Anonymous says Nasa is “on the verge” of announcing the existence of extra-terrestrial life.

A YouTube account affiliated with the hacking group has released a video making the claim.

It cites statements made by associate administrator for Nasa Thomas Zurbuchen during a congressional hearing on ‘Advances in the Search for Life’ in April.

The collective quoted Dr Zurbuchen as saying: “Our civilisation is on the verge of discovering evidence of alien life in the cosmos.

“Taking into account all of the different activities and missions that are specifically searching for evidence of alien life we are on the verge of making one of the most profound and unprecedented discoveries in history.”

The video adds that a number of recent findings, including the presence of hydrogen in Saturn’s moon discovered by the Cassini exploration craft, as well as the existence of oceans on Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter, provide grounds for optimism humanity must be close to encountering life that is not native to Earth.

Last week Nasa announced the discovery of 219 new suspected planets outside our solar system, including 10 which share characteristics with Earth.

They are “rocky”, like our planet, and exist in their solar systems’ “Goldilocks zone’, the optimum distance from their star for the existence of liquid water.

Detected by the Kepler space telescope, it brings the total number of suspected exo-planets the machine has identified to 4,034, 50 of which are near-Earth-size habitable zone candidates.

In a statement, Nasa said: “Results using Kepler data suggest two distinct size groupings of small planets. Both results have significant implications for the search of life.”