Original subtitles

the year is

2020 orbiting high above the Earth is a

telescope far more powerful than any

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before it has just made a discovery that

will change our lives

forever it is found an inhabited planet

outside our solar

system more than 50 light years from

Earth the telescope has located a world

that glows like an oasis in the vast

emptiness of

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space it's cloaked in oceans and

continents

this is a truly alien

world the air is so thick humans could

not survive here

and it's home to

Giants terrifying Predators dominate the

skies

fantasy think

again scientists believe we could find a

world like this within 10 years

and they're preparing now for what we

may

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find some of the world's leading

scientists have come to this specially

designed lab to continue their

investigation into what extraterrestrial

life might be like and where in the

universe we are most likely to find it

all our world's leaders in the fields of

astronomy astrophysics biology and

biomechanics and all share One Vision

that we are not alone many things about

this environment are going to be strange

by our

standards this is the centy for the

discovery of of extraterrestrial life we

have new programs looking for remote

planets we have new search strategies we

have new experiments being carried out

on Earth it's an incredibly exciting

time to be

here in preparation for what we might

find the scientists gathered here have

begun to investigate which worlds are

most likely to sustain

life they've designed life forms that

could survive on an alien planet

but where are we most likely to find

life this is our galaxy The Milky Way

home to a 100 billion stars and at least

as many

planets Earth is in this cluster of

stars over here

and it's in a nearby region of the

Galaxy called signis that our experts

believe were most likely to find life

first the idea that there might be life

out there has been around for a long

time and what has changed is the

realization that we have the technology

now to answer the question

over the next 10 years a new generation

of telescopes will be launched into

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space more powerful than any before

they'll peer into the signis

constellation it's one of the densest

areas of stars in our

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galaxy if life is out there our greatest

chance of finding it will be here simply

because the number of stars is so

great to narrow down the search the

scientists have decided to investigate a

very common configuration in our

galaxy twin

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stars more than half of all stars are in

fact twins

previously astronomers thought Twins

were too unstable to let planets orbit

around

them but it turns out that if the planet

is far enough away from those two stars

or if it's orbiting one or the other of

them then indeed the the orbits can be

stable and you can have worlds that stay

in their orbits for billions of years

and that could very well have

life this recent discovery has opened up

a vast opportunity for life in the

universe and the scientists will be

looking for Twin Star solar systems like

this more than 50 light years from Earth

a star orbits with its

twin and orbiting around the two suns is

a gas giant

a thousand times bigger than Earth it's

a violent lifeless

Planet but there's another world

here orbiting around the gas giant is a

moon it's exactly the kind of world the

astronomers hope to

find you could have a moon the size of

Earth uh big enough that it could have

an atmosphere that it could have an

ocean and one that that could be

supportive of Life of All Sorts

including very sophisticated

life could this be a place where life

might exist

and if so what would it look

like the astronomers and astrophysicists

gathered here have begun a

groundbreaking

project they're investigating every

detail of what a habitable Moon could be

like

a new world is coming to

life for life to survive the moon will

need a viable atmosphere and most

critically water the essential medium

for all

life if the moon is large enough if it's

geologically active so it can recycle

gases like carbon dioxide into its

atmosphere through volcanoes for

instance then it's quite possible that a

moon like this could have a viable

atmosphere all the parameters the

scientists explored show the moon could

sustain life potential saying well this

variation might tell us that there's a

blue moon there and in fact we might be

dealing with the potentially habitable

planet the scientists named it the Blue

Moon they decided to model it with a

dense atmosphere a scenario they believe

could be very common in the

universe as far as the uh blue moon goes

it has three times the atmospheric

density as the Earth has

this pressurized air will make levels of

oxygen and carbon dioxide much

higher the oxygen level is about

30% oxygen feeds fires like nothing else

at these levels it will push blue Moon's

atmosphere to the brink of spontaneous

combustion fires here will be

frequent the Blue Moon will be a world

on the

edge one person goes out without a space

suit they're back within a minute their

description is terrifying it's an

immense pressure they can hardly breathe

it's hot it's clammmy and they feel as

if they're being pushed down by the most

extraordinary weight it's nothing like

the Earth at all

you're about to visit a world scientists

believe could exist in our

galaxy The Blue

Moon it's got blue Seas it's got clouds

in the

atmosphere and the continents are cloak

with something maybe some strangely

colored vegetation

I'd love to see a world like

that sunrise on the blue moon

giant forests more than a kilometer High

dominate the

landscape but this is a volatile

World fires ignited by lightning and

fueled by the high oxygen levels will

would be an extreme

risk its dense atmosphere is like a gas

ocean and it will support some of the

strangest aliens aliens that float Glide

and

fly the sorts of life forms on Blue Moon

I think would be totally fascinating

when we look in the atmosphere there's a

sort of almost greenish Haze it's almost

like a plankton but beyond that there

are these immense shapes are they

gliding are they flying all we can tell

is they must be very large animals

indeed it's far far beyond anything

we're familiar with this is a genuinely

alien

world the Pagoda Forest is the setting

for an extraordinary story of how

extraterrestrial life could survive in

an extreme world

fields of strange floating plants fill

breakes in the pic's dense

canopy it's the territory of deadly

predators the size of

eagles the

stalkers and they hunt Giants

blue Moon's life forms have been created

by some of the world's leading

biologists and

biomechanists there's a sort of

predictability to life on Earth which

surely we can extrapolate across the

Galaxy and even at this stage we can

predict the sorts of organisms will be

adapted for living in its thick viscous

atmosphere everything about these aliens

has been scientifically calculated from

the dimension of their wings how they

might see to how they could interact

with each other on This Strange World

cuz if you find those at least you know

there's life there the wonderful

opportunities for flight here if you've

got denser air heavier air it's going to

be easier for big things to fly on the

blue moon

amazingly big

things soaring high above the Pagoda

Forest our Sky

whales with a wingspan of more than 10 m

they're the blue Moon's largest flying

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creatures they're feeding on clouds of

floating plants boiled up by the dense

atmosphere the likelihood of Sky whales

seems very high they ought to exist

so on the Blue Moon we have animals

which originally were swimming in the

oceans but because the atmosphere in

Blue Moon is so thick one can imagine

something swimming in the ocean to fly

in the atmosphere effectively as a

single

transition it's opening new eyes to the

way in which Evolution can happen on

alien

planets Guided by their sonar these

gentle Giants Glide on the thermal

updrafts what a magnificent Beast this

is a sky whale weighs as much as a

rhinoceros that's 10 time times larger

than the largest thing that has ever

flown on earth a

terrasaur at the time of the dinosaurs

we had in the sky gantic flying reptiles

why was that well one of the best

explanations is that the levels of

atmospheric oxygen was substantially

higher than they are today there was

basically more energy available these

things could get to gigantic size and so

when we go to other planets with

similarly high levels of oxygen and also

a much thicker atmosphere not only will

those animals be bigger than we're

familiar with but much

bigger oxygen levels are so high that

creatures here will have 50% more muscle

power than on Earth this enables giants

like the sky whales to spend their

entire lives on the

wing it will also supercharge their main

Predator the

stalkers giving them phenomenal flying

power as they hunt a pot of

whales soaring above the forest the sky

whales are safe as long as they stay

high the winds are faster here making

Escape

easier the scouts come from a colony of

more than 300 stalkers

and they're

hungry the scouts Dro down beneath the

pakota canopy to avoid

detection they're waiting for one of the

sky whales to drop its guard so they can

single it out for attack

the stalkers have three Eyes giving them

360° Vision perfect for tracking the sky

whales while maneuvering through this

complex

world the cape stalkers are faster

stronger and more agile than anything on

Earth

scientists here have modeled their way

of life on the social

insects one of the most successful

social systems on Earth is one we find

in bees and wasps for

example you have a queen but you also

have workers and other members

responsible for different

tasks now on Blue Moon we could imagine

something rather similar but

interestingly much larger because

remember the atmosphere is denser and

there's more oxygen

animals like stalkers would be in a

sense like giant

hornets they will be divided into a

series of Scouts looking for new

opportunities but there are also workers

and the queen staying in the

nest the workers are faster and stronger

than the scouts

they're the socer Army and they're

waiting for the scouts signal to

attack it's a very very successful way

to run a large colony and also to be

very effective in cooperation and that

includes of course hunting on the earth

that same social organization it's found

not only in the insects but

extraordinarily even in the mammals now

if this has happened independently on

Earth actually a number of times then

there's every reason to think it should

occur

elsewhere the scouts are still doggedly

tracking the

whales but they've adopted a risky

strategy the pakoda underst story is

draped with a lethal veil of tentacles

it's the lair of Ambush

Predators the scouts must avoid touching

anything down

here there will always be the Hunter and

the

hunted this battle for survival is a

major force that has shaped the destiny

of life on Earth on the Blue Moon

scientists believe it will be no

different I think there's only one thing

that we can say is going to be true of

Life everywhere and that one thing is

darwinian evolution that is the Insight

that we have from Earth that I think is

completely generalizable life everywhere

will reproduce mutate followed by

natural

selection that process I think is as

universal as the laws of gravity and Rel

ity life here is 6 billion years old

it's complex and well

established but how could life ever get

started on an alien world like the blue

moon the answer comes from one of the

biggest space discoveries in recent

years it happens when stars die the the

Supernova explosion is so bright it

outshines entire

galaxies in its wake it leaves behind a

nebula a vast cloud of dust and gas tens

of Li ear

across inside carbon and all the other

elements for life are

created what's interesting about this

dust is that it's rich in organic

material that's the stuff of Life out

there in space

the biological material in our bodies

and in plants and animals are proteins

and those proteins are made out of

blocks called amino acids well we see

those same types of molecules amino

acids out there in

space so if the basic building blocks of

life are common throughout the Galaxy

then why shouldn't life also be common

throughout the

Galaxy the discovery that Stardust is

raining down on planets and seeding them

with the ingredient for life is

astounding it could mean that Stardust

is seeding life right across the

universe and on some worlds conditions

will be right for life to take

hold in any environment that is broadly

similar to the earth water energy carbon

life will start there as well so that

the story of life could be unfolding in

many different locations independently

each time and as each story of life is

written it'll be a little different than

the

others we think of our own world as

being the perfect planet for

life but is

it the Blue Moon would in many ways be

more habitable particularly for forests

than the

Earth carbon dioxide levels 30 times

higher than on Earth will fuel rampant

plant

growth the combination of a dense

atmosphere and high levels of the

greenhouse gas CO2 will act like a

blanket keeping the moon very

warm you might expect a planet like the

blue moon to have smaller temperature

contrasts between the Equator and the

pole there will be no polar ice caps and

vegetation will carpet its entire land

Mass on the Blue Moon we have plants and

we also have forests and amongst the

most astonishing are the Pagoda

trees now these are immense absolutely

gigantic they're more than a kilometer

High that's eight times the height of

the tallest trees on Earth

the ceiling of this world is a sea of

Sky

ponds each tree has modified its leaves

to collect

rainwater and the whole Forest is

interconnected like one vast super

organism so here are forests which are

alien

indeed the trees on Earth Earth could

never grow so

large and the reason for this is

effectively that inside the plant there

is a set of tubes it's a sort of

conduction system which is responsible

for taking the water from the roots up

into the sky and effectively what we see

is there's a limit to the size the

height of the column of the water now on

Blue Moon It's rather

different the pagodas don't need to draw

water up from the ground they collect in

their Sky ponds and then gravity does

the

rest but the weight of the water in the

sky ponds could make the tree

collapse the scientists have overcome

this by imagining the forest is

interconnected it will give the pagodas

enormous strength and

stability in principle trees and a

forest based on this design could get

higher and higher and higher what could

that height be could be 500 even a

thousand meters it could be easily 10

times higher than trees on

Earth all life on the Blue Moon revolves

around this vast Cathedral of pagura

trees their Sky ponds are a Haven for

many other

aliens strange creatures hover above

them

giant

kites they use their tentacles like

fishing lines to catch helib bugs living

in the

ponds the blue Moon's dense atmosphere

is perfect for supporting large

creatures but how is it possible for the

kite to hang Motionless in the

air on the Blue Moon we get more support

by pushing on this heavy air than we

would by pushing on the lighter air that

we've got here on Earth so this kite

which might need quite a strong wind to

get it Airborne on Earth will be taken

up into the air by considerably weaker

wind on the Blue

Moon biomechanists predicts a creature

with this design could grow up to 5 m

across and still stay

airborne it's relying on moving winds

and an aile effect to keep itself up in

the air so this is going to look in

cross-section just like an airplane wing

and when there's enough wind around air

passes over top and bottom creating a

pressure difference which lifts the body

up but it's kept in place by a tether

very much like a kite string and then

behind it we have these tentacles the

dangle into the water just like a

jellyfish

tentacle waiting to grab any ly that it

hits the Kit's fishing grounds are

vast beneath the P's dense canopy light

from the Twin Suns rapidly dims

more than a kilometer below is a strange

world no natural light reaches

here in these Abyssal depths life

depends on food falling down from

above glowing scavengers hover in the

air higher up in the Twisted tangle of

the canopy is another unique world

it's the lair of the death

traps the great Halls of the forest are

draped with their lethal tentacles

you never escape the Embrace of the

death

trap the stalker faces a slow death

dissolving in a bath of

acid but the need to provide for the

colony drives the surviving Scout

on it won't be long before one of these

gentle Giants is singled out and the

fury of the stalker Army is

unleashed the Blue Moon is a land of

turmoil and change

forest fires on the earth can be deadly

on the Blue Moon they can be far more

ferocious they can sweep through huge

areas fanned by winds fueled by the

oxygen the destruction is massive but

the brakes left in the canopy will bring

opportunity to

others a new alien is coming to

life the balloon

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plants blue Moon's dense atmosphere will

enable plants to float in the

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sky the field of balloons gently Sway in

the breeze anchored to the canopy with

long tethers

the biomechanists have calculated plants

like this could grow to the size of a

small hot air

balloon it's an extraordinary vision of

what alien vegetation could be

like if you want to float in an

atmosphere you need a lighter than air

gas and the best gas on demand simply by

splitting water water molecules is

hydrogen at First Sight hydrogen might

seem to be a very strange gas to use no

on Earth in fact a number of organisms

produce

hydrogen you might think well that's

very alien nothing like that well no not

really if we go back to our own Earth

let's remind ourselves about the kelp

forests because here we see these great

strands of seaweed in a thick water but

supporting themselves with bladders full

of gas is that so very different from

the balloon plants of Blue Moon I don't

think so both are equally

alien when conditions are right the

balloons can rise high above the

pagodas it's a simple way to compete for

light on a planet where plant life is

rampant and space is at a premium

the balloon plants are opportunistic

what they do is when part of the

underlying Forest has been removed by a

fire for example they very rapidly

colonize

it they release parts of the plant which

drift

away here these giant balloons will join

clouds of tiny plants that spend their

lives drifting in the sky the

algae so high up in the atmosphere

there'll be innumerable tiny algae it's

really like the Plankton of the Earth's

ocean and this I think would give an

almost greenish Haze to many parts of

the sky as these things drift around in

colossal numbers so this atmosphere in a

sense is an enormous ladder it's full of

food and if there is food floating

around especially in the form of algae

then it would be natural to imagine that

there will be animals grazing that

resource

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the floating plants concentrate in vast

green

clouds and the sky whales scoop them up

in colossal

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mouthfuls the Blue Moon will take about

10 Earth days to orbit around its parent

planet

there will be five days of light and

five days of

darkness the temperature difference

creates intense thermals which the sky

whales ride with

ease to Be an Effective filter feeder

you need to be quite large because every

time you open your mouth to start

filtering there's a huge drag

so what I see the sky whales doing is

spiraling up these thermals and then

come down with a large mass behind them

because they're big opening up their

mouths and ramming a lot of AAL Plankton

through if you're small you do that stop

and fall out of the

sky feeding well below the main pod one

sky whale has dropped an altitude

it's the moment the Scouts have been

waiting

for the lone Sky whale continues to

graze it's mortal Danger

the scouts stealthily gain height they

must get above the

whale Gathering speed they pass low over

the

whale and in one swift flyby it sprayed

with a powerful

scent the whale is marked like like a

beacon the stalker Army will now be able

to find the whale wherever it

goes Panic spreads through the whale

pod the mark whale's only chance is to

climb as high as it can on The Thermals

and try to escape gliding

downwind the scouts now race back to the

col need to summon the

workers the idea that a trail of

chemicals pheromones could be used by

the stalkers on the Blue Moon may seem

rather unlikely wouldn't the scent be

dispersed in the atmosphere well no I

don't think so because in point of fact

remember this atmosphere is much denser

pheromones can be detected at tiny

concentrations it's an economic cheap

way of leaving the trail behind the

trail which takes the workers to their

prey

the scouts return sense a wave of

excitement through the

colony the sky whale will be lucky to

survive one of the arguments about

looking for extraterrestrial life is

will it also be intellig and many people

feel know intelligence is an

evolutionary fluk but everything else we

know about evolution is not only does it

find similar Solutions but it finds him

again and again and

again Blue Moon stalkers are highly

organized a terrifying

adversary like the social insects

their's is a shared intelligence very

different to our own

each worker has a small brain and they

don't solve the problem by stepping back

from it and thinking about it they

actually solve the problem by having

lots of individuals exploring for

answers life on other planets might have

evolved entirely down that route and

that that could be the dominant form of

life and in a sense suppress the

evolution of more individualistic forms

of

intelligence and alien Army is

Unleashed hundreds of workers home in on

the Cent Trail left by the

scouts they move as one a formidable

swarm speed is

critical they know the marked whale will

be trying to gain height

the panicking whale is still dangerously

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low the centrail is getting stronger and

stronger its desperate battle to escape

has failed

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the attack is

Savage the workers tear into its fragile

honeycombed Wings puncturing its

buoyancy cells

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the whales cries fill the

air slowly the giant begins to drop from

the

skies the stalkers follow and wait

the defenseless whale is slowly ripped

to

pieces then its flesh is carried back to

the roosts to feed a new generation of

hungry

stalkers the giant struggles become

weaker and

weaker it's all part of the Great cycle

of life in the blue Moon's pagoto Forest

the stalker colony is a formidable

Force everything they do is governed by

their collective

intelligence but how far might this

intelligence evolve could they one day

match or even exceed our own on

Earth it's really tempting to think

whether this might go further after all

they're active Hunters they're

communicating they're working

effectively in packs is it possible to

imagine that one day they would go so

far far as to develop a technology to

hunt those Sky Wales I don't see why

not one of the Intriguing things I think

that might be in the future of the

stalker is that they might end up

farming the whales rather than just

crudely predating

them and in fact you could imagine them

dominating the the the entire surface of

the planet and the surface of its

atmosphere in this way

lightning ignites the

forest the fire is immense consuming

everything in its

path the balloon plants filled with

hydrogen explode like bombs casting

their seeds over the surface of the

planet and from this destruction new

life will

emerge life will continue to evolve on

the blue moon as it has done for

millions of

years I think that one day we may indeed

find something rather like the blue

moon I think this is no longer the stuff

of Science

Fiction I I hope that I'm around when

something like this is discovered

when the new telescopes are launched

over the next 10 years they will be

pointing towards twin stars searching

for worlds like the blue

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moon The Landmark research done by the

scientists here will help govern where

we look for extraterrestrial life

will we find planets like Blue Moon

orbiting other stars orbiting giant

planets around other

stars the answer is almost certainly yes

there are so many stars with so many

potential planets that we have to

imagine there must be planets like these

there it's just a question of

discovering them that far away

life on many worlds may not progress

Beyond Simple

bacteria others could evolve complex

life and some could evolve intelligence

beyond our wildest

expectations intelligence will almost

certainly lead on many planets to a

species which will want to visit the

star

cars and if indeed we do contact

extraterrestrial life our whole world

picture will change

forever it could happen in our lifetime

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the year is

2020 circling high above the Earth is a

new telescope the terrestrial planet

finder it has just made a discovery that

will change our lives

forever more than 40 light years from

Earth it's detected the first habitable

planet outside our solar

system orbiting close to a red dwarf

star is an extraordinary world

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one half is in Frozen Darkness the other

In Perpetual

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light this is a land where the Sun never

sets

strange heartbeats fill the

air here plants have become

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animals and a lethal Predator masses in

the

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lagoons fantasy think again scientists

believe we could discover a planet like

this within the next 10

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years they are already preparing for

what we may

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find some of the world's leading

scientists have come to this specially

Design Lab to share their vision of what

extraterrestrial life might be like and

where in the universe we are most likely

to find

it all the scientists are world's

leaders in the fields of astronomy and

biology and all share One

Vision that we are not

alone do I think life is out there most

definitely

it would be very difficult to believe

that there isn't life in the universe

and the real question is is how common

or rare it is and so we have to start

looking this is the century for the

discovery of extraterrestrial life we

have new programs looking for remote

planets we have new search strategies

it's an incredibly exciting

time these scientists are breaking new

ground in the search for

extraterrestrial life

recover we are presenting the red dwarfs

particularly are real that is to say

somewhere there could be one of

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these they have already begun to

investigate which planets are most

likely to be

habitable in this series their

extraordinary Visions have been brought

to reality

but where does the search for

extraterrestrial life

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begin this is our galaxy The Milky Way

home to a 100 billion stars and at least

as many planets it's so vast that

traveling at the speed of light it would

take 100,000 years to get from one end

to the other

that's

big but there's a 100 billion more

galaxies like it in the

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universe we only know of one planet that

has

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life

Earth it orbits our star the Sun at just

the right distance for liquid water and

oceans to

form any further and water would

freeze any closer and it would boil

off and from what we know about our own

Planet water is essential for

life we still do not know of any

organism that can grow or reproduce

without liquid water so when we look at

other planets what are we going to look

for liquid water doesn't take a rocket

scientist to figure that one

out within the next 10 years the

terrestrial planet finder will be

launched into

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space more powerful than any teles scope

before it will search for earth-sized

planets orbiting around stars in our

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galaxy the idea that there might be life

out there has been around for a long

time and what has changed is the

realization that we have the technology

now to answer the

question astronomers are already

investigating which stars are most

likely to support

life a prime target are small dim Stars

called red

dwarves they produce less than a tenth

of the light of our own star the

sun the terrestrial planet finder will

detect stars that are within 50 light

years of the earth what's interesting is

that about 80% of those stars are red

dwarfs so I believe the first

potentially habitable planets will be

detected around red

dwarfs you are about to see a world

astronomers believe could

exist 40 light years from Earth a red

dwarf star glows in the depths of space

and orbiting around it is an earth-sized

Planet it's close enough to its Sun for

liquid water to form on the surface but

there's a penalty for being this

close the world is locked in the star's

gravitational

pole and it stopped

rotating one half will be in Everlasting

Light the other in permanent Darkness

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planets orbiting red dwarves were once

thought to be

uninhabitable it was believed that their

atmospheres would freeze out on the dark

side and boil off on the light

side but in pioneering new research

these scientists decided to investigate

and find out if the planet could support

life

what I did is to take that research

further using an actual computer model

of the atmosphere so you could do some

very basic tests to see under what

conditions the atmosphere might freeze

out under what conditions it

wouldn't the red dwarf planets modeled

was different from anything that had

been explored

before what they discovered will

ultimately change the search for

extraterrestrial life

a new planet is coming to

life every detail was programmed into

the

model so here we had to stop the

rotation of the

planet we used climate prediction

models to break up all the atmospheric

constituents including chemical reaction

actions and the formation of

clouds and the amount of

precipitation we then just let the model

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run so we basically produced for the

first time weather on a planet around

another star in the detail that weather

is usually predicted here on

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Earth they had proved that the new

planet Planet could have an atmosphere

and critically liquid water the

essential medium for

life they named it

aelia the big question was could aelia

support life

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on its dark side is a vast Frozen waste

a land of

Darkness with no light and Sub-Zero

temperatures life would struggle to take

hold here

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on its light side at the point where

aelia is closest to its Sun the climate

models predicted a giant Cyclone That

Never

[Music]

Dies this is aelia's Storm Zone

hurricanes rage across the land rainfall

is torrential and it never

stops but between the storm Zone and in

the dark side the computer model

predicted a belt where the climate would

be warm and

stable and with oceans of water and land

scientists believed that life was not

just possible but

probable what was so exciting when I

first saw the models was I suddenly

realized that look these temperatures

are within the range that even trees

could say

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at that point we knew that we were in

business to talk about aelia supporting

higher forms of plant and animal

life the scientists had identified a

prime target in the search for

extraterrestrial

life it could be a perfect model for the

first habitable planet we discover e

[Music]

aelia a living breathing

World rivers from the storm Zone fan out

across giant Deltas breathing life into

a vast network of lagoons

a forest of strange fans reaches up

towards the red dwarf

star a star that never moves and never

[Music]

sets it's just one endless

day the fans creep slowly across the

mud and their heartbeats Echo throughout

the forest

beneath the water the Killer is

waking welcome to an alien world a world

that scientists believe could

exist extraterrestrial has brought

together leading biologists and

biomechanists to conceive the life forms

and ecology that could exist here

[Music]

every detail of these aliens has been

worked out yes height

weight and interactions were all

designed in detail and if we join all

this up together here's an

ecology nothing here is what it

seems these are the Stinger f

hands they might look like plants but

these are animals that have leared how

to capture

sunlight they drag themselves slowly

across the mud jostling for a prime

position in the Sun

their key job is to try and catch some

sunlight if there's something blocking

them then they they're not going to

survive so instead of the Treeway of

doing things which is to grow past the

thing blocking them they go for moving a

bit to the left or to the right so

movements vitally important for

them they aelia's extraordinary

equivalent of plants

reaching up more than 10 m their fans

tra the sun's energy to produce

sugars their primitive Hearts pump the

nutrients around their

bodies in this world where the Sun never

moves competition for light is

fierce an animal that can creep along

the ground and shade out its neighbors

has come to dominate the

landscape well a stinger fan looks genu

alien mixture of an animal and a plant

but in fact when we go to the Earth

there are things which are in their own

way just as extraordinary we can see

examples in corals we can see them in

jellyfish we can even see them in some

mollusks slug-like animals effectively

and they are in a sense getting a free

lunch the photosynthesizers which

they've captured are providing some of

of the nutrition which they require it's

what we call a symbiosis so maybe the

Stinger fans weird as they are are

actually not quite as alien as we first

thought all life on aelia ultimately

depends on the Stinger

fans but they're not the only bizarre

life forms that live here

ah

[Music]

[Music]

meets the

ghog it's aelia's larest

carnivore and this amphibious creature

has had a lucky Escape

nervously the mudt makes for its

[Music]

burrow the gulp hog returns to her

clan she is greeted by the dominant

[Music]

male his stagger like like horns are a

sign of his

Supremacy the biologists have brought us

a vision of Life on AIA at 5 billion

years old half a billion years older

than

Earth could extraterrestrial life really

be like

this the gulp poog stands 4.5 M high and

weighs as much as a buffalo

there's no doubt that extraterrestrials

will be unlike anything we've seen

before but how will they sense their

environment how will they move will they

even be carbon based like life on

earth based on our understanding of life

on earth scientists are now beginning to

explore these questions

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it makes a lot of sense for any moving

life form to have all the senses near

the front of the animal so that's eyes

the ears the U the smell sensors The

Taste sensors near the front because

that's what is going to meet the

environment

[Music]

first and then it also makes sense to

have the the brain and the Computing

section uh fairly near the sensors this

long neck allows it to hold most of the

body still and just move a part of the

body so that it can use both eyes to

lock onto the prey while keeping the

rest very still so it's going to be able

to surprise a lot of the things it

catches on the other hand the guts

always going to be fairly big and it's

worth having that in a nice stable place

somewhere near the legs and the legs for

an animal that's going to move fast need

to be long and relatively light so the

gulp hog follows the rules for basic

animal

design the gulp Hogs were designed by

the biologists as

Hunters they sense the ground for their

prey they show some very interesting

adaptations in

particular what it turns out is that the

front of the skull has these long teeth

likee structures but actually it pushes

those into the ground and those are

extraordinary sensitive to the vibration

of their prey the prey of course are mud

pods the mud pods are safe for the

moment they are too far away to be

detected but the gulp Hogs will travel

enormous distances to find

them they'll need all their senses about

them to

survive and one of the most important is

Vision what happens when you visit a

planet like Orel will anybody actually

be looking at you will they be using

their

eyes many animals evolve eyes but why

did all of them evolve eyes well perhaps

one of the key driving forces is to

protect oneself from predators but also

to find

prey eyes on earth have evolved at least

seven times and so if eyes do not evolve

on aelia frankly I will be astounded

incredibly extraterrestrial life could

share the same solutions to the same

problems that life confronts on

Earth it's called convergence and it's

changing the way biologists think about

how Evolution could occur on other

planets how many ways are there to move

how many ways are there to swim well

actually rather few walking across the

ground or swimming through an ocean

there are strong constraints on what you

can actually do

that's why organisms on this planet

repeatedly return to the same solution

if it's true on Earth should be true

everywhere Evolution will drive all life

on

AIA and wherever there is life there

will be creatures that can shape the

landscape and change it

forever wherever there is a biosphere

anywhere in the Galaxy there must be an

ecology on aelia what we have is a

keystone species the central species

they're called Mud

pods tirelessly bulldozing the Earth and

felling Stinger fans they are aurelia's

great

Architects their dams have slowed the

giant Rivers they've created a vast

network of lagoons which are now a rich

Haven for alien life

with six legs and a strong shovel head

the mud pods are well designed for

building

DS the mud pod pushes mud around uh to

prove its

environment and pushing requires a good

amount of traction if you have six legs

then you can push or pull while keeping

four legs on the ground at the same

time so a six-legged animal will be

better at pushing than a four-legged

animal would

[Music]

be their dams create new land for the

ever creeping Forest which in turn

provid provides a continual Harvest of

fans for the mud pods to feed

on the mud pod Cuts Stinger fangs with

this claw which is serrated and saw

likee but this nail this adapted nail um

is continually growing just as beavers

have continuously growing front teeth so

it can nor through a tree and keep on

growing through trees in years to come

[Music]

The Haunting groans of the dying fans

fill the

air but life in Aurelia faces a hidden

danger one that could destroy it

all aelia is bathed In Perpetual light

it might seem the perfect place for

life but red dwarf stars are

unstable the biggest problem with

Aurelia is that virtually all red dwarf

stars are flare

Stars flares occur very suddenly they

reach Peak brightness within the matter

of a few

minutes and they can cover the whole day

side of the planet the star releases a

massive burst of ultraviolet

radiation within minutes aelia will be

bombarded by deadly ultraviolet

rays out in the open the mud pods are

dangerously exposed

their thin skin is no defense against

the

flare any Critters that live on aelia

would have to have this emergency quick

response to any kind of flare

activity the gulp poog has an early

warning system a third eye on the top of

its head which senses the

radiation quickly they take shelter

behind a fallen fan

the mud pods are slower to

react but when they feel the flares

searing Rays they hurry back to their

Burrows one flashes its fin to warn the

others of the

danger but one mud pod has been injured

in a gulp poog attack

the flare

intensifies The Stingers Clos their fans

to protect

themselves the injured mud pod is just

seconds away from the safety of its

burrow

but the flare is now at full

force lethal Rays irradiate the mud

[Music]

pod it's cooked aive

minutes later the flare

[Music]

subsides life returns to the forest

ultraviolet flares are deadly to carbon

based

life they break apart the carbon atoms

that make up all living

cells but can we be sure that life on

other planets will be carbon

based carbon is the party animal of the

periodic table if you will cuz it's the

atom that most likes to hook up with

other atoms to make complex compounds

and after all perhaps the biggest

achievement of carbon is this DNA a

complex blueprint for life that

underpins all of the living things on

this planet and that is built out of

compounds that are made from carbon when

we say you know life on other planets is

probably going to be carbon based that

isn't just lack of imagination that's

apply

the physics and chemistry that we know

to the worlds that we don't

know and where there is life it will

invade every available Niche

diversify and

compete life everywhere will reproduce

mutate followed by natural selection

it'll undergo the process that we call

darwinian Evolution that process I think

is as universal as the laws of gravity

and

relativity there will be alien Predators

the hunters and the hunted predation has

driven much of evolution on Earth on AIA

things will be no

different a complex web of life has

emerged each life form dependent on

another

on land the gulp Hogs are the top

predator but the lagoons are the

territory of a deadly life form the

hysteria these tiny creatures may look

harmless as they swell through the water

scooping up microscopic

life but food has become scarce and now

the solar hysteria undergo a terrifying

[Applause]

transformation it's a dangerous time to

be near the

Lagoon millions of them come

together a ghostly form starts to take

shape

the hysteria Mass so tightly that they

become one

superorganism together they are now a

deadly killing

machine it can detect the slightest

scent of

prey moving as one it can push out onto

land and Chase down its

Quarry its first victim escan slug is

dissolved in

seconds but the superorganism needs

something much bigger to satisfy its

appetite

it detects a new

scent the swirling entity moves ever

[Music]

closer its next victim is within its

grasp

a crashing fan distracts the gulp

poog it races back to the

clan hysteria

Retreats it's time will come

[Music]

the cries of dying fans Echo across the

Lagoon it's the moment the gulp Hogs

have been waiting

for the sound of the falling fans can

mean only one

thing mudpots

and it's a large

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

Colony a guard flashes a warning with

its spin

[Music]

Panic

spreads the mud pods Run for the safety

of their

Burrows but the gulp Hogs will stop at

nothing

[Music]

[Music]

the mud pod's only defense is its Barbed

[Music]

tail it's no match for these ruthless

Hunters

on alien planets there will be predators

and prey Evolution and an everchanging

landscape but for life to survive in

aelia the planet itself must be

geologically active replenishing its

atmosphere and oceans continually

cycling water and carbon the essential

ingredients for all Life as We Know It

[Music]

[Music]

scientists believe planets the size of

Earth will remain active longest it is

why aelia is a prime target in our

search for extraterrestrial

life but its red dwarf star makes it an

even more promising

Prospect the star that can destroy life

can also nurture

it red dwarfs live not for a long time

but for an immense period of time they

live on and on and on far beyond our sun

so it's difficult to avoid the

conclusion that here is a crucible of

life where experiments can continue for

almost unimaginable periods of

time our own sun will live for 10

billion

years but aurelia's Sun could burn for

10 times

longer the scientists have given us a

vision of life here at just 5 billion

years

old with so much time for life to evolve

what could the future

hold already complex social systems have

emerged in its lifetime the gulp hog

only produces a small number of

[Music]

young together the gulp Hogs are

stronger they provide protection for

individuals and share in raising their

young

it's a very successful survival strategy

that could see them Advance right across

the light side of the

planet in these gulp Hogs I think

there's a colossal opportunity for the

evolution of

intelligence it's a remarkable

adaptation because it can lend itself to

problem solving in lots of different

areas so I'm quite convinced that life

on other planets would be highly

intelligent and I think one route by

which it might have involved might be

through parental

care so you could have baby gulp Hogs

being taught by their parents where to

find food and how to interact with the

rest of the

group and in succeeding Generations they

might become progressively more and more

intelligent and with 100 billion years

of evolution still to unfold in arelia

intelligence could reach extraordinary

Heights

and the creature that evolves the

greatest intelligence will ultimately

Prevail at the moment the gulp Hogs are

leading the

race but in the lagoon there's a killer

that's so successful it could wipe them

out

[Music]

the gulp Hogs are Relentless in their

pursuit of the mud

pods one has found a den full of them

the arrival of the dominant male means

trouble the younger Gul poog STS is

ground it's a direct challenge to his

authority their dagger likee horns can

cause fatal injury

in the lagoon hysteria makes its

[Music]

move the baby backs away from the

fighting it's dangerously close to the

water's edge

[Music]

[Music]

the hysteria Mass inches

closer the dueling males are locked in

combat

[Music]

barrowing into the gulp Hog's foot it

releases a paralyzing

[Music]

poison it dies in an

instant swarming inside the young male's

body it starts to digest its flesh From

the Inside

Out hysteria multiplies and undergos its

final transformation

it emerges as a giant growth full of

[Applause]

eggs another deadly generation of

Hysteria is released across the Stinger

Forest

life and death on an alien

[Music]

planet the great cycle of life will

continue here for billions of years

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

the scientists have modeled a new planet

that could support

life it could be one of the first

habitable worlds we

discover this groundbreaking work has

changed the search strategy for

extraterrestrial

life terrestrial planet finder which is

NASA's next big Mission would have

ordinarily been able to only point to a

few hundred stars like the sun in our

Solar neighborhood but with uh red dwarf

planets like Aurelia being habitable

then now we have thousands of

targets finding extraterrestrial life is

no longer a distant

dream we could find a world like

aelia in the next 10 years terrestrial

planet finder will be launched

it will be able to peer into the

atmospheres of distant planets and

detect signs of life there's a lot of

things coming together that makes this a

very exciting time to be interested in

life beyond the Earth and for the first

time that question is there life beyond

the Earth might move from a

philosophical question to a scientific

question

in the next program scientists will be

investigating an even more extreme

World a moon with an oppressive and

volatile

atmosphere here life will be pushed to

new limits and it will come in even

stranger forms

[Music]

oh