Original subtitles

they are strangers to us

long as our world is lived among them

the Stars have offered scant overtures

save their faint flickers across the boy

they are messengers of the universe that

seems utterly barren of other life

in 1994 astronomers detected a planet

around another star but it's a world

that was stillborn formed of material

thrown into space when it's some blue

they found a second that is no planet at

all it turned out to be a dim star

called a brown dwarf and simply caught

in the orbit of a much larger star

and yet there is reason to believe our

galaxy teams with planets

1,500 light-years from Earth the Orion

Nebula is one of its most active regions

of star birth and a hotbed of new solar

systems

using the Hubble Space Telescope

astronomers are combing this region for

moments that mark the early lives of

stars and even planets something

remarkable has appeared around fully

have the young stars cited vast platters

of dust and gas ten times larger than

our own solar system

in time gravity will concentrate this

material drawing it together into

asteroids and comets but also planets

and moons

there are a hundred billion stars in our

galaxy

a recent study claims that there may be

half a trillion planets where

astronomers asked are there worlds like

our

we've seen ourselves as alone in this

enormous universe in which the distances

are so so great that they boggle our

minds and yet if we could only find life

in other places we'd realize that we

belong with them that all together we

make up something that the universe was

calling forth because it needed it if we

were to discover life elsewhere in the

universe so long as it can be shown to

be independent of life on earth I think

that will be the greatest scientific

discovery of all time and the reason I

make this statement is because according

to conventional biology life is is a

freak a fluke a statistically extremely

improbable accident that occurred just

here on earth

for millennia we have locked our gaze on

the heavens awaiting some glimmer of

other worlds

tonight our suspense is finally rewarded

at the Lick Observatory near San Jose

California a momentous discovery is it

heavy rolling I will get these two going

nuts yeah I think these are the next two

highest yeah I mean I think this if if

we had to give a talk tomorrow on giant

planets those four stars would be the

ones we'd be talking about Paul Butler

and Geoff Marcy our planet country they

are astronomers who studied the nuances

of stellar motion for hints of planets

using a technique they pioneered 85

years they've been laboring in obscurity

now they've been beaten to the punch

rivals just scored the first true planet

ever discovered beyond our solar system

the ship can identity we use bacon Swiss

team Michelle may our and DVA kilos have

announced the detection of a planet

circling the star 51 pegasi some us the

news made headlines around the world

Marcy and Butler confirmed this was

finding it was not the kind of planet

anyone expected to find a giant even

larger than Jupiter gets so close to its

star that it speeds around it every four

days it's Aptus fear is heated to about

2,000 degrees Fahrenheit

its parent star 51 pegasi is as bright

as our own Sun planet hunters cannot see

through its glare but they can tell

there's a planet by charting the minut

effects of its gravity okay why enroll

them 51 peg okay so 51 peg would be

expected to have a radius of about 30%

larger than our own Jupiter who's gonna

have the same radius starting the

exposure well you can think of it this

way our Sun sits like a giant bowling

ball and the biggest planet in our solar

system Jupiter is one one thousandth of

the mass of our Sun so when Jupiter goes

around it barely moves the Sun around so

our Sun is an almost immobile rock in

the face of Jupiter but the Sun does

move a little bit and here's how fast

the Sun moves about 12 meters per second

which is about the same speed as the

fastest Olympic sprinters so our Sun is

in effect sprinting around in a little

circle due to the pull of Jupiter we

just got a great exposure on 51 peg 6

4600 counts absolutely first-rate looks

excellent

a star's wobble even a slight one may be

the calling card of a planet Marcy and

Butler's readings are so precise they

can study stars 100 light years away and

detect the wobble down to 3 meters per

second the equivalent of human jogging

speed Marcy and Butler are looking for a

wobble that displays a more complex path

or the sign of an actual solar system

the prospect is that much closer eight

years of data I've come into sharp focus

this is

this is huge that's frightening is what

it is right that stars it's huge there's

something really wacky going on in the

system what's happening wacky literally

on periods of days or weeks but then

over over many years you've got this

wild trend going on so this could be the

first for authentic real live solar

system that's detected we won't really

know until we get to another year or two

of observations but this star 55

cankering is one of the hundred and

twenty candidates in our corner of the

galaxy

Marcion muffler our survey this could be

two or even three planets this is beyond

our wildest expectations when we started

this eight years ago no we're going to

have a few dozen new planets discovered

within the next year so we've gone

almost all of humanity's existence

discovering the nine planets in our

solar system and suddenly our inventory

of planets is going to double or triple

within the next literally the next year

I want to see two three more points and

then I'll believe it either that

variability is our discoveries mount so

to our hopes each new one brings us

closer to solving one of the deepest

mysteries in science the question is are

there other planetary systems which have

a planet somewhere in that system which

has the characteristics which make life

possible liquid water primarily people

have wondered since some antiquity

whether life on Earth is an accident

whether whether things happened in other

places the way they happened here I

think we now have a scientific basis to

conclude that it's quite likely that

life has happened elsewhere in fact I

would say an absolute certainty so I

think you'd have to be made out of stone

not to want to know the answer to that

question it would certainly surprise me

if we were unique having said that we

are interesting and complicated I still

at the same time think that we arose

according to perfectly understandable if

complicated steps I don't think there

was any magic or divine intervention so

it seems reasonable to me to think that

there are a lot of hospitable places

where people like us could have evolved

technology is advancing our search for

other worlds through history we've also

employed a tool just as powerful hope

the 17th century astronomer Johannes

Kepler imagined that intelligent

creatures had constructed dwellings on

the sides of moon craters

in 1835 a newspaper announced that a

noted astronomer had glimpsed

astonishing details of moon creatures

they were the Selenites

a civilization of lunar man bats

plans were hatched to make contact

missionaries stood ready while

abolitionists vowed to rid the moon of

any incidents of slavery if anything the

great moon hoax only fueled our appetite

for aliens

- early civilizations the Red Planet

evoked blood fire and war the Romans

named it for their god of battle Mars

at the end of the 19th century the

Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli

noted markings running down the planet

on closer examination he saw lattices of

double lines he began to name them and

connect them in a vast global network

he speculated that they carried melting

snow from the poles to the dry interior

for one astronomer Percival Lowell the

Lord of these features was irresistible

commissioned a new telescope to study

the Martian landscape for himself

Lowell saw them as canals and found

twice as many as chaparral

he came to a dramatic conclusion there

were traces of a sophisticated society

intent on shaping its environment on the

grandest of scales

Lola looked at Mars and he thought he

saw the future of Earth he looked at

this planet the red planet Mars and

thought here was a dying civilization

desperate to rescue itself from what we

would today call an ecological crisis he

thought the same thing would happen to

earth that eventually earth would dry up

as well and become a planet where we had

to build some kind of network of canals

to save ourselves from from drought and

famine so he thought that Mars was a

vision of our own future with an

impassioned series of best-selling books

Lowell pitched his vision of Mars to his

eager public but was it true

no said his peers but Lowell would not

be deterred he sent the astronomer David

Todd to South America to gather more

evidence

Todd took pictures by the thousands and

analyzed them in detail

his conclusion canals aplenty

I think at the end of that our sanctuary

it was still possible to be a serious

astronomer and believe that there might

be advanced life there

although astronomy was in a fairly

advanced state at the turn of the

century biology certainly wasn't that

the nature of life was very ill

understood the molecular basis for life

was still at least fifty years away and

so nobody really had a clue about how

life originated or would evolve on other

planet while the debate raged Mars

gripped the popular imagination who were

these Martians who had mastered the

elements through engineering

they must have evolved even beyond the

human

they're large heads barrel chests and

long snouts to reduced gravity and a

thin atmosphere

Mars was alluring and it's old soap

schemes for making contact about him

giant mirrors would flash agreed

like be homes call them up

or use mental telepathy

perhaps at one French astronomer an

ancient race of Martians had been

signaling us since the age of the

dinosaur has simply gotten tired of

trying

today astronomers routinely monitor

radio energy from space in the 1920s

however the notion was nothing short of

radical one maverick believed he could

receive messages from Mars it was David

Todd he was a visionary in one sense he

saw the coming age of interplanetary

communication when humans would

routinely communicate with other worlds

not with Martians but with space probes

that humans have sent out to Mars and to

other planets Todd made what was

probably the first feasible proposal for

interplanetary communication which was

launching a balloon with him aboard and

a radio receiver that could he hope to

detect signals from Martians who might

be trying to contact earth with great

fanfare

Todd announced his fateful launch he

would listen for Martian signals from

high in the atmosphere the project never

got off the ground

in 1924 Todd convinced the US Armed

Forces to suspend communications for an

unprecedented three-day period

as Mars approached its closest orbit to

earth all ears were tuned in speculation

about it but there was only silence then

the aliens found us

some sort of a war tank

what did they want from us in our

fertile plan when the years that

followed motion pictures enacted the

moment of contact when aliens would make

their caves

they came to take control of our world

you will find that conquering the earth

isn't so simple this is our planet a

strong Delta they sought haven from a

hostile universe during the 23rd time

rotation our Sun began to die our eyes

developed to this state to combat the

ever-growing darkness we were forced to

migrate they yearn for our family values

I'll try dear lady

quiet remoten they would stop at nothing

to recover the one resource they had

lost in a cataclysmic war men are you my

name is nya I will select some of your

strongest men to return with me to Mars

if they don't want to go with you there

is no if

scientists adopted a somewhat more sober

view in the 1950s they began to envision

the day when astronauts would actually

venture to Mars to explore it

but much of Lowell's vision of the

planet had indoor

Mars was depicted as harsh berry in

earth line with running water and sparse

vegetation this myth was about to be

dashed in 1964 the Mariner 4 mission

sent back a startling set of images of

the Martian surface

lolz canals were not the product of

nature or Martians without his fertile

imagination

I will never forget as long as I live

seeing the front page newspaper with

these pictures from the Mariner 4 space

probe and I realized at age 12 that

there were no Martians there were no

Martian canals all those marvelous

visions of life on the red planet were

all wrong and for me it was much worse

than ceasing to believe in Santa Claus

or for that matter ceasing to believe in

God because it took so much romance out

of the solar system and after that the

solar system began to seem like a more

alien inhuman place if in the distant

past

life did develop on Mars surface it was

killed off by an increasingly severe

environment

once the planet was warm and wet like

Earth then its atmosphere thinned and it

plunged into a deep Ice Age

the surface of Mars has remained frozen

in time for billions of years the

planet's thick crust has prevented the

welling up of molten rock from its core

what mars lacks is the volcanic activity

that has long replenished our atmosphere

and circulated water from below

my three and a half to four billion

years ago Mars still had water so it's

not at all unreasonable that early Mars

as well as early Earth had abundant

microbial life however then Mars and

Earth diverged very substantially

geologically for reasons that we don't

understand fully at this time Mars now

is left with only a very small

atmosphere an atmosphere which is only a

few thousandths of the pressure of our

own atmosphere Mars dried up a billion

or a billion a half years after its

formation Earth on the other hand

retained its water