All language subtitles for through.the.wormhole.s01e06.are.we.alone.hdtv.xvid-momentum

It's one of the great
mysteries of science --

a mystery that if solved

will force us to rethink
our place in the universe.

Is life on Earth unique?

Or is it spread
throughout the cosmos?

If we share the stars
with aliens,

why haven't we heard from them?

Or are we truly alone?

Space, time, life itself.

The secrets of the cosmos
lie through the wormhole.

♪ Through the Wormhole 1x06 ♪
Are We Alone?
Original air date on July 14, 2010

-- sync, corrected by elderman --
-- for www.Addic7ed.Com --

We've all done it --

stared into the night sky,

gazed at the vast canopy
of stars

and wondered what or who
is out there?

Is there other life
in the universe?

Maybe on a planet like ours
with water and air?

Or on some other kind
of planet or moon

supporting an alien form of life?

As a young boy growing up
in the Mississippi delta,

I'd sit on the porch
in the evening with my family,

and we'd talk about things.

When it was cloudy,
it was very dark --

pitch black.

We would think
we were all alone,

and then sometimes people would
just appear out of the darkness.

Who you see coming,
Morgan?

It's Devon and Travis.

Hi, boys!

Could our universe
be just as deceiving?

Might other sentient life-forms
just appear

out of the seeming darkness
of space?

There are more stars
in the universe

than all the grains of sand
on every beach on Earth,

and countless planets
orbit those stars.

So it would be arrogant to think

that we are the only creatures
in the cosmos.

I think it's easy to imagine
life on other worlds,

and I'm not alone.

A whole category of scientists
investigate alien life.

They're called Astrobiologists.

Lynn Rothschild
of the NASA Ames Research Center

is one of them.

I am so lucky that I have a job

that is so incredibly fascinating

because, to me,

it's impossible
not to be fascinated

with the potential for life.

To me, looking for the bizarre,
the extreme, the exceptions,

and some of it's here on Earth,

but there may even be
some of it elsewhere,

and, I mean,
that's the sort of thing

that just absolutely
blows your mind.

We form theories
about alien life

by first looking at life on Earth.

Our planet is filled

with an incredible diversity
of creatures

uniquely tailored
to their environment

by billions of years of evolution.

A normal condition for life,
what we see,

is all lovely,

and it's just sort of these
medium temperatures and so on,

but it only describes
a very tiny slice

of where life
can actually survive.

We need to have liquid water,

but there are organisms
that can beat the odds

and live above
the boiling temperature of water

and below the freezing temperature.

We have to be
in a certain environment

that's not too acidic
and not too basic,

and yet there are organisms

that can live down
incredibly acidic conditions.

Life on Earth can
survive in extreme environments,

but can life survive
on other worlds?

It's a mystery set in space...

And that makes it tough
to investigate

because the human race
has barely left Earth.

Searching for clues
is incredibly difficult.

Fortunately,
sometimes the clues come to us.

In 1969,

a 220-pound meteorite crashed
into Murchison, Australia.

The Murchison meteorite was more

than just a piece of rock
floating through space.

It was a doorway to alien life.

A piece of the meteorite
is kept here

at the California Academy
of Sciences.

The reason this is
so exciting to scientists is

that it's as old
as the solar system,

and yet we found
that it contains

the building blocks of life --

things like amino acids
and other sorts of chemicals

that we use to make our own
bodies and all life on Earth.

So what it shows is

that these building blocks
were around in our solar system

before life arose on the Earth.

Life may have come to
Earth in a meteorite like this,

and life similar to ours

may be spread through
the universe in the same way,

as meteorites act like seeds,

raining down the ingredients
for life on fertile planets.

So what does this mean
for our hunt for E.T.?

For one thing,

if the common elements
of life as we know it

are spread
throughout the universe,

then life on other planets might
be similar to life on Earth.

If we look
at enough Sci-Fi movies,

there are all sorts of weird
and wonderful aliens out there,

but what
we're really interested in

is what these organisms
are built from.

And if you look at life on Earth,

we're all built on
a form of carbon chemistry

called organic chemistry,

and this seems to be
the language of life.

If you look out
into the interstellar medium,

the same compounds are there
as on Earth.

If you look at what we're made
of secondarily, it's water.

There's water
all over the universe.

So in terms of our biochemistry,

life everywhere I think
would be very similar to Earth

in terms of its biochemistry.

But alien life

would not necessarily look
like human life.

Life evolves to suit its environment.

One of the big things

that would affect what life
looks like on another planet,

particularly if you're starting
to look at large life,

macroscopic life like us,
is what the gravity's like.

Now, on Earth, we've all evolved
under 1g, 1 gravity.

But if we evolved on a planet
with 2g or 5g, for example,

we would have to have
correspondingly thicker legs.

We would have to have
much stronger limbs

to hold up our weight,

and maybe at some point,

we'd be pushed so were
basically flat on the ground

because we couldn't hold up
any weight at all.

But conversely,

if we had evolved on a planet
that, say, had 1/2g,

maybe we'd be tall and thin
and avatar-like --

you know, creatures
and not the way we are today.

So gravity is something
we don't tend to think about,

but that really is one
of the things that shapes life.

If there are aliens out there,

finding them
will be incredibly difficult.

Astrobiologists
are like detectives

that can't get near
the crime scene.

They're limited
by our technology,

which, so far, can barely send
probes to nearby planets.

These probes tell us
that Earth harbors

the only currently known
sentient life

in our solar system,

which doesn't mean
there isn't any life out there.

NASA is optimistic about someday
finding simple forms of life

on one or more of our neighbors.

Microbes may live
in the Martian soil

or float in the clouds of Venus.

Strange creatures could swim
in the icy waters

of Saturn's moons.

If we find alien microbes
outside the Earth

or even Earth microbes
thriving on other worlds,

it greatly raises the odds

that life is scattered
across the universe.

E.T. probably isn't
in our neighborhood,

but the universe
is unimaginably large.

He, she, or it
may be out there somewhere.

So around the world,

science detectives have sent out
an all-points bulletin

for extraterrestrial life.

They're listening
to the stars...

...Staking out possible lairs...

Putting together
composite sketches...

And looking for clues
it may have left behind.

The hunt is on.

And now we're discovering
the incredible truth.

We don't have proof

that we share the universe
with other intelligent species,

but many scientists believe
that they are out there,

proof or not.

Perhaps extraterrestrials
are watching us right now.

Maybe they just sent us
a message.

Or maybe they have no idea
that we're here,

and they're talking
among themselves.

We'll never know the truth
unless we listen.

For half a century,
the SETI Project,

the Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence,

has done just that.

SETI combs the sky
with radio telescopes,

hoping to hear
alien transmissions.

They're trying to wiretap E.T.,

but they don't have
his phone number.

So, much as the CIA hunts
for terrorist chatter,

SETI tries to listen
to everything out there.

It's a daunting task.

For starters,
how can we tell the difference

between a natural signal
from the stars

and an intelligent signal
sent by strange alien beings?

Dr. Jill Tarter
is SETI's chief alien hunter.

If you'd like to listen
to the cosmos,

take an old-fashioned radio
like this, an analog radio,

and tune the radio
between stations.

And you hear that hiss?

About 10% of that noise

is actually coming
from the cosmos.

That's synchrotron radiation
from the Milky Way Galaxy.

SETI has combed
the cosmic radio dial

for 50 years.

Most days, it's quiet out there,

but once in a great while
something exciting happens.

In 1977, a SETI astronomer
picked up a signal

from the constellation
Cagittarius.

It lasted 72 seconds.

The full duration,

the radio telescope
was pointed at it.

Going through the data,

the scientist circled
the signal and wrote, "wow!"

The signal looked like
the kind of engineered pulse

that we expect will come
from an alien civilization.

The "wow!" Signal
was a one-time event.

Astronomers have returned
to that part of space

looking for the signal,
hoping for a repeat,

but always coming away
disappointed.

To this day,

there is still no explanation
for what happened.

In 1997, 20 years after
the "wow!" Signal,

SETI detected
another signal from space,

and Jill Tarter was there
to witness it.

At 6:00 in the morning

at an observatory
in West Virginia,

Tarter and her team
heard a mysterious sound

coming from
the Cetus constellation.

The signal showed up
early one morning

at the green bank national
radio astronomy observatory

when we were using
the 140-foot telescope there.

I was actually at the telescope.

We detected a signal,

and it was clearly
a manufactured signal.

It wasn't just one tone
on the radio dial.

It was like a comb --

many different signals,
all narrow,

all separated by the same amount
of frequency.

Mother nature wasn't doing that.

After years and years
of listening,

years and years of silence,

Tarter wondered, "is this it?"

I was incredibly excited,

and I was scheduled to finish up
my observing shift

in West Virginia at 8:00

and get on a plane
and come home.

When this started
at 6:00 in the morning,

I certainly wasn't gonna get
on any plane

and leave the signal behind.

Tarter initiated
a series of tests

to verify the signal

and find out if it was natural,
man-made, or alien-made.

We moved the telescope off
the star we were pointing on,

the signal went away.

We moved it back on the star,
the signal was there.

I thought, "oh, I wonder if
any of our other observations

have seen
that same kind of signal?"

But I was so excited that
when I looked at the output,

I didn't see that exactly what
I was looking for was there.

We had, at previous occasions,

detected this signal
with this frequency spacing.

It turned out that it was
a signal that was coming

not from the direction
that we were looking in,

but a signal that was coming
in our side lobes.

Tarter and her colleagues
had made a mistake.

The signal they detected
was not alien.

It came from a man-made
space probe orbiting the sun

called Soho.

SETI learned that
to communicate in the cosmos,

it needed better technology.

And now they're getting it.

In Northern California,

SETI is building hundreds
of new devices to wiretap E.T.

We're here
in Northern California

at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory.

Right now, what we have is
the Allen telescope array,

an innovative new way
to build a radio telescope,

a large telescope
out of small pieces.

By linking together

a large number
of small telescopes,

the A.T.A. gives astronomers
a wide field of view,

a radial picture

10 times the size
of the full moon.

Today we've got
42 of these dishes

that are 20 feet across,

and we're looking forward
to expanding it

till there are 350
of these small dishes.

It may be just the right tool,
finally.

The A.T.A.
gives SETI the ability

to observe many more channels
on the cosmic radio dial.

Now because of technology,

we simultaneously observe

hundreds of millions
of channels,

and I look forward to the future

when I can do billions
of channels all at once.

So technology
has enabled the search

on a scale that might
finally be big enough

to be able to detect something.

SETI scientists have wiretapped
the stars for 50 years,

but there are still no sign
of extraterrestrial life.

The great silence remains.

And maybe that's not surprising.

SETI really is
a needle-in-the-haystack search

without any guarantee
that there's a needle out there.

Professor Paul Davies

is a physicist and SETI affiliate.

But he's something of a heretic
within the group.

The traditional approach to SETI

is to scan the skies
with the radio telescope

in the hope of picking up

a message
from some alien civilization

that's been deliberately beamed
towards Earth.

I don't think that's credible,
and here's why.

One of the big problems
in this whole SETI business

is the vast scale of things.

The universe is really, really big.

By human standards,
it's just stupendously big.

Imagine we get
the smallest speck of dirt

from the desert floor

and that that represents
the size of our solar system

right out to the orbit of Pluto,

and then ask,
"how big is our galaxy?

"How far would you have to go

to get to the far side
of the Milky Way?"

And the answer is
all the way to those hills

right in the distance
over there.

And if you ask,
"how far do you have to go

to get to the edge
of the observable universe?"

Well, you'd need to go
right up to the orbit of Mars.

It's often said

that the because our radio
and television signals

have beamed into space
for 80 years now,

aliens should have figured out
that we're here

and have sent us a message.

But this argument overlooks
a basic law of physics.

Another way
of thinking about this is

in terms of the speed of light,

which travels at 186,000 miles
every second.

It takes light about 100,000
years to cross our galaxy,

and it takes 13.7 billion years
for it to cross the universe.

Our first radio signals,

which leaked out into space
about 100 years ago,

have gone about that far
by comparison.

Suppose there's a civilization
1,000 light-years away,

and that's actually pretty close
by even SETI optimist standards.

Well, they don't see Earth
as it is today.

They see it
as it was 1,000 years ago.

There were no radio telescopes
here then,

so it would make no sense

for them to start
sending messages to us

until they knew
that we were on the air.

And they're not gonna know
we're on the air

until our first radio messages
reach them,

and that's gonna be
in another 900 years.

Listening for signals
from the stars is a long shot.

So, how can we do a better job

of tracking down
extraterrestrial life?

As SETI monitors
its cosmic wiretaps,

another set of science detectives

follow radical new leads...

Leads that may take us
right to E.T.'s doorstep.

Listening for signals
from the stars

is one way to search

for other intelligent life
in the universe.

But there are other ways

we can find out
where E.T. lives.

Astronomer Geoff Marcy
hunts the sky

for planets
that could sustain alien life.

For many years,

people thought
he might be crazy.

When I would tell
other scientists

that I was hunting for planets
around other stars,

they would look down
at their shoes,

embarrassed for me.

You might as well be looking
for fairies

or for alien civilizations
in the pyramids.

It's hard to believe,

but until recently,
there was no proof

that other planets exist
outside our solar system.

No telescope on Earth
nor satellite in space

was powerful enough to spot
anything smaller than stars.

The reason is simple.

Planets don't shine.

They don't reflect very much
light from their host star.

They're dark specks of dust,
if you will,

floating around the universe,

and people understood

you probably
could never detect them.

Marcy refused to accept that.

Risking professional ridicule,

he was determined to find a way
to spot far-off worlds.

Eventually, he found one.

It turns out that while planets
may hide from our eyes,

they can't hide
from the stars they orbit,

what astronomers call
their host stars.

Finding planets
is actually very simple.

We watch the host star,
represented by my head,

as the planet,
represented by the tennis ball,

orbits that star and pulls
gravitationally on the star.

As it does so, the star,
my head, wobbles around,

being pulled by the planet,

and back on Earth,

our telescopes can watch to see
the wobble of the host star

as the planet goes around it.

Even if you don't
see the planet,

you can see
the star wobble around.

It's difficult
to see it directly,

but we use the Doppler shift
of the star's light.

As the star comes at you,

the light waves emitted
toward the Earth get compressed,

and as the star goes
away from you,

the light waves
get stretched out

in their travels to the Earth.

And so you can see
the light waves

compressing and stretching
and compressing and stretching,

which, to our human eyes,
means the color changes.

We see the colors change

from bluer to redder
to bluer to redder,

and we can measure that
at the back end of a telescope.

This effect is well-known,
the Doppler effect, with sound.

You can hear the pitch
of a train whistle change

as the train goes by you.

Even with your eyes closed,

you can tell whether the train
is coming or going,

and so it is
with light waves from a star.

You can tell whether the star
is coming or going

from the changing pitch
of the light waves.

For nearly a decade,

the Doppler shift method
of planet hunting

was an experiment
with no positive results.

Marcy still couldn't prove

that planets exist
outside our solar system.

But he slowly won
a few astronomers over

to his way of thinking.

He was no longer the sole
Detective on the investigation.

In 1995,
his patience was rewarded.

A group of Swiss astronomers
had their eyes

on a bright object
in the Pegasus constellation

called 51 Pegasi b.

The Swiss suspected

they had found
what everyone was looking for --

a very large planet,

the first one seen
outside of our solar system.

But they needed confirmation.

Luckily, my student,
Paul Butler, and I

had telescope time assigned
to us just a week later

on the Lick Observatory
3-meter telescope

four consecutive nights,

and as luck would have it,

the supposed orbital period
of this planet around 51 peg

was four days.

Perfect match.

We went to the telescope.
All four nights were clear.

We measured the Doppler shift
of 51 peg,

and we drove off the mountain
100% convinced

that the Swiss had been correct.

It was a marvelous moment,

and the world was introduced
at that time,

in mid October '95,

to the notion that
our solar system was not alone.

The discovery of 51 Pegasi b
changed the entire game.

The Doppler shift method
of planet detection

was proven successful,

and soon Marcy
and his colleagues

found more and more
alien worlds.

They have slowly confirmed
nearly 450.

There are likely billions more.

But Marcy's goal hasn't changed.

He wants to find worlds
like Earth

that orbit in the habitable
zones around their host stars,

the comfortable place

where it's not too hot
and not too cold...

Worlds that could possibly
support some form of life.

Planets in this habitable zone

may have a key ingredient
for life as we know it.

If you took any organism
on Earth,

and you took out the water,

you'd end up with
some powdered amino acids,

proteins, nucleic acids,
a few fats --

you know, these sorts of things.

But they don't work
in a powdered form.

You don't get the chemistry
that would make life.

So you need some kind of liquid,

some kind of solvent to dissolve
all these chemicals in.

What all life on Earth uses
as its solvent is water,

liquid water,

and so that is what we look for
as a first step

to looking for life elsewhere --
the presence of liquid water.

But finding
habitable planets isn't easy.

Planets like Earth are small,

and their host stars shine
billions of times brighter,

so they're hard to see.

Looking for solar wobbles
isn't easy, either.

Now imagine a smaller planet.

My head still represents
the host star,

and as this small planet
orbits the star,

it has so little mass,

it hardly yanks gravitationally
on my head,

the host star, at all,

making the detection
of small Earth-sized planets

very difficult.

Marcy has gone
from crazy outsider

to the peak of his profession
without changing his position.

He doesn't back down
in the face of a challenge.

He plans to keep combing
the cosmos a section at a time,

looking for stars
similar to our sun

and enjoying the fruits
of our ever-evolving technology.

Here we are,

about to answer a question
that the ancient Greeks asked

and humans undoubtedly asked
even before then.

It's a treasure of a moment
in human history

that we suddenly have
at our fingertips

the telescopes, the computers,
the light detectors,

and the knowledge to answer
a philosophical question

that humans have been asking
since antiquity.

The answer to
that question "Are We Alone?"

May come sooner than we think.

Because for the first time ever,

we have an undercover Detective
not tied to the Earth,

but floating in the heavens...

A special Agent in space

specifically designed
to track down E.T.

In its native habitat.

As a youngster,
I read a lot of science fiction,

which opened my mind
to the possibility

of life on other worlds.

Until recently, we humans
could only guess about this.

But today we live
in a scientific renaissance...

...A golden age of technology

where fictional possibilities
give way

to extraordinary discoveries.

Thanks to our high-tech tools,

we may be on the verge

of solving the mystery
of alien life.

For instance, until recently,

the investigators
tracking down E.T.

had to search for him
down here on Earth.

But now we finally have
a Detective in outer space.

Liftoff.
We have liftoff.

On march 6, 2009,

NASA launched
the Kepler Space Telescope.

Kepler is
the first-ever satellite

solely devoted to the hunt

for planets
outside our solar system.

The hope is that Kepler
will not just find more planets,

but will discover planets

roughly similar in size
and atmosphere to Earth.

Such planets could support life.

William Borucki
is the principal investigator

for the Kepler mission.

He's been planning this
for 25 years.

Ever since I was a little boy,

I was interested
in space exploration.

We used to lie on a garage roof
during meteor showers

and use cameras
to take pictures of meteors.

So it's a dream come true
to work with NASA

and actually be able
to come up with a mission

that will help us understand
what might be out in space.

The beauty of Kepler
is its simplicity.

It looks for planets

by measuring how much light
a planet blocks

when it passes
in front of its sun.

This is called a transit.

A familiar example occurs during
a lunar or a solar eclipse

when sunlight is blocked
by the moon or Earth's shadow.

This is easy for us to see
with the naked eye.

But finding an Earthlike planet
transiting a distant star

is much more difficult.

An Earth-size transit
is really, really tiny.

So it's like watching a flea
crossing a car headlight,

a really long distance.

And you find that,
and you measure it,

and you measure it accurately.

Kepler measures
these minute changes in light.

Tiny differences
between light and dark

tells it where the planets are.

So what you see is a curve
showing light being constant,

a dip, the planet goes across,
it comes back up again.

So you're looking for
that dip in light

for each star
when a planet goes across,

and the bigger the planet,
the more light it blocks,

the bigger the dip.

So we can tell
the size of the planet

from the size of the dip.

But it isn't practical
to observe one star at a time.

Borucki had to find a way
to look at many stars together,

an unprecedented,
some said impossible, goal.

We had to show

that we can measure
the brightness of these stars,

100,000 of them simultaneously.

It was met
with a great deal of skepticism,

and the science community

actually published articles
saying, "that can't be done."

And so it took us quite a while

to show that, yes,
you can do that.

You can build a wide field
of your telescope

with a huge number of pixels

that measure all these stars
simultaneously,

and then you can watch
each and every individual star

to see what planet
is crossing it.

Kepler does this
with amazing accuracy.

Basically, it's a huge
camera that orbits in space.

It does not orbit the Earth.
It orbits the sun.

And so it can look
at one group of stars

between the Cygnus constellation
and the constellation of Lyra,

150,000 stars simultaneously,

and make a measurement of each
of those every 6 seconds.

Once Kepler detects a planet,

the planet's orbital size
can be calculated

along with its mass
and surface temperature.

As a member of the Kepler
science working group,

Geoff Marcy believes that Kepler
is the next great step

towards finding life
on other planets.

I think in the next few years,

we will find the first planets
of Earth size, Earth mass,

maybe even Earthlike
temperatures,

rendering them habitable.

And I think it's fair to say

that one of the great goals
of the next decade or two

is to build
a terrestrial planet-finder

that can actually take pictures
of other Earths

and ascertain whether there's
any habitability possible

on that planet and, indeed,
life there, as well.

Payoff is just the pure knowledge

of are there Earths,
lots of Earths out there?

If there are, there's probably
a lot of life out there.

If the opposite occurs,
we don't find any,

there never will be
a "Star Trek."

There's no place to go to.

Better technology

is getting us closer
to finding those other Earths.

For instance,
by fine-tuning our senses,

we can now read
the light reflected

off a planet's surface.

This lets us determine

the chemical composition
of that planet's atmosphere.

Now that we can
analyze atmospheres,

we can start looking for the
unique environmental signatures

of alien civilizations.

Every form of technology leaves
a footprint on its environment.

For example, if you're looking
at Earth from a long way away,

you see global warming.

That's our footprint.

Well, in --
we can imagine a civilization

that might have been around
for an immense period of time

would leave
a much bigger footprint,

maybe not just on its planet,

but on its entire
astronomical environment.

So we should look for anything
out there in space,

any anomaly,
anything that looks like

it could not have
a natural explanation.

We're finding
new planets every day,

but so far, our investigation
hasn't turned up any aliens.

What if we're looking
in the wrong places

for the wrong things?

What if a real-life alien
isn't anything like

the creatures
of our imagination?

We're hunting for Earthlike
planets and Earthlike life,

and maybe, we hope,
alien civilizations.

But what if they aren't
Earthlike at all?

What if the aliens don't need
things like bodies?

Looking for life as we know it
could be a mistake

because, some say,
life as we know it

will soon be an artifact
of the past.

I think it's entirely possible

that we will discover
microbial life

on some extrasolar planet.

But I think what people
really want is they want aliens.

They want somebody
we can talk to,

somebody that we can relate to
as thinking individuals.

Will Wright is the creator

of two revolutionary
video games --

"The Sims" and "Spore."

Wright designs software
that creates alien life,

creatures uniquely adapted
to the myriad conditions

that might be encountered
out of the universe.

Of course, it's all simulated
inside this computer.

Wright believes
that life on Earth

is radically changing.

A new form of life
is being created --

part human, part machine.

You can almost look at any
technology that we use today

as an extension
of the human body.

The buildings are
an extension of our skin.

Cars are an extension
of our legs.

Telephone is an extension
of our mouth.

Humans have been so intertwined
with technology

for thousands of years already

that it's really hard
to almost pull the two apart,

and that seems
to just be increasing

and accelerating over time.

Some believe

that we might eventually get rid
of our bodies completely

and become creatures
of pure consciousness,

living in a giant computer.

If this is slowly happening
to the human race right now,

has it already happened
out in the stars?

It's probably likely
that if we ever do meet

intelligent alien life out there,

I would imagine

that they probably are gonna be
transbiological in some sense.

They might be entirely
a mechanical civilization.

Physicist Paul Davies agrees.

In my view,

biological intelligence
is just a transitory phase

in the evolution of intelligence
in the universe.

So after millions of years,
you'll be dealing with something

that might be distributed across
the whole surface of a planet.

It wouldn't be
a living organism,

but it'd be a sort of gigantic,
throbbing megabrain.

It's possible
these alien super beings,

whatever they may be,

are sending us messages
right now,

but we aren't advanced enough
to detect them.

Then again,
maybe that's for the best.

It could be
that these alien intelligences

have entirely different
intentions,

and, therefore,

maybe they aren't broadcasting
where they are.

Maybe it's a hostile universe.

There are a lot of
science-fiction scenarios

that go down the path of

the ones that basically start
calling out into the deep forest

are the ones that get eaten
by the wolves.

The intelligences

that are out there
trying to talk to everybody else

are the ones
that get eaten first.

And that's why everybody else
is being really quiet.

Maybe the aliens
aren't friendly.

On the other hand,

they may not even think
we're worth contacting...

Particularly if they're ancient
throbbing megabrains.

I think it's very unlikely
that some superintellect

that's been the product
of millions of years of design

is going to have
very much interest

in traveling around
the universe.

It would long ago
have sent probes out

and gathered
all the information it needed.

I think it's much more likely
that something

that has been around
for such a long period of time

and has such enormous
intellectual power

is gonna retreat
into a sort of inner cyberspace,

probably lose interest
with its immediate surroundings.

So long as someone's paying
the electricity bill

and defending
this throbbing megabrain

from asteroid impacts
and other dangers,

I imagine that
it's not gonna be very mobile.

And there's another
even bleaker possibility.

What if there was
other intelligent life

in the universe,

but now it's gone?

SETI's been going
for about 50 years now,

and all the astronomers have got
to show for it is a silence.

I would say an eerie silence,

because many people feel

that there should be
intelligent life out there,

there should be
other civilizations,

and if so,
they're ominously quiet.

Maybe the reason
they're ominously quiet

is because they've all died out.

They've wiped themselves out,

or some horrible fate
has befallen them.

If it is all silence,

then that bodes ill
for the future of humanity.

All of this leads back
to where we started,

with a simple question.

Is there other life
in the universe?

Absolutely.

There must be other life-forms
in the universe,

and I'm even willing to go
the next step and say

there must be
intelligent technological life

elsewhere in the universe.

When you count up all the stars
that are out there,

those billions, trillions,
even more Earthlike planets

offer an enormous number
of throws of the dice.

Even if life is one in a million
or one in a billion,

there are just too many throws
of the biological dice

out there in the cosmos

for us to be alone.

We have no evidence
one way or the other

of any life beyond Earth,
let alone intelligent life.

Therefore, my feeling about it
is we wait and see.

I've got to be skeptical

until I get some evidence
otherwise.

What's that, pa?

What's all the racket?

I would find it incomprehensible
that the answer would be no.

If it was no,

that would be an amazing bit
of information to have.

I mean, even understanding
how rare we are, you know,

that maybe intelligent life
like we might understand it

is very, very far away from us

puts an incredible
responsibility on us.

All the sudden, Earth, humans,
directed intelligence

becomes incredibly precious.

Our search for E.T.

has been going on
for half a century.

But the universe
is a very big place,

and we've only just started
to unravel its mysteries.

If you dip a glass in the ocean,
and you look at it,

and your glass has no fish,
what's your conclusion?

Is your conclusion

that the ocean doesn't have
any fish in it?

Or is your conclusion,
"that's an awfully big ocean,

and I didn't sample
very much of it with my glass?"

50 years of exploration
of the cosmic oceans

is miniscule.

We haven't looked yet.
We've hardly begun to search.

We ought to do a much better job
of searching

before we draw
any extraordinary conclusions.

The building blocks of life

are spread
all around the universe.

It's hard to imagine
they haven't taken root

in one of the countless
other planets out there.

Is any of that life

what we would consider
intelligent?

And if alien civilizations
are out there,

why are they so quiet?

Maybe their signals
are still on the way,

or maybe they use technology
we don't understand,

or...

They may not be there at all.

We just don't know.

But one thing is certain.

If we find life
outside of Earth,

it will profoundly change

the way we look at life
and ourselves.

In the meantime,
we have our hopes and dreams...

And the silence of the cosmos.

-- sync, corrected by elderman --
-- for www.Addic7ed.Com --