Original subtitles

WILLIAM SHATNER: Unidentified objects,

witnessed by military pilots.

Extraterrestrial probes,

flying through our solar system.

And a potential alien home world that may be hidden

in the darkness of space.

When we look up into the night sky, the pinpricks of light

we see are but a mere fraction of the billions

or even trillions of stars and planets in outer space.

The sheer vastness of the cosmos begs the question

are we alone in the universe?

Or is it possible that somewhere out there

there are intelligent beings, just like us?

Well, that is what we'll try and find out.

♪ ♪

The New York Times publishes a bombshell report

which reveals the existence

of a top secret military initiative known as AATIP:

the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.

The purpose of the project was to scientifically investigate

unidentified flying objects,

more commonly known as UFOs.

In the weeks that follow, a number of previously

classified military videos are leaked to the public.

One clip from 2004 shows an encounter between

U.S. fighter jets and a mysterious flying craft

that appears to be from another world.

This object that was videoed in 2004

was doing some really strange things.

I mean, just crazy things.

The fastest aircraft that we know how to build

can't go that fast.

It also appeared to have no actual source

of propulsion at all,

which is another big mystery

that can't be easily explained.

This video has become known as the Tic Tac video

because one of the pilots, Captain Underwood in this case,

nicknamed it that 'cause that's what he thought

it kind of looked like.

I remember it wasn't that long ago

when if you asked the U.S. government

for its official line on UFOs,

they would say, "No one's interested.

No one's studying this. We don't have any programs."

Some people now talk about this event

and say, "Well, maybe this was extraterrestrial."

This is a bombshell.

One can't avoid the conclusion

that we are not alone.

SHATNER: Are we on the verge of proving that there is

extraterrestrial life in the universe?

It may sound hard to believe, since this age-old mystery has

baffled us for centuries.

But many scientists are now quite confident

that there simply has to be

intelligent life on other planets.

The universe is huge,

gigantic beyond human imagination.

So, how many stars are there in the visible universe?

100 billion times 100 billion.

And to believe that we are the only game in town,

I think, is the height of arrogance.

So we have this fascination

with other intelligent creatures in the universe.

I think everybody looks at the stars at night--

on a, you know, on a deep, dark, starry night--

and all of those points of light,

and it's a reasonable question to ask

whether or not we're the only time life has happened.

Or are we just one page in a very, very long book?

SHATNER: For thousands of years,

looking up at the stars with our naked eyes

was the only way we could search for extraterrestrial life.

But then, in the 19th century,

telescopes gave us a close-up view of Mars

for the first time, which fueled intense speculation

that there may be life on the Red Planet.

ROD PYLE: There was a gentleman named Giovanni Schiaparelli in Italy,

who was making copious maps of the Martian surface.

Well, what do you see with an old telescope

when you look at the Martian surface?

He saw lines on Mars, and Schiaparelli termed these

as canale in Italian, which is the word for canals.

IWAN RHYS MORUS: Schiaparelli speculates that this might be evidence

of a huge planet-wide network

of channels essentially designed

to carry water around.

And then, of course, fascination

with the possibility of life on Mars

just simply exploded.

PYLE: Suddenly, all this buzz starts coming around about,

wait a minute, there's an entire

extraterrestrial civilization on Mars.

So, following in that line of inquiry,

a lot of people started writing these books

and popular articles where there are Martians

with vast communications networks.

They've got ships sailing Martian seas.

They've got vehicles.

It wasn't terribly scientific,

but it got a lot of people thinking about it.

SHATNER: While we now know Mars is a dusty, barren planet,

Schiaparelli's theory was just the beginning

of a growing scientific effort

to search for signs of extraterrestrial life.

NASA launches a Titan rocket

carrying the Voyager 1 probe into space.

Voyager's primary mission

is to journey to the edge of our solar system and beyond

and send back unprecedented data and images.

But the probe also serves another purpose,

which is rather unusual--

it carries a message that will hopefully be received

by an alien civilization.

Voyager 1 has a really interesting artifact

that's mounted to it.

And it's a golden record.

Think of a vinyl record that plays music.

And the idea being, if someday,

Voyager 1 travels far enough that it's recovered

by extraterrestrial intelligence,

they might be able to figure out

how to operate the record and learn about us.

PYLE: Carl Sagan was one of the intellectual giants

of the 20th century, and he and a handful of others

put together this project to create the famous Golden Record.

So this golden disc was an old-style phonograph record

filled with both visual and audio messages.

So the audio messages include the sounds of animals,

sounds of nature, waterfalls, wind, rain,

dozens of people saying hello in different languages.

On the video side, we have images of Planet Earth,

there's an astronaut in space,

images of civilization,

and a lot of people, of course,

to show a representation of humanity.

And so, if some aliens happened to intercept this thing

they can hopefully retrieve these messages.

The question is, will they?

SHATNER: Will an alien civilization discover--

and decipher-- the Voyager Golden Record?

Perhaps.

But NASA recently invested billions of dollars

in a new telescope that may give us a glimpse

of alien home worlds.

Today is a historic day.

Six and a half months ago, a rocket launched from Earth

carrying the world's newest,

most powerful deep-space telescope.

Deploying a sunshield the size of a tennis court.

SHATNER: At an event in the White House,

President Joe Biden unveils the first image

taken by NASA's brand-new James Webb Space Telescope.

BIDEN: We can see light from the oldest galaxies.

The oldest documented light in the history of the universe.

From over 13 billion years ago.

The groundbreaking instrument is

the most powerful telescope ever built,

and it's specifically designed

to look for planets where aliens might live.

SETH SHOSTAK: The James Webb telescope,

it's an infrared telescope,

so it's sensitive to heat.

But that's really not the big deal.

The big deal is that it can look,

for example, at a planet around another star

and actually see it.

It might only look like a dot on a photo,

but you take the light from that dot,

put it through a prism,

and you could tell what's in the atmosphere

of that planet.

FRANK: The most exciting thing in the development

of the James Webb Space Telescope is

we can tell the chemicals

that are in an alien atmosphere.

We could look for industrial chemicals

which could only get there

if there is a technological civilization

on the planet.

This was not possible even ten years ago.

SHATNER: In 2023, NASA announced

that the James Webb Telescope had detected chemical evidence

that a planet named K2-18 b

may potentially have an ocean...

...which could also be home to a form of plankton.

This exciting discovery has led scientists to predict

that the telescope may one day

provide definitive proof of alien life.

But looking in outer space

is not the only way to find out

whether we're alone.

Some astronomers are listening

for radio messages that were sent

by extraterrestrials.

(music playing on radio)

SHATNER: Across the United States, millions of household radios...

MAN (over radio): I'll take a look to see what I can find.

SHATNER: ...playing the familiar hum of music and entertainment

suddenly go silent.

But this isn't some widespread technical failure

because, in fact,

the government declared that all radio stations

must stop broadcasting.

This strange event was known

as the national day of radio silence,

and its purpose was to clear the airwaves

so that scientists could listen

for alien transmissions.

The government actually instigated a program

whereby they requested that, uh, everyone else

stay off the network and you have radio silence,

and they actively listened.

So it shows this desire to connect.

If there are other civilizations out there,

we want to reach out, we want to listen,

we want to talk to them.

McGEE: During the day of radio silence,

the military was raising antennas,

all the universities were raising antennas.

Everyone was listening.

This reflects how deeply, uh, the idea was held

that we might be able to receive a signal

from someone else out in the stars.

REBECCA BOYLE: This is sort of in the golden age of radio.

This is the primary way people received news

and entertainment at the time,

and they were still willing to turn off radios

to see if any faint signals were emanating from Mars.

And I think it says a lot about the curiosity

people had at the time and always have had

about whether we're alone.

SHATNER: The excitement of the national day of radio silence

hit a high point when the U.S. Naval Observatory

sent a dirigible balloon nearly two miles into the sky

so it would have a better chance

of detecting an alien transmission.

But why did people think it was possible

to receive radio signals that would prove

we're not alone in the universe?

The answer dates back 25 years earlier

to 1899, when a curious discovery

was made by famed scientist

and inventor Nikola Tesla.

This period around the end of the 19th century,

beginning of the 20th century,

was the zenith, really, of Tesla's career.

Everything that Tesla did

was directed towards this overriding goal

of spectacular new inventions

for electrical transmission.

And whilst he was doing this,

he said he encountered some strange

and otherwise anomalous and inexplicable signals

that appear to be regular,

and he became more and more convinced

that what he had detected

was evidence of extraterrestrial life.

McGEE: When Tesla started receiving signals,

he believed that they were coming from outer space

and could be of intelligent origin.

The idea that we could receive messages

from beings from other worlds

worked its way up to government with this day of radio silence,

where operators across the government

might try and tune an ear toward the stars

to see if, uh, E.T. was calling.

SHATNER: The national day of radio silence

was the brainchild of astronomer David Peck Todd.

Todd persuaded the U.S. government

that it was an ideal time

to listen for alien radio signals

because Mars' orbit brought it closer to Earth

than it would be for another hundred years.

McGEE: This was an idea that really, like an ember,

lit people's imaginations

to the idea that we could talk

to intelligent beings from other worlds.

Unfortunately, none of the signals received

were credibly of Martian origin.

But the national day of radio silence,

because it was official,

actually opened the public mind in a real way,

and we did start learning a lot about

what kinds of radio signals we do get from the stars.

SHATNER: Could there really be transmissions

sent by intelligent extraterrestrials

flying through space,

which would definitively prove

that we're not alone?

Many scientists believe the answer is yes,

and more advanced work to detect alien radio signals

has been done since the early 1960s.

The modern serious scientific search

for extraterrestrial intelligence

started with work by Frank Drake.

Frank Drake was a radio astronomer,

and with the giant radio telescope

that he was working with at Green Bank Observatory,

he realized that he would be able

to detect a radio transmission

not just from Mars or the moon,

but from a distant star.

And that was a shocking realization.

And this just electrified

not just scientists into looking for this

but the whole public into this isn't just science fiction,

but this is a legitimate search

and that we might actually find something out there.

SHATNER: At Ohio State University's

"Big Ear" telescope, which uses a specialized antenna

to detect radio waves from outer space,

astronomer Jerry Ehman is poring over

a printout of incoming data

when he notices something remarkable.

Buried amidst the random static

is a signal of such extraordinary intensity,

that he wrote a single word in the margin beside it:

"Wow!"

FRANK: This was called the "Wow!" signal

because the signal was what we call narrowband,

meaning it was only on a few radio frequencies

and persisted for long enough

that it was the exact kind of signal

we would have expected to find

when we think about looking for artificial signals

from technological sources.

It was the kind of thing

that a natural source would not produce.

WRIGHT: They actually found what they were looking for--

a powerful radio signal from space

that bore all the hallmarks of not coming from Earth.

But unfortunately the telescope

couldn't tell very precisely

where the signal seemed to be coming from.

And so ever since then,

we still don't know what the "Wow!" signal was.

We've never seen it repeat.

But it remains this tantalizing hint

of what we might be able to find in our searches.

SHATNER: Today, the work that astronomers do

to detect radio signals from outer space

is referred to as

the search for extraterrestrial intelligence,

or SETI.

This research is overseen by the SETI Institute,

which is located in Mountain View, California.

It's fascinating to think that there might be

alien transmissions zooming across the stars,

just waiting to be detected.

But what's even more intriguing is the possibility

that extraterrestrial spacecraft

have traveled through our solar system.

And perhaps even crashed onto our planet.

SHATNER: Perched atop a 10,000-foot summit

at the Haleakala Observatory,

astronomers using the Pan-STARRS telescope

detect a mysterious object

traveling at high speed through our solar system.

The velocity and trajectory of this object

is unlike any that has ever been seen before.

I was in charge of coordinating the observing

to characterize the object.

The object was discovered on October 19th.

There were images taken that showed an object

moving rapidly with respect to the stars.

The stars are individual streaks of light,

and this object was a dot.

So, they knew it was moving fast.

So, at that point, they started to compute an orbit

to try and understand what this object was.

This orbit was a really dramatic difference

from what had been seen previously.

Everything in the solar system is either on a circular

or an elliptical orbit,

but it wasn't an elliptical orbit.

It was very clear that it was hyperbolic,

meaning something coming from outside the solar system.

MIKE BROWN: This fascinating object that was discovered in 2017--

it was the first object ever found

that we could tell for sure

came from outside of our solar system.

People have talked about looking for things like this

for a long time, and this was the first time

we actually found one of these.

SHATNER: Because it originated outside our solar system,

the object was the first to be officially recognized

as interstellar.

It was given the Hawaiian name 'Oumuamua,

which means "messenger from afar."

But perhaps what's most curious about 'Oumuamua

is its odd shape,

which led some people to speculate

that this interstellar object could be proof

that we're not alone in the universe.

FRANK: When 'Oumuamua was first discovered,

lots of telescopes were trained on it

and we tried to get every bit of observation that we could.

And it turned out it was weird.

It was a different kind of object than we expected.

It was long and slender, cigar shaped,

unlike anything we've seen from natural objects

like comets or asteroids.

POPE: People speculated that this might be a piece

of an extraterrestrial spacecraft.

An interesting postscript to the story

is that 'Oumuamua behaved artificially

when it left the solar system.

It picked up speed,

and that's not what you would normally expect.

FRANK: 'Oumuamua was incredibly exciting

because it might be an artifact of an alien ship

that is just passing through.

But the cool thing is now that we know

that these things exist,

we're going to be watching, and we're gonna be able

to detect more and more of these objects.

SHATNER: Is 'Oumuamua really a piece of an alien spaceship

that zoomed through our solar system?

Ultimately, it's hard to say.

Because this interstellar object is long gone

Because this interstellar object is long gone

as it continues its journey across the universe.

But as it turns out, some scientists believe

that physical proof

of an extraterrestrial spacecraft can actually be found

on our planet.

Nearly four years before the discovery of 'Oumuamua,

the stillness of the predawn hours is shattered

when a meteor traveling at high speed

slams into the ocean.

PYLE: In 2014,

this fairly large meteorite, about three feet across,

exploded over the ocean and then the parts were scattered

in about a mile in deep water.

Some people got very excited about this because,

given the trajectory it came in at

and the speed at 134,000 miles an hour, roughly,

maybe it wasn't from our solar system.

SHATNER: In 2022, the U.S. Space Force

released data which confirmed

that the meteor is the first known

interstellar object to hit Earth.

And just like 'Oumuamua,

this object fueled intense speculation

that it is not merely a rock, but rather

a piece of a spacecraft built by extraterrestrial beings.

This theory has been thoroughly investigated

by astronomer Avi Loeb of Harvard University.

The reason that the meteor is interesting is because

it has material strength that is very unusual.

The meteor released a fireball when it exploded.

And from that, we inferred

that the object must have been tougher than iron,

tougher than all other meteors,

and that raises the possibility

that it may have been a spacecraft

propelled artificially and made of some alloy.

And of course, if we do end up concluding

that it was artificial in origin, perhaps a spacecraft,

that would be the first time that we found evidence

for an object that originated from another civilization.

SHATNER: In 2021, Professor Loeb launched an initiative

called The Galileo Project

to try and recover pieces of the object.

Loeb and his team scoured the waters

where the object crashed

in hopes of finding physical evidence

that could prove we're not alone in the universe.

And incredibly, in July of 2023,

Loeb announced that his team successfully retrieved

some fascinating metallic spheres

that are much stronger than any known natural meteor.

PYLE: What's impressive is

that the fragments of this are very strong.

So this might not be a rock. It could be a machine

or it could be some kind of transponder

or any kind of artificial object created by another culture.

LOEB: Science is guided by evidence,

not by prejudice and not by convictions.

And we hope, just like detectives,

to collect enough evidence

that will tell us the origins of this object.

Did scientists recover pieces of an extraterrestrial spacecraft

from the bottom of the ocean?

Until the objects can be analyzed further,

their true nature will remain a mystery.

However, some people claim

that the government already has proof that aliens exist

and wants to keep it secret from the public.

But some whistleblowers are willing to speak out

on the floor of Congress.

SHATNER: The House Oversight Committee

convenes a public hearing to investigate the possibility

that we're not alone in the universe.

The subcommittee hearing

on unidentified anomalous phenomena,

or UAPs, will come to order.

TRIMBLE: The House Oversight and Accountability Committee

hold hearings all the time, and usually,

it's about holding some federal bureaucrat's

feet to the fire over some issue that they're concerned about.

Uh, but this was a lot different.

They had solicited testimony

from former members of the military

and the intelligence community

to talk about their direct experience

with these UAPs.

SHATNER: The three witnesses were

former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer

David Grusch

and former Navy fighter pilots

David Fravor and Ryan Graves.

Graves claimed that on numerous occasions,

he saw strange flying craft that defied explanation.

I have experienced advanced UAP firsthand,

and I'm here to voice the concerns of more

than 30 commercial aircrew and military veterans

who have confided their similar encounters with me.

Are there common characteristics to the UAPs

that have been sighted by different pilots?

And can you describe

what the convergence of descriptions is?

Certainly. We were primarily seeing dark gray or black cubes

-inside of a clear sphere. -I'm sorry. Dark gray

-or black cubes? -Yes,

inside of a clear sphere where the apex or tips

of the cube were touching the inside of that sphere.

And with no self-evident propulsion system?

No wings, no IR energy coming off of the vehicle.

Um, nothing tethering it to the ground.

And that was... that was primarily

what we were experiencing out there.

POPE: We heard from Ryan Graves

that their technology, whoever the "they" is,

is so much more advanced than ours.

It's one thing to see this sort of stuff

anonymously on the Internet.

It's quite another to have it in a formal congressional hearing,

with the witnesses under oath.

SHATNER: The sight of a U.S. military pilot

reporting UAP encounters to members of Congress

was shocking, to say the least.

But even more remarkable was the testimony given

by David Grusch, who claimed that the U.S. government

is in possession of extraterrestrial technology

and... alien bodies.

NANCY MACE: If you believe we have crashed craft,

as stated earlier, do we have the bodies

of the pilots who piloted this craft?

Biologics came with some of these recoveries, yeah.

Were they, I guess, human or non-human biologics?

Non-human, and that was the assessment

of the people with the direct knowledge on the program

I talked to, that are currently still on the program.

POPE: So, this was probably

the most bizarre and surreal

congressional hearing that's ever taken place.

People were watching, almost with disbelief,

at hearing phrases like "nonhuman intelligence"

and "biologics," unpacked on the floor in Congress.

SHATNER: Is the U.S. government hiding the truth

about extraterrestrials?

While skeptics were quick to doubt the explosive testimony,

these aren't the only whistleblowers to come forward.

A 2022 declassified government report revealed

that members of the U.S. military have reported

more than 500 UAP sightings.

BILL BIRNES: This vast collection

of UFO sightings and phenomena

and the public hearings on UFOs in Congress--

when you bring those two things together,

the country is going UFO crazy.

What people then demanded was, tell us the truth.

SHATNER: In response

to the government's lack of transparency,

some scientists want to take matters into their own hands.

For instance, astronomer Avi Loeb's Galileo Project

will conduct an independent investigation of the skies

to search for extraterrestrial spacecraft.

LOEB: Since the sky's not classified,

the Galileo Project decided to build a suite of instruments

that will monitor the sky,

and we will analyze the data

with artificial intelligence systems

that would see if there is anything else out there

that is of a different origin,

not human-made and not natural,

so, perhaps, extraterrestrial.

SHATNER: Dr. Loeb claims that, unlike the U.S. government,

if the Galileo Project finds indisputable evidence

of extraterrestrial spacecraft,

the American public will be the first to know.

LOEB: We have been publishing our results

in peer review journals

and making them available for anyone to see,

because most of the data

that the government collected is classified,

and it's not available for people to see.

We hope to bring clarity to the subject

because otherwise, the public is left

without a good understanding of what these objects might be.

POPE: There's been a ramping up

of the intensity of all this.

There will be the release of more videos

and photographs of these objects.

There'll be more congressional hearings.

It does look as if the truth

about this will be a profound shock.

Will scientists be able

to identify extraterrestrial spacecraft flying in our skies?

Well, such a discovery would prove

that we are definitely not alone.

But experts are also looking for life

in much more unexpected places, such as a distant planet

hidden in our solar system

that we can't even see.

SHATNER: On the campus of

the California Institute of Technology

a group of experts led by astronomer Mike Brown

is puzzling over some strange data

from outer space

that they can't explain.

BROWN: A few years ago,

a colleague of mine and I,

Konstantin Batygin, he and I were looking at

the orbits of the most distant objects in our solar system.

This vast collection of objects

is very much like the asteroid belt,

but just an icier version further away.

They're out in the same region where Pluto is,

well past Neptune.

And we realized that the ones that go

the furthest away from the sun

all have their orbits pointing off in one direction.

These guys all go off far away,

and it shouldn't be that way.

Unless there's something pulling them with gravity,

it shouldn't happen.

So, Konstantin and I tried to figure out what's going on,

and we made jokes to each other

that, like, "Well, it could be a planet, but that's dumb.

"We know it's not a planet,

"because we know there are

no other planets in our solar system."

SHATNER: The idea that there's an undiscovered planet

in our solar system that could potentially be

a place where life has formed,

sounds too incredible to believe.

But on the other hand,

Mike Brown still couldn't figure out why

objects in space were being pulled in a strange direction.

BROWN: We spent about two years trying to figure out

what else could be causing these things

to be pulled off in this direction,

and we couldn't figure out what it could be.

We realized, "Actually, this planet just

is the only thing that actually makes sense."

We started doing calculations, simulations.

We realized, actually,

if you put a planet out here that's pulling these things way,

it not only explains these objects,

but it explains half a dozen other things that have been

happening in the solar system.

So, I am really quite convinced

that there is a giant planet

still to be found out there at the edge of the solar system.

SHATNER: In February of 2019,

Mike and his colleagues published a groundbreaking paper

in which they proposed that there could be

an unseen planet hiding in our solar system,

which they have dubbed Planet Nine.

Their intriguing theory made headlines,

because for hundreds of years,

humanity has believed that

there were only eight planets in the solar system,

not including Pluto,

which is considered a smaller "dwarf planet."

So, how could there be an undiscovered planet

in our corner of the universe

that we're only now finding out about?

Right now, we think, based on our computer simulations,

that Planet Nine is

about seven times

more massive than the Earth.

And it's 600 times further

than the Earth is from the Sun.

And so it's way out there.

FRANK: Planet Nine, if it exists,

it's so far away,

out there in the deep, deep dark,

that it's just very difficult to detect.

You are so far out in the solar system

when you get to these kinds of distances,

that the sun is barely distinguishable.

There's just not a lot of light out there.

But really, it's exciting, because,

even though we can't see the planet,

it's just almost impossible to not to wonder

what is happening out there.

SHATNER: If scientists are able to prove that there is, in fact,

a planet hiding in the darkness of our solar system,

it would raise an even more pressing question.

Could there actually be life

on this mystery planet?

BROWN: Planet Nine is a really important place

to look for life.

Right now, scientists are very strongly focused on

figuring out whether there's just single celled

microbial life on Planet Nine.

Here is the interesting thing about Planet Nine

when it comes to life.

It's possible that if Planet Nine exists,

that it was much closer in the solar system earlier on.

And if it had a rocky surface,

and if it was in the places where liquid water could exist,

then maybe it did form microbial life.

And then maybe, somehow, it got

kicked out farther out from there.

BROWN: One of the things that

we don't know about Planet Nine is

why do we have this planet so far away?

I think the most likely hypothesis

is that, as it was going around the sun,

it got too close.

And as you get too close, you get a, basically,

a gravitational slingshot, and you go whizzing out

to the outer part of the solar system.

And it's been out there basically lurking around,

waiting for us to find it ever since then.

SHATNER: Will we one day lay eyes on this mysterious Planet Nine,

and perhaps learn that it harbors life?

It's an exciting prospect.

But some scientists are looking for

signs of extraterrestrial life in even more distant realms

by tracking the farthest object

mankind has ever sent into space.

SHATNER: NASA announces that the Voyager 1 probe,

which has been traveling through space since 1977,

has finally crossed an important threshold.

It is the first man-made object

to officially leave our solar system

and enter deep space.

JEFF COUGHLIN: It's significant that Voyager

crossed the plane of the solar system

because it meant that we, as a species,

for the first time, sent an object out

into the cosmos that will travel for the rest of time.

The Voyager spacecraft, in their current trajectories,

will pass close enough to a solar system

where, if somebody was really looking for it,

they might have a shot at finding it.

SHATNER: Today, Voyager 1 continues

on its journey through space,

and many people eagerly await the day

that extraterrestrial beings find the probe,

and the golden record it's carrying into the cosmos.

At the current time, Voyager 1's about

15 billion miles away.

And so, the Voyager Golden Record,

a long-playing record album,

has been out there for decades,

and we hope alien beings get a look at that record,

which is humanity's postcard to the stars.

SHATNER: At its current speed, Voyager 1 will reach

the nearest star system in approximately 40,000 years.

But, fortunately,

many experts believe that we won't have to wait

nearly that long to find out

whether we're alone in the universe.

Because scientists are now focused on the search

for extraterrestrial life

more than ever before.

FRANK: For a long time, if you wanted to do SETI,

all your colleagues would kind of raise their eyebrows

and be like, "Oh, okay."

I mean, it was kind of considered a marginal field.

But people really need to understand that

we have the tools, the capacity,

the people, and the funding

to really take this on.

Given all the amount of time that's being spent

looking and looking and listening and waiting,

a lot of very intelligent scientists and theoreticians

feel that it's likely

that we'll have some indication

of extraterrestrial life

within the next ten years,

and I can't imagine any other event

that would be as much of a turning point for the human race

as finding out that we're not alone.

COUGHLIN: If we find evidence that there was

another intelligent civilization out there,

I think it puts into perspective our own humanity.

We're no longer the center of the universe,

and that is kind of humbling.

FRANK: With everything that we've learned about the universe,

there are at least ten billion trillion

planets out there in the right place for life to form.

That's a lot of places where the universe

has had the opportunity

to try and form life.

All we need is just one

other example out there

to know that we are not an accident,

and then, suddenly, the space of cosmic possibility

just explodes open.

In the end, there are only two possible answers

to the question, "Are we alone?"

Either we are or we're not.

Are we just a fantastic and fragile cosmic anomaly

or could we be a small part

of something much greater?

All we can do is simply continue our quest

to find the answer and accept that,

for the moment, our place in the universe

remains unexplained.

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