WASHINGTON—Challenging commonly held misperceptions, the U.S. Department of Justice published a report this week revealing that the vast majority of UFO abductions are perpetrated by aliens a person knows rather than extraterrestrials unfamiliar to victims. “The popular notion of UFO abductions is of a person being beamed up into the sky by strange, hostile beings from Sirius or Andromeda, but the reality is that most of these abductions are committed by an extraterrestrial acquaintance the victim trusts and feels comfortable around,” DOJ spokesman Devin Shane said of the estimated 2,800 reported victims of UFO abduction last year, many of whom were taken against their will into an advanced spacecraft and subjected to psychological experiments and medical examinations by nonhuman entities they already knew through family or friends. “While it’s true that a significant number of abductions are still carried out by extrasolar reptilian beings with planetary invasion-related motives, data shows that known relationships with extraterrestrials are by far the greater danger to civilians, with many aliens committing abduction for personal reasons, such as indulging their own cravings for power, control, or revenge, or siphoning human energy from host bodies in order to replicate.” Officials noted, with a degree of optimism, that evidence now shows only 10 percent of all UFO abductions result in aliens impregnating the victim with thousands of eggs.

It’s life, but not as we know it. The oldest fossil ever discovered on Earth shows that organisms were thriving 4.2 billion years ago, hundreds of millions of years earlier than previously thought.

The microscopic bacteria, which were smaller than the width of a human hair, were found in rock formations in Quebec, Canada, but would have lived in hot vents in the 140F (60C) oceans which covered the early planet.

The discovery is the strongest evidence yet that similar organisms could also have evolved on Mars, which at the time still had oceans and an atmosphere, and was being bombarded by comets which probably brought the building blocks of life to Earth.

Three of the planets fall within a temperature range that should allow water to exist on their surfaces – a placement that is sometimes referred to as “the Goldilocks zone” because it is neither too hot nor too cold. Given the right sort of atmosphere, water could also be present on three of the others.

Astronomers say a solar system 39 light-years from Earth’s harbours seven Earth-sized planets, at least three of which are in the temperature sweet spot where water (and potentially life) is possible.

It’s a trap(PIST-1)! 😉

“The seven exoplanets were all found in tight formation around an ultracool dwarf star called TRAPPIST-1.”

Astronomers have found at least seven Earth-sized planets orbiting the same star 40 light-years away, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The findings were also announced at a news conference at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

This discovery outside of our solar system is rare because the planets have the winning combination of being similar in size to Earth and being all temperate, meaning they could have water on their surfaces and potentially support life.

“This is the first time that so many planets of this kind are found around the same star,” said Michaël Gillon, lead study author and astronomer at the University of Liège in Belgium.

And all of them are in the temperate zone.

In late 2015, in the Chilean desert, astronomers pointed a telescope at a faint, nearby star known as a red dwarf. Amid the star’s dim infrared glow, they spotted periodic dips, a telltale sign that something was passing in front of it, blocking its light every so often. Last summer, the astronomers concluded the mysterious dimming came from three Earth-like planets—and that they were orbiting in the star’s temperate zone, where temperatures are not too hot, and not too cold, but just right for liquid water, and maybe even life.

This was an important find. Scientists for years had focused on stars like our sun in their search for potentially habitable planets outside our solar system. Red dwarfs, smaller and cooler than the sun, were thought to create inhospitable conditions. They’re also harder to see, detectable by infrared rather than visible light. But the astronomers aimed hundreds of hours worth of observations at this dwarf, known as TRAPPIST-1 anyway, using ground-based telescopes around the world and NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

We may be about to meet some strange new worlds beyond our solar system.

NASA will hold a news conference Wednesday to make an announcement on exoplanets, planets that orbit a star other than our own sun. You can tune in at 1 p.m. ET and stick around for a Reddit Q&A with the researchers at 3 pm.