By Tim Binnall
Home security company Ring has launched a new contest wherein a lucky individual could win a whopping $1 million if they somehow manage to capture evidence for aliens by way of their surveillance devices. The clever campaign, dubbed the Million Dollar Search for Extraterrestrials, was announced on Wednesday in a press release which called upon "customers to keep their eyes peeled for any unusual extraterrestrial activity" that might get picked up by the company's various camera systems. Declaring that "you could be rewarded for catching an otherworldly sighting," the company is offering a $1 million prize "to a US resident who captures unaltered scientific evidence of a real extraterrestrial life form on their indoor or outdoor Ring device."
As for how such a determination might be made, the company has enlisted astrobiologist Dr. Jacob Haqq Misra as their "Space and Extraterrestrial Expert" who will judge the entries based on Ring's rather stringent criteria for what constitutes alien evidence. To that end, the official contest rules state that the footage must be unaltered and show a being "exhibiting unusual, extraordinary, or unexplainable behavior." Additionally, one must demonstrate how this entity is otherworldly "based on theoretical predictions from the existing scientific literature, recovery and analysis of an artifact or documentation of extraterrestrial markings or symbols." Beyond that, the winning video "must unequivocally rule out any known explanations or any new Earth-based phenomena."
Making the million dollars all the more difficult to win, as if producing evidence of aliens was not enough, the footage must be filmed between now and when the contest ends on November 3rd, leaving a mere month-long window of opportunity to spot an extraterrestrial and, in turn, take home the prize. Perhaps anticipating that people might simply produce a fake video or realizing that no one will actually will the grand prize, Ring is also running a secondary promotion in which they will award a $500 Amazon gift card to the five individuals who create the most entertaining faux ET footage via the company's devices.