Alien Planet

a spacecraft from another solar system invades the night sky but this is not our sky and we are the invaders the search for alien life has begun we think that other Otherworld perhaps other Earth's if you will exist we know of hundreds of other planetary systems right now and that may be the tip of the iceberg it isn't conceivable really that there would not be like is it intelligent I don't know that's a whole nother issue within a few decades unmanned probes equipped with artificial intelligence may find life on planets beyond our solar system 2014 that's the magic year that's the magic year where the terrestrial planet finder goes up into orbit and its explicit mission is to find evidence of up to perhaps five hundred five hundred earth-like planets orbiting other stars systems there is no reason not to think that on some of them somewhere you would find multicellular organisms like ourselves the life we have on earth must have spontaneously generated itself it must therefore be possible for life to be generated spontaneously elsewhere in the universe we now take a simulated journey scientifically verified by leading experts - a planet called Darwin for the life it supports test the limits of technology and the in Lex of the greatest minds of our generation because here on Darwin life is truly full of surprising an interstellar spacecraft named von braun leaves earth orbit for a planet some six and a half light-years away are we ready to confront the technical challenges of a mission that will take decades to complete to find out a team of top scientists engineers and artists create a virtual mission to Darwin for fourth planet in a binary system called Darwin it seemed utterly important to me that the foundation to create a world was to make sure that the world was acceptable to the science community now we put together a team of scientists to have a look at that concept and to make sure that the laws of physics and chemistry were all represented in that model today we search for planets like Earth through telescopes the Darwin for mission simulates the next giant step the unmanned quest to find life beyond our solar system the von Braun is roughly the size of a nuclear attack submarine and travels to 37,000 miles per second 20% the speed of light according to Einstein there's an ultimate speed limit in the universe mother nature is like a cop a cop that says you cannot break the light barrier now the nearest star is four light-years away and Darwin traveling at 20% the speed of light will take 42 years to make that journey the metal composite nose shield that protects the ship is cratered by collisions with space debris accumulated during the 42 year journey to Darwin for the planet orbits the larger son of a binary solar system in a zone just close enough to its own star for comfort a sweet spot astronomers call the Goldilocks zone not too close and not too far away but just at the right distance that the planet can support liquid water on its surface the von braun's first priority is to call home the digital message will be sent through a laser beam but the limits of time and space impose a roaming charge for long distance even at the speed of light von Braun's transmissions to earth takes six-and-a-half years making it impractical for engineers to correct problems so von Braun and its probes will have to think on their own the first phase of the mission is to deploy the Darwin Reconnaissance Orbiter or dro it's going to spend months monitoring weather looking for geology looking for signs of life that's going to map the entire planet and it's going to rotate around the planet and it's going to give us some detail on the topography we learned a little bit about the planet fire the space-based telescopes that we ran are on earth but now that we're actually there we're going to look down and confirm that our guesses were correct so that when we put these probes down which can only explore a small fraction of the planet we get the most out of it images surged through the dr o's camera lens infrared radar invisible light pictures reveal an equatorial mountain range and vast plains swirling with weather systems darwin for has no oceans just a small blue sea von braun's computers sift through thousands of destinations before selecting the one landing site with the most to offer the Von Braun launches a probe about the size of a dump truck named Balboa after the famous Explorer Balboa enters Darwin's airspace as our first ambassador to a pristine alien planet the first contact between Earth and Darwin literally Falls to pieces but the planners of the Darwin mission have prepared for just such a scenario the vonroenn vehicle carries two additional probes probe Leonardo da Vinci is nicknamed leo Leo is followed by a twin probe the eyes of new aka Mike the coab's enter the atmosphere just like the space shuttles do on earth the final approach is a lazy-s pattern to burn off excess speed before landing temperatures on the surface 70 degrees Fahrenheit leo is first to land and emerge from his vehicle Leos bird-like head is crammed with sensors driven by protocols embedded in his software Leo confirms that Ike's landing is on track and sends a status report to the von Braun the news that Leo naik of landed is beamed to earth perhaps it's fitting that scientists who were babies when the bonbon left her now announced the birth of interstellar space travel watching these probes from back on earth would be much like sitting in the back of an auditorium watching your child at a spelling bee where you know the answer and you're sitting there hoping that they're going to make the right decision and come forth with the right answer but also knowing that you can't do a thing to help them at this moment Balam for has a denser atmosphere than the Earth's and the probes would have been designed to cope with that now we would have known that the atmosphere was in fact denser before we got there the way we would have known that is by looking at the spectrum of this planet and looking at the signature from oxygen and the planet that oxygen signature would have been so broad we would have known there was much more oxygen there in the atmosphere than we have on earth well today our awareness of the universe has expanded you know exponentially really we've gotten smart we've learned we've done our homework the first wave of space telescopes showed us one thing earth-based telescopes showed us another physics computers mathematics has come together in a beautiful confluence that has allowed us to recognize what before was unmeasurable next the probe called da Vinci explores a puddle and discovers a micro universe but life forms on Darwin come in many sizes and some of them are lethal one Darwin for probes DaVinci and Newton are backed up by a menagerie of mini probes within minutes their sensors detect a mysterious presence recently some astronomers have said bah humbug the conditions for life are extremely rare for example you need a large moon to stabilise the orbit of the earth or else the Earth tumbles in its orbit you need a large Jupiter to clean out the comets and meteors of the solar system you have to have so many Goldilocks zones the Earth has to be just right for this just right for that then perhaps we are alone well I don't think so because if you look at the number of stars in the heavens perhaps 10 billion trillion stars that are within the range of our telescopes and you realize that half of them perhaps half of them have solar systems around them and if you play the odds you come up with a realization that perhaps there are billions billions of planets in our universe that have conditions that are compatible with life as we know it Leo's first assignment is to recon a region studded by tall mysterious gourd-like structures before he can take them on he's got to get himself together Darwyn fours atmosphere is drenched in water vapor a free source of hydrogen which leo converts to inflate a large bag on his back it's covered with photosynthetic solar panels the array turns a green hue as an algae like material within the cells generates energy from Darwin fours two sons Leos bird-like head contains two sensitive camera eyes his arms are simulated plastic muscle tipped with sensors and a manipulator that can pluck a petal off an alien Daisy thrusters on pivots push him along at a top speed of 30 miles an hour Leo senses movement in his side scanning radar but it can investigate the source of the movement his artificial intelligence isn't programmed for it at this point Leo's first priority is finding his yellow-tailed brother while physically identical Ike and Leo were created with complimentary personalities Hayek is safety conscious Leo is inquisitive and programmed to take risks they're artificial IQs are roughly those of four-year-old children their missions can be redirected by the von braun's supercomputers at any time assisting them are mini probes like this spider it's designed to explore places too tight or dangerous for Leo and I keep the data they collect is transmitted to the von Braun for analysis camera disks serve as high speed Scouts the saucers can be retrieved and recharged radical changes in Darwin fours weather could tear the probes to shreds so I can Leo deploy an early warning system small weather balloons monitor the atmosphere it's now time for the last diagnostic check should I curly o confront intelligent life they'll present a calling card in the form of a hologram number comprehension images of our galaxy solar system the earth and the human species are offered as an interstellar handshake Leo has sent something again von braun determines that leon i-car fully prepared to explore the bizarre structures that surround them scientists will name them gourd trees 15 stories high they stand on a matrix of root like stilts von braun's computers determined the stilts could only support such a huge mass if the gourds were hollow or filled with some type of spongy material but Leo and Ike are not programmed to immediately study objects like the gourd trees some astrobiologists predict the only alien life-forms we may stumble upon are microorganisms and the probes are designed to study them leo is programmed to search for them in the first puddle of water he finds in micro cosmos of single and multiple cell life-forms filled his sensors but Leo is about to discover that life on Darwin for comes in many sizes and many faces this life-form is roughly the size of a t-rex but instead of a roar it directs a single wave of sonar at Leo and Ike Darwin fors dealt the mission a wild card the probes are in the middle of an extraterrestrial Serengeti and it's a whole new game discovery that Darwin for is not just a planet capable of sustaining life 4head life at a simple level on it in fact had entire complex interactive multicellular biosphere comparable to what we see on earth is one of the greatest discoveries B grade is discovering the history of mankind we can almost be certain that life that we find on another planet will have evolved along lines differently from the life on Earth the arrow tongue is a remarkable large predator as far as as we can tell in terms of the land living predators on Darwin for its largest one we've got a record so when we look at Darwin for and look at an organism like an arrow tone and then we look at earth and our organism like a Tyrannosaurus Rex we've got two different evolutionary pathways starting out with different raw materials under perhaps similar circumstances and we end up with these two organisms that in some ways are very very similar and in other ways are extremely different we really need to examine the entire food chain on this planet from the very smallest animals up to the largest to get a sense of what is what is earth in Darwin for have in common when we left Earth we would not know anything really about Darwin for we would know some very broad things but we wouldn't know of the surface was covered with water we wouldn't know if the surface was very marshy or very strange and if you send a probe that can just fly over everything and fly very slowly which a lighter-than-air pro do then you can cover all the bases pretty well the intelligence of Ike in leo is very much like a small child intellectually the child might know to do certain things and not to do others but in some cases may need to be reinforced a child doesn't know necessarily not to touch the burner of a stove and I can Leo may not be aware of all the possible threats in its environment and would have to learn from those next Leo and Ike entered the kill zone of a power predator on Darwin for an Alien Hunter that pegs its prey with sonar a high-speed chase begins on Darwin for an alien planet where life and death will turn on a dime and as night falls alien life forms create a bioluminescent light show if we realize that there's other life at a higher order of multicellular organization of of even you know adaptation to environment I think that would rock profoundly our boat and you know in one sense it may it may actually lead to a greater realization that we have to do more exploring because our own little backyard is not as isolated and protected as we think it is and I think will lead to amazing opportunities by learning about that other life we may better recognize our own limits our own possibilities it's eyesight maybe less you fall with that large life on earth so using sonar could be a more accurate means of locating objects around it like Leo and Ike splotches of bioluminescence cover the creatures back astrobiologists could call this creature the arrow tongue the RO tongue determines the probes pose no threat and turns to tensions elsewhere the gyro sprinter is a two legged vegetarian about twice the size of an African antelope arrow tongue reveals itself as an ambush predator capable of great bursts of speed as predator and prey hits speeds of 40 miles per hour the probes left in the dust aiight watches a camera disc to follow the action the arrow tongue commands the road like a semi-truck of the gyro sprinter corners on a dime night falls on Darwin for scattered bands of bioluminescence rake the surface like some kind of alien landscape lighting possibly it's a form of communication on Darwin for but I can Leo ignore the light show and push on towards their prime objective their first priority is to scour the landing site for Balboa the loss probe to confirm its fate the Darwin mission now depends on just two intrepid probes with the intelligence of Preschoolers images of the Balboa and of large life-forms taken by Ike and Leo are evaluated by the von Braun it's supercomputers now make important adjustments in the programming of the two probes the probes are directed to split up Leo will hunt for Darwin's larger creatures while Ike explores ecosystems and life-forms that resemble plants as Leo's quest begins he flies over a geothermal vent here he'll top off his gas bag with some hydrogen from the mist but even join a pit-stop a good probe keeps exploring life on Darwin for never stops either in the midst of this volcanic caldron Leo finds microorganisms that resemble some found in hot springs on earth as Leo looks for big game his twin probe Ike explores a small isolated forest the floor is covered with stickball plants part sponge part virus giant molds called Darwin Tomatoes rise in the dense soil then like sensors suddenly direct him skyward called trunk suckers they cling to these plaque bark trees sucking nourishment from the nutrient-rich layers just beneath the tough outer shape it's here that the mission reaches another milestone after seeing life everywhere Mikey gets his first glimpse of death on Darwin for but death from what the arrow tongue is a very again interesting organism it has a lot of similarities to some of our dinosaurs doesn't have the maneuverability of some of its prey items a formidable high-speed predator it's an ambush predator of yours to sneak up on it's on its prey and then take them down quickly a very high efficiency predator very highly evolved very interesting and gyro sprinter is a very probable animal when we look at animals on earth this is an animal that needed to get away from predators was running in a loping manner beat things out 100 million years earlier it's predator got faster it got faster and tavella developed this amazing sense of balance the large feet for gripping and handling on the turf looking at the shoulder girdle and the group hip girdle it appears that this animal may have evolved from a four-legged animal it appears we have a fusion here of the four limbs of fusion of the hind limbs truly extraordinary something we would never predict from life on earth one of the things about the plants on Darwin four is that superficially they seem kind of bizarre and yet when we look at plants on earth we find that there's a lot of really bizarre plants on earth - it's just that they're not common one of the things that we might ask about a plaque bark tree is first of all is it transporting nutrients and water and we're guessing that it is but we might also ask where does it transport them we didn't tell the probes to go checking but we can learn about this from looking at the behaviors of the trunk suckers they're very similar to some sorts of birds woodpeckers that we have here on earth they fly they land on the trunk of the tree they prop themselves up with their tail and they're taking fluid from from the tree this tells us some things about the trunk suckers where they're getting their energy but also is informative about the plants and what they're doing so trunk suckers are informative about both plants and M next a herd of phantoms stampede across Darwin for and Leo attempts contact with a crouching alien on an alien planet Ike has discovered forest creatures dead from unknown causes meanwhile a sonic King ends a conversation and Leo goes offline on Darwin for if you look at the diversity what species look like on this planet nature has come up with better things than our best science fiction artists and people try to conceive what a foreign species would look like some of these things that come out of the deep ocean just absolutely amazing creatures just the diversity from the same starting materials of DNA and genes by mixing and matching these almost any physical appearance as possible for the past three days the Darwin Reconnaissance orbiters tracked a large object moving rapidly across the surface Leo has been ordered to investigate what mission scientists call an object of interest as it turns out the object of interest is not an object at all it's a bunch of them leo locks onto a herd of creatures called lumps the closer Leo gets to the heard the Moroz attention turns from motion to sound hunts have nostrils and lungs but they also inflate secondary air sacs on both sides of their bodies months are named after the sound they make when they exhale through their dorsal vents like buffaloes on earth the aunts our competitor possibly fighting for domination of the her something spooks the herd Leo senses movement nearby but can't get a fix his sensors are simultaneously scanning in all directions looking for the strongest signal the newest input comes through Leo's microphones a pair of bladder horns compete bioluminescent antlers are displayed to scare off opponents the racket from this Joule might have spooked the odds Leo interprets the back-and-forth bellowing as a form of communication perhaps this alien grump is smarter than it looks Leo deploys the earth communication screen like a greeting card it's the best hello we can offer them but if the bladder horn is saying anything it's probably telling Leo to get lost the bladder horn cuts and runs as Leo's sensors detect another disturbance for the next 24 hours LaVon Ron makes several attempts to communicate with Leo but gets no reply a grim dispatch rides a laser beam to earth probe da Vinci has gone offline cause unknown I can Leo's programming would be different so that they would respond differently you have a chance of one of them responding in a situation that may not be the best response to that situation may put the probe in danger by having the two probes carry separate software you have a chance to have one survive where another one might fail the ins are interesting in that they occur in our groups this is one of the Darwin 4 animals that we see where there is the evolution of sociality social groups which is also very important and involved evidently many times on earth these animals are interacting each other in a number of sophisticated ways probably both established pecking order within the herd and even though we're not sure what's a female what's a male in the US at this point certainly the kind of interactions we're seeing these animals are very similar to males fighting for females that we see on earth among herding animals the bladder horn is a very interesting animal for a variety of reasons one thing that's a bit unexpected is that the bladder horn is the only animal we've seen so far that in fact appears to use sound as a Mae your means of communication it's taking some of the features we would expect to see that is display features that would be used in competition we see these animals interacting front to front probably these these horns with the bladders are fundamental in the way they interact with each other next light confronts a forest vampire and a living earthquake rocks the surface of Darwin on an alien planet a forest encounter is a near disaster for Ike when we do make contact with an intelligent life-form they may be descended from predators take a look at our animal kingdom we have foxes lions and tigers with stereo eyes to the front and then we have rabbits and deers with eyes to the side that's because the Predators have to zero in on the prey they are they have cunning they have stealth they know how to ambush well if you are rabid all we have to do is know how to run so which is more intelligent the Fox or the rabbit well obviously the Fox is more intelligent than the rabbit so chances are well we meet intelligent life-forms are not a space they're going to be descended from predators unless he resumes transmitting again Leo is virtually an invisible dot on a vast alien landscape Leo's twin probe Ike soldiers on he finds another pocket forest the living remains of woodlands that thrived until Darwin's oceans evaporated and the climate changed as I begins to scan the trees his sensors pick up something new lurking on a high branch of a plaque bark tree scientists will call it the dagger wrist for good reason one Ike launches a camera disc the dagger risk is not interested in Posey the dagger wrists four limbs sink so deep the nutrient-rich SAP leads to the surface Ickes not programmed to approach something this aggressive that was Leo's job the study of plant life is likes mission until von Braun orders otherwise finding water is statistically the most efficient method of finding vegetation like scans a carpet of moss at the edge of a deep water marsh but what lies beyond it is even more intriguing like surveys three odd mounds covered with saplings but appearances are deceiving on Darwin for rising five stories into the air is a massive paradox the growth back growth packs bury themselves alive for long periods of time they're not hibernating they're feeding Grove backs absorb nutrients from the soil through the skin of their under bodies when the grounds depleted they move on in search of new feeding areas groves of trees sprout from these immense creatures the Grove back provides them water from its spongy tissue the trees inject sugars into the Grove back just enough juice to jumpstart these Titanic walkabouts on Darwin for a burst of data kicks von braun's computers into hyperdrive Mike's brother Leo has come back online if I could Leo were to come back after having gone offline the first thing you'd want to know is why they need to send you some information what caused the reboot anything they could tell you as well as if possible have saved some data from just before the problem so that you'd be able to see what was going on when the problem occurred and then their response to it so that you could start trying to figure out what had happened a grove back is the most massive animal that we have a record of and garland is tremendous sized supports don't my own theory that I put together on these animals and I think shared by some other scientists they have a much lower body density the size of our Grove back far exceeds the the mass of any of our dinosaurs we have records of living on earth my first impression on the dagger wrist is that this is a very large praying mantis it has a limb configuration that is reminiscent of the four limbs of a praying mantis although the dagger is uses them to climb trees which was very interesting moving by gliding is very interesting this is a rather large animals the membranes involved in producing the lift the gliding appear rather small we have to remember that the gravity in Darwin for is less than than earth and we also have to remember we're gliding through a thicker atmosphere so the dynamics are going to be different people ask me all the time you know why should we care about discovering new things if it isn't applicable to us if it doesn't put food on the table or gas in the car why should we care and all I can all I can say is that you know if you're not curious enough to want to know the answer to anything you can know anything we can discover then you're not you're not human next Pike solves a gruesome mystery in the forests and the wide wings of aerial hunters cast their shadows across Darwin for the von Braun has picked up a signal from the loss probe Leo iock is sent on a mission to find his twin but his search has barely begun when icun counters a pair of Darwin fours greatest predators on this alien planet I think statistics would say life is a cosmic imperative I personally believe from all the observations that NASA has offered humanity for the last 50 years suggests that the environments could be there we now recognize potential habitats on Mars today that you could insert earth life into and have it potentially be sustained this is amazing 25 years ago we might not have said that and then the question is why don't we see it all around us and I think that begs the bigger question do we really know what we see all around us we are just taking those baby steps into that cosmic ocean with a few elegant robots and a few human voyages we've barely left the cradle as von Braun tries to get a fix on leo his twin probe Ike moves deeper into the foothills of Darwin for like groves of pine on earth the pocket forests of Darwin four are covered with colonies of passive organisms that feed on the moist spongy floor as Ike continues to explore the Darwin Reconnaissance Orbiter detects a sudden atmospheric disturbance while like sensors clock the wind at only 30 miles per hour the super dense atmosphere gives it the kinetic punch of a young hurricane mike has no choice but to head for the ceiling to get out of the storm like fires a salvo of weather balloons to sample the currents of the unexplored upper atmosphere unlike the earth where storms are fed by great oceans Darwin foras airspace is a shifting maze of thermals rising from hot spots created by the two suns the power of passing storms present a new and potentially lethal threat to the mission byuk is little more than a fragile sack of hydrogen on a planet where even the weather seems predatory but for now it's back to the business of discovery likes motion sensors pick up activity within the Grove not on the ground but in the air the link between a deadly hunter its prey and the plaque part tree suddenly unfolds the dark king of the pocket forest fills in the missing pieces of a predatory puzzle trunk suckers feed on the sap from gashes made by climbing dagger wrists hikes data confirms the dagger wrists extract the predigested material from the corpses of their prey a gruesome but energy-efficient survival strategy on Darwin for the weather on Darwin for is puzzling 130 days have passed since I began his survey and never once has it rained as far as accessories can determine darwin's surface orders flow from underground aquifers and springs that might explain why farce can only exist in small pockets like takes his survey to a high meadow where his side scanning radar detects some new blips the sonar ping throws a herd of literal Lopes into a patentee like the arrow tongue these aerial killers hunt with sonar no creature on Darwin four is safe from the lamps of the flying skewer the lanch itself is hollow and as strong as titanium running through its center is a razor spike tongue that bores through the toughest high helpless prior killed and drained of flutes scavengers called jet daughters feed on the rest the skewers are remarkable a large animal for flight the fact that they're not using their their wings or air falls in order to fly they seem to be checked repulsed using the skewer to impact a prey item and then lift it is highly unexpected that the forces involved there are tremendous in a flying animal if you suddenly attach all that weight on the front that shifts the center of balance of the animal which is very critical for flying which is almost certainly why they almost go straight up after they impale a prey item because the center of gravity with the center of way for the animal shifted so far forward dropping of the prey item and having another one swooping and catch it in the air is again very unusual kind of reminded me of what we see when we throw large hunks of fish up to frigate Birds when you're out fishing the way they fight and interact bark we'd want to know is there competition here or is this cooperative behavior are these related individuals of all sorts of interesting questions about skewers next a giant takes a step in the wrong direction and Ike enters a deadly matrix on Darwin for probe DaVinci attempts to get a fix on his crash site meanwhile like his twin discover size is no guarantee of survival on alien planet one piece of evidence that suggests a probability of primitive forms of life appearing may be reasonably high that life seems to have appeared on earth shortly after fever cooled sufficiently for life to be possible if life was very unlikely one might have expected life not to have appeared until late in the 10 billion years or so that the earth has to live on Darwin for the mission encounters giant life-forms and super sized animal organisms all supported by a dense humid atmosphere and a lower gravity that on earth ruling the skies our Falcon like predators called skewers eriell life-forms that travel and hunt in pairs skewers maneuver by changing the shape of their 50 foot wingspans but it's not their wings that actually propel them skewers create methane gas internally and combusted in four jet light pods literal lobes defend themselves by scattered in all directions skewers are forced to choose only one target Darwin's aerial predator is literally knocked from the sky but by what high above the foothills of Darwin's equatorial mountain chain hikes sensors detect unusual bursts of energy a swarm of scavengers called jet daughters stray into a kill zone what looks like a colony of oversized mushrooms is a deadly maze likes programmed to gather more data to learn how it works the answer must lie within the organisms themselves but I can't risk frying his circuit boards a mini probe is the only expendable option the crawler will look for the power source from below acting like a light switch the crawler has closed a fatal gap between two electric charges like sensors pick up a familiar signature just walking on Darwin for is a hazardous undertaking even a five-story Grove back must watch it step a colony of beach quills launch an assault on a careless growth package the quills penetrate deep into the creatures hide and deliver a fatal dose of neurotoxins the beach quills consumed the Grove back alive far from the killing field another struggle continues in a remote corner of Darwin for leo has no fix on his location to find his position he must launch a camera disk to clue in to his surroundings Leo's last transmission allows von Braun's super computers to plot his location Pike is roughly 200 miles away from Leo as he continues his survey of the foothills Badlands encrusted with ancient lava fields are covered with lichens and low vegetation like sensors now lock on to higher life-forms like alien ghosts they seem to come from everywhere but these nimble creatures all follow the same scent on earth we have wolves on Darwin for they're called prong heads one can look at the electrified plants here's this thing that looks like a plant and yet it's zapping things out of the sky and you sort of wonder what is it doing with the things that it zaps is it simply frightening them off is it killing them and eventually eating them and we're not seeing that and so it gets back to the question of is this a plant or is this an animal but the plant and animal distinction is one that's very peculiar to the way that humans look at life because we live on the surface of Earth and as it turns out at this stage in the Earth's history there's only two big lineages of living organisms in the land the plants they're green they're photosynthetic the animals they run around they eat things and so we see that as a very important distinction it shouldn't be a surprise to us at all to find our organism when Darwin for any place else that combines aspects of what we might think our plant and animal now if we look at Darwin for we're going to look for evidence of both how these animals developed Lokomotiv pathways how they developed efficiency at locomotion predator-prey interactions if we look at the attack of the beech quills on the growth back we come to conclusion very quickly that this animal must been subjected to a very toxic poison perhaps similar to that produced by cone shells on earth today which is one of the most potent toxins we know we're cone shell can very quickly kill a large fish and then consume it one of the things we would want to know if that was going on is to go back and look at one of these places after the beetles have killed the Grove back to see what's happened next are they turning into the next stage of their life so there's a lot we want to know to be able to sort out all these possibilities next in his search for Leo I must now cross a blue sea with a dark secret Mike finds the weather on Darwin for is as dangerous as the planets predatory life forms life forms when we go to another planet and looking for life-forms I think the first thing we need to do is have a definition of what a life form is we certainly have a definition or we have a number of definitions of what people would like to think life forms are based on earth based on what we have here on earth there may be life forms composed of many other molecules that that don't exist here on earth but but before we can actually call something in a life form we have to have a definition as to what it is gyro sprinters are fast and evasive creatures the prawn heads know how to run interception like pack predators on earth not every hunt ends in success but the discovery of cooperative hunting is a major breakthrough the inhabitants of Darwin for our more evolved than anticipated artificial intelligence computers on the vonbraun have decided to do something about Leo as a result the protocols that control Ike's behavior are reprioritized the mike has ordered to break off his survey immediately he's now instructed to assume greater risks his mission now is to find leo the journey will take him across a vast unexplored region of Darwin for based on data from the Reconnaissance Orbiter Darwin's oceans evaporated millions of years ago transforming the air into a dense oxygen-rich blanket when the oceans vanished they left behind a bad land of twisted spires over the eons some have grown a mile high the spires are the accumulated remains of billions of tons of ocean salts and minerals ayuk identifies a new object of interest like nothing yet seen on darwin for the curved formations don't mesh with the environment perhaps they were made by some creature yet to be discovered while Darwin lost its oceans it still maintains a sea roughly the size of Texas but what looked like water from space doesn't hold up under closer examination the water's edge looks like a thick sheet of gelatin surrounded by great spires of salt I can't penetrate the surface it's like a waterbed teeming with life what looks like a sea is actually a vast colony a matrix of symbiotic life-forms they evolved as the oceans evaporated trapping sea water within their transparent membranes the von Braun has calculated that crossing the Amidah C is the quickest way to reach the site of Leo's last transmission but halfway there Mike spots a radical change in the surface texture the amoebic see suddenly behaves like a gigantic predator that preys on low-flying game the Darwin Reconnaissance Orbiter issues a sudden storm alert wall of debris is closing in at high speed likes one chance to survive they'd already be out of reach what you see around the amoebic see assaults and goons which are the remnants of the ocean that once covered Darwin for as that ocean receded what happened was extremely ingenious the life in that ocean developed its own seal to protect the loss of the last piece of the ocean and that life covered remnant of the ocean is what is the amoebic sea Darwin for is a planet that doesn't have a lot of water whereas here on the earth we have a lot of water vapour available to drive storms and the water has a special property of being able to store and release energy so that's how we drive the storms on the earth and Darwin for though with little water you end up instead with storms being driven by temperature differences so there's incredible storms we see over the amoebic sea are driven by differences in temperature that occur between differences in absorption of sunlight between the salt dunes and the darkness of the sea the behavior we see with the prawn heads is very reminiscent what we see with a wolf pack and that you have animals flanking out different areas going very slow and then certainly kind of corralling the prey into one spot where they can finish it off it is very suggestive of a coordinated hunting strategy in terms of pack hunting there needs to be greater intelligence to coordinate a pack hunting behavior such as we see and lobes or we predict might have happened among the drove missile is a raptor dinosaurs you have to have a fairly large brain capacity however these are still instinctive behaviors in these organisms after all is said and done I would hope that when we discover life and out of space what we take with us is the fact that life is precious life is so precious it took billions of years of a complex series of accidents accidents to create life on the planet Earth we have great oceans liquid water oceans perhaps the most precious substance in the universe liquid water and what do we do with it we pollute it we dump all our garbage in the liquid oceans so I would hope that we come away with our understanding realizing how pressure it is that we exist how prescient is that life can form and grow and that we have to protect it a perfect storm strikes Darwin for and Mike meets the awesome monarchs of the amoebic see next the largest denizens of Darwin for guide Icke from danger on valium clatter single-cell life is the key event in evolution in my view there certainly wouldn't be any macro life on Darwin or any other planet if it didn't start with single-cell life so if we didn't start with micro organisms single cells that eventually worked in colonies and then work out to form networks eventually multicellular organisms there would be no larger life that would be visible to the eye there's a commonality of life that we build from the same building blocks but we put great emphasis because of our visual acuity on how things look and if they look different or not we put much more significance on that than if they have radically different metabolism probe Isaac Newton is blasted by a cyclone of salt and caustic minerals like could have run from the storm by rising above but his new directive is to assume greater risk in the search for Leo crossing the amoebic sea is the shortest path like sensors detect a huge disturbance but it's not the store it's the biggest life-form ever encountered anywhere the sea Strider is seven stories tall now I could text normal the Flyers seem to orbit the Strider attracted to an energy source just beneath its mouth less head the Striders are not just walking on the surface they're taking chunks of it along with them the storm ends as suddenly as it began the Striders are heading the same direction ayuk must take to reach leo so I will tag along and gather data on the alien Giants astrobiologist could find that the Striders eat from mouths at the bottom of their giant feet trudging back and forth across the sea on a removable feast something's disturbed the Striders but quickly vanishes from mic sensors the Flyers are nymph like young deceased drivers they have a relationship to the seeds well the far shore is finally in sight here the peaceful Giants of Darwin for make a u-turn based on Leo's transmissions to the vonbraun Mike will follow his trail like a robotic bloodhound within hours Mike nears one of Leo's last reported locations the unheard hasn't strayed far from where Leo first encountered them an adult makes ruts in the ground perhaps the patterns found by the spires were created by a herd and like this one Eike spots a metallic glint that could only come from leo see Striders immense size and extreme height suggests that these animals are less dense than the animals were familiar with on earth to carry such an immense weight around on two legs immense volume we can't justify that with the same kind of densities that we see in animals on earth that's just mechanically impossible one of the other things that's kind of surprising we're seeing these in a storm they're very large organisms how do they keep from being blown over especially if they're light enough that they don't sink to the bottom of the sea so there's a lot of things about the sea strider we'd like to know more about the science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke said that there either is or is not intelligent life and out of space however either thought is frightening however I tend to look at as exhilarating I tend to believe that when we make contact with in another intelligent life form we will perhaps have a tremendous bonanza of scientific information so much cultural exchange that will be involved as a scientist I look forward to the day when we make contact with other intelligent life forms in the universe so rather than being frightened I think we'd approach the idea with open arms with open mind realizing that this could be a turning point in the history of the human race a clue to Leo's disappearance reveals evidence of an alien intelligence on Darwin for next on an alien planet Pike discovers clues to Leo's disappearance and he's caught in the sights of a skewer our first forays beyond the solar system to the nearest nearby planets will be robotic they ought to be robotic it makes sense and we will be the bystanders much more so than we are today with our robotic emissaries but that's okay because it's my belief that as we do that we will have trained ourselves for those smart machines to act more like us not to be us they never will but they'll act more like us in the sense that they'll observe mine the data understand the anomalies the excitement the excitement find the sweet spots and tell us that at the limits of the speed of physics the speed of light and as they go they'll open the doors in our eyes to how we may go it's not the camera disk that stumps Ike's computer its what lays around it like is unable to determine if something actually built this site Pyke detects motion as he heads for Leo's final transmission point the bladder horn still defends the same piece of turf but Leo's nowhere in sight there's no place to run and no time to hide from Darwin's deadliest predator the probe is not equipped to evade predators like the skewer but that's not a problem now like sensors pick up a new life-form and he follows the signal the skewer has disappeared the trail ends at the base of a steep mountain face where does it whatever killed the skewer has managed to lift all 50 feet of it up a sheer cliff Eike senses no movement no transmissions coming from his twin probe leo mic senses movement all around suddenly movement is detected from Leo's direction being life itself on another planet would would be the most breathtaking the emotional charge that scientists could ever possibly have life on earth could have turned out very very different except for specific events that were sort of random in nature probably the best known of which was the asteroid that hit the earth at the end of the Cretaceous period caused the extinction of all the large dinosaurs without that single event the organisms that survive to the present day would have been very very different from the ones that we see and so to the extent that in a planet like Darwin for we find things that resemble organisms on earth that's astonishing to us because it tells us that there's something more than the luck of the draw there's some reason they look that way they just didn't turn out that way I think just knowing we're not alone at the even at the cellular level will change our view of our own our own neighborhood and on beyond the universe but then the question will be well how are we related to that are we all the same stuff I mean Sagan said so well we're all made of starstuff and we are Mike is about to make contact with humanity's greatest discovery next on the alien planet bike attempts to communicate with life forms that seem intelligent the octopus has eyes very weak eyes it has tentacles by which it can manipulate the environment but it has no culture it cannot transmit information from generation to generation but if you could breed the octopus for millions of years perhaps you could read octopus with the capability of speech the capability of handing down information and perhaps even a race another race of intelligent beings on the planet Earth so the bottom line is why should an alien life-form look just like us this alien could have easily destroyed the probe instead it waits for Ike to make the next move when Ike projects numeric symbols the alien seems ready to respond part one is a test to determine if this alien creature can conceptualize and is therefore intelligent hike flashes three symbols the alien responds correctly with four flashes this response triggers ike to deliver the rest of the message when a third creature closes in punches a camera disc to assess the threat 160 days into the Darwin for mission the last recorded image of Ike and Leo is sent to the von Braun computers play and replay the data for the next 72 hours but interpretation of this profound event is beyond the scope of its artificial intelligence software to evaluate the full significance of our first extraterrestrial contact requires human intelligence after decades of research the pieces begin to fall together scientists call the creatures vo sapiens life-forms with intelligence possibly similar to that of early man neo sabians appear to be highly mobile and airborne they navigate with organic thrusters and a large delicate bag of methane for lift the EO sapiens may see the camera disc launched by the probes as threats this misunderstanding may have triggered the destruction of Leo as the simulated mission to this alien planet ends the questions it raises are as immense as the universe will we ever find life beyond our planet what must we do to reach it and how can we prepare ourselves psychologically to deal with the discovery of alien life-forms finding life beyond Earth it really is just going to be a matter of persistence we'll probably have to send a lot of probes we're just beginning you know that the world and the universe is about to open up to you you were just slowly waking up out of our cave for God's sakes this is the best time in the next hmm you know two or three hundred thousand years will be fantastic great to be alive you think discovering life and another planet might be one of the most fantastic things for humans if we want to find advanced intelligent life our best bet is to listen for radio signals like the SETI project interstellar distances are cool earth firster travel to more than the closest stars if we want to explore the galaxy so we'd better send robots but we may not live long enough to hear back from him we find life on another planet we're going to first of all know that we're not the center of the universe anymore I think it's important that we understand our place in the universe I think it's terribly important that in so doing we come full circle to respect the world that we're on and to understand the distances and what the universe is all about we will know that if the conditions for life are present then life can arise at multiple sites in the universe and that we now live in a living universe that we're ready to explore I think the revolution that science is giving us as we look at our solar system in the accessible universe will continue to unfold when we get the next generation telescopes up there we will not only see in direct evidence of other Earth's but will see the earlier time of the universe and have better abilities to understand how the universe the galaxies that they populated came to be you have seen nothing yet because it's only going to get better in that zone that gap between science fiction and science fact is just going to come together and you know I've never met a science fact that couldn't be seen as interesting as some of the best of science fiction and I think we're going to see that zone blurring together as we continue the quest for life Thomas Huxley the great biologist in the last century said that perhaps one of the noblest achievements of science and philosophy is to discover our true role in the universe who are we where do we fit in the larger scheme of things that he thought was a central question unifying philosophy science and art and today I think we may be able to answer that question because we are on the verge of perhaps the greatest breakthrough in the history of science and that is the discovery of other life-forms in space you

Channel: Aaron Maynard

Views: 1,421,764

Rating: 4.6531825 out of 5

Keywords: Stephen, Hawking, Aliens, Planet, ufo's, NASA, misson, mars, moon, Darwin, military, science, flying, alien, space, documentary, weapons, geographic, earth, wildlife, nature, gardening, animation, environment, off-road, vehicles, warfare, outdoors, wilderness, television, series, shuttle, universe, predator, area, secret, outer, galaxy, invasion, astronomy, apollo, duty, call, roswell, planets, atm2770, the_illusionist, the, illusionist

Id: fJIgcihiw2Y

Length: 94min 0sec (5640 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 23 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/UnorignalUser]

I remember this from when I was a kid.

[u/Reedstilt]

If you're interested in this, I also recommend the book it's based on; Expedition by Wayne Douglas Barlowe.

[u/zacharypamela]

I love how, in the end, the probes activate long-dormant technology under the surface that causes a massive devastating tsunami and torrential rains.

[u/Altair_ShepardN7]

I remember watching this when it came out, I was like 8 or 9. I thought this shit was real and was soooo confused. I think in that same year Discovery Channel also released several other movie "documentaries" - one about Yellowstone blowing up and another about some people that discovered the remnants of a dragon. My brain was so confused that year, took me a while to figure out that they were just movies.

[u/Chris_in_Lijiang]

7.3 rating on IMDB

[u/[deleted]]

I liked how Naomi used a small flying orb drone to scan the structures. I love mini drones that act like a swarm of bugs.

[u/31337hacker]

I watched this when it first aired and I was fascinated. Thanks for posting this.

[u/L-Cell]

I spent years trying to remember this stupid film!!!!!!

[u/halfwaykf]

Thank you! I saw the end of this as a kid and always wanted to watch the rest