Alien Worlds (2020) s01e04 Episode Script
Terra
1
The Earth,
home to millions of species.
But what might live beyond?
Astronomers have discovered
thousands of planets
outside our solar system.
They believe there are trillions more.
If life exists
on only a fraction of them,
then the universe must be alive.
All living things have the same needs.
To feed
reproduce
and evolve.
By applying the laws of life on Earth
to the rest of the universe
it's possible to imagine
what could live
on alien worlds.
Being an astronomer, it's sort of
like being a human conversation piece.
There's two questions you always get.
The first is "What's inside a black hole?"
And the second, which is the one
people are really interested in,
is "What about life
elsewhere in the universe?"
And then, you know, almost always,
we come down to this place.
Area 51 is a secret U.S. Air Force base.
Its existence was only officially
recognized in 2013.
So, what really goes on back there?
Well nobody knows.
Of course, some people think they know.
The believers,
the the conspiracy theorists,
they think that that's where
all the alien bodies are.
All the dead aliens in the crashed
spaceships are taken somewhere back there
and they're held in refrigerators
or "defructinators,"
or whatever technology
you need for an alien body.
And, you know, that's essentially
where all the secrets
that we're not allowed
to know about are being kept.
This is footage
supposedly showing an alien body
being examined at Area 51.
But the video is a hoax
perpetuating the idea
that aliens are among us.
The reason why most ufology
sounds like a science-fiction story is,
it is a science fiction story.
But, you know,
in spite of the silliness of ufology,
I do believe
that there is other life in the universe.
And, as a scientist, um,
I I I'm taken to that belief,
because I really believe that's where
the numbers now are leading us.
A couple of years ago, a colleague and I
tried to take all the amazing data
that we now have,
and we wrote down an equation
that allowed us to calculate
the total number of planets out there
that might have civilizations on them.
Essentially, what we found
was that there were ten billion
trillion
planets out there
in the right place where life,
and possibly, civilizations could form.
Every one of those planets
is essentially an experiment.
And for none of them, other than ours,
to turn out with a civilization
that's pushing it quite a bit.
If alien civilizations
are statistically so likely,
why haven't astronomers
found any sign of them?
Where is everyone?
Think about it this way.
Out there in the Pacific Ocean, there's
187 million billion gallons of water.
Now, if I take this bucket here
and throw it over
and then haul up,
see what's in it
All righty. What do we see?
Nothing.
Should I take the fact that I don't see
any life in my bucket
to tell me that there's no life
in the Pacific Ocean?
Well, that would be crazy, right?
There's all kinds of life out there.
There are sea otters, and whales,
and octopuses, and jellyfishes,
and God only knows what's out there.
They're just not in this bucket.
That's why this is a perfect metaphor
for the search
for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Every time we look at an individual star,
that's like dropping a bucket
in the ocean.
We're going to have to look
at a lot of stars,
and we're gonna have
to search through a lot of data
until we find the clue that leads us
to another civilization.
What sort of alien civilizations
might exist in the vastness of space?
Imagine a planet nine billion years old,
twice as old as Earth.
Old enough that a truly advanced
intelligence could evolve.
This is Terra.
It was once a fertile world.
Now, it is barren.
But life can still thrive here
in artificial domes.
Plants convert sunlight
into glucose energy
which feeds the inhabitants of Terra.
Each box contains the brain matter
of a super-intelligent being.
Over time, they've evolved
not to need their bodies.
They exist only as neural tissue.
They never age. They never die.
They're monitored
and maintained by robots.
Each is an individual.
But they're connected to think as one.
A hive mind.
This is a hyper-advanced civilization.
On Earth, humans are the only species
to have created any form of civilization.
Why haven't other intelligent creatures
done the same thing?
The octopus is as close
to an alien intelligence
as exists on our planet.
Octopuses belong
to a group called cephalopods.
And they have evolved down
a completely different pathway.
The octopus has separate nervous systems
in each of its arms.
So, each arm contains
about 14 million neurons.
And each arm
can make independent decisions.
So the octopus can be said to have,
essentially, nine separate brains.
I kind of wanna reach out and touch him.
Lego toys are quite hard to get apart.
But we're curious to see
if he's gonna be able to open them.
Octopuses are clearly smart.
But being smart isn't enough
to form a civilization.
The key is cooperation
sharing ideas
passing down knowledge
from one generation to the next.
Our culture
is constantly improving.
We keep building
on each other's inventions.
All right.
Take this taxi, for example.
Wheels were invented more
than five-and-a-half thousand years ago.
Iron has been smelted more than
four-and-a-half thousand years ago.
Vulcanized rubber has been used for tires
since about 180 years.
So, all of these inventions were necessary
to actually build
something as complicated as this car.
An octopus, by comparison, has to pretty
much figure out everything for himself.
There is no improving and building
on previous solutions.
And that's pretty limiting,
even if you have nine brains.
Civilizations are like living organisms
with millions of connected parts.
It's this connectivity
that allows them to grow.
But the civilization on Terra is in peril.
Its star is double the age
of our own sun.
And as stars get older,
they burn bigger and brighter.
Eventually, the planet Terra
will be incinerated.
So an escape plan is underway
to colonize another planet
in the same solar system
further from the star than Terra.
There's ice on this world,
but no atmosphere.
It needs to be manufactured.
This is engineering on a planetary scale.
Giant machines melt the ice caps
to release vapor and gas
generating enough atmosphere
to warm the planet.
Such a massive project
requires a massive amount of energy
delivered directly from the aging star.
The ability to harness energy
is the bedrock of civilization itself.
Part of what I do
is to try and predict the future.
And you can look back in history
and get a lot of ideas from there,
but there are underlying trends we can use
to some extent to see what's to come,
like life expectancy, wealth,
population size.
And one of the most revealing is the
amount of energy that civilizations use.
The more energy a civilization can access,
the more powerful it becomes.
That's the secret of progress
from the Stone Age until today.
So, unleashing the heat and energy
in charcoal
allowed us to get temperatures
hot enough to smelt metals
to make tools and weapons.
Later on, of course, we harnessed
fossil fuels like coal and gas,
allowing the creation of vehicles
that could hurtle us across the world
at much higher speed
than we ever had before.
But the greatest source of energy
is, of course, our star.
The Noor Power Station is the largest
solar complex of its kind in the world.
Half a million mirrors
at the edge of the Sahara Desert.
The ones over here are heliostats,
and they track the sun
as it moves through the sky
and focus all its energy
down on that tower.
And that energy goes out into the world
and powers modern civilization.
More and more of our transport,
our lighting, our agriculture.
Very relevant for here, air conditioning.
Basically, everything that keeps us safe,
working and entertained
comes from electricity.
And more and more of that electricity
is coming from solar power plants
like this.
But humans use only a tiny fraction
of all the energy available from the sun.
So, 430 quintillion joules of the sun's
energy fall on the Earth every hour.
For comparison, that's very roughly
2,000 Hiroshima bombs every second.
A lot of energy. How much do we use?
Well, humanity uses
410 quintillion joules in a year.
So, in a year, we fail to use
all the energy that the sun sends us
in a single hour.
Imagine if we could capture
all that energy
and use it to power our civilization.
What miracles could we accomplish?
What places
could we explore with all that?
According to astrophysicists,
any truly advanced civilization
will be able to harness all its energy
directly from the stars.
By this measure, the civilization on Terra
is supremely advanced.
It has built solar panels in space,
near to its star
for maximum effect.
But as the star becomes
bigger and brighter
it also becomes more volatile.
A solar flare.
Sooner or later, this will be
the destiny of Terra itself
to be swept away by the power of its sun.
The solution is to colonize
the new planet as quickly as possible.
There are no life forms here.
All the work is done by machines.
They're able to think for themselves
and make their own decisions.
They are artificially intelligent.
If humans are to form colonies in space,
the groundwork will be done
in the same way
using robots.
And those robots will be designed
by people like Philip Metzger.
He has spent his whole life
in and around the space program.
My father used to work
in this building,
and he helped build the Saturn V rockets
that were large enough
to take humans to the moon.
Apollo 11,
this is the launch operations manager.
The launch team wishes you
good luck and Godspeed.
Ah, thank you very much.
Know it will be a good one.
I'll never forget
the Apollo 11 flight.
I was seven years old.
I was across the river during the launch,
watching it.
There were helicopters flying around.
People had come from all over the world,
coming to watch the moon launch.
It was electric.
Astronauts report it feels good.
20 seconds and counting.
T minus 15 seconds, guidance is internal.
Twelve, eleven,
ten, nine
Ignition sequence starts.
six five four
three two one
zero.
Liftoff!
We have a liftoff.
As it climbed into the sky,
you could see that long, beautiful flame
shimmering across the water.
We got skirts-up?
Roger, we confirm skirts-up.
So, I grew up wanting to be
a rocket scientist, my entire life.
Philip became a NASA scientist.
But rather than sticking at rocket design,
he moved into robotics.
If we ever really want to do
anything fabulous in space,
we need robots.
RASSOR is designed to work
in tough planetary environments.
It can climb over rocks.
If it gets stuck,
it can get itself unstuck.
If it flips upside down,
it can flip itself over.
In any situation,
it can get itself out of trouble.
The simplest thing that we could mine
on a planet is the regolith,
the dirt that covers
the planetary surface.
You can extract metal from the regolith.
You can also make ceramics that are used
for insulating electrical systems.
And you can make rocket fuel.
But mining does take intelligence.
You have to know where to drive,
where to cut.
You've gotta keep from getting lost,
get yourself unstuck.
So it's going to take a clever machine
like RASSOR
to be able to start industry in space.
The Holy Grail of robotics
is self-replication
a machine that can make copies of itself.
This is a spare wheel for RASSOR.
A robot part made by a robot
for another robot, using space materials.
But this is an early example
of how we're evolving the robots
toward a fully closed ecology of robots
that can self-reproduce in space.
Once you've got self-reproducing robots,
everywhere is a place you can go.
I don't think there are any limits.
Without input from any life form,
the robots are re-engineering a planet
making it ready for colonization.
Now, it's time to abandon Terra.
Each of the domes has been designed
for this moment
to get into orbit.
From here, they will travel
to their new home.
The domes have their own
life-support systems.
But they're helpless
against a high-energy burst
of solar radiation.
Nothing is evolved to survive
in the vacuum of space.
This is as true for aliens
as it is for humans.
Michael Foale knows all about
the dangers of space travel.
In 1997, he was a guest American astronaut
on the Russian Mir space station
during the first collision in space.
There was, uh, an attempt
by the Russian commander, Vasily,
and his crewmateto control
a cargo ship that weighed seven tons,
and dock it without the radar,
without speed,
without distance measurements
Dock it to our space station.
I felt the station
I didn't "felt" it, I saw the station
move all around me and I heard a thud.
And at that point I thought, "Mm
This could be it, you know, where I die."
Uh, 'cause I'm looking at all these bolts
and I was just waiting
for those bolts to part,
and to, kind of, rip open
and just see the vacuum of space.
And then, all the fans, all the lights,
all the computers failed and went silent.
And now we're in
a completely silent station
that's getting cold.
We've lost power.
Pressure is at 602.
And then my ears started to pop.
I knew we were depressurizing,
and that basically,
air was leaving the space station,
and we only had 23 minutes left to live,
if we stayed there
and we didn't stop the leak.
I started helping Sasha
pull these cables out.
Huge cables I thought would have taken
us hours to undo,
we did them in six minutes.
And we'd take this cap and we'd put it in
and it sucks in, and it goes "pew."
And at that point, we've stopped the leak.
And it was there in front of the window,
looking at the galaxy
I said
"Well, I know it's been a really bad day,
but this is an amazingly beautiful view."
You're kind of sensing, trying to sense
all of the, uh
The presence in the in the universe.
In total, Michael Foale went into space
on six missions.
Oops, more hair going away.
But every second spent off-world
increased his dose of radiation.
We're exposed
to radiation on Earth,
but once you go into orbit,
now you're exposed
to thousands of times more radiation.
And that radiation now is damaging
our DNA much faster,
and the repair mechanisms
that we evolved to have
are not able to cope with it.
When I came back from my space flights,
they found I had, like, four percent
of my white blood cells had DNA mutations.
Most of those mutated cells get killed
by other white blood cells in your body,
but, some of them,
unfortunately, don't die.
They reproduce and mutate
and become cancers.
That is a fundamental risk for astronauts.
And if we imagine going out to stars,
it could be that, out of a hundred ships,
only one of them makes it.
Long-distance space travel
will always be risky
even for intelligent aliens.
There's no protection against
a sudden blast of stellar radiation.
But for those that make it
to the end of the journey,
this is their reward
a new Terra.
Rather than adapting to a different world,
they have created a copy
of their old world.
Such are the benefits
of an advanced civilization.
But how long will the good times last?
The star keeps growing,
bigger and brighter
spitting out more radiation.
Eventually, it will render the new planet
as lifeless as Terra.
And then they'll need to relocate again,
to another planet, further from the star.
This is the advantage of being mobile.
It's possible to transit
from world to world,
making and remaking home.
Perhaps there's an alien civilization
already headed for Earth.
If so, should we hide from them,
or make ourselves known?
Okay. Um
Let me Let me end by saying
Let me close by telling you
why we should begin transmitting
and why we should begin right now.
Doug Vakoch wants to open up a dialogue
with potential aliens
by sending them radio messages.
But first, he needs to persuade
astronomers on Earth
that it's a good idea.
This is where it all started.
The biggest radio telescope
Earth had ever seen.
There's something about being here,
the awesomeness, the scale of the place.
This is where, in 1974, we sent
humanity's first message into space.
It starts by these pulses that count out
the numbers from one through ten.
Then after we've shown extraterrestrials
how we count,
we use those numbers to describe
some of the chemical elements
essential to life on Earth.
And then after that
what we look like,
how many humans there are,
how tall we are.
Then after that,
a representation of our solar system.
And then it ends with a representation
of this telescope itself,
where the message came from.
The pulses of the Arecibo message
could be arranged into a pictogram
to inform intelligent aliens
about life on Earth.
But it was a one-time event,
aimed at a star cluster
25,000 light-years away.
If we'd been sending messages
to nearby stars
at the same time
we sent out the Arecibo message,
we could be getting responses today
from any of thousands of stars.
But we haven't, and so we're in the dark.
The biggest reason we haven't sent
more messages is because we're afraid.
Because the blockbuster
science-fiction films
show aliens coming to Earth
and annihilating us
and so that's what we think
would really happen.
I think the the most prominent challenge
is the concern that some people have
that transmitting intentional messages,
uh, will lead to an alien invasion.
And I think the easiest
response to that is,
our planet has been giving off evidence
of life for two billion years.
So, if there are any really paranoid
aliens out there
who want to annihilate any competition,
they've had a long time to come here,
and I haven't seen 'em.
Rather than sending an occasional message
into space,
Doug's plan is to transmit
thousands of them
when the Arecibo telescope
is on downtime.
With radio astronomy,
you can do it any time of the day.
But I like to do it at night.
Caffeine is essential for astronomers.
Um
A lot of late nights in the observations
and we have to stay sharp.
Once a month, Arecibo does a survey
of recently discovered asteroids.
Quite often there's a gap, maybe an hour,
where the transmitter is transmitting
off into space at no particular place.
What I'm proposing is that Arecibo
should use those gaps in the schedule
to target nearby stars with a message,
in case there are any extraterrestrials
in orbit around that star.
Each month, we could be targeting
about 50 stars
that may support intelligent life.
And for me, it's a no-brainer.
I think we should be doing it.
I think of this in terms
of what's sometimes called
"joining the galactic club."
And what I find so strange about that
analogy is that no one ever talks about,
um, paying our dues
or even submitting an application.
And that's what messaging
extraterrestrial intelligence does.
It may just be our way
of making first contact.
Thanks.
Thank you very much to Doug
for this interesting presentation.
When we reach out to other stars,
when we send them our messages,
in the best-case scenario,
we get a reply back in 10 or 20 years.
But realistically, it could take
thousands of years.
So this is something that we're doing,
not for ourselves, but for our children,
for our grandchildren.
And even for the aliens.
Eight, seven, six,
five, four, three,
two, one.
Mission liftoff.
Switching down range.
In 2018, the latest
planet-hunting telescope went into orbit.
It is finding evidence of new worlds
across the night sky.
Astronomers think it's only
a matter of time
before some alien life forms
are discovered.
Among them, perhaps, intelligent beings.
One day, we will know for sure.
Until then, we can only guess
at who or what is out there.
The Earth,
home to millions of species.
But what might live beyond?
Astronomers have discovered
thousands of planets
outside our solar system.
They believe there are trillions more.
If life exists
on only a fraction of them,
then the universe must be alive.
All living things have the same needs.
To feed
reproduce
and evolve.
By applying the laws of life on Earth
to the rest of the universe
it's possible to imagine
what could live
on alien worlds.
Being an astronomer, it's sort of
like being a human conversation piece.
There's two questions you always get.
The first is "What's inside a black hole?"
And the second, which is the one
people are really interested in,
is "What about life
elsewhere in the universe?"
And then, you know, almost always,
we come down to this place.
Area 51 is a secret U.S. Air Force base.
Its existence was only officially
recognized in 2013.
So, what really goes on back there?
Well nobody knows.
Of course, some people think they know.
The believers,
the the conspiracy theorists,
they think that that's where
all the alien bodies are.
All the dead aliens in the crashed
spaceships are taken somewhere back there
and they're held in refrigerators
or "defructinators,"
or whatever technology
you need for an alien body.
And, you know, that's essentially
where all the secrets
that we're not allowed
to know about are being kept.
This is footage
supposedly showing an alien body
being examined at Area 51.
But the video is a hoax
perpetuating the idea
that aliens are among us.
The reason why most ufology
sounds like a science-fiction story is,
it is a science fiction story.
But, you know,
in spite of the silliness of ufology,
I do believe
that there is other life in the universe.
And, as a scientist, um,
I I I'm taken to that belief,
because I really believe that's where
the numbers now are leading us.
A couple of years ago, a colleague and I
tried to take all the amazing data
that we now have,
and we wrote down an equation
that allowed us to calculate
the total number of planets out there
that might have civilizations on them.
Essentially, what we found
was that there were ten billion
trillion
planets out there
in the right place where life,
and possibly, civilizations could form.
Every one of those planets
is essentially an experiment.
And for none of them, other than ours,
to turn out with a civilization
that's pushing it quite a bit.
If alien civilizations
are statistically so likely,
why haven't astronomers
found any sign of them?
Where is everyone?
Think about it this way.
Out there in the Pacific Ocean, there's
187 million billion gallons of water.
Now, if I take this bucket here
and throw it over
and then haul up,
see what's in it
All righty. What do we see?
Nothing.
Should I take the fact that I don't see
any life in my bucket
to tell me that there's no life
in the Pacific Ocean?
Well, that would be crazy, right?
There's all kinds of life out there.
There are sea otters, and whales,
and octopuses, and jellyfishes,
and God only knows what's out there.
They're just not in this bucket.
That's why this is a perfect metaphor
for the search
for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Every time we look at an individual star,
that's like dropping a bucket
in the ocean.
We're going to have to look
at a lot of stars,
and we're gonna have
to search through a lot of data
until we find the clue that leads us
to another civilization.
What sort of alien civilizations
might exist in the vastness of space?
Imagine a planet nine billion years old,
twice as old as Earth.
Old enough that a truly advanced
intelligence could evolve.
This is Terra.
It was once a fertile world.
Now, it is barren.
But life can still thrive here
in artificial domes.
Plants convert sunlight
into glucose energy
which feeds the inhabitants of Terra.
Each box contains the brain matter
of a super-intelligent being.
Over time, they've evolved
not to need their bodies.
They exist only as neural tissue.
They never age. They never die.
They're monitored
and maintained by robots.
Each is an individual.
But they're connected to think as one.
A hive mind.
This is a hyper-advanced civilization.
On Earth, humans are the only species
to have created any form of civilization.
Why haven't other intelligent creatures
done the same thing?
The octopus is as close
to an alien intelligence
as exists on our planet.
Octopuses belong
to a group called cephalopods.
And they have evolved down
a completely different pathway.
The octopus has separate nervous systems
in each of its arms.
So, each arm contains
about 14 million neurons.
And each arm
can make independent decisions.
So the octopus can be said to have,
essentially, nine separate brains.
I kind of wanna reach out and touch him.
Lego toys are quite hard to get apart.
But we're curious to see
if he's gonna be able to open them.
Octopuses are clearly smart.
But being smart isn't enough
to form a civilization.
The key is cooperation
sharing ideas
passing down knowledge
from one generation to the next.
Our culture
is constantly improving.
We keep building
on each other's inventions.
All right.
Take this taxi, for example.
Wheels were invented more
than five-and-a-half thousand years ago.
Iron has been smelted more than
four-and-a-half thousand years ago.
Vulcanized rubber has been used for tires
since about 180 years.
So, all of these inventions were necessary
to actually build
something as complicated as this car.
An octopus, by comparison, has to pretty
much figure out everything for himself.
There is no improving and building
on previous solutions.
And that's pretty limiting,
even if you have nine brains.
Civilizations are like living organisms
with millions of connected parts.
It's this connectivity
that allows them to grow.
But the civilization on Terra is in peril.
Its star is double the age
of our own sun.
And as stars get older,
they burn bigger and brighter.
Eventually, the planet Terra
will be incinerated.
So an escape plan is underway
to colonize another planet
in the same solar system
further from the star than Terra.
There's ice on this world,
but no atmosphere.
It needs to be manufactured.
This is engineering on a planetary scale.
Giant machines melt the ice caps
to release vapor and gas
generating enough atmosphere
to warm the planet.
Such a massive project
requires a massive amount of energy
delivered directly from the aging star.
The ability to harness energy
is the bedrock of civilization itself.
Part of what I do
is to try and predict the future.
And you can look back in history
and get a lot of ideas from there,
but there are underlying trends we can use
to some extent to see what's to come,
like life expectancy, wealth,
population size.
And one of the most revealing is the
amount of energy that civilizations use.
The more energy a civilization can access,
the more powerful it becomes.
That's the secret of progress
from the Stone Age until today.
So, unleashing the heat and energy
in charcoal
allowed us to get temperatures
hot enough to smelt metals
to make tools and weapons.
Later on, of course, we harnessed
fossil fuels like coal and gas,
allowing the creation of vehicles
that could hurtle us across the world
at much higher speed
than we ever had before.
But the greatest source of energy
is, of course, our star.
The Noor Power Station is the largest
solar complex of its kind in the world.
Half a million mirrors
at the edge of the Sahara Desert.
The ones over here are heliostats,
and they track the sun
as it moves through the sky
and focus all its energy
down on that tower.
And that energy goes out into the world
and powers modern civilization.
More and more of our transport,
our lighting, our agriculture.
Very relevant for here, air conditioning.
Basically, everything that keeps us safe,
working and entertained
comes from electricity.
And more and more of that electricity
is coming from solar power plants
like this.
But humans use only a tiny fraction
of all the energy available from the sun.
So, 430 quintillion joules of the sun's
energy fall on the Earth every hour.
For comparison, that's very roughly
2,000 Hiroshima bombs every second.
A lot of energy. How much do we use?
Well, humanity uses
410 quintillion joules in a year.
So, in a year, we fail to use
all the energy that the sun sends us
in a single hour.
Imagine if we could capture
all that energy
and use it to power our civilization.
What miracles could we accomplish?
What places
could we explore with all that?
According to astrophysicists,
any truly advanced civilization
will be able to harness all its energy
directly from the stars.
By this measure, the civilization on Terra
is supremely advanced.
It has built solar panels in space,
near to its star
for maximum effect.
But as the star becomes
bigger and brighter
it also becomes more volatile.
A solar flare.
Sooner or later, this will be
the destiny of Terra itself
to be swept away by the power of its sun.
The solution is to colonize
the new planet as quickly as possible.
There are no life forms here.
All the work is done by machines.
They're able to think for themselves
and make their own decisions.
They are artificially intelligent.
If humans are to form colonies in space,
the groundwork will be done
in the same way
using robots.
And those robots will be designed
by people like Philip Metzger.
He has spent his whole life
in and around the space program.
My father used to work
in this building,
and he helped build the Saturn V rockets
that were large enough
to take humans to the moon.
Apollo 11,
this is the launch operations manager.
The launch team wishes you
good luck and Godspeed.
Ah, thank you very much.
Know it will be a good one.
I'll never forget
the Apollo 11 flight.
I was seven years old.
I was across the river during the launch,
watching it.
There were helicopters flying around.
People had come from all over the world,
coming to watch the moon launch.
It was electric.
Astronauts report it feels good.
20 seconds and counting.
T minus 15 seconds, guidance is internal.
Twelve, eleven,
ten, nine
Ignition sequence starts.
six five four
three two one
zero.
Liftoff!
We have a liftoff.
As it climbed into the sky,
you could see that long, beautiful flame
shimmering across the water.
We got skirts-up?
Roger, we confirm skirts-up.
So, I grew up wanting to be
a rocket scientist, my entire life.
Philip became a NASA scientist.
But rather than sticking at rocket design,
he moved into robotics.
If we ever really want to do
anything fabulous in space,
we need robots.
RASSOR is designed to work
in tough planetary environments.
It can climb over rocks.
If it gets stuck,
it can get itself unstuck.
If it flips upside down,
it can flip itself over.
In any situation,
it can get itself out of trouble.
The simplest thing that we could mine
on a planet is the regolith,
the dirt that covers
the planetary surface.
You can extract metal from the regolith.
You can also make ceramics that are used
for insulating electrical systems.
And you can make rocket fuel.
But mining does take intelligence.
You have to know where to drive,
where to cut.
You've gotta keep from getting lost,
get yourself unstuck.
So it's going to take a clever machine
like RASSOR
to be able to start industry in space.
The Holy Grail of robotics
is self-replication
a machine that can make copies of itself.
This is a spare wheel for RASSOR.
A robot part made by a robot
for another robot, using space materials.
But this is an early example
of how we're evolving the robots
toward a fully closed ecology of robots
that can self-reproduce in space.
Once you've got self-reproducing robots,
everywhere is a place you can go.
I don't think there are any limits.
Without input from any life form,
the robots are re-engineering a planet
making it ready for colonization.
Now, it's time to abandon Terra.
Each of the domes has been designed
for this moment
to get into orbit.
From here, they will travel
to their new home.
The domes have their own
life-support systems.
But they're helpless
against a high-energy burst
of solar radiation.
Nothing is evolved to survive
in the vacuum of space.
This is as true for aliens
as it is for humans.
Michael Foale knows all about
the dangers of space travel.
In 1997, he was a guest American astronaut
on the Russian Mir space station
during the first collision in space.
There was, uh, an attempt
by the Russian commander, Vasily,
and his crewmateto control
a cargo ship that weighed seven tons,
and dock it without the radar,
without speed,
without distance measurements
Dock it to our space station.
I felt the station
I didn't "felt" it, I saw the station
move all around me and I heard a thud.
And at that point I thought, "Mm
This could be it, you know, where I die."
Uh, 'cause I'm looking at all these bolts
and I was just waiting
for those bolts to part,
and to, kind of, rip open
and just see the vacuum of space.
And then, all the fans, all the lights,
all the computers failed and went silent.
And now we're in
a completely silent station
that's getting cold.
We've lost power.
Pressure is at 602.
And then my ears started to pop.
I knew we were depressurizing,
and that basically,
air was leaving the space station,
and we only had 23 minutes left to live,
if we stayed there
and we didn't stop the leak.
I started helping Sasha
pull these cables out.
Huge cables I thought would have taken
us hours to undo,
we did them in six minutes.
And we'd take this cap and we'd put it in
and it sucks in, and it goes "pew."
And at that point, we've stopped the leak.
And it was there in front of the window,
looking at the galaxy
I said
"Well, I know it's been a really bad day,
but this is an amazingly beautiful view."
You're kind of sensing, trying to sense
all of the, uh
The presence in the in the universe.
In total, Michael Foale went into space
on six missions.
Oops, more hair going away.
But every second spent off-world
increased his dose of radiation.
We're exposed
to radiation on Earth,
but once you go into orbit,
now you're exposed
to thousands of times more radiation.
And that radiation now is damaging
our DNA much faster,
and the repair mechanisms
that we evolved to have
are not able to cope with it.
When I came back from my space flights,
they found I had, like, four percent
of my white blood cells had DNA mutations.
Most of those mutated cells get killed
by other white blood cells in your body,
but, some of them,
unfortunately, don't die.
They reproduce and mutate
and become cancers.
That is a fundamental risk for astronauts.
And if we imagine going out to stars,
it could be that, out of a hundred ships,
only one of them makes it.
Long-distance space travel
will always be risky
even for intelligent aliens.
There's no protection against
a sudden blast of stellar radiation.
But for those that make it
to the end of the journey,
this is their reward
a new Terra.
Rather than adapting to a different world,
they have created a copy
of their old world.
Such are the benefits
of an advanced civilization.
But how long will the good times last?
The star keeps growing,
bigger and brighter
spitting out more radiation.
Eventually, it will render the new planet
as lifeless as Terra.
And then they'll need to relocate again,
to another planet, further from the star.
This is the advantage of being mobile.
It's possible to transit
from world to world,
making and remaking home.
Perhaps there's an alien civilization
already headed for Earth.
If so, should we hide from them,
or make ourselves known?
Okay. Um
Let me Let me end by saying
Let me close by telling you
why we should begin transmitting
and why we should begin right now.
Doug Vakoch wants to open up a dialogue
with potential aliens
by sending them radio messages.
But first, he needs to persuade
astronomers on Earth
that it's a good idea.
This is where it all started.
The biggest radio telescope
Earth had ever seen.
There's something about being here,
the awesomeness, the scale of the place.
This is where, in 1974, we sent
humanity's first message into space.
It starts by these pulses that count out
the numbers from one through ten.
Then after we've shown extraterrestrials
how we count,
we use those numbers to describe
some of the chemical elements
essential to life on Earth.
And then after that
what we look like,
how many humans there are,
how tall we are.
Then after that,
a representation of our solar system.
And then it ends with a representation
of this telescope itself,
where the message came from.
The pulses of the Arecibo message
could be arranged into a pictogram
to inform intelligent aliens
about life on Earth.
But it was a one-time event,
aimed at a star cluster
25,000 light-years away.
If we'd been sending messages
to nearby stars
at the same time
we sent out the Arecibo message,
we could be getting responses today
from any of thousands of stars.
But we haven't, and so we're in the dark.
The biggest reason we haven't sent
more messages is because we're afraid.
Because the blockbuster
science-fiction films
show aliens coming to Earth
and annihilating us
and so that's what we think
would really happen.
I think the the most prominent challenge
is the concern that some people have
that transmitting intentional messages,
uh, will lead to an alien invasion.
And I think the easiest
response to that is,
our planet has been giving off evidence
of life for two billion years.
So, if there are any really paranoid
aliens out there
who want to annihilate any competition,
they've had a long time to come here,
and I haven't seen 'em.
Rather than sending an occasional message
into space,
Doug's plan is to transmit
thousands of them
when the Arecibo telescope
is on downtime.
With radio astronomy,
you can do it any time of the day.
But I like to do it at night.
Caffeine is essential for astronomers.
Um
A lot of late nights in the observations
and we have to stay sharp.
Once a month, Arecibo does a survey
of recently discovered asteroids.
Quite often there's a gap, maybe an hour,
where the transmitter is transmitting
off into space at no particular place.
What I'm proposing is that Arecibo
should use those gaps in the schedule
to target nearby stars with a message,
in case there are any extraterrestrials
in orbit around that star.
Each month, we could be targeting
about 50 stars
that may support intelligent life.
And for me, it's a no-brainer.
I think we should be doing it.
I think of this in terms
of what's sometimes called
"joining the galactic club."
And what I find so strange about that
analogy is that no one ever talks about,
um, paying our dues
or even submitting an application.
And that's what messaging
extraterrestrial intelligence does.
It may just be our way
of making first contact.
Thanks.
Thank you very much to Doug
for this interesting presentation.
When we reach out to other stars,
when we send them our messages,
in the best-case scenario,
we get a reply back in 10 or 20 years.
But realistically, it could take
thousands of years.
So this is something that we're doing,
not for ourselves, but for our children,
for our grandchildren.
And even for the aliens.
Eight, seven, six,
five, four, three,
two, one.
Mission liftoff.
Switching down range.
In 2018, the latest
planet-hunting telescope went into orbit.
It is finding evidence of new worlds
across the night sky.
Astronomers think it's only
a matter of time
before some alien life forms
are discovered.
Among them, perhaps, intelligent beings.
One day, we will know for sure.
Until then, we can only guess
at who or what is out there.