Has NASA discovered aliens?
Yesterday, a rumor was widely spread through Weibo and forums: NASA will hold a press conference the next day, announcing an "enough to shock all mankind" information". The text is often accompanied by a screenshot of NASA's website, which features the agency's press conference announcement. There were speculations for a while. Although many industry insiders speculated that the news that NASA is about to announce is related to the Chandler X-ray Telescope and may be an X-ray source, there are still many netizens who do not know the truth. the existence of man".
However, as soon as the NASA news was announced, it was greeted with boos. It turned out that the agency just announced the discovery of a suspected young black hole. Disappointed Chinese netizens said the result was "unsatisfactory". However, how did the original quite powerful speculation of "shocking all mankind" come out and spread like wildfire?
Speculation from Italy
The earliest source of the misinterpretation that NASA is going to release the new findings may be a report aired on November 14 by the Italian TV station Italia 1's news program Studio Aperto[1]. The report was titled "Tomorrow NASA will announce shocking news from outer space" (la nasa annuncia: domani novita choc dallo spazio; Tomorrow NASA will announce shocking news from space). However, this news just says that NASA will release information about the unusual object discovered by Chandler near Earth.
Still, the news casts speculation on what's to come and steers the conversation toward "alien life." In the program, the producer also cited the "Apollo 11 dialogue" that has been circulating on the Internet but has never been officially confirmed, suggesting that astronauts have seen aliens. However, the news makes it clear in the final section that the above is just speculation, and the answer will only be known when NASA officially announces it, and ET fans may be disappointed because NASA's press conference may only be about a new The content of the celestial element.
"Alien Fans" Appear
On November 15, this news video was uploaded to Youku [2] and Tudou [3] by domestic netizens, with the title "Tomorrow NASA will announce a story that may shock all mankind. news," and explained that the Studio Aperto news program speculated that NASA may officially acknowledge the existence of extraterrestrial creatures or flying saucers in a statement.
Subsequently, posts discussing NASA's press conference began to appear in forums such as Baidu's "2012 Truth Exploration Club" and "2012 Bar" discussing strange phenomena, aliens, and UFOs. In one of the posts, some netizens gave the "antecedents" of the press conference[4]:
"According to a NASA official, since 2004, alien fleets have appeared successively near the sun. After years of observation, one of the super-giant alien spaceships is docked between Venus and Mercury, and the goal is coming towards the earth. , NASA urgently notified astrophysicists, philosophers, churches, and social research scholars around the world to secretly study the impact of this object on human society on Earth in 2008. At the same time, it secretly made contact with extraterrestrial visitors, in a series of observations and confirmations After there was no hostility. Then, after many and long discussions, NASA decided to make this important event public on November 15th.”
By this time, though, such rumors were only spreading among aliens and mystery fans.
Weibo is an amplifier
As a special communication platform, Sina Weibo has become the most important medium for this rumor to spread. Relevant news first appeared on Sina Weibo around 11:30 on the 15th. At that time, many fans and users with few followers continuously reprinted the original text of the NASA press conference without translation or any interpretation. "WASHINGTON -- NASA will hold a news conference at 12:30 p.m. EST on Monday, Nov. 15, to discuss the Chandra X-ray Observatory's discovery of an exceptional object in our cosmic neighborhood."
At 13:32, a subtitle group that translates mysterious events, aliens, and UFO-themed works announced through its official Weibo: Tomorrow, November 15th (November 16th, Beijing time) NASA A piece of news that may shock all mankind will be announced at 12:30 local time. [5]
The news has been retweeted more than 5,000 times (as of press time), and bigger waves are to come. At 16:38 a few hours later, the official Weibo of a Newsweek published a message saying:
The website of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) suddenly announced today that tomorrow, November 15, US time (November 16, Beijing time), it will announce a news that is enough to shock all mankind. [6]
Links to relevant NASA pages are also distributed. It is worth noting that the "may" in the previous subtitle group rumors was replaced by "enough". The rumor has been retweeted more than 50,000 times and has more than 10,000 comments (as of press time).
Although some netizens quickly pointed out the errors in this news: first, NASA announced the news of the conference as early as November 10, but it became "suddenly announced today" in the rumors; secondly, the original text of the NASA page The words "news enough to shock all mankind" did not appear in the text. Although the official Weibo account of the weekly magazine subsequently released a number of supplementary news, and made corrections and apologies for the words "news enough to shock all mankind", it did not change the result that the rumor was widely spread.
The truth: At 12:30 local time on November 15th (1:30 am Beijing time on the 16th), NASA calmly told the masses who did not know the truth at a press conference: We did not find aliens, we found The celestial body is the first "young" black hole to be watched by humans and "grown" for 31 years, and it is really close, only about 50 million light-years away from us.
References:
[1] Italia 1Studio Aperto news video
[2] Youku video
[3] Potato Video 1 Potato Video 2
[4] Post Bar
[5] Official Weibo of the subtitle group
[6] Official Weibo of a News Weekly
