ANOTHER EARTH: Alien Planet - Space Documentary HD

be able to identify the next earth astronomers suspect there could be tens of billions of rocky earth-like planets in the Milky Way places where perhaps life has gotten a foothold but life as we know it requires water how can scientists possibly find this miracle substance on planets light-years away you it's the same water that formed clouds of the earlier four billion years ago and every organism that has ever existed on earth has used this single ration of water as the biochemical powerhouse that keeps it alive on earth all life requires liquid water to grow and reproduce it's the common ecological requirement for life liquid water is just so good for getting evolution going molecules can dissolve in the water actually interact with each other for more complex chains it does it with charge there's positive charges and negative charges separated between the hydrogen and the oxygen in h2o those charges break apart the hydrocarbons the carbon-based molecules that persist everywhere in nature now that's very rare hardly any other liquids do that so liquid water is a natural starting place when you look out into the universe and say what planets could possibly have life to understand how much liquid water is out there astronomers must first calculate how common water is in all its forms amazingly they find it everywhere they look water is incredibly common in its gaseous form we see water vapor filling the space between the stars we see it in clouds of material that are actually forming new stars and planets right now since water is a fundamental building block of stars and planets exoplanet worlds must surely have it in abundance but if you're looking for life you need to find liquid water and plenty up to find it astronomers take their cue from a fairy tale 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 cold I was just right when it comes to cooking up life like a porridge you need to have an environment that's not too hot not too cold just right and traditionally we look for that at a certain distance around a star at first astronomers based this magical distance known as the Goldilocks zone on the Earth's orbit around the Sun but as they found more and more exoplanets they've had to re-evaluate the boundaries from liquid water there isn't a single distance it depends on the brightness of your parents a dim star you need to be closer hot star very bright need to be farther away scientists have calculated just how many rocky planets may lie within the Goldilocks zone of their stars it comes out to over 30 billion potentially watery words even more remarkably recent discoveries have shown us it's not just planets that can bask in the warmth of the Goldilocks zone there may be moons painted blue with oceans too most of the planets were finding our big jupiter-sized planets however a lot of them were are orbiting roughly where the earth is orbiting the Sun so even if the planet that we're finding can't support life it could have a moon a moon with an atmosphere that could support life and the biggest of these rocky moons may resemble our home there could be billions upon billions of XA means out there and even perhaps countless paradises teeming with life David kipping searches for exomoons by looking for double dips in the brightness of distant stars we look for XA means in a very similar way to the way that we look for planets by looking for them transit their host star now if that planet had a moon then we should expect to have one big dip due to the planet and then one smaller depth either to the left or to the right due to the new habitable exomoons may play host to one of the most spectacular sights in the universe imagine a warm rocky world just like our own with oceans mountains but in the sky a massive ringed planet with a fiery sister moon shooting hot magma into space [Music] exoplanets and now the vast potential of exomoons in a galaxy filled with the possibilities for life but a rocky surface and liquid oceans may not be enough biology needs the breath of life air backlit by the Sun a halo appears around the earth a pale blue ring of light our atmosphere and we oh it's everything the Earth's atmosphere provides the gases that fuel the biochemistry of advanced life but it also protects the oceans from the full fury of the sun's rays preventing the water from boiling away into space without an atmosphere there would be no wind no rain no fresh water and probably no life atmospheres are absolutely essential for life take a look at the planet Earth and you realize that just like the skin of the Apple the skin of the Apple preserves the Apple well the atmosphere of our planet preserves the oceans and makes possible the presidents of life as we know it [Music] scientists in search of living exoplanets hope to detect the thin gassy envelope that should surround these alien worlds to do it they're turning to the power of rainbows in the same way that water splits Sun lights into a rainbow astronomers use instruments to split starlight into a band of colours called a spectrum it's one of the oldest tricks and science and one of the most revealing several hundred years ago scientists first began to take something like a prism and put it in front of their telescope so he started taking the light from stars like the Sun and actually spreading it out into a spectrum and what they saw was kind of surprising so instead of seeing andreen continuous rainbow of light they saw that rainbow but they saw these dark lines superimposed on top each chemical elements of the stars atmosphere absorbs different parts of the spectrum creating signature dark bands for instance up the top there's a pair of lines in the yellow part of the spectrum which are due to sodium like a DNA profile for stars spectral analysis has taught us almost everything we know about stars today but these same lines may hide a marvelous secret the faint signal of alien atmospheres and perhaps also alien life so the challenge is that these planets are very small and very faint so we can't actually go and directly measure the light emitted from the planet the same way that we go and measure this lovely spectrum for the Sun instead we have to rely on more indirect methods so one indirect way of doing that is to wait until the planet passes in front of the star when the light of a star passes through an EXO atmosphere the gases that surround the planet should stamp their own faint lines on the star's spectrum so as we watched the light from the stars transmitted through that atmosphere its atmosphere is going to act like a little filter so part of the Starlight is gonna pass through that atmosphere and we're gonna see that in printing extra lines on it which are due to the planet's atmosphere so that change in the spectrum tells us something about the properties the planet's atmosphere [Music] the one chemical astronomers most want to find is oxygen because only life can produce enough oxygen to be easily detected it's a so-called bio signature the race is now on to find bio signatures in the atmospheres of rocky exoplanets and while some groups look for rainbows indirectly others are tackling the challenge head-on alright Ben Oppenheimer is part of a team trying to take direct photographs of exoplanets using massive ground-based telescopes we're within minutes of taking our first long exposure and I hope it's good the greatest challenge to imaging exoplanets is the blinding light of the parent star which shines tens of millions of times brighter than the planet itself the trick is to stop the light of the star from entering the telescope sensors by blocking it using a series of masks and lenses called a coronagraph right now we're standing right underneath the telescope's primary mirror and the light comes through a hole in the middle of the mirror and goes into this crazy box here which is full of optics motors sensors and electronics that all allow us to precisely control the star light that's coming through the system using state-of-the-art software they manipulate the coronagraph to black out the unwanted light under good conditions we can actually carve dark holes into this image of the star so that we can see really faint things in those regions coronagraphs presents an intriguing problem though errors within the optics produce tiny flares of starlight called speckles that look just like exoplanets but man has come up with an ingenious way to tell speckles from planets so we've developed a technique where we exploit an aspect of speckles which is that they change position in the image depending on what color you take your image at so Ben takes the same image of the star through different color filters and runs them like a movie the speckles appear to move across the screen but the planets stay stock still allowing Ben to easily pick them out and so I'd like to point out that there is a little thing right here that if you watch for you're careful you'll notice that it doesn't move and the speckles are washing over it [Music] this stationary blob is a candidate exoplanet and below it and to the left is a second they both appear to orbit a star around 200 light-years from the earth just a decade ago capturing an image like this through a telescope was unthinkable but today thanks to the ingenuity of astronomers like Ben we have hundreds [Music] and by analyzing the light for these distant worlds scientists can work out their chemical composition and potentially the fingerprints of life at this point we're studying much larger planets gaseous things like Jupiter that most likely don't have any kind of life like we know it but that's a first step and we're going to fainter and smaller and smaller planets as time goes on as we develop this technology in the not-too-distant future scientists may be able to simply scan a star for earth-like planets and find the signature of life there we can look right at the light from a little planet around its distant star and that opens up a whole range of possibilities for us to not just detect the planet but to start a the planet I mean this all sounds like science fiction but there is a reality to this we have a scientific method to actually determine whether there is life on another planet life is one thing intelligent life another all together that requires billions of years and a powerful force field like the one we owe our lives to every day if an alien astronomer were to file a report on our home solar system they might make a surprising observation because of all the eight planets that orbit the Sun they could easily conclude that two not one were suitable for life it's an easy mistake to make because the Sun has two planets within its Goldilocks zone the Earth and Mars both planets have surfaces warm enough for liquid water to pool on but while the earth is blessed with warm liquid oceans ours is dry and dead the one crucial difference between these two planets could be the key to finding truly habitable exoplanets a magnetic shield our Sun is constantly hurling deadly radiation out towards us only our magnetic shield the magnetosphere saves us without it the solar wind would blow our atmosphere away and without an atmosphere liquid water could not exist on the surface in order to have liquid water not only do you need the right temperature but you need the right pressure you know if there were no atmosphere here right now even at the same temperature we are today all of the water would boil off into vapor immediately so where does the Earth's magnetosphere come from and why does it Mars have one actually in the past both Earth and Mars had magnetospheres but Mars lost its around 4 billion years ago and with it the potential for life [Music] both the earth and Mars were born into a realm of violence asteroids smashed into their surfaces turning rock and metal into a molten mass as they started to cool a solid crust formed on the surface but the molten metal below churned as the planets turn inducing a magnetic field which rose high up above the surface of both planets at the same time active volcanoes pumped gas into the space around each planet protected by the newly formed magnetic field these gases built up into thick atmospheres creating the air pressure for liquid water to run on the surface for over a hundred million years both Mars and Earth were warm wet paradises primed for life to take off then quite suddenly Mars's magnetic protection disappeared the solar wind blew its atmosphere into space and its oceans boiled away leaving the dry sterile red rock we see today Mars this fundamental problem is is that it's smaller than Earth and because it's smaller the internal core of Mars cooled down and solidified and once it becomes a solid metal there's no more magnetic field the magnetic field shuts off essentially and the atmosphere therefore is vulnerable to both energy and radiation from the Sun and the rest of the galaxy and probably just blew off whatever life was on there at least on the surface was now completely exposed all rocky planets will one day lose their magnetospheres as their cores cool and turn solid so to know if an exoplanet is alive you need to work out if its magnetosphere is still active but magnetospheres are tough to measure because they are unbelievably weak the earth has a magnetic field of approximately half a Gauss which when you think about it is actually really weak our fridge magnets are about a hundred Gauss they're much stronger Excel planets are too far away for us to measure such weak magnetic fields directly but there is an indirect method when electrons in the solar wind interact with a planet's magnetosphere they emit radio waves that beam out into space turning the planet into a giant radio beacon astronomers like of geniu hoped to use these signals to spot habitable exoplanets not only that the frequency of the signal should also tell her how big the planet is if we're looking for the magnetic signature in radio waves of a giant planet say a hot Jupiter we expect it to have a strong magnetic field and therefore it would have a high frequency and around 100 megahertz kind of where the limit of this radio is however a weaker field like Earth's requires us to go down to lower and lower frequencies so instead of a hundred megahertz we go down to ten megahertz but hunting for exoplanets at 10 megahertz presents a unique challenge because the Earth's own magnetic sphere creates a deafening radio roar at that frequency so to find alien Earth's using radio requires a dish in space when we want to look for magneto spheres of extrasolar planets we really need to get outside of the earth-moon system in order to get away from all the radio frequencies that are bouncing around the earth [Music] with a slew of new technologies and upcoming technologies scientists are edging ever closer to the ultimate prize finding a second earth 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 I'm hoping to see that soon using shadows rainbows and now radio we finally have the tools to detect a planet just like our own [Music] but in the rush to find the Earth's identical twin are we missing something big [Music] what if earth is an outlier a freakishly lucky place on the very fringes of habitability could there be another kind of planet out there even better for life for years astronomers have scanned the heavens for planets that could sustain life they've faced their search on the earth seeking the exact same conditions an exact same size I think right now there is a huge focus to finding earth-like planets now whether or not there actually is life there that is another question altogether but after 20 years of searching for an earth clone the exoplanet hunters may be about to switch targets recent observations have revealed a brand new class of planet it's one that may eclipse our own home we've learned something in the last few years that really shocked us with the Kepler space porn telescope we have found hordes of planets that are a little bigger than the earth we never imagined that there would be such planets in fact in our own solar system there are no planets between the size of the earth and the next largest planet that of Uranus and Neptune astronomers call these mysterious planets super-earths differ earths are about three to five times the mass of the earth and there's nothing like that here we don't know what they're like it's an entirely alien sort of planet in just the last few years astronomers have begun to imagine the conditions on this new class of planet and they've come to a startling conclusion super earths could be super habitable there are probably planets out there that are even more hospitable for life planets that have even more chemicals necessary to create the organic materials that create life conditions that make it more likely to get life off the ground imagine a rocky planet twice the size of the earth dramatic volcanism on the surface betrays a vast heart of fire that beats within its core we expect that a heavier earth will be more geologically active that the increased amount of geothermal heat within the super earth will lead to stronger motions of the magma underneath the crust belching volcanoes dot the surface of this super earth their gases feed a super thick atmosphere and help to regulate a super stable climate many times life on Earth was nearly extinguished for example once upon a time the earth was snowball earth completely covered in ice maybe in these other planets there are earth in which snowball earth never happened that the taught climate was always stable and temperate the grip of gravity is three times stronger here than we're used to it pulls mountain ranges down to a third the height they'd be on earth gravity also flattens the ocean bed making shallower CDs filled with volcanic island chains and the nutrient-rich waters that surround these archipelagos provide the perfect conditions for life in these other planets perhaps they have conditions which would make DNA get up to ground much earlier and flourish much more quickly finally our super earth may be protected by a super magnetosphere the magnetic field strength is a condition both of the mass of the planet as well as its rotation speed and so it is quite likely that a planet that is a couple of times bigger than the earths would be able to develop a stronger magnetic field may shield the planet even better than our magnetic field shields us having a stronger magnetosphere would be a distinct advantage for life on a super earth surrounding the Milky Way's most plentiful kind of star the M dwarf or red dwarf star red dwarf habitable zones are much closer in than the earth is to the Sun because their host star is so dim it's as if you took the terrestrial planets in our own solar system and zapped it with his shrink ray gun and shrunk them down to orbital periods that are less than about 30 days meaning that they're very close to their stars some astronomers believe these planets are at risk from solar activity such as deadly flares but a super-earth with a super protective magnetosphere may well resist these deadly rays allowing life to flourish under a psychedelic sky full of swirling Aurora's if one was standing on a super-earth we would see the Aurora come down to lower latitudes you might get different colors [Music] if I had the opportunity to travel to one of these exoplanets I would snap that up pretty quickly most intriguing of all if life does exist on a red dwarf super earth it could be home to the longest-lived civilizations in the entire universe the 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 going for billions and billions of years especially now around a red dwarf that is going to exist for billions and billions of years you might be in that perfect system where life can exist and evolve into even more complex beings than us we're getting so close our local neighborhood of Stars teams with red dwarfs bursting with the potential for advanced life but they're also cosmic killers out there lurking in our galaxy primed to wipe out life on a regular basis is anywhere safe the exoplanet revolution is in full swing the Kepler space telescope has scanned our local neighborhood of stars for planets and it's found them by the thousands [Music] for a long time we didn't know if the other stars in our galaxy had planets and for thousands of years there was no way to answer that question finally now with modern technology we can do that and to our surprise we found they are extremely common from Kepler's small sample astronomers believe there could be tens of billions of rocky earth-like planets throughout the Milky Way where life may already be thriving but how many of these countless worlds is held on to this life long enough for intelligence to evolve the answer surprisingly may depend on a planet's galactic zip code [Music] the universe is not a happy safe place the universe wants to kill us it's it's incredibly violent out there there are solar flares and supernovae and black holes and colliding galaxies and all these really amazingly dangerous and violent events it's actually kind of amazing that we're here at all in order to develop advanced intelligent life and exoplanets may have to avoid these cosmic killers for over three billion years if we look at the history of the earth the first thing that happens that's important is the origin of life right away very quickly but then nothing for a long time you have nothing but microbes stomping on the earth for the first two and a half billion years the earth was ruled by single-celled food multicellular life has only been around for a billion years fish for 500 million mammals for 200 million and modern humans have only walked the earth for the last 200,000 years the lesson is clear who takes a long time to cook up intelligent life [Music] but most planets in the Milky Way don't have that kind of time astronomers believe that a planet's position within a galaxy may determine if it gets hit by global extinction events there's an idea of a habitable zone for a galaxy and it's in analogy to the habitable zone around stars stars too close to the galactic center are in the firing line from their violent neighbors which frequently blast them with deadly high-energy radiation in the middle of a galaxy we have a lot of 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 fired up by the supermassive black hole that sits at the center of the Milky Way this cosmic Killzone stretches out around 8,000 light years from the galactic center and extends out along the densely packed spiral arms any planets that exist within this zone are likely to have their surfaces regularly scrubbed clean of life fortunately for us our home star the Sun sits in a relatively empty quiet zone between two of the galaxy's spiral arms so there's this idea that there's a band in the middle of the galaxy that's the Galactic habitable zone where you don't have too many stars going off you don't have it too many supernovae so it's quiet in that way those might be great places for complex life these green zones are like the suburbs of the Milky Way galaxy they're sheltered from the worst of the galaxy's radiation it's here that earth-like worlds will have the luxury of long uninterrupted periods for life to take hold and develop into more complex forms and eventually perhaps intelligent life like us the Galactic habitable zone is no more than a fledgling theory but if it's true it reduces the number of places where advanced life could flourish in the Milky Way the good news is those places should be near us and aliens more likely to be on our doorstep and with our technology getting better every day it surely won't be long before we find them I think in 20 years time I'm gonna be able to look up into the night sky and say there really is another place I could stand like this and feel at home suddenly we humans will realize for the first time that there are other cultures other civilizations probably other religions out there among the stars and we are just one member of a grand galactic tribe to have cousins that we won they may communicate with seems to me to be potentially one of the greatest developments that humanity will ever ever experience and if that isn't worth doing I don't know what is [Music] you [Music] we are surrounded by thousands and thousands of stars are we alone in this vast cosmic landscape [Music] science is searching for an answer and as outlined two hypotheses one we are alone and life is an anomalous fact that can only be explained by an unpredictable and eventful combination of circumstances to life is implicit in the nature of the universe and its appearance anywhere is unavoidable [Music] the systematic search for extraterrestrial life has just begun its discovery would be the most important earners in the history of mankind presently from out there only the ekor of an intense silence reaches us [Music] this gigantic diaphanous mass occupies a space that is a thousand times greater than the solar system it is one of the many interstellar clouds that the universe contains 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 as knowledge of the universe advances it is confirmed that the ingredients of life do not exist only on earth to the contrary as living beings we are made from a raw material that is abundant in the universe we can think of the origin of life is perhaps in three different ways in one extreme life is a miracle life comes from God a unique event if so science can't address the question because science can't address miracles miracles by definition define natural law but life may have been consistent with physics and chemistry and yet a very rare perhaps a unique event very improbable because of chance and if so again science has trouble addressing the question because how can one go to a laboratory and study an improbable event so only in the third case if life is an inevitable consequence of chemistry and physics if anywhere there's water in rock and air life arises then science can hope to answer the question when we ask ourselves about the mystery of life we almost always look at the earth for the answer we have no other reference although the earth with its inexhaustible variety of forms plants and animals is like a box of surprises and new questions more than a direct answer no one is sure where life begins and ends on earth these are possible that something exists that is not just a copy more or less advanced than what we have on earth [Music] we already know with much precision what caused life to develop on our planet everything began with water and with the release of certain chemical elements like carbon and oxygen which combined to form organic molecules these molecules thanks to the light of the Sun electric discharges from the atmosphere and the energy from the interior of the earth became incipient living beings thus starting with water chemical elements and a source of energy the most elemental living organism known today appeared bacteria [Applause] [Music] in 1953 the American chemist Stanley Miller and Harold Urey tried to reproduce the origin of life in a laboratory they placed water vapor methane and ammonia in a test tube and ran a continuous electric current through it almost one week later the water had acquired color and new compounds had appeared including two amino acids which are the basic building blocks of life this combination however continued to be just as lifeless perhaps something similar to this experiment occurred on earth but if this is true it was nothing more than another failed attempt that kept the planet during its early stages as a barren lifeless place [Music] experiments aimed at reproducing the origin of life have helped science to define with greater precision the frontier between living material and lifeless material between life and non-life series of specific characteristics that make a living beings different from a non living being for example replication a living being should replicate generate progeny it should produce offspring whether they are molecular children or social meaning that replication should not be exact from father to child because we would laugh diversity in replication there should be a series of mutations that introduce changes between the parental generation and the generation of the descendant and these changes will make the descendants different from each other being different amongst themselves means they will react in different ways to stimuli selective pressure and to environmental changes therefore somewhat better than living beings there replicate and evolve and they have a metabolism this means that living being any much are capable of carrying out a series of processes the consumption of energy they produce biomolecules from a disorganized outside world they produce organized molecules which they used to grow and for their own metabolism it's possible that these are the three fundamental characteristics of living gluttonous replication mutation and therefore evolution and metabolism timothean mentalities at the limit of these requirements we find the viruses which most scientists don't consider living beings it's true that they reproduce and evolve that they transform with several mutations but they only do so when they infect a cell which they use so that they can reproduce themselves thus viruses only act as living beings when they act as parasites on a cell the question of this transition from non-life to life that's in some sense a philosophical question and yet many of us who work in the field have our prejudices and mine is that the transition occurs when competition and natural selection begins you can imagine inanimate nature molecules rocks water that's not alive that doesn't compete but at some point a level of organization occurred in molecules molecular systems that could replicate themselves and when that happened and because of the richness of organic molecules available you had slight differences in these self-replicating molecules some were a little more efficient than others and so life begins to compete for resources for energy and to me the crucial stage in the origin of life is that very moment when competition led to selection that's Darwinian evolution [Music] every day the great milestones in the path of the evolution of species are better understood the first step of life is still unknown however in laboratories biologists and chemists try to reproduce time and time again how this first gestation took place to do so the key is to manage to get certain chemical molecules to combine in a specific way which is what provokes the miracle of life the recipe at the great alchemists is a secret scientists have no other option but to continue investigating how the miracle of life occurred and the only place where they know that this has happened is on the earth just like the rest of the solar system the earth was formed over 4.5 billion years ago when the remains of a supernova like this one crossed a vast cloud of cosmic dust after this accidental birth our planet was subject to bombardment by meteorites and comets during a large part of its history during the first part of its existence the earth was an inhospitable place aside from external aggression there was also a great volcanic activity on its surface this violent phase however favored the evaporation of water and the emission of gases like carbon dioxide and methane the atmosphere was slowly created with these elements if this had not occurred the earth would eventually have been burned by the sun's rays [Music] during this infernal period the basic broth a kind of culture medium or breeding ground for life was also formed the water of the Seas penetrated the cracks of the sea bottom and returned to the sea through the volcanoes 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 provoked the greatly [Music] chemistry opened the way to biology and the appearance of the first bacteria [Music] present-day organisms could not survive in such a toxic environment but the planets path towards milder stable conditions allowed the first signs of life to maintain themselves and evolve from their simple forms towards more complex beings [Music] [Music] the impact of meteorites did not suddenly stop in fact many years later the dinosaurs disappeared due to their effects but fortunately biodiversity was well developed at that time and even though species disappeared in huge numbers life was already deeply rooted hundreds of organisms were able to survive in the middle of the impressive destruction life on Earth has overcome a variety of climatic and environmental changes but Atlanta Kalista changes may be a living being that does not depend on water oxygen and solar energy or one that can survive in such extreme temperatures is not conceivable in recent years however the discovery of organisms that live on the fringes of these laws are modifying our ideas about what a living being needs these organisms are known as extremophiles the lovers of very radical external conditions these waters belong to the river team built in the southern Spanish province of wimba its peculiar blood-red color which gave it its name is due to the metals that it bears they come from the rocks that are drank from its headwaters and from spillages from mines spirit community of living beings has been discovered that challenges the traditional point of view concerning the environmental conditions that allow for survival these microscopic images have been recorded in these unhealthy waters which shows some organisms that assume basic vital functions without difficulties with a minute left characteristic there are two extreme characteristics of the river the low pH in other words the acidity of the system which is around 2 and the high concentration of heavy metal in the mid always beside heavy metals are toxic especially those in the mining area of the river team though essentially copper which is used to prevent the growth of fungi and vineyards and arsenic and cadmium etc yes the supplies was fine down eukaryotic organism a season not the prokaryotes the bacteria the minerals but eukaryotes algae fungi filament fungi protozoans amoebas etc which are present in a place where no one in the right mind with the thing they could exist [Music] the mysterious life that is hidden in the River Tinto has disconcerted scientists and not only because it is a unique class of extremophiles it is extraordinary because in these conditions a certain degree of biological variety has developed with more or less common algae fungi and amoebas their ability to adapt is such that we could say that they don't appear to be terrestrial [Music] the first extremophiles were discovered a little over 30 years ago in Yellowstone Park in the United States they were organisms that survived in temperatures over 100 degrees Celsius they appeared in geological chimneys where water vapor emerged from the interior of the earth scientists have also found living beings that are fond of extreme temperatures in the cold Antarctic rocks [Music] in the ice or in the lakes of water found below they have found bacteria and algae living hundreds of meters below the surface they are cold lovers living beings that have the peculiarity of growing slowly since the low temperatures slow down their metabolisms [Music] 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 there is no oxygen or light there but 48 different species survive in this place 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 these strange mounds on the Australian coast are known as stromatolites they are the fossil remains of bacteria that have been grouped in layers the lower layers are formed by anaerobic bacteria which are beings that strange as it may seem do not need oxygen to live even today there is a class of organisms that exist in environments that lack oxygen of which our intestine is wandering on others [Music] there are even more cases of life in anomalous conditions in the Dead Sea and in specific salt lagoons of Africa's Rift Valley there are some salt loving bacteria [Music] to survive in a salty medium these organisms have developed their own mechanisms to avoid dehydration last time I'll feel yellow the extremophiles are what allows us to open a series of scenarios which means if there are microorganisms that can grow at high temperatures the model of originating life in an underwater volcano at a hundred or so degrees is not absurd because today there are microorganisms that can do it in a surface salt marsh the high concentration is due to evaporation specific interactions are favorable which can happen since there are microorganisms that exist in these conditions today if life emerged in such unfavorable environments it is therefore a much stronger impulse than what our limited vision expected [Music] [Music] [Music] the discovery of these living beings in unimaginable conditions has had repercussions among those searching for the presence of life in space 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 geologists biologists chemists and astrophysicists have come together in a new scientific field astrobiology they have established new expectations about what type of life to search for and where to look for it what we have successfully achieved is the collaboration of geologists and planetary astrophysicists and the people dedicated to the original evolutionary chemistry in this way geologists give us a guideline for example as to how the planet has evolved into a physical body at the same time they join with planetary astrophysicists who explain how the earth was formed and how this formation is the result of the evolution of the universe itself on the other hand the people who study evolutionary chemistry complex molecules that evolve and bridge the knowledge of the geologists about what existed on the original the primitive engineers locality media all these related Sciences of astrobiology are drawn from a basic idea the appearance of life as a natural phenomena as the inevitable consequence of a universe in continual change and evolution in a shortened middle term in astrobiology is searching to contrast the idea that life is a cosmic imperatives by applying the scientific method to it the scientific method that is based on everything we know from how a mobile phone works to how bridge is built or how to launch a spacecraft into outer space this scientific method requires more than one example of a specific phenomenon life on Earth as we know it has extraordinary biodiversity a biodiversity that is manifested in millions as different species on earth all of these forms of life however are based on certain unique principles so that the phenomenon of life as we know it on earth is the manifestation of a unique phenomenon therefore the scientific method cannot be directly applied as a result we have to go to other places in order to contrast whether life exists or has existence [Music] [Music] in 1975 the direct search for life in the solar system began when NASA sent the Viking spacecrafts aloft with Mars as their destination today the red planet is very cold with average temperatures of minus 53 degrees Celsius which has frozen the water that at some point covered its surface it is dominated by a current geological relief of deep craters and dusty dunes which gives it the appearance of a rocky desert on the other hand the absence of an ozone layer subjects Mars to relentless ultraviolet solar radiation in this dead land it would seem impossible to find life the results of the tests carried out by the Viking mission confirmed this hypothesis and the scientific interest in Mars was set aside [Music] studies of extremophiles on earth palaver have put Mars back in the game for scientists the absence of signs of life in the two places where the Viking spoonstrats took samples is not final proof they have to search other parts of the planet with milder environments and investigate the possibility that life manifested itself there in the past well I think to me the fact that we're seeing that life exists in these very extreme environments on earth gives us optimism that we'll find life other places because we know for example on Mars that there is liquid water at times we know that there's ice we know that they're very dry regions they're probably very salty regions too and so it seems to me that the fact that we find life existing on earth in these extreme environments means that we don't know yet the limits every year the limits increase in terms of our discoveries so why not broaden the limits a bit more to to the environments of some of the planets I think Mars is the planet of greatest interest for astrobiological exploration first because it's nearby and therefore is is fairly easy to explore or at least relatively easy to explore and second because although today Mars is a very forbidding planet low temperatures very little atmosphere tectonic Li it appears to be almost dead at least at the time that life emerged on earth Mars was a planet much like much more like our own perhaps not identical both much more it had active volcanism it had a thicker atmosphere at least episodically it had liquid water and so therefore Mars is a good candidate to ask the question directly did life appear more than once and if it did appear on Mars the way we will recognize it is in general the same way that we recognize evidence of ancient life on Earth through micro fossils through the influence of microbial communities on sediments and through chemical signatures that they impart to rocks 1984 a scientific expedition goes to the Antarctic to collect samples of meteorites the solitude and the conditions of the frozen continent have kept them intact here they discovered a rock that became a key piece in the investigation of Mars it weighs almost two kilograms and is known as al H in 1996 at NASA David McKay and his team presented it to the public as a Martian meteorite with possible fossil evidence of certain living beings since then the air alight alongside others that had been previously collected have triggered a debate within the scientific community on whether or not we are standing before the definitive evidence that Mars also for life [Music] we've been studying the the alh meteorite for a long time now we're also looking at other Mars meteorites there are now 18 different Mars meteorites and we've looked in detail in about four of them and we have found what we believe to be signs of life in all four meteorites that we have studied first alh then then Nakhla which fell in egypt in 1911 then sure Gatti which fell in India and then Lafayette which was recovered in Indiana USA we think we see evidence for life we have to prove it we haven't proved it yet to the satisfaction of the scientific community but we're working on that how long will that take possibly a few more years we hope that we can do that either prove it or disprove it within say three or four more years and that's what we're we're working on through the study of meteorites and through explorations scientists hope to decipher the Martian enigmas in the period of just one decade [Music] the European Space Agency is also participating in the race with the Mars Express which will be launched in 2004 it is a satellite that will be placed in orbit around Mars and which has a landing module 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 since the American Viking missions in the 1970s there has not been another mission with such a central astrobiological focus in its investigations as the Mars Express Lucy misty and furthermore this spacecraft has a landing vehicle the Beagle 2 with a series of instruments to analyze the chemistry and organic substances of the planet such as the rock minerals and the surface of Mars they can also take images of the surface and measure the composition of the atmosphere around the landing area it even has instruments able to reach a depth of between one and one and a half meters in order to analyze the subsoil which has not been affected by ultraviolet radiation and where indications of life may be preserved better than on the surface our analysis oops Widow conocido effect i'll pour la reacción ultraviolet in air quality top reservoir say in details de vida [Music] in addition to Mars the scientific community is investigating other planets within the solar system Mercury and Venus due to their extremely hot climates have been ruled out Uranus Neptune and Pluto due to their extremely cold climates are not worthy of consideration either saturn and jupiter are the only two left to gassy giants where life seems impossible these planets however have satellites orbiting around them that are arousing scientific interest in the case of jupiter and the moons IO and Europa two satellites which thanks to the energy of the planet they orbit are much hotter than what was expected given their great distance from the Sun io is the satellite with the most volcanoes interruption in the entire solar system which is a positive symptom due to the history of the earth it is known that volcanoes can play a fundamental role in the generation of life in contrast however signs of water have not been detected yet which for the moment reduces the hope of finding life [Music] Europa seems to be a more gifted contender it's frozen surface may shelter an enormous ocean below with organic molecules [Music] if these were to exist just as it happened on earth the discharge of some kind of energy may provoke the appearance of life and in this aspect there are also indications that the moon Europa has volcanoes which is why some scientists hope that life exists or has existed there so Mars is our best candidate but on a longer time scale I think the exploration of Europa is going to be interesting there's every reason to believe there is an a long-standing water body and ocean if you will on Europa and that could have incubated life it may actually have a higher probability than Mars of actually having still living organisms so we might be able to look by biological techniques for life on Europa whereas on Mars I think largely it's going to be a paleontological exercise in the orbit around Saturn there is a satellite called Titan which with a diameter less than half the size of the earth is very similar to our planet in other aspect in 1980 the Voyager 1 spacecraft passed by Titan at a distance of 7,000 kilometers which enabled it to carry out a detailed study the images show a disturbing orange atmosphere with a touch of blue on the horizon mainly made up of methane [Music] according to the scientists who studied the data the smell of the air of Titan should be like the inside of an oil refinery methane is the star gas of this satellite it is suspected that it may exist in three states solid liquid and gas so perhaps there are giant oceans of methane with polar ice caps made up of this compound it is also possible that there is an evaporation cycle and methane rain is produced [Music] if this were true 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 this case cells could exist that have methane in their interior just like ours have water if this hypothesis of methane beings were true we would be dealing with organisms that live at very low temperatures with very slow biochemistry 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 exploration people look for water first and then if there is water on a planet or a moon then perhaps there will be some sort of life so the question becomes is there another substance that might do the same job as water and it has been suggested from time to time that methane would be a substitute for water as a substrate for life if so it's not easy to imagine what kind of life that would be certainly it would not be a life that would be easily recognizable in terms of our experience on earth whether or not it's impossible I don't know but I would certainly think it would be much less probable than a life that is based on a on a watery environment and so in that regard when we think about a place like Titan well perhaps Titan could have given rise to life it certainly has given rise to complex organic molecules but in the absence of water I think the probability the life would have emerged from that chemistry is much much lower in 1998 the Cassini spacecraft was sent into space with Saturn as its destination one of its missions is to study Titan thanks to its atmosphere and probe which will descend down onto Titan surface this will take place in 2004 starting them perhaps the mystery of the methane satellite can be deciphered the first explorations of the solar system have not provided proof of extraterrestrial life but the absence of evidence as paradoxical as it may seem increases the belief that life is possible the mechanisms of life are better understood today furthermore it is also known that life can develop in much more open conditions than was originally believed the question is what kind of life are we dealing with instead of beings with antenna and extraordinary abilities more realistic scientists assert that there is no intelligent life in our immediate cosmic environment it's one thing to find unicellular organisms on a planet but it's something very different to believe that these beings necessarily evolved into such complex forms as human beings [Music] if earth is the point of reference the data is devastating of the millions of species that have prospered here only one has been able to develop technological intelligence we can then say well what are the conditions that might favor intelligent life and certainly one is environmental you certainly need an environment that's capable of sustaining the biology of a large organism and on our planet that only became possible when oxygen rose to high concentrations in the atmosphere and then second one can ask what kind of lifestyles would facilitate the origin of intelligence and there certainly predation is important once you have to get your food by capturing prey there's strong selective pressure for very very sophisticated sensory apparatus and the neurological ability to integrate sensory apparatus and there's also very strong selective selective forces favoring highly sophisticated muscular systems and again a highly sophisticated coordination of the neurological and muscular systems once those were in place then I think the basic biological attributes that could lead to intelligence were there the lack of existing intelligent life in the proximities of the earth does not mean that it cannot be found in other parts of the universe nothing is impossible within the magnitudes and dimensions of the cosmos the universe has hundreds of thousands of galaxies which at the same time have thousands of millions of stars some of which are accompanied by planets there are so many possibilities that we have to search far beyond the limits of the solar system in 1996 the first extrasolar planets were detected and since then their numbers have increased unceasingly adding up to hundreds of them today most of them are big planets normally located very close to their corresponding Sun the main difficulty is that they cannot be observed directly yet their existence is a deduction made from the behavior of the star the most successful techniques so far for finding planets around other stars is the so called radial velocity or spectroscopic technique this technique is an indirect technique you don't actually see the planet what you see instead is the star moving around the center of mass of the planet star system that is we all are familiar with planets moving around a star but in addition the star moves around on a much smaller orbit the center of mass of the star planet system so we detect the planets by seeing the star move around and we detect the stellar motion by looking at the line-of-sight changes in the velocity of the star using this the Doppler technique which are familiar with from hearing a train whistle as a trance coming towards you or away from you the 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 it's shifted towards the red so by watching very carefully how the spectral lines of the star change with time one could infer that the star is moving back and forth on its orbit and something must be causing that motion and we now know that that is actually a planet NASA and the European Space Agency plan to place infrared telescopes in space in order to observe the extrasolar planets directly if they have an atmosphere that would be a good sign since an atmosphere normally regulates extreme temperatures which are found quite frequently on many planets [Music] the telescope's will analyze these atmospheres in order to find evidence of the necessary chemical elements for life to be produced oxygen which is present in our atmosphere is one of the key signs of life but it is not the only element that they are looking for there is also the signature of co2 carbon dioxide and water vapor and these three compounds are all involved in the reaction that produce oxygen by biology which is oxygenic photosynthesis and if there there are all these three signature it could be a very very good indicator for the presence of some photosynthetic activity and another signature is the signature spectroscopic signature of methane because it's it seemed that the primitive life-forms on earth could have produce huge amount of methane in the atmosphere and this could be detected there was a very efficient telescope the possibility of an intelligent civilization in some corner of the universe has encouraged the sending of messages into outer space these images place us in the year 1974 when a communication was broadcast from Addis Ababa Tirico towards a dense ball of stars located twenty-five thousand light-years away from us if someone was able to decode the message he or she or it would find a pictogram explaining the foundations of life on Earth [Music] meanwhile some spacecraft sent into outer space which are never going to return to Earth having graved plaques about who we are the Voyager spaceships more specifically have all kinds of sounds and images even those of animals tribal songs and a Beethoven string quartet but almost 40,000 years will have passed before the Voyager approaches the first star the SETI program is another initiative for establishing contact they are doing more than just sending messages they are now trying to receive them that is if there is an alien civilization that uses radio waves in its interstellar communications to powerful radio telescopes are being used to detect radio signals from space which are later analyzed in an enormous computer information is so abundant that the SETI program allows anyone who wants to use his or her computer to help with this task of distinguishing captured signals when the computer is resting a program is activated to analyze the data provided by the central computer almost 3 million people collaborate with the SETI program some curious signals have been detected but after being thoroughly investigated it has been proved that they were nothing more than telecommunication equipment interferences to date we have not received news from outer space [Music] Western culture suffered an earthquake when Copernicus discovered that the earth and man were not the center of the universe but mere extras in a corner of the cosmos the discovery of planets revolving around other stars now shows us that planets are a common occurrence with this knowledge someday it may be possible to solve the question of whether we as the inhabitants of the earth do or don't represent the only life forms in the universe seems what does England finally be beings in other parts of the universe it will be without a doubt it's the most important discovery in the history of mankind but we will therefore be able to show and in a palpable way that life is a consequence of the evolution of the universe furthermore since we proudly believe that we are unique and the most powerful living beings we will realise that we are nothing more than a coincidence but frozen in the evolution of the universe this will add in an important way to our understanding of humility as human beings we should be humble not only with respect to ourselves but also with respect to other species that live on the planet we should also give life the respect it deserves and every asset they look at I lead us a minute if you imagine looking out above the Earth's atmosphere into the dark starry night and imagining the immensity of the universe its would be rather discomforting to think that we are the only sentient beings out there I think who would make the universe and much feel like a much more pleasant place if we realize it's somewhere out there on another rock orbiting another star like our own could be another sort of being perhaps similar less perhaps not so similar looking back in our direction and wondering if we existed [Music] life beyond Earth is today a hypothesis more than a certainty a new science astrobiology is knocking on the gains of the universe once again with more improved technical equipment and greater knowledge [Music] the cosmos will shine then with greater magnificence and man will be amazed once again before this manifestation after all month why not just might emerge at enormous for in any place and in whatever form he chooses [Music] connect unable on all systems are go for entry descent landing Jim bye-bye [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] at the dawn of the 21st century space agencies in Europe and America began making plans to land the first humans on Mars but manned missions to the red planet have been proposed before [Music] for some Mars holds the answers to mankind's future in space others say Mars is too far too dangerous and too expensive for humans to explore and in a world torn by troubles some say there is no need or will for mankind to reach into space anymore more than 30 years after the last Apollo astronaut walked on the moon the American manned space program seems to have lost its way unable to reach beyond even low-earth orbit we've got a problem NASA has been literally going around in circles with its space program for the past 30 years astronautical engineer dr. Robert Zubrin has been arguing for years that sending humans to Mars is the mission the space program needs it's time that we set goals for NASA that were worthy of the risks of human spaceflight Mars is the next logical step in our space program 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 it's the planet that has on it the resources needed to support life and therefore someday technological civilization it's the planet that will provide us with the answer as to whether life is prevalent in the universe or exclusive to the earth and it's the planet that will give us the critical test whether humanity can break out of the planet of our birth and become a spacefaring species in the early 1990s Zubrin was the head of the Mars direct program at Martin Marietta astronautics his team developed a mission to Mars that could be done at a fraction of NASA's projected costs using only existing technology Zubrin argues that the first steps on Martian soil could be made within 10 years there is absolutely nothing in this that is beyond our technology we are not ready to send humans to Mars right now we don't know how to keep them alive there are people out there who say we can go to Mars tomorrow one of my requirements one of NASA's requirements is that if we send humans to Mars we bring them back alive for the past 15 years Zubrin and his colleagues have waged a campaign to convince society and the political class that humans on Mars should be the goal for NASA now this is the story of a cold neighboring planet and the debate over whether man's fate is tied to the red world it's the story of an engineer's journey and the Battle of ideas over which direction in space will truly benefit mankind we're at a crossroads today we either muster the courage to go or we risk the possibility of stagnation in the case the victor in this debate could determine the fate of mankind will we become a spacefaring species will we live on more than one planet in the winter of 2003 the Chinese put their first Thai Connell in space [Music] the Chinese space administration plans to begin a manned program of moon exploration by 2017 the european space agency has outlined a plan for humans to the moon by 2024 and to mars by 2033 and the Russians building on years of experience are conducting tests for long-duration Mars missions in America with the impending retirement of the shuttle fleet in the completion of the International Space Station the British administration announced in 2004 the constellation program on the moon a plan that would return Americans to the moon by 2020 but the program was never fully funded was eventually cancelled in 2010 the Obama administration announced its vision for NASA and human Mars exploration by the mid 2030s I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to earth and landing on Mars will follow and I expect to be around to see it with a new timeline for humans to Mars sometime after 2035 and with administration's changing every four or eight years it is far from certain that such a plan will be realized twenty years earlier the first president Bush also proposed a long interview man exploration program and the great fanfare the program quietly died in Congress a few years later if you want to go to Mars you cannot do it in 30 years you can't do in 20s you gotta do it in 10 years or some program start or you're more or less guaranteeing political failure to date only the Apollo moon program which was announced in 1961 and had men on the moon eight years later has succeeded in getting astronauts beyond low Earth orbit I was 5 when Sputnik flew and while to the adults Sputnik was a terrifying event to me as a child who was already reading science fiction it was exhilarating because it meant that this possibility of a spacefaring future was going to be real and I was nine when he gave his speech committing us to the moon I grew up during the 60s when it was mercury was Gemini Apollo every month NASA was doing something more impressive than in the month before we were gonna be on the moon by 1970 Mars by 1980 Saturn by 1990 Alpha Centauri by the year 2000 we were moving out and I wanted to be part of that and so I got myself a scientific education but then in the early 70s it's all collapsed we achieved the first part of that program moon by 1970 but the Nixon administration shut down the rest and we did not move out into space and for a while I accepted that grudgingly it became a science teacher but then in the early 80s something hit me and I said I'm not going to accept myself doing less than what I had dreamed of doing when I was a boy Zubin went back to graduate school getting advanced degrees in engineering into aerospace he then went on to work at Martin Marietta which later became Lockheed Martin designing interplanetary missions it was here that zubrin's obsession with the red planet began to take hold [Music] while at Martin in the 1990s Zubrin and his colleagues developed a plan for sending humans to Mars that changed NASA's thinking on the issue but the plan has languished on the drawing boards ever since now as president of the Mars Society Zubrin is at center stage in the debate over the future of manned spaceflight known as a smart visionary scientist he's authored several books on exploring space and is the self-appointed spokesman for the possibility of colonizing Mars 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 technological civilization it has water it has carbon it has nitrogens it has a 24-hour day it has a complex geological history that has created mineral org it has sources of geothermal energy Mars is a place we can settle one reason for such optimism over a frozen world like Mars is evidence that two billion years ago Mars was a much warmer and wetter place we think that at one time in the ancient past Mars was very similar to the condition of early Earth this Martian war mage lasted for over a billion years and could have been a suitable environment for the development of life if we go to Mars and find evidence of a second Genesis on Mars I think we can conclude that the universe is full of life 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 intelligence could also emerge on some planets as well it really does answer the question are we alone that to me is a question that transcends science it's a philosophical societal as well as scientific question to me that's the big prize that's what why Mars is interesting that's why human exploration makes sense space programs are often criticized for the huge sums of money they require although the American space program is less than 1% of the federal budget a human mission to Mars may have to wait for better times there are those who say then we have many problems to deal with here on earth and we need to postpone ventures such as the human exploration on Mars until these problems are solved well there are many problems in Spain in 1492 and there still are there are problems that need to be dealt with here on earth and should be dealt with but we also have to think of the future you also have to think about opening up new volumes in human history [Music] I believe that it's essential for a positive human future that humanity expand into space [Music] [Music] the greatest value that we got out of Apollo was the creation of intellectual capital through the inspiring of millions to go into science and engineering to be part of the great adventure of human expansion to space there's a phrase that happened with the Apollo program which was if we can go to the moon we can and then everybody's filled in whatever they were interested in build mass transit cure cancer do this do that the point is it did give us a sense that we could accomplish great things it did bring out the best of us we excited a generation of engineers and scientists the generation that built the computers and cell phones and all the technology everybody uses today and takes for granted if we send humans to Mars as our goal we'll get millions of new scientists that will create new inventions new industries this is the enormous payback and we can get it if we set the kind of challenge that will inspire the youth to Zubrin civilizations like people thrive on challenge decay without it we have everything we have today because of our predecessors who had the courage to leave the world of the known and go out into the wilderness and build new cities and if we stop being people like that then we will hand down much less to our posterity than our ancestors handed down to us so there's the choice in life one either grows or one decays grow or die I think we should grow history proves that we have never lost by pressing the limits of our frontier in the summer of 1989 the first president Bush announced the space exploration initiative directing NASA to draw up long-term plans to get humans back to the moon and begin developing a program of manned Mars exploration at Martin Marietta Zubrin and his colleagues looked forward to moving NASA's Space Program outwards after two decades in low-earth orbit of course we were very excited when Bush made his call saying that he was making a national commitment to implement such a program NASA assembled a large team to take on the space initiative in 90 days the team developed a 30-year plan that required an enormous buildup of space infrastructure what the NASA bureaucracy decided to do was basically design the most complex mission they possibly could in order to make sure that everyone's pet technology would remain mission-critical which is the exact opposite of the correct way to do engineering first NASA would triple the size of the planned space station and add enormous hangars as well as free-floating fuel depots checkout Docs and crew stations then on the moon they would construct more shipbuilding facilities bases and depots next the moon crew would construct the Mars ship a huge craft dubbed by its detractors as Battlestar Galactica this ship would carry everything to Mars over an 18-month flight once in Mars orbit a small group would descend to the surface spend a few days then plant a flag in the ground and the plan became known as the 90-day report to those of us at Martin who had been engaged in designing Mars missions when we saw the 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 politically the plan was submitted to Congress the estimated cost 450 billion the legislators went into sticker shock this would have been the single most expensive program for the United States since World War two by the end of 1990 Congress had refused all requests for sei funding when the realization came the sei was doomed Zubrin wrote a memo to his colleagues at Martin Marietta outlining his problems with the NASA plan and arguing for a more direct approach Zubrin favored launching a Mars mission directly from the surface of Earth using only existing rocket technology this negated the need for a lunar base and avoided the complexity and cost of building ships in space he also objected to NASA's plan for a short surface stay on Mars a mission that would amount to little more than a flag and footprints exercise to Zubrin we were going to Mars to explore and develop a new world to maximize surface time Zubrin proposed using a faster flight path known as a conjunction class mission this would mean a crew could arrive on Mars after only a six-month journey they would then remain on the Martian surface for a year and a half this would give the team time to explore a wide area and conduct detailed research about the planet then as the earth returned window opens crew would launch from Mars a six-month trip home Zubrin was convinced that a simplified more robust and cost-effective mission could be designed using these principles along with several like-minded colleagues Zubrin decided to ask management at Martin to allow them to design alternative Mars missions the management approvement and we formed a team was known as the scenario development team of just 12 people from the whole very large Martin company one team member whose thinking was closely aligned with zubrin's was David Baker I went off to my office and said alright how would I do a Mars mission if I had to pay for it and I had to go on the ride and I said well it's going to be simple there's gonna be no on-orbit assembly I really tried to take everything out of the mission that didn't absolutely need to be there while the rest of the team focused on longer-term more traditional mission plans that required on-orbit assembly Zubrin and Baker decided to collaborate on a mission that could be done near-term we decided to do Mars the way Lewis and Clark did America okay use local resources travel light live off the land Zubrin and Baker were convinced that a Mars mission could be launched directly from the ground the other team members felt this was impossible that the weight of the rocket fuel required for a round trip to Mars was so enormous it would render the launch ship and possibly heavy to solve this problem Zubrin was exploring a radical idea that had been kicked around the aerospace industry since the 1970s the idea was to produce a methane-oxygen rocket fuel directly from the Martian atmosphere it was a relatively simple and robust Chemical Engineering procedure that was done commonly in the 1800s the air of the gas line if the idea worked astronauts could land a relatively light ship with empty tanks they wouldn't have to ship all the fuel with them for their return trip this would radically lower their size and weight the only problem was methane-oxygen fuel requires a hydrogen component hydrogen exists on Mars in the form of h2o but water may be difficult or impossible to extract from the Martian environment really the hydrogen was only 5% of the total weight of the methane-oxygen propellant being manufactured so if you just say ok we won't be pure we all get all of the propellant from Oris will just get 95% of the propellant from Mars the other 5% of the hydrogen will just bring from Earth another fundamental resource that could be extracted from the Martian environment is oxygen second processing unit could separate oxygen molecules from the thin carbon dioxide atmosphere providing breathable air for a Mars crew if used intelligently the same resources that make Mars interesting are precisely what could make it attainable Baker and Zubrin had greatly reduced their mission mass but they still found their ship was too heavy and would require two launches and assembly in space then Zubrin hit on an idea one of the key 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 on in 1989 was that we had split the mission up into two parts and we'd send the return vehicle out first with its own return propellant plant so the propellant would be made on Mars before the first astronauts ever left her with two separate direct to Mars launches a human crew would have a fully fueled ship waiting for them on the surface of Mars before they ever left Earth so Zubrin and Baker had come up with a plan that seemed to accomplish all of their goals it was relatively inexpensive development time was short they could use existing technology and it allowed for a long stay on the Martian surface they dubbed their idea Mars direct the board and Ares rocket is the earth return vehicle or ERV no one has aboard this ship it will pave the way for the astronauts who are years later we'll use the ERV to return to Earth [Music] on its second day the ERV deploys a small nuclear power reactor the reactor powers a chemical plant inside the ERV the plant will produce the methane-oxygen rocket fuel for the launch home nearby a second robotic rover is guided to a pre-picked landing site for the human crew it places a radar transponder to help guide the astronauts in the long journey to land a human being on Mars begins three two one engines carrying the most skillfully assembled flight team in history four astronauts begin their two and a half year mission to the Red Planet this will be the first time a human has gone beyond the earth-moon system 250 million miles farther than any person has ever been to counter the health problems of zero-gravity and to fully acclimate the astronauts to Mars the ship will deploy a weighted tether attached to the last stage of the spent rocket booster by thrusting the ship into a rotational spin the counterweight of the rocket will create centrifugal force and thus artificial gravity the crew will be able to live with their feet planted firmly on the floor during their six-month transit but the hab is not entirely alone on its journey just ahead of it is a second ERV identical to the first 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 it can also function as a backup for the first mission if anything should go wrong [Music] on sixth month of the flight the crew gaze upon an alien world [Music] this is the new frontier after days in orbit unsatisfied with the landing conditions the crew will receive final word from Mission Control on earth it will be a tense 40 minutes before people back on earth get the signal from Mars and know if everything has gone well [Music] everybody's looking good down I am okay [Music] [Applause] for more than 500 days the astronauts will live on Mars and embark on one of the greatest journeys of discovery in the history of science will they find life or the fossilized remains of past life [Music] such a discovery could tell us whether our solar system has seen more than one Genesis and answer the ultimate question are we alone in any case these explorers will be learning how feasible the colonization of Mars really is and whether or not mankind has a future among the stars then when the time comes in the window for Earth return opens crew will climb into their earth return vehicle and head home [Music] they will arrive home heroes the first to stretch the limit of man's expanse from one planet to another their names added to the list of great explorers of new worlds in their footsteps others will follow what began as a trickle is free to rise into a deluge of humankind sweeping over a once barren land and transforming it into a viable new world when Baker and Zubrin presented Mars direct to their bosses at Martin they expected the worst [Music] to their surprise management was excited about it they liked the fact that everything needed was relatively simple and near-term as time went on Martin Marietta embraced Mars direct as their creation and put Bob and I on an airplane to several NASA centers to present Mars direct and try to build some momentum for Baker and Zubrin flew to the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville Alabama this had been one of the original design hubs for the Apollo moon landings but recently many of the engineers had become demoralized by the failure of NASA's sei program tag-team style Baker and Zubrin presented their alternative mission architecture the response was thrilling the old-school Apollo crowd embraced it this was a plan that actually made sense and was within reach Baker and I gave a number of briefings the first was at the Marshall Space Flight Center next was a chance these people were incredibly excited over the next few weeks Zubrin and Baker were flown around the country pitching to all branches of NASA and everywhere they went the response was electric the plan was standing up to scrutiny and groups all over NASA were converting to Mars direct their tour culminated in a public presentation to the National Space Society the crowd gave the two aerospace engineers a standing ovation [Music] [Applause] [Music] a week later the story was in newspapers around the country [Music] the counter-attack was beginning to form within NASA the space station teams and many in the advanced propulsion groups were against the idea 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 NASA didn't want to pursue a Mars mission at that time 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 what NASA thought NASA should do what we did in Mars direct was literally come up with the leanest solution the one that involved the least spending on an assortment of technologies and infrastructural elements including for example we made no use whatsoever of the International Space Station and so people involved in all those programs were very upset because we were showing that you can go to Mars without their program being required and they felt that we were justifying them the NASA administration rejected Mars direct the two engineers were Outsiders again but Zubrin remained determined Bob had grabbed hold of it and I could see that it was his and no matter what I did he was going to do what he was going to do and he was going to be a proponent for it and push it and I really saw my role sort of evaporate it's a little bit like being a dim planet next to a bright star around him in terms of his enthusiasm and you really can't compete with that all you can do is decide how you're going to deal with it by February 1991 Baker quit Martin to start his own firm [Music] Zubrin battled on for the next year and a half Zubrin tried to get NASA to pay attention giving speeches writing papers but Mars directs time seemed to have passed but then in 1992 a new administration came into power at NASA and Zubrin saw a second chance I was invited to brief Mike Griffin who was the associate administrator for space exploration in charge of the whole space exploration initiative he immediately became a very strong supporter Mars direct but before the engineers at NASA would take another look at Mars direct they wanted Zubrin to prove the producing rocket fuel on Mars could work they gave Martin Marietta a small budget to do an experiment Zubrin and his team built a machine called the in-situ propellant plan it could take carbon dioxide the dominant gas in the Martian atmosphere combine it with a little hydrogen and produce a methane-oxygen fuel we did it in three months with a very small team we built a plant that was 94% efficient and no one who actually participated in that effort was actually a real chemical engineer they were all aerospace engineers like me who were simply dabbling in chemistry in order to prove to NASA that 19th century chemical engineering really worked with the experiments success the administration had Zubrin give detailed briefings of the mission plan to the engineers of the Johnson Space Center they liked it but had some problems Dave Weaver was the lead mission architect there were a number of things that we were concerned about with bob zubrin's mission first of all we thought his estimates of mass were probably too optimistic didn't have sufficient margins for a variety of things not the least of which would be things like provisions for the crew the amount of water that would be required we thought as a sent vehicle was very large which meant his power requirements his propellant requirements were 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 the other problem was the size of his crew he had a four-person crew I think virtually every study that's been done says that a four-person crew for a three-year type of mission is probably not realistic Weaver took Zubrin into his office and the two men worked out compromised mission architecture first Weaver wanted three launches for every mission instead of two the first year three ships would launch a MAV Mars ascent vehicle an unoccupied hab and an ERV earth return vehicle the harb and MAV would land on the surface and begin producing fuel for the return flight and air for the crew these crafts would spend to solitary years on Mars allowing NASA to test all of the system's before sending a human crew then in the third year three more ships would launch 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 once on Mars the team could also utilize the first half then after a year and a half stay the crew would climb aboard their small capsule and rendezvous with the return ship this ship would carry them back home in a roomier environment than zubrin's ERV Zubrin called the plan Mars semi direct NASA called it the design reference mission they had a larger crew than we had they had bigger ships they had more equipment they had heavier equipment so they had to do the mission in three launches instead of two but it was done with the same principles of Mars direct 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 the design reference mission came back at a fraction of the cost fifty five billion spread out over ten years could be done within NASA's existing budget the plan made the cover of Newsweek here was a mission architecture that was affordable and could be done today with existing technology but NASA's astronauts have not left low-earth orbit sent [Music] with the completion of the International Space Station and the retiring of the space shuttle program a debate rages over the future of space exploration should NASA continue to focus on low-earth orbit developing technologies for the future or shouldn't a sir have a goal like it did in the 1960s with Apollo the way we got to the moon was by a presidential imperative that demanded that NASA get to the moon within a decade so NASA was forced to sit down design a plan for how to do that and then fly the mission since that time without the presence of the driving imperative we engage in basically a random set of constituency driven programs which are justified ad hoc 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 think nASA has focused on a steady process where the government can't just pull the plug on their funding I think the Apollo cancellation was very traumatic for NASA and it really transformed NASA from what it was in the 60s to more of what it is now if you have a singular program like going to Mars then it is very vulnerable to having its funding pool NASA must be destination-driven it is the only thing that allows the agency to be productive NASA was a hundred times more productive when it was destination-driven than in the period that has not been and we have stagnated in NASA since 1973 thirty years more than a generation has been wasted [Music] the American space program has been stacking for thirty years there is a once-in-a-generation shot right now to get it moving again by giving it a goal that will take it somewhere some mistakes today are high and if you ask me if I am nervous right now I am dr. Zubrin why is NASA stuck in low-earth orbit the problem with NASA's lack of current achievement is not money the problem is lack of focus its lack of a goal it shouldn't be humans to Mars in 50 years it should be humans to Mars in 10 we can do this we do not need gigantic nuclear-electric spaceships to send people to Mars that that is pork it's nonsense the primary question I get from American people is why aren't we doing this there's a big sense of disappointment almost verging on a sense of betrayal 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 effects from doing so dr. Zubrin in your testimony you were very passionate but you also were mad you're mad we haven't done this or that this vision has been stolen from a generation I guess you could say that it's like Columbus coming back from the New World and Ferdinand and Isabella saying ask so what forget it burned the ships okay you know that's what has happened in this country [Music] we've won our point but there needs to be a destination what we need the point we need to win on now is the destination needs to be Mars and it needs to be suit [Music] the movement to send humans to Mars in the near term began at the University of Colorado in 1978 a graduate student in Astro geophysics named Chris McKay gave a small seminar on the possibility of introducing life to Mars I got interested in Mars in graduate school I enter graduate school the same year that Viking landed on Mars and sent back these images and it sent back data that showed all the elements needed for life are here on this planet and yet there's no life here I know that's sort of the lights are on and nobody's home and I thought well that's curious so some of my other grad students and I we sort of got together to talk about well if there's no life on Mars now could we put life there and that evolved also into the question was maybe there was life in the past and so we could find fossils evidence of it well how would you do that well you do that by sending people there together with fellow graduate students the group decided to put together a small conference to discuss the matter of human Mars exploration we basically just started a forum we invited everybody from all the NASA centers and from all the universities were involved in it and they all came and it was it really was in retrospect I realized a very important step toward building a consensus for human exploration of Mars in 1996 I published my first book the case for Mars and the response was phenomenal I got 4,000 letters from all of the world I had parisian bankers and twelve-year-old kids in poland and firemen from Saskatoon and astronauts and they're all writing me and saying how do we make this happen Bob Zubrin came to the 3rd Mars conference and got very much involved he was willing and interested in forming a society forming a group in organizing said look if we could pull these people together we can get them to work together we could have a force that could actually make humans to Mars happen the group formed the Mars Society Robert Zubrin became the president they held their first convention in 1998 that convention was just magic we had no idea how many people were coming they were there not just from the United States and Canada and Europe think with the air from Israel they were there from Mozambique we were there from New Zealand it was astonished since its inception the Mars Society has attracted members worldwide Derek Shannon is the head of the Southern California Chapter he's met with political leaders from all over the country if you make them look at the whole Mars vision in historical terms it becomes a much easier so how will be Martians remember our century they're probably not going to remember our deficit our Wars our healthcare those will be footnotes what they'll remember is it out of all of human history there came a generation that decided to take this amazing step out into space and 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 [Music] in order to further the knowledge necessary for a manned mission to the red planet the Mars Society has been building research stations around the globe all of them based on the design of zubrin's hab module [Music] most recently the society set up a desert Research Station in Utah here international researchers and aerospace student come to do experiments under the harsh desert conditions and learn what's necessary to keep a Mars crew alive and productive 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 simulation environment for up to 14 days so what that means is every time we go outside they have people have to Don spacesuits after depressurize when we go outside they called extra vehicular activities they can only be of a certain duration to the air supply we have to recycle and water and basically have our own food as well [Music] it's great to fantasize but it's another thing when you have to put it together when the nuts have to hit the bolts like the Apollo missions to the moon sending human beings to Mars will mean putting people in harm's way there are many dangers in outer space and many things could go wrong a serious equipment breakdown could doom the crew to their deaths some argue that the risk of failure is simply too high you know back in the days when medieval man was looking out from Europe thinking about exploring in the world the world was unknown and mapmakers populated their maps with dragons we've got the same thing today there are people who are afraid to go out into space and they've populated their maps of the solar system of dragons we've got cosmic radiation we've got zero gravity we've got back contamination but these are dragons that we can take on there are two kinds of radiation astronauts must contend with in outer space solar flares and cosmic rays solar flares are floods of protons that burst from the Sun at irregular intervals and would be dangerous to an unshielded human crew we are not ready to send humans to Mars right now we've got to know a lot more about radiation and radiation mitigation one of the Apollo flights barely missed like by a week a major solar event if it had gone off when the Apollo astronauts are on the way back and forth to the moon they would have gotten their entire lifetime radiation dose in that one mission and that's just one solar flare so that's why we worry about this in the Maz direct plan Zubrin envisions a central insulated core where a crew can retreat to while the radiation passes by the core would be surrounded by all the provisions of the mission this should stop any harmful dose of radiation from reaching the astronauts basically you use your pantry as your storm shelter so a solar flare happens the alarm bell rings the crew goes into the storm shelter they stay in there cramped up pretty tight for a few hours until the all-clear rings and they come out this is gonna happen once it might happen twice in the course of the mission the second type of radiation is cosmic rays this constant rain of charged particles comes from interstellar space and cannot be avoided without many metres of shielding we can experience some of this type of radiation on earth at high altitudes airline pilots who spend their career is flying high in the atmosphere can receive almost as much of this radiation throughout their life as a Mars astronaut would on a two-and-a-half year mission it's a long trip it's a six-month trip there a six-month trip back is probably a year on the surface that's a lot of radiation the best estimates are that the magnitude of that dose is not that great perhaps 60 REM of radiation scattered over two and a half years now 60 REM of radiation delivered over a long period of time like that would not create any noticeable effects at all it would though it is believed increase your statistical risk of getting cancer at some point later in your life by about 1% 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 this would make it 21 if you're an average American smoker it's 40 in fact if you recruited the Morris crew out of smokers and sent them to Mars without their tobacco you would be reducing their chance of getting cancer with the immense distance from Earth never before experienced by a human being with the constant dangers of outer space surrounding their small life-sustaining craft and with nowhere else to go a psychological impact on a crew could be severe fear is real I mean it would be to me abnormal for a person to not feel the fear of getting on a rocket and launching into space and going to Mars so I think fear is a very normal thing that all astronauts in fact are supposed to have and I would be afraid to fly with someone who does not have fear some psychologists worry the cabin fever could set in and the crew might literally go crazy the human Mars mission is a more rigorous and difficult condition than most of us experience in daily life but it is hardly more difficult situation than many people have endured throughout human history we could compare the Mars crew to the crew of 19th century or prior sailing vessels many of whom were away from home for 3 years or more than three years under conditions in which they're eating extremely bad food without any medical knowledge to support their health commanded by brutal officers in every respect the crew of a human Mars mission with the full support of Mission Support in the whole world cheering for them and great rewards awaiting for them in life upon their return is in a vastly superior condition the Mazda eight crew spend most of their time inside the two-story hab carefully designed to promote psychological well-being despite the confinement the space where I think everybody would spend the most time you know just like a lot of homes on earth it would be the galley wardroom area there would be chairs a table some kind of large screen for entertainment you would have individual staterooms about four or five feet wide the ability for them to communicate with loved ones with colleagues on earth I think will be almost unlimited a Mars crew will need to be carefully chosen and thoroughly tested to ensure their ability to handle the extreme isolation John young went to the moon used to say that he could cover the earth by just lifting his thumb up to up to it and he says that when you go to Mars you are going to redefine the concept of loneliness and so it is very important that the crew be well-balanced and well-chosen so that they can support each other whoever gets picked to go they will have to learn to live together for two and a half years if you put out a call for volunteers for the first crew DeMars they'd be lined up coast to coast most people recognize what's left after you go is the good you left behind and to take part in adventure of this character such a historic character of extending the reach of the newest species this is something of immortal significance [Music] one of the most bogus threats associated with a Mars mission is the so called back contamination issue which is this notion that you go to Mars and discover these virulent disease organisms that you bring back to earth and destroy all life on Earth if we discover life on Mars one fear is that our earth biology will have no defense against possible Martian pathogens some argued that missions to Mars cannot be risked until we can prove Mars is free from harmful contaminants this is completely nonsensical there's natural transfer of material from Mars to earth all the time we get around 500 kilograms of unsterilized Martian rocks landing on earth every year and they have been doing so for the past three four billion years and so if there were Martian organisms that could contaminate the earth they've already done so although the prospect of Martian diseases seems remote lawmakers have required that NASA create elaborate protocol to ensure that any extraterrestrial material stays contained and like the Apollo astronauts who spent 17 days in quarantine after their return from a sterile moon a Mars crew will have to be thoroughly tested for any harmful Martian pathogens the probability is infinitesimally tiny but nevertheless this is our home planet and it's extremely important and we have to protect it the idea of a pathogen on Mars is clearly ridiculous because there is no megafauna or mega flora on Mars for pathogens to infect so it is impossible to propose a credible lifecycle for a martian pathogen the diseases that afflict us have been Co evolving with us and our ancestors and near relatives for the past 3 billion years and they are specifically designed to live inside the habitat of the human body and to overcome its defenses and they've been engaged in an arms race with the human defenses for those 3 billion years this is why humans do not get diseases from distantly related species for example I don't know of any person who has ever contracted Dutch elm disease you know in trees don't get colds when the first Mars Lander touches down the crew will be staring out at a new world a place that in four billion years no eyes have ever seen the crew won't be alone millions of television viewers back home will be watching as the first man or woman places their footprint into the rust-colored soil the crew will savor these moments for here someday a new branch of civilization might begin and future Martians will remember and celebrate this day [Music] there is much for the crew to do and explore one of their main mission objectives will be to search for signs of microscopic life to do this they will follow the ancient water flows for on earth where there is water there is life to help the crew in their search they will have a pressurized Rover that allows them to explore in a comfortable shirtsleeve environment this means the crew can examine a vast area around the landing site during their 18-month stay and there is much to explore Mars has 58 different kinds of topography and a surface area equivalent to all the continents of Earth combined [Music] if these explorers can uncover the fossilized remnants of indigenous Martian life they will redefine mankind's understanding of its place in the universe but if life arose separately on a planet so close to our own it strongly suggests that the universe is a biologically rich place and full of life [Music] for some the ultimate question of Martha is will there be human settlements on the planet will Mars become a new branch of human civilization as each subsequent Mars mission explores a wider and wider area of the planet over several years an ideal site for a base will be found probably worn with a thermal vent that can supply water and power at that point several Habs will be landed in this one spot with crews that plan to stay for eight or even twelve years perhaps we'll be interconnected and a permanent human presence on Mars will be established this scientific community will have to learn to become self-sufficient to be able to survive on Mars without supplies constantly being sent from Earth but unlike any other planet in the solar system besides Earth Mars has all of the fundamentals needed to make this possible it's 24 hour and 37 minute day is critical for growing plants it has all of the elements necessary for creating building materials like plastics metals and glass and it has oceans of water frozen into the soil if we can develop this craft of living on Mars then Mars becomes inhabitable not immediately physically but intellectually I mean look what determines whether an environment is habitable or not is Colorado habitable we're not naturally adapted to live in Colorado where tropical animals no one could survive the single winter night here without technology such as clothing efficient use of fire we invented our way into becoming people that could colonize such hostile environments eventually with a lot of ingenuity and invention the scientists will learn to live off the land it will grow crops in the iron-rich but potassium poor soil and they will produce oxygen and energy from the water and atmosphere sooner or later children will be born the first true Martians they will grow up to see Mars as their home with time more and more people will arrive these won't only be scientists but settlers people who plan to stay they may come for all kinds of reasons but to them Mars will be a chance to start over to build a new life for themselves [Music] the well of human social thought is not exhausted by the present age and I don't think we'll ever be exhausted there will always be people with new ideas on how humans should live together with Mars so far away the hold of earth governments on their colonies will be tenuous the Martians will need to govern themselves Mars is not going to be utopia Mars is gonna be a lab it's an open frontier it's a place where things are gonna be tried out I think we'll see a lot of noble experiments on Mars perhaps some of these Martian colonies with their novel ideas based on the best thought the 21st century has to offer maybe they'll find ways in which humans create society that are more humane and offering more opportunity for human potential the ultimate dream of the Martians will be to terraform their planet to make Mars as hospitable as Earth this may not be as big a fantasy as it seems here we are in earth a world that's very sophisticated and developed and complete and anything we do is just a subtraction because we live in such a biologically rich planet when we go to Mars we have an opportunity that we don't have on earth here's a planet that's died 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 once there are large even settlements on Mars that would have significant industrial capability we could actually start addressing ourselves to the question of transforming the Martian environment itself terraforming Mars as it's called because Mars was once a warm and went planet and it could be made so again through human engineering efforts with daytime temperatures in the Martian tropical zone averaging around zero degrees centigrade and with an atmosphere only 1% as thick as Earth's exposure to these elements by a human without a space suit would be instantly fatal the first step to terraforming Mars and bringing it back to life will be for the Martian colonists to warm up their planet well we know how to warm up planets we're doing it on earth by putting gases in the atmosphere on earth it's not a good idea to warm up the planet the temperature was just fine thank you we don't need it any warmer here but in principle if you could trap the sunlight reaching Mars today every single photon that's hitting Mars large would warm up in about 10 years well obviously you can't trap every single photon that's hitting Mars but you can trap about 10 percent of them with the greenhouse effect so that would imply that Mars could warm up in about 100 years 100 years is a long time but it's not astronomically long one idea is to build small automated factories that produce super greenhouse gasses with no ozone depleting side effects although these gases would be unwelcome on earth for the Martians they would be an efficient way to trap heat then within a few decades we would raise Mars by more than 10 degrees centigrade and if you did that that would cause massive amounts of carbon dioxide that is currently adsorbed into the Martian soil to start to outguess carbon dioxide is also a natural greenhouse gas as it builds up in the atmosphere more and more heat will be trapped which will in turn cause more co2 to out gas the process will become automatic and as the atmosphere thickens Mars will eventually reach a state of equilibrium and stay warm naturally the rise in air pressure would mean that the human colonists could discard their pressure suits and walk around the surface of Mars carrying only a supply of oxygen [Music] and as the temperatures rise on Mars water frozen into the soil will begin to melt out and for the second time in its history Mars would have liquid water on its surface drei Martian rivers will start to flow Seas will rise and there will be rain clouds in the skies [Music] the return of Mars to its warm and wet stage will make it a fertile environment for life any indigenous Martian organisms lying dormant will begin to grow and Mars will be full of Martians [Music] if no native life emerges or that life is all dead and humans could begin addressing the idea of bringing life from Earth at first it would be simple organisms perhaps genetically engineered that would thrive in the Martian environment then complex plants could be introduced the plants would be right at home in the carbon dioxide atmosphere and with no competition and a whole planet to cover they could transform Mars into a green world [Music] warming Mars so that it sustains life is rapid but then the slow process of making the atmosphere breathable for humans and animals starts and that's done by plants although the process will happen naturally if the colonists can't find a quicker way it will take tens of thousands of years this is a philosophical debate many people think the universe has a big sign on it that says do not touch leave it alone was made this way that is not in our purview as human beings to change anything I can respect that view although I disagree with it I think the universe has a big sign on it that says go forth and spread life because when I look around the universe I think life is the most amazing thing we see it is just incredible and we human beings are uniquely positioned to help spread light from this little tiny planet which it seems to be started on beyond and that's our gift Earth's gift to the universe I think is the gift of life [Music] [Music] this scheme for terraforming Mars is based on 20th century notions of engineering I don't think it is how Mars will actually be terraformed what you have here is a 20th century mind trying to address a 22nd century problem and so I think Mars will be terraformed by the 23rd century not by the 33rd 23rd things that would seem utterly fantastical to us is how it will actually be done but it'll be done more in a crossroads today we either muster the courage to go or we risk the possibility of stagnation in the case the exploration of the solar system and expanding of life through the rest of our solar system and some day beyond is the kind of thing that will keep our civilization going we're explorers by Nature eventually we will go to the Stars the question is when will we start I think a manned Mars mission could happen within 15 years some days I'm very optimistic I think we can do it in 10 maybe 15 years other days I see the all the political things that go into the space program I look back on 230 years 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 yeah we'd be surprised if we got to Mars prior to 2025 or 2030 in May of 2018 understanding the various political obstacles that exist in what we need to fight through to get the program started I believe that we will be on Mars by 2020 [Music] you have to believe in hope you have to believe in the future there are more and more people coming around to the point of view that a positive future for Humanity requires human expansion to space

Channel: ADVEXON TV

Views: 1,796,420

Rating: 4.3104687 out of 5

Keywords: The search for a second earth, the earth is not alone, are we alone?, alien life, another earth, alien planet, kepler, documentary, space, galaxy, universe, our planet, galaxy documentary, universe documentary, space documentary, earth like planet, documentary 2019, ufo, space aliens, aliens, are we alone, documentary 2020, bbc documentary, full episode documentary, 8k documentary, trending, doc, advexon documentary, astronomy

Id: VLDel3aZSxM

Length: 156min 57sec (9417 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 10 2019