The truth is out there... but it's not that Mazlan Othman is going to be our space ambassador, as recently reported by The Sunday Times (paywall) and reprinted in The Australian:
The United Nations, tackling head-on the problem of what to do if an alien says “take me to your leader”, is poised to designate a specific individual for the task.... An obscure Malaysian astrophysicist who is head of its little-known Office for Outer Space Affairs (Unoosa).
The story, which was widely reported over the weekend, was published on Sunday at 12:50 pm AEST (Saturday, 9:50 pm EDT). It compared Unoosa and Othman to the Men In Black and even quoted experts in space policy:
Professor Richard Crowther, an expert in space law and governance at the UK Space Agency and who leads British delegations to the UN on such matters, said: “Othman is absolutely the nearest thing we have to a 'take me to your leader' person.”
The story was then picked up by The Telegraph
, which published on Sunday at 11:30 am BST (Sunday, 6am EDT), discussing the details of Othman's push for her new role:
She will set out the details of her proposed new role at a Royal Society conference in Buckinghamshire next week. The 58-year-old is expected to tell delegates that the proposal has been prompted by the recent discovery of hundreds of planets orbiting other starts, which is thought to make the discovery of extraterrestrial life more probable than ever before.
From there the story spread to various other news sites, including CNET
, and Time
before anyone thought to actually check the facts of the Australian article. At around 8 am EDT on Monday The Guardian
posted a story claiming that that Mazlan Othman has officially denied the statement:
Finally an email from Othman herself would have prompted our Martian to trudge back to his spaceship. "It sounds really cool but I have to deny it," she said of the story. She will be attending a conference next week, but she'll be talking about how the world deals with "near-Earth objects". Our alien will just have to try someone else, or stop reading the Sunday Times.
Related content: Discoblog: Man Claims That Aliens Are Pelting His House With Meteorites
80beats: Stephen Hawking, for One, Does Not Welcome Our Potential Alien Overlords
Bad Astronomy: Aliens can be prickly
Science Not Fiction: First Dinosaurs, Now Aliens Invade San Diego!
Gene Expression: Diplomacy among the aliens
Gene Expression: The aliens are out to get us!
Image: Flickr/Kevindooley
