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The earth is not alone in the last few years
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Scientists have found that our planet is just one of billions out there in the Milky Way galaxy
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There's a really decent chance that there are more planets in the galaxy than there actually are stars
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We're now scouring these planets for evidence of atmospheres
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liquid water
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of life itself
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We are going to know where in the night sky you can point and find another earth
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We have a scientific method to actually determine whether there is life on another planet another
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earth
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Alien life the truth is out there, but are we ready for it?
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The earth gives us the blueprint for life as we know it
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The Sun warms our oceans creating the perfect environment for all scales of life
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From the very smallest to the Giants that eat them
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Mountains
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planes
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and forests teen with plants and animal species and
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It's all cocooned in a thick atmosphere that nurtures and protects for us. It's paradise
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20 years ago a group of scientists decided to find out if there were other paradises out there
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so-called exoplanets orbiting the stars that light up our night sky
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Just in the last decade we've had this explosion in the discovery of these exoplanets
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Which has revolutionized the whole field of astronomy
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The early days of exoplanet hunting turned up enormous jupiter-sized planets by the boatload
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These hot gas, each iins proved easy to find but hostile to life as we know it
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Now though new telescopes and technologies have allowed astronomers to target smaller planets
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Earth-sized ones and the stunning results have transformed the way we see our place in the universe
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We now know something precious that our planet Earth is not unique. It's not even rare. There are
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Tons hoards flocks if you will of other earth-like planets out there fluttering around the other stars
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Some stars probably have multiple earths orbiting them. That's how common earth-like planets are
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We owe this exoplanet explosion to a Space Telescope called Kepler the
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Kepler space telescope is an observatory in space that is staring at one spot in the sky. It's looking at roughly
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150,000 stars and it's looking for the tell-tale sign of
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Planets orbiting those stars then every time the planet passes in front of the star
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it'll block a little bit of that star light and if you plot the amount of light you get from the star it drops and
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Then goes back up as the planet passes
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In just four years scientists have detected over a thousand exoplanets just from their shadows
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But Kepler has a problem. It can't tell if the shadow is made by a giant gassy planet hostile to life
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or a potentially habitable earth-like planet
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What we're measuring when a when a planet passes in front of its host star is what is the area of the planet
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Relative to the area of the star that it's passing in front of it's a it's a ratio basically
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But Jupiter sized planets crossing giant stars full Kepler
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Because they block the same fraction of light as earth sized planets crossing smaller stars
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To prove a planet is earth sized you first need to measure the size of its star using the world's biggest telescopes
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But that's time-consuming expensive and it creates a huge
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exoplanet backlog
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But astronomer Kavon Stassen has come up with an ingenious shortcut by turning the raw Kepler data into sound
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what the Kepler telescope directly measures and the data that we use is
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small changes in brightness that a star produces due to the flickering
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Arising from the boiling and roiling motions of gas at its surface
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what we can do then is take that light flickering data and
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Transform it in a sound studio for example into audio frequencies
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And so then we can represent with sound what we're actually detecting with light
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The bigger the star the more its surface boils with activity
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Making big stars flicker more powerfully
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Converted to sound this boiling becomes a deafening hiss
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Well, let's listen to some stars, okay, can we hear the red giant star please? I'm gonna bring up the volume here
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This is a very large star very low density
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and so that large amount of hiss is the result of
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vigorous boiling and churning at the surface of this large red giant star
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Can we get the dwarf star, please?
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On smaller stars sunspots dominate the sound profile creating a low-frequency drone
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Actually sounds like a series of clicks
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But below clicks lies the faint hiss Kavon needs to size the star
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Underneath it at a very low level is a little bit of hiss
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That little bit of is actually the light flickering that we're interested in
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By accurately measuring the level of this background hiss Kavon can work out the size of the star
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In this case, it's around the same size as our star the Sun
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Cave-ins work could be the breakthrough
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exoplanet hunters have been hoping for
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It's cheap. The results are practically instantaneous
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And once you know the size of the star
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Figuring out the size of the planets casting shadows over
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It is child's play it it feels like a very privileged time to be a scientist to be an astronomer
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Working in this area and contributing to the hunt for the next earth. Here. We are actually
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discovering these worlds by the hundreds and now on the cusp of
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Being able to identify the next earth
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Astronomers suspect there could be tens of billions of rocky earth-like planets in the Milky Way
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Places where perhaps life has gotten a foothold
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But life as we know it requires water
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How can scientists possibly find this miracle substance on planets?
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light-years away
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Water divides our living world goes with it prosper
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Those bounts suffer
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Remarkably the water we drink today contains the same atoms as the water dinosaurs drank 100 million years ago
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It's the same water that formed clouds over the earlier
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4 billion years ago and every organism that has ever existed on earth
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Has used this single ration of water as the biochemical powerhouse that keeps it alive
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On earth all life requires liquid water to grow and reproduce
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It's the common ecological requirement for life liquid water is just so good for getting evolution going
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Molecules can dissolve in the water actually interact with each other for more complex chains. It does it with charge
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There's positive charges and negative charges separated between the hydrogen and the oxygen in h2o
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Those charges break apart the hydrocarbons the carbon-based molecules that persist everywhere in nature
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Now that's very rare. Hardly. Any other liquids do that?
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So liquid water is a natural starting place when you look out into the universe and say what planets could possibly have life
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To understand how much liquid water is out there astronomers must first calculate how common water is in all its forms?
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Amazingly they find it everywhere they look
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Water is incredibly common in its gaseous form. We see water vapor filling the space between the stars
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We see it in clouds of material that are actually forming new stars and planets right now
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Since water is a fundamental building block of stars and planets exoplanet worlds must surely have it in abundance
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But if you're looking for life
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You need to find liquid water and plenty up to find it astronomers take their cue from a fairy tale
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Everybody knows the famous story of Goldilocks and the three bears and the the cup of porridge where one was too hot one was too
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Cold it was just right
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When it comes to cooking up life like a porridge, you need to have an environment. That's not too hot not too cold
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just right and
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Traditionally we look for that at a certain distance around a star
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At first astronomers based this magical distance known as the Goldilocks zone on the Earth's orbit around the Sun
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But as they found more and more exoplanets, they've had to re-evaluate the boundaries from liquid water
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There isn't a single distance. It depends on the brightness of your parents a dim star. You need to be closer
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Hot star very bright need to be farther away
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Scientists have calculated just how many rocky planets may lie within the Goldilocks zone of their stars
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It comes out to over 30 billion
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potentially watery world
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Even more remarkably
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Recent discoveries have shown us. It's not just planets that can bask in the warmth of the Goldilocks zone
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There may be moons
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painted blue with oceans -
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Most of the planets were finding our big jupiter-sized planets
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However, a lot of them were are orbiting roughly where the earth is orbiting the Sun
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So even if the planet that we're finding can't support life
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It could have a moon a moon with an atmosphere that could support life
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And the biggest of these rocky moons they resemble our home
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There could be billions upon billions of XA means out there and even perhaps countless paradises teeming with life
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David kipping searches for exomoons by looking for double dips in the brightness of distant stars
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We look for XA means in a very similar way to the way that we look for planets
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by looking for them transit their host star
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Now if that planet had a moon then we should expect to have one big dip
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Due to the planet and then one smaller deputy to the left or to the right due to the new
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Habitable exomoons may play host to one of the most spectacular sights in the universe
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Imagine a warm rocky world just like arrow with oceans mountains
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But in the sky a massive ringed planet with a fiery sister moon shooting hot magma into space
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Exoplanets, and now the vast potential of
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exomoons
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Int a galaxy filled with the possibilities for life
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But a rocky surface and liquid oceans may not be enough
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Biology needs the breath of life
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air
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Backlit by the Sun a halo appears around the earth a
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pale blue ring of light our atmosphere and
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We oh, it's everything
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The Earth's atmosphere provides the gases that fuel the biochemistry of advanced life
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But it also protects the oceans from the full fury of the sun's rays
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preventing the water from boiling away into space
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Without an atmosphere there would be no wind. No rain. No
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fresh water and probably
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No life
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Atmospheres are absolutely essential for life
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Take a look at the planet Earth and you realize that just like the skin of the Apple?
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The skin of the Apple preserves the Apple. Well the atmosphere of our planet
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Preserves the oceans and makes possible the presence of life as we know it
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Scientists in search of living exoplanets. Hope to detect the thin gassy envelope that should surround these alien worlds
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To do it. They're turning to the power rainbows
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In the same way that water splits Sun lights into a rainbow
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astronomers use instruments to split starlight into a band of colours called a spectrum
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It's one of the oldest tricks and science
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and one of the most revealing
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Several hundred years ago scientists first began to take something like a prism and put it in front of their telescope
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So he started taking the light from stars like the Sun and actually spreading it out into a spectrum
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And what they saw was kind of surprising. So instead of seeing andreen continuous rainbow of light
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They saw that rainbow but they saw these dark lines superimposed on top
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Each chemical elements of the star's atmosphere absorbs different parts of the spectrum
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creating signature dark bands
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For instance up at the top. There's a pair of lines in the yellow part of the spectrum which are due to sodium
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Like a DNA profile for stars
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Spectral analysis has taught us almost everything we know about stars today
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But these same lines may hide a marvelous secret
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the faint signal of alien atmospheres and
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perhaps also
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alien life
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so the challenge is that these planets are very small and very faint so we can't actually go and
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Directly measure the light emitted from the planet the same way that you go and measure this lovely spectrum for the Sun
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Instead we have to rely on more indirect methods
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So one indirect way of doing that is to wait until the planet passes in front of the star
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When the light of a star passes through an EXO atmosphere
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The gases that surround the planet should stamp their own faint lines on the star's spectrum
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So as we watched the light from the star transmitted through that atmosphere its atmosphere is going to act like a little filter
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so a part of the star light is going to pass through that atmosphere and we're gonna see that
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In printing extra lines on it, which are due to the planet's atmosphere
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So that change in the spectrum tells us something about the properties the planet's atmosphere
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The one chemical astronomers most want to find is oxygen
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Because only life can produce enough oxygen to be easily detected
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It's a so-called bio signature
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The race is now on to find bio signatures in the atmospheres of rocky exoplanets
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And while some groups look for rainbows
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Indirectly others are tackling the challenge head-on
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All right
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Then Oppenheimer is part of a team trying to take direct photographs of exoplanets
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using massive ground-based telescopes
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We're within minutes of taking our first long exposure and I hope it's good
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The greatest challenge to imaging exoplanets is the blinding light of the parent star
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Which shines tens of millions of times brighter than the planet itself?
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The trick is to stop the light of the star from entering the telescope sensors by blocking it using a series of
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Masks and lenses called a coronagraph
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Right now we're standing right?
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Underneath the telescope's primary mirror and the light comes through a hole in the middle of the mirror and goes into this
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Crazy box here, which is full of optics motors
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Sensors and electronics that all allow us to precisely control the star light that's coming through the system
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Using state-of-the-art software they manipulate the coronagraph to black out the unwanted light under good conditions
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We can actually carve
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Dark holes into this image of the star so that we can see really faint things in those regions
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coronagraphs present an intriguing problem though
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errors within the optics produce tiny flares of starlight called speckles that look just like
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Exoplanets, but van has come up with an ingenious way to tell speckles from planets
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So we've developed a technique where we exploit an aspect of speckles
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Which is that they change position in the image, depending on what color you take your image at?
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So Ben takes the same image of the star through different color filters and
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Runs them like a movie the speckles appear to move across the screen
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But the planets stay stuck still allowing Ben to easily pick them out
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And so I'd like to point out that there is a little thing right here
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That if you watch for you're careful, you'll notice that it doesn't move and the speckles are washing over it
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This stationary blob is a candidate exoplanet
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And below it and to the left is a second. They both appear to orbit a star around 200 light-years from the earth
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Just a decade ago capturing an image like this through a telescope was unthinkable
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But today thanks to the ingenuity of astronomers like Ben we have hundreds
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And by analyzing the light for these distant worlds scientists can work out their chemical composition
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And potentially the fingerprints of life
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At this point we're studying much larger planets
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Gaseous things like Jupiter that most likely don't have any kind of life
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Like we know it but that's a first step and we're going to fainter and smaller and smaller
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Planets as time goes on as we develop this technology
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In the not-too-distant future
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Scientists may be able to simply scan a star for earth-like planets and find the signature of life there
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We can look right at the light from a little planet around its distant star and that opens up a whole range of possibilities
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For us to not just detect the planet but to study the planet
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I mean this all sounds like science fiction, but there is a reality to this
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We have a scientific method to actually determine whether there is life on another planet
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Life is one thing
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intelligent life
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another all together that requires
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Billions of years and a powerful force field like the one we owe our lives to every day
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If an alien astronomer were to file a report on our home solar system they might make a surprising observation
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Because of all the eight planets that orbit the Sun they could easily conclude that - not one were suitable for life
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It's an easy mistake to make because the Sun has two planets within its Goldilocks zone the Earth and Mars
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Both planets have surfaces warm enough for liquid water to pool on
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But while the earth is blessed with warm liquid oceans
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Ours is dry and dead
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The one crucial difference between these two planets could be the key to finding truly habitable exoplanets a
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magnetic shield
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Our Sun is constantly hurling deadly radiation out towards us
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Only our magnetic shield the magnetosphere saves us
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Without it the solar wind would blow our atmosphere away and without an atmosphere liquid water could not exist on the surface
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In order to have liquid water not only do you need the right temperature, but you need the right pressure
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You know if there were no atmosphere here right now
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Even at the same temperature we are today all of the water would boil off into vapor immediately
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So where does the Earth's magnetosphere come from and why does it Mars have one?
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Actually in the past both Earth and Mars had magnetospheres
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But Mars lost its around 4 billion years ago and with it the potential for life
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Both the earth and Mars were born into a realm of violence
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Asteroids smashed into their surfaces turning rock and metal into a molten mass
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As they started to cool a solid crust formed on the surface but the molten metal below
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Churned as the planets turn
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Inducing a magnetic field which rose high up above the surface of both planets
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At the same time active volcanoes pumped gas into the space around each planet
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Protected by the newly formed magnetic field these gases built up into thick atmospheres
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Creating the air pressure for liquid water to run on the surface
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For over a hundred million years both Mars and Earth were warm wet paradises primed for life to take off
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Then quite suddenly
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Mars's magnetic protection
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Disappeared the solar wind blew its atmosphere into space and its oceans boiled away leaving the dry
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Sterile, red rock we see today
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Mars is fundamental problem is is that it's smaller than Earth and because it's smaller the internal core of Mars cooled down and
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Solidified and once it becomes a solid metal. There's no more magnetic field the magnetic field shuts off essentially and
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the atmosphere therefore is vulnerable to both energy and radiation from the Sun and the rest of the galaxy and
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Probably just blew off
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Whatever life was on there, at least on the surface was now completely exposed
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All rocky planets will one day lose their magnetospheres as their cores cool and turn solid
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So to know if an exoplanet is alive you need to work out if its magnetosphere is still active but
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Magnetospheres are tough to measure because they are unbelievably weak
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The earth has a magnetic field of approximately half a Gauss
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Which when you think about it is actually really weak. Our fridge magnets are about a hundred Gauss. They're much stronger
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Excel planets are too far away for us to measure such weak magnetic fields directly
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But there is an indirect method
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When electrons in the solar wind interacts with a planet's magnetosphere they emit radio waves that beam out into space
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Turning the planet into a giant radio beacon
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Astronomers like of geniu hoped to use these signals to spot habitable exoplanets
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Not only that the frequency of the signal should also tell her how big the planet is
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If we're looking for the magnetic signature in radio waves of a giant
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planet say a hot Jupiter
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We expect it to have a strong magnetic field and therefore it would have a high frequency
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And around 100 megahertz kind of where the limit of this radio is
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However, a weaker field like Earth's requires us to go down to lower and lower frequencies
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So instead of a hundred megahertz we go down to ten megahertz
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But hunting for exoplanets at 10 megahertz presents a unique challenge
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Because the Earth's own magnetic sphere creates a deafening radio roar at that frequency
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So to find alien Earth's using radio requires a dish in space
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When we want to look for magneto spheres of extrasolar planets, we really need to get outside of the earth-moon system
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In order to get away from all the radio frequencies that are bouncing around the earth
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With a slew of new technologies and upcoming technologies
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Scientists are edging ever closer to the ultimate prize
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Finding a second earth
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I wouldn't be surprised if we have that data about an earth and about life on it around another star in 10 or 15 years
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I'm hoping to see that soon
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Using shadows
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Rainbows and now radio we finally have the tools to detect a planet just like our own
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But in the rush to find the Earth's identical twin are we missing something big
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What if earth is an outlier a freakishly lucky place on the very fringes of habitability
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Could there be another kind of planet out there even better for life?
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For years astronomers have scanned the heavens for planets that could sustain life
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They've faced their search on the earth seeking the exact same conditions an exact same size I
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Think right now there is a huge focus to finding earth-like
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Planets now whether or not there actually is life there. That is another question all together
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But after 20 years of searching for an earth clone, the exoplanet hunters may be about to switch targets
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Recent observations have revealed a brand new class of planet. It's one that may eclipse our own home
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We've learned something in the last few years that really shocked us with
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The Kepler space porn telescope we have found hordes of planets that are a little bigger than the earth
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We never imagined that there would be such planets. In fact in our own solar system
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There are no planets between the size of the earth and the next largest planet that of Uranus and Neptune
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Astronomers call these mysterious planets super Earths
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Super earths are about three to five times the mass of the earth, and there's nothing like that here
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We don't know what they're like, it's an entirely alien sort of planet
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In just the last few years
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Astronomers have begun to imagine the conditions on this new class of planet and they've come to a startling conclusion
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super earths could be
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super habitable
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There are probably planets out there that are even more hospitable for life
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Planets that have even more chemicals necessary to create the organic materials that create life
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Conditions that make it more likely to get life off the ground
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Imagine a rocky planet twice the size of the earth
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Dramatic volcanism on the surface betrays a vast heart of fire that beats within its core
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We expect that a heavier earth will be more geologically active
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that the increased amount of
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Geothermal heat within the super earth will lead to stronger
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motions of the magma underneath the crust
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Belching volcanoes dot the surface of this super earth
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Their gases feed a super thick atmosphere and help to regulate a super stable climate
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Many times life on Earth was nearly extinguished for example once upon a time the earth was snowball earth
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completely covered in ice
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maybe in these other planets there are earth in which
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Snowball earth never happened that the climate was always stable and temperate
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The grip of gravity is three times stronger here than we're used to
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It pulls mountain ranges down to a third the height, they'd be on earth
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Gravity also flattens the ocean bed making shallower seas filled with volcanic island chains and
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The nutrient-rich waters that surround these archipelagos provide the perfect conditions for life
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In these other planets perhaps they have conditions which would make DNA get off the ground much earlier and flourish much more quickly
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Finally our super earth may be protected by a super magnetosphere the
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Magnetic field strength is a condition both of the mass of the planet as well as its
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rotation speed and so it is quite likely that a planet that is a couple of times bigger than the earths would
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Be able to develop a stronger magnetic field may shield the planet even better than our magnetic field shields us
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Having a stronger magnetosphere would be a distinct advantage for life on a super earth
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Surrounding the Milky Way's most plentiful kind of star the M dwarf or red dwarf star
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Red dwarf habitable zones are much closer in than the earth is to the Sun because their host star is so dim
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it's as if you took the terrestrial planets in our own solar system and zapped it with a shrink ray gun and
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Shrunk them down to orbital periods that are less than about 30 days meaning that they're very close to their stars
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Some astronomers believe these planets are at risk from solar activity such as deadly flares
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But a super-earth with a super protective magnetosphere
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May well resist these deadly rays
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allowing life to flourish under a psychedelic sky full of swirling Aurora's
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If one was standing on a super-earth we would see the Aurora come down to lower latitudes
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00:34:44,739 --> 00:34:46,739
Might get different colors
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If I had the opportunity to travel to one of these exoplanets, I would snap that up pretty quickly
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Most intriguing of all if life does exist on a red dwarf super earth, it could be home to the longest-lived
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civilizations in the entire universe the
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Advantage of the M Dwarfs is that they last for much longer and if you had a super earth then keeping a strong magnetic field
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Going for billions and billions of years
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Especially now around a red dwarf that is going to exist for billions and billions of years
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You might be in that perfect system where life can exist and evolve into even more complex beings than us
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We're getting so close
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Our local neighborhood of stars teens with red dwarfs bursting with the potential for advanced life
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But they're also
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Cosmic killers out there lurking in our galaxy primed to wipe out life on a regular basis
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Is anywhere safe?
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The exoplanet revolution is in full swing
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00:36:10,389 --> 00:36:17,670
the Kepler space telescope has scanned our local neighborhood of stars for planets and it's found them by the
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00:36:17,949 --> 00:36:19,949
thousands
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00:36:21,880 --> 00:36:28,170
For a long time we didn't know if the other stars in our galaxy had planets and for thousands of years
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There was no way to answer that question
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Finally now with modern technology we can do that and to our surprise we found they are extremely common
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From Kepler's small sample astronomers believe there could be tens of billions of rocky earth-like
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planets throughout the Milky Way where life may already be thriving
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00:36:55,269 --> 00:37:01,168
But how many of these countless worlds has held on to this life long enough for intelligence to evolve
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The answer surprisingly may depend on a planet's galactic zip code
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The universe is not a happy safe place the universe wants to kill us
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It's it's incredibly violent out there
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There are solar flares and supernovae and black holes and colliding galaxies and all these really amazingly dangerous and violent events
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It's actually kind of amazing that we're here at all
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In order to develop
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Advanced intelligent life and exoplanets may have to avoid these cosmic killers for over three billion years
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00:37:42,920 --> 00:37:46,088
If we look at the history of the earth the first thing that happens
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00:37:46,429 --> 00:37:52,239
That's important is the origin of life right away very quickly, but then nothing for a long time
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You have nothing but microbes stopping on the earth
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For the first two and a half billion years the earth was ruled by
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single-celled Beauty
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Multicellular life has only been around for a billion years
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fish for 500 million
384
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mammals for 200 million and
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Modern humans have only walked the earth for the last
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200,000 years
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The lesson is clear it takes a long time to cook up intelligent life
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But most planets in the Milky Way don't have that kind of time
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00:38:35,679 --> 00:38:43,108
Astronomers believe that a planet's position within a galaxy may determine if it gets hit by global extinction events
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00:38:44,259 --> 00:38:50,878
There's an idea of a habitable zone for a galaxy and it's in analogy to the habitable zone around stars
391
00:38:52,630 --> 00:38:57,930
Stars too close to the galactic center are in the firing line from their violent neighbors
392
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Which frequently blast them with deadly high-energy radiation?
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00:39:05,469 --> 00:39:08,408
In the middle of a galaxy we have a lot of
394
00:39:08,719 --> 00:39:16,269
Bright stars and young stars and maybe even supernova going off. And so there's a very harsh radiation field. That's not good for life
395
00:39:21,050 --> 00:39:25,449
Fired up by the supermassive black hole that sits at the center of the Milky Way
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00:39:26,210 --> 00:39:29,318
this cosmic Killzone stretches out around
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00:39:29,838 --> 00:39:35,918
8,000 light years from the galactic center and extends out along the densely packed spiral arms
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00:39:39,440 --> 00:39:46,360
Any planets that exist within this zone are likely to have their surfaces regularly scrubbed clean of life
399
00:39:48,320 --> 00:39:53,019
Fortunately for us our home star the Sun sits in a relatively empty
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00:39:53,480 --> 00:39:56,980
quiet zone between two of the galaxy's spiral arms
401
00:39:59,300 --> 00:40:02,800
So there's this idea that there's a band in the middle of the galaxy
402
00:40:02,800 --> 00:40:08,350
That's the Galactic habitable zone where you don't have too many stars going off. You don't have it too many supernovae
403
00:40:08,349 --> 00:40:12,068
So it's quiet in that way. Those might be great places for complex life
404
00:40:13,010 --> 00:40:16,360
These green zones are like the suburbs of the Milky Way galaxy
405
00:40:17,000 --> 00:40:19,929
They're sheltered from the worst of the galaxy's radiation
406
00:40:22,550 --> 00:40:27,249
It's here that earth-like worlds will have the luxury of long uninterrupted
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00:40:27,949 --> 00:40:34,449
periods for life to take hold and develop into more complex forms and eventually perhaps
408
00:40:35,329 --> 00:40:37,329
intelligent life like us
409
00:40:42,030 --> 00:40:45,649
The Galactic habitable zone is no more than a fledgling theory
410
00:40:46,019 --> 00:40:52,128
But if it's true, it reduces the number of places where advanced life could flourish in the Milky Way
411
00:40:57,030 --> 00:41:04,399
The good news is those places should be near us and aliens more likely to be on our doorstep and
412
00:41:05,219 --> 00:41:11,480
With our technology getting better every day. It surely won't be long before we find them
413
00:41:13,599 --> 00:41:14,719
I
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00:41:14,719 --> 00:41:19,658
Think in 20 years time I'm gonna be able to look up into the night sky and say there really is
415
00:41:20,000 --> 00:41:22,840
Another place. I could stand like this and feel at home
416
00:41:25,630 --> 00:41:33,420
Suddenly we humans will realize for the first time that there are other cultures other civilizations probably other religions
417
00:41:33,420 --> 00:41:39,420
Out there among the stars and we are just one member of a grand galactic
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00:41:40,030 --> 00:41:41,260
tribe
419
00:41:41,260 --> 00:41:42,520
to have
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00:41:42,519 --> 00:41:50,458
cousins that we one day may communicate with seems to me to be potentially one of the greatest developments that humanity will ever ever
421
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experience and
422
00:41:52,300 --> 00:41:54,570
If that isn't worth doing I don't know. What is
423
00:42:06,280 --> 00:42:12,629
All systems are go for entry descent landing Jim, bye-bye
424
00:44:09,510 --> 00:44:14,449
At the dawn of the 21st century space agencies in Europe and America
425
00:44:15,030 --> 00:44:18,169
Began, making plans to land the first humans on Mars
426
00:44:21,088 --> 00:44:25,099
But manned missions to the red planet have been proposed before
427
00:44:33,130 --> 00:44:37,769
For some Mars holds the answers to mankind's future in space
428
00:44:39,009 --> 00:44:45,148
Others say Mars is too far too dangerous and too expensive for humans to explore
429
00:44:48,539 --> 00:44:50,539
And in a world torn by troubles
430
00:44:51,400 --> 00:44:56,939
Some say there is no need or will for mankind to reach into space anymore
431
00:44:59,108 --> 00:45:03,148
More than 30 years after the last Apollo astronaut walked on the moon
432
00:45:04,028 --> 00:45:06,028
the American manned space program
433
00:45:06,789 --> 00:45:08,789
Seems to have lost its way
434
00:45:09,130 --> 00:45:11,939
Unable to reach beyond even in low-earth orbit
435
00:45:13,208 --> 00:45:20,009
We've got a problem NASA has been literally going around in circles with its space program for the past 30 years
436
00:45:23,168 --> 00:45:25,168
Astronautica engineer, dr. Robert Zubrin
437
00:45:25,659 --> 00:45:31,469
Has been arguing for years that sending humans to Mars is the mission the space program needs
438
00:45:32,889 --> 00:45:38,429
It's time that we set goals for NASA that were worthy of the risks of human spaceflight
439
00:45:39,789 --> 00:45:43,468
Mars is the next logical step in our space program
440
00:45:43,469 --> 00:45:49,979
It's the challenge that's been staring us in the face for the past 30 years. It's the planet that's most likely earth
441
00:45:50,228 --> 00:45:56,518
It's the planet that has on it. The resources needed to support life and therefore someday technological civilization
442
00:45:56,768 --> 00:46:00,328
It's the planet that will provide us with the answer as to whether life is
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00:46:00,608 --> 00:46:07,108
prevalent in the universe or exclusive to the earth and it's the planet that will give us the critical test whether humanity
444
00:46:07,389 --> 00:46:10,858
Can break out of the planet of our birth and become a spacefaring species
445
00:46:14,068 --> 00:46:20,777
In the early 1990s Zubrin was the head of the Mars direct program at Martin Marietta astronautics
446
00:46:22,079 --> 00:46:28,008
His team developed a mission to Mars that could be done at a fraction of NASA's projected costs
447
00:46:29,009 --> 00:46:36,528
Using only existing technology Zubrin argues that the first steps on Martian soil could be made within 10 years
448
00:46:36,809 --> 00:46:39,979
There is absolutely nothing in this that is beyond our technology
449
00:46:42,059 --> 00:46:46,369
We are not ready to send humans to Mars right now, we don't know how to keep them alive
450
00:46:46,768 --> 00:46:49,638
There are people out there who say we can go to Mars tomorrow
451
00:46:50,400 --> 00:46:55,400
One of my requirements one of NASA's requirements is that if we send humans to Mars we bring them back alive
452
00:46:56,219 --> 00:46:58,219
For the past 15 years
453
00:46:58,349 --> 00:47:04,577
Zubrin and his colleagues have waged a campaign to convince society and the political class that humans on Mars
454
00:47:04,858 --> 00:47:06,978
Should be the goal for NASA now
455
00:47:09,500 --> 00:47:16,000
This is the story of a cold neighboring planet and the debate over whether man's fate is tied to the red world
456
00:47:17,028 --> 00:47:24,878
It's the story of an engineer's journey and the Battle of ideas over which direction in space will truly benefit mankind
457
00:47:26,539 --> 00:47:28,539
We're at a crossroads today
458
00:47:28,670 --> 00:47:34,000
We either muster the courage to go or we risk the possibility of stagnation in the case
459
00:47:34,940 --> 00:47:38,378
The victor in this debate could determine the fate of mankind?
460
00:47:39,559 --> 00:47:41,829
Will we become a spacefaring species?
461
00:47:43,670 --> 00:47:46,148
Will we live on more than one planet
462
00:48:05,630 --> 00:48:11,210
In the winter of 2003 the Chinese put their first tycoon all in space
463
00:48:16,639 --> 00:48:23,259
The Chinese space administration plans to begin a manned program of moon exploration by 2017
464
00:48:25,250 --> 00:48:33,099
The european space agency has outlined a plan for humans to the moon by 2024 and to mars by 2033
465
00:48:35,139 --> 00:48:41,710
And the Russians building on years of experience are conducting tests for long-duration Mars missions
466
00:48:44,210 --> 00:48:50,599
In America with the impending retirement of the shuttle fleet in the completion of the International Space Station
467
00:48:51,599 --> 00:48:56,539
The brochure administration announced in 2004 the constellation program
468
00:48:56,969 --> 00:49:01,730
On the moon a plan that would return Americans to the moon by 2020
469
00:49:04,010 --> 00:49:08,060
But the program was never fully funded was eventually cancelled
470
00:49:12,059 --> 00:49:14,059
In 2010 the Obama
471
00:49:14,639 --> 00:49:20,539
administration announced its vision for NASA and human Mars exploration by the mid 2030s
472
00:49:20,539 --> 00:49:25,489
I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to earth and
473
00:49:26,340 --> 00:49:28,340
landing on Mars will follow
474
00:49:28,349 --> 00:49:30,349
And I expect to be around to see it
475
00:49:32,969 --> 00:49:38,480
With a new timeline for humans to Mars sometime after 2035 and with administration's
476
00:49:39,360 --> 00:49:44,778
Changing every four or eight years. It is far from certain that such a plan will be realized
477
00:49:46,590 --> 00:49:52,610
Twenty years earlier the first president Bush also proposed a long interview man exploration program
478
00:49:53,219 --> 00:49:55,219
under great fanfare
479
00:49:55,260 --> 00:49:58,699
The program quietly died in Congress a few years later
480
00:49:59,909 --> 00:50:01,230
if
481
00:50:01,230 --> 00:50:05,780
You want to go to Mars? You cannot do it in 30 years you can't do in 20s
482
00:50:05,780 --> 00:50:08,929
You've got to do it in ten years or less from program start or you're more or less guaranteeing
483
00:50:09,539 --> 00:50:11,130
political failure
484
00:50:11,130 --> 00:50:13,309
to date only the Apollo moon program
485
00:50:13,590 --> 00:50:21,229
Which was announced in 1961 and had men on the moon eight years later has succeeded in getting astronauts beyond low Earth orbit
486
00:50:25,219 --> 00:50:27,219
I
487
00:50:27,869 --> 00:50:29,869
Was 5 when Sputnik flew
488
00:50:30,929 --> 00:50:32,929
and while to the adults
489
00:50:33,809 --> 00:50:39,438
Sputnik was a terrifying event to me as a child who was already reading science fiction
490
00:50:39,440 --> 00:50:46,128
it was exhilarating because it meant that this possibility of a spacefaring future was going to be real and
491
00:50:46,440 --> 00:50:49,849
I was 9 when he gave his speech committing us to the moon
492
00:50:55,139 --> 00:50:57,139
I
493
00:50:57,300 --> 00:50:58,619
Grew up
494
00:50:58,619 --> 00:51:00,000
During the 60s
495
00:51:00,000 --> 00:51:02,869
When it was mercury was Gemini Apollo?
496
00:51:03,269 --> 00:51:09,530
Every month NASA was doing something more impressive than in a month before we were gonna be on the moon by 1970
497
00:51:09,750 --> 00:51:14,030
Mars by 1980 Saturn by 1990 Alpha Centauri by the year
498
00:51:14,159 --> 00:51:17,089
2000 we were moving out and I wanted to be part of that
499
00:51:17,090 --> 00:51:24,289
And so I got myself a scientific education, but then in the early 70s, it's all collapsed
500
00:51:24,289 --> 00:51:27,978
We achieved the first part of that program moon by 1970 but the Nixon
501
00:51:28,079 --> 00:51:33,858
Administration shut down the rest and we did not move out into space and for a while. I accepted that
502
00:51:34,650 --> 00:51:40,760
grudgingly it became a science teacher but then in the early 80s something hit me and I said I'm
503
00:51:41,130 --> 00:51:43,130
Not going to accept myself
504
00:51:43,650 --> 00:51:46,579
Doing less than what I had dreamed of doing when I was a boy
505
00:51:48,719 --> 00:51:53,779
Zubin went back to graduate school getting advanced degrees in engineering into aerospace
506
00:51:54,420 --> 00:52:01,250
He then went on to work at Martin Marietta, which later became Lockheed Martin designing interplanetary missions
507
00:52:02,130 --> 00:52:06,390
It was here that zubrin's obsession with the red planet began to take hold
508
00:52:13,110 --> 00:52:19,249
While at Martin in the 1990s Zubrin and his colleagues developed a plan for sending humans to Mars
509
00:52:19,469 --> 00:52:21,529
That changed NASA's thinking on the issue
510
00:52:23,730 --> 00:52:26,780
But the plan has languished on the drawing boards ever since
511
00:52:27,690 --> 00:52:34,550
Now as president of the Mars Society Zubrin is at center stage in the debate over the future of manned spaceflight
512
00:52:36,570 --> 00:52:41,869
Known as a smart visionary scientist. He's authored several books on exploring space
513
00:52:41,869 --> 00:52:45,949
And is the self-appointed spokesman for the possibility of colonizing Mars?
514
00:52:47,519 --> 00:52:55,519
Mars is where the futurist Mars is the closest planet to the earth that has honored all the resources needed to support life and therefore
515
00:52:56,039 --> 00:53:01,489
Technological civilization it has water it has carbon it has nitrogens. It has a 24-hour day
516
00:53:01,489 --> 00:53:07,039
It has a complex geological history that has created mineral org, it has sources of geothermal energy
517
00:53:07,619 --> 00:53:09,679
Mars is a place we can settle
518
00:53:11,338 --> 00:53:15,378
One reason for such optimism over a frozen world like Mars is
519
00:53:15,929 --> 00:53:20,779
Evidence that two billion years ago Mars was a much warmer and wetter place
520
00:53:23,219 --> 00:53:29,719
We think that at one time in the ancient past Mars was very similar to the condition of early Earth
521
00:53:33,949 --> 00:53:41,108
This Martian war mage lasted for over a billion years and could have been a suitable environment for the development of life
522
00:53:42,980 --> 00:53:48,010
If we go to Mars and find evidence of a second Genesis on Mars, I think we can conclude that
523
00:53:48,050 --> 00:53:49,640
The universe is full of life
524
00:53:49,639 --> 00:53:56,769
We can probably conclude that on some planets that life evolves to more complex forms, and I think we'd be reasonable to conclude that
525
00:53:57,500 --> 00:54:03,519
Intelligence could also emerge on some planets as well. It really does answer the question. Are we alone?
526
00:54:04,159 --> 00:54:08,888
That to me is a question that transcends science. It's a philosophical
527
00:54:09,619 --> 00:54:15,097
Societal as well as scientific question to me. That's the big prize. That's what why Mars is interesting
528
00:54:15,099 --> 00:54:17,649
That's why human exploration makes sense
529
00:54:22,170 --> 00:54:26,180
Space programs are often criticized for the huge sums of money. They require
530
00:54:26,909 --> 00:54:31,368
although the American space program is less than 1% of the federal budget a
531
00:54:32,068 --> 00:54:35,358
Human mission to Mars may have to wait for better times
532
00:54:37,048 --> 00:54:43,458
There are those who say then we have many problems to deal with here on earth and we need to postpone ventures
533
00:54:43,798 --> 00:54:48,559
Such as the human exploration on Mars until these problems are solved
534
00:54:49,409 --> 00:54:53,478
well, there are many problems in Spain in 1492 and
535
00:54:54,809 --> 00:54:56,809
there still are
536
00:54:56,880 --> 00:55:01,489
There are problems that need to be dealt with here on earth and should be dealt with
537
00:55:02,130 --> 00:55:04,670
But we also have to think of the future
538
00:55:05,670 --> 00:55:10,909
We also have to think about opening up new volumes in human history
539
00:55:20,980 --> 00:55:22,980
I
540
00:55:23,570 --> 00:55:30,309
Believe that it's essential for a positive human future that humanity expand into space
541
00:55:41,000 --> 00:55:48,940
The greatest value that we got out of Apollo was the creation of intellectual capital through the inspiring of
542
00:55:49,760 --> 00:55:55,239
Millions to go into science and engineering to be part of the great adventure of human expansion into space
543
00:55:55,239 --> 00:55:57,549
There's a phrase that happened with the Apollo program
544
00:55:57,619 --> 00:55:59,920
Which was if we can go to the moon we can
545
00:56:00,170 --> 00:56:06,398
And then everybody's filled in whatever they were interested in build mass transit cure cancer do this through that
546
00:56:06,889 --> 00:56:12,338
The point is it did give us a sense that we could accomplish great things. It did bring out the best of us
547
00:56:14,608 --> 00:56:17,358
We excited a generation of engineers and scientists
548
00:56:17,699 --> 00:56:22,849
The generation that built the computers and cell phones and all the technology everybody uses today
549
00:56:22,849 --> 00:56:30,768
It takes for granted if we send humans to Mars as our goal, we'll get millions of new scientists that will create new
550
00:56:31,440 --> 00:56:32,760
inventions new
551
00:56:32,760 --> 00:56:39,800
Industries. This is the enormous payback and we can get it if we set the kind of challenge that will inspire the news
552
00:56:42,818 --> 00:56:46,797
To Zubrin civilizations like people thrive on challenge
553
00:56:47,528 --> 00:56:53,639
Decay without it. We have everything we have today because of our predecessors
554
00:56:54,818 --> 00:57:01,409
who had the courage to leave the world of the known and go out into the wilderness and build new cities and
555
00:57:02,170 --> 00:57:05,338
If we stop being people like that
556
00:57:06,278 --> 00:57:09,838
Then we will hand down much less to our posterity
557
00:57:10,809 --> 00:57:13,169
That our ancestors handed down to us
558
00:57:14,769 --> 00:57:21,719
So there's the choice in life one either grows or one decays grow or die I think we should grow
559
00:57:24,010 --> 00:57:26,129
History proves that we have never lost
560
00:57:27,460 --> 00:57:30,119
by pressing the limits of our frontier
561
00:57:32,699 --> 00:57:38,908
In the summer of 1989 the first president Bush announced the space exploration initiative
562
00:57:40,150 --> 00:57:47,309
Directing NASA to draw up long-term plans to get humans back to the moon and begin developing a program of manned Mars
563
00:57:47,798 --> 00:57:49,798
exploration
564
00:57:50,679 --> 00:57:55,440
At Martin Marietta Zubrin and his colleagues looked forward to moving NASA's Space Program
565
00:57:56,019 --> 00:57:59,309
outwards after two decades in low-earth orbit of
566
00:58:00,280 --> 00:58:07,530
Course, we were very excited when Bush made his call saying that he was making a national commitment to implement such a program
567
00:58:08,079 --> 00:58:11,609
NASA assembled a large team to take on the space initiative
568
00:58:12,190 --> 00:58:18,929
In 90 days the team developed a 30-year plan that required an enormous buildup of space infrastructure
569
00:58:19,179 --> 00:58:20,798
What the NASA bureaucracy?
570
00:58:20,798 --> 00:58:22,798
decided to do was basically
571
00:58:23,019 --> 00:58:30,418
Design the most complex mission they possibly could in order to make sure that everyone's pet technology would remain mission-critical
572
00:58:31,000 --> 00:58:33,929
Which is the exact opposite of the correct way to do engineering
573
00:58:34,630 --> 00:58:42,150
First NASA would triple the size of the planned space station and add enormous hangars as well as free-floating fuel depots checkout
574
00:58:42,548 --> 00:58:47,938
Docs and crew stations then on the moon. They would construct more shipbuilding facilities
575
00:58:48,789 --> 00:58:50,789
bases and depots
576
00:58:51,130 --> 00:58:56,760
Next the moon crew would construct the Mars ship a huge craft dubbed by its detractors as Battlestar
577
00:58:57,639 --> 00:59:01,980
Galactica this ship would carry everything to Mars over an 18-month flight
578
00:59:03,400 --> 00:59:06,628
Once in Mars orbit, a small group would descend to the surface
579
00:59:07,150 --> 00:59:11,099
Spend a few days then plant a flag in the ground and go home
580
00:59:13,650 --> 00:59:16,789
The plan became known as the 90-day report
581
00:59:18,090 --> 00:59:22,910
to those of us at Martin who had been engaged in designing Mars missions when they saw the
582
00:59:23,550 --> 00:59:30,830
Monstrosity of complexity of the 90-day report we were dismayed and it was readily apparent to anyone with any insight that that program would fail
583
00:59:31,170 --> 00:59:34,878
Politically the plan was submitted to Congress the estimated cost
584
00:59:36,030 --> 00:59:39,560
450 billion the legislators went into sticker shock
585
00:59:39,869 --> 00:59:45,108
This would have been the single most expensive program for the United States since World War two
586
00:59:45,840 --> 00:59:50,778
By the end of 1990 Congress had refused all requests for sei funding
587
00:59:53,010 --> 00:59:59,600
When the realization came the sei was doomed Zubrin wrote a memo to his colleagues at Martin Marietta outlining
588
00:59:59,940 --> 01:00:04,010
His problems with the NASA plan and arguing for a more direct approach
589
01:00:05,789 --> 01:00:11,840
Zubrin favored launching a Mars mission directly from the surface of Earth using only existing rocket technology
590
01:00:12,599 --> 01:00:18,679
This negated the need for a lunar base and avoided the complexity and cost of building ships in space
591
01:00:19,800 --> 01:00:24,229
he also objected to NASA's plan for a short surface stay on Mars a
592
01:00:24,750 --> 01:00:28,400
Mission that would amount to little more than a flag and footprints exercise
593
01:00:29,559 --> 01:00:33,778
To Zubrin we were going to Mars to explore and develop a new world
594
01:00:34,780 --> 01:00:41,850
To maximize surface time Zubrin proposed using a faster flight path known as a conjunction class mission
595
01:00:43,300 --> 01:00:47,699
This would mean a crew could arrive on Mars after only a six-month journey
596
01:00:48,460 --> 01:00:51,990
They would then remain on the Martian surface for a year and a half
597
01:00:52,599 --> 01:00:58,648
This would give the team time to explore a wide area and conduct detailed research about the planet
598
01:00:59,050 --> 01:01:05,009
Then as the earth returned window opens crew would launch from Mars the six-month trip home
599
01:01:07,239 --> 01:01:13,829
Zubrin was convinced that a simplified more robust and cost-effective mission could be designed using these principles
600
01:01:17,340 --> 01:01:25,278
Along with several like-minded colleagues Zubrin decided to ask management at Martin to allow them to design alternative Mars missions
601
01:01:27,090 --> 01:01:29,120
The management approvement and
602
01:01:29,730 --> 01:01:31,230
We formed a team
603
01:01:31,230 --> 01:01:37,130
Was known as the scenario development team of just 12 people from the whole very large Martin company
604
01:01:38,219 --> 01:01:43,250
One team member whose thinking was closely aligned with zubrin's was David Baker
605
01:01:43,250 --> 01:01:46,010
I went off to my office and said alright
606
01:01:46,010 --> 01:01:50,419
how would I do a Mars mission if I had to pay for it, and I had to go on the ride and
607
01:01:50,730 --> 01:01:54,110
I said well it's going to be simple. There's gonna be no on-orbit assembly
608
01:01:54,239 --> 01:01:59,059
I really tried to take everything out of the mission that didn't absolutely need to be there
609
01:02:01,079 --> 01:02:06,978
While the rest of the team focused on longer-term more traditional mission plans that required on-orbit assembly
610
01:02:07,889 --> 01:02:11,900
Zubrin and Baker decided to collaborate on a mission that could be done near-term
611
01:02:12,269 --> 01:02:15,918
We decided to do Mars the way Lewis and Clark did America
612
01:02:16,769 --> 01:02:21,199
Okay, use local resources travel light live off the land
613
01:02:25,360 --> 01:02:29,789
Zubrin and Baker were convinced that a Mars mission could be launched directly from the ground
614
01:02:30,639 --> 01:02:36,449
The other team members felt this was impossible that the weight of the rocket fuel required for a round trip to Mars
615
01:02:36,760 --> 01:02:40,590
Was so enormous it would render the launch ship impossibly heavy
616
01:02:41,980 --> 01:02:49,528
To solve this problem Zubrin was exploring a radical idea that had been kicked around the aerospace industry since the 1970s
617
01:02:51,460 --> 01:02:56,128
The idea was to produce a methane-oxygen rocket fuel directly from the Martian atmosphere
618
01:02:57,099 --> 01:03:04,498
It was a relatively simple and robust Chemical Engineering procedure that was done commonly in the 1800s the air of the gas life
619
01:03:06,639 --> 01:03:11,578
If the idea worked astronauts could land a relatively light ship with empty tanks
620
01:03:12,010 --> 01:03:15,300
They wouldn't have to ship all the fuel with them for their return trip
621
01:03:16,389 --> 01:03:18,808
This would radically lower their size and weight
622
01:03:20,369 --> 01:03:25,038
The only problem was methane-oxygen fuel requires a hydrogen component
623
01:03:25,739 --> 01:03:32,779
Hydrogen exists on Mars in the form of h2o but water may be difficult or impossible to extract from the Martian environment
624
01:03:33,000 --> 01:03:37,250
Really the hydrogen was only 5% of the total weight of the methane-oxygen propellant
625
01:03:37,769 --> 01:03:40,728
Being manufactured so you just say, okay
626
01:03:40,730 --> 01:03:46,579
We won't be pure we all get all of the propellant from Oris will just get 95% of the propellant from Mars
627
01:03:46,829 --> 01:03:50,389
The other 5% of the hydrogen will just bring from Earth
628
01:03:50,969 --> 01:03:56,059
Another fundamental resource that could be extracted from the Martian environment is oxygen
629
01:03:56,880 --> 01:04:02,179
Second processing unit could separate oxygen molecules from the thin carbon dioxide atmosphere
630
01:04:02,820 --> 01:04:04,910
providing breathable air for a Mars crew
631
01:04:05,519 --> 01:04:07,500
If used intelligently
632
01:04:07,500 --> 01:04:11,630
The same resources that make Mars interesting are precisely
633
01:04:12,239 --> 01:04:14,239
What could make it attainable?
634
01:04:14,699 --> 01:04:17,629
Baker and Zubrin had greatly reduced their mission mass
635
01:04:17,940 --> 01:04:23,900
But they still found their ship was too heavy and would require two launches and assembly in space
636
01:04:24,599 --> 01:04:26,599
Then Zubrin hit on an idea
637
01:04:27,119 --> 01:04:28,289
One of the key
638
01:04:28,289 --> 01:04:34,759
Events of the Mars directive element was one morning Bob burst in my office and said I've got it the idea that I finally hit
639
01:04:34,760 --> 01:04:35,610
on
640
01:04:35,610 --> 01:04:43,099
In 1989 was that we had split the mission up into two parts and we'd send the return vehicle out first
641
01:04:43,469 --> 01:04:46,069
with its own return propellant plant
642
01:04:46,500 --> 01:04:52,340
So the propellant would be made on Mars before the first astronauts ever left her
643
01:04:53,309 --> 01:05:00,809
With two separate direct Amar's launches a human crew would have a fully fueled ship waiting for them on the surface of Mars
644
01:05:01,030 --> 01:05:03,030
before they ever left Earth
645
01:05:05,829 --> 01:05:12,599
So Zubrin and Baker had come up with a plan that seemed to accomplish all of their goals, it was relatively inexpensive
646
01:05:13,119 --> 01:05:19,139
Development time was short, they could use existing technology and it allowed for a long stay on the Martian surface
647
01:05:19,809 --> 01:05:22,079
They dubbed their idea Mars direct
648
01:05:28,989 --> 01:05:32,968
Board and Ares rocket is the earth return vehicle or ERV
649
01:05:34,239 --> 01:05:36,239
No one has aboard this ship
650
01:05:36,250 --> 01:05:42,269
It will pave the way for the astronauts who years later. We'll use the ERV to return to Earth
651
01:06:38,920 --> 01:06:43,800
On its second day the ERV deploys a small nuclear power reactor
652
01:06:45,849 --> 01:06:49,110
The reactor powers a chemical plant inside the ERV
653
01:06:49,989 --> 01:06:54,119
The plant will produce the methane-oxygen rocket fuel for the launch home
654
01:07:00,610 --> 01:07:06,449
Nearby a second robotic rover is guided to a pre-picked landing site for the human crew
655
01:07:07,480 --> 01:07:11,730
it places a radar transponder to help guide the astronauts in the
656
01:07:13,000 --> 01:07:16,320
long journey to land a human being on Mars begins
657
01:07:18,340 --> 01:07:21,329
Three two one engine
658
01:07:34,739 --> 01:07:42,289
Carrying the most skillfully assembled flight team in history four astronauts begin their two and a half year mission to the Red Planet
659
01:07:46,079 --> 01:07:50,028
This will be the first time a human has gone beyond the earth-moon system
660
01:07:51,480 --> 01:07:55,639
250 million miles farther than any person has ever been
661
01:08:09,570 --> 01:08:17,149
To counter the health problems of zero-gravity and to fully acclimate the astronauts to Mars the ship will deploy a weighted tether
662
01:08:17,609 --> 01:08:20,539
attached to the last stage of the spent rocket booster
663
01:08:23,520 --> 01:08:30,200
By thrusting the ship into a rotational spin the counterweight of the rocket will create centrifugal force and
664
01:08:30,390 --> 01:08:32,390
Thus artificial gravity
665
01:08:32,579 --> 01:08:38,149
The crew will be able to live with their feet planted firmly on the floor during their six-month transit
666
01:08:40,920 --> 01:08:47,989
But the hab is not entirely alone on its journey just ahead of it is a second ERV identical to the first
667
01:08:49,259 --> 01:08:56,569
Launched just a few weeks prior to the Harpe. It will prepare the way for a second human crew that will follow two years. Later
668
01:08:57,810 --> 01:09:01,999
It can also function as a backup for the first mission if anything should go wrong
669
01:09:14,279 --> 01:09:19,099
On the sixth month of the flight the crew gaze upon an alien world
670
01:09:22,859 --> 01:09:24,859
This is the new frontier
671
01:09:31,630 --> 01:09:38,789
After days in orbit, unsatisfied with the landing conditions the crew will receive final word from Mission Control on earth
672
01:09:53,670 --> 01:10:00,409
It will be a tense 40 minutes before people back on earth get the signal from Mars and know if everything has gone well
673
01:10:17,488 --> 01:10:23,788
I thought forward down
674
01:10:31,479 --> 01:10:34,259
Contact light okay in this stop
675
01:10:46,979 --> 01:10:51,619
For more than 500 days the astronauts will therefore Mars and
676
01:10:52,198 --> 01:10:54,407
Embark on one of the greatest journeys of discovery
677
01:10:54,960 --> 01:10:56,960
in the history of science
678
01:10:58,289 --> 01:11:03,829
Will they find life or the fossilized remains of past life
679
01:11:09,409 --> 01:11:14,949
Such a discovery could tell us whether our solar system has seen more than one Genesis and
680
01:11:15,890 --> 01:11:17,890
Answer the ultimate question
681
01:11:18,050 --> 01:11:20,050
Are we alone?
682
01:11:23,460 --> 01:11:31,429
In any case these explorers will be learning how feasible the colonization of Mars really is and whether or not mankind
683
01:11:31,948 --> 01:11:33,948
Has a future among the stars
684
01:11:39,420 --> 01:11:47,298
Then when the time comes in the window for Earth return opens crew will climb into their earth return vehicle and head
685
01:11:52,448 --> 01:11:54,448
They will arrive home heroes
686
01:11:55,210 --> 01:11:59,668
the first to stretch the limit of man's expanse from one planet to another
687
01:12:00,368 --> 01:12:04,498
their names added to the list of great explorers of new worlds
688
01:12:07,939 --> 01:12:10,249
In their footsteps others who follow
689
01:12:16,139 --> 01:12:23,239
What began as a trickle is free to rise into a deluge of humankind sweeping over a once barren land and
690
01:12:23,760 --> 01:12:26,150
Transforming it into a viable new world
691
01:12:31,859 --> 01:12:37,250
When Baker and Zubrin presented Mars direct to their bosses at Martin they expected the worst
692
01:12:39,569 --> 01:12:47,090
To their surprise management was excited about it. They liked the fact that everything needed was relatively simple and near-term
693
01:12:50,340 --> 01:12:54,750
As time went on Martin Marietta embraced Mars direct as their creation and
694
01:12:55,238 --> 01:13:02,188
put Bob and I on an airplane to several NASA centers to present Mars direct and try to build some momentum for
695
01:13:02,979 --> 01:13:07,079
Baker and Zubrin flew to the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama
696
01:13:08,469 --> 01:13:12,149
This had been one of the original design hubs for the Apollo moon landings
697
01:13:12,310 --> 01:13:18,029
But recently many of the engineers had become demoralized by the failure of NASA's sei program
698
01:13:19,510 --> 01:13:23,639
tag-team style Baker and Zubrin presented their alternative mission architecture
699
01:13:23,859 --> 01:13:28,259
The response was three the old-school Apollo crowd embraced it
700
01:13:28,510 --> 01:13:34,590
This was a plan that actually made sense and was within reach Baker and I gave a number of briefings
701
01:13:34,590 --> 01:13:36,590
The first was at the Marshall Space Flight Center
702
01:13:37,029 --> 01:13:40,738
Next was a chance. These people were incredibly excited
703
01:13:41,710 --> 01:13:48,779
Over the next few weeks Zubrin and Baker were flown around the country pitching to all branches of NASA and everywhere
704
01:13:48,779 --> 01:13:50,779
They went the response was electric
705
01:13:51,310 --> 01:13:56,920
The plan was standing up to scrutiny and groups all over NASA were converting to Mars direct
706
01:13:57,710 --> 01:14:01,480
their tour culminated in a public presentation to the National Space Society
707
01:14:02,210 --> 01:14:05,559
The crowd gave the two aerospace engineers a standing ovation
708
01:14:14,890 --> 01:14:18,249
A week later. The story was in newspapers around the country
709
01:14:25,270 --> 01:14:33,240
But a counter-attack was beginning to form within NASA the space station teams and many in the advanced propulsion groups were against the idea
710
01:14:33,729 --> 01:14:41,369
Since Mars direct didn't need their programs, they felt under threat as quickly as doors opened for Zubrin and Baker. They began to close
711
01:14:41,920 --> 01:14:45,270
NASA didn't want to pursue a Mars mission at that time
712
01:14:45,270 --> 01:14:51,810
They didn't want to be derailed by a bunch of Mars fanatics that thought that their idea of what NASA should do should overwhelm
713
01:14:52,029 --> 01:14:56,908
What NASA thought NASA should do what we did in Mars direct was?
714
01:14:57,250 --> 01:14:59,609
Literally come up with the leanest solution
715
01:14:59,710 --> 01:15:06,810
the one that involved the least spending on an assortment of technologies and infrastructural elements including for example
716
01:15:06,819 --> 01:15:10,378
we made no use whatsoever of the International Space Station and
717
01:15:10,659 --> 01:15:15,958
So people involved in all those programs were very upset because we were showing they shouldn't go to Mars without
718
01:15:16,659 --> 01:15:21,208
Their program being required they felt that we were justifying them
719
01:15:21,880 --> 01:15:24,539
the NASA administration rejected Mars direct
720
01:15:25,420 --> 01:15:27,779
The two engineers were outside is again
721
01:15:29,229 --> 01:15:31,229
but Zubrin remained determined
722
01:15:32,109 --> 01:15:34,109
Bob had grabbed hold of it and
723
01:15:34,329 --> 01:15:39,029
I could see that it was his and no matter what I did he was gonna do what he was going to do and
724
01:15:39,340 --> 01:15:42,029
he was going to be a proponent for it and push it and
725
01:15:42,609 --> 01:15:45,359
I really saw my role sort of evaporate
726
01:15:45,430 --> 01:15:50,550
It's a little bit like being a dim planet next to a bright star around him in terms of his
727
01:15:50,920 --> 01:15:55,140
Enthusiasm and you really can't compete with that. All you can do is decide how you're going to deal with it
728
01:15:56,079 --> 01:16:00,238
By February 1991 Baker. Quit Martin to start his own firm
729
01:16:03,130 --> 01:16:10,409
Zubrin battled on for the next year and a half Zubrin tried to get NASA to pay attention giving speeches writing papers
730
01:16:10,658 --> 01:16:13,408
But Mars directs time seemed to have passed
731
01:16:18,899 --> 01:16:23,899
But then in 1992 a new administration came into power at NASA and Zubrin
732
01:16:24,420 --> 01:16:25,699
Saw a second chance
733
01:16:25,699 --> 01:16:32,269
I was invited to brief Mike Griffin who was the associate administrator for space exploration in charge of the whole space exploration initiative?
734
01:16:32,579 --> 01:16:35,418
He immediately became a very strong supporter Mars direct
735
01:16:36,119 --> 01:16:39,619
But before the engineers at NASA would take another look at Mars direct
736
01:16:39,619 --> 01:16:44,778
They wanted Zubrin to prove the producing rocket fuel on Mars could work
737
01:16:45,750 --> 01:16:53,659
They gave Martin Marietta a small budget to do an experiment Zubrin and his team built a machine called the in-situ propellant plan
738
01:16:54,210 --> 01:16:57,560
It could take carbon dioxide the dominant gas in the Martian atmosphere
739
01:16:58,439 --> 01:17:01,849
Combine it with a little hydrogen and produce a methane-oxygen fuel
740
01:17:02,550 --> 01:17:07,039
We did it in three months with a very small team. We built a plant. That was 94%
741
01:17:08,039 --> 01:17:09,569
efficient and
742
01:17:09,569 --> 01:17:14,119
No one who actually participated in that effort was actually a real chemical engineer
743
01:17:14,119 --> 01:17:19,338
They were all aerospace engineers like me who were simply dabbling in chemistry
744
01:17:19,649 --> 01:17:22,250
In order to prove to NASA that 19th century
745
01:17:22,949 --> 01:17:24,949
chemical engineering really worked
746
01:17:25,409 --> 01:17:33,349
With the experiment to success the administration had Zubrin give detailed briefings of the mission plan to the engineers of the Johnson Space Center
747
01:17:34,529 --> 01:17:39,559
They liked it, but had some problems Dave Weaver was the lead mission architect
748
01:17:39,719 --> 01:17:42,889
There were a number of things that we were concerned about with bob zubrin's mission
749
01:17:43,979 --> 01:17:48,139
First of all, we thought his estimates of mass were probably too optimistic
750
01:17:49,469 --> 01:17:54,559
Didn't have sufficient margins for a variety of things not the least of which would be things like provisions
751
01:17:54,810 --> 01:17:57,680
For the crew the amount of water, that would be required
752
01:17:57,719 --> 01:18:02,748
We thought as a sent vehicle was very large, which meant his power requirements his propellant
753
01:18:03,750 --> 01:18:04,529
requirements were
754
01:18:04,529 --> 01:18:11,329
Much larger than needed to be his trip times out were too long and that for a very little effort you could get him shorter
755
01:18:11,329 --> 01:18:15,168
The other problem was the size of his crew. He had a four-person crew
756
01:18:15,329 --> 01:18:19,788
I think virtually every study that's been done says that a four-person crew for a
757
01:18:20,130 --> 01:18:23,539
Three-year type of mission is probably not realistic
758
01:18:24,619 --> 01:18:29,590
Weaver took Zubrin into his office and the two men worked out compromised mission architecture
759
01:18:30,649 --> 01:18:34,298
First Weaver wanted three launches for every mission instead of two
760
01:18:35,119 --> 01:18:42,279
the first year three ships would launch a MAV Mars ascent vehicle an unoccupied hab and
761
01:18:43,460 --> 01:18:45,550
an ERV earth return vehicle
762
01:18:47,210 --> 01:18:53,199
The harb and MAV would land on the surface and begin producing fuel for the return flight and air for the crew
763
01:18:54,770 --> 01:19:02,290
These crafts would spend to solitary years on Mars allowing NASA to test all of the system's before sending a human crew
764
01:19:03,350 --> 01:19:06,130
Then in the third year three more ships would launch
765
01:19:06,859 --> 01:19:14,798
This time with the hab occupied by astronauts. The other two ships are for a future mission unless needed as a backup for this crew
766
01:19:15,979 --> 01:19:19,089
Once on Mars the team could also utilize the first hab
767
01:19:20,060 --> 01:19:26,470
Then after a year and a half stay the crew would climb aboard their small capsule and rendezvous with the returned ship
768
01:19:27,289 --> 01:19:32,229
This ship would carry them back home in a roomier environment than zubrin's ERV
769
01:19:33,859 --> 01:19:36,399
Zubrin called the plan Mars semi direct
770
01:19:37,220 --> 01:19:42,579
NASA called it the design reference mission. They had a larger crew than we had they had bigger ships
771
01:19:42,579 --> 01:19:47,619
They had more equipment they had heavier equipment so they had to do the mission in three launches instead of two
772
01:19:47,840 --> 01:19:51,639
But it was done with the same principles of Mars direct
773
01:19:51,949 --> 01:19:59,288
The plan was subjected to the same cost analysis that tagged the 90-day report with a four hundred and fifty billion dollar price tag
774
01:20:00,109 --> 01:20:03,308
The design reference mission came back at a fraction of the cost
775
01:20:04,189 --> 01:20:05,960
55 billion
776
01:20:05,960 --> 01:20:10,090
Spread out over 10 years. It could be done within NASA's existing budget
777
01:20:11,180 --> 01:20:13,180
The plan made the cover of Newsweek
778
01:20:15,100 --> 01:20:20,760
Here was a mission architecture that was affordable and could be done today with existing technology
779
01:20:21,250 --> 01:20:24,659
but NASA's astronauts have not left low Earth orbit since
780
01:20:48,140 --> 01:20:54,130
With the completion of the International Space Station and the retiring of the space shuttle program a
781
01:20:54,439 --> 01:20:56,979
debate rages over the future of space exploration
782
01:20:59,750 --> 01:21:04,479
Should NASA continue to focus on low-earth orbit developing technologies for the future
783
01:21:05,270 --> 01:21:09,609
Or shouldn't a sir have a goal like it did in the 1960s with Apollo
784
01:21:10,430 --> 01:21:14,230
the way we got to the moon was by a
785
01:21:14,930 --> 01:21:19,119
presidential imperative that demanded that NASA get to the moon within a decade
786
01:21:19,659 --> 01:21:25,510
So NASA was forced to sit down design a plan for how to do that and then fly the mission
787
01:21:27,529 --> 01:21:34,090
Since that time without the presence of the driving imperative we engage in basically a random set of
788
01:21:34,369 --> 01:21:37,510
Constituency driven programs which are justified ad hoc
789
01:21:37,819 --> 01:21:44,859
Afterwards by the argument that they could prove useful at some time in the future when you actually have a plan to go somewhere. I
790
01:21:46,430 --> 01:21:53,950
Think NASA has focused on a steady process where the government can't just pull the plug on their funding. I
791
01:21:54,739 --> 01:21:58,448
think the Apollo cancellation was very traumatic for NASA and it really
792
01:21:58,699 --> 01:22:02,828
Transformed NASA from what it was in the 60s to more of what it is now
793
01:22:03,350 --> 01:22:10,300
If you have a singular program like going to Mars then it is very vulnerable to having its funding pool
794
01:22:12,010 --> 01:22:14,219
NASA must be destination-driven
795
01:22:14,520 --> 01:22:22,259
It is the only thing that allows the agency to be productive NASA was a hundred times more productive when it was
796
01:22:22,539 --> 01:22:28,798
Destination-driven than in the period that has not been and we have stagnated in NASA since 1973
797
01:22:29,618 --> 01:22:34,528
Thirty years more than a generation has been wasted
798
01:22:39,960 --> 01:22:44,448
The American space program has been stacking for thirty years. There is a once-in-a-generation
799
01:22:45,569 --> 01:22:50,210
Shot right now to get it moving again by giving it a goal that will take it somewhere
800
01:22:50,939 --> 01:22:52,939
Some mistakes today are high
801
01:22:54,210 --> 01:22:58,309
And if you ask me if I am nervous right now I and
802
01:23:02,979 --> 01:23:07,528
Dr. Zubrin why is NASA stuck in low-earth orbit?
803
01:23:07,770 --> 01:23:13,620
The problem with NASA's lack of current achievement is not money. The problem is lack of focus its lack of a goal
804
01:23:13,619 --> 01:23:17,640
It shouldn't be humans to Mars in 50 years. It should be humans to Mars in 10
805
01:23:18,189 --> 01:23:21,389
We can do this. We do not need gigantic nuclear-electric spaceships
806
01:23:21,939 --> 01:23:24,628
To send people to Mars that that is pork
807
01:23:24,630 --> 01:23:29,279
It's nonsense the primary question I get from American people is why aren't we doing this?
808
01:23:29,279 --> 01:23:32,460
There's a big sense of disappointment almost verging on a sense of betrayal
809
01:23:32,460 --> 01:23:39,210
The purpose of spaceships is to actually travel across space and go to new worlds not to hang out in space and observe the health
810
01:23:39,210 --> 01:23:44,548
Effects from doing so dr. Zubrin in your testimony. You were very passionate, but you also were mad
811
01:23:45,460 --> 01:23:50,460
You're mad. We haven't done this or that this vision has been stolen from a generation
812
01:23:50,460 --> 01:23:52,460
I guess you could say that
813
01:23:52,539 --> 01:23:57,930
It's like Columbus coming back from the New World and Ferdinand and Isabella saying ask so what forget it burned the ships
814
01:23:58,239 --> 01:24:00,688
Okay, you know that's what has happened in this country
815
01:24:07,890 --> 01:24:10,459
We've won our point but there needs to be a destination
816
01:24:11,039 --> 01:24:16,878
What we need the point we need to win on now is the destination needs to be Mars and it needs to be suit
817
01:24:25,929 --> 01:24:31,739
The movement to send humans to Mars in the near term began at the University of Colorado in
818
01:24:32,529 --> 01:24:34,448
1978 a
819
01:24:34,448 --> 01:24:42,298
Graduate student in Astro geophysics named Chris McKay gave a small seminar on the possibility of introducing life to Mars. I
820
01:24:45,100 --> 01:24:47,609
Got interested in Mars in graduate school
821
01:24:47,609 --> 01:24:54,269
I enter graduate school the same year that Viking landed on Mars and sent back these images that sent back
822
01:24:54,520 --> 01:25:00,509
Data that showed. All the elements needed for life are here on this planet and yet there's no life here
823
01:25:00,510 --> 01:25:06,150
I know that's sort of the lights are on and nobody's home. And I thought well, that's curious
824
01:25:06,149 --> 01:25:09,689
So some of my other grad students and I we sort of got together to talk about
825
01:25:10,149 --> 01:25:12,269
Well if there's no life on Mars now
826
01:25:12,279 --> 01:25:17,099
Could we put life there and that evolved also into the question was maybe there was life in the past
827
01:25:17,260 --> 01:25:19,920
And so we could find fossils evidence of it
828
01:25:20,439 --> 01:25:23,309
Well, how would you do that while you do that by sending people there?
829
01:25:24,039 --> 01:25:31,918
Together with fellow graduate students the group decided to put together a small conference to discuss the matter of human Mars exploration
830
01:25:34,329 --> 01:25:36,809
We basically just started a forum
831
01:25:36,810 --> 01:25:41,429
We invited everybody from all the NASA centers and from all the universities were involved in it
832
01:25:41,429 --> 01:25:45,958
And they all came and it was it really was in retrospect
833
01:25:45,960 --> 01:25:51,929
I realized a very important step toward building a consensus for human exploration of Mars in 1996
834
01:25:51,929 --> 01:25:55,168
I published my first book the case for Mars and
835
01:25:55,899 --> 01:25:58,948
the response was phenomenal I got
836
01:25:59,619 --> 01:26:02,068
4,000 letters from all of the world
837
01:26:03,850 --> 01:26:09,569
Parisian bankers and twelve year old kids in Poland and firemen from Saskatoon and
838
01:26:10,119 --> 01:26:16,199
Astronauts and they're all writing me and saying how do we make this?
839
01:26:16,989 --> 01:26:18,369
Bob Zubrin
840
01:26:18,369 --> 01:26:25,378
Came to the 3rd Mars conference and got very much involved. He was willing and interested in forming a society forming a group in
841
01:26:25,989 --> 01:26:30,929
Organizing said look if we could pull these people together we can get them to work together
842
01:26:31,149 --> 01:26:37,649
We could have a force that could actually make humans to Mars had the group formed the Mars Society
843
01:26:38,890 --> 01:26:45,329
Robert Zubrin became the president they held their first convention in 1998 the convention
844
01:26:46,449 --> 01:26:47,889
was just
845
01:26:47,890 --> 01:26:55,378
Magic, we had no idea how many people were coming. They were there not just from the United States and Canada Europe
846
01:26:55,380 --> 01:26:59,489
They were there for Israel. They were there from Mozambique. We are there from New Zealand
847
01:27:00,130 --> 01:27:02,130
It was astonished
848
01:27:05,229 --> 01:27:08,968
Since its inception the Mars Society has attracted members worldwide
849
01:27:12,368 --> 01:27:15,057
Derek Shannon is the head of the Southern California Chapter
850
01:27:15,550 --> 01:27:20,579
He's met with political leaders from all over the country if you make them look at the whole Mars
851
01:27:21,460 --> 01:27:22,899
vision in
852
01:27:22,899 --> 01:27:26,460
Historical terms it becomes a much easier. So how will be Martians?
853
01:27:27,340 --> 01:27:33,900
Remember our century. They're probably not going to remember our deficit our Wars or healthcare. Those will be footnotes
854
01:27:33,899 --> 01:27:36,179
What they'll remember is it out of all of human history?
855
01:27:36,279 --> 01:27:42,059
there came a generation that decided to take this amazing step out into space and
856
01:27:42,399 --> 01:27:48,929
If you tell politicians and they're the ones whose names actually get to be remembered. That's when hopefully the space program starts going somewhere
857
01:27:52,760 --> 01:27:56,920
In order to further the knowledge necessary for a manned mission to the red planet
858
01:27:56,920 --> 01:28:04,389
The Mars Society has been building research stations around the globe all of them based on the design of zubrin's hab module
859
01:28:07,819 --> 01:28:12,368
Most recently the society set up a desert Research Station in Utah
860
01:28:13,429 --> 01:28:19,298
Here international researchers and aerospace students come to do experiments under the harsh desert conditions
861
01:28:19,789 --> 01:28:24,128
And learn what's necessary to keep a Mars crew alive and productive
862
01:28:24,649 --> 01:28:32,229
Basically, what we're doing here is undergoing analog studies crews of up to six people at a time come together to live in a full
863
01:28:32,229 --> 01:28:36,548
Simulation environment for up to 14 days. So what that means is
864
01:28:37,069 --> 01:28:40,658
Every time we go outside they have people have to Don spacesuits
865
01:28:43,399 --> 01:28:45,399
After depressurize
866
01:28:47,539 --> 01:28:53,199
When we go outside, they called extra vehicular activities, they can only be of a certain duration to the air supply
867
01:28:55,340 --> 01:28:59,259
We have to recycle all our water and basically have our own food as well
868
01:29:07,029 --> 01:29:14,189
It's great to fantasize but it's another thing when you have to put it together when the nuts have to fit the bolts
869
01:29:20,520 --> 01:29:22,520
Like the Apollo missions to the moon
870
01:29:23,100 --> 01:29:26,749
Sending human beings to Mars will mean putting people in harm's way
871
01:29:27,630 --> 01:29:31,789
there are many dangers in outer space and many things could go wrong a
872
01:29:32,520 --> 01:29:36,050
Serious equipment breakdown could doom the crew to their deaths
873
01:29:37,500 --> 01:29:41,000
Some argue that the risk of failure is simply too high
874
01:29:42,239 --> 01:29:48,800
You know back in the days when medieval man was looking out from Europe thinking about exploring in the world
875
01:29:49,050 --> 01:29:51,439
The world was unknown and mapmakers populated
876
01:29:52,050 --> 01:29:54,050
their maps with dragons
877
01:29:54,750 --> 01:29:56,750
We've got the same thing today
878
01:29:56,850 --> 01:30:02,870
There are people who are afraid to go out into space and they've populated their maps of the solar system of dragons
879
01:30:03,090 --> 01:30:09,949
You know, we've got cosmic radiation. We've got zero gravity. We've got bat contamination, but these are
880
01:30:10,470 --> 01:30:12,470
Dragons that we can take on
881
01:30:18,840 --> 01:30:25,759
There are two kinds of radiation astronauts must contend with in outer space solar flares and cosmic rays
882
01:30:27,899 --> 01:30:35,719
Solar flares are floods of protons that burst from the Sun at irregular intervals and would be dangerous to an unshielded human crew
883
01:30:36,750 --> 01:30:39,408
We are now ready to send humans to Mars right now
884
01:30:39,810 --> 01:30:43,009
We've got to know a lot more about radiation and radiation
885
01:30:43,469 --> 01:30:45,588
mitigation one of the Apollo flights
886
01:30:45,899 --> 01:30:50,149
Barely missed like by a week a major solar event if it had gone off when the Apollo
887
01:30:50,279 --> 01:30:52,219
Astronauts are on the way back and forth to the moon
888
01:30:52,219 --> 01:30:57,259
They would have gotten their entire lifetime radiation dose in that one mission and that's it's one Solar Flare
889
01:30:57,448 --> 01:31:00,768
So that's why we worry about this in the Maz direct plan
890
01:31:01,170 --> 01:31:07,310
Zubrin envisions a central insulated core where a crew can retreat to while the radiation passes by
891
01:31:08,039 --> 01:31:15,048
The core would be surrounded by all the provisions of the mission. This should stop any harmful dose of radiation from reaching the astronauts
892
01:31:15,569 --> 01:31:20,630
Basically, you use your pantry as your storm shelter. So a solar flare happens the alarm bell rings
893
01:31:20,630 --> 01:31:21,920
The crew goes into the storm shelter
894
01:31:21,920 --> 01:31:26,329
They stay in there cramped up pretty tight for a few hours until the all-clear rings and they come out
895
01:31:26,579 --> 01:31:29,748
this is gonna happen once it might happen twice in the course of the mission the
896
01:31:31,020 --> 01:31:33,469
Second type of radiation is cosmic rays
897
01:31:34,050 --> 01:31:41,270
This constant rain of charged particles comes from interstellar space and cannot be avoided without many metres of shielding
898
01:31:41,969 --> 01:31:45,948
We can experience some of this type of radiation on earth at high altitudes
899
01:31:46,890 --> 01:31:49,819
Airline pilots who spend their career is flying high in the atmosphere
900
01:31:50,010 --> 01:31:57,170
Can receive almost as much of this radiation throughout their life as a Mars astronaut would on a two-and-a-half year mission
901
01:31:57,569 --> 01:32:03,679
It's a long trip. It's a six-month trip there six months back is probably a year on the surface. That's a lot of radiation
902
01:32:04,439 --> 01:32:09,349
the best estimates are that the magnitude of that dose is not that great perhaps
903
01:32:09,988 --> 01:32:11,988
60 REM of radiation
904
01:32:12,630 --> 01:32:15,920
scattered over two-and-a-half years now 60 REM of radiation
905
01:32:16,710 --> 01:32:21,408
Delivered over a long period of time like that would not create any noticeable effects at all
906
01:32:21,658 --> 01:32:29,658
It would though it is believed increase your statistical risk of getting cancer at some point later in your life by about 1%
907
01:32:30,090 --> 01:32:35,509
Right now if you're an average American and you do not smoke you have a 20% chance you're going to die of cancer
908
01:32:35,880 --> 01:32:39,500
This would make it 21 if you're an average American smoker
909
01:32:40,050 --> 01:32:41,909
It's 40
910
01:32:41,908 --> 01:32:42,649
in fact
911
01:32:42,649 --> 01:32:48,198
If you recruited the Mars crew out of smokers and sent them to Mars without their tobacco
912
01:32:48,658 --> 01:32:52,038
You would be reducing their chance of getting cancer
913
01:33:00,779 --> 01:33:07,579
With the immense distance from Earth never before experienced by a human being with the constant dangers of outer space
914
01:33:08,010 --> 01:33:12,800
Surrounding their small life-sustaining craft and with nowhere else to go the psychological
915
01:33:13,380 --> 01:33:15,710
Impact on a crew could be severe
916
01:33:16,710 --> 01:33:17,869
Fear is real
917
01:33:17,869 --> 01:33:23,418
I mean it would be to me abnormal for a person to not feel the fear of getting on a
918
01:33:23,639 --> 01:33:25,668
rocket and launching into space and
919
01:33:26,219 --> 01:33:27,090
Going to Mars
920
01:33:27,090 --> 01:33:33,020
so I think fear is a very normal thing that all astronauts in fact are supposed to have and
921
01:33:33,270 --> 01:33:37,189
I would be afraid to fly with someone who does not have fear
922
01:33:38,829 --> 01:33:44,430
Some psychologists worry the cabin fever could set in and the crew might literally go crazy
923
01:33:46,300 --> 01:33:52,439
The human Mars mission is a more rigorous and difficult condition than most of us experience in daily life
924
01:33:52,810 --> 01:33:58,019
But it is hardly more difficult situation than many people have endured throughout human history
925
01:33:58,810 --> 01:34:02,939
We could compare the Mars crew to the crew of 19th century or prior
926
01:34:03,130 --> 01:34:04,180
sailing vessels
927
01:34:04,180 --> 01:34:11,070
many of whom were away from home for three years or more than three years under conditions in which they're eating extremely bad food without
928
01:34:11,069 --> 01:34:18,478
Any medical knowledge to support their health commanded by brutal officers in every respect the crew of the human Mars mission
929
01:34:19,060 --> 01:34:23,189
With the full support of Mission Support in the whole world cheering for them and great
930
01:34:23,680 --> 01:34:28,289
Rewards awaiting for them in life upon their return is in a vastly superior condition
931
01:34:29,199 --> 01:34:33,628
The Mazda eight crew spend most of their time inside the two-story hab
932
01:34:34,390 --> 01:34:41,849
Carefully designed to promote psychological well-being despite the confinement the space where I think everybody would spend the most time, you know
933
01:34:41,850 --> 01:34:43,060
Just like a lot of homes on earth
934
01:34:43,060 --> 01:34:50,700
It would be the galley wardroom area there would be chairs a table some kind of large screen for entertainment you would have
935
01:34:50,859 --> 01:34:53,369
individual staterooms about four or five feet wide
936
01:34:54,039 --> 01:35:00,149
The ability for them to communicate with loved ones with colleagues on earth. I think will be almost unlimited a
937
01:35:01,000 --> 01:35:08,189
Mars crew will need to be carefully chosen and thoroughly tested to ensure their ability to handle the extreme isolation
938
01:35:15,618 --> 01:35:19,238
John Young went to the moon used to say that he could cover
939
01:35:19,639 --> 01:35:24,399
The earth by just lifting his thumb up to up to it
940
01:35:24,399 --> 01:35:29,500
And he says that when you go to Mars you are going to redefine
941
01:35:30,109 --> 01:35:37,359
The concept of loneliness and so it is very important that the crew be well-balanced and well-chosen
942
01:35:38,600 --> 01:35:41,559
So that they can support each other
943
01:35:43,158 --> 01:35:47,738
Whoever gets picked to go they will have to learn to live together for two-and-a-half years
944
01:35:48,679 --> 01:35:50,679
if you put out a call for
945
01:35:51,260 --> 01:35:53,260
volunteers for the first crew to Mars
946
01:35:53,569 --> 01:35:55,840
They'd be lined up coast to coast
947
01:35:56,840 --> 01:35:58,699
most people recognize
948
01:35:58,698 --> 01:36:02,918
what's left after you go is the good you left behind and
949
01:36:04,429 --> 01:36:11,109
To take part in adventure this character such a historic character of extending the reach of the human species
950
01:36:12,050 --> 01:36:14,469
This is something of immortal significance
951
01:36:30,529 --> 01:36:32,529
One of the most bogus threats
952
01:36:33,020 --> 01:36:36,189
Associated with the Mars mission is the so called back contamination issue
953
01:36:36,529 --> 01:36:40,449
Which is this notion that you go to Mars and discover these virulent disease
954
01:36:40,640 --> 01:36:47,410
Organisms that you bring back to earth and destroy all life on Earth if we discover life on Mars one fear
955
01:36:47,409 --> 01:36:51,729
Is that our earth biology will have no defense against possible Martian pathogens?
956
01:36:53,029 --> 01:36:59,319
Some argue that missions to Mars cannot be risked until we can prove Mars is free from harmful contaminants
957
01:36:59,899 --> 01:37:02,439
This is completely nonsensical
958
01:37:04,100 --> 01:37:08,829
There's natural transfer of material from Mars to earth all the time
959
01:37:09,020 --> 01:37:13,450
We get around 500 kilograms of unsterilized Martian rocks landing on earth
960
01:37:13,880 --> 01:37:17,739
Every year and they have been doing so for the past three four
961
01:37:18,590 --> 01:37:25,000
Billion years. And so if there were Martian organisms that could contaminate the earth they've already done so
962
01:37:26,359 --> 01:37:29,349
although the prospect of Martian diseases seems remote
963
01:37:30,199 --> 01:37:34,868
Lawmakers have required that NASA create elaborate protocol to ensure that any extraterrestrial
964
01:37:35,390 --> 01:37:37,720
material stays contained and
965
01:37:38,149 --> 01:37:44,439
like the Apollo astronauts who spent 17 days in quarantine after they returned from a sterile moon a
966
01:37:44,750 --> 01:37:48,759
Mars crew will have to be thoroughly tested for any harmful Martian pathogens
967
01:37:49,310 --> 01:37:51,310
the probability is
968
01:37:52,100 --> 01:37:57,999
Infinitesimally tiny but nevertheless this is our home planet and it's extremely important and we have to protect it
969
01:38:00,069 --> 01:38:07,649
The idea of a pathogen on Mars is clearly ridiculous because there is no megafauna or mega flora on Mars
970
01:38:07,840 --> 01:38:09,840
for pathogens to infect
971
01:38:10,029 --> 01:38:14,969
So it is impossible to propose a credible lifecycle for a Martian karagin
972
01:38:15,849 --> 01:38:17,229
the
973
01:38:17,229 --> 01:38:21,269
diseases that afflict us have been Co evolving with us and our
974
01:38:21,609 --> 01:38:24,719
ancestors and near relatives for the past three billion years and
975
01:38:24,908 --> 01:38:30,658
They are specifically designed to live inside the habitat of the human body and to overcome its
976
01:38:30,819 --> 01:38:37,078
Defenses and they've been engaged in an arms race with the human defenses for those 3 billion years
977
01:38:37,448 --> 01:38:42,448
This is why humans do not get diseases from distantly related species
978
01:38:42,448 --> 01:38:46,827
For example, I don't know of any person who has ever contracted Dutch elm disease
979
01:38:47,408 --> 01:38:49,408
You know in trees don't get colds
980
01:38:59,738 --> 01:39:07,287
When the first Mars Lander touches down the crew will be staring out at a new world a place that in four billion years
981
01:39:07,630 --> 01:39:09,630
No eyes have ever seen
982
01:39:14,349 --> 01:39:16,328
The crew won't be alone
983
01:39:16,328 --> 01:39:23,368
Millions of television viewers back home will be watching as the first man or woman places their footprint into the rust-colored soil
984
01:39:26,319 --> 01:39:33,179
The crew will savor these moments for here someday a new branch of civilization might begin and
985
01:39:33,698 --> 01:39:36,778
Future Martians will remember and celebrate this day
986
01:39:48,448 --> 01:39:50,838
There is much for the crew to do and explore
987
01:39:52,618 --> 01:39:57,228
One of their main mission objectives will be to search for signs of microscopic life
988
01:39:59,069 --> 01:40:06,109
To do this they will follow the ancient water flows for on earth where there is water there is life
989
01:40:11,279 --> 01:40:18,259
To help the crew in their search they will have a pressurized Rover that allows them to explore in a comfortable shirtsleeve environment
990
01:40:27,119 --> 01:40:33,168
This means the crew can examine a vast area around the landing site during their 18-month stay and
991
01:40:34,350 --> 01:40:36,350
There is much to explore
992
01:40:36,930 --> 01:40:44,180
Mars has 58 different kinds of topography and a surface area equivalent to all the continents of Earth combined
993
01:40:51,260 --> 01:40:56,150
If these explorers can uncover the fossilized remnants of indigenous Martian life
994
01:40:56,579 --> 01:41:00,708
They will redefine mankind's understanding of its place in the universe
995
01:41:04,859 --> 01:41:11,899
But if life arose separately on a planet so close to our own it strongly suggests that the universe is a
996
01:41:12,210 --> 01:41:14,989
biologically rich place and full of life
997
01:41:22,479 --> 01:41:27,929
For some the ultimate question of Mazda is will there be human settlements on the planet?
998
01:41:28,630 --> 01:41:32,039
Will Mars become a new branch of human civilization?
999
01:41:37,069 --> 01:41:38,368
As
1000
01:41:38,368 --> 01:41:43,759
Each subsequent Mars mission explores a wider and wider area of the planet over several years
1001
01:41:44,099 --> 01:41:46,548
An ideal site for a base will be found
1002
01:41:47,340 --> 01:41:50,690
Probably worn with a thermal vent that can supply water and power
1003
01:41:51,210 --> 01:41:56,838
At that point several Habs will be landed in this one spot with crews that plan to stay for
1004
01:41:57,270 --> 01:41:59,329
eight or even twelve years
1005
01:42:01,619 --> 01:42:06,649
Perhaps we'll be interconnected and a permanent human presence on Mars will be established
1006
01:42:07,800 --> 01:42:11,449
This scientific community will have to learn to become self-sufficient
1007
01:42:11,969 --> 01:42:16,219
To be able to survive on Mars without supplies constantly being sent from Earth
1008
01:42:18,569 --> 01:42:24,859
Unlike any other planet in the solar system besides Earth Mars has all of the fundamentals needed to make this possible
1009
01:42:26,430 --> 01:42:30,769
It's 24 hour and 37 minute day is critical for growing plants
1010
01:42:32,250 --> 01:42:38,119
it has all of the elements necessary for creating building materials, like plastics metals and glass and
1011
01:42:38,670 --> 01:42:41,390
It has oceans of water frozen into the soil
1012
01:42:42,948 --> 01:42:45,548
If we can develop this craft of living on Mars
1013
01:42:46,189 --> 01:42:48,398
Then Mars becomes inhabitable
1014
01:42:49,130 --> 01:42:52,509
Not immediately physically, but intellectually
1015
01:42:52,510 --> 01:42:58,810
I mean, look what determines whether an environment is habitable or not is Colorado habitable
1016
01:42:59,569 --> 01:43:04,658
We're not naturally adapted to live in Colorado. We're tropical animals
1017
01:43:05,329 --> 01:43:12,998
No one could survive a single winter night here without technology such as clothing efficient use of fire
1018
01:43:14,238 --> 01:43:15,649
we
1019
01:43:15,649 --> 01:43:21,399
Invented our way into becoming people that could colonize such hostile environments
1020
01:43:26,470 --> 01:43:31,740
Eventually with a lot of ingenuity and invention the scientists will learn to live off the land
1021
01:43:32,470 --> 01:43:36,990
they will grow crops in the iron-rich but potassium poor soil and
1022
01:43:37,779 --> 01:43:41,550
They will produce oxygen and energy from the water and atmosphere
1023
01:43:50,248 --> 01:43:57,318
Sooner or later children will be born the first true Martians. They will grow up to see Mars as their home
1024
01:44:00,118 --> 01:44:08,028
With time more and more people will arrive these won't only be scientists but settlers people who plan to stay
1025
01:44:10,340 --> 01:44:12,340
They may come for all kinds of reasons
1026
01:44:12,739 --> 01:44:17,769
But to them Mars will be a chance to start over to build a new life for themselves
1027
01:44:22,079 --> 01:44:28,248
The well of human social thought is not exhausted by the present age and I don't think we'll ever be exhausted
1028
01:44:28,250 --> 01:44:32,000
There will always be people with new ideas on how humans should live together
1029
01:44:34,170 --> 01:44:38,779
With Mars so far away the hold of earth governments on their colonies will be tenuous
1030
01:44:41,069 --> 01:44:43,069
The Martians will need to govern themselves
1031
01:44:46,649 --> 01:44:48,649
Mars is not going to be utopia
1032
01:44:48,989 --> 01:44:54,380
Mars is gonna be a lab. It's an open frontier. It's a place where things are gonna be tried out
1033
01:44:54,380 --> 01:44:57,380
I think we'll see a lot of noble experiments on Mars
1034
01:44:58,319 --> 01:45:04,728
Perhaps some of these Martian colonies with their novel ideas based on the best thought the 21st century has to offer
1035
01:45:05,010 --> 01:45:11,059
Maybe they'll find ways in which humans create societies that are more humane and offer more
1036
01:45:11,279 --> 01:45:13,279
opportunity for you and potential the
1037
01:45:20,640 --> 01:45:26,689
Ultimate dream of the Martians will be to terraform their planet to make Mars as hospitable as Earth
1038
01:45:27,329 --> 01:45:30,019
This may not be as big a fantasy as it seems
1039
01:45:30,930 --> 01:45:33,139
Here we are an earth a world. That's very
1040
01:45:33,930 --> 01:45:38,630
Sophisticated and developed and complete and anything we do is just a subtraction
1041
01:45:38,939 --> 01:45:42,859
It's because we live in such a biologically rich planet when we go to Mars
1042
01:45:43,170 --> 01:45:46,998
We have an opportunity that we don't have on earth. Here's a planet that's died
1043
01:45:47,489 --> 01:45:54,078
Here's a world that's not full of biology. It probably doesn't have any at all. Well there we can actually do something to help
1044
01:45:58,470 --> 01:46:03,109
Once there are large even settlements on Mars that would have significant industrial capability
1045
01:46:03,270 --> 01:46:08,089
We could actually start addressing ourselves to the question of transforming the Martian environment itself
1046
01:46:08,909 --> 01:46:14,239
Terraforming Mars as it is called because Mars was once a warm and wet planet and it could be made
1047
01:46:14,239 --> 01:46:16,239
So again through human engineering efforts
1048
01:46:16,949 --> 01:46:23,208
With daytime temperatures in the Martian tropical zone averaging around zero degrees centigrade and with an atmosphere
1049
01:46:23,430 --> 01:46:25,430
Only 1% as thick as Earth's
1050
01:46:25,949 --> 01:46:30,349
Exposure to these elements by human without a space suit would be instantly fatal
1051
01:46:31,289 --> 01:46:38,028
The first step to terraforming Mars and bringing it back to life will be for the Martian colonists to warm up their planet
1052
01:46:38,489 --> 01:46:41,298
Well, we know how to warm up planets. We're doing it on earth
1053
01:46:41,819 --> 01:46:47,179
By putting gases in the atmosphere on earth. It's not a good idea to warm up the planet. The temperature was just fine
1054
01:46:47,180 --> 01:46:51,859
Thank you. We don't need it any warmer here but in principle if you could trap the sunlight
1055
01:46:52,590 --> 01:46:54,239
Reaching Mars today
1056
01:46:54,239 --> 01:46:56,448
Every single photon that's hitting Mars
1057
01:46:57,149 --> 01:46:59,509
Mars would warm up in about ten years
1058
01:47:00,329 --> 01:47:03,979
Well, obviously you can't trap every single photon. That's hitting Mars
1059
01:47:04,590 --> 01:47:07,579
But you can trap about 10% of them with the greenhouse effect
1060
01:47:08,100 --> 01:47:12,529
So that would imply that Mars could warm up in about 100 years
1061
01:47:13,109 --> 01:47:15,109
100 years is a long time, but it's not
1062
01:47:15,630 --> 01:47:17,100
astronomically long
1063
01:47:17,100 --> 01:47:24,620
One idea is to build small automated factories that produce super greenhouse gasses with no ozone depleting side effects
1064
01:47:25,140 --> 01:47:30,950
Although these gases would be unwelcome on earth for the Martians there would be an efficient way to trap heat
1065
01:47:33,149 --> 01:47:37,068
Then within a few decades we would raise Mars by more than 10 degrees centigrade
1066
01:47:37,350 --> 01:47:38,910
And if you did that
1067
01:47:38,909 --> 01:47:45,798
That would cause massive amounts of carbon dioxide that is currently adsorbed into the Martian soil to start to outguess
1068
01:47:46,739 --> 01:47:51,469
Carbon dioxide is also a natural greenhouse gas as it builds up in the atmosphere
1069
01:47:51,899 --> 01:47:56,750
More and more heat will be trapped which will in turn cause more co2 to out gas
1070
01:47:57,800 --> 01:47:59,800
The process will become automatic
1071
01:47:59,930 --> 01:48:06,459
And as the atmosphere thickens Mars will eventually reach a state of equilibrium and stay warm naturally
1072
01:48:12,628 --> 01:48:17,729
The rise in air pressure would mean that the human colonists could discard their pressure suits and
1073
01:48:18,878 --> 01:48:22,559
Walk around the surface of Mars carrying only a supply of oxygen
1074
01:48:30,039 --> 01:48:32,140
And as the temperatures rise on Mars
1075
01:48:33,109 --> 01:48:36,609
water frozen into the soil will begin to melt out and
1076
01:48:37,279 --> 01:48:41,469
For the second time in its history Mars would have liquid water on its surface
1077
01:48:44,800 --> 01:48:47,130
Drei Martian rivers will start to flow
1078
01:48:49,779 --> 01:48:54,338
Seas will rise and there will be rain clouds in the skies
1079
01:49:04,260 --> 01:49:09,409
The return of Mars to its warm and wet stage will make it a fertile environment for life
1080
01:49:10,739 --> 01:49:17,599
Any indigenous Martian organisms lying dormant will begin to grow and Mars will be full of Martians
1081
01:49:31,708 --> 01:49:39,269
If no native life emerges or that life is all dead and humans could begin addressing the idea of bringing life from Earth
1082
01:49:42,760 --> 01:49:48,310
At first it would be simple organisms perhaps genetically engineered that would thrive in the Martian environment
1083
01:49:51,078 --> 01:49:53,648
Then more complex plants could be introduced
1084
01:49:54,139 --> 01:50:00,518
The plants would be right at home in the carbon dioxide atmosphere and with no competition and a whole planet to cover
1085
01:50:00,710 --> 01:50:03,489
They could transform Mars into a green world
1086
01:50:10,960 --> 01:50:16,350
Warming Mars so that it sustains life is rapid but then the slow process of making the atmosphere
1087
01:50:16,810 --> 01:50:21,180
Breathable for humans and animals starts and that's done by plants
1088
01:50:22,630 --> 01:50:30,208
Although the process will happen naturally if the colonists can't find a quicker way. It will take tens of thousands of years
1089
01:50:32,569 --> 01:50:38,019
This is a philosophical debate many people think the universe has a big sign on it that says do not touch
1090
01:50:38,539 --> 01:50:44,079
Leave it alone was made this way that is not in our purview as human beings to change anything
1091
01:50:44,079 --> 01:50:46,359
I can respect that view, although I disagree with it
1092
01:50:46,359 --> 01:50:51,338
I think the universe has a big sign on it that says go forth and spread life
1093
01:50:51,979 --> 01:50:53,319
Because when I look around the universe
1094
01:50:53,319 --> 01:50:55,119
I think life is the most amazing thing
1095
01:50:55,119 --> 01:51:02,378
We see it is just incredible and we human beings are uniquely positioned to help spread light from this little tiny planet
1096
01:51:02,380 --> 01:51:04,380
Which it seems to have been started on
1097
01:51:04,640 --> 01:51:06,320
beyond and
1098
01:51:06,319 --> 01:51:08,149
That's our gift
1099
01:51:08,149 --> 01:51:11,139
Earth's gift to the universe I think is the gift of life
1100
01:51:53,460 --> 01:51:58,429
This scheme for terraforming Mars is based on 20th century notions of engineering I
1101
01:51:59,010 --> 01:52:02,000
Don't think it is how Mars will actually be terraformed
1102
01:52:02,789 --> 01:52:06,289
What you have here is a 20th century mind
1103
01:52:06,988 --> 01:52:09,617
Trying to address a 22nd century problem
1104
01:52:09,618 --> 01:52:15,228
And so I think Mars will be terraformed by the 23rd century not by the 33rd
1105
01:52:16,078 --> 01:52:22,307
23rd things that would seem utterly fantastical to us is how it will actually be done, but it'll be done
1106
01:52:26,698 --> 01:52:28,698
We're at a crossroads today
1107
01:52:28,859 --> 01:52:34,158
We either muster the courage to go or we risk the possibility of stagnation in the case
1108
01:52:35,158 --> 01:52:42,708
the exploration of the solar system and expanding of life through the rest of our solar system and some day beyond is the
1109
01:52:42,960 --> 01:52:46,039
Kind of thing that will keep our civilization going
1110
01:52:47,670 --> 01:52:54,170
We're explorers by Nature eventually, we will go to the Stars and the question is when we start I
1111
01:52:56,189 --> 01:52:59,960
Think a manned Mars mission could happen within 15 years
1112
01:53:00,510 --> 01:53:04,670
Some days. I'm very optimistic. I think we can do it in 10, maybe 15 years
1113
01:53:05,670 --> 01:53:11,359
Other days I see the all the political things that go into the space program. I look back on 230 years
1114
01:53:11,359 --> 01:53:17,838
We've been bogged down and I and I get more negative about and I say it's going to be another three decades or four decades
1115
01:53:18,359 --> 01:53:21,229
Yeah, we'd be surprised if we got to Mars prior to
1116
01:53:22,349 --> 01:53:24,210
2025 or 2030
1117
01:53:24,210 --> 01:53:26,210
in May of
1118
01:53:26,670 --> 01:53:28,670
2018
1119
01:53:30,020 --> 01:53:35,109
Understanding the various political obstacles that exist in what we need to fight through to get the program started
1120
01:53:35,239 --> 01:53:38,288
I believe that we will be on Mars by 2020
1121
01:53:42,920 --> 01:53:46,389
You have to believe in hope you have to believe in the future
1122
01:53:48,590 --> 01:53:54,250
There are more and more people coming around to the point of view that a positive future for Humanity
1123
01:53:54,738 --> 01:53:56,798
requires human expansion to space
1124
01:53:58,578 --> 01:54:03,278
We will eventually break through the forces of inertia that have been holding this thing back
1125
01:55:52,118 --> 01:55:54,118
You
1126
01:56:15,250 --> 01:56:21,958
We are surrounded by thousands and thousands of stars, are we alone in this vast cosmic landscape?
1127
01:56:31,489 --> 01:56:36,069
Science is searching for an answer and has outlined two hypotheses one
1128
01:56:36,069 --> 01:56:42,548
We are alone and life is an anomalous fact that can only be explained by an unpredictable and eventful combination of circumstances
1129
01:56:43,760 --> 01:56:49,090
To life is implicit in the nature of the universe and its appearance anywhere is unavoidable
1130
01:56:55,789 --> 01:56:59,229
The systematic search for extraterrestrial life has just begun
1131
01:57:00,380 --> 01:57:04,088
Its discovery would be the most important earners in the history of mankind
1132
01:57:06,020 --> 01:57:10,660
Presently from out there only the ekor of an intense silence reaches us
1133
01:57:59,340 --> 01:58:05,210
This gigantic diaphanous mass occupies a space that is a thousand times greater than the solar system
1134
01:58:06,090 --> 01:58:09,590
It is one of the many interstellar clouds that the universe contains
1135
01:58:10,920 --> 01:58:18,470
Hundreds of organic molecules accumulate in its interior many of them are identical or similar to those that make up the living beings on earth
1136
01:58:20,939 --> 01:58:22,939
As
1137
01:58:23,579 --> 01:58:28,998
Knowledge of the universe advances it is confirmed that the ingredients of life do not exist. Only on earth
1138
01:58:29,939 --> 01:58:35,898
To the contrary as living beings. We are made from a raw material that is abundant in the universe you
1139
01:58:38,430 --> 01:58:44,240
Can think of the origin of life is perhaps in three different ways in one extreme
1140
01:58:45,329 --> 01:58:48,890
Life is a miracle life comes from God a unique event
1141
01:58:49,470 --> 01:58:55,760
If so science can't address the question because science can't address miracles miracles by definition
1142
01:58:56,310 --> 01:58:58,310
define natural law but
1143
01:58:58,470 --> 01:59:00,470
life may have been
1144
01:59:01,079 --> 01:59:07,729
Consistent with physics and chemistry and yet a very rare perhaps a unique event
1145
01:59:09,029 --> 01:59:12,438
very improbable because of chance and if so again,
1146
01:59:12,720 --> 01:59:19,458
Science has trouble addressing the question because how can one go to a laboratory and study an improbable event
1147
01:59:19,829 --> 01:59:25,038
So only in the third case if life is an inevitable consequence of chemistry and physics
1148
01:59:25,500 --> 01:59:29,029
If anywhere there's water in rock and air life
1149
01:59:29,699 --> 01:59:30,899
arises
1150
01:59:30,899 --> 01:59:33,378
Then science can hope to answer the question
1151
01:59:39,420 --> 01:59:44,538
When we ask ourselves about the mystery of life we almost always look at the earth for the answer
1152
01:59:45,538 --> 01:59:48,828
We have no other reference although the earth with its inexhaustible
1153
01:59:49,198 --> 01:59:55,668
Variety of forms plants and animals is like a box of surprises and new questions more than a direct answer
1154
01:59:58,710 --> 02:00:04,309
No one is sure where life begins and ends on earth this is possible that something exists
1155
02:00:04,309 --> 02:00:08,149
That is not just a copy more or less advanced than what we have on earth
1156
02:00:16,889 --> 02:00:21,409
We already know with much precision what caused life to develop on our planet
1157
02:00:23,069 --> 02:00:28,009
Everything began with water and with the release of certain chemical elements like carbon and oxygen
1158
02:00:28,529 --> 02:00:31,130
Which combined to form organic molecules?
1159
02:00:48,960 --> 02:00:55,609
These molecules thanks to the light of the Sun electric discharges from the atmosphere and the energy from the interior of the earth
1160
02:00:55,920 --> 02:00:57,920
Became incipient living beings
1161
02:01:08,640 --> 02:01:15,710
Thus starting with water chemical elements and a source of energy the most elemental living organism known today appeared
1162
02:01:16,590 --> 02:01:18,590
bacteria
1163
02:01:31,939 --> 02:01:39,219
In 1953 the American chemist Stanley Miller and Harold Urey tried to reproduce the origin of life in a laboratory
1164
02:01:43,849 --> 02:01:50,019
They placed water vapor methane and ammonia in a test tube and ran a continuous electric current through it
1165
02:01:51,559 --> 02:01:58,389
Almost one week later the water had acquired color and new compounds it appeared including two amino acids
1166
02:01:58,389 --> 02:02:00,389
Which are the basic building blocks of life?
1167
02:02:01,849 --> 02:02:05,199
This combination however continued to be just as lifeless
1168
02:02:09,828 --> 02:02:12,338
Perhaps something similar to this experiment occurred on earth
1169
02:02:12,889 --> 02:02:14,118
but if this is true
1170
02:02:14,118 --> 02:02:21,639
It was nothing more than another failed attempt that kept the planet during its early stages as a barren lifeless place
1171
02:02:39,979 --> 02:02:44,948
Experiments aimed at reproducing the origin of life have helped science to define with greater precision
1172
02:02:45,260 --> 02:02:50,079
The frontier between living material and lifeless material between life and non-life
1173
02:02:54,140 --> 02:02:58,599
Series of specific characteristics that make a living beings different from a non living being
1174
02:02:59,300 --> 02:03:00,770
for example
1175
02:03:00,770 --> 02:03:07,870
Replication a living being should replicate generate progeny. It should produce offspring whether they are molecular children or some
1176
02:03:08,869 --> 02:03:14,439
Meaning that replication should not be exact from father to child because we would laugh diversity
1177
02:03:15,859 --> 02:03:17,210
in replication
1178
02:03:17,210 --> 02:03:23,439
There should be a series of mutations that introduce changes between the parental generation and the generation of the descendant
1179
02:03:23,659 --> 02:03:27,399
and these changes will make the descendants different from each other and
1180
02:03:27,920 --> 02:03:31,809
Being different amongst themselves means they will react in different ways to stimuli
1181
02:03:32,569 --> 02:03:35,198
selective pressure and to environmental changes
1182
02:03:36,500 --> 02:03:39,369
Therefore some better than others
1183
02:03:41,359 --> 02:03:46,538
Living beings there replicate in a bottle and they have a metabolism
1184
02:03:47,840 --> 02:03:52,449
This means that living being and ms are capable of carrying out a series of process
1185
02:03:53,449 --> 02:03:56,710
the consumption of energy they produce biomolecules
1186
02:03:57,500 --> 02:04:04,689
From a disorganized outside world, they produce organized molecules, which they used to grow and for their own metabolism
1187
02:04:05,600 --> 02:04:09,880
It's possible that these are the three fundamental characteristics of living entities
1188
02:04:11,119 --> 02:04:12,289
replication
1189
02:04:12,289 --> 02:04:14,289
mutation and therefore evolution and
1190
02:04:15,020 --> 02:04:17,020
metabolism dilution
1191
02:04:18,380 --> 02:04:24,190
At the limit of these requirements we find the viruses which most scientists don't consider living beings
1192
02:04:25,310 --> 02:04:29,379
It's true that they reproduce and evolve that they transform with several mutations
1193
02:04:29,899 --> 02:04:34,628
But they only do so when they infect a cell which they use so that they can reproduce themselves
1194
02:04:42,050 --> 02:04:46,630
Thus viruses only act as living beings when they act as parasites on a cell
1195
02:04:53,658 --> 02:04:58,238
The question of this transition from non-life to life
1196
02:04:59,029 --> 02:05:05,679
that's in some sense a philosophical question and yet many of us who work in the field have our prejudices and
1197
02:05:06,439 --> 02:05:10,960
mine, is that the transition occurs when competition and
1198
02:05:11,810 --> 02:05:13,810
natural selection begins
1199
02:05:14,060 --> 02:05:16,569
You can imagine inanimate nature
1200
02:05:17,029 --> 02:05:23,738
Molecules rocks water that's not alive that doesn't compete but at some point a level of organization
1201
02:05:24,408 --> 02:05:29,738
occurred in molecules molecular systems that could replicate themselves and
1202
02:05:30,198 --> 02:05:36,128
When that happened and because of the richness of organic molecules available you had slight differences in these
1203
02:05:36,920 --> 02:05:41,079
self-replicating molecules somewhere a little more efficient than others and
1204
02:05:41,899 --> 02:05:43,899
So life
1205
02:05:44,329 --> 02:05:46,329
begins to compete for
1206
02:05:46,520 --> 02:05:54,339
Resources for energy and to me the crucial stage in the origin of life. Is that very moment when competition
1207
02:05:55,010 --> 02:05:57,070
led to selection that's
1208
02:05:57,710 --> 02:05:59,710
Darwinian evolution
1209
02:06:13,350 --> 02:06:18,169
Every day, the great milestones in the path of the evolution of species are better understood
1210
02:06:19,380 --> 02:06:21,859
The first step of life is still unknown. However
1211
02:06:29,310 --> 02:06:36,859
In laboratories biologists and chemists try to reproduce time and time again how this first gestation took place
1212
02:06:37,829 --> 02:06:43,399
To do so the key is to manage to get certain chemical molecules to combine in a specific way
1213
02:06:43,710 --> 02:06:45,829
Which is what provokes the miracle of life
1214
02:06:58,109 --> 02:07:00,829
The recipe of the great ant nest is a secret
1215
02:07:02,220 --> 02:07:06,889
scientists have no other option but to continue investigating how the miracle of life occurred and
1216
02:07:07,380 --> 02:07:10,579
The only place where they know that this has happened is on the earth
1217
02:07:25,880 --> 02:07:27,850
Just like the rest of the solar system
1218
02:07:27,850 --> 02:07:30,789
The earth was formed over 4.5 billion years ago
1219
02:07:31,159 --> 02:07:35,889
When the remains of a supernova like this one crossed a vast cloud of cosmic dust
1220
02:07:39,319 --> 02:07:46,269
After this accidental birth our planet was subject to bombardment by meteorites and comets during a large part of its history
1221
02:07:48,859 --> 02:07:52,719
During the first part of its existence the earth was an inhospitable place
1222
02:07:53,239 --> 02:07:57,548
Aside from external aggression. There was also a great volcanic activity on its surface
1223
02:07:58,819 --> 02:08:04,960
This violent phase however, favoured the evaporation of water and the emission of gases like carbon dioxide and methane
1224
02:08:06,890 --> 02:08:09,700
The atmosphere was slowly created with these elements
1225
02:08:11,000 --> 02:08:15,399
If this had not occurred the earth would eventually have been burned by the sun's rays
1226
02:08:27,550 --> 02:08:34,050
During this infernal period the basic broth a kind of culture medium or breeding ground for life was also formed
1227
02:08:44,630 --> 02:08:49,989
The water of the Seas penetrated the cracks of the sea bottom and returned to the sea through the volcanoes
1228
02:08:51,359 --> 02:08:57,228
This water was enriched with minerals that it had taken from the heart of the earth which when it came into contact with the atmosphere
1229
02:08:57,930 --> 02:08:59,930
provoked that greatly
1230
02:09:02,279 --> 02:09:06,198
Chemistry opened the way to biology and the appearance of the first bacteria
1231
02:09:11,670 --> 02:09:14,958
Present-day organisms could not survive in such a toxic environment
1232
02:09:15,239 --> 02:09:23,029
But the planet's path towards milder stable conditions allowed the first signs of life to maintain themselves and evolve from their simple forms
1233
02:09:23,189 --> 02:09:25,189
towards more complex beings
1234
02:09:50,979 --> 02:09:58,438
The impact of meteorites did not suddenly stop in fact many years later the dinosaurs disappeared due to their effects
1235
02:10:09,130 --> 02:10:10,900
But fortunately
1236
02:10:10,899 --> 02:10:17,908
Biodiversity was well developed at that time. And even though species disappeared in huge numbers life was already deeply rooted
1237
02:10:18,550 --> 02:10:22,320
Hundreds of organisms were able to survive in the middle of the impressive destruction
1238
02:10:31,390 --> 02:10:35,279
Life on Earth has overcome a variety of climatic and environmental changes
1239
02:10:36,609 --> 02:10:42,689
But as radical as the changes may be a living being that does not depend on water oxygen and solar energy
1240
02:10:43,119 --> 02:10:47,128
Or one that can survive in such extreme temperatures is not conceivable
1241
02:10:52,479 --> 02:10:54,039
In recent years, however
1242
02:10:54,039 --> 02:11:00,119
The discovery of organisms that live on the fringes of these laws are modifying our ideas about what a living being needs
1243
02:11:02,260 --> 02:11:07,798
These organisms are known as extremophiles the lovers of very radical external conditions
1244
02:11:22,779 --> 02:11:27,029
These waters belong to the river team Phil in the southern Spanish province of Waveline
1245
02:11:27,189 --> 02:11:32,189
It's peculiar blood-red color which gave it its name is due to the metals that it bears
1246
02:11:32,710 --> 02:11:36,659
They come from the rocks that are drank from its headwaters and from spillages four mines
1247
02:11:42,880 --> 02:11:50,250
Steer a community of living beings has been discovered that challenges the traditional point of view concerning the environmental conditions that allow for survival
1248
02:11:52,869 --> 02:11:56,729
These microscopic images have been recorded in these unhealthy waters
1249
02:11:57,100 --> 02:12:01,350
Which show some organisms that assume basic vital functions without difficulties?
1250
02:12:04,270 --> 02:12:11,040
Dominant a less characteristic there are two extreme characteristics of the river the low pH in other words the acidity of the system
1251
02:12:11,050 --> 02:12:17,099
Which is around 2 and the high concentration of heavy metals always beside heavy metals are toxic
1252
02:12:17,140 --> 02:12:20,340
Especially those in the mining area of the river Tinto
1253
02:12:20,890 --> 02:12:25,260
essentially copper which is used to prevent the growth of fungi and vineyards and
1254
02:12:25,840 --> 02:12:31,889
Arsenic and cadmium etc. Speeding. Yes. The supplies was fine down eukaryotic organism a season
1255
02:12:31,890 --> 02:12:34,979
Not the prokaryotes the bacteria that eat minerals
1256
02:12:35,199 --> 02:12:40,559
But eukaryotes algae fungi filament fungi protozoans amoebas, etc
1257
02:12:40,779 --> 02:12:45,029
Which are present in a place where no one in the right mind what you think that they could exist?
1258
02:12:51,439 --> 02:12:58,809
The mysterious life that is hidden in the River Tinto has disconcerted scientists and not only because it is a unique class of extremophiles
1259
02:13:00,229 --> 02:13:07,418
It is extraordinary because in these conditions a certain degree of biological variety has developed with more or less common algae
1260
02:13:07,609 --> 02:13:09,609
fungi and amoebas
1261
02:13:14,569 --> 02:13:18,939
Their ability to adapt is such that we could say that they don't appear to be terrestrial
1262
02:13:30,270 --> 02:13:35,720
The first extremophiles were discovered a little over 30 years ago in Yellowstone Park in the United States
1263
02:13:37,020 --> 02:13:40,940
They were organisms that survived in temperatures over 100 degrees Celsius
1264
02:13:41,850 --> 02:13:46,280
They appeared in geological chimneys where water vapor emerged from the interior of the earth
1265
02:14:10,189 --> 02:14:15,158
Scientists have also found living beings that are fond of extreme temperatures in the cold Antarctic rocks
1266
02:14:19,469 --> 02:14:26,149
In the ice or in the lakes of water found below they have found bacteria and algae living hundreds of meters below the surface
1267
02:14:32,069 --> 02:14:39,500
They are cold lovers living beings that have the peculiarities of growing slowly since the low temperatures slow down their metabolisms
1268
02:14:53,868 --> 02:15:01,478
At Moga cave in romania a group of several animals have lived isolated from the outside world for about five and a half million years
1269
02:15:03,649 --> 02:15:08,679
There is no oxygen or light there but 48 different species survive in this place
1270
02:15:10,488 --> 02:15:18,097
Its trophic chain takes advantage of the energy from the chemical elements that exist in the cave in order to produce nutritional substances for feeding
1271
02:15:26,479 --> 02:15:30,188
These strange mounds on the Australian coast are known as stromatolites
1272
02:15:31,698 --> 02:15:34,867
They are the fossil remains of bacteria that have been grouped in layers
1273
02:15:35,840 --> 02:15:42,880
The lower layers are formed by anaerobic bacteria, which are beings that strange as it may seem do not need oxygen to live
1274
02:15:50,779 --> 02:15:57,188
Even today there is a class of organisms that exist in environments that lack oxygen of which our intestine is one on others
1275
02:16:06,779 --> 02:16:13,759
There are even more cases of life in anonymous conditions in the Dead Sea and in specific salt lagoons of Africa's Rift Valley
1276
02:16:14,130 --> 02:16:16,130
There are some salt living bacteria
1277
02:16:24,909 --> 02:16:30,028
To survive in a salty medium these organisms have developed their own mechanisms to avoid dehydration
1278
02:16:33,459 --> 02:16:37,739
Last table Philip the extremophiles are what allows us to open a series of scenarios
1279
02:16:38,170 --> 02:16:41,790
Which means if there are microorganisms that can grow at high temperatures
1280
02:16:42,040 --> 02:16:47,219
The model of originating life in an underwater volcano at a hundred or so degrees is not absurd
1281
02:16:47,739 --> 02:16:54,899
Because today there are microorganisms that can do it in a surface salt marsh. The high concentration is due to evaporation
1282
02:16:55,929 --> 02:17:02,068
Specific interactions are favorable which can happen since there are microorganisms that exist in these conditions today
1283
02:17:06,790 --> 02:17:13,679
If life emerged in such unfavorable environments it is therefore a much stronger impulse than what our limited vision expected
1284
02:17:36,959 --> 02:17:43,579
The discovery of these living beings in unimaginable conditions has had repercussions among those searching for the presence of life in space
1285
02:17:45,270 --> 02:17:52,279
If life here was possible in conditions that were different from what we enjoy today why couldn't the same thing happen on other planets
1286
02:17:56,700 --> 02:18:01,789
Geologists biologists chemists and astrophysicists have come together in a new scientific field
1287
02:18:02,638 --> 02:18:08,929
Astrobiology, they have established new expectations about what type of life to search for and where to look for it
1288
02:18:11,729 --> 02:18:16,759
What we have successfully achieved is the collaboration of geologists and planetary astrophysicists
1289
02:18:17,129 --> 02:18:20,359
And the people dedicated to the original evolutionary chemistry
1290
02:18:22,079 --> 02:18:28,998
In this way geologists give us a guideline for example as to how the planet has evolved into a physical body
1291
02:18:29,638 --> 02:18:31,938
At the same time they join with planetary
1292
02:18:32,218 --> 02:18:38,538
Astrophysicists who explain how the earth was formed and how this formation is the result of the evolution of the universe itself
1293
02:18:39,299 --> 02:18:42,559
On the other hand the people who study evolutionary chemistry
1294
02:18:43,020 --> 02:18:49,759
Complex molecules that evolve and bridge the knowledge of the geologists about what existed on the original the primitive
1295
02:18:50,819 --> 02:18:52,819
opinion locality media
1296
02:18:56,629 --> 02:19:01,000
All these related Sciences of astrobiology are drawn from a basic idea
1297
02:19:01,519 --> 02:19:09,219
The appearance of life as a natural phenomenon as the inevitable consequence of a universe in continual change and evolution
1298
02:19:11,929 --> 02:19:13,929
In a shorter middle term
1299
02:19:14,269 --> 02:19:20,049
Astrobiology is searching to contrast the idea that life is a cosmic imperatives by applying the scientific method to it
1300
02:19:20,450 --> 02:19:22,509
The scientific method that is based on everything
1301
02:19:22,510 --> 02:19:27,969
We know from how a mobile phone works to how bridge is built or how to launch a spacecraft into outer space
1302
02:19:29,000 --> 02:19:36,849
This scientific method requires more than one example of a specific phenomenon life on Earth as we know it has extraordinary biodiversity
1303
02:19:37,250 --> 02:19:41,259
A biodiversity that is manifested in millions as different species on earth
1304
02:19:42,138 --> 02:19:43,579
all of these forms of life
1305
02:19:43,579 --> 02:19:49,539
However are based on certain unique principles so that the phenomenon of life as we know it on earth
1306
02:19:49,909 --> 02:19:52,418
Is the manifestation of a unique phenomenon?
1307
02:19:53,389 --> 02:19:57,159
Therefore the scientific method cannot be directly applied as a result
1308
02:19:57,200 --> 02:20:01,869
We have to go to other places in order to contrast whether life exists or has existence
1309
02:20:25,959 --> 02:20:27,069
In
1310
02:20:27,069 --> 02:20:34,110
1975 the direct search for life in the solar system began when NASA sent the Viking spacecrafts aloft with Mars as their destination
1311
02:20:37,719 --> 02:20:43,138
Today the red planet is very cold with average temperatures of minus 53 degrees Celsius
1312
02:20:43,139 --> 02:20:46,139
Which has frozen the water that at some point covered its surface
1313
02:20:50,020 --> 02:20:57,340
It is dominated by a current geological relief of deep craters and dusty dunes which gives it the appearance of a rocky desert
1314
02:20:59,840 --> 02:21:05,889
On the other hand the absence of an ozone layer subjects Mars to relentless ultraviolet solar radiation
1315
02:21:08,328 --> 02:21:11,978
In this dead land it would seem impossible to find life
1316
02:21:17,200 --> 02:21:24,659
The results of the tests carried out by the Viking mission confirmed this hypothesis and the scientific interest in Mars was set aside
1317
02:21:30,909 --> 02:21:35,039
Studies of extremophiles on earth a lower have put Mars back in the game for
1318
02:21:37,510 --> 02:21:43,800
Scientists the absence of signs of life in the two places where the Viking spacecraft took samples is not final proof
1319
02:21:45,219 --> 02:21:52,738
They have to search other parts of the planet with milder environments and investigate the possibility that life manifested itself there in the past
1320
02:21:54,818 --> 02:21:56,818
Well, I think to me
1321
02:21:58,238 --> 02:22:06,179
the fact that we're seeing that life exists in these very extreme environments on earth gives us
1322
02:22:07,059 --> 02:22:08,619
optimism that
1323
02:22:08,620 --> 02:22:11,279
we'll find life other places because
1324
02:22:12,100 --> 02:22:19,170
We know for example on Mars that there is liquid water at times. We know that there's ice
1325
02:22:20,020 --> 02:22:22,409
We know that they're very dry regions
1326
02:22:23,228 --> 02:22:28,349
They're probably very salty regions too. And so it seems to me that
1327
02:22:29,920 --> 02:22:31,920
The fact that we find life
1328
02:22:32,648 --> 02:22:34,679
existing on earth in these extreme
1329
02:22:35,439 --> 02:22:39,358
Environments means that we don't know yet the limits
1330
02:22:40,059 --> 02:22:42,090
every year the limits increase
1331
02:22:42,939 --> 02:22:45,778
In terms of our discoveries, so why not?
1332
02:22:47,109 --> 02:22:52,198
Broaden the limits a bit more to to the environments of some of the planets
1333
02:22:53,510 --> 02:22:58,700
I think Mars is the planet of greatest interest for astrobiological
1334
02:23:00,180 --> 02:23:01,229
exploration
1335
02:23:01,228 --> 02:23:08,448
first because it's nearby and therefore is is fairly easy to explore or at least relatively easy to explore and
1336
02:23:08,939 --> 02:23:10,710
second because
1337
02:23:10,709 --> 02:23:12,709
although today
1338
02:23:13,049 --> 02:23:16,608
Mars is a very forbidding planet low temperatures
1339
02:23:17,398 --> 02:23:19,398
very little atmosphere
1340
02:23:19,680 --> 02:23:25,609
Tectonic Li it appears to be almost dead at least at the time that life emerged on earth
1341
02:23:26,340 --> 02:23:31,700
Mars was a planet much like much more like our own restaurant identical book much more
1342
02:23:31,700 --> 02:23:35,088
It had active volcanism. It had a thicker atmosphere
1343
02:23:36,329 --> 02:23:38,689
At least episodically it had liquid water
1344
02:23:38,760 --> 02:23:42,559
And so therefore mars is a good candidate to ask
1345
02:23:42,959 --> 02:23:50,688
The question directly did life appear more than once and if it did appear on Mars the way we will recognize it is
1346
02:23:51,299 --> 02:23:52,978
in general
1347
02:23:52,978 --> 02:23:58,878
The same way that we recognize evidence of ancient life on Earth through micro fossils
1348
02:23:59,579 --> 02:24:07,338
Through the influence of microbial communities on sediments and through chemical signatures that they impart to rocks
1349
02:24:14,620 --> 02:24:16,510
1984 a
1350
02:24:16,510 --> 02:24:20,790
scientific expedition goes to the Antarctic to collect samples of meteorites the
1351
02:24:21,398 --> 02:24:24,628
Solitude and the conditions of the frozen continent have kept them intact
1352
02:24:29,408 --> 02:24:33,298
Here they discovered a rock that became a key piece in the investigation of Mars
1353
02:24:35,020 --> 02:24:39,689
It weighs almost two kilograms and is known as al H in
1354
02:24:40,959 --> 02:24:42,608
1996 at NASA
1355
02:24:42,609 --> 02:24:49,168
David McKay and his team presented it to the public as a Martian meteorite with possible fossil evidence of certain living beings
1356
02:24:56,260 --> 02:25:02,699
Since then the era light alongside others that had been previously collected have triggered a debate within the scientific community
1357
02:25:03,010 --> 02:25:07,949
On whether or not we are standing before the definitive evidence that Mars also for life
1358
02:25:11,709 --> 02:25:16,469
We've been studying the the alh meteorite for a long time now
1359
02:25:16,720 --> 02:25:19,770
We're also looking at other Mars meteorites
1360
02:25:20,110 --> 02:25:26,369
there are now 18 different Mars meteorites and we've looked in detail in about four of them and
1361
02:25:26,890 --> 02:25:33,239
We have found what we believe to be signs of life in all four meteorites that we have studied
1362
02:25:33,610 --> 02:25:39,539
First alh then then Nakhla which fell in egypt in 1911
1363
02:25:40,329 --> 02:25:42,899
then sure Gatti which fell in India and
1364
02:25:43,810 --> 02:25:48,360
Then Lafayette which was recovered in Indiana USA
1365
02:25:50,409 --> 02:25:54,418
We think we see evidence for life we have to prove it
1366
02:25:54,420 --> 02:26:00,690
We haven't proved it yet to the satisfaction of the scientific community, but we're working on that
1367
02:26:01,810 --> 02:26:03,810
How long will that take?
1368
02:26:04,659 --> 02:26:09,509
Possibly a few more years we hope that we can do that
1369
02:26:10,601 --> 02:26:17,340
Either prove it or disprove it within say three or four more years and that's what we're we're working on
1370
02:26:21,159 --> 02:26:28,619
Through the study of meteorites and through new explorations scientists. Hope to decipher the Martian enigmas in the period of just one decade
1371
02:26:35,920 --> 02:26:42,960
The European Space Agency is also participating in the race with the Mars Express, which will be launched in 2004
1372
02:26:43,600 --> 02:26:48,180
It is a satellite that will be placed in orbit around Mars and which has a landing module
1373
02:26:49,369 --> 02:26:56,587
Both devices will carry out in-depth studies of the planet and with the images obtained precise maps of the territory will be drawn up
1374
02:27:00,190 --> 02:27:04,918
As the Museu knows since the American Viking missions in the 1970s
1375
02:27:06,040 --> 02:27:12,600
There has not been another mission with such a central astrobiological focus in its investigations as the Mars Express
1376
02:27:13,420 --> 02:27:15,420
As fool's he misty and furthermore
1377
02:27:16,090 --> 02:27:21,450
This spacecraft has a landing vehicle the Beagle 2 with a series of instruments
1378
02:27:21,970 --> 02:27:25,770
To analyze the chemistry and organic substances of the planet
1379
02:27:26,500 --> 02:27:29,129
Such as the rock minerals and the surface of Mars
1380
02:27:29,920 --> 02:27:35,338
They can also take images of the surface and measure the composition of the atmosphere around the landing area
1381
02:27:36,011 --> 02:27:42,840
It even has instruments able to reach a depth of between one and one and a half meters in order to analyze the subsoil
1382
02:27:43,239 --> 02:27:50,610
Which has not been affected by ultraviolet radiation and where indications of life may be preserved better than on the surface
1383
02:27:52,659 --> 02:27:54,659
Parrinello sorry Supes Widow
1384
02:27:55,239 --> 02:28:03,030
Conocido effect I'll pour la radio thermal travelator in kuala pedido preserve our say in details de vida
1385
02:28:19,670 --> 02:28:24,849
In addition to Mars, the scientific community is investigating other planets within the solar system
1386
02:28:25,818 --> 02:28:29,468
Mercury and Venus due to their extremely hot climates have been ruled out
1387
02:28:31,699 --> 02:28:36,699
Uranus Neptune and Pluto due to their extremely cold climates are not worthy of consideration either
1388
02:28:42,318 --> 02:28:47,528
Saturn and jupiter are the only two left to gassy giants where life seems impossible
1389
02:28:48,559 --> 02:28:53,439
These planets however have satellites orbiting around them that are arousing scientific interest
1390
02:28:59,389 --> 02:29:05,680
In the case of Jupiter the moons IO and Europa two satellites, which thanks to the energy of the planet
1391
02:29:05,680 --> 02:29:09,818
They orbit are much hotter than what was expected given their great distance from the Sun
1392
02:29:13,760 --> 02:29:19,420
Io is the satellite with the most volcanoes interruption in the entire solar system, which is a positive symptom
1393
02:29:20,148 --> 02:29:25,208
Due to the history of the earth. It is known that volcanoes can play a fundamental role in the generation of life
1394
02:29:27,640 --> 02:29:34,290
In contrast however, signs of water have not been detected yet which for the moment reduces the hope of finding life
1395
02:29:42,101 --> 02:29:49,200
Europa seems to be a more gifted contender. It's frozen surface may shelter an enormous ocean below with organic molecules
1396
02:29:54,069 --> 02:30:00,759
If these were to exist just as it happened on earth the discharge of some kind of energy may provoke the appearance of life
1397
02:30:02,540 --> 02:30:04,521
And
1398
02:30:04,521 --> 02:30:05,600
in this aspect
1399
02:30:05,600 --> 02:30:12,670
There are also indications that the moon Europa has volcanoes which is why some scientists hope that life exists or has existed there
1400
02:30:15,500 --> 02:30:20,168
So Mars is our best candidate but on a longer time scale
1401
02:30:20,799 --> 02:30:24,939
I think the exploration of Europa is going to be interesting
1402
02:30:25,219 --> 02:30:29,229
There's every reason to believe there is an a long-standing
1403
02:30:29,840 --> 02:30:35,590
Water body and ocean if you will on Europa, and that could have incubated life
1404
02:30:35,930 --> 02:30:42,909
It may actually have a higher probability than Mars of actually having still living organisms
1405
02:30:43,069 --> 02:30:47,498
So we might be able to look by biological techniques for life on Europa
1406
02:30:48,351 --> 02:30:52,690
Whereas on Mars I think largely it's going to be a paleontological exercise
1407
02:30:58,238 --> 02:31:01,797
In the orbit around Saturn there is a satellite called Titan
1408
02:31:02,139 --> 02:31:07,528
Which with a diameter less than half the size of the earth is very similar to our planet in other aspects
1409
02:31:14,619 --> 02:31:20,757
In 1980 the Voyager 1 spacecraft passed by Titan at a distance of 7,000 kilometers
1410
02:31:20,828 --> 02:31:23,217
Which enabled it to carry out a detailed study?
1411
02:31:23,828 --> 02:31:29,638
The images show a disturbing orange atmosphere with a touch of blue on the horizon mainly made up of methane
1412
02:31:33,899 --> 02:31:35,899
Who
1413
02:31:37,610 --> 02:31:43,119
According to the scientists who studied the data the smell of the air of Titan should be like the inside of an oil refinery
1414
02:31:51,530 --> 02:31:53,800
Methane is the star gas of this satellite
1415
02:31:54,800 --> 02:31:59,409
It is suspected that it may exist in three states solid liquid and gas
1416
02:32:00,290 --> 02:32:04,959
So perhaps there are giant oceans of methane with polar ice caps made up of this compound
1417
02:32:06,200 --> 02:32:10,390
It is also possible that there is an evaporation cycle and methane rain is produced
1418
02:32:12,260 --> 02:32:13,398
If this were true
1419
02:32:13,398 --> 02:32:20,448
It could be compared with the earth and water as if methane were able to fulfill the role that water plays on our planet in
1420
02:32:21,180 --> 02:32:26,359
This case cells could exist that have methane in their interior. Just like ours have water
1421
02:32:28,170 --> 02:32:29,639
If
1422
02:32:29,639 --> 02:32:37,368
This hypothesis of methane beings were true. We would be dealing with organisms that live at very low temperatures with very slow biochemistry
1423
02:32:39,209 --> 02:32:46,308
One of the key attributes for life on Earth is the presence of water and I think it's fair to say that in most astrobiological
1424
02:32:47,219 --> 02:32:48,840
exploration
1425
02:32:48,840 --> 02:32:53,568
People look for water first and then if there is water on a planet or a moon
1426
02:32:54,209 --> 02:32:56,748
Then perhaps there will be some sort of life
1427
02:32:57,029 --> 02:33:04,788
So the question becomes is there another substance that might do the same job as water and it has been suggested
1428
02:33:05,459 --> 02:33:07,459
from time to time that methane
1429
02:33:08,229 --> 02:33:12,189
Would be a substitute for water has a substrate for life
1430
02:33:13,700 --> 02:33:17,680
If so, it's not easy to imagine what kind of life that would be
1431
02:33:18,920 --> 02:33:25,479
Certainly, it would not be a life. That would be easily recognizable in terms of our experience on earth
1432
02:33:26,690 --> 02:33:30,969
Whether or not it's impossible. I don't know but I
1433
02:33:31,489 --> 02:33:35,229
Would certainly think it would be much less probable than a life
1434
02:33:36,799 --> 02:33:43,329
That is based on a on a watery environment and so in that regard when we think about a place like Titan
1435
02:33:44,450 --> 02:33:50,980
Well, perhaps Titan could have given rise to life. It certainly has given rise to complex organic molecules
1436
02:33:51,500 --> 02:33:54,190
But in the absence of water, I think the probability
1437
02:33:55,010 --> 02:33:58,780
The life would have emerged from that chemistry is much much lower
1438
02:34:01,040 --> 02:34:06,580
In 1998 the Cassini spacecraft was sent into space with Saturn as its destination
1439
02:34:06,920 --> 02:34:13,210
One of its missions is to study Titan thanks to its atmosphere intro which will descend down onto Titan surface
1440
02:34:18,671 --> 02:34:25,590
This will take place in 2004 starting them perhaps the mystery of the methane satellite can be deciphered
1441
02:34:39,251 --> 02:34:43,770
The first explorations of the solar system have not provided proof of extraterrestrial life
1442
02:34:45,220 --> 02:34:50,729
But the absence of evidence as paradoxical as it may seem increases the belief that life is possible
1443
02:34:52,031 --> 02:34:54,600
The mechanisms of life are better understood today
1444
02:34:55,360 --> 02:35:00,840
Furthermore it is also known that life can develop in much more open conditions than was originally believed
1445
02:35:01,601 --> 02:35:04,531
The question is what kind of life are we dealing with?
1446
02:35:06,550 --> 02:35:14,490
Instead of beings with antenna and extraordinary abilities more realistic scientists assert that there is no intelligent life in our immediate cosmic environment
1447
02:35:17,081 --> 02:35:22,979
It's one thing to find unicellular organisms on a planet but it's something very different to believe that these beings
1448
02:35:23,200 --> 02:35:26,099
Necessarily evolved into such complex forms as human beings
1449
02:35:38,129 --> 02:35:44,298
If earth is the point of reference the data is devastating of the millions of species that have prospered here
1450
02:35:44,549 --> 02:35:47,629
Only one has been able to develop technological intelligence
1451
02:35:50,398 --> 02:35:53,148
We can then say well what are the conditions that might
1452
02:35:53,969 --> 02:35:55,379
favor
1453
02:35:55,379 --> 02:36:00,409
intelligent life and certainly one is environmental you certainly need an
1454
02:36:01,109 --> 02:36:05,028
Environment that's capable of sustaining the biology of a large
1455
02:36:05,879 --> 02:36:13,818
organism and on our planet that only became possible when oxygen rose to high concentrations in the atmosphere and
1456
02:36:14,370 --> 02:36:16,200
then second
1457
02:36:16,200 --> 02:36:19,639
one can ask what kind of lifestyles would
1458
02:36:20,340 --> 02:36:25,519
Facilitate the origin of intelligence and there certainly predation is important
1459
02:36:26,040 --> 02:36:29,299
Once you have to get your food by capturing prey
1460
02:36:29,818 --> 02:36:32,509
there is strong selective pressure for
1461
02:36:33,299 --> 02:36:39,379
very very sophisticated sensory apparatus and the neurological ability to integrate
1462
02:36:40,139 --> 02:36:43,579
Sensory apparatus and there's also very strong selective
1463
02:36:45,420 --> 02:36:52,159
Selective forces favoring highly sophisticated muscular systems and again a highly sophisticated
1464
02:36:53,189 --> 02:36:58,219
coordination of the neurological and muscular systems once those were in place
1465
02:36:59,189 --> 02:37:01,818
Then I think the basic biological
1466
02:37:02,579 --> 02:37:05,568
Attributes that could lead to intelligence were there
1467
02:37:08,540 --> 02:37:11,830
The lack of existing intelligent life in the proximities of the earth
1468
02:37:11,959 --> 02:37:15,128
Does not mean that it cannot be found in other parts of the universe
1469
02:37:16,940 --> 02:37:20,770
Nothing is impossible within the magnitudes and dimensions of the cosmos the
1470
02:37:22,610 --> 02:37:28,270
Universe has hundreds of thousands of galaxies which at the same time have thousands of millions of stars
1471
02:37:28,940 --> 02:37:31,029
some of which are accompanied by planets
1472
02:37:31,969 --> 02:37:36,670
There are so many possibilities that we have to search far beyond the limits of the solar system
1473
02:37:42,930 --> 02:37:49,039
In 1996 the first extrasolar planets were detected and since then their numbers have increased
1474
02:37:49,408 --> 02:37:51,738
Unceasingly adding up to hundreds of them today
1475
02:37:52,529 --> 02:37:56,809
Most of them are big planets normally located very close to their corresponding Sun
1476
02:37:57,359 --> 02:38:04,969
The main difficulty is that they cannot be observed directly yet. Their existence is a deduction made from the behavior of the star the
1477
02:38:07,199 --> 02:38:13,609
Most successful techniques so far for finding planets around other stars is the so called radial velocity or spectroscopic
1478
02:38:13,799 --> 02:38:16,308
Technique this technique sanim direct technique
1479
02:38:16,309 --> 02:38:19,519
You don't actually see the planet what you see instead is the star
1480
02:38:19,949 --> 02:38:23,629
moving around the center of mass of the planet star system
1481
02:38:23,629 --> 02:38:30,259
That is we all are familiar with planets moving around a star but in addition the star moves around on a much smaller orbit
1482
02:38:30,389 --> 02:38:33,019
the center of mass of the star planet system
1483
02:38:33,148 --> 02:38:39,407
so we detect the planets by seeing the star move around and we detect the stellar motion by looking at the
1484
02:38:40,289 --> 02:38:42,469
line-of-sight changes in the velocity of the star
1485
02:38:42,748 --> 02:38:48,679
Using this the Doppler technique which are familiar with from hearing a train whistle as a trance coming towards you or away from you
1486
02:38:49,170 --> 02:38:55,129
Same thing with a star the Stars. It's coming towards you. It's light is shifted towards the blue as it's moving away from us
1487
02:38:55,129 --> 02:38:56,368
It's shifted towards the red
1488
02:38:56,369 --> 02:38:58,609
so by watching very carefully how the
1489
02:38:58,889 --> 02:39:04,908
spectral lines of the star change with time one could infer that the star is moving back and forth on its orbit and
1490
02:39:05,189 --> 02:39:09,497
Something must be causing that motion and we now know that that is actually a planet
1491
02:39:12,411 --> 02:39:19,781
NASA and the European Space Agency plan to place infrared telescopes in space in order to observe the extrasolar planets directly
1492
02:39:21,200 --> 02:39:27,490
If they have an atmosphere, that would be a good sign since an atmosphere normally regulates extreme temperatures
1493
02:39:27,560 --> 02:39:29,800
Which are found quite frequently on many planets
1494
02:39:38,568 --> 02:39:44,917
The telescope's will analyze these atmospheres in order to find evidence of the necessary chemical elements for life to be produced
1495
02:39:49,579 --> 02:39:51,579
Oxygen which is present in our atmosphere
1496
02:39:52,000 --> 02:39:56,168
Is one of the key signs of life, but it is not the only element that they are looking for
1497
02:39:56,959 --> 02:40:00,909
there is also the signature of co2 carbon dioxide and
1498
02:40:01,370 --> 02:40:09,249
water vapor and these three compounds are all involved in the reaction that produce oxygen by biology which is
1499
02:40:09,680 --> 02:40:11,680
oxygenic photosynthesis and
1500
02:40:12,139 --> 02:40:18,699
If there there are all these three signature, it could be a very very good indicator for the presence of some
1501
02:40:19,579 --> 02:40:25,929
Photosynthetic activity and another signature is the the signature spectroscopic signature of methane
1502
02:40:27,350 --> 02:40:31,120
Because it's it seemed that the primitive life forms on earth
1503
02:40:31,819 --> 02:40:35,319
could have produce huge amount of methane in the atmosphere and
1504
02:40:36,200 --> 02:40:39,759
This could be detected. There was a very efficient telescope
1505
02:40:42,290 --> 02:40:48,820
The possibility of an intelligent civilisation in some corner of the universe has encouraged the sending of messages into outer space
1506
02:40:50,180 --> 02:40:53,139
These images place us in the year 1974
1507
02:40:53,569 --> 02:40:59,078
When a communication was broadcast from Addis Ababa Porto Rico towards a dense ball of stars located
1508
02:40:59,870 --> 02:41:01,870
25,000 light-years away from us
1509
02:41:03,620 --> 02:41:11,139
If someone was able to decode the message he or she or it would find a pictogram explaining the foundations of life on Earth
1510
02:41:19,200 --> 02:41:26,119
Meanwhile some spacecraft sent into outer space which are never going to return to Earth having graved plaques about who we are
1511
02:41:27,120 --> 02:41:31,879
The Voyager spaceships more specifically have all kinds of sounds and images
1512
02:41:32,430 --> 02:41:36,440
Even those of animals tribal songs and a Beethoven string quartet
1513
02:41:37,590 --> 02:41:42,889
But almost 40,000 years will have passed before the Voyager approaches the first star
1514
02:42:00,959 --> 02:42:04,489
The SETI program is another initiative for establishing contact
1515
02:42:05,370 --> 02:42:07,730
They are doing more than just sending messages
1516
02:42:08,370 --> 02:42:15,469
They are now trying to receive them that is if there is an alien civilization that uses radio waves in its interstellar communications
1517
02:42:16,140 --> 02:42:23,390
To powerful radio telescopes are being used to detect radio signals from space which are later analyzed in an enormous computer
1518
02:42:24,719 --> 02:42:31,279
Information is so abundant that the SETI program allows anyone who wants to use his or her computer to help with this task of
1519
02:42:31,379 --> 02:42:33,379
distinguishing captured signals
1520
02:42:35,670 --> 02:42:40,969
When the computer is resting a program is activated to analyze the data provided by the central computer
1521
02:42:47,399 --> 02:42:50,690
Almost 3 million people collaborate with the SETI program
1522
02:42:52,560 --> 02:42:59,810
Some curious signals have been detected but after being thoroughly investigated it has been proved that they were nothing more than telecommunication equipment
1523
02:43:00,420 --> 02:43:01,530
interferences
1524
02:43:01,530 --> 02:43:04,520
To date we have not received news from outer space
1525
02:43:13,770 --> 02:43:16,310
Western culture suffered an earthquake when Copernicus
1526
02:43:16,590 --> 02:43:22,578
Discovered that the earth and man were not the center of the universe but mere extras in a corner of the cosmos
1527
02:43:24,090 --> 02:43:29,960
The discovery of planets revolving around other stars now shows us that planets are a common occurrence
1528
02:43:32,739 --> 02:43:34,590
With this knowledge someday
1529
02:43:34,590 --> 02:43:38,728
It may be possible to solve the question of whether we as the inhabitants of the earth
1530
02:43:39,040 --> 02:43:42,240
Do or don't represent the only life forms in the universe
1531
02:43:43,568 --> 02:43:48,269
Seems what does England finally be beings in other parts of the universe? It will be without a doubt
1532
02:43:48,270 --> 02:43:50,850
It's the most important discovery in the history of mankind
1533
02:43:51,728 --> 02:43:57,688
But we will therefore be able to show and in a palpable way that life is a consequence of the evolution of the universe
1534
02:43:58,959 --> 02:44:00,369
furthermore
1535
02:44:00,370 --> 02:44:04,289
Since we proudly believe that we are unique and the most powerful living beings
1536
02:44:04,299 --> 02:44:09,179
We will realise that we are nothing more than a coincidence but frozen in the evolution of the universe
1537
02:44:09,939 --> 02:44:15,179
This will add in an important way to our understanding of humility as human beings
1538
02:44:15,180 --> 02:44:17,519
We should be humble not only with respect to ourselves
1539
02:44:18,010 --> 02:44:20,880
But also with respect to other species that live on the planet
1540
02:44:21,250 --> 02:44:23,159
We should also give life the respect
1541
02:44:23,159 --> 02:44:25,588
It deserves and every aspect they look at lead us a minute
1542
02:44:26,049 --> 02:44:32,549
If you imagine looking out above the Earth's atmosphere into the dark starry night and imagining the immensity of the universe
1543
02:44:33,159 --> 02:44:35,159
Its would be rather
1544
02:44:35,290 --> 02:44:38,459
Discomforting to think that we are the only sentient beings out there
1545
02:44:38,459 --> 02:44:45,119
I think who would make the universe so much feel like a much more pleasant place if we realize it's somewhere out there on another
1546
02:44:45,579 --> 02:44:47,579
rock orbiting another star
1547
02:44:47,829 --> 02:44:49,829
Like our own could be
1548
02:44:49,898 --> 02:44:56,128
Another sort of being perhaps similar less perhaps not so similar looking back in our direction and wondering if we existed
1549
02:45:01,069 --> 02:45:05,019
Life beyond Earth is today. I have offices more than a certainty a
1550
02:45:05,659 --> 02:45:13,450
New science astrobiology is knocking on the gates of the universe once again with more improved technical equipment and greater knowledge
1551
02:45:17,870 --> 02:45:24,549
The cosmos will shine then with greater magnificence and man will be amazed once again before this manifestation
1552
02:45:26,450 --> 02:45:33,639
After all month why not just might emerge at any moment or in any place and in whatever form you choose
1553
02:46:20,030 --> 02:46:22,030
You
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