Original subtitles

NARRATOR: Throughout the ancient world,

there were tales of mortals

and immortals.

AMIR HUSSAIN: In Christian traditions,

in Islamic traditions,

and Hindu traditions,

you have these divine beings who live forever.

NARRATOR: Could these stories be accounts of alien visitors

who traveled to Earth from thousands of lightyears away?

TRAVIS TAYLOR: Imagine an advanced civilization

that has interstellar travel.

If they can travel through the stars, they could

stretch their longevity maybe even to centuries.

NARRATOR: And if humans are to one day

colonize other planets,

will we too need to discover

the key to immortality?

DAVID CHILDRESS: What our extraterrestrial ancestors

have wanted us to do

is be like them.

They want us to be a spacefaring race that goes to the stars.

And to live these extended lives where

we become essentially immortal.

NARRATOR: There is a doorway

in the universe.

Beyond it is the promise of truth.

It demands we question everything

we have ever been taught.

The evidence is all around us.

The future is right before our eyes.

We are not alone.

We have never been alone.

The Ashmolean Museum of art and archaeology.

Among the hundreds of historic artifacts on display

is an ancient Sumerian cuneiform text.

Dating back to at least 2000 BC,

the four-sided clay document is a list of kings

who lived far longer than the average human life span.

In the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford,

there's an astounding artifact.

It's referred to as WB44,

the Sumerian Kings List.

On one panel, it tells us about eight kings

that ruled over five cities, and what's astounding about this

is the length of the reigns of these kings.

One king is said to have ruled for 43,200 years.

Another king rules for 28,000 years.

It's astounding.

NARRATOR: Curiously, the Sumerian Kings List

is not the only ancient record of rulers

who lived for centuries.

A curious document was found in a tomb

in Luxor,

and it's called the, uh, Turin Kings List.

We only have fragments of this document,

but what this document lays out

is that many of the really early

Egyptian pharaohs had lives

that were many hundreds of years,

and that some of these pharaohs lived

for 700, 800, 900 years.

We have a similar story in the Bible of Methuselah

and that he's said to have lived

for 969 years.

So, how is it that people are able

to live such great ages?

NARRATOR: Is it merely coincidence

that in three different ancient traditions

there are records of their earliest leaders

living impossibly long lives?

Curiously, in all three cultures, it was

also recorded that, during the time when people lived

to these incredible ages, humans shared the Earth

with beings who came down from the sky.

The ancient Egyptians referred to

a-a time called the first time,

when the gods walked among men.

Ancient Egyptian creation mythology tells us that these

original god beings came from the stars.

This sounds very much like the arrival of the Anunnaki,

the divine lords of light of the Sumerian tradition

when they arrived atop Mount Kerzok.

It's also virtually identical to the arrival of the Watchers.

The Watchers are the angels

of the Old Testament.

They are the fallen angels

who came to Earth

and intermingled with humans.

NARRATOR: The Watchers, like divine beings

in many other ancient cultures,

were referred to as immortals, but often

they were described as having very humanlike traits.

There were 200 of these Watchers,

and they were led by, uh,

an individual named Samyaza.

They shone.

There was a translucence.

There was an aura about them that was as bright as the Sun.

But they seem to be more human in their appetites

than one would like to believe.

They're hungry, they eat,

they want affection, they lust.

I think that the Watchers most definitely

are extraterrestrials who came to Earth.

Countless ancient, original cultures

speak of a time when the gods

descended from the sky

and mingled with people to impart their knowledge.

Ancient Egypt,

ancient China,

ancient Sumeria,

ancient Japan,

ancient Greece.

And so, I think the different cultures

were visited by the same teachers,

who were extraterrestrials.

NARRATOR: Could it be

that the earliest human civilizations

shared the Earth with visitors from another world?

And if so,

is this somehow connected to the ancient records

of people who lived extraordinarily long lives?

Ancient astronaut theorists suggest an important clue

can be found in a famous verse

from the Bible that is often mistranslated.

In many English versions of the Book of Genesis,

chapter one, verse 27 states

that "God created man in his own image."

But in the original Hebrew,

instead of "his" image, it says "our" image.

God says in Genesis, "Let us make man in our image."

Well, you have to say, "Well, who is 'our'?

Who-who are the other people there?"

Well, the word "God" in Hebrew is "Elohim,"

and that is plural.

TSOUKALOS: If you look at the original Hebrew

in which the sentence was written,

all of a sudden you have the truth

because, according to the ancient astronaut theory,

someone came and someone altered our DNA

in order for us

to become humans

and essentially gave us more intelligence.

ERICH VON DÄNIKEN: Practically every culture,

including our Bible, says, "In the beginning,

God," in the plurals, "created

humans according their own image."

I'm a deep believer in God,

but God is something gigantic,

spiritual, not explainable.

In my opinion, when you read the Bible,

it's all about extraterrestrials.

Part of ancient astronaut theory

is that what our extraterrestrial

ancestors have wanted us to do

is be like them.

They want us to achieve

the same things that they achieved.

The goal was, some thousands of years

in the far future,

this humanity should be able to construct spaceships

to spread out in the universe again.

NARRATOR: If Homo sapiens were genetically engineered

by extraterrestrial space travelers

to one day become like them

and seed life on other planets,

what might this mean for the future of the human race?

Some experts have suggested that interstellar travel

will only be possible when science finds a way

to dramatically extend the human life span.

TAYLOR: Maybe our generation,

with new developments in technologies,

will be living to the mid-100s, 150,

maybe even up to 200 in the next few decades.

So, imagine an advanced civilization

that has interstellar travel.

Certainly, if they can travel through the stars,

they could stretch their longevity

maybe even to centuries.

NARRATOR: Could it be that the ancient people

referred to the gods as "immortals"

because they encountered space travelers

who lived for thousands of years?

And if so,

is it possible that there are records

of early rulers living for centuries

because these visitors somehow extended their life spans?

RABBI ARIEL BAR TZADOK: It was natural for people

in those days

to live a life close to a thousand years,

but we're talking about those who interacted

with these beings from the stars.

Are these things connected?

HENRY: We're talking about an age in which otherworldly beings

assist humankind in becoming

very much like the gods.

NARRATOR: But if our ancestors from deep antiquity

were so close to becoming like their extraterrestrial creators,

as ancient astronaut theorists suggest,

what kept them from realizing this destiny?

And are humans today still on the same path?

Perhaps further clues can be found

by examining a story shared by different cultures

all over the world,

the story of the Great Flood.

NARRATOR: The Bible's Book of Genesis.

In chapter six, verse nine

begins the story of Noah and the flood,

in which God sends a great deluge

to cleanse the Earth, which has become overrun by sin.

It is one of the most well-known tales from the Bible,

but, curiously, nearly identical stories

exist in dozens of other ancient traditions.

BILL BIRNES: We've heard about the flood of Noah,

which wiped out that whole generation and brought

about a new generation of descendants of Noah.

The fact is,

there's all these stories of the Great Flood

in all countries across the world.

Plato talked about Atlantis.

He talked about a whole civilization

destroyed by floods.

In the Bible,

Turkey, in Egypt,

among the Native Americans,

there's a story

that the Great Flood wrapped around the entire planet.

All life was destroyed.

The connection between the biblical story

of the Great Flood and the destruction

of other societies around the world

through floods tell us one thing.

There actually was a Great Flood

and that, at one point

in the history of this planet,

all life was wiped out

as the Earth was covered in water.

VON DÄNIKEN: In all mythologies, including the Bible,

some gods are coming down

and teach the human a great flood

will come and destroy you.

And these god, they knew it long before,

and they knew it because

they themselves made the Great Flood.

The Great Flood was created by extraterrestrials on purpose.

NARRATOR: Could the story of the Great Flood

be a historical record of a real event

that was brought on by extraterrestrials?

But if the ancient astronaut theory is correct,

and aliens genetically engineered humankind,

why would they then destroy their greatest creation?

TZADOK: We have the records, as described in the Book of Enoch

and other literature,

that the Watchers led to the moral corruption

of all humanity,

which led to the destruction of the face of the Earth.

They were introducing hidden technologies

centuries before they were meant to be introduced.

They corrupted the human gene pool.

CARTER: In Genesis six,

we hear about the sons of God.

They see the daughters of men,

and they lust after them, and they come down,

and they take them as wives.

And then they create a hybrid race called the Nephilim.

You weren't supposed to fraternize with the natives,

but this is what we are told in the Bible.

Now, what are we to make of these texts?

Are we to say, "Well, maybe these angels,

"these sons of God, did they have sex

the old-fashioned way?"

We don't know, but we need to start

looking at these stories from a 21st century perspective.

With the technology that we have with genetic engineering

and splicing genes and what have you,

maybe we can revisit this story and look

at it from maybe an extraterrestrial,

uh, hypothesis or point of view.

They're creating a hybrid race.

The DNA of the off-world intelligence

and the human DNA

creates this hybrid race, and most

of these beings, for better or for worse,

had what we could call superhuman powers.

NARRATOR: As far as ancient astronaut theorists

are concerned, a genetic upgrade occurred.

One that closed the gap between mortals and immortals

far more quickly than was intended.

And it is a story that, once again,

was told across many cultures.

When the sons of God procreated with

the daughters of men, it is said that

mighty ones were born.

They had a longer life span as well,

dating maybe centuries,

up to a thousand years-- not immortal

but a life span much, much longer than ours.

CHILDRESS: When you look back at ancient Egyptian history,

the pharaohs themselves were said to be demigods.

Part-god, part-human.

JONATHAN YOUNG: This was present in the Greek imagination.

The Olympians were known to get involved in the world

of the mortals, and they would intervene sometimes.

Sometimes they would get attracted to a mortal

and children would come. Hercules, Perseus.

These are the offspring, demigods, half-god, half-human.

NARRATOR: But in many of the ancient stories,

the gods who were responsible for this upgrade of humanity

were acting against the wishes of their superiors.

They were not just helping to jumpstart human civilization

but creating a new race of immortals.

CARTER: Enoch, who's the scribe of God,

says that these angels went against the will of God.

Now, you can imagine those angels were

extraterrestrial in origin.

If there was a prime directive, they violated it.

They gave us gifts,

and we weren't ready for those gifts.

It's like giving a gun to a baby.

Nothing good will happen.

HENRY: Maybe the extraterrestrials

were protecting humanity,

and humanity is considered a sacred project,

and they know that, while they begun it thousands of years ago,

it would take thousands or perhaps tens of thousands

of years for humanity to reach its ultimate fulfillment,

but they were committed ultimately

to the sacredness or the fulfillment of the project.

And this is why they restarted civilization.

NARRATOR: As far as ancient astronaut theorists

are concerned, the story of Noah and his family

being saved from the flood

shows that Earth's extraterrestrial

visitors did not abandon their plan for humankind.

As further evidence, they cite a 2,000-year-old text

called the Zohar, that continues the Biblical

story of the Watchers after the cataclysm

that ended the previous age of humans.

TZADOK: The Zohar says that there's a great secret

about the angels who walked with us on Earth.

The Watchers.

They ascended to the stars,

and they are the ones who

come back and shepherd us,

watch over us.

They watch over humanity

and direct the course of our civilization.

TSOUKALOS: I think that the extraterrestrials

never left. Why?

Because, according to the ancient astronaut theory,

we are their offspring.

They made us Homo sapiens sapiens, what we are today.

If you have such a creation,

I don't think you would just abandon that.

We are a long-term project.

NARRATOR: If the first humans shared the planet with alien visitors,

as ancient astronaut theorists suggest,

is it possible that

these otherworldly beings have remained on Earth for thousands

of years, continuing to direct the course of humanity?

And if humans were designed to ultimately

achieve immortality, just how will that happen?

Perhaps further clues can be found by examining

a strange substance discovered

on Easter Island.

NARRATOR: Lying over 2,000 miles off the coast of Chile,

this remote landmass is famous for the nearly 1,000

monolithic stone statues called moai

found along its coastline.

For ancient astronaut theorists,

the enormous statues,

along with the local legends that say

they represent giant beings

who came down from the sky, present a compelling case

for Easter Island being a place

of extraterrestrial visitation.

And what has made this notion even more

intriguing is the discovery that the island's soil

contains a substance called rapamycin

that might be able to extend the human life span.

In 1968, a remarkable

substance was found, a kind of bacterial substance

called rapamycin, and it was given that name

because it was found on Rapa Nui, or Easter Island,

which in itself is very interesting.

And what they found was it could actually help

when people had organ transplants

to stop them rejecting them,

but it could also help in cancer therapies as well.

Then they found that it had very strong anti-aging properties.

It would almost reverse aging in certain medical situations.

NARRATOR: Rapamycin has already been shown

to extend life span and improve health in mice,

and in 2018,

researchers at Texas A&M

began testing the substance on dogs.

While there is still much to learn about the effects

of rapamycin,

scientists are hopeful that it

could prove to actually reverse aging

on a cellular level.

Is it a coincidence that rapamycin

was found on Easter Island?

Where there's possible alien visitations?

We don't know. In fact, one question to ask is, what

do the aliens do to live

very long lives themselves? Do they take certain substances?

NARRATOR: Could it be that the anti-aging substance found

on Easter Island was left behind by alien visitors

who used it as a way to extend their life spans?

In numerous ancient traditions,

there are stories of the gods possessing elixirs

of immortality

and sometimes sharing them with humans.

There are many ancient cultures

that had their own food and drink

that could bring immortality.

For instance, in China,

there was the peaches of immortality

that were given out by the goddess known as

the Old Mother of the West.

These were given to the immortals of China

to quite literally allow them to live

for eternity.

HUSSAIN: For the Greeks, it's this nectar ambrosia,

literally the food of the gods, that, if you consume that,

then you yourself will be divine.

In the Vedas, you have this drink--

uh, soma-- and the same idea,

that this is what feeds the gods

and keeps them alive and immortal.

Then, if we humans eat that food,

these substances will keep us alive forever.

NARRATOR: If these gods were, in fact, alien visitors,

could it be that they were able to achieve immortality

simply by ingesting some type of plant or drug?

Some ancient astronaut theorists suggest that substances,

like ambrosia, were merely symbolic devices

representing the gods' ability to extend their lives.

And they believe this was accomplished using the same

technology that scientists are developing today,

gene splicing.

A team of scientists working with a gene-manipulating

technology known as CRISPR

at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT

makes a groundbreaking discovery.

By editing specific genes in mice,

the researchers were able

to double the life spans of their test subjects.

CRISPR, you can think of it like

we can cut and snip out pieces of our DNA.

And if we can discover, for example,

part of our genetic code

that has to do with aging,

we can maybe cut it out,

or we can add things into the genetic code

that might extend life

to potentially create

a human that could live forever.

If we could rewrite the DNA code,

in principle we can live forever.

Already we've been able to slice and dice that for a mouse,

and eventually we'll do it for a human.

NARRATOR: While it remains to be seen if CRISPR technology

will succeed in increasing the human life span...

...some scientists believe the key to immortality

may be found by studying a strange sea creature

that has the ability to live forever.

So, one thing in nature that seems

to be immortal is the immortal jellyfish,

where it can actually revert to an earlier state

when damaged or at risk

and then regrow back into the adult state.

NARRATOR: The cells of all animals begin as stem cells,

which then develop into organs, muscles, bones,

and whatever else the organism needs.

The jellyfish species Turritopsis dohrnii,

commonly known as the immortal jellyfish,

can take mature adult cells

and turn them back into stem cells,

allowing the jellyfish to, in effect,

start its development all over.

So you're really reversing the biological

timeline and then resetting it going forward,

so that you're actually not only living longer

but you're also younger.

And thinking about how these things

get reversed, to me, is an intriguing way

to approach the biology and the immortality.

NARRATOR: By understanding species

like the immortal jellyfish

and through the technology of gene editing,

might we greatly extend the human life span?

And could extraterrestrials have used

similar means to achieve immortality,

allowing them to travel great distances through space?

TSOUKALOS: It often seems to me

that we live in a time

of rediscovery,

meaning that the fact that we

come up with ways with which to improve

and prolong our lives,

extraterrestrials have figured that out long ago.

NARRATOR: But while scientists are optimistic that the human

life span can be lengthened through genetic engineering,

many aerospace experts believe that biological

bodies are simply not equipped

to withstand the rigors of extended space travel.

They suggest that,

if humans are to one day colonize

other planets, it will require merging man

and machine.

NARRATOR: In a press conference organized by a UFO investigative group

called the Disclosure Project,

former Army Sergeant Clifford Stone

makes a shocking announcement.

He claims to be part of a top secret military unit

once tasked with recovering extraterrestrial craft

and their pilots for the U.S. government.

I was involved in situations where we actually

did recoveries of crashed, of crashed saucers,

for lack of a better term, debris thereof.

There were bodies that were involved with

some of these crashes. Also, some were alive.

While we were doing all this, we were telling

the American public there was nothing to it.

We were telling the world there was nothing to it.

NARRATOR: Sergeant Stone would later describe

a specific mission in which he learned that the pilot of

an extraterrestrial craft was "a biological robot."

NEWMAN: So, what he found was, is that these so-called

Grey aliens with the skinny bodies and giant

heads were like biological robots.

They-they had few organs.

They had all this machinery

and computing inside them,

and he really questioned what this was all about.

And the conclusion was that they must have been created

to travel huge distances from their planet to this planet

because, if they were just a biological entity,

they simply would not have survived.

NARRATOR: Could it be that Earth is being visited

by alien entities that are part machine?

Is this why the ancient people referred to the gods as

immortals, because they were not entirely

biological beings and appeared to never age?

As further support for this notion,

ancient astronaut theorists

point to a strange figure that appears in 18th century France,

the mysterious Count de Saint-Germain.

COLLINS: The Count de Saint-Germain is

probably one of the most enigmatic

gentlemen of human history.

He was an adventurer, he was a scientist,

he was a composer.

He knew several languages,

yet, strangely, he always

was the same age

whenever anybody saw him.

ETTINGTON: One of the most interesting stories

about the count was that when he was at a social gathering

he met an old woman, and the old woman said,

"I met you 60 years ago when I was a young woman,

and you looked in your 40s then, same as you do now."

He hadn't aged.

Another thing that people talk about was that he had

so much knowledge of history and of science.

He knew a lot of the leaders and kings.

NARRATOR: Throughout his reportedly very long life,

the Count de Saint-Germain befriended many noblemen

and rulers, who he was believed to have great influence over.

ETTINGTON: In the mid-1700s

he was a diplomat for King Louis XV,

and in the 1760s

he traveled to Russia

and he was complicit in the overthrow

that put Catherine the Great in place as the czar of Russia.

HENRY: It was rumored that he later advised

the Russian imperial commander in the war against

the Turks, which the Russians ultimately won.

COLLINS: He's supposed to have died

in 1784, but there were

reported sightings of him just the following year

entering into a Masonic lodge in France,

where his name was actually noted there and then.

He was reportedly at the beheading

of Marie Antoinette several years later.

And there are many other reports

of his presence

all the way around the world in the 19th century.

NARRATOR: In addition to appearing in historical records long after he

was alleged to have died, it was said by many who knew

the Count de Saint-Germain that he had odd habits

and possessed extraordinary abilities.

One of the strange things about him were his dietary habits.

He'd sit with other people as they ate,

but he wouldn't eat with them.

One of Count Saint-Germain's contacts in the 18th century was

Casanova, who said he had an ability to melt diamonds,

that he had amazing abilities and powers.

He thought that he was an incredible

superhuman type of person.

So, if Saint-Germain

had lived centuries,

and he was an alien from the past,

certainly when you look at aliens,

who are thousands of years in advance of us,

they could have had alterations genetically or mechanically

that would allow them to live a very long time.

NARRATOR: Is it possible that the Count de Saint-Germain

was an extraterrestrial entity that was part robotic,

much like the Grey alien that Sergeant Clifford Stone

claims to have examined?

Ancient astronaut theorists suggest that such a scenario

is not so far-fetched considering that today

we are already creating robots that are

incredibly humanlike in their appearance.

One of the most cutting-edge

is a Hanson Robotics creation named Sophia.

HENRY: What is absolutely mind-blowing

about Sophia and other robotic entities is,

it's not hard to imagine a population

of extraterrestrials creating humanoid robots

like the ones that we're building today.

Probably even more advanced.

And it makes a lot of sense for us to send robots into space

instead of flesh-and-blood bodies.

If it makes sense for us, it probably

makes sense for extraterrestrials as well.

NARRATOR: If the ancient astronaut theory is correct

and humankind was created to follow in the footsteps

of its extraterrestrial creators,

will that mean merging man and machine?

According to some scientists,

that process is already underway.

NARRATOR: Located just four miles west of the Pentagon

is the headquarters

for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency,

better known as DARPA.

Since 2002, DARPA has been

investing hundreds of millions of dollars in its

brain-machine interface program for the U.S. military.

The technologies they're developing allow

humans to control mechanical devices

with their minds.

BERLIN: There are these brain-computer

interfaces where we can implant electrodes in the brain.

And, for example, you can control a prosthetic limb

by just using your thoughts

with these brain-computer interfaces.

The chip records activation in your brain.

It sends that information to a computer, which then

sends that to, let's say, a prosthetic limb to control it.

This is certainly a good way to extend lives

when the brain is not the part that's failing, but

it's the rest of the body that's failing.

'Cause you can actually now imagine human,

sort of metal robotic cyborg

combinations where your brain is

now not just controlling maybe your biological body

but something artificial and man-made.

You give this technology another

50 years, and we will appear as god beings

to a person living at the beginning of the 20th century.

So, let's now look back at the extraterrestrial

gods of the ancient world.

They must have had at least the level of technological

sophistication that we are enjoying and experiencing today,

probably even more advanced.

I think it's fascinating where we are

in this moment in time because

what if, one day, we can create

artificial human beings?

And, in fact, we are merely rediscovering

what has happened already a long time ago.

NARRATOR: As far as some ancient astronaut theorists

are concerned, merging biology and

technology is an important

first step in becoming like our alien ancestors.

But they believe the extraterrestrial beings

that people have reported encountering on Earth

may be merely avatars,

vessels for intelligences

that can move from one body to another.

HENRY: What if they're digital beings?

Or light beings? We have numerous stories

that tell us that the god beings were

originally light beings that could then phase into a physical

flesh-and-blood form and then phase back into

their light body form when they want to travel the stars.

We hear the story of the Anunnaki,

the divine lords of light of the Sumerian tradition...

...or the arrival of the Watchers,

the lords of light who descended upon Mount Hermon.

TAYLOR: The stories of Vishnu actually describe Vishnu

having many manifestations of himself as other gods.

He would come to our reality as a different god.

He came to Earth many different times as many

different people and had adventures and activities

and then he would go back into the heavens as Vishnu.

KAKU: The aliens could be avatars.

They can withstand all the rigors of outer space

because they are part biological and part mechanical

but controlled by an alien consciousness

in a different star system.

NARRATOR: While the notion of a conscious being that

can move from one body to another may sound far-fetched,

humankind is working towards

realizing this technology right now

by attempting to map the human brain.

Whole brain emulation is the ability

to create a carbon copy of the brain itself.

Already, by slicing and dicing the brain of a fruit fly,

we've been able to catalog all the connections

of a fruit fly's brain

up to 100,000 neurons.

Think about that-- every single connection of the brain

of a fruit fly mapped using computers

by slicing and dicing the brain.

Now, the human brain is much more complicated.

A hundred billion neurons,

with each neuron connected to

10,000 other neurons, but in principle

that's also possible to create an exact copy

of the brain to map every single neuron

of the brain

using transistors rather than neurons.

And it would, in principle,

be identical to who you are.

It would have access to all your memories,

all your dreams, all your foibles,

all your mannerisms.

It'll take, of course, decades

to give you that kind of accuracy, but it is doable.

NARRATOR: Once scientists can completely replicate a human brain

through whole brain emulation,

then that information can be uploaded to a computer

to digitally represent a person's consciousness.

Could it be that extraterrestrials who already

possess this capability have come to Earth

by uploading their consciousness into artificial bodies?

There are some theoretical physicists

who say not only is this possible

but that this is how humans will eventually leave the planet

and travel the stars.

NARRATOR: August 27, 2019.

Space X announces the successful test flight

of its starship prototype Starhopper.

The founder of the private aerospace company,

billionaire Elon Musk, has also been at the forefront

of efforts to upgrade humankind.

It is his belief that both pursuits are critical

to ensuring the survival of the human race.

It's interesting that, today,

we have these adventurer billionaires like Elon Musk,

and they want to put computer chips in our brains,

even map our own consciousness and put

that in a robot or cyborg,

and they're wanting to go into space at the same time.

So, in many ways,

they're like the

alien explorers

who came here in the past.

KAKU: I think with known technologies,

we can theorize, that is, within 100, within 200 years,

we're talking about fusion rockets and antimatter

rockets capable of reaching the stars.

And then I think we'll be sending

robots into outer space that are actually avatars.

I personally think this is the future of the space program,

and I think we will do this using laser beams.

If we can digitize the human brain,

we can put that knowledge on a laser beam

and shoot it to the Moon.

In one second,

you are on the Moon.

In 20 minutes, you could be on Mars.

In four years, at the speed of light,

you could reach the nearby stars.

And what would you do?

If that laser beam goes

to the Moon, is then downloaded

into an avatar,

that avatar could withstand gravity fields,

poisonous gases,

radiation from the Sun.

And in fact, I'll stick my neck out.

I think this already exists.

I think this is the preferred way

for an advanced alien species to explore the universe.

In fact, near the Earth,

there could be a digital highway

with the digitized souls

of billions of aliens going across the Milky Way Galaxy.

So I think when we meet aliens from outer space,

we should not be surprised if they're actually

avatars that are controlled by

the aliens in a distant star system.

NARRATOR: As entrepreneurs

continue to invest billions in pursuit

of both space travel and whole brain emulation,

are we getting closer to becoming like the immortals

our ancestors described thousands of years ago?

And if these immortals were responsible for the creation

of the human race,

as ancient astronaut theorists suggest,

could this evolution be exactly

what they intended for humankind all along?

Why would extraterrestrials come to Earth

and start a human project,

knowing that it would take thousands of years

for us to, to develop?

Well, it could perhaps be that extraterrestrials

have a different perspective of time than we do.

If we think of the extraterrestrials

as immortal, time is irrelevant.

And their goal is to assist humanity

to become more like them.

TAYLOR: There's a potential that humanity is going to become

a starfaring nation that has long life

because you're gonna need that for some of these long journeys.

And we might become more like the gods that seemed to

live for thousands of years and traveled the heavens.

NARRATOR: Is humanity on the verge of becoming

an intergalactic civilization?

And if so, is it possible that we

were set on this path by an extraterrestrial race

that visited Earth thousands of years ago?

Perhaps one day, the immortal gods

seen descending from the sky

on a distant planet...

will be us.

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