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It is the night before Halloween, 1938.

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Millions of people across the country are tuning in to CBS expecting to hear a weekly

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music program.

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A bulletin has handed me, margin cylinders are falling all over the country.

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It is a radio drama unlike anything that has ever been broadcast before.

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Today we know this is Orson Welles and the actors of his Mercury Theatre Company dramatizing

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War of the Worlds, a work of science fiction by H.G. Wells.

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But in 1938, the possibility that invaders from Mars are actually attacking the Earth

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is demonstration of our willingness to embrace the possibility of life on other planets.

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It is a desire that resonates deep in the human psyche.

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Because for as long as humankind has looked at the night sky we have wondered, is anyone

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out there?

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The Earthly landscape may have changed dramatically since the dawn of man, but one thing has never

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changed.

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We see the same sky, the same stars as our most ancient ancestors and from the very beginning

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we have tried to put a superhuman face on the cosmos.

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Everybody's curious about whether we're alone and I mean everybody stood out late at night

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looking at the stars and sort of wonder, well is there somebody up there looking back this

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way?

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In ancient Egypt it is Ra, the sun god.

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The ancient Greeks populate the sky with hundreds of gods and goddesses whom they describe in

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their literature as beings beyond Earth and they give the constellations names and human

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forms.

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It's Sagittarius the archer, Orion the hunter, Hercules the hero.

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Then there is that enormous white ball in the sky which seems to be exerting a powerful

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force on Earth.

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It affects the tides, crop planting and even our emotions.

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This too we anthropomorphize.

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It is the man in the moon and there are indications that as early as 2,000 years ago we are trying

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to communicate with them.

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High atop the Peruvian plains are enormous pictographs some more than two miles across

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that can only be seen from the air and yet the Nazca lines as they are called are created

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by an ancient people for whom the possibility of human flight does not exist even as an

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idea.

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Could this be Earth's first greeting card to extraterrestrials?

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Then in the 16th century the invention of the telescope changes everything and nothing.

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Fact is merging with myth and superstition but the infant science of astronomy only deepens

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the belief that we are not alone and leading the charge is Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus.

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Copernicus way back in the 16th century is the one who put the sun in the center instead

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of the earth so instead of having the geocentric worldview you have the heliocentric worldview.

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What that means in terms of the extraterrestrial life concept is that the earth now becomes

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just another planet and the planets potentially become earths and so the question is how much

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are those other planets like the earth?

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The question is answered first in literature and painting.

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These are the earliest works of what will one day be called science fiction and as the

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dreamers interpret the cosmos through their art scientists are searching the skies with

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bigger lenses and better calculations.

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By 1850 we have found five planets, observed sunspots and found a moon orbiting Mars.

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Then in 1877 Italian astronomer Giovanni Ciapparelli peers through his looking glass and observes

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something that will astonish and inspire the world.

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And he played there with these straight lines lacing the surface of Mars which he called

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canale which was translated into English as canal, it's not a perfect translation but

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in any case stimulated a lot of thought that there might not only be cosmic company but

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it might be very nearby just 35 million miles away on the red planet.

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But even the mere possibility is enough to spark the imaginations of scientists and dreamers

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around the world.

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In 1865 Frenchman Jules Verne publishes From the Earth to the Moon foreshadowing what will

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become a reality a century later.

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Verne's early space travelers are shot into space from a large cannon on the Florida

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coast and at the turn of the 20th century H.G. Wells writes his novel First Men in the

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Moon about early astronauts who meet up with a sophisticated race of insect like creatures.

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In 1902 French director Georges Milliez inaugurates the genre of science fiction movie making

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with a 16 minute film The Voyage de la Lume.

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His space creatures are approximately humanoid with chicken like heads and lobster like claws.

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And while writers and movie directors are imagining life on other planets an astronomer

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in the United States thinks he is close to proving it.

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His name is Percival Lowell.

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A lot of astronomers doubted his findings because he wasn't trained in astronomy at a university

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he was trained in mathematics.

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I think what he probably thought was you haven't seen what I've seen I have the evidence come

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and look through my telescope.

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Percival Lowell had been fascinated with astronomy since boyhood but it was never more than a

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hobby.

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By 1893 he is a wealthy entrepreneur in Boston Massachusetts.

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Then Lowell reads an article about Chaperrelli's so called Martian canals and his life changes

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forever.

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He puts his business interests on hold to devote himself full time to astronomy.

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He begins to study the red planet and then in 1895 Lowell publishes his earliest findings

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in Mars a book that becomes very popular.

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Certainly we see hints of the existence of beings who are in advance of us not behind

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us in the journey of life.

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Startling is the outcome of these observations may appear at first in truth there is nothing

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startling about it.

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In 1896 Lowell builds his own observatory in the highest darkest place he can drag a

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26 inch telescope flagstaff Arizona.

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While cowboys are riding the range in the wild west Percival Lowell is looking for life

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on Mars.

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When we continue what Percival Lowell finds on Mars will inspire others to try and make

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contact and in at least one case it seems they may have.

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In the late 19th century Mogul turned astronomer Percival Lowell is nationally known because

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of his startling revelations that he has observed artificial structures on the planet

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Mars.

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Not everybody can see these delicate features at first sight and to perceive their more minute

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details takes a trained as well as an acute eye.

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These are the Martian canals.

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Lowell speculates that the canals were built by Martians to carry water from the melting

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polar ice caps to the Martian equator.

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The theory of the canals being made by intelligent beings was not accepted by most of the scientific

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community and for many years he was in fact ridiculed.

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So Lowell spends thousands of hours in his observatory painstakingly drawing sketches

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of what he sees in his telescope.

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He transfers those sketches onto maps and then Martian globes.

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There are several things in the archives.

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So there are all of his working papers and all of his manuscripts.

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The maps, the globes, those kinds of things that we have.

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They're a true treasure as this observatory is a treasure and I think we have to treat

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it as that.

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And it is during the Lowell era that other scientists are inspired to take alien hunting

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in a whole new direction.

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If we can see them, the scientists' news, maybe they can see us.

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At the turn of the 19th century mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss proposes planting broad

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bands of wheat in the Siberian forest to form a vast right-angled triangle as an unmistakable

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sign of earthly intelligence that could be seen from space.

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Austrian astronomer Joseph von Mütrow suggests a scheme to dig a series of mile-long canals

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in the Sahara Desert and then set them on fire to signal to our Martian cousins.

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In France, scientist Charles Crowe urges his government to build a gigantic mirror to reflect

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sunlight towards Mars.

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But the biggest ideas are still coming out of America.

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The recent discovery of radio waves in 1887 was transforming all branches of science and

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the idea that something or someone out there could receive our messages or send one of

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their own meant we now had the possibility of communicating with other worlds.

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This was the dream of Nikola Tesla, a Serbian-born American physicist and engineer.

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Tesla was doing experiments out in Colorado Springs around 1899 and it was in the course

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of those experiments that he believed that he had actually detected a signal.

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He didn't publish anything on this until 1901 because he realized it would be very controversial.

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But he did publish a little article in 1901 called Talking with the Planets and he predicted

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in there that this would be one of the major themes of the 20th century.

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In 1901, Tesla writes,

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The disturbances I'd observed might be due to an intelligent control.

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The feeling is constantly growing on me that I had been the first to hear the greeting

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of one planet to another.

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Tesla's announcement is widely reported but in academic circles the idea of radio communication

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without her space is greeted with almost unanimous skepticism, even ridiculed.

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It would be another two decades before the idea of interplanetary communication is revived

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by another radio pioneer, Gurye Moum-Marconi.

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Marconi as early as 1919 believed that he had made a detection again by radio from Mars

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and this was played out in the pages of the New York Times during 1919 and the early 1920s.

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We have not the slightest proof of their origin.

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They are sounds.

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They may be signals.

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We do not know.

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Marconi himself eventually lost interest in that and it sort of remained a mystery what

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these dots and dashes were that were received by Marconi.

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Others carried forward with the idea that there might be something to it.

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One of those others is astronomer David Todd.

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His specialty had been solar eclipses but in the 1920s Todd also becomes fascinated

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with the possibility that Martians might be communicating with Earth via radio waves.

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Todd already in 1909 had the idea that you might take a balloon flight up above some

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of the atmosphere and use radio apparatus there to try to detect a signal from Mars.

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David Todd thought that by putting sensitive wireless telegraph receivers aloft and away

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from any obstructions in the atmosphere signals to and from Mars would come in a whole lot

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better.

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On August 29th and 30th 1924 Mars is at its closest point to Earth optimal conditions

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for communicating with the red planet Todd believes.

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He asks the U.S. military to shut down all radio transmissions in the Washington, D.C.

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area for a short amount of time.

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Amazingly they comply.

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The chief of naval operation sends a dispatch to the radio facilities under his command

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telling them to avoid any unnecessary communications and to listen for any unusual signals.

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After Todd switches on his radio gear several strange signals are in fact detected at several

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sites.

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But the most unusual phenomenon occurs because of an invention by another scientist who is

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with Todd.

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C. Francis Jenkins had invented an early version of television called the radio photo message

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continuous transmission machine.

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During Todd's experiment Jenkins records what is described as a curious picturization of

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radio phenomenon.

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What came out in the picture was something that looked like a face and Jenkins was more

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conservative than Todd.

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Todd Jenkins said that he really believed that this was not something related to Mars

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but Todd always pressing forward sort of in a lowellium kind of a way said that maybe

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it could be.

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We now have a permanent record which can be studied and who knows until we've studied

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it just what the signals may have been but the important thing is to have a record.

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The picturization is 30 feet long and 6 inches wide.

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Some see the profile of a man others the possibility that this is a Martian code that the aliens

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are hoping we earthlings can decipher.

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Half the film is turned over for analysis to William Friedman the U.S. Army's chief

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of cryptography who was world renowned for cracking a number of German codes during World

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War One.

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If there was a message in the signal Friedman died without deciphering it.

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The film was found in his private papers following his death.

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The man who had solved so many code riddles apparently never stopped puzzling over this

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one.

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When we continue some Americans start to believe that Martians aren't going to wait around

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for us to figure out their messages.

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It's time to invade.

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If we were on the verge of building rockets that could go into space maybe the aliens

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were able to build rockets that had come here.

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In the 1930s and 40s scientists were discovering strange new worlds all the time holding out

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the possibility that one of them might be inhabited.

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And it was Hollywood's job to show us what they would look like when they got here.

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American fiction had its own versions with aliens that seemed to take on the personality

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of the times.

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Then in 1947 a U.S. Forest Service pilot named Kenneth Arnold is flying over Washington

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state when he sees what he describes as flying discs.

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A few days later the U.S. Army appears to confirm the possibility of alien invaders with

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a press release.

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Dateline Roswell, New Mexico.

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It is the birth of the UFO era and soon thousands of sightings of UFOs are being reported to

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civilian and military authorities.

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Movies and television fan the flames of a burning enthusiasm for the idea that beings

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from another planet have visited Earth and continue to do so.

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The Cold War had set in and people were afraid of things in the sky because things in the

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sky could after all be Soviet bombers headed your way.

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If we were on the verge of building rockets that could go into space maybe the aliens were

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able to build rockets that had come here.

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So I think there was sort of a conflation of all these sorts of factors that operated

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in the public mind to cause them to interpret what they were seeing in the sky as something

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alien and probably unfriendly.

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Early on the U.S. military buys into the fervor.

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In 1947 the Air Force is officially and covertly investigating UFOs through its project Bluebook.

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Eventually the project will go public and then in 1969 be terminated when the Air Force

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concludes that there is no tangible evidence that UFOs pose a threat to national security.

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We've been able to explain them as a hope, as erroneously identified friendly aircraft,

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as meteorological or electronic phenomena.

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It does not contain any pattern of purpose or of consistency that we can relate to any

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conceivable threat to the United States.

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But among astronomers the possibility of communication with other worlds is alive and well, fueled

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not by UFO mania but by hard science.

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Pioneering astronomer Edwin Hubbell has proven that there are galaxies beyond the Milky Way

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and that the universe is constantly expanding, opening up infinite possibilities for intelligence

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on other planets.

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In 1948 Hubbell is installed at the world's largest telescope on Mount Palomar in California.

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Hubbell believes in his words, many of these planets must be suitable for supporting life.

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New questions are being asked about how we can determine scientifically the existence

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of intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy.

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One of those questions is being raised by what is called the Fermi Paradox.

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The Fermi Paradox was first raised in about 1950 by the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi

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and he simply asked the question, where are they?

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In other words, if there are so many intelligent civilizations out there in outer space, why

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do we not see them here on the earth?

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If you consider the time scales involved in the universe, you know you have a universe

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that is 12 to 15 billion years old that they would have populated the galaxy by now.

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We should have seen them by now.

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So perhaps some Maverick astronomers begin to wonder, it's not a big eye in the sky that

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we need but a big ear.

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It is called new astronomy, the belief that celestial objects radiate energy in many ways

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along the electromagnetic spectrum, not just optically.

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And new astronomers like Frank Drake step forward to study that theory.

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They are pioneers in what will become known as CETI, the U.S. government's search for

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extraterrestrial intelligence.

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I first became fascinated with discovering life in space when I was very young, perhaps

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eight years old, when my parents told me that there were other planets, which was to me

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a bombshell, and it excited me to think that there might be other worlds like the earth.

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And I wondered if there were, were there creatures living on them like us, what were their histories.

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Surely it would be a great adventure to discover those creatures.

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In 1960, with a Ph.D. from Harvard, Drake accepts a staff position at the National Radio Astronomy

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Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia.

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I am sure we're not alone.

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Of course, that's a very daring statement.

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People will say, well, how can you say that?

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Well, you can say it, because first there are 400 billion stars in our galaxy.

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A substantial fraction are like our sun.

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The circumstances that brought all that about were very normal circumstances.

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So what happened here must have happened to other places.

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And if even then you're doobies, well, there are another 100 billion galaxies.

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So there is no doubt there is life elsewhere in the universe,

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including intelligent life.

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Drake sets out to test that theory during his work at Green Bank.

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He and others begin using the 85-foot radio telescope to listen for signals at 1420 megahertz,

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what's called a marker frequency or a meeting place of the hydrogen atom.

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Drake gives his project an unusual name.

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It occurred to me that Osmo was a good name because the place we were trying to find

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was a land far away, very difficult to reach, and populated by strange and exotic beings.

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In the spring of 1960, the Osmo receivers are switched on.

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Amazingly, Drake's team gets immediate results.

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It was the first day of Osmo.

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When we, in fact, having observed for many hours our first target star, Tosetti,

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turned the telescope to Epsilon Erydini, the second target star.

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Immediately we heard something we'd never heard before in years and years of radio astronomy,

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which was a signal which sounded like...

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And as the type of signal that some people predicted we'd get from another world.

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My first thought was, is it this easy?

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All you do is go to the first star and turn it on. There it is.

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It was really amazing. We didn't quite know what to do.

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The telescope is moved away from the star and then refocused on it,

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but the signal can't be located again.

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A similar signal was found several weeks later, then ruled out as radio interference from another transmitter on Earth.

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But Osmo prompted serious attention and in 1961 the National Academy of Sciences

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hosts a conference at Green Bank to assess the possibility of communicating with other worlds.

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It is then that Frank Drake unveils an equation that will forever put alien hunting into the scientific mainstream.

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To this day, tells us what we need to know if we're to predict the number of civilizations in space.

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The equation is a way of determining N, the number of civilizations in our galaxy

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that have the potential for radio communication.

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It is a way of quantifying how likely we are to get a message from deep space

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and says Drake, the chances mathematically speaking are very good.

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The Drake equation is a bold formula that turns the staid world of astronomy on its head.

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It will greatly influence the work of a young astronomer Carl Sagan.

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But the public is completely unaware of it. They want their alien hunters in shiny silver suits.

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It's got speed, John Glenn.

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In 1961, John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth, seeing it from an extraterrestrial point of view.

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It is now the space age and for the first time in history, the public sees science catching up with science fiction.

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Five, four, three, two, one, zero, ignition.

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The lift off.

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The lift off.

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The space race is on and just like our ancient ancestors, the object of our desire is the moon.

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On July 21st, 1969, we make it.

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Go ahead, Mr. President. This is Houston out.

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Because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of man's world.

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But Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins aren't alone up there.

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The alien hunters have launched a number of unmanned probes into space.

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They are set to take pictures and gather data, but some of them also contain a special message intended for ET,

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a message not far removed from those Peruvian drawings created so long ago.

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It is now okay to talk about all the articles where, whereas a decade or two ago, it wasn't okay.

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It was considered too speculative to be worth the investment of time.

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We may never know if Sagan's message has found an intergalactic recipient.

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When we continue, in 1974, a cosmic greeting card of another kind comes out, and this one gets a response.

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Scientists can only say, wow.

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The year is 1974.

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Fringe UFO researchers announced that they have evidence that the Air Force is holding 12 alien bodies at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.

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It sets off a debate that will continue for many years to come.

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Science fiction images of alien life created in the 50s are reinforced in TV shows and movies,

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and the sale of sci-fi books keeps pace with classic literature.

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An unbeknownst to nearly everyone, a real scientist, Frank Drake, is sitting in his new observatory in Puerto Rico trying to make contact.

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In 1974, we sent a three-minute message from the Air Civil Observatory. It consists of 1,679 characters.

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It's a kind of cosmic music that will one day become part of pop culture, influencing the movie classic,

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close encounters of the third kind. But in 1974, it's cutting edge.

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And what it does when properly decoded is create a picture which starts with a number system,

320
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and it then shows the chemistry of the DNA molecule, the basic molecule of life on Earth.

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There's a crude sketch of a human being to show what we look like, or a primate, that's about all you can tell.

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And then below that, there's a sketch of a telescope focused and raised to a point with its size given,

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and it's the size of the telescope that sent the message, the Air Civil Telescope,

324
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which not only tells what telescope sent the message, but it gives a measure of how advanced our technology is,

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because it is our largest telescope.

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Three years after the message is sent into space, there is a response.

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At the Ohio State University Radio Observatory, Jerry Eamon is at the controls of a radio receiver called the Big Ear,

328
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one of the listening devices in the government's SETI network.

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I had the task to look at the computer printouts to see if there was anything interesting.

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Anything for or above was definitely unusual.

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Well, this was the equivalent of 30, and so it was so strong, five to six times stronger than I had seen any signal in the past,

332
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that I was astonished and immediately wrote the word, wow, exclamation point in the margin of the computer printout.

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Within a series of random numbers, the computer had kicked out a strange series of letters.

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What did 6EQUJ5 mean?

335
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It was probably interference of one sort or another, but it was the kind of interference that mimics a real signal.

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I mean, nobody knows what it was. You have to admit that, but seeing a signal once is not good enough.

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It would be like my neighbor seeing a ghost in his attic once, and every time we went back to his attic, it was never a ghost again.

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Well, unfortunately, that just doesn't prove the existence of ghosts.

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SETI keeps looking, and through the 1980s, scientists are on a roll.

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The search for extraterrestrial intelligence has gradually encouraged a worldwide web of scientific interest and support.

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SETI becomes a line item in the NASA budget, and its federal funding rises from just a few hundred thousand dollars in the early 1970s

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to over ten million dollars in the early 1990s.

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Then, on October 12, 1992, ironically the 500th anniversary of Columbus' discovery of the New World,

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Congress downsizes the SETI program, and within a year pulls the plug.

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After more than 15 years and 60 million dollars in research and development, SETI is dead.

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All these resources potentially wasted, because it was a great embarrassment to the American Congress, and in fact to our country.

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And indeed, in the rest of the world, people shake their heads every time they hear about it.

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How could the Americans, who are so sophisticated in science and technology, have done something so dumb?

349
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This was not a good thing for the government to do.

350
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I think that the American people were behind such a search, and still are behind such a search,

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and that the amount of money that was being spent on that was, for such a grave question, for such an important question,

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for a question that bears on our place in the universe, really was worthwhile.

353
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So SETI goes private, and goes begging.

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In 1993, it becomes the non-profit SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.

355
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Bill Hewlett and David Packard of Computer fame provide the seed money.

356
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Gordon Moore, a co-founder of Intel, and Paul Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft, each write million dollar checks.

357
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The Institute launches Project Phoenix, because SETI has indeed risen from the ashes.

358
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I think the knowledge that we share the universe with other intelligent creatures will change our view profoundly,

359
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but it may not happen overnight.

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We're definitely trying to pursue the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, the way that you would pursue any other scientific exploration,

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and to do it credibly.

362
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And where is science fiction?

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Carl Sagan uses Dr. Tartar as a model for the astronomer in his book, Contact, which later inspires a movie that stars Jody Foster.

364
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In the movie, astronomers receive and decode a signal from an extraterrestrial intelligence far beyond our galaxy.

365
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Real life may not be far behind at SETI's new listening post.

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Frank Drake's old stomping ground, the Arecibo radio telescope.

367
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The most fun part of my job is actually when I get to go to the observatory.

368
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Arecibo is a very special and unique observatory.

369
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The scale of the facility is something that's really hard to appreciate from videos or seen in the distance.

370
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You have to stand there, you have to be underneath a thing, or 500 feet up in the air on top of it to understand how big an amethyst is.

371
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And then when you're there, and this piece of listening equipment is there, nothing else matters.

372
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Computers at Arecibo continuously scan millions of radio frequencies looking for that peripatetic signal emanating from deep space.

373
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Tartar was at a computer terminal there one night in 1998 with SETI astronomer Seth Shostak when they think they may have found it.

374
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We got a signal that for a while looked quite interesting, both Joe Tartar and I.

375
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We weren't saying much, but we were paying very, very close attention to what was happening.

376
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When you pass the first layer of filtering, oh well, that's happened before.

377
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But by the time you pass the second layer of filtering, that hasn't happened very often.

378
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And you really do get intrigued.

379
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It certainly occurs to you that, well, what if this is the big one?

380
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You know, because you're not expecting the big one at that particular moment.

381
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You'll never be expecting the big one when it happens, of course.

382
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And that gives you a certain amount of pause.

383
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You know, how am I going to react to this?

384
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I mean, what if this is it? What am I going to do next?

385
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It's a little unsettling.

386
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I don't know if I have so much of the, my God, it's me feeling as a reconformation that it really could happen.

387
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Unfortunately, in each case, it's turned out to be something particularly complex about our own technology that's foolless.

388
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But no one's giving up yet.

389
00:33:04,320 --> 00:33:10,320
SETI has optimistically established a series of protocols if ET ever phones home.

390
00:33:10,320 --> 00:33:15,320
One is make really sure that the signal you've detected is extraterrestrial.

391
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That's point one.

392
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So it calls for confirmation, very careful confirmation.

393
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And point to us, you release it immediately to the whole world.

394
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In fact, the information about the existence of an extraterrestrial technology is really quite properly the property of all human kind, that we don't intend to keep it secret.

395
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And as the search for signals from space continues into the 21st century, contact of another kind proves there is life out there, and the Percival Lowell was right all along.

396
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Was Genesis a one time event here on Earth, or is there a second Genesis out there?

397
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For centuries, astronomers have aimed their telescopes into the heavens and wondered about what was on on those far away stars and planets.

398
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The universe is a big place.

399
00:34:13,320 --> 00:34:18,320
When you look at that small patch of sky and see all those galaxies, you see where we fit in the universe.

400
00:34:18,320 --> 00:34:21,320
But land based telescopes have their limitations.

401
00:34:21,320 --> 00:34:30,320
So ever since 1964 and the first Mariner missions, we have tried to get closer to them instead of waiting for them to come to us.

402
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First stop, Mars.

403
00:34:36,320 --> 00:34:45,320
1965, an Atlas rocket sends the Mariner 4 probe on a 325 million mile seven month journey to Mars.

404
00:34:46,320 --> 00:34:51,320
Mariner 4 sends back the first close up views of a planet other than our own.

405
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Early in its history, we see evidence that it had water, that it had a thicker atmosphere, that it was very much like the Earth.

406
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So maybe it had life as well.

407
00:35:02,320 --> 00:35:07,320
Mariner 4 has given just a few brief and intoxicating glimpses of Mars.

408
00:35:08,320 --> 00:35:15,320
The dual missions of Mariner 6 and 7 in 1969 train their cameras on the puzzling polar areas of the planet.

409
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Those white polar caps are not water ice. They're carbon dioxide ice.

410
00:35:19,320 --> 00:35:24,320
The dark features are not vegetation. They're dust moving around by the wind.

411
00:35:25,320 --> 00:35:32,320
In 1971, when Mariner 9 settles into a geosynchronous orbit around Mars,

412
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it becomes the first American spacecraft to orbit around a planet other than Earth.

413
00:35:37,320 --> 00:35:43,320
Within five years, we are strolling on the red planet, albeit by remote control.

414
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The question of life on Mars or life on any other planet, in our solar system or outside of the solar system,

415
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bears very much in what our place is in the universe.

416
00:35:52,320 --> 00:35:59,320
If we're the only ones, the only life in the universe, it's quite a different universe than if it's filled with life.

417
00:35:59,320 --> 00:36:07,320
By 1976, Viking 1 and 2 transmit to Earth a series of images of the vast Martian landscape.

418
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The two probes also test the soil for signs of Martian life.

419
00:36:12,320 --> 00:36:18,320
I was not one of those kids that read science fiction since day one, but the science of Viking has gotten me interested.

420
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Spacecraft lands on Mars, looks around for life, doesn't see anything, everybody's dead.

421
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There's nothing there, but all the elements needed for life are there.

422
00:36:27,320 --> 00:36:33,320
I thought, well, that's kind of odd. It's sort of lights are on, but nobody's home sort of message.

423
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But somehow this real proof of life beyond Earth is eclipsed by the public's desire to make science and science fiction merge once more.

424
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All eyes turn to this, a seemingly artificial structure on the surface of Mars that bears a striking resemblance to a human face.

425
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We want to believe and for a while we do, but it's just a pile of rocks photographed at Martian sunset.

426
00:37:05,320 --> 00:37:12,320
Meanwhile, back on Earth, another discovery would literally rock the scientific community.

427
00:37:15,320 --> 00:37:21,320
In 1984, government researchers in Antarctica discover a small meteorite.

428
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It looks like a potato and it comes from Mars.

429
00:37:25,320 --> 00:37:37,320
Tests on rock ALH84001 in 1995 reveal microscopic traces of organic material that might indicate the presence of a past life.

430
00:37:38,320 --> 00:37:42,320
In that rock, the team from Johnson Space Center thinks they found fossils.

431
00:37:42,320 --> 00:37:48,320
Now that discussion is still very much open. We don't know for sure if those are fossils, if they aren't.

432
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This is one of the reasons why we think life could be carried from Mars to Earth and probably vice versa.

433
00:37:55,320 --> 00:38:02,320
July 4th, 1997, NASA's Pathfinder Mobile Surveyor lands on Mars.

434
00:38:02,320 --> 00:38:10,320
As we get deeper and more profound in our understanding of Mars, we might be able to find evidence that there was once life there.

435
00:38:10,320 --> 00:38:13,320
There's two possibilities when we look at the possibility of life on Mars.

436
00:38:13,320 --> 00:38:20,320
One is that we'll go to Mars, we'll find fossils, we'll find life and it will turn out to be the same as us.

437
00:38:20,320 --> 00:38:25,320
A more interesting scenario would be if we go to Mars, we find fossils, we find evidence of life,

438
00:38:25,320 --> 00:38:30,320
we find Martian biochemistry in the dead Martians and their organic material.

439
00:38:30,320 --> 00:38:35,320
We compare it to us and we realize these are truly alien. These are a different type of life.

440
00:38:35,320 --> 00:38:37,320
This was the second genesis of life.

441
00:38:37,320 --> 00:38:41,320
In the back of my mind, I always think we are too conservative.

442
00:38:41,320 --> 00:38:54,320
My thought on that is that if you examine the biology of Earth, you'd realize one of life's prime characteristics is very opportunistic, very adaptive.

443
00:38:54,320 --> 00:39:01,320
And so we in our conservative ways say life will only exist on planets much like the Earth.

444
00:39:01,320 --> 00:39:08,320
And I'll bet you anything, we're going to find worlds where there's life, disobey, one or all of those things.

445
00:39:08,320 --> 00:39:14,320
At what point do you throw in the towel? You know, if you've done this for another 10 or 20 years, are you going to say,

446
00:39:14,320 --> 00:39:18,320
OK, we give up, they're not there? And of course the answer to that is no.

447
00:39:18,320 --> 00:39:21,320
Just because you haven't found them, doesn't mean they're not there.

448
00:39:23,320 --> 00:39:29,320
It has been more than 100 years since Percival Lowell theorized about life on Mars.

449
00:39:29,320 --> 00:39:34,320
And although it appears that the advanced civilization Lowell thought might exist was never there,

450
00:39:34,320 --> 00:39:40,320
he has left an unwavering legacy in popular culture and in science that lives on.

451
00:39:41,320 --> 00:39:46,320
Lowell was wrong in a detail, but he was right in the big question and he was right in the planet to go after.

452
00:39:46,320 --> 00:39:53,320
He was right in asking the question that searching for life is the interesting thing we should do when we go looking at the stars and going to space.

453
00:39:53,320 --> 00:39:58,320
And he was right in supposing that Mars was the first planet that's going to give us meaningful answers.

454
00:39:58,320 --> 00:40:05,320
I think if Lowell's spirit is alive today, it's going to be alive in people like me and scientists like us who are searching for life

455
00:40:05,320 --> 00:40:12,320
and who see Mars as being the most interesting planet other than the Earth in terms of the story of life.

456
00:40:13,320 --> 00:40:22,320
Just before his untimely death in 1916, Percival Lowell observed what he thought was a ninth planet far out in the solar system.

457
00:40:22,320 --> 00:40:30,320
He was right. In 1930, astronomers at the Lowell Observatory verified his sightings of the so-called Planet X

458
00:40:30,320 --> 00:40:39,320
and honored his memory by naming the newly found planet Pluto, PL, being taken from the initials of Percival Lowell.

459
00:40:40,320 --> 00:40:46,320
You can use his telescope, walk out the front door and within about ten yards is his mausoleum.

460
00:40:46,320 --> 00:40:51,320
And so he's in spirit at least still watching over the telescope and keeping an eye on us,

461
00:40:51,320 --> 00:40:56,320
making sure we look at things he wants to and takes care of his telescope.

462
00:41:16,320 --> 00:41:18,320
See you.