Planets: The Search for a New World | Space Science | Episode 4 | Free Documentary

mankind has always looked to the Stars since time immemorial the universe has been a source of fascination and fundamental questions what else is out there how was all this created where do we come from we are on a never-ending journey of scientific discovery to the edge of our universe and beyond gazing far into infinity and the dream of discovering the origins of mankind is as old as civilization itself but was the emergence of humanity a pure coincidence or are there other worlds in which life exists [Music] welcome to space time with Oliver Volta astronaut and scientist he knows incredible things await us in outer space only a few decades ago we believed our solar system was unique but the earth is no more than a grain of sand on a gigantic beach our solar system is only one of a myriad of others more and more planets are meanwhile being discovered in the endlessness of the universe in ever decreasing intervals are we alone in the universe this for mankind is probably one of the most classic questions according to the scholar Albertus Magnus in the early Middle Ages at that time the existence of exoplanets that could only be believed to be true or dismissed but today we know yes they do exist lots of them and some of them even have the capacity to support extraterrestrial life this is the search for a cosmic twin the search for a second earth and the search for the answer to one of humankind's greatest questions does extraterrestrial life exists [Music] finding life on another planet this would be the most momentous discovery of all time proposal establish if our solar system really were the complete exception in the universe life would naturally be a complete exception to but today experimental observations have shown us that planets are quite obviously the rule in the universe wherever stars are formed planets seem to have been formed as well and that of course enormous ly increases the chances of life and that's why I believe the probability that life exists is certainly very high as a scientist I am of course waiting for the proof like all planets our earth was also formed from Stardust a ball of molten rock surrounded by a poisonous atmosphere cooling led to the formation of the Earth's crust condensating water vapour became the sea but how life developed from this dead matter remains one of humanity's great mysteries of course you can ask what does earth-like mean if you look at what we have here what makes us what we are what makes up the earth it's more than just temperature we have an atmosphere we have water we have land we have oxygen here too we have wind and a moon and all that so you have to wonder what would another planet need to have for us to regard it as earth-like finding an earth-like planet created to produce life that's what makes the search so fascinating in 2017 around the red dwarf star Trappist one scientists discovered a whole range of potential candidates bomas jetski this what you now have to do is to characterize them well enough to grade them we know that stars are very different in size and the same is true of exoplanets extrasolar planets exoplanets are increasingly being found but of genuine interest of those resembling the earth this trap is star is not a hot star it's only half as hot as the Sun which means what we see here as bright light from the Sun is seen there as a red glow like an oven of about two-and-a-half thousand degrees that of course means the planets are much closer which enables them to be as warm as the earth but there is only a red glow so you can ask are the earth-like what does that mean we don't just want to stand around in water but might also like to put our feet on dry land there needs to be oxygen there is that the case on Trappist we don't know yet an indication for extraterrestrial life would be evidence of oxygen in the atmosphere of one of these planets the oxygen is a very reactive gas which is why you often don't find it as such we know on earth at least that only biological processes in our plants produce oxygen then with carbon dioxide it's also quite similar this is also we excrete carbon dioxide and that's why a composition consisting of a lot of oxygen and traces of carbon dioxide would really be something like a fingerprint for Biological life as we know it really Olivia's Canon in terms of size the planets around Trappist are comparable to the earth and they could also be water in liquid form there too a basic condition for life as we know it [Music] Trappist one is a very special solar system as you can immediately see from this image we not only have four terrestrial planets like in our solar system but a total of seven and that's really unusual however only three of them are at a distance that would allow the occurrence of liquid water these three here are the only ones on which life could develop at all nevertheless that will in all probability not be the case the reason is the star itself it is also unusual in that it is a so-called ultra-cool dwarf as the name implies it's so cold that it only shines very weakly however all seven live very close to their star 25 times closer than the earth to the Sun to be precise but in the end the problem with this star is that it produces eruptions of x-rays every few days every few weeks and hurls these x-rays toward the three planets which very probably destroys any biological life that could otherwise develop in stained content but if there is any biological life we may be able to find it it's also possible to search for biomarkers these are special molecules created by life-forms that we know such as microbes or by algae seaweed or other things in the ocean methane for instance methylene chloride or even laughing gas these are compounds produced by living organisms which are then enriched in the atmosphere so when we examine the atmosphere of the planets in question we can determine their spectral attributes co2 their planet moon those who can also become the first step is finding evidence for the chemical components of life carbon dioxide and water but what actually constitutes life we can only search for life in the form we know from Earth [Music] biological life doesn't mean there's someone out there waving to us it can be plant life single-cell organisms you could almost say green slime but it means it would be a life form which is of biological origin because whether anything could develop or has developed from this life would have to be examined more closely life as it also developed on earth billions of years ago then you not leave when we search for life beyond the earth we are looking for microbial life that has to be clearly understood the Columbus simple reason is that even on earth the overwhelming proportion of biomass believe it or not is made up of microbes these tiniest of creatures make up the biggest proportion of the Earth's biomass Kirsten Toyota beer muscles the earth the blue planet a perfect system for developing and maintaining life and yet the physicist Stephen Hawking has prophesied that in a hundred years time humanity will need to find a new home or chemists often saying that of course Hawking is criticizing the way we treat our earth the first thing he says is that we use the earth in such a way that it may be uninhabitable in 100 years people think about what you're doing that is certainly correct but when he says we need to find a new home then I have to say it's not as simple as that astronomers know the distances in space we know the technology that's required and we're nowhere near ready we can simply emigrate to Mars tomorrow morning and I'm not sure we think it's such a great place or whether we think Mars could be green one day or whether we'd have to live our lives in greenhouses and then if Mars wasn't suitable for settlement because we need to go further away the nearest possibility would be Proxima Centauri a Toli Proxima Centauri is the star nearest to our Sun 4.3 light years away in cosmic terms a stone's throw and orbiting around the star is a planet that could have spawned life Proxima be Superman the search for life in the universe is the major issue occupying science quite simply because no one can tell me they're not interested in it that's the assumption and should any absolutely irrefutable evidence for life in the universe we found will see that in comparison to this every other scientific matter will take a backseat in other words this is the search for the holiest grail of all hi listen Clark and the search has only just begun evermore planets are being discovered within and beyond our galaxy [Music] Jubilees incidentally there are planets and there are planets the differences are significant and our planet system is perfectly suited to demonstrate this let's begin at the center this is mercury then comes Venus then Earth and then Mars and these four innermost planets have one basic property in common they are solid you can stand on them and that's why they're called terrestrial planets as we go further outward this changes dramatically here we have Jupiter Saturn Uranus and Neptune they look roughly the same size but the proportions are not quite right here Jupiter is much larger than all the others these four outer planets however are not rock planets but gas planets and are made up completely of gas you can't stand on them the size of these gas planets increases as we get closer to the Sun the largest Jupiter is therefore closest to the earth we know that's no coincidence as this occurs in all planetary systems how do we know this well today we have telescopes which enable us to see that all planet systems are structured in roughly the same way it's not much more than 100 years since Albert Einstein's theory of relativity fundamentally changed our understanding of space time matter and energy it opened the door to modern cosmology and astrophysics in only a few generations knowledge of our planets and solar system increased enormous ly yeah once we humans know our place here in the solar system we are the third inner planet Mercury's hot Venus is also hot Mars is too cold and so we realize how wonderful the earth is the other planets are also very nice but they're not green they have no water as such no one can live there the earth is different from all the other planets because it happens to be in the area where water is liquid come on it's loom our astronomical worldview has changed uniquely when the astronomer Galileo Galilei turned his new invention to the sky over 400 years ago new worlds were opened up galilei's telescope was the key that unlocked the doorway to the universe he discovered the moons of Jupiter as well as the phases of Venus in his search for our origins Galilei uncovered new worlds and new worldviews for us it's generally all about understanding who we are science is often very egocentric equal centers want to understand who we are how all this came about how life is really created is it really such a one-off event as it does it happen more frequently this is just a matter of time from the site it's this insatiable curiosity that drives mankind onwards the advent of space travel finally launched the real exploration of our solar system and the quest but new knowledge about our origins there's mustard there Lanza it's only since we've had space probes and the ability to travel there that we've really been able to examine what's happening on the surfaces we've sent probes to the moon send probes to Mars we've sent them to Saturn to the Saturn moons to other bodies that happen to be flying by and above all we got excellent photos and huge amounts of data on magnetic fields on compounds etc that means space travel has multiplied our knowledge and every year we are adding new information to it American visitor - stepping into the space age extended our knowledge of our home planet Earth and its relationship to the entire cosmos probes launched by man into space explore the solar system and advanced right - it's very edge from the outset our neighbor Mars has always attracted very special interest we meanwhile know that in its earliest times the red planet had oceans and also a much denser atmosphere but was Mars also perhaps home to primitive forms of life [Music] but come on sir she is conceivable and there are indications that there was liquid water there at some point river valleys can be seen on its surface and that's where we would certainly want to look for evidence of life whether we will actually find life there today can't be completely ruled out or maybe we'll find traces of earlier life in the rock in Steinman completely different from Mars is Jupiter the largest planet in our solar system this giant is 11 times the diameter of the earth decisive for the formation and development of any planetary system it is the so called gas giant in our solar system it's Jupiter I'm going to take a look at it now you can see it here in the background it's simply enormous almost like another small Sun that really seems to radiate from within a little a typical feature are these different alternating light and dark bands they move in opposite directions and this causes the formation of cyclones at the edges these can sometimes be quite large sometimes leading to the formation of huge wealth eyes such as this red spot the famous great red spot that's been visible for hundreds of years the red spot is an anticyclonic storm with a diameter of 1,600 kilometers Jupiter is a complex gigantic and turbulent world full of different phenomena yet without Jupiter humanity could not survive like a giant Guardian it holds its protective hand over our solar system Jupiter Jupiter has an enormous proportion of the gravitational pull in our solar system it has quite a large mass and consequently diverts all manner of bodies that could otherwise enter the solar system and possibly hit the earth so it prevents impacts occurring that could otherwise destroy civilization system more than 60 moons orbit this giant planet the 4th largest of them is Europa and on this Jupiter satellite life could have occurred among vias we know it has an ice covering several kilometers and underneath this there must be an ocean of liquid water because you can see this ice layer floating so to speak you can see it moving and that means there is liquid water the main component of life we also know that the Jupiter moon is heated up by so-called tidal friction which results in energy hearts in there and this is what causes the water to be liquid so then the probability that such a moon has a core of rock which is bound to contain carbon is not at all that's small the carbon energy water we know what that led to on earth all-school the moons of the gas giant in our solar system are increasingly becoming the focus for astronomers in 1997 space explorers sent the probe Cassini to Saturn which had reached 7 years later on the Saturn moon and salad Asst Cassini observed geezers blasting molecular hydrogen out into space this ice-covered moon has an ocean containing all the chemical elements of life live life on Enceladus would of course be life-forms living exclusively in water something fish life though I'd have to say that fish would probably be too big so in these oceans we would initially be looking for single-cell life forms of course no one can say if anything more could develop from these life-forms life needs one important factor and that's time and what we know from the earth is that single-cell life forms developed very quickly but the leap from single cell to multi cell took a very long time in fact billions of years more in September 2017 the Cassini mission came to an end after 20 years the probes energy supply was exhausted and the spacecraft was allowed to burn up in Saturn's upper atmosphere right to the end Cassini continued to send data and images back to earth there will of course be further probes sent out into deep space in search of knowledge and life and more Neptune is the eighth and outermost planet in our solar system but there are scientists who believe there is at least one other planet orbiting the Sun if this are the virulence of certain observations of our planets can't yet be explained completely there might be something out there if there's something quite far away and it isn't very large and massive its influence on the inner planets will be relatively slight that's why no one can say that there definitely is something there but it can't be completely ruled on either there could well be something out there that's very far away deserve ID Vickers is there a mysterious Planet X orbiting on the edge of our solar system we have this wonderful thing in the sky called the Milky Way it looks fantastic but the problem is it consists of thousands of objects and that does mean something can be hidden amid this background and that's where this so far undetected planet could be we ventured beyond our home planet to appease our curiosity but extraterrestrial life is something we still haven't found but says this ultimately brings us back down to earth so to speak if we look at the other planets and have to say ok they are so different then the earth really is something special we have found the basic elements for life all over the universe but not yet in a combination or an environment in which life could safely develop vision what properties must the planet actually have to support higher life-forms well the best thing to do is look at the earth because it's perfectly suited to supporting such higher life the most important thing is this planet must have the correct distance away from its star if it's too far away water freezes and that's not good for life if it's too close to the star it will be too hot water evaporates not good for life either that means the planet needs to be in a special zone known as the habitable zone but there's more if the planet is too small its core would no longer be molten and the magnet inside it would no longer flow so it would have a no magnetic field and if it has no magnetic field the Sun is rays would hit its surface unhindered and destroy all life so it needs a minimum size also only a planet that's large enough like the earth can maintain an atmosphere Mars for instance is too small to have either a magnetic field or an atmosphere and now we come to a very important and decisive point it's a really good planet needs a moon orbiting around it because if it doesn't its access it will not be stabilized over millions of years the axis tilt that would vary and that is not good at all for the climate it would be constantly changing and that's not beneficial to higher life so as you can see lots of different conditions have to come together and the question is is there another planet anywhere out there that fulfils all these conditions the search for life in the universe is also the search for extraterrestrial intelligence we have found it and we haven't been found billions of unknown galaxies consisting of billions of stars and their planetary systems and yet the universe remains silent and it can't hear us all these radio signals we've been doing this now for around 100 years or so and that's only 100 light years which shows that it's only a very small area if we take the Milky Way as a whole and so even if they received a signal and we knew where that was and how long that communication path was whether it would actually be possible to communicate is highly questionable by human standards the universe is frustratingly huge the light we see from faraway stars and galaxies is millions and billions of years old we can only see the universe's past and it would be exactly the same for any extraterrestrial civilization that may be looking out for us assuming you're 1,000 light years away which is relatively close we would receive a signal that was sent over 1,000 years ago and if we wanted to reply that we'd receive the signal it would take another 1,000 years for it to arrive there so any communication that took place would hardly be free-flowing 200 or Star Trek despite all the technical advances in space observation factors like time and distance make our existence in the universe so solitary and still we continue discovering more and more planets on which life could be possible the first proof for the existence of a planet outside our solar system came in 1995 51 pegasi B a gas planet half the size of Jupiter as technology advances the number of planet discoveries increases meanwhile they number among the thousands many of them indicate conditions that would make life possible and perhaps in the near or distant future humanity really will need somewhere to escape to once that has succeeded in killing off its own planet just like in the science fiction epic interstellar [Music] a foreigner vodka but if we do find such a planet will it be a world we will want to live in what we can see here is the famous Drake Equation and this plaque on the wooden panel hangs in the Institute where he worked and where he wrote this equation at that time in the early 1960s Drake wondered whether he could estimate the number of civilizations existing at the time and thought yes that must be possible if n is the number of civilizations today then that depends on how many stars there are in our Milky Way multiplied by the probability of that star having a planet understand and Planet naught multiplied by the probability of a planet being in the habitable zone soon effete multiplied by the probability of this planet actually developing primitive life multiplied by the probability of this primitive life developing into intelligent life multiplied by the probability of this intelligent life developing into a civilization that can communicate and now comes an important factor it depends on how long such a civilization can survive if it bombs out after only 100 years then the number today will be very small if it exists for any significant length of time then the number will be high does this equation make sense well in theory it does but the crux of the matter is this factor these three parts because we haven't the slightest idea how big these factors are and consequently practically it makes no sense at all the search for life in space is a game of probabilities perhaps the development and evolution of life as it occurred on earth was nothing but an incredibly huge coincidence we have discovered that practically all stars of planets that all stars have a number of planetary systems but now all the other things need to be factored in is there a magnetic field for example to divert the solar wind is there something like Jupiter protecting us from meteorites is there a moon stabilizing the axis is there perhaps the right concentration of oxygen once all this has been factored in you arrive at a relatively small number an ideal method for studying exoplanets is the use of detectors such as the sofia stratospheric telescope which is installed onboard a jumbo jet planets are cold they don't radiate heat Sofia detects distant infrared radiation from outer space the cooled space between the stars the one thing is looking for exoplanets and finding them the other is characterizing them how can the atmospheres be determined and elite among how can the characters the colors of these atmospheres be measured that's difficult for us to do from the ground because of interference signals from our own atmosphere Stroeve economy funds it can't be done from the ground so we've got to go higher it can be done with the Sofia telescope for example the Sofia Observatory or you have to go into space infrared telescopes must be kept very cool for which liquid helium is used and telescopes stationed in space can only carry a very limited supply of coolant once this is exhausted the mission is over in contrast Sofia can replenish its helium supply each time it lands frenzy on if you put a telescope onto a plane you've more or less made every mistake it's possible to make you haven't planted concrete in the ground you have no rock foundation it's not all calm and still there's no doom shielding it from the wind you've simply got a telescope on shaky ground up in the air traveling at an extremely high speed of 800 kilometres an hour it's drafty unstable it vibrates and then you have to carry out your observations there has to be a very good reason for doing something like that and there is this Observatory looks for distant infrared radiation from space for everything that's cold such as planets dust or cold gases whatever there is in the cold of space between the stars the flying Observatory combines the benefits of earth-based observatories were those of telescopes in space 99% of the disruptive water vapor layer lies beneath Sofia the observatory bridges the gap between earthbound observation and space it cannot however completely replace space telescopes Tom Tillis corporate space telescopes have the immense advantage of having no atmosphere to deal with I'm outside away from the Earth's surface there's no atmosphere and so I have considerably less interference in my images suomen in mine Bhutan the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990 heralded a new golden age of astronomy never before had humankind been able to gaze so deeply into space the telescope can see to the very edge of our universe this telescopic eye in space delivers images of bizarre fascinating and bewildering beauty landscapes of light Stardust and clouds of gas formed by cosmic winds and radiation and it searches for distant planets how can you find out if a star has a planet well today we use the so called transit method let's take a look at it now when a planet passes in front of a star as we can see here it covers part of the star you can't actually see such a transit with a Space Telescope because the resolution today isn't sufficient but what we can't see is the so-called light curve so the Hubble telescope is in space and it's observing the star it then sees the light that enters the aperture here and at the moment the planet crosses the light intensity fades once it moves away the intensity increases again that's the principle of transits but there are two problems we can see one of them here because when the light fades it isn't necessarily caused by a planet crossing it could be caused by these star spots here every star has such spots and they revolve with the star meaning that the fluctuations in light intensity could be caused by these star spots the second problem is that the planet of course has to pass directly in front of the star but that is rather improbable because we are more likely to be observing the orbit from above and the planet will be orbiting around the star so this here is more of a coincidence the Kepler space telescope was developed exclusively to hunt for undiscovered planets it brought the final undeniable proof that the earth was neither nor rare the planet hunter observed an area with over 190,000 planets in the Cygnus constellation and Kepler was quite specifically searching for small terrestrial planets earth-like planets Kepler follows the earth flies behind the earth so to speak and constantly observes a particular field and there it was able to find long period planets which means planets as far away from their host stars as the earth is from the Sun the Kepler telescope was able to identify several thousand exoplanets this included a few dozen in the habitable zone where any potential water would be liquid a basic condition for life and these were all discovered although Kepler was only observing a very limited area somewhere out there a second earth is turning that much seems certain in every planetary system there seems to be at least one planet at the right distance we can already look at atmospheres on large planets and what can be found in these atmospheres seems very exciting we'll soon be able to examine smaller planets and look at their atmospheres and apparently in this universe we never find anything that doesn't exist somewhere else Kepler has also tracked down another phenomenon planets orbiting a binary star system the existence of binary star systems has been known for some time but the fact that there can be planets there too is a completely new discovery we are Colonel Eleanor Mele we only know planets which orbit a single star like the Sun but there are also planets that orbit two stars in the star wars film there's that planet Tatooine or whatever it's called and there you can see two suns rising next to each other for a long time no one had even considered whether it would be possible for something like that to be stable but now systems have actually been found where one planet orbits two stars four stars meanwhile we know that planets and binary star systems occur just as frequently as in systems with only one star generally speaking there are two types of star systems single star systems and double star systems the ratio is about 50/50 when we stand on the surface of a planet in a single star system for instance and look at its star it looks rather like this that's just one half of all star systems the other 50% have two sons I'll just draw another smaller one typically one Sun is larger than the other and these two suns revolve around their common center of mass I'll show it like this now if there's also a planet in this double star system there are two possibilities the planet could be close to the two suns in which case that's really bad luck because the gravitational pull will divert it between the two stars it will get closer to one of the sons and hurled far out of the space somewhere no it's destroyed it is a this mean that's that there'll be no life there there's a second possibility the planet is further away let's say here in the center it only sees one mass some of both masses and it's movement takes it more or less stable around them varying a little but generally always around these two suns that means it has a stable orbit but the fluctuations means that the climatic conditions on the planet are very erratic in other words primitive life could develop here but not higher life forms which needs stable climate conditions stability madness the Kepler space telescope can only detect planets it can't examine them scientifically this task is taken on by the James Webb telescope this giant space device is to investigate the already discovered small earth-like planets much more closely and provide the scientists with entirely new insights [Music] I'm villain Teresa obviously we want to get to the point where the atmospheres of terrestrial planets can also be analyzed for this the James Webb telescope is the next step it will have very good spectrographs which may enable us to observe and follow transit planets and the task then is to analyze the atmospheres the James Webb telescope is a giant Observatory floating in space an all-round telescope which can peer much deeper into space than even the Hubble telescope James Webb can carry out observations in both the infrared zone and in visible light an enormous cosmic eye telescopes on earth in the stratosphere and in space are the astronomers sensory organs but even though the closest extrasolar planet is in cosmic terms orbiting right on our own doorstep for humanity itself it's out of reach [Music] assuming we don't only want to observe such a planet but actually want to fly there well Alpha Centauri the closest one is 4.3 light years away so if I wanted to fly there in my shuttle it would take me thousands of years much too long now breakthrough starshot Sai dia is that we would have to travel at almost the speed of light to get there so we take a tiny chip on a large sail about one square meter and bombard it with extremely powerful lasers to provide this amount of energy however an entire nuclear power plant would be needed and that would give me 20% of the speed of light and would only take 20 years to get there the project is being financed by private individuals and supported by the physicist Stephen Hawking just appeared closes camera it's the first project I know of that could actually bridge this enormous distance that's what makes the project so exciting and therefore it makes sense to think about this further at the moment I believe this project has to take a back seat behind the countless other interesting projects because they have much greater probabilities of success detecting earth-like exoplanets close to our solar system is the principal goal of NASA's tests mission the intention is to compile a catalog of exoplanet for more detailed investigation by earthbound telescopes this satellite equipped with cameras is a small Space Telescope and we'll be focusing especially on stars the size of our Sun and searching for terrestrial planets ultimately we have to say that due to this research we're seeing the planets in a completely new light because our division up to now into two categories terrestrial and gas planets isn't true for many other systems there are planets which are so hot that it can rain something like sand they don't have clouds of water vapor but if silicon compounds that then rain down then there are planets that do have liquids on their surfaces so there could well be something like water planets which have some kind of mix like the earth there are so many different variations the Europeans have also launched their search for a second earth the European Explorer Cheops is set to investigate known planet systems around neighboring Suns it's task is the more detailed exploration of earth-like exoplanets is there an atmosphere and what is it made up of is there water and can the chemical components for life be found there in this universe we can't find anything that doesn't exist somewhere else there are planets whose densities you can calculate and the result is the density of water there seems to be planets covered by oceans which is also very curious planets have been found with densities which are exactly the same as carbon there could well be a huge diamond out there in the universe somewhere it would be immeasurably valuable but there's no way to get there somehow we now seem to know that there's nothing in this universe that doesn't exist somewhere the super eye of humanity is currently being created somewhere in the Chilean Atacama Desert the II ELT the European extremely large telescope the largest telescope in the world this gigantic eye for the sky will begin operating in 2024 and is the first telescope that can observe extrasolar planets directly the e-elt aims to scour their atmospheres for signs of life in spider yarn in 20 years we could be capable of analyzing the atmospheres of terrestrial planets so precisely that we can say I can see the signals here and they can no longer really be explained by geological processes the best explanation for them would be that there may be bacterial life there which has produced these substances yet it is out there somewhere the planet with conditions suitable for human life perhaps were the answers to the question of our origin and the destination for future generations of space travelers the search for other planets is more than just the search for somewhere to relocate to if I think that even if we didn't have to move or shouldn't move or didn't want to finding out if there were other planets supporting life would still be of interest as with the questions are we alone and where do we come from altom utley human beings have a need to know where they came from and where they're going and the question about other planets is just a facet of this need only a few hundred years ago mankind believed itself to be the focus of all being we have now long accepted the knowledge that we are no more than the briefest of moments in infinity we will certainly find life somewhere in our solar system would be nice of course as we could study it in detail but also with regard to life in outer space the trend is moving towards the idea that we do live in a green universe that life is possible especially bacterial life the question is however how probable is it that there's another intelligent civilization existing in parallel at the same time as us which we will be able to make contact with finding an extraterrestrial civilization is pure science fiction but discovering the origins of life the beginning of a biological evolution the likelihood of this is increasing all the time I believe that life will actually be discovered outside the solar system first of all by finding a curious composition within an atmosphere similar to what we have on earth and then saying this composition can only be the biological origins of life and that's how I believe the discovery will be made over golf if not the into coke inside the solar system it will be difficult we've been scrutinizing Mars for some time now and it appears to be dead and technologically we are a relatively long way for missions to the Jupiter moons or the Saturn moon Enceladus plans are being made the intention is there but it will take another 10 or 20 years to actually achieve it whether I'll see it happen I don't know the search goes on new insights into our universe are being discovered ever more quickly maybe this exploration of new worlds will solve the mysteries surrounding our own origin sin are we alone in the universe let's first take a look at our Milky Way it has around 100 billion stars and probably just as many planets we know today that one in a thousand planets could support life that's about 100 million planets but evolutionary biologists say that only on one billionth of them could life really develop in other words this probability only occurred on earth so in the Milky Way we will probably be alone but our universe is almost infinitely huge and in a really huge universe there are an infinite number of planets in other words in our universe we are certainly not alone is the development of life on Earth really just the result of an accumulation of incredible coincidences the search for planets outside our solar system and their investigation has opened up entirely new worlds to us by gazing into the depths of space we have come to realize how special our own solar system is and one day on a planet like our earth we will find life

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Keywords: Free Documentary, Documentaries, Full documentary, HD documentary, documentary (tv genre), documentry - topic, space, space documentary, space science, science documentary, facts about the Universe, astronaut documentary, living in space, space discoveries, ISS documentary, nasa, space station, space travel, zero gravity, exoplanet, exoplanet documentary, planets, planet, planets documentary, saturn, jupiter, new worlds

Id: N9HgTH7SbpE

Length: 48min 59sec (2939 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 19 2019