All language subtitles for Cosmos.Possible.Worlds.S01E07.The.Search.for.Intelligent.Life.on.Earth.1080p.WEBRip.x264-CAFFEiNE.en

We search the heavens
for signs of intelligent life.

But what would we
do if we found it?

Are we ready
for first contact?

Would we be smart enough to even know
if someone was sending us a message?

We've only been able to detect
radio signals for a little over a century.

Extraterrestrial civilizations
could have been bombarding

Earth with radio signals for millions
and billions of years before then,

and nobody here would have had
any inkling that it had ever happened.

And what if we seem
just like ants to them.

We all know
how we treat ants.

What if the extraterrestrials
are smarter than we are,

have technology, weapons
that render us helpless?

The history of first contact
among terrestrial civilizations,

the humans of east and west,

north and south,
has been scarred by genocide.

In all of the cosmos,

is there such a thing as a first contact story
with a happy ending?

I know of one
first contact story,

but it's too soon to
know how it will turn out...

This scientific and
architectural wonder of the

world is in Southern China,

it's the largest
radio telescope on Earth,

in fact it's the largest
telescope of any kind.

The Five-Hundred Meter Aperture
Spherical Radio Telescope,

or FAST, as it's known.

This dish is a giant listening
device for detecting radio waves

that propagate
throughout the cosmos.

The mission of this telescope
is to solve unanswered questions

about the origin
of the universe,

and its early history.

It will also
search for pulsars,

those rapidly
rotating neutron stars,

and for telltale signs
of gravitational waves,

ripples in the
fabric of space-time...

And it will search for
signs of alien civilizations.

Especially
those very far away...

I want to take you to
a place where we've begun to

eavesdrop on an intricate
global communications network.

We didn't even know it
existed until recently.

Complex beyond
our wildest imagining,

it was built by a
community whose population

is inconceivably vast.

Our distant ancestors,
tiny shrew-like animals,

came of age in places not
too different from this one.

Forests.

Maybe they knew what we've
only recently discovered.

The secret life of this
place is filled with drama,

abuzz with conversation.

Much of it is spoken in
an electrochemical language,

and it takes place
on a scale too small,

and in motion too slow,

for creatures
like us to even notice.

But there's something even
more amazing that was going

on right beneath our feet,
for the longest time,

and on a global scale,

and we had no inkling
that it was there.

An ancient,
subterranean worldwide web,

a vast neural network is
what binds the forest together,

making it an
intercommunicating,

and interacting dynamic organism.

One with agency, and the power
to influence events above ground.

It's called the mycelium.

It's a hidden matrix,
the creation of an enduring

collaboration among fungi,
plants, bacteria, and animals.

90% of all the trees and
plants on Earth are involved

in the mutually
beneficial relationship made

possible by the mycelium.

They exchange
nourishment, messages,

and empathy with one
another, across species,

and even across
the kingdoms of life.

Mushrooms are the
reproductive organs,

the fruiting
bodies of the mycelium.

To see a mushroom growing
wild in the forest is to know

that the great natural Internet
is online beneath your feet.

Some mushrooms spread trillions
of spores on the breeze,

each spore a paratrooper
carrying life's message.

This is mushroom sex.

After a while, in
their search for moisture,

this new segment of the
mycelium will return down

to the underworld, and
link up to the greater network.

The secret lives of trees
have been long-hidden from us.

For them, the mycelium is
their lifeline to one another.

It makes the
forest a community.

They use it to parent,

to nurture each other

and even to devise a
stay of execution,

a reprieve from the axe.

When a tree is
cut down in the forest,

other trees reach out to
the victim with their root tips,

and send lifesaving
sustenance, water, sugar,

and other
nutrients via the mycelium.

This continuous IV drip
from neighboring trees can

keep this stump alive for
decades, and even centuries.

And they don't only
do it for their own kind.

They do it for the
trees of other species.

Why?

Is it because they know
that their lives depend on

the health of the whole forest,

and even on beings very
different from themselves?

Is it possible that the trees
can think in longer terms than we do?

We know they have
excellent parenting skills.

Take this fir tree.

This younger tree
here is its offspring,

and it requires
constant attention.

It's hardly young by
our standards, 60 years old.

But young trees don't know that
if they grow up too quickly,

there will be too much air
in the cells of their trunks.

Later, when the stormy
winds and predators come,

they'll be weak
and vulnerable.

Like the young
of other kingdoms,

the fir wants to grow into
the light as soon as possible.

But the mother fir shades
it with her branches so that

it cannot binge on sunlight,

and grow up too
fast for its own good.

How many forests have I
been in without any awareness

of what was really
happening all around me?

Who are we to search for alien intelligence
when we can't even recognize,

or respect, the
consciousness all around us,

and even beneath our feet?

This stately maple
senses that the tiny caterpillar

is nipping at its leaf.

A signal is sent
through the tree,

just as it would go
through our own nervous system.

But not nearly so fast.

Again, the trees live
on a much slower time scale.

The speed of "ouch"
for a tree is only an inch,

every three minutes.

So, it will take at least
an hour for the tree to react

by generating the chemical
that will chase this pest away.

When a predator strikes,
the first thing a tree does

is to take a saliva sample in order to sequence
the DNA of the invading species.

It then tailors its chemical
response to the special

vulnerability of its enemy.

In certain cases, it releases
the precise pheromone that

will attract its enemy's enemy
to do the tree's fighting for it.

Is it fair to say that the
trees have a deep knowledge

of chemistry, entomology,
and other earth sciences?

How exactly is their
knowing different from ours?

Is it any different when
we humans do these things?

Throughout nature,
we find these electrochemical

conversations between the
life-forms of different

species and kingdoms.

But what of a conversation
between different worlds?

What might we share with the intelligent
civilization of another world?

Science and mathematics.

The symbolic languages of
the scientist, mathematician,

and the engineer avoid
those things that are lost

in translation from
one culture to another.

Symbolic languages, including
those used in programming,

have a much higher degree
of precision than words do.

They are not as open
to misinterpretation.

I know of only one
nonhuman symbolic language,

and only one instance when
we humans made contact with

the life-form that uses it.

Their knowledge of astronomy
and mathematics would astonish most of us.

Their commitment to resolving
their differences democratically,

and reaching the broadest possible
consensus through debate,

is unparalleled by any
human society that I know.

Tens of millions
of years ago,

they had been carnivores,

but they gave that
up to become vegans.

It changed their world,

and resulted in surpassing
beauty wherever they wandered.

They are explorers who
use their symbolic language

to tell each other about the things
they have discovered on their travels.

This is their night sky.

I want to tell you their story.

This is the shore
of the Panthalassic Ocean,

a sea that covered Earth's
entire Northern Hemisphere

in a period
named the Ordovician.

We've compressed all of
the time from this very second,

back to the
beginning of the universe,

into a single calendar
Earth year, a Cosmic Calendar.

Every month represents
a little more than a billion years.

Every week,
nearly 300 million years.

Every day,
about 40 million years.

The Big Bang is the first moment
of New Year's Day.

Our present, right now,
is at the stroke of midnight on

New Year's Eve.

I'm standing on the morning
of December 20th on the Cosmic Calendar,

480 million years
ago in Earth's history.

This was the time when
life began to diversify.

It's remembered as the
Great Ordovician Biodiversity Event.

It came 40 million years
after life's first big leap

into diversification known
as the Cambrian explosion.

This was the dawn
of the arthropods,

the invertebrates who wear
their skeletons on the outside,

instead of on the inside,

as we would one day do
hundreds of millions of years later.

The arthropods of the
Ordovician pioneered the most

successful body plan
ever evolved by life.

Even today, more than 80% of all living
animals are arthropods.

But around the time the
plants began to venture out

of the waters, a
crustacean staggered ashore,

and made a home in the
new world of the land.

Insects evolved
from the crustaceans.

A thought I do my best to
hold at bay whenever I'm dining

in a seafood restaurant.

We think that the insects
and the plants colonized

the land at about the same time,
400 million years ago,

or December 21 on
the Cosmic Calendar.

This was a time when giant
mushrooms towered over the world's trees,

which were then no
more than a few feet high.

Mushrooms this gigantic
make you wonder just how big

the underground network that
supported them must have been.

And this was the time on Earth
when life learned how to fly.

The insects would have it all to themselves
for another 90 million years.

No flying reptiles, no birds,
no bats to gobble them up,

just other bugs.

Powered flight was a huge
evolutionary leap for insects,

allowing them to
spread all over the planet.

The insects put
human pretensions to shame.

Their tenure on Earth is hundreds
of times greater than ours.

They look much
the same to us today,

as they did to the dinosaurs
in the late Cretaceous.

Even back then, you
didn't want to mess with a wasp.

They've always
been voracious hunters.

Yes, there were giant redwoods on the Earth
240 million years ago.

That wasp is out
hunting for food for her young.

Wasps did their thing
for another 100 million years.

And then, something happened
on an almost microscopic scale

that would paint the Earth in
a whole new spectrum of colors.

Back then, there was no such
thing as an animal partner to

aid the plants in
their fertilization,

to efficiently transport
their seed to the reproductive

organs of distant
plants, in other words,

to play cupid for them.

The drama unfolding here
is not the struggle between

the spider and the wasp,

it's those tiny particles
sticking to the wasp's legs.

Nothing much to look
at, just a few grains,

but this magic
dust, called pollen,

contained the power
to transform the world,

and to make possible
some of the most beautiful

sights ever seen
on this planet.

Even today, more than
100 million years later,

this is still true.

Each grain of pollen sculpted
differently by evolution,

each a novel
strategy for survival,

sharpened by vast
expanses of time.

Pollen is tough.

It has to be.

It's so well-built that
you can fire it from a gun,

and it will emerge unscathed
with its identity fully intact.

The wasps had nurtured their
young during their helpless,

larval stage by bringing
home game for them to feast on.

The pollen was
rich in protein,

a meal for the grubs when
Mom came home without any kills.

Over the eons, a new
kind of life-form evolved,

one that stopped bringing
meat home for dinner.

This new creature brought
only the magic dust that the flowers made.

Bees.

They had no appetite for the
mangled parts of dead insects.

They went on the all-pollen
diet, and it was no fad.

The bees became fully
committed pollinators.

The plants rewarded
them handsomely by evolving

evermore alluring
female sexual organs,

in outrageous colors
and seductive forms.

They concocted delicious
secretions, sweet nectars,

that would keep the
bees coming back for more,

again and again.

The Age of the Flowers
had begun.

Bees are masters of time,

traveling across
100 million years,

and they are
none the worse for wear.

These beings did more
than anyone else to fill the

Palace of Life with
sustenance and beauty.

We will explore its treasures
and mysteries later on our voyage.

For thousands of years,

bees have been
symbols of mindless industry.

We always think of them
as being something like

biological robots, doomed to live out
their lives in lockstep,

shackled to the dreary roles
assigned to them by nature.

This is our
first contact story.

It happened in a place called
Brunnwinkl in rural Austria,

in the early 1900s.

From the time
Karl von Frisch was a child,

he longed to understand
what the other animals knew,

how they perceived the world.

He wanted to know
if tiny fish saw color,

or had a sense of smell.

He invented experiments
to explore animal experience,

and he filmed them.

Starting in the
early 20th century,

he was the first to use
the new medium of motion pictures

to create popular science
entertainment and communication.

For thousands of years,

humans have noted the
eccentric dances of the bees.

But no one had ever looked at
them with the kind of respect

that assumed there was
a reason to their dancing.

Before Karl von Frisch,

no one ever thought to ask
why they moved this way and

that way in a succession
of elaborate figure eights...

Von Frisch studied
every tiny bee gesture,

and became fascinated by
a mystery he couldn't explain.

He would set out a dish
of sugar water for a bee from

his experimental hive.

The bee would feast upon
it before flying back home.

The marked bee would
later return to dine on

the delicious sugar water.

Von Frisch noted
that in just a few hours,

a multitude of other
bees would join her there.

They were always
her fellow hive mates.

But here was the
really amazing thing,

von Frisch knew that
the other bees had not

followed the marked
bee to the feeding place.

How?

Because he had the hive
closely watched at all times.

He had been careful to use
sugar water, and not honey,

so that the bees' sense of smell
could not guide them to the reward.

He continued to move the dish
of sugar water farther away,

until it was several
kilometers from the hive.

Still, the hive mates
would find their way to it.

So, how did the painted
bee reveal the exact location

of the sugar water with such
precision that her hive mates

could unerringly
find their way there?

There was a secret
message in her choreography.

What had seemed to countless
generations of observers

to be nothing more
than the meaningless,

spasmodic motions of a dumb animal
was actually a complex message,

an equation informed
by mathematics, astronomy,

and an acute
knowledge of time,

all synthesized to convey
the location of the riches

she hoped to
share with her sisters.

The dancer used the
angle of our star, the sun,

to indicate the general direction
of the food's location.

Von Frisch noted that when
a bee danced straight upward,

she meant,
"fly toward the sun."

And when she moved downward,
she meant, "fly away from it."

Her swivels left and right conveyed
the food's exact coordinates in space,

sometimes kilometers away.

The duration of her dance, down
to a fraction of a second,

indicated the length of time it would
take her fellow bees to get there.

She even factored in wind speed to more
finely calibrate the message she danced.

And this was true at
any time of the year,

and from hive to hive,
from continent to continent.

Bees can do the math.

Why do I call this
a first contact story?

Two species as different
as any you can imagine,

humans and bees, evolved
on evolutionary pathways that

diverged 600
million years ago.

And yet, these two
species and as far as we know,

only they and
we on this planet,

managed to create a
symbolic language written

in mathematics and science.

We lived side-by-side
with the bees for millennia,

never dreaming of the complexity
of their communications.

What we've learned about bee
society in the decades since

von Frisch puts some of our loftiest human
aspirations to shame,

and changes forever our idea
of intelligent life on Earth.

We live in a time when
the world's democracies are

even more fragile than ever.

But there are places on
Earth where that's not true.

Where every
individual has a voice.

Where corruption is unknown.

Where the community
acts only when it has arrived

at consensus
through reason and debate.

This is one of those places.

Contrary to popular belief,
the hive is no monarchy.

The queen is no absolute ruler
controlling the other bees.

The queen's role is
almost entirely reproductive.

Any female bee, and that's what
the vast majority of bees are,

can ascend to the throne given
the right food and the space to grow.

When the weather warms,
and the trees bloom,

she graciously passes her scepter
to a new generation of queens.

That's the time in
the life of a hive,

in late spring
or early summer,

when about half the hive's
bees, around 10,000 of them,

grow restless.

They decide it's time
to leave the mother hive,

to found a new colony,
they know not where.

Once they depart,
there's no turning back.

It takes courage to
leave home with no way back,

to risk everything,
and choose the unknown.

That pushing and shoving
is not meant to be hostile.

The workers are putting
the queen on a rigorous

exercise program so
that she can lose weight,

and get back
into flying shape.

When everything's ready,

it's time for the first
leg of their odyssey.

It's time to swarm.

With a new queen now installed
on her throne in the original hive,

the old Queen Mother has
pride of place at the very

center of the
swarm of adventurers.

Hundreds of their most
senior members, scouts,

are dispatched on missions of reconnaissance
over a five kilometer radius.

The scouts reconnoiter the local trees
for the best possible new home.

And they're extremely picky.

Not just any place will do.

The front door,
a hollow in a tree,

must be too high for
bears and other marauders to

easily reach in and
plunder their precious honey.

Total square footage
is of critical concern.

Honeybees don't hibernate.

They'll have to heat the
place for the long winter,

and be sure to
produce enough food, honey,

to see them through.

Each scout must measure
the exact dimensions,

height, width, and depth.

If it's even slightly
too small, or too large,

the entire swarm will be wiped
out before the next spring.

When all the scouts return,
the bees are ready to hold

their annual convention.

Each scout finds a place
to stand on the swarm.

There, she presents her
argument for the best site

she has discovered.

This house-hunting
discourse is conducted in

their scientific and
mathematical language.

Hundreds of scouts now use
the waggle dance to advertise

the home that they've found.

At first,
opinions vary widely,

as each advocate attracts
her share of followers.

At our political conventions,
people routinely lie.

They press our buttons,
demonizing, scapegoating,

appealing to our fears.

But the bees can't risk that.

In both cases,
ours and theirs,

the future depends on
seeing reality clearly.

But for some reason,

we are easily
manipulated and deceived.

The bees somehow know that
they have to stick to the facts.

They have to be accurate.

They can't oversell.

They act as if they understand
that it matters what's true.

That nature won't be fooled.

The scouts who have found
the optimum sites for the

swarm's new home are the
most passionate waggle dancers.

Close scientific observation
over many decades affirms

this astonishing fact,

each bee has a platonic
ideal of home in mind.

Moreover, the members
of the swarm don't take the

testimony of the most
popular dancers on faith.

Many of them go
to see for themselves.

Skepticism is a
survival mechanism.

The fact-checkers fly
off to the site to make

an independent evaluation.

Just think for a minute
how articulate the waggle

dance messaging has to be.

It's the coordinates
for one particular tree in

a whole forest of them.

The scouts make a
beeline for it every time.

If the hollow turns out
to be as good as advertised,

they will return to
the swarm, where they,

too, will dance its praises.

Without deceit, or
violence, or back-hive deals,

the scouts are the first
to arrive at consensus.

But the larger population
remains to be persuaded.

Once they all
align behind one dance,

once they've achieved unanimity
on the best new place to call home,

the great migration can begin.

Within 60 seconds
of the first takeoff,

10,000 bees depart in
formation for their new home.

With the sun
as their compass,

the airborne colony turns
to its queen for leadership.

The swarm is a kind of mind,
a collective consciousness to

which every individual
bee makes a contribution.

Now that the move is
complete, it's time to unpack,

decorate the nursery,
stock the pantry,

and make the place their own,
until the weather warms,

and the trees bloom again.

And so it has been for
tens of millions of years.

This intimate knowledge of
the lives of the bees is the

legacy of Karl von Frisch,
who was the first to decrypt

their symbolic language, to
make contact with a completely

different kind of mind.

Today, we study bee brains.

We are building a bridge over
the chasm that has separated

two species for
half a billion years.

And yet,
after all that time,

there are places where our species
and theirs converged,

agriculture, architecture,
language, and politics.

We now know that bees sleep,

and some scientists
suspect that they dream.

What knocked us
out of our trance,

so that we could finally
recognize another intelligence

that had always been there?

A few generations
before von Frisch,

one man did more than
any other to open the way.

For me, he was the greatest spiritual
teacher of the last thousand years.

The flowers he planted
here long ago still bloom.

The hive he founded,
and studied with open eyes,

continues to flourish.

It was he who figured out
how the Palace of Life could

evolve from a modest one-room structure
to an edifice of soaring towers,

reaching to the
stars and it was he who

first glimpsed the secret
lives of our fellow earthlings.

a shrine to all the broken
branches on the tree of life.

But that tree still lives,

it's seen 4 billion springtimes
since it first took root.

Its flowers burst forth with
unforeseeable possibilities.

A tiny, one-celled
organism evolves into you

and everything else
that is Earthlife.

There's just no way of
predicting, for now, anyway,

where life can lead.

No way of foretelling the
forms and capabilities that

can issue from simpler organisms
over vast expanses of time.

Life itself can be seen as an
emergent property of chemistry,

science as an
emergent property of life,

a way that life has found
to begin to know itself.

Four billion years.

These are the most
ancient towers that life built.

Nobody knew this
palace existed.

It was hidden by the mists
of time, and enshrouded in myth.

But one man dared
to part that curtain.

He studied as many
kinds of life as he could.

He sailed to a group of
islands on the far side of

the planet in search
of exotic species.

He studied the bees,
the flowers, the finches,

mollusks, and
earthworms, for 30 years.

A radical pattern emerged,
one that would shake the world.

It still does, he debunked
the story of Adam and Eve.

Humans are not the kings
of life, created separately,

and charged with its
management but instead,

an upstart offspring of
its stately, ancient family.

He waited to tell the world
what he had discovered until

he could demonstrate its truth
beyond a shadow of a doubt.

But then he made
another great leap,

Charles Darwin was also one
of the first to recognize that

if all life is related,

there were certain
philosophical implications.

If we were not created
separately from the other animals,

must we not share more
of who we are with them?

Our awareness, our
relationships with others,

even our feelings?

Instead of a single island
of human perception in the universe,

Darwin realized that
we are surrounded by other

ways of being
alive and conscious.

For Darwin, science was
a pathway to a deeper level

of empathy and humility.

When word reached him that
a local farmer was mistreating his sheep,

Darwin dropped his research
to make an arrest of the man.

He exposed the horrendous
suffering of wild animals

caught in the
jaws of steel traps,

and experimented on surgically
without benefit of anesthesia.

Throughout his entire life,
he was haunted by an image of

the helpless dog who licked
his tormentor's hand while

being dissected by a scientist.

And this compassion extended
even to our own species.

He recognized the blindness of
his 19th century contemporaries.

In his autobiography,
he recounted the story of

an African woman who jumped off
a cliff to her certain death,

rather than submit to being
enslaved by the Portuguese.

Darwin observed that if she had been
a Roman matron from classical antiquity,

she would be
viewed very differently.

We would be naming
our daughters after her.

It was he who began the
scientific study of the hidden

world beneath
the forest floor.

Darwin worshipped nature.

His knowledge of science informed
and drove his compassion to new heights.

Behold, Saccorhytus coronarius.

When it lived, 550 million
years ago, it was microscopic.

But for us now, it looms
large because this creature is

the earliest common
ancestor we've yet found,

a physical connection we share with
almost every animal on Earth.

If we could only take
that connection to heart.

If some day, we could
synthesize all our knowledge

of life, and use it to
build an Arch of Experience,

a way for us to really feel
what it's like to be the other.

What if we could truly
know the joy of a giant condor

riding the thermals
high in the Andes,

or the anguish of a humpback
whale singing to its lover

across the vast Pacific,
or the fear in the heart of

our most hated enemy, how
would that change this world?

And all of them,
and each of us,

made from the same toolbox,
with the same genetic

material, but on
different evolutionary voyages.

Are there other possible
worlds in the cosmos where

life's pathways
converge and intersect?

Remember our friends,
the tardigrades,

who can rise from the dead
to thrive on Earth in those

hellish places where
no one else can live?

They have survived all
five mass extinctions,

and they can even live in the vacuum of
space without protection.

These creatures, too small
to see with the naked eye,

have been observed
by scientists,

using a scanning
electron microscope,

doing something that we
like to think only humans do.

They're not performing any of
the known biological functions

that organisms
need to survive.

They're gently giving
each other pleasure,

affection,
tenderness for its own sake.

If bees dream,
and tardigrades snuggle,

are there countless roads
in the universe that life can

take to wonder and to love?

If we could stand beneath
the Arch of Experience,

or build one inside ourselves,

maybe we'd be able to give our
first contact story a better outcome.

Captioned by
Cotter Captioning Services.