Not Real News

FILE - Workers near the top of the 526 ft. Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center spruce up the NASA logo standing on scaffolds in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Wednesday, May 20, 2020. On Friday, Dec. 31, 2021, The Associated Press reported on stories circulating online incorrectly claiming NASA just hired 24 theologians to assess how the world would react if we discovered alien life. (AP Photo/John Raoux, File)

A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

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NASA hasn’t hired theologians to study reaction to alien life

CLAIM: “NASA just hired 24 theologians to assess how the world would react if we discovered alien life.”

THE FACTS: NASA has not hired any theologians to study the potential reaction humans would have to the discovery of alien life. NASA provided some funding in 2015 to the Center of Theological Inquiry, frequently referred to as CTI, in Princeton, New Jersey, for a program to study the potential societal impact of finding life beyond Earth. The NASA-funded portion of the program ended in 2017, an agency spokesperson told The Associated Press. Claims suggesting NASA recently hired two dozen theologians for the research followed an announcement by Rev. Andrew Davison, who participated in the research, that he was publishing a book called “Astrobiology...

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