Wow

Drudge is passing along a story from an Orlando TV station saying that NASA is preparing to make a "huge" announcement at 2pm today about possible life in the solar system. There aren't any further details, and the station's web server has crashed from all the traffic it's getting.

But if this story is true - WOW. And if it's alien microbes, I hope they're friendly!

Counting down the minutes till 2 o'clock...

UPDATE: Blah, Drudge is now reporting that the announcement concerns observations from the Cassini space probe that indicate the presence of liquid water on a moon of Saturn, Enceladus. Which is an important discovery to be sure, since it means the conditions for life could exist there. But I was hoping for a bit more...so bring on a Mission to Enceladus!

UPDATE II: The Orlando station that Drudge originally linked to on this story apparently misread a NASA press release, causing all the online furor earlier today:

There were erroneous reports online and elsewhere Thursday that NASA was going to report finding life on another planet or somewhere else in the solar system, according to Florida Today reporter John Kelly.

"That's not the case," Kelly said in an Internet posting. "It appears some who obtained NASA's news release did not fully understand what they were reading."

It makes one wonder just how many other news stories are distorted because reporters don't fully understand the subject matter involved...