Original subtitles

earth

our home planet the only place in the

universe known to support

life yet could life forms from outer

space

already have paid us a visit could they

even be abducting members of the human

race

it may seem like science fiction but has

planet earth

already had a close encounter

stories of close encounters with alien

life

are part of our culture every year in

the us

there are thousands of reported

sightings of ufos

unidentified flying objects and some

people

even claimed to have been abducted by

aliens

i'm a perfectly normal individual that's

had rather extraordinary

odd experiences my entire lifetime

natural phenomena or even military

activities

can explain most of the ufo incidents

but

some still keep people guessing

there's no way that it was balloons or

an aircraft or helicopters

or flares people actually saw a mile to

two mile wide craft flying saucers have

invaded our planet

skeptics argue that such sightings and

close encounters

are merely figments of our imagination

perhaps inspired by science fiction

movies and popular culture

you have a dream about an alien in the

middle of the night what is your alien

gonna look like

your alien's gonna look like my alien

the alien we we both saw on television

although even respected scientists admit

that real aliens

could have the capability to travel vast

distances across the cosmos

to visit earth there is no

law of physics preventing a civilization

perhaps a million years more advanced

than ours from reaching the planet earth

some believe that there is overwhelming

evidence that aliens have visited us

possibly on many occasions throughout

history

leaving artifacts and messages ranging

from crop circles

to the pyramids i saw some strange

objects and strange lights i saw some

things i couldn't

explain they were definitely under

intelligent control

for those of you that are skeptical i

would ask you look at all

the incidents there are some very

serious things out there some incident

really needs some investigation

in 1995 dr lynn kaitai saw lights she

could not explain

near her home in the mountains just

north of phoenix arizona

she had her camera with her i

really concentrated on that top orb that

was starting to disappear

it didn't budge it just slowly dimmed as

if

once it disappeared it was still there

and i noticed an

eerie silence as if time had stopped

it was just extraordinary and very

strange

two years later on march 13th 1997

kaitai was also among the thousands of

witnesses

who shared a remarkable experience

thousands of people statewide were

looking up purposely

to the sky on a clear beautiful night to

catch a glimpse of the hailbop comet

when this

mile to two mile wide triangle craft

traverse the entire state

i mean it really went through the most

populated corridor of arizona

totally totally silent this was a

massive parade

throughout the state some people find it

hard to dismiss

the phoenix lights case because there

were so many eyewitnesses

after a brief investigation the military

revealed that the lights were created by

flares

released from a squadron of aircraft

flying in a v

formation despite this explanation

some people maintain that the lights

were otherworldly

pyrotechnic expert paul mann has worked

with flares for over 23 years

he believes that staging this event

would be incredibly challenging

i think you would find it very difficult

to mistake a flare

for what people would regard as a ufo

although he won't be launching the

flares from a fighter jet paul believes

that he can explain the difference

between flares

and the phoenix lights here are flares

which will go to about 300 feet high

give you a constant burn but you'll see

there's a slight flicker in it

anybody be able to spot that as a flare

rather than a craft

so we've got a shimmering red light

there lots of smoke you can see the

smoke trail

the pinpoint of light will give it away

as a flare and it falls to the ground it

doesn't hover

for hours so for anybody who saw the

phoenix lights just

if it was a pyrotechnic that could last

for so long that was quite an

achievement and to get it to hold in the

sky

was something else altogether

i know what i saw and thousands of other

people know what they saw

and it definitely was not flares the

characteristics are quite different from

these orbs

there's no smoke trails these are balls

these are orbs that are in rock solid

formations

the data speak for itself

some people believe that flares are an

improbable explanation for the lights

over phoenix

dr michael shermer publisher of skeptic

magazine

thinks the incident highlights the

difficulty of judging the truth about

ufos

people are poor eyewitnesses all of us

judging the size

motion and speed of objects in the sky

particularly at night or at dusk it's

very difficult to do

schermer has been writing about the

unexplained for over 10 years

he questions not only the quality of the

evidence but also the reliability of

human testimonies

when somebody says oh it was 200 meters

wide

in the sky how do you know was it next

to something that you knew the size of

already and then you can judge it's

twice as big as that

no people just make wild ass guesses

these wild guesses include mistaking

military aircraft

weather balloons flares and even the

planet venus

as alien craft yet such sightings lead

many people to believe in the existence

of ufos

despite logical explanations from

scientists

and the us government ironically

official denials of ufo landings may

actually encourage a popular belief in

their existence

because of a fascination with conspiracy

theories

and a fear of government cover-ups

particularly

in the infamous case of roswell roswell

this is the mecca of ufology initially

the story given that it was a weather

balloon was a lie

it was a lie because it was a national

security secret

it was a national security secret until

1995

when the government said that roswell

wasn't actually a high altitude weather

balloon

but a high altitude surveillance balloon

to monitor

soviet nuclear tests this revelation

only serves to convince the ufo

community

that the government are still covering

up whatever did happen

at roswell so the ufology people said oh

hi you see we've been saying that they

lie

yeah right but they're saying what it

actually is

but that's a lie no that makes perfect

sense for a cold war

atmosphere in 1947. the mystery

surrounding roswell

has been fueled by misinformation and

the shifting official explanation

that keeps the story alive yet sometimes

even the military themselves spot the

unusual

in 1980 personnel at an air force base

on the east coast of england saw a

strange light in a nearby forest

deputy base commander colonel charles

halt was on duty

when he received a strange message from

one of his staff

when the on-duty police lieutenant came

in and insisted on seeing myself in the

base commander and talking to us

privately

he was white as a sheep the lieutenant

reported that a strange

unidentified flying object had been seen

descending into nearby

rendelsham forest colonel halt and a

disaster preparedness officer

visited the supposed landing site they

recorded their

mission as evidenced

all the birds got quiet all the animals

in the forest were just silent

we approached a site where they said

this alleged craft had landed

there were three indentations in the

ground about an inch and a half to two

inches deep about eight to ten inches

across

they were about six seven maybe eight

foot apart in a nice triangular shape

being cautious colonel halt and his

disaster preparedness officer

took radiation readings with their

geiger counter

the levels were four times higher than

normal

then something moved in the trees

a bright red light with a black center

that was moving through the trees

it appeared to be shedding something

like molten metal

almost like steel coming out of a

crucible as we stood there and all

watching it

it silently exploded and broke into

multiple white objects

that just disappeared many journalists

and researchers

claim that what colonel halt and others

actually saw while in rendelsham forest

was in fact the lighthouse at nearby

orford ness

but colonel halt remains convinced that

what he saw wasn't of this world

i know what we saw but i don't know what

it was my own personal suspicions are

that there may have been a craft that

was damaged injured or it may have been

a reconnaissance vehicle of some type

taking a look at all the activity in the

area

in january 1981 colonel halt contacted

the british ministry of defense

but never received an official response

he is convinced that his close encounter

was genuine

and that governments cover up this and

other ufo cases

dr michael shermer is not so sure the

problem with government cover-ups like

that is people can't keep their mouth

shut

if aliens were really here and the

government was covering up

surely some lower echelon person would

say

i've got the story of a lifetime

even if governments were trying to cover

up ufo incidents

people haven't stopped questioning the

official explanations

either aliens exist or they don't either

thought

is frightening for any ufo to get here

it would have to travel across space

from another part of the universe

light years away where might they come

from

and just how would they get here has

earth ever had a close encounter with an

alien civilization

there have been many supposed sightings

of ufos

but no definitive evidence of a visit

but whether or not aliens have dropped

into our own backyard

many scientists do believe that they

could exist

i would be shocked if we were alone it

would be

an incredible waste of space considering

how many galaxies there are

there should be lots of planets like

ours with life on it

the universe is about 14 billion years

old

and expanding at a phenomenal rate

it holds billions and billions of stars

far more stars than there are grains of

sand

on all the beaches on earth

and some of these stars have planets

orbiting them

there are plenty of places from which

e.t could originate

physicist lawrence krauss believes that

the most likely place for e.t

to call home would be on a planet

similar to our own

life seems to form ubiquitously

relatively easily in conditions like

this

so we we would expect one simple way to

find life would be to look for planets

like earth

the problem is that any such planet is

going to be a long

long way from earth outer space

distances

are so vast they are measured in light

years rather than miles

one light year is a distance of nearly

six trillion miles

that's the distance traveled in one year

by a beam of light

moving slightly in excess of 186 000

miles

per second

light from our own sun reaches earth

in about eight minutes

and takes another ten and a half years

to travel to the nearest known planet

outside

of our solar system

any alien planning to visit us from this

planet

faces a round trip of over 120 trillion

miles

the only way to shorten the duration of

such a journey

may be to go faster than the fastest

thing we know in the universe

light itself in 1905 einstein

laid out special relativity and in that

theory you cannot go faster than the

speed of light

there's a cop on the block in some sense

that says you can't break the light

barrier

einstein's theory of special relativity

suggests that there is a cosmic speed

limit

preventing anything and any alien going

faster than the speed of light

however in 1916 einstein created an

even more powerful theory the general

theory of relativity

it opens up the possibility that instead

of beating the laws of physics

the answer might be to get around them

theoretical physicist michio kaku

believes that this holds the key

to breaking the light speed barrier

space-time

is a fabric a fabric that can be

stretched and compressed and perhaps

even ripped

that might give you the possibility to

break the light barrier

einstein's theory proposes that matter

causes space

time to curve imagine a heavy ball on a

rubber sheet

the ball's presence causes the sheet to

distort into a hollow

if a smaller ball is then dropped onto

the sheet it will spiral toward the

heavier ball

einstein theorized that space like the

rubber sheet

is warped as objects travel through it

and if space can be warped then there

may be a novel way to travel from one

side of the galaxy

to the other if you have a sheet of

paper

a straight line is the shortest distance

between two points

however there's a loophole if you want

to fold the sheet of paper

then you realize the shortest distance

between two points

is actually a wormhole some scientists

suggest that wormholes are space-time

tubes which act as shortcuts connecting

distant regions of space

theoretically an alien using wormholes

could travel between two parts of our

galaxy

faster than a beam of light could travel

through normal space and time

it's a shortcut first described more

than 150 years ago

by a mathematician in oxford england

that man

was the author known as lewis carroll

alice's looking glass connects the

countryside of oxford

to a fantastic world called wonderland

and if you were to put your hand

through the looking glass your hand

would leave oxford

and go to the other side of forever

that is a wormhole what we physicists

call

a multiply connected space

wormholes may be the ideal

transportation network

but manipulating the laws of physics

could bring catastrophic consequences

you don't know how stable they are it

may be quite

radioactive there may be quantum

corrections and radiation as you enter

the wormhole or perhaps it will close up

even before you can enter

it may be possible to artificially

create a wormhole

but it would take enormous energy and

advances in technology way beyond our

imagination

to rip through the fabric of space and

time

but maybe there's an alien civilization

so advanced

that they can build these super galactic

highways with ease

intelligent aliens may also have found

another trick to navigate around the

universe

perhaps they can actually move space

itself

as far as we know space can do whatever

the heck it wants it can expand and

respond to the presence of matter and

energy

if we could somehow harness that then in

principle you might be able to develop

something you might call a warp drive

the alien craft would collapse the space

in front of it

and simultaneously expand the space

behind it

in that way the ship would transfer from

one part of the galaxy to another

without actually moving an inch

it may sound like the stuff of science

fiction but for some advanced aliens

it could be science fact i can show you

with this balloon

i have a little replica i've drawn of

the uss enterprise

from star trek and just so you know the

local surroundings have the sun

here i have the moon saturn and what i

want to

show you is that is that the the

enterprise could travel

away from this star system and towards

this star without ever moving with

respect to its local surroundings

how can i do that well if i squeeze the

balloon at this end

then i expand this region of the balloon

the distance between the starship and

these stars has increased but the

starship hasn't moved at all with

respect to its local surroundings

and so what i've done is i've had space

do the work

nobody knows how a warp drive might be

powered

and krause believes that its use would

be fraught with danger

it may not be dangerous for the

participants in the spacecraft but it'd

be pretty dangerous for everyone else

because when you contract space in front

of you you literally crush everything

between you and your star when you

expand space behind you

you you put incredible tension in

everything around you

you'd have to have an interstellar

highway where you cleared out everything

in between

because otherwise you destroy basically

everything around you

our own technology is nowhere near

sidestepping the laws of physics

but an alien civilization that has

evolved a million years ahead of us

might already have found a way

earth-bound physicists who are looking

for life

take this idea very seriously they have

devised a system to categorize alien

civilizations

according to how advanced they may be

when we physicists look in outer space

we don't look for little green men we

look for type 1

type 2 and type 3 civilizations

a type 1 alien civilization would be so

advanced

it could harness all forms of energy on

its planet

including oceans volcanoes

and even the weather

would soon exhaust the power of a planet

and use the energy of their local star

at this stage they would be categorized

as a type 2

civilization eventually they become

galactic

they begin to colonize entire star

systems they begin to have fantastic

energies allowing them to manipulate

stars and black holes

that is type three

perhaps a hundred thousand to a million

years

more advanced than our technology but

where would our own civilization be

on this scale

we don't even rate on this scale we get

our energy from

dead plants oil and coal that's how

primitive

we are our official rating

is type zero we cannot travel across the

vastness of interstellar space

however a type three civilization would

have developed the technology needed to

control

space and time in order to travel freely

throughout the universe

you cannot rule out the possibility that

an extraterrestrial civilization perhaps

a million years more advanced than ours

have the capability of

reaching the planet earth but any alien

civilization

developing ways of traveling across the

galaxy to planet earth

still faces potential disaster

if they reach us at all then the oxygen

in our atmosphere

the very thing that keeps us alive

may prove to be deadly poison for our

alien visitors

if an alien civilization has

successfully learned how to control time

and space

and cross the interstellar void to visit

earth

they will face a serious danger our

atmosphere

it protects us from solar radiation but

it's a dangerous barrier for any

approaching spacecraft

as an object approaches earth from space

it heats up due to friction with

molecules in our atmosphere

the heat burns up most objects such as

asteroids

before they reach the ground

nasa spacecraft use this friction to

slow down

as they re-enter the atmosphere

heat resistant tiles protect them from

the intense heat

without them the ship would burn up

but some physicists believe that a

technologically advanced civilization

would solve the problem long before they

reach our atmosphere

i would suspect that any intelligent

creature with an advanced form of space

travel would simply

slow down even before it reaches the

planet earth

having navigated our atmosphere and

landed safely on our planet

the aliens faced their next big hurdle

it's unlikely they could just step

out of their craft earth's atmosphere

would probably not match exactly the

atmosphere on the home planet of a

visiting alien

in fact unless the aliens were adapted

to oxygen

they would find the gas extremely

poisonous

as aliens come to earth you wouldn't

expect them to just walk out of their

spacecraft and breathe the air and start

eating apples and oranges here in the

mojave desert in nevada

nasa's space science division studies

how earth's basic organisms

live in extreme environments from this

they hope to ascertain how different

species might survive

potentially hazardous conditions

leading the research is dr chris mckay

we take for granted that life needs

oxygen

and we all need it plants and animals

need oxygen but we have developed very

special machinery and enzymes

for detoxifying oxygen oxygen is

intrinsically poisonous

but would evolution have happened in the

same way on the home planet of an alien

visitor

would they have evolved to cope with

oxygen

in an extreme case the fundamental

chemistry might be completely different

with different gases

dr mckay studies samples that contain

over 10 million bacteria

they reveal that some species here exist

using totally different principles

to the vast majority of life on earth

if we look at the bacteria we get a

glimpse of how strange

chemistry really can be how these

organisms can be really so

so alien the strength of our sun poses

another problem for visiting aliens

the energy from its rays supports life

on earth

but it can be dangerous

too much sun can blind humans burn us

or even cause cancer for a creature from

another planet

our sun's rays could be deadly

you can imagine life forms from another

world coming here and finding the uv

light here to be

stunningly bright and require extensive

sun shields and

sunglasses and other ways to protect

themselves

and then there is earth's invisible

hazard for aliens

gravity a visitor from another planet

might find earth's gravity a challenge

humans have grown up with it in bodies

designed for one

g if we subject our own bodies to

extreme gravity

the consequences can be disastrous

fighter pilots making extreme turns can

experience forces

as high as 9 g's that means that a 160

pound pilot

feels like he weighs over 1500 pounds

anything above 9 g's the pressure

becomes too great

and the pilot will black out

aliens from a planet with less gravity

would probably experience a similar

effect

say the martians came to earth well on

mars the gravity is the third

on earth the gravity would be higher for

them so even if they were fit by martian

standards they might find

this high gravity of drag but it's not

hard to postulate

and have the technology to allow them to

operate in higher gravity

a far less predictable danger facing a

visiting alien

is germs just as in h.g

wells's war of the worlds simple

bacteria

might be deadly to visiting aliens

the bacteria on one planet could have

serious consequences for organisms on

another planet

when the martians come they invade earth

they kill off the armies of earth with

no problem

but then the bacteria on earth infect

the martians and kill them in the end

earth winds the war of the world but not

because of the prowess of human

technology

but because of the biochemical diversity

of the bacteria

history has shown that there is good

reason for visitors from another world

to be cautious

and for us to be cautious about them

when the spanish invaded the americas

they brought a far deadlier weapon than

their guns and swords

they brought smallpox the flu and other

illnesses

when those barriers were reduced and

life spread between the new world and

the old world

there was a lot of death and destruction

as a result of that

we might contaminate visiting aliens or

they might contaminate us

this fear of infection from new species

of bacteria

also troubled nasa during the moon

exploration of the 1960s

they placed the first astronauts

returning from the moon in quarantine

in case they carry deadly space germs

mckay hopes that an alien civilization

exploring the universe

would also be careful not to contaminate

planets

with their bugs one would imagine that

an

alien civilization with the technology

to

move between worlds would have the sense

to realize the same problem

and have strict biological barriers and

controls

they wouldn't just land and go out for a

picnic and spread out their stuff on

another world

it's clear that the occupants of an

alien spacecraft traveling to earth

would face a catalog of dangers

first they would have to survive the

destructive forces within a wormhole

then avoid burning up in the earth's

atmosphere and finally

protect themselves from poisonous oxygen

or deadly germs

perhaps alien visitors would decide not

to take the risk themselves

what if they send explorers who never

age

and who never die from deadly diseases

the most efficient way is with robots

these are

self-replicating nanobots

nanobots are miniature robots minute and

lightweight enough

to be potentially invaluable in space

travel

one of the major factors in traveling

fast through space is weight

the smaller you are the faster you can

go in fact

subatomic particles can travel at near

the speed of light

so tiny nanobots may be the best way of

exploring the universe

scientists believe that it might be

possible to create microscopic nanobots

able to clone themselves these would

land on moons and planets

and self-replicate allowing an alien

civilization

to explore vast tracts of the galaxy

without ever leaving their home planet

eventually you would have a sphere of

perhaps trillions

of robots expanding near the speed of

light

landing on moons each robot creating

other robots

that's the most scientifically

reasonable way to explore the galaxy

that's how nature does it that's how

viruses work

humans are already exploring the cosmos

using robots

nasa's voyager probes are heading deep

into space

sending back data as they go

and robotic rovers have explored the

surface of other planets in our solar

system

but because of their size it appears

that nanobots could be the most logical

way to explore the universe

but so far there is no evidence that

alien nanobots

have ever visited earth and even if they

have

will we be able to detect them

the vast majority of people who claim to

have had close encounters

in fact describe not miniature robots

but living alien creatures often none

too

friendly and prone to abducting probing

and experimenting upon their victims

an advanced alien civilization might be

able to manipulate physics and cross

time in space to visit earth

but some scientists question why on

earth

would they want to they suggest that

beings capable of traveling through

space and time

would be millions of years more advanced

than humans

and would find life on earth of little

interest and even if they do want to

make contact

they might not be friendly

based upon the human race's own history

of confrontation

michael shermer publisher of skeptic

magazine

has his own theory if you go by what

happens here on earth we would never

want to come into contact with e.t

we would be eaten or enslaved or killed

because that's what happens here so

that's not good

even so some people claim to have

already had a close encounter with

extraterrestrials

some even claim to have been abducted by

them

the alien abduction experience is a

fascinating one these stories have all

the earmarks of a very human

kind of experience it's a type of night

terror it's a bad dream

because there is no evidence outlandish

accounts of alien visitation

are greeted with disbelief so most

claimants are keen to conceal their

identity

one woman from new york who we have

named molly claims to have experienced

repeated visitations throughout her life

probably the most strangest and

disturbing memory that i have

is of a dream with a white paw

coming into my neck and placing a tiny

little stick

in it and when i woke up that morning i

was very shocked to find

a strange painful lump on my neck and

when i felt it

because i thought it was a pimple i

discovered something hard

in there the shape of a piece of rice

according to molly the tiny implant

worked its way deep into her body

and before she could get medical advice

it disappeared without a trace

another encounter that she vividly

remembers actually involved being taken

on board an

alien spacecraft

i recall being in i'm going to call it a

clam shell but it was more like a

scallop

and it had a top and a bottom and i can

recall being inside of it and the top

closed over you

i experience medical procedures

with very strange types of devices one

of the beings was very tall

and very thin and very insect-like

like most people who claim to have met

aliens

molly has no evidence at all to back up

her story

and skeptics consider that experiences

like hers

are more to do with popular culture than

extraterrestrials

most people just give the default

explanation

that comes to mind which is whatever

they've been seeing on television and

reading in

popular magazines and books over

hundreds of years the phenomenon of

visitations

has manifested itself in a variety of

guises

in the middle ages people reported

stories of angels and demons

while a hundred years ago reports spoke

of spirits

and ghosts many scientists including

shermer

believe that a combination of sci-fi

stories movies

and real-life exploration of space

encourages people to manifest their

fears

in the form of alien visitations

the aliens are our angels they are our

demons

that that's who we personify as these

weird anomalies we call them aliens

because that's what we're into

we're in the space age in the age of

science fiction

however that does not completely explain

what causes people to believe they have

experienced a visitation

dr michael persinger from laurentian

university in canada

believes he has discovered a link

between the alien visitation sensation

and electromagnetic fields he suggests

that fluctuations in electromagnetic

activity

could stimulate a reaction in the brains

of certain individuals

and account for most alien visitation

experiences

the experience of a presence occurring

usually late at night and either

producing

a mystical experience or a sexual

experience or even a terrifying

experience

shows up in all cultures and we now

realize that this sensed presence

is built into the human brain itself

persinger believes that it is possible

to induce something like an

alien visitation experience in almost

anyone

he does this by creating a complex

electromagnetic field in his laboratory

and applying it to people's brains

to demonstrate persinger and his

assistant place a volunteer inside a

soundproof chamber

electrodes producing the magnetic field

are attached to the subject's head

then he is blindfolded and the lights

are dimmed

persinger monitors his stats and waits

for his subject to experience a feeling

similar to that of an alien presence

with the experiences if you wish to

report them aloud go right ahead

within minutes the electromagnetic

fields

trigger a shocking reaction in the

subject's brain

how he describes it it's going to be a

function of his culture

his experiences and his experiences a

lot

feels like i'm dying

at this point persinger stops the

experiment

in this study the subject is visualizing

the presence in a terrifying way

i have never had any feeling that ever

it just

made me feel a little trapped and it

hurt

i don't know closest i've ever been to

hell

it just it was an awful place to be

the volunteer was extremely sensitive to

the electromagnetic fields which

stimulated his brain

however this technique demonstrates the

extraordinary power of our brain

to turn our fears into monsters and

demons

and even aliens from distant worlds

dozens of people have had experiences

that they attributed to alien abductions

and experiences

we put them to the chamber they have a

very similar experience

the terrifying experiences induced in

the chamber

are caused by channeled electromagnetic

fields

persinger believes that abduction

experiences in the real world

are caused by electromagnetic fields

created by

natural phenomena such as sun flares

seismic activity and changes in

atmospheric conditions

and it's thought that our common

physiology and global culture

is responsible for the similarity in the

accounts

inevitably we're all going to have

similar experiences because our brains

are wired that way

we'll see the same kinds of illusions

we'll have the same kinds of

hallucinations and so on

the role of electromagnetism in alien

experiences

is far from proven some researchers

suggest that sleep paralysis

or conditions like post-traumatic stress

are to blame

but until we've made contact with et we

may never know if aliens are all in the

mind

or not and if e.t

did reveal itself there could be another

barrier to overcome

language

it may be that aliens don't choose to

talk with us

at all they may decide to talk to one of

the other species that inhabits the

earth

and that could be whichever species they

consider possesses

the most intelligent language

it may be possible for aliens to cross

the interstellar void

to land on earth and to adjust for

survival

in our atmosphere but communicating with

us

in any meaningful way may prove to be

the hardest step of all

we are arrogant to believe that they're

going to want to actually

talk to us and and visit us i mean why

think of ants in an ant hill if someone

is building a five-lane

super highway right next to the anthill

would the ants know how to communicate

with the workers the main danger is that

these workers will simply pave over the

anthill and not even realize what

they've done

in san francisco a few scientists are

already studying ways of communicating

should e.t ever come to call

leading the hunt is seti the search for

extraterrestrial intelligence

for the last 40 years seti scientists

have been monitoring the skies

listening for messages from alien

species

seti is just about every field you can

imagine

applied to the search for life in the

universe

seti scientist lawrence doyle believes

that the key to communicating with

aliens

is first to understand their level of

intelligence

and for that he needs to establish how

organisms communicate

there hasn't been a search for

extraterrestrial intelligence yet

there's only been a search for

extraterrestrial technology

we plan to make it a search for

intelligence by

understanding the laws that create

communication

so that if we get signals we can tell

it's a communication as opposed to

random astrophysical processes

by understanding the laws that dictate

communication

doyle can identify and separate real

patterns of communication

from random noise to do this

he uses a mathematical equation known as

information theory which was originally

developed to quantify the amount of

information

sent down telephone lines doyle uses it

to analyze the complexity of a language

he calculates the interdependency of

different words or sounds within the

language

the greater the number of words or

sounds that can be strung together

that are dependent on the first word or

sound in the sequence

the more complex the language

on this scale english is a level 9

communication system

doyle now plans to use the same

technique on alien communication

and the higher the complexity the more

superior the intelligence

any alien or extraterrestrial message

has to obey the rules of information

theory there's no other way to transmit

information

and if we can measure how complex their

communication is

it may be an indicator of how complex an

extraterrestrial society is

but information theory can only help

doyle understand the complexity of an

alien signal

not the content so even if he spots e.t

he won't know what e.t is saying it's

the same problem we have on earth

when humans try and communicate to other

species

if you smile at a wolf it does not mean

i'm happy

it means you want to pick a fight if you

smile at chimpanzee it means you're

scared

so even a smile doesn't work how do you

communicate with an alien is a tricky

point

we can't even agree on the same symbols

of greeting

among species on earth

doyle has been using information theory

to discern

patterns and rules in animal

communication and study their complexity

the results have been surprising with

his current data

doyle has found that squirrel monkeys

have a level three communication system

while dolphins have a level four

so who does doyle think might be the

best candidates to communicate with

aliens

so far he's not convinced that either

dolphins or

humans have the necessary linguistic

skills

but he has found a species on earth with

a communication level

much much higher humpback whales we're

majoring in

because they look like they will have

the absolutely most complex

communication system maybe on the planet

doyle's study of humpbacks is in its

early stages

and so far he has only studied their

social calls

but it may be that when

extraterrestrials talk to the earth

species with the most

intelligent language they won't talk

with us they'll talk to humpback whales

instead

but despite listening to the universe

for four decades

seti has yet to discover a single

confirmed extraterrestrial signal

to actually find real aliens we may need

to look in a different place

a place closer to home

perhaps we should take a closer look at

ourselves

when you look in the mirror perhaps you

are looking at a martian

it's always amusing to me when i hear

people talking about

ufos and aliens but for me it's the

bacteria

there could be bacteria here that are

really alien

life on earth could have come from mars

and we could all be aliens here

mckay and other scientists believe

there's a chance that billions of years

ago

alien bacteria were blasted from the

surface of another planet

and carried away in a meteorite

the meteorite might have eventually

crash-landed on earth

spilling out the bacteria allowing it to

grow

and flourish it's a process

called panspermia if panspermia is true

you and i are aliens in the sense that

our life

did not develop on the planet that we're

living now

professor jay milosh of the university

of arizona

has studied meteorites that have landed

on earth to see if they could have

transported life from other worlds

this meteorite is a piece of martian

basalt

where it came from was a large meteorite

impact on the surface of mars

it's almost an ideal delivery mechanism

it's ideal

because the rock protects the bacteria

from radiation

and extreme temperatures in space it

would also protect it from the impact

of crash landing on earth

to test whether bacteria could travel

safely through the cosmos

malach and his colleague wayne nicholson

conduct an extreme survival experiment

they inject a large block of rock with

bacteria

and take the sample to the ames vertical

gun laboratory near san francisco

the blocks placed inside a large vacuum

chamber ready

and milosh then fires a projectile into

it

at over 13 000 miles per hour it

absolutely destroyed

the rock target blasted into tiny

fragments

amazingly despite the rock being

virtually vaporized

the bacteria survive intact

if they could survive it's not a big

stretch to think that

organisms on the surface of another

planet could also survive meteorite

impact

and launch into interplanetary space

the experiment shows that bacteria could

not only survive the vacuum of space

but also the impact of landing on earth

one theory is that bacteria from another

world

evolved over millions of years to form

life as we know it

so perhaps all life on our planet is

alien in origin

we human beings life plants animals

everything we see descended from that

common martian ancestor that's a

possibility we may go to mars and

suddenly see well that's where great

great great grandma lived

because of the vast size of our galaxy

aliens even highly advanced ones

may never have visited earth in

spaceships

all ufo sightings may well be no more

than a simple misinterpretation of what

we are seeing

and alien visitations a product of our

overactive imaginations

but aliens might have been here all

along

we and all the species on our world

could be the direct descendants of

extraterrestrial life forms

in the strangest twist of all perhaps

we are the aliens

you