NASA has something to tell us

Extraterrestrial life. It’s the stuff of a thousand books, movies and TV shows – but generally as fiction. Until now?

Serious space types are keeping one eye on the skies and the other on NASA at the moment, as the agency prepares to announce ‘an astrobiological finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life’, very early on Friday morning.

The announcement involves some of the biggest players in the field, including Mary Voytek, director of NASA’s Astrobiology program, NASA astrobiologists Felisa Wolfe-Simon and Pamela Conrad, as well as Steven Benner, a distinguished fellow from the Foundation of Applied Molecular Evolution in Florida, and Professor James Elser from Arizona State University.  

Astrobiology, for those not up on their sciences, is the study of life in the universe –where it’s come from, how it’s evolving and interacting and what the future holds for it. It’s a mix of astronomy, microbiology, earth sciences, cosmochemistry and a whole mess of other disciplines.

If ET is out there, these are the folks that are going to know about it. More on the NASA Astrobiology progam can be found more here.

While it’s probably not likely that this is the announcement where they finally wheel out the little green men and fess up that sci-fi has been right all along, it’s certainly going to be fascinating. You can watch it live on their website at 6am on Friday morning (Australian EDST).

Watch the skies!