00:00:04:05 00:00:09:05
VO: Burney in northern California is little more
than a stretch of highway, with a few shops, motels
2:
00:00:09:08 00:00:11:19
VO: a night club, and a diner.
3:
00:00:11:22 00:00:15:14
VO: But just 30 minutes away
hidden among the Hat Creek mountains
4:
00:00:15:17 00:00:19:09
VO: is a laboratory
carrying out pioneering research.
5:
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Top American scientists are
hunting for extraterrestrial civilizations.
6:
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VO: Exciting new discoveries
have been causing quite a stir
7:
00:00:28:05 00:00:30:03
VO: among the smartest people
on earth.
8:
00:00:30:06 00:00:35:02
VO: We're now closer than ever to answering the
big question: Are we alone in the universe?
00:00:48:16
Dr. Seth Shostak, SETI Institute astronomer
If you assume that this is the only planet
where anything interesting is happening, where life
has developed, where intelligent life has developed,
then you're saying that the earth is very special,
and there doesn't seem to be any reason to think
that the earth is that special.
00:01:06:14
Shostak
one nice thing about radio observatories is
that they put them in usually spectacular locations,
that are far away from people.
It's like "another day at the office - but you gotta say;
it's a beautiful office"
Volcanoes, Lava beds, nature... snakes.
00:01:35:15
Shostak
When waves come in from the cosmos, they bounce off that
big reflector there, that 6 metre reflector, and then
they get bounced again and they go into the receiver, then those
signals are sent into the building over there where
they're analysed.
00:01:48:03
Shostak
This is a very sensitive array - I mean, people make calculations;
you could pick up a cell phone on Jupiter. Not that there are any
cell phones on Jupiter, but that gives you some idea of how
sensitive radio technology is.
9:
00:02:02:06 00:02:09:08
VO: Astronomer Dr Seth Shostak is one of
the 130 top scientists at the SETI Institute -
10:
00:02:09:11 00:02:16:14
VO: The acronym stands for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence,
and the organisation was founded in 1984.
00:02:17
Dr. Jill Tarter, head SETI Institute
These are all radio telescopes, and we're using them to try
and detect someone else's transmissions some technology from
a distant planet around a distant star to understand whether
or not there are any other technological civilisations in our
galaxy.
REPORTER: Why are you doing that?
00:02:38:13
Tarter
Well we'd like to know, are we alone. We've been asking that
question for millenia, right? And one way we might find an
answer, is by finding the smart folks out there.
11:
00:02:49:21 00:02:55:07
VO: Dr Jill Tarter is also an astronomer
and one of the institute's founders.
12:
00:02:55:10 00:02:59:01 03:16
VO: A few years ago,
Time Magazine voted her
13:
00:02:59:04 00:03:03:15
VO:one of the 100 most influential people
on earth.
00:03:04:00
Tarter
We've been doing SETI for 50 years. We've hardly begun to
search. If you make an analogy, the cosmic oceans that we
want to search, compare that to the oceans on the Earth.
Well, so far, what we've sampled is one glass of water
from the Earth's Oceans. So there's a lot more to be done.
00:03:26:16
Shostak
Well, in the fastest Rockets we have, to go to the nearest
other star, would take you about 100,000 years - one way
trip. The Universe is really big.
14:
00:03:38:08 00:03:42:04
VO: Our local star, the sun, is middle aged,
orbited by 8 planets,
15:
00:03:42:07 00:03:46:20
VO: and, humanity aside, is otherwise fairly
unexceptional. Proxima Centauri,
16:
00:03:46:23 00:03:51:24
VO: currently the next closest star,
is some 25 million, million miles away.
17:
00:03:52:02 00:03:55:15
VO: Sometimes, it's hard to imagine
just how vast the universe is.
00:03:56:05
Shostak
How big is it? Well, we're in a galaxy, it's called the
milky way, the number of stars the galaxy, in our galaxy,
is a few hundred thousand million; that's a lot of stars.
But there are at least a few hundred thousand million
Galaxies, each with a similar number of stars.
00:04:13:22
Shostak
Now, how many of theose stars have planets? We don't know
for sure, but at least half of them do... maybe more. So
what that means is the number of planets in the part of
the Universe we can see with our telescopes, turns out to
be about the same as all the sand grains on all the beaches
on the earth. Now that's a huge number.
00:04:32:21
Shostak
That's a one, followed by twenty three zeros. That's such
an enormous number that if this is the only sand grain with
intelligent life on it that means we're some sort of miracle,
and one thing you learn by being a scientist is not to
believe in miracles.
18:
00:04:59:07 00:05:04:23
VO: The SETI Institute works closely
with the US space organisation NASA,
19:
00:05:05:01 00:05:08:10
VO: And with the University of California
in Berkeley.
20:
00:05:08:13 00:05:12:13
VO: UC Berkeley has single handedly produced
66 Nobel Prize winners -
21:
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VO: more than most countries
22:
00:05:14:24 00:05:19:00
VO: Many SETI scientists either teach
or have studied here.
23:
00:05:19:03 00:05:24:08
VO: In short, this is a select bunch of some of
the world's most celebrated scientists.
00:05:24:06
Tarter
We're made out of stardust so it's stardust studying the stars.
We are what happens to Hydrogen and Helium after billions years
of evolution, till it finally gets round to being sentient and
figuring out the universe around it. It is a story about who
we are and where we came from, that's based on data. It's based
on observations.
24:
00:05:53:10 00:05:58:03
VO: Ever-faster computers have enabled us to
point radio telescopes more accurately,
25:
00:05:58:06 00:06:01:06
VO: allowing us explore the cosmos
faster and more deeply than ever before.
26:
00:06:01:09 00:06:06:23
VO: This past decade, SETI scientists have
examined some 1,000 star systems.
27:
00:06:07:01 00:06:11:13
VO: In the coming decade, at least 1,000 times
as many may be scanned.
00:06:12:00
There are a lot of computers, a lot of digital electronics over there, the idea is to narrow the focus of these things so we're looking at really only one spot on the sky, where there might be a star with planets, and then to look over millions of different frequencies... different spots on the radio dial, looking for that signal that would tell you "hey, there's somebody up there".
28:
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VO: About six hours travel south of the Burney installation,
29:
00:06:41:01 00:06:46:16
VO: through the sun, pine forests and great mountain
regions of the American West,
30:
00:06:56:05 00:07:00:17
VO: lies the San Francisco Bay Area,
with its nine million inhabitants.
31:
00:07:00:20 00:07:04:06
VO: It's the birthplace
of the personal computer,
32:
00:07:04:09 00:07:07:04
VO: and it's now home to one of the most innovative
regions on earth.
33:
00:07:13:20 00:07:16:13
VO: Silicon Valley, in the southern Bay area,
is the base for
34:
00:07:16:16 00:07:21:17
VO: the world's most well-known computer
companies.
35:
00:07:22:20 00:07:28:06
VO: In the heart of the Valley you'll find Mountain
View, where SETI has its headquarters.
36:
00:07:28:09 00:07:32:14
VO: The radio telescopes in Hat Creek,
some 500 kilometres to the north,
37:
00:07:32:17 00:07:36:07
VO: can be operated from here
via the internet.
38:
00:07:36:10 00:07:39:00
VO: The data it collects is also analysed here.
00:07:39:00
Reporter: Do you think there is some extra-terrestrial
society, or intelligence?
00:07:45:00
Dr. Laurence Doyle, NASA and SETI Institute
Well, I don't think they're going to be like us. But I
think that from my studies that nothing here is a
show-stopper - in other words nothing has occured here
on earth that couldn't occur somewhere else. Whether
you look at the environment, you look at the development
of technology, of intelligent species, of a star that
shines very steady, you look at all the factors that go
into why we're here, and could happen just about anywhere
else in the galaxy.
39:
00:08:14:09 00:08:21:04
VO: Astrophysicist Dr Laurance Doyle heads
a 49-strong team of NASA scientists
40:
00:08:21:07 00:08:23:14
VO: who recently made world news.
41:
00:08:23:17 00:08:27:08
VO: Using the Kepler space telescope
they became the first team to discover
42:
00:08:27:11 00:08:30:03
VO: planets orbiting around a binary star system
- planets with two suns.
43:
00:08:30:06 00:08:36:22
VO: Kepler was specifically launched to search for
earth-like planets that may be habitable.
00:08:38:06
Doyle
By the time we find them, they will probably have found us. Because if the average sun... if the average star is older than the sun by 10 million years and everything that happened here happened there, they may not be interested in us because they are that much smarter.
00:08:58:12
Doyle
I think that they could study us from a distance where
we would never know we were being studied. People have
said they were picked up by spaceships and things like
that, they don't need to do that. The nearest star if
look at, if this was the earth and this was the moon,
on that scale, the nearest star is from here in San
Francisco to London. So an extra- terrestrial has an
enormous way to come to actually get here.
44:
00:09:30:19 00:09:36:05
VO: The SETI Institute has also set up
a collaborative web project: Earth Speaks.
45:
00:09:36:08 00:09:40:14
VO: People across the world can suggest what
humanity should communicate
46:
00:09:40:17 00:09:45:16
VO: if an intelligent extraterrestrial
signal is discovered. Here's an example:
00:09:45:23
Dr. Douglas Vakoch, SETI Institute
Dear fellow universe inhabitants. Assuming you are more
intelligent, my advice would be, stay away for now and
wait for us to reach the same phase as you. Right now,
however, we are to occupied with trying hard to destroy
the planet and each other, believing in hundreds of gods
that are incompatible, and focussing too hard on
individual wealth. Let us try and fix this mess ourselves;
that way it will stick. Until then, enjoy the show.
00:10:18:15
Vakoch
I'm Doctor Douglas Vakoch, director of the Interstellar
message centre at the SETI Institute and I think about
how we would make messages that are understandable by
other civilisations around other stars.
00:10:30:22
Vakoch
We know the building blocks of life are strewn about the
galaxy, but aliens will not speak english, you know. If
we make contact, they're not going to speak english, or
dutch, or swahili... so what then? I think the best
starting place is mathematics and science.
00:10:50:12
Vakoch
And why math? Because if we get a message, we know that
they have the technology to send us that message. And
it's hard to imagine how you can be a good engineer on
another world if you don't at least know that two plus
two equals four.
47:
00:11:10:20 00:11:15:06
VO: So we could try to communicate
using the language of mathematics.
48:
00:11:15:09 00:11:21:23
VO: But before that, we would need to be able to recognise an
intelligent signal when it arrived.
49:
00:11:22:01 00:11:26:16
VO: How can we distinguish these sounds
from the background noise of the cosmos?
00:11:46:00
Doyle
So this is a pulsar
REPORTER: So this is noise coming out of space?
Doyle
Yes. This is actually an exploded star that is emitting
pulses and what we can do...
Reporter: You can recieve the signal with the radio
telescopes
Doyle
Yes, exactly, and it's from in here... this is the
result of its explosion.
00:12:08:08
Doyle
Is this an intelligent signal? Sounds like just bubbles,
but turns out it's a communication from a humpback whale.
Humpback whales probably have the most complex communication
system on earth, as far as we know. So let's listen to
some humpback sounds...
54:
00:12:35:21 00:12:38:20
VO: Laurance Doyle has studied
the communication systems
55:
00:12:38:23 00:12:43:20
VO: of intelligent and social animals
such as humpback whales and dolphins.
56:
00:12:43:23 00:12:49:20
VO: They automatically transfer information
faster and more efficiently than humans.
57:
00:12:49:23 00:12:53:08
VO: Doyle wanted to find out how
to distinguish intelligent signals
58:
00:12:53:11 00:12:57:19
even incomprehensible signals,
from non-intelligent signals.
59:
00:12:57:22 00:13:01:11
By using complex information theories
to interpret these sounds
60:
00:13:01:14 00:13:04:10
he has designed a filter
to make this possible.
00:13:09:05
Doyle
We now have a kind of an intelligence filter. So
intelligent communication is something that doesn't
necessarily have meaning for you, but it has a
complexity nested in it, and that's what we can
measure.
00:13:22:07
Shostak
The speed of our search is increasing with time and
that's because of technology. So if this experiment
is going to succeed at all, if we are ever going to
pick up a signal coming from another society, I
think it's going to happen before the mid part of
this century. If it doesn't happen by then, I think
there's something wrong with what we're doing.
61:
00:13:43:16 00:13:48:02
But if a signal is actually received
from extraterrestrial intelligence
62:
00:13:48:05 00:13:51:06
would it be wise to send a message
back?
63:
00:13:51:09 00:13:54:19
Stephen Hawking, the British
physicist and cosmologist
64:
00:13:54:22 00:13:58:24
regarded by many as the
present-day Einstein
65:
00:13:59:02 00:14:00:17
thinks it could be dangerous.
00:14:02:16
Reporter: Stephen Hawking said that they could be
very big, very bad and very busy.
00:14:08:15
Tarter
Stephen Hawking is already too late, right? Because we've
over the past seventy years or so, we've been transmitting
signals, not intentionally, but our television signals,
such as yours, and broadcast radio, they leak off the planet,
so that horse is already out of the barn.
00:14:33:03
Doyle
If they're really dangerous and they can travel between
the stars, what are we gonna do anyway?
00:14:39:24
Shostak
You'd have to turn off all the lights in New York city.
Because those could be detected with a big enough telescope
and the aliens, any aliens that can come, from one star to
the next, they could pick up that light. So what are you
gonna do? Turn off all the lights? Is that what you wanna do?
Do you wanna condemn humanity to living under a rock forever?
00:15:04:21
Reporter: Let's presume there is a civilisation out there
that's much more advanced than we are, these people are much
smarter than we are, what do you think that they will think
about us?
00:15:14:15
Tarter
Well, I think you can't get smart and old until you've
been foolish and young. I think that's the way evolution
works. I think they probably had a technological adolesence,
in their past, so I think any old civilisation has a younger
past, that they can look back at, and probably understand
that we are an emerging technology, that we're the young
guys, we haven't yet really figured out how to get along with
one another.
00:15:47:01
Shostak
What do you think about species that existed on
Earth 10 million years ago? Kind of interesting,
not a great concern to you. So I'm really not
sure that we're going to be all that interesting
to them. So they may be at levels that are so far
beyond us that their intelligence to ours is as
our intelligence is to the ants.
00:16:08:14
Doyle
If aliens are looking at earth, they'd notice that
we have weapons in orbit around the planet, and they'd
think well this species is pretty paranoid. And then
they'd look closer, and they'd see the weapons were
all pointed in on ourselves, and that's nuts.
00:16:30:02
Reporter: Maybe it happens that you don't find a signal
at all, that there's nothing out there. Wouldn't that be
then a waste of time?
00:16:37:09
Tarter
I wouldn't spend my life working on something that I
didn't think had a chance of succeeding. But I don't
know what the odds are. As a scientist, I have to
admit that the answer might be that we are alone.
We're actually trying to find the answer. And if
somebody tells you that is what you ought to believe,
then that is not science3, it's religion. And that's
not what we're about. But it would be an awful waste
of space if we are all there is - Yes.
66:
00:17:01:12 00:17:05:03
Whatever the answer to these questions,
if extraterrestrial civilizations do exist,
67:
00:17:05:06 00:17:11:05
scientists say they are extremely far
away: at least four light years.
68:
00:17:11:08 00:17:16:08
Using current technology, it would take
at least 100,000 years
69:
00:17:16:11 00:17:18:10
for us to travel this distance.