A spacecraft from another solar system invades the night sky.
But this is not our sky.
And we are the invaders.
The search for alien life has begun.
We think that other worlds, perhaps other earths, if you will, exist
We know of hundreds of other planetary systems right now
and that may be the tip of the iceberg
It is not conceivable, really, that there would not be life
Is it intelligent?
I don't know. That is a whole other issue
Within a few decades, unmanned probes
equipped with artificial intelligence may find life
on planets beyond our solar system.
2014, that's the magic year.
That's the magic year where the terrestrial planet finder goes up into orbit.
And its explicit mission is to find evidence of up to perhaps
500, 500 earth-like planets orbiting other star systems.
There is no reason not to think that on some of them, somewhere,
you would find multicellular organisms like ourselves
The life we have on Earth must have spontaneously generated itself
It must therefore be possible for life to be generated
spontaneously elsewhere in the Universe
We now take a simulated journey, scientifically verified
by leading experts to a planet called Darwin IV.
The life it supports test the limits of technology
and the intellects of the greatest minds of our generation
Because here on Darwin, life is truly full of surprises
An interstellar spacecraft named Von Braun leaves earth orbit
for a planet some 6.5 light-years away
Are we ready to confront the technical challenges of a mission
that will take decades to complete?
To find out, a team of top scientists,
engineers and artists create a virtual mission to Darwin IV
Fourth planet in a binary system called Darwin.
It seemed utterly important to me that the foundation to create a world
was to make sure that the world was acceptable to the science community
Then we put together a team of scientists to have a look at that concept
and to make sure that the laws of physics and chemistry were all represented in that model
Today, we search for planets like Earth through telescopes.
The Darwin IV mission simulates the next giant step.
The unmanned quest to find life beyond our solar system.
The Von Braun is roughly the size of a nuclear attack submarine.
and travels at 37,000 miles per second.
20% the speed of light.
According to Einstein, there is an ultimate speed limit in the Universe
Mother-nature is like a cop.
A cop that says you cannot break the light barrier
Now the nearest star is four light-years away
And Darwin traveling at 20% the speed of light
will take 42 years to make that journey
The metal-composite nose shield that protects the ship
is cratered by collisions with space debris
accumulated during the 42-year journey to Darwin IV.
The planet orbits the largest sun of a binary solar system.
In a zone just close enough to its own star for comfort
A sweet spot, astronomers call, "the Goldilock Zone"
Not too close and not too far away
But just at the right distance that the planet
can support liquid water on its surface.
The Von Braun's first priority is to call home.
A digital message will be sent through a laser beam.
but the limits of time and space, impose a roaming charge
for long distance.
Even at the speed of light, Von Braun's transmissions to earth
take 6.5 years, making it impractical for engineers to correct problems
So Von Braun and its probes will have to think on their own.
The first phase in the mission is to deploy the Darwin Reconnaissance Orbiter
Or D.R.O.
It's going to spend months monitoring weather, looking for geology,
looking for signs of life
It's going to map the entire planet. And it's going to rotate around the planet
and it's going to give us some detail on its topography.
We learned a little bit about the planet via the space-based telescopes
that went around Earth But now that we are actually there.
We are gonna look down and confirm that ours guesses were correct
So that when we put these probes down which can only explore a small fraction of the planet.
We get the most out of it
Images surge through the D.R.O's camera lens
Infrared, radar, invisible light pictures
reveal an equatorial mountain range.
And vast plains swirling with weather systems.
Darwin IV has no oceans. Just a small blue sea.
Von Braun's computers see through thousands of destinations
before selecting the one landing site with the most to offer
The Von Braun launches a probe about the size of a dump trunk
named Balboa after the famous explorer.
Balboa enters Darwin's airspace as ours first ambassador
to a pristine alien planet.
The first contact between Earth and Darwin literally falls to pieces
But the planners of the Darwin mission have prepared for just such a scenario
The Von Braun vehicle carries two additional probes.
Probe Leonardo Da Vinci is nicknamed Leo.
Leo is followed by a twin probe,
the Isaac Newton, AKA, Ike.
The probes enter the atmosphere just like the spaceshuttles do on Earth
The final approach is a lazy S pattern
to burn off excess the speed before landing
Temperature on the surface: 70 degrees Fahrenheit
Leo is first to land and emerge from its vehicle
Leo's bird-like head is crammed with sensors
Driven by protocols embedded in the software
Leo confirms that Ike's landing is on track
and sends a status report to the Von Braun.
The news that Leo and Ike have landed is beamed to Earth.
Perhaps it's fitting that scientists who were babies when the Von Braun left Earth
Now announce the birth of interstellar space travel
Watching these probes from back on Earth would be much like sitting in the back of an auditorium
watching your child, at a spelling bee where you know the answer,
and you're sitting there hoping that they're going to make the right decision and come forth with the right answer,
but also knowing that you can't do a thing to help them at this moment
Darwin IV has a denser atmosphere than the Earth's
And the probes would've been designed to cope with that.
Now, we would have known that the atmosphere was in fact denser before we got there
The way we would've known that is by looking at the spectrum of this planet
and looking at the signature from oxygen in the planet.
That oxygen signature would be so broad
We would have known there was much more oxygen there in the atmosphere than we have on Earth
Well, today our awareness of the Universe has expanded, you know, exponentially, really
We've gotten smart. We've learned. We've done our homework.
The first wave of space telescopes showed us one thing.
earth based telescopes showed us another.
Physics, computers, Mathematics has come together in a beautiful confluence
that has allowed us to recognize what before was unmeasurable
Next, the probe called Da Vinci explores a puddle and discovers a micro universe.
But life forms on Darwin come in many sizes.
And some of them are lethal.
On Darwin IV, probes Da Vinci and Newton
are backed up by a menagerie of mini-probes.
Within minutes, their sensors detect a mysterious presence.
Recently, some astronomers have said: "Bah, humbug! The conditions for a life
are extremely rare."
For example, you need a large moon to stabilize the orbit of the Earth.
Or else the Earth tumbles in its orbit.
You need a large Jupiter
to clean up the comets and meteors of the solar system.
You have to have so many "Goldilock Zones", the Earth has to be just right for this, just right for that...
That perhaps we are alone. Well, I don't think so.
Because if you look at the number of stars in the heavens
perhaps ten billion trillion stars
that are within the range of our telescopes and you realize that half of them,
perhaps half of them have solar systems around them
And if you play the odds, you come up with the realization
that perhaps there are billions, billions of planets
in our Universe that have conditions that are compatible with life as we know it
Leo's first assignment is to recon a region studded
by tall mysterious gourd-like structures
Before he can take them on, he's got to get them self together
Darwin IV's atmosphere is drenched in water vapor
a free source of hydrogen
which Leo converts to inflate a large bag on his back
It's covered with photosynthetic solar panels
The array turns a green hue, as an algae-like material,
within the cells, generates energy from Darwin IV's two suns.
Leo's bird-like head contains two sensitive camera eyes
His arms are simulated plastic muscle
tipped with sensors and a manipulator
that can pluck a petal off an alien daisy.
Thrusters on pivots push him along at a top speed of 30 miles an hour
Leo senses movement in his side scanning radar.
But he can't investigate the source of the movement
His artificial intelligence isn't programmed for it at this point
Leo's first priority is finding his yellow-tailed brother
While physically identical, Ike and Leo were created with complementary personalities.
Ike is safety conscious, Leo is inquisitive and programmed to take risks.
Their artificial IQs are roughly those of 4-year-old children.
Their missions can be redirected by the Von Braun's super computers at any time
Assisting them are mini-probes like this "spider."
It's designed to explore places too tight or dangerous
for Leo and Ike.
The data they collect is transmitted to the Von Braun for analysis.
Camera disks serve as high speed scout
The saucers can be retrieved and recharged.
Radical changes in Darwin IV's weather could tear the probes to shreds
So, Ike and Leo deploy an early warning system.
Small weather balloons monitor the atmosphere.
It's now time for the last diagnostic check
Should Ike or Leo confront intelligent life
they'll present a calling card in the form of a hologram.
Number comprehension, images of our galaxy, solar system,
the Earth and the human species, are offered as an interstellar handshake
Leo has sensed something again.
Von Braun determines that Leo and Ike are fully prepared
to explore the bizarre structures that surround them.
Scientists will name them gourd trees
15 stories high, they stand on a matrix of root-like stilts
Von Braun's computers determine the stilts
could only support such a huge mass if the gourds were hollow
or filled with some type of spongy material.
But Leo and Ike are not programmed to immediately study objects like the gourd trees
Some astrobiologists predict the only alien life forms we may stumble upon
are microorganisms.
And the probes are designed to study them
Leo is programmed to search for them in the first puddle of water he finds
A microcosmos of single and multiple cell life forms
fill his sensors.
But Leo is about to discover that life on Darwin IV
comes in many sizes and many faces.
This life form is roughly the size of a T-Rex.
But instead of a roar it directs a single wave of sonar at Leo and Ike.
Darwin IV's dealt the mission a wildcard
The probes are in the middle of an extraterrestrial Serengeti
And it's a whole new game
The discovery that Darwin IV is not just a planet capable of sustaining life
or had life at a simple level on it
in fact, had an entire complex interactive multicellular biosphere
comparable to what we see on Earth,
is one of the greatest discoveries, the greatest discovery in the history of mankind
We can almost be certain that life that we find on another planet
will have evolved along lines differently from the life on Earth
The Arrowtongue is a remarkable large predator.
As far as we can tell, in terms of the land living predators on Darwin IV,
it's the largest one that we got a record of
So when we look at Darwin IV and look at an organism like an Arrowtongue
and then we look at Earth and organisms like Tyrannosaurus Rex,
we've got two different evolutionary pathways
Starting out with different raw materials and perhaps similar circumstances,
And we end up with these two organisms, that in some ways are very, very similar
and in other ways are extremely different
We really need to examine the entire food chain
on this planet from the very smallest animals up to largest
to get a sense of what is Earth and Darwin IV have in common.
When we left Earth we would not know anything really about Darwin IV.
We would know some very broad things that we wouldn't know of the surface was covered with water,
we wouldn't know if the surface was very marshy or very strange.
And if you send a probe that can just fly over everything
and fly very slowly, which a lot of your probe can do,
then you can cover all the basis pretty well
The intelligence of Ike and Leo is very much like a small child.
Intellectually, the child might know to do certain things, not to do others.
But, in some cases, may need to be reinforced.
A child doesn't know necessarily not to touch the burner of a stove
And Ike and Leo may not be aware of all the possible threats in its environment
and would have to learn from those
Next, Leo and Ike enter the kill zone of a power predator on Darwin IV.
An alien hunter that pegs its prey with sonar.
A high-speed chase begins on Darwin IV.
An alien planet where life and death turn on a dime
And as night falls, alien life forms
create a bioluminescent light show
If we realized that there's other life at a higher order
of multicellular organization of even, you know, adaptation to environment
I think that would rock profoundly our boat.
And, you know, in one sense it may,
it may actually lead to a greater realization that we have to do more exploring
Because our own little backyard is not as isolated and protected as we think it is
And I think it will lead to amazing opportunities.
By learning about the other life we may better recognize our own limits,
our own possibilities.
Its eyesight, may be less evolved than large life on Earth.
So, using sonar could be a more accurate means
of locating objects around it like Leo and Ike.
Splotches of bioluminescence cover the creature's back
Astrobiologists could call this creature the Arrowtongue
The Arrowtongue determines the probes pose no threat
and turns its attentions elsewhere
The Gyrosprinter is a two-legged vegetarian, about twice the size
of an African antelope.
Arrowtongue reveals itself as an ambush predator
capable of great bursts of speed
As predator and prey hit speeds of 40 miles per hour,
the probes are left in the dust
Ike lunches a camera-disk to follow the action
The Arrowtongue commands the road like a semi-truck
But the Gyrosprinter corners on a dime
Night falls on Darwin IV.
Scattered bands of bioluminescence rake the surface
like some kind of alien landscape lighting
Possibly it's a form of communication on Darwin IV
But Ike and Leo ignore the light show
And push on towards their prime objective
Their firs priority is to scour the landing side for Balboa,
the lost probe, to confirm its fate
The Darwin mission now depends on just two intrepid probes
with the intelligence of preschoolers
Images of the Balboa and of large life forms taken by Ike and Leo
are evaluated by the Von Braun
Its super computers now make important adjustments
in the programming of the two probes
The probes are directed to split up
Leo will hunt for Darwin's larger creatures while Ike explores ecosystems
and life forms that resemble plants
As Leo's quest begins, he flies over a geothermal vent
Here he'll top off his gasbag with some hydrogen from the mist
But even during a pit stop a good probe keeps exploring
Life on Darwin IV never stops either
In the midst of this volcanic caldron Leo finds microorganisms
that resemble some found in hot springs on Earth
As Leo looks for big game his twin probe Ike
explores a small isolated forest
The floor is covered with stick-ball plants
Part sponge, part virus
Giant molds called Darwin tomatoes
rise from the dense soil
Then Ike's sensors suddenly direct him skyward
Called Trunksuckers, they cling to these plaque bark trees,
sucking nourishment from the nutrient rich layers
just beneath the tough outer shingles
It's here that the mission reaches another milestone
After seeing life everywhere
Ike gets its first glimpse of death on Darwin IV
But death from what?
The Arrowtongue is a very interesting organism
It has a lot of similarities to some of our dinosaurs.
It doesn't have the maneuverability of some of its prey, I don't see it at all
a formidable high-speed predator
It's an ambush predator appears to sneak up on its prey
and then take them down quickly.
It is a high efficiency predator.
very highly evolved, a very interesting animal.
Gyrosprinter is a very probable animal,
when we look at animals on Earth
This is an animal that needed to get away from predators
who's running in a hoping manner, beat things 100 million years earlier
it's better to get fast, it got faster.
until it developed this amazing sense of balance, the large feet for gripping and handling on the turf
Looking at the shoulder girdle and the, the hip girdle
It appears that this animal may have evolved from a four-legged animal
It appears we have a fusion here in the forelimbs, fusion of the hindlimbs
Truly extraordinary. Something that we would never have predicted from life on earth
One of the things about the plants on Darwin IV, is that, superficially they seemed kind of bizarre
And yet when we look at the plants on earth,
we find that there is a lot of really bizarre plants on Earth too
It's just that they're not common
One of the things that we might ask about a plaque bark trees is
first of all, is transporting nutrients and water and we're guessing that it is
We might also ask where does it transport them
We didn't tell the probes to go checking
But we can learn about this from looking at the behaviors of the Trunksuckers
They are very similar to some sorts of birds.
the woodpeckers that we have here on earth They fly, they land on the trunk of tree
They prop themselves up with their tail And they taking fluid from the tree
This tells us somethings about the Trunksuckers where they're getting their energy
but also is informative about the plants and what they're doing
So Trunksuckers are informative about both plants and animals
Next, a herd of phantoms stampede across Darwin IV
And Leo attempts contact with a grouchy alien
On an alien planet, Ike has discovered forest creatures death from unknown causes
Meanwhile a sonic ping ends a conversation
and Leo goes offline on Darwin IV
If you look at the diversity of what species look like on this planet
Nature's come up with better things than our best science fiction
Artists and people try to conceive what a foreign species would look like
Somebody thinks are come out of the deep ocean,
just are absolutely amazing creatures
just the diversity from the same starting materials of DNA and genes
By mixing and matching these, almost any physical appearance is possible
For the past three days, the Darwin Reconnaissance Orbiter's tracked a large object
moving rapidly across the surface
Leo's been ordered to investigate,
what mission scientists call an object of interest
As it turns out the object of interest is not an object at all
It's a bunch of them.
Leo locks on to a herd of creatures called Unths
The closer Leo gets to the herd the more his attention turns from motion to sound
Unths have nostrils and lungs But they also inflate secondary air sacs
on both sides of their bodies
Unths are named after the sound they make
when they exhale through their dorsal vents
Like buffalos on Earth, the Unths are competitive
Possibly fighting for domination of the herd
Something spooks the herd.
Leo senses movement nearby, but can't get a fix
His sensors are simultaneously scanning in all directions
looking for the strongest signal
The newest input comes through Leo's microphones
A pair of Bladderhorns compete
Bioluminescent antlers are displayed to scare off opponents
The racket from this duel might've spooked the Unths
Leo interprets the back and forth bellowing as a form of communication
Perhaps this alien grump is smarter than it looks
Leo deploys the Earth communication screen
Like a greeting card, it's the best hallo we can offer
But if the Bladderhorn is saying anything, it's probably telling Leo and get lost
The Bladderhorn cuts and runs as Leo's sensors
detect another disturbance
For the next 24 hours, the Von Braun makes several attempts to communicate with Leo
But gets no reply A grim dispatch rides a laser beam to Earth
Probe Da Vinci has gone offline Cause, unknown
Ike and Leo's programming would be different
So that they would respond differently
You have a chance of one of them responding in a situation
that may not be the best response to that situation,
may put the probe in danger
By having the two probes carry separate software,
you have a chance to have one survive while another one may fail
The Unths are interesting in that they occurring in herds or groups
This is one of the Darwin IV animals that we see
where there is the evolution of sociality, social groups
which is also very important and evolved evidently many times on Earth
These animals are interacting each other in a number of sophisticated ways
Probably both to establish pecking order within the herd
And even though we're not sure what's a female what's a male
in the Unths at this point Certainly the kind of interaction
we're seeing in these animals are very similar to males fighting for females
that we see on Earth among herding animals
The Bladderhorn is a very interesting animal for variety reasons
One thing that's a bit unexpected is that the Bladderhorn is the only animal we've seen so far
that in fact appears to use sound as a major means of communication
It's taking some of the features we would expect to see
that is display features, that would be use in competition
We see this animal interacting front to front
Probably these, its horns with the bladders
are fundamental in the way they interact with each other
Next, Ike confronts a forest vampire
and a living earthquake blocks the surface of Darwin IV
On an alien planet a forest encounter's
a near disaster for Ike
When we do make contact with an intelligent life form They may be descended from predators
Take a look at our animal kingdom We have foxes, lions and tigers
with stereo eyes to the front
And then we have rabbits and deer with eyes to the side
That's because the predators have to zero in on the prey
They are, they have cunning, they have stealth They know how to ambush,
while if you're rabbit, all you have to do is know how to run
So which is more intelligent, the fox or the rabbit?
Well, obviously the fox is more intelligent than the rabbit
So chances are when we meet intelligent life forms in outer space,
They're gonna be descended from predators
Unless he resumes transmitting again Leo is virtually an invisible dot
on a vast alien landscape
Leo's twin probe Ike soldiers on
He finds another pocket forest The living remains of woodlands that thrived
until Darwin's oceans evaporated and the climate changed
As Ike begins to scan the trees his sensors pick up something new
lurking on a high branch of a plaque bark tree
Scientists will call it the Daggerwrist for good reason
When Ike launches a camera disk, the Daggerwrist is not interested in posing
The Daggerwrist's forelimbs sink so deep,
the nutrient rich sap bleeds to the surface
Ike's not programmed to approach something this aggressive
That was Leo's job
The study of plant life is Ike's mission until Von Braun orders otherwise
Finding water is statistically the most efficient method of finding vegetation
Ike scans a carpet of moss at the edge of a deep water marsh
But what lays beyond it is even more intriguing
Ike surveys three odd mounds covered with saplings
But appearances are deceiving on Darwin IV
Rising five stories into the air is a massive paradox
The Groveback
Grovebacks bury themselves alive for long periods of time
They're not hibernating, they're feeding
Grovebacks absorb nutrients from the soil through the skin of their underbodies
When the ground's depleted they move on in search of new feeding areas
Groves of trees sprout from these immense creatures
The Groveback provides them water from its spongy tissue
The trees inject sugars into the Groveback
Just enough juice to jump start these titanic walkabouts on Darwin IV
A burst of data kicks Von Braun's computers into hyper drive
Ike's brother Leo has come back online
If Ike or Leo were to come back after having gone offline
The first thing you'd wanna know is why They'd need to send you some information
What caused the reboot, anything that can tell you
As well as if possible they have saved some data from just before the problem
So that you'd be able to see what was going on when the problem occurred
And then their response to it So that you could start trying to figure out what had happened
The Groveback is the most massive animal that we have a record of on Darwin IV
Its tremendous size, supports, the own, my own theory that I've put together on these animals
and I think shared by some other scientists
They have a much lower body density The size of Groveback
far exceeds the, the mass of any of our dinosaurs, that we've records of living on Earth
My first impression on the Daggerwrist is that this is a very large Praying mantis
It has limb configuration that is reminiscent of the forelimbs of the Praying mantis,
although the Daggerwrist uses them to climb trees.
which was very interesting.
Moving by gliding is very interesting,
this is a rather large animal The membranes involved in producing the lift,
the gliding appeared rather small We have to remember that the gravity on Darwin IV
is less then Earth's. And we also have to remember we're gliding through a thicker atmosphere
So the dynamics are gonna be different
People ask me all the time
Why should we care about discovering new things, if it is not applicable to us?
If that doesn't put food on the table or gasoline in the car?
Why should we care?
All I can say is that, if you are not curious enough
to want to know the answer to anything you can know,
anything we can discover
Then, you are not, you are not human
Next, Ike solves a gruesome mystery in the forest
And the wide wings of aerial hunters cast their shadows across Darwin IV
The Von Braun has picked up a signal from the lost probe, Leo
Ike is sent on a mission to find his twin
But his search has barely begun
when Ike encounters a pair of Darwin IV's greatest predators on this Alien planet
I think statistics would say life is a cosmic imperative.
I personally believe, from all the observations
that NASA has offered Humanity for the last 50 years
suggest that environments could be, there, we now recognize,
potential habitats on Mars today
that you could insert earth life into, in habitat potentially be sustained
This is amazing! 25 years ago we might not have said that
And then the question is: Why don't we see it all around us?
And I think that begs a bigger question
Do we really know what we see all around us?
We are just taking those baby steps
into that cosmic ocean, with a few elegant robots
and a few human voyages We barely left the cradle.
As Von Braun tries to get a fix on Leo
His twin probe Ike moves deeper into the foothills of Darwin IV
Like groves of pine on Earth, the pocket forests of Darwin IV
are covered with colonies of passive organisms
that feed on the moist, spongy floor
As Ike continues to explore, the Darwin Reconnaissance Orbiter detects a sudden atmosphere disturbance
While Ike's sensors clock the wind at only 30 miles per hour
The super dense atmosphere gives it a kinetic punch of a young hurricane
Ike has no choice but to head for the ceiling to get out of the storm
Ike fires a salvo of weather balloons
to sample the currents of the unexplored upper atmosphere
Unlike the Earth where storms are fed by great oceans
Darwin IV's airspace is a shifting maze of thermals
rising from hotspots created by the two suns
The power of passing storms present a new and
potentially lethal threat to the mission.
Ike is little more than a fragile sack of hydrogen
on a planet where even the weather seems predatory
But for now, it's back to the business of discovery
Ike's motion sensors pick up activity within the grove
Not on the ground, but in the air
The link between a deadly hunter, its prey and the plaque bark trees suddenly unfolds
The dark king of the pocket forest fills in the missing pieces of a predatory puzzle
Trunksuckers feed on the sap from gashes made by climbing Diggerwrists
Ike's data confirms that Diggerwrists extract the pre-digested material
from the corpses of their prey
A gruesome, but energy efficient survival strategy on Darwin IV
The weather on Darwin IV is puzzling
130 days have past since Ike began its survey
and never ones has it rained
As far as Ike's sensors can determine
Darwin's surface waters flow from underground aquifers and springs
that might explain why forests can only exist in small pockets
Ike takes his survey to a high meadow
where his side scanning radar detects some new blips
A sonar ping throws a herd of Littoralopes into a panic
Like the Arrowtongue, these aerial killers hunt with sonar
No creature on Darwin IV is safe from the lance of the flying Skewer
The lance itself is hollow and as strong as titanium
Running through its center is a razor spiked tongue
that bores through the toughest hide
Helpless prey are killed and drained of fluids
Scavengers called Jetdarters feed on the rest
The Skewers are remarkable, large animals of flight
In the fact that they're not using their, their wings or airfoils in, in order to fly
They seem to be jet propulsed
Using the Skewer to impact the prey item and then lift it is highly unexpected
The, the forces involved there're tremendous
A, in a flying animal if you suddenly attach all that weight on the front,
that shifts the center of the balance of the animal, which is very critical for flying
which is almost certainly why they almost go straight up
after they impale a prey item
Because the center of gravity, the center of weight for the animal's shifted so far forward
Dropping of the prey item and having another one swoop it and catch it in the air is again very unusual
It's kind reminded me of what we see when we throw a large chunks of fish
up to frigate bird when you out fishing in the way they fight, interact for
We want to know is there competition here, or is this cooperative behavior are these related individuals?
All sorts of interesting questions about Skewers
Next, a giant takes its step in a wrong direction
And Ike enters a deadly matrix
On Darwin IV, probe Da Vinci attempts to get a fix on its crash site
Meanwhile Ike, his twin discovers size is no guarantee of survival on alien planet
One piece of evidence that suggests the probability of primitive forms of life appearing
may be reasonably high, is that life seems to have appeared on Earth
shortly after the Earth cooled sufficiently for life to be possible
If life was very unlikely, one might have expected life not to have appeared
until late in the ten billion years or so that the Earth has to live.
On Darwin IV, the mission encounters giant life forms
and super sized animal organisms all supported
by a dense, humid atmosphere and a lower gravity than on Earth
Ruling the skies are falcon-like predators called Skewers
Aerial life forms that travel and hunt in pairs
Skewers maneuver by changing the shape of their 50-foot wingspans
But it's not their wings that actually propel them
Skewers create methane gas internally
and combust it in four jet-like pods
Littoralopes defend themselves by scattering in all directions
Skewers are forced to chose only one target
Darwin's aerial predator is literally knocked from the sky
But by what?
High about the foothills of Darwin's equatorial mountain chain
Ike's sensors detect unusual bursts of energy
Swarm of Scavengers called Jetdarters stray into a kill zone
What looks like a colony of oversized mushrooms
is a deadly maze.
Ike's programmed to gather more data
to learn how it works
The answer must lie within the organisms themselves
But Ike can't risk frying his circuit boards
A mini probe is the only expendable option
The crawler will look for the power source from below
Acting like a light switch, the crawler has closed a fatal gap between two electric charges
Ike's sensors pick up a familiar signature
Just walking on Darwin IV is a hazardous undertaking
Even a five-storey Groveback must watch its step
A colony of Beach Quills launch an assault on a careless Groveback
The Quills penetrate deep into the creature's hide
And deliver a fatal dose of neurotoxins
The Beach Quills consumed Groveback alive
Far from the killing field, another struggle continues in a remote corner of Darwin IV
Leo has no fix on his location
To find his position, he must launch a camera disk
to clue in to his surroundings
Leo's last transmission allows Von Braun's super computers
to plot his location.
Ike is roughly 200 miles away from Leo as he continues his survey of the foothills
Badlands encrust with ancient lava fields are covered with lichens and low vegetation
Ike's sensors now lock on to higher life forms
Like alien ghosts they seem to come from everywhere
But these nimble creatures all follow the same scent
On Earth we have wolves On Darwin IV they're called Prongheads
Take a look at the electrified plants Here's this thing that looks like a plant
and yet it's zapping things out of the sky And you sort of wonder what it is doing
with the things that it zaps
Is it simply frightening them off? Is it killing them and eventually eating them and we're not seeing that?
And so it's get back to the question of is this a plant or is this an animal?
But the plant and animal distinction is one that's very peculiar to the way
that humans look at life
Because we live on the surface of Earth and as it turns out at this stage in the Earth's history
There is only two big lineages of living organisms on the land
The plants, they're green, they're photosynthetic
The animals, they run around, they eat things
And so we see that as a very important distinction
It shouldn't be a surprise to us at all to find an organism on Darwin IV,
any place else
that combines aspects what we might think are plant and animal
Now if we look at Darwin IV, we're gonna look for evidence
of both how these animals developed locomotive pathways, how did they develop the efficiency of locomotion
predator and prey interactions
If we look at the attack of the Beach Quills on the Groveback
We come to the conclusion very quickly that this animal must've been subjected to a very toxic poison
Perhaps similar to that produced by cone shells on Earth today
which is one of the most potent toxin we know of
Where cone shell can very quickly kill a large fish and then consume it
One of the things that we want to know is that was going on is to go back and look at one of these places
after the Beach Quills killed the Groveback to see what's happened next
Are they turning into the next stage of life? So there is a lot we want to know
to be able to sort out all the possibilities
Next, In his search for Leo, Ike must now cross a blue sea
with a dark secret
Ike finds the weather on Darwin IV is as dangerous
as the planet's predatory life forms
Life forms, when we go to another planet and looking for life forms
I think the first thing we need to do is have a definition of what a life form is
We certainly have a definition or we have a number of definitions
of what people would like to think life forms are
based on Earth, based on what we have here on Earth
There may be life forms
composed of many other, molecules that, that don't exist here on Earth
But before we can actually call something a life form
we have to have a definition of what it is
Gyrosprinters are fast and evasive creatures
But Prongheads know how to run interception
Like pack predators on Earth, not every hunt ends in success
But the discovery of cooperative hunting is a major breakthrough
The inhabitants of Darwin IV are more evolved than anticipated
Artificial intelligence computers on the Von Braun
have decided to do something about Leo
As a result the protocols that control Ike's behavior are reprioritized
Ike is ordered to break off his survey immediately
He's now instructed to assume grater risks
His mission now is to find Leo
The journey will take him across vast unexplored region of Darwin IV
Based on data from the Reconnaissance Orbiter
Darwin's oceans evaporated millions of years ago
transforming the air into a dense, oxygen rich blanket
When the oceans vanished, they left behind a badland of twisted spires
Over the eons some have grown a mile high
The spires are the accumulated remains of billions of tons of ocean's salts and minerals
Ike identifies a new object of interest
Like nothing yet seen on Darwin IV
The curved formations don't mesh with the environment
Perhaps they were made by some creature yet to be discovered
While Darwin lost its oceans,
it still maintains a sea roughly the size of Texas
But what looked like water from space
doesn't hold up under closer examination
The water's edge looks like a thick sheet of gelatin,
surrounded by great spires of salt
Ike can't penetrate the surface
It's like a water bed teeming with life
What looks like a sea is actually a vast colony,
a matrix of symbiotic life forms
They evolved as the oceans evaporated,
trapping sea water within their transparent membranes
The Von Braun has calculated that crossing the amoebic sea,
is the quickest way to reach the side of Leo's last transmission
But halfway there, Ike spots a radical change in the surface texture
The amoebic sea suddenly behaves like a gigantic predator
that preys on low flying game
The Darwin Reconnaissance Orbiter issues a sudden storm alert
Wall of debris is closing in at high speed.
Ike's one chance to survive may already be out of reach
What you see around the amoebic sea are salt sand dunes
which are the remnants of the ocean that once covered Darwin IV
As that ocean receded
what happened was extremely ingenious
The life in that ocean developed its own seal
to protect the loss of the last piece of the ocean
And that life-covered remnant of the ocean is what is the amoebic sea
Darwin IV is a planet that doesn't have a lot of water
Whereas here on the Earth we have a lot of water vapor available to drive storms
And the water has a special property of being able to store and release energy
So that's how we drive the storms on the Earth
On Darwin IV though, with little water
you end up instead with storms being driven by temperature differences
So its incredible storms that we see on the amoebic sea
are driven by differences in temperature
that occur between differences in the absorption of sun light between the salt dunes and the darkness of the sea
The behavior we see with the Prongheads is very reminiscent what we see with the wolf pack
In that you have animals flanking out different areas, going very slow
and then certainly have a corralling, the prey into one spot where they can finish it off
is very suggestive of a coordinating hunting strategy
In terms of pack hunting, they are needs to be greater intelligence
to coordinate a pack hunting behavior, such as we see in the wolves
or we predict it might have happened among the Dromaeosaurs, the Raptors dinosaurs
You have to have a fairly large brain capacity.
However, these are still instinctive behaviors in these organisms
After all is said and done
I would hope that when we discover life in outer space
What we take with us is the fact that life is precious
Life is so precious It took billions of years
of a complex series of accidents Accidents to create life on the planet Earth
We have great oceans, liquid water oceans
Perhaps the most precious substance in the universe, liquid water
And what do we do with it? We pollute it,
we dump all our garbage in the liquid oceans
So I would hope that we come away with our understanding
Realizing how precious it is that we exist
How precious it is that life can form and grow
and that we have to protect it
A perfect storm strikes Darwin IV
and Ike meets the awesome monarchs of the amoebic sea. Next...
The largest denizens of Darwin IV guide Ike from danger on alien planet
Single cell life is the key event in evolution in my view
There certainly wouldn't be any micro life
on Darwin or any other planet if it didn't start with single cell life
So if we didn't start with micro organisms, single cells are eventually worked in colonies
And then worked out to form networks Eventually multicellular organisms
There would be no larger life that would be visible to the eyes
There is a commonality of life that we built from the same building blocks
But we put great emphasis because of our visual acuity on how things look
and if they look different or not.
We put more significance on that and if we have radically different metabolism
Probe Isaac Newton is blasted by a cyclone of salt and caustic minerals
Ike could've run from the storm by rising above
But his new directive is to assume greater risk
in the search for Leo
Crossing the amoebic sea is the shortest path
Ike's sensors detect a huge disturbance
But it's not the storm
It's the biggest life form ever encountered anywhere
The Sea Strider is seven stories tall
Now Ike detects more movement
The Flyers seem to orbit the Strider
Attracted to an energy source just beneath its mouthless head
The Striders are not just walking on the surface
They are taking chunks of it along with them
The storm ends as suddenly as it began
The Striders are heading the same direction Ike must take to reach Leo
So Ike will tag along and gather data on the alien giants
Astrobiologists could find that
the Striders eat from mouths at the bottom of their giant feet
Trudging back and forth across the sea on a movable feast
Something's disturbed the Striders
But quickly vanishes from Ike's sensors
The Flyers are nymph-like young of the Sea Striders
They have a relationship to the sea as well
The far shore is finally in sight
Here, the peaceful giants of Darwin IV make a u-turn
Based on Leo's transmissions to the Von Braun
Ike will follow his trail like a robotic bloodhound
Within hours Ike nears one of Leo's last reported locations
The Unths herd hasn't strayed far from where Leo first encountered them
An adult makes ruts in the ground
Perhaps the patterns found by the spires
were created by a herd, like this one
Ike spots a metallic glint that could only come from Leo
Sea Strider's immense size and extreme height suggest that these animals are less dense
than the animals we're familiar with on Earth
To carry such an immense weight around on two legs, immense volume
we can't justify that with the same kind of densities that we see with animals on Earth
That's just mechanically impossible
One of the other things that's kind of surprising we see these in a storm.
They are very large organisms. How do they keep from being blown over?
Especially if they are light enough, that they don't sink into the bottom of the sea.
There is a lot of things about the Sea Strider we like know more about
The science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke said
that there either is or is not intelligent life in outer space
However, either thought is frightening
However, I tend to look at as exhilarating
I tend to believe that when we make contact with an another intelligent life form
We will perhaps have a tremendous bonanza of scientific information
So much cultural exchange that will be involved
As a scientist I look forward to the day
when we make contact with other intelligent life forms in the universe
So rather than being frightened, I think we'd approach the idea
with open arms, with open mind realizing that this could be
a turning point in the history of the human race
A clue to Leo's disappearance reveals evidence of an alien intelligence on Darwin IV. Next...
On an alien planet,
Ike discovers clues to Leo's disappearance
and he's caught in the sights of a Skewer
Our first forays beyond the solar system
to the nearest, nearby planets
will be robotic,
they ought to be robotic, it makes sense
And we will be the bystanders,
much more so than we are today with our robotic emissaries
But that's okay
Because, it's my belief, that as we do that
we will have trained ourselves for those smart machines
to act more like us,
not to be us, they never will
But they'll act more like us in the sense they'll observe, mine the data, understand
the anomalies, the exciting, the excitement find the sweet-spots and tell us that
at the limits of the speed of physics, the speed of light
And as they go they'll open the doors and our eyes to how we may go
It's not the camera disk that stumps Ike's computer
It's what lays around it
Ike is unable to determine if something actually built this site
Ike detects motion as he heads for Leo's final transmission point
The Bladderhorn still defends the same piece of turf
But Leo's nowhere in sight
There is no place to run and no time to hide
from Darwin's deadliest predator
The probe is not equipped to evade predators like the Skewer
But that's not a problem now
Ike's sensors pick up a new life form
And he follows the signal
The Skewer has disappeared
The trail ends at the base of a steep mountain face
Or does it?
Whatever killed the Skewer has managed to lift all 50 feet of it up a sheer cliff
Ike senses no movement
No transmission's coming from his twin probe, Leo
Ike senses movement all around him
Suddenly movement is detected from Leo's direction
Seeing life itself on another planet
would be the most breathtaking
the emotional charge that scientists could ever possibly have
Life on Earth could've turned out very, very different
except for specific events that were sort of random in nature
Probably the best known of which was the asteroid that hit the Earth
at the end of the Cretaceous period, caused the extinction of all the large dinosaurs
Without that single event the organisms that survive
to the present day would've been very, very different from the once that we see
And so to the extent that in a planet like Darwin IV
we find things that resemble organisms on earth
That's astonishing to us because it tells us that there are something more a luck of the draw
There are some reason they look that way, they just didn't turn out that way
I think just knowing we're not alone at the, even at the cellular level
will change our view of our own neighborhood and on beyond the universe
But then the question will be, well, how are we related to that?
Are we all the same stuff
I mean, Sagan said so well "We're all made of star stuff",
And we are.
Ike is about to make contact with humanity's greatest discovery. Next.
On the Alien Planet Ike attempts to communicate with life form that seem intelligent
The octopus has eyes, very weak eyes It has tentacles by which it can manipulate the environment
But it has no culture It cannot transmit information
from generation to generation
But if you could breed the octopus for millions of years
perhaps you could breed octopus with the capability of speech, the capability of handing down information
and perhaps even a race, another race of intelligent beings on the planet Earth
So the bottom line is, why should an alien life form
look just like us?
This alien could have easily destroyed the probe
Instead it waits for Ike to makes the next move
When Ike projects numeric symbols
the alien seems ready to respond
Part one is a test to determine if this alien creature
can conceptualize and is therefore intelligent
Ike flashes three symbols
The alien responds correctly with four flashes
This response triggers Ike to deliver the rest of the message
When the third creature closes in Ike launches a camera disk
to assess the threat
160 days into the Darwin IV mission, the last recorded image of Ike and Leo
is sent to the Von Braun
Computers play and replay the data
for the next 72 hours
But interpretation of this profound event
is beyond the scope of its artificial intelligence software
To evaluate the full significance of our first extraterrestrial contact
requires human intelligence
After decades of research, the pieces begin to fall together
Scientists call the creatures Eosapiens
Life forms with intelligence possibly similar to that of early man
Eosapiens appear to be highly mobile and airborne
They navigate with organic thrusters and a large delicate bag of nothing for lift
The Eosapiens may see the camera disk,
launched by the probes, as threats
This misunderstanding may have triggered the destruction of Leo
As the simulated mission to this Alien Planet ends
The questions it raises are as immense as the universe
Will we ever find life beyond our planet?
What must we do to reach it?
And how can we prepare ourselves psychologically to deal
with the discovery of alien life forms?
Finding life beyond Earth, it really is just going to be a matter of a persistence
We'll probably have to send a lot of probes
We're just beginning
You know that the world and the universe is about to open up to you
You know, we're just slowly waking up out of our cave for God's sakes
This is the best time.
in the next, you know, 2 or 3 hundred thousand years will be fantastic
We are great to be alive
I think discovering life on another planet
might be one of the most fantastic things for humans
If we want to find advanced intelligent life
our best bet is to listen for radio signals like the SETI project
Interstellar distances are too large for us to travel
to more than the closest stars
If we want to explore the galaxy so we'd better send robots
but we may not live long enough to hear back from them
If we find life on another planet,
we're going to, first of all,
know that we're not in the center of the universe anymore
I think it's important that we understand our place in the universe
I think it's terribly important that
in so doing we come full circle to respect the world that we're on
And to understand the distances
and what the universe is all about
We will know that if the conditions for a life are present
then life can arrive at multiple sites in the universe
And that we now live in a living universe that we're ready to explore
I think the revolution that scientists giving us
as we look at our solar system, any testable universe
We'll continue to unfold
When we get the next generation telescopes up there,
we will not only see indirect evidence about the earth
but we see the earlier time of the universe
and a better belief understand how the universe, the galaxies that populated came to be
you have seen nothing yet
Because it's only gonna get better
And that zone, the gap between science-fiction and science fact
is just gonna come together
And, you known, I've never met a science fact
that couldn't be seen as interesting as some of the best of science-fiction
And I think we're gonna see that zone blurring together
as we continue the quest for life
Thomas Huxley, the grate biologist in the last century,
said that perhaps one of the noblest achievements of science and philosophy
is to discover our true role in the universe
Who are we?
Where do we fit in a larger scheme of things?
That he thought was a central question unifying philosophy, science and art
And today, I think we may be able to answer that question
Because we are on the verge
of perhaps the greatest break through in the history of science
And that is the discovery of other life forms in space
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