How NASA Could Determine Aliens Are Real and Tell the World
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“This is going to be a very, very hard thing to actually get the scientific community, I think, to agree upon — unless we actually see something moving around and waving at us, which is unlikely,” Glaze told Insider.
That’s why NASA has tried to develop a procedure for assessing and sharing such a monumental, sensitive discovery. The conversation is still ongoing, Glaze said, but in 2021, the agency published a framework as a starting point. It could help scientists, journalists, and NASA itself explain the science.
It’s called the “confidence of life detection” (CoLD) scale, rating scientific confidence in any potential alien-life discovery on a scale of one to seven. A possible detection can climb to higher levels of confidence as evidence builds.
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illustration cartoon shows people in white lab coats building a staircase of green bricks with numbers 1 through 7 climbing it
An illustration of the CoLD scale for determining confidence in a detection of alien life. NASA/Aaron Gronstal
For example, a level one detection might be the discovery of a molecule that could be related to life inside a Perseverance Mars sample. The evidence would graduate to level two once scientists confirm there was no contamination in the sample, or the instruments involved, that could have influenced their findings. By ruling out non-biological sources of the molecule, or by confirming that it came from an environment suitable for life, scientists could move it further up the scale.
Other scientific teams would have to measure the Mars sample themselves, with different methods, and confirm the initial finding to graduate to level six.
According to NASA, in this Mars molecule example, additional evidence from a different part of the red planet may be necessary to bring it up to level seven — where it’s probably life.
Each new level of confidence could mean a new public announcement.
The discovery of extraterrestrial life is likely to be a slow build-up, rather than an explosive eureka moment.
“Until now, we have set the public up to think there are only two options: it’s life or it’s not life,” Mary Voytek, head of NASA’s Astrobiology Program, said in a press release when the new scale was published. “We need a better way to share the excitement of our discoveries, and demonstrate how each discovery builds on the next, so that we can bring the public and other scientists along on the journey.”