The professors interviewed all expressed various levels of excitement about the prospect of alien life, but they also uniformly cautioned against jumping to premature conclusions.
"It's a long way from being established as true," said Buck, adding that he brought a historian's skepticism to the subject.
"It's come at a very good time, almost too nice a time," said Saunders, noting that NASA's fiscal year 1997 budget is coming up for review soon.
"Most of [NASA]'s great adventures are well-timed" to precede budget decisions, said Buck, who listed the Apollo moon landing and "most of the probes into the solar system" as examples.
But even if they're cynical about NASA's motives, the scholars still said that the discovery could be one of the landmark scientific achievements of the century.
"It's a wonderful opportunity," said Hartl. "I'm glad I'm alive when it happened.