All language subtitles for Through.the.Wormhole.S03E01.Will.We.Survive.First.Contact.720p.HDTV.x264.da

Human civilization

everything we can know,
feel and hope for

is for us here
on Earth.

A ball of rock, just 8 thousand
miles wide.

But out there,
across the vast heavens

there could be
countless other civilizations

each with knowledge, history,
and ambition vastly different

from our own. And one day,
perhaps sooner than think

humanity and alien civilization
will collide.

How will that day change us?

Will it be our
greatest leap forward?

Or the end
of everything we know?

Space, time, life itself.

The secrets of the cosmos
lie through the wormhole.

♪ Through the Wormhole 03x01 ♪
Will We Survive First Contact?
Original Air Date on March 6, 2012

== sync, corrected by elderman ==

Think of everything
you learned in school.

Think of everything that Einstein,
Buddha and Shakespeare knew.

The entire experience
of humanity

is overwhelming
to a single mind.

But if aliens are out there,

all that is nothing

compared with the sum total
of knowledge in the galaxy.

The day we make first contact
with an alien race

will be the dawn of a new era
for humanity.

It could spur a renaissance
that will change us utterly.

Or it could be the darkest day
in human history.

[ Creature growls ]

Most kids in the '40s and '50s

grew up reading tales
of adventure on other worlds.

And most of us imagined we were
Earth's first line of defense

against alien invaders.

These days, I would like
to think we were wrong,

that extraterrestrials
might be friendly.

[ Growls ]

[ Boys scream playfully ]

[ Imitates gunshot ]

But many scientists believe
basic forces of biology

make aggressive aliens
a safer bet.

Charles Cockell is a Professor
of Astrobiology

at the University
of Edinburgh, Scotland.

He thinks deeply
about alien life

and how evolution might
determine their actions

at first contact.

It's not clear
that a civilization

just because it can travel
through space

would be altruistic.

Humanity, for example,

landed spacecraft
on the freezing moon of Titan,

and yet we still go to war.

So it's not the case that
technological advancement

necessarily is -- comes
hand in hand with altruism,

and it's possible
that an alien civilization

could actually
be quite dangerous.

Freeman: Charles studies
the forces of evolution

that gave us
the intelligence necessary

for an advanced civilization,

forces he believes could drive
aliens to tear ours apart.

It's a question of autotrophs
or heterotrophs,

or in layman's terms...

What's for dinner?

An autotroph is a type of life

that uses light
as a source of energy.

For example, the grass here
is an autotrophic organism.

It's using sunlight from the sky

to power itself
and to grow and reproduce.

Autotrophs generally
are not intelligent.

Gathering sunlight is a very
good way of gathering energy,

but it never really gathers
sufficient energy

for a creature
to become intelligent.

Freeman: Autotrophs have
another weakness.

They're easy prey
for heterotrophs.

Cockell:
These sheep behind me,

these are heterotrophs,

but they're feeding off
autotrophs.

They're feeding off the grass
in this field.

Freeman: Charles believes that
the food chain is just as real

of a force for alien life
as it is for terrestrials.

The smarter the creature,

the more food it must consume
to keep its brain working.

All right. Thanks.
Just what I ordered.

You can see the hors d'oeuvre
I have here,

and you can get some idea
of the amount of grass

I would have to eat a day
to power a sheep's brain.

But it's a completely
different matter

when you need to power
a human brain.

Freeman: If we spent
all of our waking hours

eating the pounds of grass

it takes just to power
our brain,

we would have little time
for the imagination and ambition

that sent us to the Moon.

But nature provides a solution.

It's not pretty,
but it is a fact of life.

Cockell: Lamb.

Thank you.

[ Sheep bleats ]

Freeman:
Our massive brains

require colossal amounts
of energy.

And being a predator
is the cleanest, quickest,

and most effective way
to acquire the energy necessary

for advanced intelligence,

whether human or alien.

Intelligent creatures,

particularly very intelligent
creatures, would be predatory.

They would be at the end
of a food chain,

and they would eat
other creatures

that would eat other creatures.

So they're bound to be predatory
in some way.

Freeman: Charles is confident
that at first contact,

we will meet an intelligent race
of predators,

predators that most likely
developed a war-like culture

just like ours.

Cockell:
Conflict in human beings

is definitely linked
to predation.

It's all about
grasping territory.

It's all about having resources
and commanding those resources

in times of a famine
or in times of difficulty.

Freeman: Predatory aliens
who show up on our doorstep

may well be in need
of new resources.

If so, the existence of humanity
could be in jeopardy.

If they need oxygen
to burn their food,

just as in the same way we need
oxygen to burn our food,

they might find
the environmental conditions

on this planet very conducive
for their civilization.

And oxygen-bearing planets
like ours

with high levels of oxygen
in the atmosphere

might actually be quite rare
in the universe.

And when you find them,
they might be good places to go.

Freeman: It is a scenario
we usually see in the movies.

Aliens arrive
as a conquering armada,

and mankind engages them in
a desperate battle for survival.

But one scientist
begs to differ.

Let's say that a civilization
is hostile.

Hollywood has brainwashed us
into thinking

that it's gonna be
a Titanic battle

between David and Goliath.

I mean, give me a break.

More than likely, it's gonna be
between Bambi and Godzilla.

Freeman: Physicist Michio Kaku
of the City College of New York

tries to be more scientific

about mankind's relationship
to alien civilizations.

We physicists like to classify
alien civilizations

in outer space by energy.

A type-one civilization
harnesses planetary power.

They can, for example,
control hurricanes,

control volcanoes.

Type two can control
an entire star.

They play with stars.

Type three controls the power
of an entire galaxy.

On this cosmic scale of energy,
what are we?

Do we control hurricanes
and volcanoes?

Do we play with stars?

Do we roam across
the space lanes of the galaxy?

No. We are type zero.

We don't even rate on the scale.

Freeman: But we may have
a chance to survive

in the galactic jungle
after all.

Michio believes that we can rise
in the ranks of civilization

by learning from
our superior neighbors.

And the safest way to acquire
their knowledge...

Is eavesdropping.

Even aliens have to obey
the laws of physics,

and the laws of physics tell us
that electromagnetic radiation

is the fastest,
most convenient way

to communicate between stars.

Freeman: The heavens are buzzing with
electromagnetic radiation.

Almost all of it
occurs naturally.

And around Earth,
most is manmade.

But buried in all that static
could be some radiation

that aliens are using
to send a message.

Finding such an alien signal
is really tough,

like looking for a single car

in the swarm of traffic
that clogs the streets

of New York City.

We send messages
by electromagnetic radiation,

whether it's in the form
of e-mail, radio, radar,

microwaves, F.M., or A.M.

Let's say that this car
represents a message

that we send into outer space.

Most messages are sent by you
and me, by the human family.

However, what I'm looking for
is much more rare.

I'm looking for this --

a message sent
by an alien civilization

using electromagnetic radiation.

Freeman:
For the past 40 years,

armies of large radio telescopes

have tuned into the frequencies
of the Universe,

just like turning the radio dial
to find a station.

So far, scientists have heard
only empty static.

But Michio believes that is
because they have been listening

the wrong way.

Kaku:
We are only listening

to one frequency at a time

among an infinite number
of possible frequencies.

It's like trying to find
this alien decal

on a car on a freeway
by taking pictures.

[ Camera shutter clicking ]

How long would it take for me

to finally identify
that alien decal?

A week? Months? Years?

Maybe even never.

Freeman: Michio believes

that even if we stumble upon
an elusive alien message,

we might not even recognize it.

There may still be hope

to discover
these rare signals, however,

if we broaden our perspective.

Let's say that I want
to send this alien message

across outer space.

And let's say that each car
represents a photon

vibrating at
a certain frequency.

Well, perhaps the silliest way
to send such a message

is to put the entire message
on one photon at one frequency.

The message could be lost.

The message could be degraded.

A more efficient way

is to cut up the message
into different frequencies,

creating what is called
a broadband,

and then you put each fragment
of the message on each photon.

Freeman: Using multiple channels
to send a message

is faster in the same way

broadband is faster
than dial-up.

But if aliens
communicate this way,

their signals would be harder
to detect.

Now, here's the irony.

If you were to eavesdrop
on an alien conversation

and you would pick up
all these pieces,

you would just hear gibberish.

So in other words,

we could be in the middle of
an intergalactic conversation

and not even know it.

Freeman:
If Michio is correct,

the heavens could be filled
with alien chatter.

We do not see this radio traffic

because our
signal-frequency search

only picks up fragments
of their conversations.

But if we were to look
at the broadband,

we might find what has been
there all along.

If we do learn to detect
alien communication,

how can we ever hope
to understand it?

What language would they speak?

Now, one scientist believes

he knows how to crack the code
of any language,

no matter how alien.

Around the world,

we speak to each other in about
7,000 different languages.

Most of us understand
only one or two.

But there is no living language
that cannot be translated,

because they all have
one thing in common --

the human brain.

What languages
might alien brains create?

Could we ever hope
to understand them?

Could we even recognize
their communication

as language at all?

Doyle: Well, I actually only
speak English and Swahili

a little bit.

I've learned a little Navajo,

and I can write a little bit
in Cherokee.

Oh, I took Russian, too,
for a couple years.

Freeman: Laurance Doyle
is a communications expert

with the Institute of the Search

for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence, or SETI.

He is working to add one more
language to his list,

one no human has ever spoken.

Bottle-nose dolphins
are perfect.

We know they're intelligent.

Seriously, Chomp.

Wow, that's interesting.

They communicate
in very complex ways.

They make bubbles.
They play.

They have complex society.

But we don't have
any common reference system.

We can't talk about movies.

We can't talk about
the most elementary things.

Freeman:
Laurance decided to see

whether he could extract
any meaning from dolphin speak.

He and his colleagues recorded
and studied

hundreds of hours
of dolphin chatter.

[ Dolphins chitter ]

Doyle: Because they have
this huge range

over which they can communicate.

[ Dolphins lowing ]

When you look at
the relationship of whistles,

a structure starts to emerge

that's not unlike syntax
in human languages.

Freeman: But are these whistles
and clicks an actual language,

one that could be translated?

Laurance searched for patterns
in the sounds

using a statistical technique
called information theory,

a theory powerful enough
to find a needle of meaning

in a haystack noise.

Information theory is built
on the probability

of occurrence of a given signal.

How often does it occur,

and how often
does it have a relationship

with other signals
in that occurrence?

"Perseus best wishes tiger cow

accepting printing ink
hydro lories shovel in..."

So, this is kind of
a random distribution of words.

I can add up how frequently
each word occurs.

What I am going to get

from this random distribution
of words

is that each word occurs with
about the same equal frequency.

Freeman:
In this page of gibberish,

plotting a chart of words
against how often they are used

gives us a straight line.

That means there's virtually
no linguistic information

being transmitted.

It is a random distribution,

and you can't actually transmit
knowledge this way.

Freeman: A message with meaning
and information

shows an entirely
different pattern.

"No one would have believed
in the last years

"of the 19th century

"that this world
was being watched keenly

"and closely by intelligences
greater than man's

and yet as mortal as his own."

Freeman: According to Laurance,
all languages,

be they human, dolphin,
or alien,

must have common
and uncommon words.

The most common words are ranked
in descending order

from left to right.

Well, the most frequent word
here is "the,"

and it'll appear here.

The second-most frequent word
is probably "of."

Freeman: When
plots this word chart

from a message
that is not gibberish,

a pattern emerges.

Doyle: This is a plot of
a frequency of occurrence,

and this is the words
in "War of the Worlds."

And we see that it has
this 45-degree slope.

So this is a way to tell

if there's linguistic
or knowledge content

within a random page

even if you don't understand
what the symbols mean.

Freeman:
This 45-degree slope

appears for any message
in any language,

in any medium,

be it a book in French
or a phone call in Japanese.

And when Laurance's team applied
information theory

to the chatter of dolphins,
a 45-degree slope emerged.

[ Dolphins chirp ]

Doyle:
This was proof right away,

without understanding
what the dolphin signals are,

that dolphins are transmitting
knowledge to each other.

Freeman: Laurance has not yet
learned to speak dolphin,

but knowing a language when
we hear it is the first step.

And he is now applying
the same technique

to the electromagnetic buzz
that fills the Milky Way.

Doyle: There are all sorts of things
in space that make noises.

We could examine each one
and find out which one's random

and which has the information
we're looking for,

has a sign of intelligence.

Freeman:
Even if alien communication

sounds like empty noise
to the human ear,

it will still produce
a 45-degree slope.

Doyle: We can now actually
start to examine

the complexity of the message,

and that's gonna
tell us something

about the species that sent it.

And that's why
you want to practice

on non-human species on Earth.

Thank you.
You were lovely.

I think that was dolphin
for "see you later."

[ Chuckles ]

Freeman:
But we may not have to wait

to intercept an alien message
to make first contact.

Many scientists now suspect
an advanced spacecraft

will soon forge a direct link
between two worlds.

And that spacecraft
could come...

From Earth.

In 1903,

Orville Wright guided
the first powered flight

in human history.

He traveled just over 100 feet.

Only 66 years later,

three men flew
a quarter of a million miles

and landed on the Moon.

The next quantum leap in travel
may be close at hand.

It would take us
trillions of miles from Earth,

and we could find aliens
before they find us.

And that is thanks in part
to this man.

John Brophy works at NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory

in Pasadena, California.

His expertise...

Is exotic propulsion.

So, this is an ordinary balloon,

and I'm gonna rub it on my hair,

which will separate
some of the charges,

leaving a net charge
on the balloon,

which will allow it to stick
on my shirt.

Freeman: The same force that holds
a balloon to a piece of fabric

can be used in reverse to push
a vessel through space.

Brophy: So,
as we just illustrated

where we can use
oppositely charged particles

to attract each other,

if we use particles
with the same charges,

we can actually repel them.

Freeman:
This electrical repulsion

is the heart of John's
revolutionary machine,

the Ion engine.

Xenon gas is ionized
with a positive charge,

then placed against the engine's
positively charged body.

Brophy: And those like charges
repel each other

and push the ions out
at a very high speed.

And by pushing the ions out,

it pushes the spacecraft
in the other direction.

Freeman: NASA recently charted
John's Ion engine

to send the Dawn spacecraft
on a two-billion-mile journey

to the asteroid belt.

The engine stayed lit
for more than three years.

This groundbreaking
achievement...

was made possible by the same
high-performance engineering

found in the unbridled,
uncompromising,

unrelenting power
of an all-American...

[ Motor whirs ]

...golf cart.

Brophy: We're gonna have a race
between these two vehicles.

And it looks like
an unfair race, but actually,

we're gonna give each vehicle
the same amount of fuel,

and we're gonna see how far and
how fast these two vehicles go.

[ Engine revs ]

[ Tires squeal ]

Freeman: Unlike the
fuel-guzzling chemical rockets

that took us to the moon,

the Dawn spacecraft

is an extremely
fuel-efficient vehicle.

But, like the golf cart,

it's a bit slow off the mark.

Brophy:
The Dawn spacecraft,

it accelerates very slowly
like we've done.

In fact, it'll go 0 to 60 miles
an hour in about four days.

So, not something
you'd write home about.

But, after four years,

it'll be going
over 26,000 miles an hour

and have used
only 60 gallons of fuel.

It is exquisitely
fuel-efficient.

Freeman: The old chemical rocket
gets going faster,

but it burns out quickly.

An ion-powered spacecraft,
however,

can keep on accelerating
for years...

[ Motor whirring ]

...and eventually travel faster
and farther

than a chemical rocket
ever could.

It's completely impractical to
use chemical-rocket technology

to travel to the stars,

and that's because you just
cannot carry enough propellent

to make that trip.

Freeman: The closest star,
Proxima Centauri,

is about 25 trillion miles away.

That is a very long journey.

Brophy: Imagine the sun
at the center of this quarter

and Pluto's orbit around
the outside edge of the quarter.

Every planet that you learned
about in school,

everybody that you know is
contained within this quarter.

With our current
electric-propulsion technology

or advances
that we can readily make,

we can get around this region
of space relatively well.

What we really want to do

is see what it takes
to get to the nearest star.

The question is, where is that?

And this is the closest star.

Freeman:
Astronomers now believe

there are 17 alien solar systems

within 100 trillion miles
of Earth.

With some
engineering improvements,

future versions
of John's Ion engine

could reach any
of these new worlds.

But for the foreseeable future,

an ion-powered vessel
will not have the power

to take human beings along
for the ride.

Brophy:
The payloads have to be small

to go to the stars

primarily because you have
to accelerate that mass

to a very high speed,

and the lighter weight
the vehicle is,

the easier that is to do.

Freeman: One day,

an alien spacecraft
will pierce the clouds

of an unexplored world.

And the aliens might be us.

Crossing the vast emptiness
of space

is not the only challenge
of making first contact.

We must also figure out
what we're going to say

when we get there.

How does one communicate
across language barriers?

Here on Earth, our faces can
express fear, love, or happiness

even better than words
sometimes.

But what ideas and emotions
could we share with aliens,

and how can we avoid
sending the wrong message?

Kakalios: There's a story
from U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

They wanted cars to stop
at a checkpoint.

They used what they thought was
a universal symbol for "stop"

by holding up
their out-raised palm.

Unfortunately for the people
in Iraq,

this is the symbol also
for "welcome," not "stop."

So the cars kept approaching
the checkpoint

even though the soldiers

were signaling violently
for them to stop.

[ Machine-gun fire ]

Freeman:
Jim Kakalios is a physicist

who explores the hard science

behind the dreams
of science fiction.

He thinks he has identified

a universal communication
medium.

Kakalios:
We're all familiar with waves --

sound waves, light waves.

Ever matter has waves --
or water waves.

Any disturbance on the surface,

and we get mechanical vibrations
on the surface.

The molecules move up and down
but coherently,

forming concentric rings
that expand outwards.

Freeman: Because waves move in
predictable and regimented ways,

they could be used
to communicate mathematics,

a language
any advanced civilization

will surely understand.

But waves do not add
and subtract like numbers.

We're used to arithmetic based
upon the counting of objects --

one apple and two apples
equals three apples.

But if you were
to base mathematics

based upon the addition
of waves,

such as light waves,
sometimes it works,

sometimes you get
confusing results.

Here, we've assigned numbers

to the different colors
of light.

One for red, two for orange,
and so on.

If I take a one, red light,

and a five, blue light,

add them together,
and I get six, purple light.

That works.

But it doesn't always work.

Let's try another
color combination.

One is red.

Three is yellow.

One plus three
should give us four, green.

But no, we get orange -- two.

One plus three equals two?

That doesn't seem right.

Freeman: Even though they do not
add up like simple numbers,

it is still possible
to communicate

complex mathematical ideas
through waves.

Because whether they move
in water, light,

or the air around us,
all waves have frequencies.

Kakalios:
If you can give me a "C"...

[ Note plays ]

Very good.

And how about
a bouncy "G" sharp?

[ Different note plays ]

Those are two
distinct frequencies.

Freeman: Aliens may describe
the frequency of a wave

with numbers that are
indecipherable to us.

But the ratio
between those two frequencies

will always be the same,

no matter what number system
is used.

And the ratios could be the key

to two species expressing
their knowledge

of the fundamental laws
of the universe.

Measure the circumference
of a circle.

Now divide by its diameter.

The ratio is the number pi,

or about 3.14.

No matter what unit you used
to make the measurements --

inches, your arms...

Or anything else --

the ratio pi
will always be the answer,

and pi is one of only a handful
of fundamental ratios

in the universe.

They must certainly
have noticed this

because it is so common.

It is one of the foundations
of our understanding of nature.

Freeman:
At first contact,

we could beam aliens
a pair of waves,

the ratio of their frequencies
equal to pi.

We could send another pair

whose ratio is the same
as the ratio of the proton mass

to the electron mass.

Sending these messages would
prove we understand the physics

of the universe around us.

There's no guarantee
it will work,

but there's another way

of looking at a series
of changing frequencies.

On Earth, we call it music.

[ Rock music plays ]

If aliens lack ears,

they might still be able
to appreciate the performance

of the high-tech rock band
Arcattack,

because Arcattack can play
the same song simultaneously

in sound waves, light waves,

and the buzzing discharge of
one-million-volt Tesla coils.

Kakalios:
A Tesla coil generates waves

both in radio-wave signals
and electric fields.

It generates heat by heating up
the atmosphere.

It generates sound,
and it generates light.

[ Music continues ]

Freeman:
This performance could initiate

the greatest peaceful exchange
of knowledge in our existence.

[ Music stops ]

We could try one of the most
beautiful pieces of music

that we have developed.

It may just get on their nerves.

Freeman: But what if aliens will not
or cannot meet us face-to-face?

There is still a chance
to make contact,

because aliens could have
already sent us a message

hidden on Earth for hundreds
of millions of years.

If you compress
the entire history

of planet Earth into 24 hours,

human beings would only appear
in the final few seconds.

If aliens have
already come here,

we probably were not around
to greet them.

But what if they left a record
of their visit?

Where would it be?

One scientist
thinks he may have found it,

hiding inside us all.

Paul Davies is a physicist

and astrobiologist
who has spent many years

trying to work out how aliens
might communicate with us.

And he has realized
it is all about timing.

Let me make a call
on this cellphone.

[ Cellphone beeps ]

It's ringing.

Freeman:
An electromagnetic signal

flies through space
at the speed of light,

and it only passes
by our antennas

for a fleeting moment.

Hello?

If the person at the other end
doesn't connect with me,

the message has gone off
in these radio waves

off out into space

off into the proverbial ether,
never to return,

and they're lost.

Freeman: If aliens wanted
to make contact,

Paul believes they would choose
to send messages

with much more staying power.

[ Scratching ]

Davies: I'm scratching a message
in a rock here

in the way that people
have been doing it

for thousands and thousands
of years.

And why do they do it?

Well, it's a message
for posterity.

This thing will be around
for a long, long time.

Freeman: But even a rock

will eventually crumble
or get buried.

Paul discovered that there is
a material on earth

that could preserve a message
for tens of millions of years.

We all have it...

Inside us.

Davies:
Every living organism on earth

carries genetic information

encoded in a molecule
called DNA.

It's a whole sequence
of molecular information,

which carry all that is needed
to reconstruct that organism

and to enable it
to go about its business.

So we've got genes in our bodies
dating back billions of years.

Freeman: DNA is made up of four
chemical building blocks --

adenine, thymine, cytosine,
and guanine.

The particular arrangement
of those blocks

creates a unique genetic code,

instructions for building
our bodies

from proteins
and other materials.

But not all of that code
is used.

You total up the length
of each gene,

and you soon see
that only a small fraction

of the total amount of DNA
in our bodies

is actually coding for proteins.

So what you've got in this big,
dark, mysterious chunk of DNA,

the majority of it is
undoubtedly some real junk.

Freeman: Think of one person's
genetic code

like objects in a house.

Most everything an individual
needs is easily found.

But not everything
is out in the open.

If you look around,

what you see is some
functional space used every day.

And then when you go down
to the garage,

you see some space
that really is storage.

It contains things

that we may never use for years
and years on end

but we haven't thrown out,

and if we move house, probably
will take it with us to the next place.

Freeman: Nearly every living
thing carries this genetic junk,

innocuous sequences of DNA

that are faithfully passed along
for countless generations.

Paul realized this junk DNA

could be the perfect hiding
place for a coded message.

Imagine that there is some way
that we could etch or embellish

the fundamental structure of DNA
with some sort of message,

in such a way
that it didn't compromise

the functionality
of the organism.

Then it could endure for tens
of millions of years

or even longer.

Freeman:
Paul believes that long ago,

alien genetic engineers could
have rearranged sequences of DNA

inside living organisms
on Earth,

maybe in our earliest
mammalian ancestors.

Their descendants
would carry the message

through the eons unnoticed,

until one of them
is finally smart enough

to sample his own DNA
and read the message.

Researchers have begun scouring
the genetic code of humans

and other species, searching
for unusual patterns in DNA.

It is an endeavor
called genomic SETI.

Supposing you saw a sequence
of prime numbers

spelled out in the language
of DNA,

which is the four bases --
"A," "G," "C," and "T."

Well, there's no way
that natural selection

would ever produce such a thing.

It would leap out at you

as being of obviously
artificial origin.

Freeman: If genomic SETI
does find something,

one of the first questions
we will ask is,

"Why did aliens go through
all the trouble

of sending such a message?"

Davies: People have all sorts
of different ideas.

Some people think, "Well,
could be a religious symbol."

Some people,
"it could be a monument."

We go to Egypt, for example.

We see these huge monuments.

What are they for?
Well, they're for posterity.

They're put there
because people feel

that their civilization
was great, it has something,

it can speak to people
all down the generations,

they want to leave
something behind.

Freeman:
A message in our DNA

could also communicate something
much more fundamental --

that DNA is the language
of all life in the galaxy.

It sounds like wild speculation,
but it is not,

because this man may have found
the common bond

between us and alien life.

We have always
looked to the stars

in our effort to make contact
with aliens.

Now that quest could be taking
an unexpected turn,

because we may find a link
between ourselves and aliens,

not in the heavens

but in the life-creating
code of DNA.

In the vast, frozen emptiness
of Antarctica,

researchers recently
stumbled across fragments

of a four-billion-year-old
meteorite,

a piece of cosmic shrapnel

that dates back to the very
birth of our solar system.

This is one of the most precious
objects known to man.

Unscathed,
it is worth a small fortune.

But sometimes
science requires sacrifice.

First thing I'm thinking
to myself is, "don't mess up.

Don't mess up,
and don't cough on it."

Freeman:
Mike Callahan is a chemist

at NASA's Goddard
Space Flight Center.

His studies focus
on a rare type of meteorite

called carbonaceous chondrites.

Callahan: These meteorites
are very, very rich in carbon

and contain a wealth
of organic molecules.

You can think
of our meteorite extractions

kind of like
making a cup of tea.

When we place the tea bag
into our liquid,

you can see that you're
extracting out all the herbs

and all the flavors

into your solution,

and this is what we're doing
with our meteorite.

Freeman: Mike is trying to
brew up conclusive evidence

that molecules essential to life
were present in space rocks

4 1/2 billion years ago.

People have found lots
of interesting molecules

such as amino acids,

which are the building blocks
of your proteins,

and other essential molecule
in other meteorites for years.

But there was always
this missing puzzle piece

with nucleobases.

That's been
a scientific question

that's been out there
for over 50 years.

Freeman: Nucleobases
are the letters of DNA --

"A," "G," "C," and "T" --

the molecules that zip together
the double helix.

For decades, biochemists have
struggled to synthesize them

and puzzle over how
they could have been created

on our primordial earth.

But in Mike's meteorite tea,

the answer may finally
have arrived.

We find these simple
building blocks,

these nucleobases, like adenine
and guanine, in meteorites.

Freeman: The same molecules
that make up the DNA

common to all life on Earth

have existed in outer space
for billions of years.

They were created
when our solar system formed.

Callahan: It's amazing
when you start looking

at what's inside
these meteorites,

what you actually truly find.

And now we're looking at this
and thinking,

ell, if these meteorites
are coming into Earth

"and now they're being scattered
everywhere in the solar system,

"everywhere in the universe,

"I think maybe aliens do look
very similar to us,

because maybe we're all composed
of the same building blocks."

Freeman: Mike's finding

shows that the building blocks
of DNA

could be scattered
all over the galaxy,

that DNA might be the basis
not just of life on Earth

but of alien life, as well.

First contact could be with
our distant cosmic cousins.

But there's no guarantee it will
be a warm family reunion

for them or us.

The impact of a first contact

would be absolutely stupendous,

on the level of the discovery
of fire.

Davies: We would have access
to new technologies

that would solve some
of our immediate problems.

But the big problem is,

we'll also need
to have the wisdom

to be able to
implement those changes

in a way that won't cause
massive economic

and social disruption.

That wisdom part
is really difficult.

An extraterrestrial signal,
I think, would begin to go,

"Guys, we're inhabitants
of the galaxy,

"and we have to start thinking
that way.

It's time to grow up."

One thing we do is think
a lot more about the planet.

"Oh, my gosh.

"We've got this giant spaceship
called planet Earth,

and we better take care of it.

Freeman:
It could happen tomorrow,

or a message from aliens
could already be here,

waiting to be discovered.

But when we finally experience
first contact,

our species will be forced
to come of age.

To realize, that we are members
of a family of life forms

that inhabit the cosmos.

== sync, corrected by elderman ==