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(deep space music)
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- [Narrator] This is the
closest planet to Earth
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in size and distance.
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It once may have had oceans
and a similar climate.
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Now, it is hostile and unforgiving.
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Scientists want to know
why and how it changed.
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This could help with the hunt
for other habitable worlds.
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For now, Venus could be
considered Earth's evil twin.
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(energetic orchestral music)
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(soft wondrous music)
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One of the brightest objects in the sky,
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Venus has been a world of
mystery and conjecture.
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Probes were sent to briefly
study the cloud tops
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as they passed by,
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the NASA Mariner Mission,
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quickly followed by
the Soviet Union series
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of Venera Flights.
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They left more questions
than answers in their wakes.
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Eventually, Venera 4 landed a probe
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through the dense atmosphere
onto a searing hot surface,
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followed up with more sophisticated probes
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that lived for a very short time.
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Other probes floated briefly
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in the dense poisonous atmosphere.
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Mars became a much more attractive target,
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and Venus has been left little explored.
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In the late '80s, the
Magellan Probe was launched
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from the Space Shuttle.
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It mapped the planet's surface with radar,
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giving us a detailed look
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at the rugged surface of the planet.
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Stripping away the dense,
thick atmosphere revealed
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intricate mountains,
volcanoes, and lava fields,
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an uninviting and hazardous
environment hot enough
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to melt lead.
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Following orbiters from
both Europe and Japan
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also studied the surface
features with radar.
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The Venus Express dipped
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into the upper atmosphere to aerobrake
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and descended into lower orbits.
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In recent years, several
probes have used Venus
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for gravity assists to propel
them to other destinations.
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BepiColombo, on its way to study Mercury,
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passed by taking images
and other readings.
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The maneuver, the second of Venus
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and the third of nine flybys overall,
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helped steer the spacecraft
on course for Mercury.
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Another European spacecraft,
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the Solar Orbiter also
utilized Venus for a slingshot
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as it closed in on its solar orbit.
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The Parker Solar Probe made a close flyby
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taking measurements of the
electric field of the planet
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and the radio emissions
from the hot surface.
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(electronic screeching)
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- [Brian] It's thrilling
to be able to see something
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that's never been seen before.
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This emission that we're
seeing is thermal emission.
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Even on the nightside,
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the surface of Venus is so hot
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that it's glowing faintly
at very red wavelengths.
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- These WISPR images I
think are really exciting
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because they provide a new window
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into the lower atmosphere
and surface region of Venus
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where these extreme conditions exist.
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- [Narrator] A faint glow
of heat from the nightside
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shows distinctive features
like continental regions,
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planes and plateaus.
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A luminescent halo of
oxygen in the atmosphere
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can also be seen surrounding the planet.
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These observations revealed much
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about the chemical
composition of the surface.
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- Another really interesting
thing we could look for
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is potentially mineralogical differences.
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Different rocks and different minerals
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emit different levels of heat.
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- [Narrator] Some
surprising results suggested
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that water may have been
on Venus in the past,
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but climatic changes
in planetary processes
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removed the water from the
planet and its atmosphere.
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- We have chemical fingerprints
in Venus' atmosphere
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and on its surface suggesting
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that Venus might have been
habitable in the past.
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- [Narrator] The Wide-Field Imager
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or WISPR is the sole imager
aboard the Parker Solar Probe.
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- This is something that's truly new,
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and I believe will yield
exciting science in the longterm.
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- [Narrator] Once upon a time,
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Venus might just have
been like an early Earth
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with oceans, lakes, and
rivers of liquid water,
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a much milder oxygen-rich atmosphere.
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What changed the environment?
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(soft intense orchestral music)
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Perhaps volcanic eruptions and toxic gases
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creating an atmosphere of carbon dioxide
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and sulfuric acid clouds trapping heat
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in a greenhouse effect.
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Venus has the hottest surface
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of any planet in our solar
system, hotter the mercury.
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The atmospheric pressure
is nearly 75 times greater
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than that of Earth.
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NASA and DSA are returning to the planet
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to find some answers.
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(gentle orchestral music)
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Europe is sending the spacecraft EnVision
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in partnership with NASA,
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which is providing the
synthetic aperture radar system
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called VenSAR.
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The S band radar will also
act as a microwave radiometer
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and altometer to map the surface.
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EnVision will also carry
three optical spectrum meters
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designed to observe the surface
and atmosphere of Venus,
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and a subsurface radar sounder
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that will probe the top
kilometer of subsurface.
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NASA will also be sending
DAVINCI and VERITAS to Venus,
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due to be launched around 2029.
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VERITAS stands for Venus
Emissivity, Radio Science,
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InSAR, Topography and
Spectroscopy Mission.
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It will also map Venus's surface
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to determine the planet's
geologic history.
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Germany and France are contributing
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to the infrared mapper and
radar systems to determine
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whether active volcanoes
are releasing water vapor
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into the atmosphere.
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DAVINCI the atmospheric probe will descend
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into the Venusian atmosphere
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to study the gases and
chemistry with advanced sensors.
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It is designed to survive
the descent to ground level,
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whilst imaging its journey.
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The one-meter wide probe
will target a region
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called Alpha Regio,
twice the size of Texas,
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and will add to scientists' understanding
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of rocky atmosphere-bearing exoplanets
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that will be explored
by new observatories,
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such as the James Webb Space Telescope.
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(low space music)
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- [Glyn] So Venus is cool.
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Venus is awesome.
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Venus is, in many ways,
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one of the most Earth-like
planets that we know of.
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One of the key ways that it's different
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is that it's very, very dry.
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With temperatures on the surface
of 460 degrees centigrade
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and whatever that is in Fahrenheit,
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you would never expect there
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to be liquid oceans on the surface.
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That kind of temperature
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only boils off that water into steam,
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but the atmosphere of Venus
is still incredibly dry.
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So where did the steam go?
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So to talk about how we remove
something from a planet,
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we're gonna have to talk
about two forces of nature.
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Firstly, the force of gravity.
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Gravity is the thing
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which is holding you down to the planet.
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But if you think about it,
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it's also what is holding
the atmosphere down
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onto the planet as well.
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If I want to remove some of
the oxygen from the planet,
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we have to overcome that gravity.
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So to do that, I wanna talk
about the electric force.
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It's the thing which your
device is using right now
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to pump electricity
around its wires, right?
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It's pushing the electrons
around the circuits.
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And what we think can happen is
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that the electric force
can help push on the ions
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in the upper parts of the atmosphere,
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push them off and up into space.
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So just as every planet
has a gravity field,
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we think that every planet
has a weak electric field.
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So we went looking for
Venus' electric field,
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and boy oh boy did we find it.
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It turns out that Venus' electric field is
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at least five to 10 times
stronger than on Earth.
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It's a monster of a force.
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It can rip heavy things like oxygen
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straight out of the upper atmosphere
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and send them kicking and
screaming off into space.
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So this really changes the way
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we have to think about planets
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'cause it turns out
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that planets can lose heavy
things like oxygen to space
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entirely through electrical
forces in their ionospheres.
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This is something that's really important
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if we want to go looking for exoplanets,
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for habitable planets around other stars.
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It is no good having
conditions perfect for an ocean
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and an atmosphere you might wanna breathe
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if some invisible force
is going to come along
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and rip it all off into space.
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It's only understanding
how atmospheres evolve
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can we try and understand how we got here.
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(soft wondrous music)
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- [Narrator] Many orbiting telescopes
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and instruments are now
in use to search for,
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identify, and catalog exoplanets,
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planets orbiting other stars.
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TESS, Kepler, Hubble, James Webb,
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and the Nancy Roman telescopes are looking
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at planetary formations
around various stars.
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Knowing how Venus evolved would
give additional assistance
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to the planet searches.
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This image is of a new
star in its gas disc.
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The black rings show
where planets are forming
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by gathering the dust and debris.
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This image reveals a moon forming
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around a gas giant as it evolves.
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This massive exoplanet
orbits a white dwarf,
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the remnant of a dead star
that is slowly evaporating.
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- Another big unknown is
to characterize planets
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that are orbiting other stars.
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So we could now...
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Astronomers have got very
good at finding these planets,
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but what we want to do is
look at what they're made of,
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so what's in their atmospheres,
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or if they were rocky,
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what kinds of minerals are we seeing.
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And to be able to do that
I think will be stupendous.
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- So this, we can see the composition
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of the atmosphere in exoplanet,
so what it's made of.
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And the specific planet
we're looking at is hot.
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And so what we see in that
is that there's water there.
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It wouldn't be in liquid form
because the planet's hot,
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so it'd be more like
steam that's around it.
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But we can tell what's in that atmosphere.
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- So the James Webb Space
Telescope is brilliant
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in a number of ways.
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One, it extends our wavelength
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all the way into the infrared,
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into the mid infrared.
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So we can look for these heat signatures
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from these planets as well.
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But that also means we
can cover the fingerprints
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of different materials in the atmosphere.
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So the Hubble Space Telescope looks
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for fingerprints of sodium
and potassium and water
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in the atmospheres of these worlds.
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But the James Webb Space
Telescope's gonna be able
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to look for signatures of
methane and carbon dioxide
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and carbon monoxide,
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as well as all of these
wonderful water features
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that we'll be seeing in these
giant planet atmospheres.
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But not only can it tell us
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in these different wavelength ranges,
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it's actually better resolution.
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So we can get more data points
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for each of these different molecules.
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And it's a much bigger telescope.
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We're collecting far more light.
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We can get a much better precision.
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So that means that the degree
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to which we believe our measurements
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is going to improve a
lot with this telescope.
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That's gonna mean that
we'll be able to tell you
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with confidence what we're measuring.
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Looking for life on other planets
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is the ultimate future goal
of all of these missions,
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trying to understand how we got here,
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how the earth is the way it is.
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The James Webb Space Telescope's
taking us one step further
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towards that goal.
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We're gonna be pushing
to these smaller worlds
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where we can see what different planets
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that are unlike ones in
our solar system are like,
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how atmospheres change with
the size of your planet.
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And it's also going to give us information
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on these giant planets
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that we don't have in our solar system,
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so close to their star, that
they're hotter than a rocket.
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There are different worlds
that we can explore with this.
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And every technique that we use
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with the James Webb Space Telescope
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is going to be the technique we need
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to be looking for life
signatures on these other worlds.
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So getting good at using this
technique is so important,
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so that in the future we can be looking
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for these signatures.
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- [Klaus] So what we see here
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is what's called a hot Jupiter.
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So it's a planet that
moves in front of its star,
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and it has about the size of Jupiter,
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but the mass of Saturn.
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And what we see here is light filters
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through its atmosphere,
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and that allows us to look
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for the fingerprints of certain molecules.
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And in this case, the planet
is full of water vapor,
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full of water.
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And that's what you see as
wiggles in the spectrum.
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When we go and look at
other exoplanets with Webb,
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we may look for other molecules,
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some that are familiar in our
own atmosphere here as well,
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like carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide,
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maybe even methane and ozone.
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- [Narrator] The total so
far exceeds 5,000 exoplanets,
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with a further 8,000 to be confirmed.
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Of particular interest
are the smaller rocky
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Earth-like planets.
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- [Kate] We know our targets.
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They're bright stars which are known
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to host the type of
planets we want to observe.
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And we will know when
these planets transit.
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That is when the planets move
across the disc of the star
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and we can measure the changes
in the output of the star,
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the measured output of the star,
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in order to measure
the size of the planet.
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We'll be focusing on smaller planets,
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so Earth-size to Neptune-size planets,
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which have been found by
other missions such as Kepler
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to be very abundant around
other sun-like stars.
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Something which is not so much the case
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in our own solar system.
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So it's a big question.
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What are these smaller planets?
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What are they made of?
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- [Narrator] The range of
planet types is amazing,
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rocky worlds that
sustain oceans and lakes,
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likely candidates for life.
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Others more extreme like WASP-76b,
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tightly locked to its star,
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only ever showing one face to its sun.
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This extreme exoplanet has a
dayside where metals evaporate,
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and a nightside where it rains iron.
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(low droning music)
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Rogue planets that have no sun to orbit,
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ejected from their solar system
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and left to roam through space.
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(wondrous orchestral music)
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Planets that have the heavy element barium
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in their atmosphere.
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Water worlds, planets still forming,
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others around dying stars.
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(moves to soft orchestral music)
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(violins begin)
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(moves to upbeat orchestral music)
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We must remember that
amidst all these searches
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for a new Earth,
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we must take care of the one we have
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because it is a very long way to travel
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to reach these other habitable worlds.
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(low space music)
26817
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