Alien hunting expedition with NASA scientists | 60 Minutes Australia

for humankind most of the universe is a mystery a vast space of unknown worlds and faraway galaxies a cold and intimidating domain that we Earthlings can only gaze out in wonder you look at the sky you see things that have been here since before you were born gonna be here long after you're gone you think well maybe some of the answers can be found up there and the answer they're all seeking is to the greatest mystery of all is there anybody out there that ancient question is more relevant than ever after the recent discovery of water on Mars if it can be found on that cold and desolate landscape scientists are certain water could support alien life elsewhere on more hospitable planets though what form that life will take is anyone's guess we are on the brink of making discoveries that will cause us to have to rethink our whole approach to what we are as a species finding life somewhere else which is the biggest thing of all will be amazing discovery and I think it's possible we could infer it if we don't have direct contact with it sometime in the next two decades finding intelligence Wow now the human race is taking some giant steps to prove we're not alone this is a method for eavesdropping on signals coming to us from the cosmos astronomer Seth Shostak is an Alien Hunter but with serious science on his side this is the most powerful human experiment ever designed to find intelligent extraterrestrial life we're listening for et you're listening for alien we are we're listening for aliens indeed we think they're out there we figured this might be the fastest way to prove that they are there in the remote mountains of far northern California this place is called SETI the search for extraterrestrial intelligence 42 enormous telescopes are tuned to space listening for alien radio signals illusi transmissions coming from other worlds what are you listening for specifically radio waves that are produced by a transmitter somebody who was smart enough to build a transmitter put it on the air aim at our way and send us a paying saying hey you know maybe you'd like to buy some used cars from us or whatever it is they have in mind okay did you haven't got a message yet have you we haven't got a message yet no we have it we have it I'm not discouraged by that actually people often ask when are you guys gonna succeed as if we know right you don't know you don't know anymore than then Captain Cook knew when he was gonna see a new Island come over the horizon he just didn't know so you're the cosmic Explorer yeah I'm standing on the prow of a ship of discovery here I guess you could say and unfortunately uh this doesn't Bob up and down too much because I get seasick while the team here has a tear on the universe waiting to hear signs of extraterrestrial life elsewhere scientists are already exploring deep space trying to find it it's never been busier up there right now there are dozens of interplanetary spacecraft scouring the endless void looking for evidence that we're not alone Peter this is NASA multi mission control all the spacecraft that are out there exploring the solar system send their data to the dishes and they come here which entry Lee is the chief architect of NASA's search for life historians will write that it was during our time that we first understood what the solar system was about and began the next step to understand how our solar system relates to others of all the space probes looking for life Voyager launched way back in 1977 has traveled the farthest 16 billion kilometres when I think of Voyager I romanticized its role as it moves out farther and farther in space and I imagine that perhaps there's some great extraterrestrial garbage man floating around say what is this thing it's mapped our solar system and discovered volcanoes and evidence of water that we never thought existed all the while carrying a special record of life on Earth there's Beethoven there's Buck and there's Chuck Berry singing Johnny be good so in Voyager went off blasted off what 30 years ago scientists then were thinking it may encounter alien life so we will put this record of Earth on that space and when that extraterrestrial plays that phonograph record they will hear a recording of the sounds of Earth and 1/3 of the sounds of Earth which is our attempt to describe ourselves on a phonograph record to an extraterrestrial is music [Music] Voyager is destined for an icy lonely deaf drifting on to infinity but it's done its job right now the action is much closer on Mars a mere 600 million kilometres from Earth on this freezing landscape Martian exploration is hotter than ever we're heading down to a place where there is ice where there is water we've never done this before just just below the surface five centimeters of digging and there it is pure ice the Phoenix lander is unique because it's the first time we've explored the polar ice caps of Mars Peter welcome to Mars Wow and in the middle of it all is an Australian mile Smith he's an astrophysicist on the Phoenix project well the version that we have on Mars is a 500 million dollar development it's really our science lab on Mars various instruments that can take in a sample that we deliver with the robotic arm and try to understand is you know what's the content of the soil on Mars so this is as good as having you or I on on Mars it's the next best thing and so all of the senses that but you would bring with you if you were an astronaut on Mars come with you on the going along on it with this spacecraft so far the sensors have been busy the camera has seen the landscape the robotic arm has dug into the ice and special ovens have smelt the soil revealing an organic makeup that could grow a Martian vegetable patch if you were to take some of that soil back to earth and you would have plant some asparagus for example in it you'd grow it and you'd be able to eat it and it would be quite healthy now you want to move this to some other place miles now Iver sees hundreds of the brightest minds from around the globe working long into the night on Mars time it's painstaking they can go for weeks without any significant breakthroughs [Applause] remarkably we were there for this one looks like a pretty clean insertion from this perspective this tiny soil probe has taken ten years from development to finally touching Martian soil for the first time place this little fork sized thing in the ground just perfect yeah its enormous ly exciting now of course the next step is actually to get data back from both of them but you're enjoying this my house ignition is the discovery that you could grow a pop plant or asparagus in Martian soil it's significant to know that there's another place where life could exist tells me that Earth isn't so special and it makes me feel more connected to the rest of the universe there are other places out there where life could exist [Music] the discoveries on Mars are truly significant but the real Holy Grail in the search for extraterrestrial life is to find another planet with plenty of this stuff water underpins our very existence and makes earth for now unique but scientists say they're closer than ever before to discovering new watery earth-like planets just like ours we suspect that water is ubiquitous in the universe and when we find other Earth's we are gonna find oceans that dwarf our own what that means Peter is a planet in which water is liquid more or less in the same kind of orbit that we're in and they could conceivably Harbor life these planets would exist in what's called the habitable zone just the right distance from their stars and with plenty of water and the right atmosphere to support life but not as we know it what sort of civilizations does your mind allow you to look at one of the things that I always find amusing Peter is that whenever the the classical media start to recreate aliens they look remarkably like us they have two eyes in the middle of a something like looks like a head that is so ridiculous to believe there are so many things that happened along our evolutionary paths to create us that the probability that we would encounter anything even remotely like us is virtually zero whatever alien life looks like our best chance of finding where it exists will be this giant flying telescope called Kepler to be launched next year five years from now Kepler will have come to a conclusion on the likely number of earth-like planets in one section of the galaxy and will be able to then extrapolate that to somewhere else if as our current model suggests we have a hundred and fifty Earth's in our journal in the neighborhood of the Stars sky where they're looking it will suggest that there are tens of thousands in our galaxy if Kepler does find earth-like planets that will give seth shostack and his team are much better target at which to aim their enormous listening device well what Kepler will tell us that we don't know now it will tell us what fraction of stars have planets and what fraction of those planets are small guys like the earth like Mercury Venus Mars once we know this planet has an atmosphere looks like biologies going on there has liquid water bullseye happy dies yes very happy days until that happens Mars gives us the best clue to Whaley in life this was our first glimpse at NASA's next mission the next one is the biggest step we've ever taken it's a two billion dollar science laboratory on wheels way more advanced than anything that's gone before it with this machine we can move from one geological unit to another geological unit taking samples analyzing them with our laboratory equipment to society and determining exactly what the cohabit ability coefficient is of that particular area it's just one more stiff in Gentry's life long attempt to prove what he's believed all along somewhere along the way I feel confident some species is intelligent enough not to destroy itself not to destroy its own planet and to reach out a helping hand to infants like us and say come join us in the Galactic Federation nothing to do in join them would not it be fabulous spend some time with these brilliant scientists and you can't help but think we're closer than ever before if and when that moment of contact comes stargazing we'll never be the same look at that Milky Way look at how many tens of millions of stories you can see it's just inconceivable to me there are people up there looking at the sky just the way we are do you really believe it I think it's true I think it's true [Music] hello I'm Charles Wooley thanks for watching to keep up with the latest from 60 minutes Australia make sure you subscribe to our Channel you can also download the 9 now app for full episodes and other exclusive 60 minutes content

Channel: 60 Minutes Australia

Views: 273,617

Rating: 4.6334777 out of 5

Keywords: 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, Liz Hayes, Charles Wooley, Tara Brown, Liam Bartlett, Allison Langdon, Ellen Fanning, Peter Overton, Ray Martin, Jana Wendt, Jeff McMullen, Jennifer Byrne, Mike Munro, Richard Carleton, Tracey Curro, Peter Harvey, Ross Coulthart, George Negus, Ian Leslie, Gerald Stone, Sarah Abo, aliens, ET, extra terrestrial beings, space, universe, conspiracy theories

Id: bzdbU3m1jMk

Length: 13min 53sec (833 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 10 2019