Researchers at Pennsylvania State University recently proposed a theory that suggests: if extraterrestrials detect changes in Earth’s atmosphere due to increased greenhouse gas emissions, they might attack humans to protect other civilizations from humanity’s destructive actions.

Total ozone over the southern hemisphere in 1996, from a NASA TOMS instrument on the Japanese ADEOS satellite. (credit: NASA)
But this scenario is “highly unlikely,” according to Jacob Haqq-Misra, a meteorologist and astrobiologist at Penn State and a co-author of the new paper. He explains, “We’re not really saying this is going to happen, but it’s a possibility. The motivation for explaining this possibility is that we are doing this technology already. We are looking at other planets and their spectral signatures.”
According to the International Business Times, media reports about this new study frightened some of the general public with headlines like “”NASA REPORT: Aliens may destroy humanity to protect other civilizations” and “NASA: Aliens May Destroy Humanity Over Greenhouse Gases.” NASA was forced to quickly respond, clarifying that, while one of the paper’s authors, postdoctoral student Shawn Domagal-Goldman, works at NASA headquarters, NASA was in no way involved with the study. NASA posted multiple messages on Twitter addressing the issue, with statements like, “Yes, @drudge & @guardiannews are mistaken about an ‘alien’ report. It’s not NASA research,” and “Again, claims we released a study about aliens are not true.”

Shawn Domagal Goldman (credit: Paleblue)