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'Emergency, which service?' | 0:00:06 | 0:00:08 | |
'Police. My husband's been attacked.' | 0:00:08 | 0:00:10 | |
'There's still deadlock tonight between the United States and Iran | 0:00:15 | 0:00:19 | |
'over the 60 American hostages held in their embassy in Tehran. | 0:00:19 | 0:00:22 | |
'But the Muslim students did...' | 0:00:22 | 0:00:24 | |
RADIO STATIC | 0:00:26 | 0:00:30 | |
For decades, some have suspected there might be others out there. | 0:00:38 | 0:00:44 | |
Beings capable of communicating with us, | 0:00:46 | 0:00:48 | |
even visiting our world. | 0:00:48 | 0:00:51 | |
HE SHOUTS | 0:01:40 | 0:01:44 | |
It might sound like science fiction, | 0:01:55 | 0:01:57 | |
but today, scientists from across the globe are scouring the universe | 0:01:57 | 0:02:02 | |
for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. | 0:02:02 | 0:02:05 | |
My students showed me this signal that was so bright | 0:02:09 | 0:02:12 | |
and apparently so far away | 0:02:12 | 0:02:14 | |
that it was unlike anything we've ever seen before. | 0:02:14 | 0:02:16 | |
Then we realised this is just impossible, | 0:02:21 | 0:02:23 | |
unless a civilisation is way more advanced than we are. | 0:02:23 | 0:02:26 | |
A Kardashev Type II civilisation | 0:02:29 | 0:02:30 | |
would need to build a massive network of solar collectors | 0:02:30 | 0:02:34 | |
that would orbit their star in space. | 0:02:34 | 0:02:35 | |
Something we call a Dyson sphere or a Dyson structure. | 0:02:37 | 0:02:40 | |
Some scientists believe advanced aliens really could exist. | 0:02:41 | 0:02:47 | |
About 10,000 detectable civilisations | 0:02:48 | 0:02:52 | |
at present in our galaxy, the Milky Way. | 0:02:52 | 0:02:55 | |
And yet, no solid evidence has ever been found. | 0:02:57 | 0:03:01 | |
But recent discoveries mean that could all be about to change. | 0:03:04 | 0:03:08 | |
The data for the star looked nothing like any other star | 0:03:10 | 0:03:13 | |
that we know of today. | 0:03:13 | 0:03:15 | |
And so at last we might be close to answering the question | 0:03:20 | 0:03:25 | |
of whether we are alone in the universe. | 0:03:25 | 0:03:27 | |
One day my father happened to tell me, there are other worlds in space. | 0:03:51 | 0:03:54 | |
And, to an eight-year-old kid, | 0:03:57 | 0:03:59 | |
I thought that meant worlds just like mine. | 0:03:59 | 0:04:02 | |
Just like the Earth, creatures just like myself and I wondered, | 0:04:04 | 0:04:08 | |
what are they like? Are they really like that, or are they different? | 0:04:08 | 0:04:11 | |
And I've wondered those same questions my whole life. | 0:04:13 | 0:04:16 | |
The universe is thought to contain 700 million trillion rocky planets | 0:04:21 | 0:04:27 | |
like our own. | 0:04:27 | 0:04:28 | |
Countless worlds other intelligent beings might call home. | 0:04:31 | 0:04:34 | |
And yet, in more than 50 years of searching, | 0:04:41 | 0:04:44 | |
we're yet to find them. | 0:04:44 | 0:04:46 | |
The deafening lack of any communication from extraterrestrials | 0:04:48 | 0:04:53 | |
has become known as "the great silence". | 0:04:53 | 0:04:56 | |
Oh, I believe very strongly that they're out there. | 0:05:00 | 0:05:04 | |
The numbers support that. | 0:05:04 | 0:05:05 | |
There's so many stars in the universe, | 0:05:05 | 0:05:08 | |
numbers that are so large they make no sense to us. | 0:05:08 | 0:05:12 | |
We can be very, very wrong and yet there will be | 0:05:12 | 0:05:15 | |
many, many detectable civilisations. | 0:05:15 | 0:05:17 | |
We met in Arecibo in Puerto Rico. | 0:05:39 | 0:05:41 | |
There's a large radio telescope there. | 0:05:41 | 0:05:44 | |
I used to work at the observatory as a staff scientist | 0:05:44 | 0:05:47 | |
and you were a grad student at Cornell, | 0:05:47 | 0:05:50 | |
and they used to send their students down from Cornell. | 0:05:50 | 0:05:52 | |
We met at the observatory in the control room. | 0:05:52 | 0:05:55 | |
Husband and wife Duncan Lorimer and Maura McLaughlin | 0:05:58 | 0:06:01 | |
share a passion for astronomy. | 0:06:01 | 0:06:03 | |
Boys, it's breakfast time! | 0:06:07 | 0:06:11 | |
I was never, you know, the type of kid, when I was really young, | 0:06:11 | 0:06:14 | |
that was super into astronomy. | 0:06:14 | 0:06:16 | |
I still don't know, like, a single constellation. | 0:06:16 | 0:06:19 | |
But when I was sort of 10, 11, 12, I started reading science fiction. | 0:06:19 | 0:06:24 | |
So when I went to college I decided to take astronomy classes. | 0:06:24 | 0:06:29 | |
I still wasn't sure what I wanted to do, | 0:06:29 | 0:06:31 | |
but then I did research with a professor at Penn State | 0:06:31 | 0:06:35 | |
that took me down to Arecibo and I observed pulsars. | 0:06:35 | 0:06:39 | |
I was just so excited, | 0:06:39 | 0:06:40 | |
and I just really enjoyed doing that and I thought, | 0:06:40 | 0:06:43 | |
"OK, I think this is what I want to do", | 0:06:43 | 0:06:45 | |
and I've just stuck with it ever since. | 0:06:45 | 0:06:48 | |
-Nice day! -Yeah. | 0:06:54 | 0:06:56 | |
What do you have today? | 0:06:56 | 0:06:58 | |
-Gym. -Gym. | 0:06:58 | 0:06:59 | |
I got into astronomy in a different way to Maura, I guess. | 0:07:02 | 0:07:07 | |
I've always been fascinated with the night sky. | 0:07:07 | 0:07:09 | |
When I was about 16, taking my A-levels, | 0:07:11 | 0:07:14 | |
my physics teacher saw that myself and a few other students | 0:07:14 | 0:07:17 | |
were interested in astronomy and said, | 0:07:17 | 0:07:19 | |
"Here's the key to the school telescope. Go and fix it up." | 0:07:19 | 0:07:22 | |
And it was this old telescope, this early 1900s telescope, | 0:07:23 | 0:07:26 | |
and it had lots of things, | 0:07:26 | 0:07:29 | |
lots of moving parts that were fascinating to us | 0:07:29 | 0:07:31 | |
and we got the telescope going | 0:07:31 | 0:07:33 | |
and we took a picture of a lunar eclipse, | 0:07:33 | 0:07:36 | |
and we started a little astronomy club at school | 0:07:36 | 0:07:39 | |
and I went to college after that and heard about neutron stars, | 0:07:39 | 0:07:43 | |
and once I found out about those, I knew that's what I wanted to study. | 0:07:43 | 0:07:47 | |
I would have had nothing to do with him | 0:07:47 | 0:07:49 | |
if I'd met him like 30 years ago. | 0:07:49 | 0:07:51 | |
-Yes. -That would have been it. | 0:07:51 | 0:07:53 | |
Oh! | 0:07:53 | 0:07:55 | |
We work here in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. | 0:08:07 | 0:08:10 | |
We're next-door neighbours, aren't we? | 0:08:12 | 0:08:15 | |
Yeah, our offices are right next door | 0:08:15 | 0:08:17 | |
and it's typically really useful. | 0:08:17 | 0:08:19 | |
We can just, you know, pop in and out, so it saves us a lot of time. | 0:08:19 | 0:08:23 | |
-See you. -All right, then. -Have a good day. -You, too. | 0:08:23 | 0:08:26 | |
Occasionally we have disputes. | 0:08:26 | 0:08:28 | |
I'm in control of the temperature in both offices, | 0:08:28 | 0:08:32 | |
and so I like it really warm, and Duncan likes it a lot colder. | 0:08:32 | 0:08:36 | |
So we have occasional arguments, but generally it's really useful | 0:08:36 | 0:08:40 | |
being right next to each other. | 0:08:40 | 0:08:41 | |
Sometimes you bang your feet on the wall | 0:08:41 | 0:08:43 | |
and I have to tell you to stop. | 0:08:43 | 0:08:45 | |
But generally it's really nice. | 0:08:45 | 0:08:47 | |
-It's good. -We like it. | 0:08:47 | 0:08:48 | |
In the summer of 2006, | 0:08:50 | 0:08:52 | |
Duncan and Maura began a project searching historical data | 0:08:52 | 0:08:56 | |
for the Park's radio telescope. | 0:08:56 | 0:08:58 | |
So we'd just arrived at West Virginia University. | 0:09:00 | 0:09:03 | |
We wanted to find some data that already existed to get working | 0:09:03 | 0:09:07 | |
on a project straightaway. | 0:09:07 | 0:09:08 | |
So we kind of like bandied around some ideas for good projects, | 0:09:08 | 0:09:12 | |
and one of the things we thought of was re-analysing the data | 0:09:12 | 0:09:16 | |
from an old survey taken, like, in the late 1990s, | 0:09:16 | 0:09:19 | |
of the small Magellanic cloud and this large Magellanic cloud, | 0:09:19 | 0:09:23 | |
to look for pulsars that had been missed before. | 0:09:23 | 0:09:26 | |
The project involved painstakingly searching hundreds of data plots, | 0:09:28 | 0:09:32 | |
work Duncan delegated to student. | 0:09:32 | 0:09:35 | |
Every week my student would come to me with the results of his analysis | 0:09:37 | 0:09:41 | |
from the previous week, | 0:09:41 | 0:09:43 | |
and sometimes those would be known pulsars, | 0:09:43 | 0:09:46 | |
sometimes we would see sources of interference or just noise. | 0:09:46 | 0:09:49 | |
But one week, I remember it very clearly, | 0:09:49 | 0:09:52 | |
he came to me and showed me this plot with a signal | 0:09:52 | 0:09:56 | |
that was so bright and apparently so far away | 0:09:56 | 0:09:59 | |
that it was completely unlike anything we'd ever seen before. | 0:09:59 | 0:10:03 | |
So this is the plot that my student David brought to me, | 0:10:03 | 0:10:07 | |
and you can see straightaway this is the pulse that he found. | 0:10:07 | 0:10:11 | |
This big dark feature here. | 0:10:11 | 0:10:13 | |
This is a graph of telescope time along the horizontal axis, | 0:10:13 | 0:10:17 | |
so this is almost two hours of observation here. | 0:10:17 | 0:10:20 | |
And on the vertical axis is basically distance. | 0:10:20 | 0:10:22 | |
You can see the background of noise from the telescope and the sky, | 0:10:22 | 0:10:26 | |
these little dots here. | 0:10:26 | 0:10:28 | |
So this feature really stands out | 0:10:28 | 0:10:30 | |
because it's so bright and so far up the plot here, | 0:10:30 | 0:10:35 | |
which indicates that it's a bright source that's very, very far away. | 0:10:35 | 0:10:39 | |
Quite frankly, it was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. | 0:10:39 | 0:10:42 | |
Yet, it had all the hallmarks of a signal | 0:10:42 | 0:10:44 | |
that was coming from deep space. | 0:10:44 | 0:10:46 | |
The signal, or "fast radio burst" Duncan had discovered | 0:10:50 | 0:10:55 | |
became affectionately known as the "Lorimer Burst". | 0:10:55 | 0:10:58 | |
When people started calling it the Lorimer Burst, | 0:11:01 | 0:11:04 | |
at first I just chuckled. | 0:11:04 | 0:11:06 | |
Because it seemed just so funny | 0:11:06 | 0:11:09 | |
to have something actually named after Dunc, | 0:11:09 | 0:11:11 | |
and it was even funnier when people didn't realise I was married to him, | 0:11:11 | 0:11:15 | |
we have different last names, so I got lots of questions, | 0:11:15 | 0:11:18 | |
like, "What do you think about the Lorimer Burst, is it real or not?" | 0:11:18 | 0:11:21 | |
So I kind of got a good chuckle out of it for a little bit, | 0:11:21 | 0:11:24 | |
but then that kind of stuck and so we started using the name | 0:11:24 | 0:11:27 | |
in proposals and things, which was kind of fun. | 0:11:27 | 0:11:31 | |
To have something named after me like this was really a great honour. | 0:11:31 | 0:11:35 | |
Yeah, not something I was expecting, but yeah, really nice. | 0:11:35 | 0:11:39 | |
But the Lorimer Burst was so distant and yet so bright | 0:11:43 | 0:11:47 | |
it didn't appear to have been produced | 0:11:47 | 0:11:49 | |
by any naturally occurring phenomenon. | 0:11:49 | 0:11:52 | |
I did think that it could be a signal from an extraterrestrial | 0:11:54 | 0:11:58 | |
civilisation - we create signals like that on Earth, | 0:11:58 | 0:12:02 | |
so it's not crazy to think that radio bursts | 0:12:02 | 0:12:05 | |
could be created on another planet. | 0:12:05 | 0:12:07 | |
Once we actually thought about it, and looked at the energetics, | 0:12:07 | 0:12:10 | |
you'd need to harness almost a whole solar system's worth of energy | 0:12:10 | 0:12:13 | |
to create something this bright. | 0:12:13 | 0:12:15 | |
Then we realised this is just impossible | 0:12:15 | 0:12:17 | |
unless the civilisation is way more advanced than we are. | 0:12:17 | 0:12:20 | |
We couldn't think of how to make something this energetic. | 0:12:20 | 0:12:23 | |
Scientists have been searching the cosmos for strange signals | 0:12:33 | 0:12:36 | |
like the Lorimer Burst for more than 50 years. | 0:12:36 | 0:12:39 | |
Ever since a secretive meeting took place | 0:12:40 | 0:12:43 | |
in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. | 0:12:43 | 0:12:45 | |
There have been, over the years, | 0:12:48 | 0:12:51 | |
a lot of claims, of sightings of extraterrestrials, | 0:12:51 | 0:12:55 | |
colonies on the moon. | 0:12:55 | 0:12:57 | |
The subject had gotten to be treated with contempt, really. | 0:12:59 | 0:13:02 | |
It was considered almost taboo. | 0:13:03 | 0:13:06 | |
But, in 1961, | 0:13:09 | 0:13:11 | |
Frank Drake held a conference behind closed doors in this room | 0:13:11 | 0:13:15 | |
at the Green Bank Observatory. | 0:13:15 | 0:13:17 | |
The National Academy of Sciences of the United States, | 0:13:21 | 0:13:23 | |
a very eminent body, | 0:13:23 | 0:13:25 | |
asked me to convene a meeting of all the people I knew in the world | 0:13:25 | 0:13:30 | |
who were actually serious thinkers on the subject | 0:13:30 | 0:13:33 | |
and I invited them all. | 0:13:33 | 0:13:34 | |
All 12 of them. | 0:13:34 | 0:13:36 | |
The group called themselves the Order of the Dolphin. | 0:13:38 | 0:13:42 | |
I could talk about all of them at length but let me just mention a few | 0:13:44 | 0:13:48 | |
just to give you a feel for who they were. | 0:13:48 | 0:13:50 | |
There was Otto Stuber, | 0:13:50 | 0:13:52 | |
director of the observatory here at Green Bank, | 0:13:52 | 0:13:55 | |
and considered perhaps the most important astronomer | 0:13:55 | 0:13:58 | |
of the 20th century. | 0:13:58 | 0:13:59 | |
Besides being a great astronomer | 0:13:59 | 0:14:01 | |
he was a very strong proponent of the idea that intelligent life, | 0:14:01 | 0:14:05 | |
and life in general, was very common in the universe. | 0:14:05 | 0:14:09 | |
And there was Carl Sagan, a familiar name, | 0:14:09 | 0:14:13 | |
who was a great proponent of extraterrestrial intelligent life. | 0:14:13 | 0:14:16 | |
He had popularised it, gotten support for it, | 0:14:16 | 0:14:20 | |
both with the general public and the scientific world. | 0:14:20 | 0:14:23 | |
Then there was John Lilly, not an astronomer, | 0:14:23 | 0:14:28 | |
a neurologist who had studied the human brain, | 0:14:28 | 0:14:31 | |
and then the brains of dolphins, | 0:14:31 | 0:14:33 | |
and was convinced that dolphins were close in intelligence to us, | 0:14:33 | 0:14:38 | |
and, in studying the brain, he was trying to make the case | 0:14:38 | 0:14:42 | |
that intelligence is inevitable in the course of evolution, | 0:14:42 | 0:14:47 | |
and therefore it should be very common in the universe. | 0:14:47 | 0:14:50 | |
Then there was Melvin Calvin, | 0:14:50 | 0:14:52 | |
a chemist who had successfully understood how chlorophyll works | 0:14:52 | 0:14:57 | |
to produce food and plants and makes life on earth thrive. | 0:14:57 | 0:15:01 | |
And in fact had been awarded the Nobel Prize for it. | 0:15:01 | 0:15:05 | |
In fact, that prize was given to him right in the middle of this meeting, | 0:15:05 | 0:15:08 | |
which was pretty disruptive, I have to tell you. | 0:15:08 | 0:15:11 | |
The purpose of the meeting was to estimate how many extraterrestrial | 0:15:14 | 0:15:18 | |
civilisations might be out there | 0:15:18 | 0:15:21 | |
using what's become known as the Drake Equation. | 0:15:21 | 0:15:24 | |
So, we start out with the rate of star formation, | 0:15:27 | 0:15:31 | |
which you write R star, | 0:15:31 | 0:15:33 | |
and of course the more stars more planets there will be, | 0:15:33 | 0:15:36 | |
the more possibilities for life. | 0:15:36 | 0:15:38 | |
We multiply that by the fraction of stars which actually have planets | 0:15:38 | 0:15:43 | |
and then again by the number of habitable planets in each system. | 0:15:43 | 0:15:49 | |
We then multiply this by the fraction on which life develops. | 0:15:49 | 0:15:53 | |
And then by the fraction by which intelligence appears. | 0:15:54 | 0:15:58 | |
And then by the fraction of those | 0:15:58 | 0:16:01 | |
which actually give a detectable technology, | 0:16:01 | 0:16:05 | |
one we might detect across the great distances between the stars. | 0:16:05 | 0:16:10 | |
What we have now in these six factors is the rate of production | 0:16:10 | 0:16:15 | |
of detectable civilisations. | 0:16:15 | 0:16:17 | |
Well, how many are there? | 0:16:17 | 0:16:19 | |
This rate times the average time | 0:16:20 | 0:16:23 | |
that these civilisations remain detectable. | 0:16:23 | 0:16:26 | |
'United States maintains its determination...' | 0:16:26 | 0:16:30 | |
For two days, the group worked out best guess values | 0:16:30 | 0:16:33 | |
for each term in Frank's equation. | 0:16:33 | 0:16:35 | |
The answer we came to for the value of N | 0:16:39 | 0:16:42 | |
was N equals about 10,000 detectable civilisations at present | 0:16:42 | 0:16:50 | |
in our galaxy, the Milky Way. | 0:16:50 | 0:16:54 | |
It became clear to us that it was very likely | 0:16:58 | 0:17:01 | |
that there were radio signals from other worlds | 0:17:01 | 0:17:04 | |
passing through the room in which we were sitting | 0:17:04 | 0:17:06 | |
and which we could detect if we but pointed our telescopes | 0:17:06 | 0:17:10 | |
in the right direction and tuned to the right frequency. | 0:17:10 | 0:17:13 | |
At the time of the meeting, | 0:17:16 | 0:17:18 | |
Frank thought he knew exactly what channel to listen into. | 0:17:18 | 0:17:21 | |
What we needed was a special place in the universe | 0:17:23 | 0:17:26 | |
where civilisations might contact, and we realised it wasn't a place, | 0:17:26 | 0:17:31 | |
but it was a radio channel. | 0:17:31 | 0:17:33 | |
The most common element in the universe is hydrogen. | 0:17:35 | 0:17:39 | |
It happens to transmit a very beautiful signal | 0:17:39 | 0:17:43 | |
at a certain frequency when it's in its lowest energy state. | 0:17:43 | 0:17:47 | |
And we decided that might be the place you meet your friends | 0:17:48 | 0:17:52 | |
when you can't arrange in advance where to meet. | 0:17:52 | 0:17:55 | |
So we decided to search the hydrogen wavelength. | 0:17:55 | 0:17:59 | |
My father served in the Army, and when I was in high school he really | 0:18:15 | 0:18:19 | |
encouraged me to join the Service, so that's what I did. | 0:18:19 | 0:18:22 | |
I joined the military as an intelligence officer | 0:18:22 | 0:18:24 | |
and after seven years I transferred to the Department of Defence. | 0:18:24 | 0:18:27 | |
I was in the cold case unit for four years | 0:18:30 | 0:18:33 | |
and during that time I would look through cases that were | 0:18:33 | 0:18:36 | |
20, 30 or 40 years old, and the intent for that | 0:18:36 | 0:18:39 | |
was to capture spies that slipped through our fingers. | 0:18:39 | 0:18:42 | |
The Department of Defence was just a chapter in my life, | 0:18:44 | 0:18:47 | |
but as a kid I always wanted be an astronomer, | 0:18:47 | 0:18:50 | |
so I went to school, received my degrees and I became a scientist. | 0:18:50 | 0:18:53 | |
Since leaving the agency, | 0:18:58 | 0:19:00 | |
Antonio has become obsessed with the most famous cold case | 0:19:00 | 0:19:04 | |
in the search for extraterrestrials. | 0:19:04 | 0:19:06 | |
On August 15, 1977, | 0:19:13 | 0:19:15 | |
astronomers at the Big Ear radio telescope in Ohio | 0:19:15 | 0:19:18 | |
were listening to the night sky and, at about 23:00 hours local time, | 0:19:18 | 0:19:23 | |
they detected a radio signal from space. | 0:19:23 | 0:19:26 | |
The single was strong, about 72 seconds, | 0:19:26 | 0:19:28 | |
but more importantly, it was detected in something known as | 0:19:28 | 0:19:32 | |
the hydrogen line. | 0:19:32 | 0:19:33 | |
That was significant because at the time, | 0:19:33 | 0:19:36 | |
astronomers thought that if extraterrestrials did exist | 0:19:36 | 0:19:39 | |
they would use that frequency. | 0:19:39 | 0:19:41 | |
The astronomer Jerry Ehman and was so excited | 0:19:43 | 0:19:46 | |
that he actually wrote the term "Wow!" on the printout. | 0:19:46 | 0:19:49 | |
But what exactly caused the Wow! signal? | 0:19:52 | 0:19:54 | |
It's a mystery that has endured for decades. | 0:19:55 | 0:19:58 | |
I approached the Wow! signal just like any cold case at the Pentagon. | 0:20:01 | 0:20:04 | |
I had multiple facts. | 0:20:04 | 0:20:06 | |
I had a crime scene, and in this case | 0:20:06 | 0:20:09 | |
we know that the crime scene is the constellation Sagittarius. | 0:20:09 | 0:20:12 | |
I have a time of the crime, which was at 23:17 local, | 0:20:12 | 0:20:17 | |
and the date of the event which was on August 15, 1977. | 0:20:17 | 0:20:21 | |
More importantly, we have a fingerprint of the suspect, | 0:20:21 | 0:20:24 | |
and that's hydrogen. | 0:20:24 | 0:20:26 | |
So I went back to the NASA databases | 0:20:26 | 0:20:28 | |
and I plugged in the date and time of the event, | 0:20:28 | 0:20:31 | |
and what I learned was there were two comets in the very same area | 0:20:31 | 0:20:35 | |
at the same time that the Wow! signal was detected. | 0:20:35 | 0:20:39 | |
Comets are giant rocks of ice, dust and carbon. | 0:20:39 | 0:20:42 | |
And, as they get closer to the sun, they begin to melt | 0:20:42 | 0:20:46 | |
and as they melt they give off a massive envelope of hydrogen, | 0:20:46 | 0:20:49 | |
that can be millions of kilometres across. | 0:20:49 | 0:20:52 | |
So when we put two and two together, | 0:20:52 | 0:20:54 | |
what we have here is a suspect that matches the fingerprint | 0:20:54 | 0:20:58 | |
of the Wow! signal. | 0:20:58 | 0:21:00 | |
But not everyone is convinced by Antonio's detective work. | 0:21:02 | 0:21:05 | |
Few believe that comets produce enough hydrogen | 0:21:06 | 0:21:10 | |
to emit such a strong signal. | 0:21:10 | 0:21:12 | |
If my theory proves wrong, then I won't be upset. | 0:21:15 | 0:21:18 | |
There are no emotions in science. | 0:21:18 | 0:21:20 | |
What I'll do is what any other scientist would do, | 0:21:20 | 0:21:23 | |
and that's move onto the next suspect. | 0:21:23 | 0:21:25 | |
As Antonio continues his hunt, | 0:21:31 | 0:21:33 | |
many believe the answer lies far closer to home. | 0:21:33 | 0:21:36 | |
Rather than coming from deep space, | 0:21:38 | 0:21:40 | |
the most likely source of the Wow! signal is thought to be interference | 0:21:40 | 0:21:45 | |
from passing satellites, or aircraft here on Earth. | 0:21:45 | 0:21:48 | |
Four years following its discovery, | 0:22:09 | 0:22:11 | |
people were beginning to have doubts about the Lorimer Burst, too. | 0:22:11 | 0:22:15 | |
Let's get to the bus stop. | 0:22:16 | 0:22:18 | |
Because only one had ever been detected. | 0:22:18 | 0:22:21 | |
So, did you bring your book? | 0:22:21 | 0:22:23 | |
-Yes. -What was your favourite part of that? | 0:22:24 | 0:22:27 | |
When he chewed gum. | 0:22:27 | 0:22:28 | |
I knew you were going to say that. | 0:22:29 | 0:22:31 | |
So, around 2010, | 0:22:34 | 0:22:35 | |
people were actively looking for these bursts in other datasets | 0:22:35 | 0:22:38 | |
and then one day I got a call that the first few were found. | 0:22:38 | 0:22:43 | |
This might sound exciting, but it really wasn't because these bursts | 0:22:43 | 0:22:47 | |
were a lot like the Lorimer Burst, the original burst. | 0:22:47 | 0:22:50 | |
But they had a couple of different characteristics | 0:22:50 | 0:22:54 | |
which indicated that they definitely were not extragalactic, | 0:22:54 | 0:22:57 | |
and that they were from some source, | 0:22:57 | 0:22:59 | |
either on the Earth, or maybe just right in our local atmosphere. | 0:22:59 | 0:23:04 | |
When I got that call, my heart really did sink and I thought, | 0:23:06 | 0:23:10 | |
"Oh, the original burst is probably a similar thing." | 0:23:10 | 0:23:13 | |
Just a locally generated signal. | 0:23:15 | 0:23:17 | |
So it was very, very depressing. | 0:23:17 | 0:23:20 | |
There was also something deeply suspicious about the new bursts. | 0:23:23 | 0:23:27 | |
They were far more common in winter | 0:23:29 | 0:23:31 | |
and always appeared around lunch time. | 0:23:31 | 0:23:34 | |
It was eventually discovered they weren't coming from space at all. | 0:23:35 | 0:23:39 | |
They were being generated by the observatory's microwave. | 0:23:40 | 0:23:44 | |
So I think it was a hard time for him | 0:23:47 | 0:23:49 | |
because he felt like his original paper was discredited. | 0:23:49 | 0:23:54 | |
It made it harder that everyone had been calling it the Lorimer Burst | 0:23:54 | 0:23:57 | |
because then it felt very personal. | 0:23:57 | 0:23:59 | |
When I first saw the data and I compared their properties | 0:23:59 | 0:24:03 | |
with the Lorimer Burst properties, | 0:24:03 | 0:24:05 | |
they looked really similar and I thought it too much of a coincidence | 0:24:05 | 0:24:09 | |
for them not to be coming from the same source. | 0:24:09 | 0:24:12 | |
My initial conclusion was that the Lorimer Burst probably wasn't real. | 0:24:12 | 0:24:16 | |
But Duncan wasn't prepared to give up on his discovery so easily. | 0:24:24 | 0:24:27 | |
So what we're looking at here is the original burst from 2007, | 0:24:30 | 0:24:34 | |
and then one of the detections that was coming out in 2010, | 0:24:34 | 0:24:38 | |
so you can see that they have quite a lot of similarities. | 0:24:38 | 0:24:41 | |
Both pulses are about the same width. | 0:24:41 | 0:24:43 | |
But if you look at them in terms of their frequency versus time, | 0:24:43 | 0:24:47 | |
you'll see that they have an overall slope. | 0:24:47 | 0:24:50 | |
They both have the same slope, | 0:24:50 | 0:24:52 | |
but the structure within the pulse is quite different. | 0:24:52 | 0:24:56 | |
One of the new signals has this very blotchy appearance, | 0:24:56 | 0:24:59 | |
whereas our original signal had a smoother, continuous appearance. | 0:24:59 | 0:25:04 | |
And that was the thing that was really giving me hope | 0:25:04 | 0:25:07 | |
that this was still real. | 0:25:07 | 0:25:08 | |
But for the scientific community, | 0:25:12 | 0:25:14 | |
the most likely explanation for the Lorimer Burst | 0:25:14 | 0:25:17 | |
was still interference. | 0:25:17 | 0:25:19 | |
For now, at least, the great silence persists. | 0:25:23 | 0:25:26 | |
In 1989, | 0:25:55 | 0:25:56 | |
the International Academy of Astronautics | 0:25:56 | 0:25:59 | |
approved a post-detection protocol. | 0:25:59 | 0:26:02 | |
A code of practice to be put into play by governments | 0:26:09 | 0:26:12 | |
should we detect an alien transmission. | 0:26:12 | 0:26:14 | |
The document detailed how to control the dissemination of information | 0:26:26 | 0:26:31 | |
and coordinate a unilateral response. | 0:26:31 | 0:26:33 | |
One reason scientists believe such a protocol was required... | 0:26:41 | 0:26:45 | |
..is because in the mid-'70s, | 0:26:47 | 0:26:49 | |
we tried to make contact with aliens ourselves. | 0:26:49 | 0:26:53 | |
There were two purposes to the Arecibo message. | 0:27:06 | 0:27:10 | |
One was to demonstrate that it was possible to send a message | 0:27:10 | 0:27:14 | |
across the interstellar space | 0:27:14 | 0:27:16 | |
that would be detectable and decodable, understandable. | 0:27:16 | 0:27:21 | |
The other was simply to show that we had in fact reached the stage | 0:27:22 | 0:27:26 | |
where we ourselves could do this sort of thing. | 0:27:26 | 0:27:28 | |
There were like probably 200 people, they're sitting in chairs | 0:27:31 | 0:27:35 | |
on the edge of the big giant dish, | 0:27:35 | 0:27:38 | |
and we tell them we're about ready to send, | 0:27:38 | 0:27:41 | |
and they steer the telescope, that whole great big thing starts moving. | 0:27:41 | 0:27:46 | |
Which is in itself very impressive. | 0:27:47 | 0:27:50 | |
This giant thing is moving, | 0:27:51 | 0:27:53 | |
and you just have the sense that something spectacular is going on. | 0:27:53 | 0:27:58 | |
I will play the tape for you. | 0:28:01 | 0:28:03 | |
This is a recording made in the control room | 0:28:06 | 0:28:09 | |
of the Arecibo radio telescope at the time, in November 1974, | 0:28:09 | 0:28:14 | |
when we sent a message to the stars. | 0:28:14 | 0:28:17 | |
LONG, LOW TONE | 0:28:17 | 0:28:21 | |
That steady tone is the sound of the transmitter being turned on, | 0:28:21 | 0:28:25 | |
it's simply sending out a signal without any information on it. | 0:28:25 | 0:28:29 | |
To call attention to itself, | 0:28:30 | 0:28:32 | |
so that people who capture this will know that something is coming | 0:28:32 | 0:28:36 | |
and here it comes. | 0:28:36 | 0:28:37 | |
That sort of warbling sound you hear is actually a sequence | 0:28:37 | 0:28:42 | |
of 10 characters per second, being sent out with those characters | 0:28:42 | 0:28:47 | |
being on two slightly different radio frequencies. | 0:28:47 | 0:28:50 | |
When you listen to the sound, you had the impression | 0:28:56 | 0:28:59 | |
that there was a story being told here. | 0:28:59 | 0:29:02 | |
And when it finally ends, everybody was crying... | 0:29:09 | 0:29:13 | |
..on the actual occasion. | 0:29:15 | 0:29:17 | |
It was just the, um... | 0:29:26 | 0:29:29 | |
sense that this great big machine was talking to another world. | 0:29:29 | 0:29:35 | |
The message goes to 300,000 stars, so there's a good chance, actually. | 0:29:37 | 0:29:40 | |
The recipient of the Arecibo message is a galaxy 25,000 light years away. | 0:29:47 | 0:29:54 | |
But the 50,000 years it would take for a message to get there, | 0:29:56 | 0:29:59 | |
and for any reply to journey back to Earth, | 0:29:59 | 0:30:03 | |
is far beyond the lifespan of any single human. | 0:30:03 | 0:30:06 | |
Perhaps even the lifespan of civilisation itself. | 0:30:09 | 0:30:12 | |
Human civilisation is thousands of years old, | 0:30:47 | 0:30:50 | |
but we've only been sending strong signals into space | 0:30:50 | 0:30:54 | |
for really about 60 years. | 0:30:54 | 0:30:56 | |
The truth is, we don't know how long we'll continue to send the signals | 0:30:58 | 0:31:02 | |
out into space | 0:31:02 | 0:31:03 | |
because we don't know longa technological civilisation like ours | 0:31:03 | 0:31:07 | |
typically lasts. | 0:31:07 | 0:31:08 | |
When we look into space, searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, | 0:31:15 | 0:31:19 | |
in a way we're looking for a glimpse of our own future | 0:31:19 | 0:31:22 | |
and potentially a glimpse of how our civilisation might come to an end. | 0:31:22 | 0:31:26 | |
And one of the biggest dangers we face | 0:31:29 | 0:31:31 | |
is the threat we pose to ourselves. | 0:31:31 | 0:31:34 | |
In the Cold War, we were worried about nuclear annihilation. | 0:31:35 | 0:31:39 | |
Nowadays we worry more about climate change, | 0:31:39 | 0:31:41 | |
and in the future we might worry about things such as nanotechnology | 0:31:41 | 0:31:45 | |
or artificial intelligence. | 0:31:45 | 0:31:47 | |
These are all serious risks that we have to be very careful about. | 0:31:47 | 0:31:50 | |
As we become more advanced, | 0:31:51 | 0:31:53 | |
the threat we pose to ourselves increases | 0:31:53 | 0:31:56 | |
because we have improved ability to harness large amounts of energy | 0:31:56 | 0:32:00 | |
and manipulate the environment to a greater degree. | 0:32:00 | 0:32:02 | |
When those processes go wrong, | 0:32:06 | 0:32:08 | |
the damage we can inflict on ourselves and on the planet | 0:32:08 | 0:32:11 | |
becomes substantial. | 0:32:11 | 0:32:13 | |
Faced with these dangers, | 0:32:18 | 0:32:20 | |
advanced civilisations could be relatively short-lived. | 0:32:20 | 0:32:23 | |
It might be that in the 13.5 billion year history of the universe, | 0:32:27 | 0:32:31 | |
many have risen, | 0:32:31 | 0:32:34 | |
but today, nothing but ruins remain. | 0:32:34 | 0:32:38 | |
So if we don't find anything, that could be quite a disturbing thought | 0:32:41 | 0:32:45 | |
because it could mean that the reason we don't see anything | 0:32:45 | 0:32:48 | |
is that civilisations don't last very long, | 0:32:48 | 0:32:50 | |
and that the signals they produce suddenly disappear. | 0:32:50 | 0:32:53 | |
MUSIC: It's Not Unusual by Tom Jones | 0:32:53 | 0:32:57 | |
# It's not unusual to be loved by anyone... # | 0:33:04 | 0:33:08 | |
But if they haven't destroyed themselves, | 0:33:08 | 0:33:11 | |
a technologically advanced civilisation | 0:33:11 | 0:33:14 | |
might provide us with another way of detecting them. | 0:33:14 | 0:33:17 | |
Because all technology needs energy. | 0:33:17 | 0:33:21 | |
In 1994, Las Vegas consumed 1300 megawatts of power. | 0:33:25 | 0:33:30 | |
Today that figure has nearly doubled to 2400 megawatts. | 0:33:30 | 0:33:35 | |
That's the same trend that we see all over the world. | 0:33:35 | 0:33:38 | |
For the last century, every few decades, | 0:33:38 | 0:33:41 | |
humanity's power consumption has doubled. | 0:33:41 | 0:33:43 | |
As our technology has increased, so too has our need for power. | 0:33:43 | 0:33:47 | |
And, as demand increases, | 0:33:50 | 0:33:51 | |
civilisations must look beyond their home world. | 0:33:51 | 0:33:55 | |
Every star, just like our sun, | 0:33:55 | 0:33:57 | |
is basically a giant nuclear furnace, | 0:33:57 | 0:34:00 | |
fusing hydrogen into helium and producing energy. | 0:34:00 | 0:34:04 | |
The ultimate limit to the amount of energy available to any civilisation | 0:34:04 | 0:34:08 | |
is just the amount of energy that they can harvest | 0:34:08 | 0:34:11 | |
from that parent star. | 0:34:11 | 0:34:12 | |
Deep in the Mojave Desert, | 0:34:29 | 0:34:31 | |
halfway between Las Vegas and Reno... | 0:34:31 | 0:34:34 | |
..it's possible to glimpse the future. | 0:34:38 | 0:34:40 | |
So, this is the Crescent Dunes Solar Facility. | 0:35:15 | 0:35:18 | |
There are 10,347 of these mirrors. | 0:35:18 | 0:35:21 | |
They all reflect the sun's energy up to that tower. | 0:35:21 | 0:35:24 | |
The heat's a reservoir of molten salt, | 0:35:24 | 0:35:27 | |
that's then used to turn water into steam, | 0:35:27 | 0:35:29 | |
turning turbines, and generating electricity. | 0:35:29 | 0:35:32 | |
Crescent Dunes is one of the world's largest solar power plants, | 0:35:36 | 0:35:39 | |
but even this gigantic facility | 0:35:39 | 0:35:41 | |
can only collect a small fraction of the sun's energy. | 0:35:41 | 0:35:44 | |
In the future, we might build thousands more of these facilities, | 0:35:47 | 0:35:50 | |
collecting even more of the sun's energy. | 0:35:50 | 0:35:52 | |
The amount of energy a civilisation can harness from their star | 0:35:58 | 0:36:02 | |
provides an indication of their technological advancement. | 0:36:02 | 0:36:05 | |
And it's measured on what's known as the Kardashev scale. | 0:36:09 | 0:36:12 | |
A Kardashev Type I civilisation | 0:36:16 | 0:36:18 | |
is a civilisation that's capable of harnessing all of the energy | 0:36:18 | 0:36:22 | |
that falls on their planet from their parent star. | 0:36:22 | 0:36:24 | |
Human civilisation only consumes about 20 terawatts of power. | 0:36:26 | 0:36:31 | |
That's about 1000th of the amount of energy that falls on our planet | 0:36:31 | 0:36:34 | |
from our sun. | 0:36:34 | 0:36:35 | |
But the amount of sunlight that hits the Earth | 0:36:38 | 0:36:40 | |
is only a tiny fraction of the light that leaves the sun. | 0:36:40 | 0:36:44 | |
Our sun's power is 400 billion terawatts. | 0:36:46 | 0:36:50 | |
That's 10 million times as much energy in just one second | 0:36:50 | 0:36:55 | |
as the entire United States consumes over the course of the year. | 0:36:55 | 0:36:58 | |
Any civilisation capable of harnessing all the energy | 0:37:00 | 0:37:04 | |
emitted by its star would have achieved Kardashev Type II status. | 0:37:04 | 0:37:09 | |
But to do it | 0:37:12 | 0:37:14 | |
would require engineering on a truly astronomical scale. | 0:37:14 | 0:37:18 | |
A Kardashev Type II civilisation | 0:37:20 | 0:37:22 | |
would need to build a massive network of solar collectors | 0:37:22 | 0:37:25 | |
that would orbit their star in space. | 0:37:25 | 0:37:27 | |
Something we call a Dyson sphere, or a Dyson structure. | 0:37:27 | 0:37:30 | |
A Dyson structure is very much like the solar power plant here, | 0:37:33 | 0:37:37 | |
but billions of times larger, in space, orbiting an entire star. | 0:37:37 | 0:37:41 | |
But they needn't be a solid surface. | 0:37:43 | 0:37:46 | |
It could be a swarm of individual solar panels, | 0:37:46 | 0:37:49 | |
all interconnected, as long as they occluded a large fraction | 0:37:49 | 0:37:53 | |
of the light that came from the star. | 0:37:53 | 0:37:55 | |
To construct a Dyson sphere that enveloped the sun | 0:37:57 | 0:38:00 | |
would require all the matter in all the planets in the solar system. | 0:38:00 | 0:38:04 | |
And so until recently, | 0:38:06 | 0:38:08 | |
Dyson spheres were thought to be purely theoretical. | 0:38:08 | 0:38:11 | |
Then, in 2013, | 0:38:40 | 0:38:41 | |
some deeply strange observations from NASA's Kepler space telescope | 0:38:41 | 0:38:46 | |
fell onto the desk of astronomer Tabetha Boyajian. | 0:38:46 | 0:38:51 | |
Kepler looked at over 150,000 stars in our galaxy, | 0:38:58 | 0:39:02 | |
and the data for this star looked nothing like any of the stars, | 0:39:02 | 0:39:06 | |
and nothing like any other star that we know of today. | 0:39:06 | 0:39:09 | |
For four years, the telescope scoured the Milky Way, | 0:39:13 | 0:39:16 | |
hunting for evidence of exoplanets. | 0:39:16 | 0:39:20 | |
Meticulously measuring the brightness of stars | 0:39:21 | 0:39:24 | |
in search of the tell-tale dimming in light | 0:39:24 | 0:39:26 | |
produced as a planet passes in front of them. | 0:39:26 | 0:39:29 | |
So, this is what an exoplanet transit looks like. | 0:39:36 | 0:39:40 | |
On the left-hand side you have the amount of light, | 0:39:40 | 0:39:42 | |
and on the bottom you have time, | 0:39:42 | 0:39:44 | |
and when a Jupiter-like planet transits in front of a star, | 0:39:44 | 0:39:48 | |
you have this clean U-shaped dip in the star's light. | 0:39:48 | 0:39:52 | |
And this dip this about 1%. | 0:39:52 | 0:39:54 | |
So this is the Kepler data for KIC 8462852. | 0:39:56 | 0:40:01 | |
And it shows four years of Kepler photometry of the star. | 0:40:01 | 0:40:05 | |
And, as you can see, for most of the time it's pretty flat. | 0:40:05 | 0:40:09 | |
Nothing is going on. | 0:40:09 | 0:40:10 | |
But then in May 2009, you had this dip that on face value, | 0:40:10 | 0:40:14 | |
appears to look like what a transiting planet would look like. | 0:40:14 | 0:40:18 | |
But if you take a closer look, | 0:40:18 | 0:40:19 | |
then you actually see that the transit lasts for almost a week, | 0:40:19 | 0:40:23 | |
compared to a planet-sized object, | 0:40:23 | 0:40:25 | |
which would just last for a couple of hours. | 0:40:25 | 0:40:28 | |
It was also very asymmetric in shape, | 0:40:28 | 0:40:31 | |
meaning that, instead of having that cleanly U-shaped dip, | 0:40:31 | 0:40:34 | |
it had this strange slope over here on the left-hand side. | 0:40:34 | 0:40:38 | |
This seemed to indicate that whatever was crossing | 0:40:38 | 0:40:40 | |
in front of the star was not circular like a planet. | 0:40:40 | 0:40:43 | |
Things are pretty quiet for a couple of years, | 0:40:48 | 0:40:50 | |
and then in March of 2011 we have this very dramatic feature | 0:40:50 | 0:40:56 | |
where the star's brightness drops by 15%. | 0:40:56 | 0:41:00 | |
And this drop is also very asymmetric. | 0:41:02 | 0:41:06 | |
It gradually decreases in brightness for about a week | 0:41:06 | 0:41:09 | |
and it then snaps right back up to normal in just a few days. | 0:41:09 | 0:41:13 | |
Now, after this nothing happens again for a couple of years | 0:41:13 | 0:41:17 | |
until February of 2013, | 0:41:17 | 0:41:19 | |
when you have this huge complex of dips that last almost for 100 days. | 0:41:19 | 0:41:25 | |
Each of these dips have a different structure, | 0:41:25 | 0:41:27 | |
some are very shallow, some are very sharp, | 0:41:27 | 0:41:30 | |
and the deepest one here drops by over 20%. | 0:41:30 | 0:41:35 | |
And so it seems to indicate that there is some swarm of objects | 0:41:35 | 0:41:39 | |
with different sizes and shapes that were passing in front of the star. | 0:41:39 | 0:41:43 | |
At first, no one had any idea what those objects could be. | 0:41:46 | 0:41:50 | |
Then somebody came along and said, | 0:41:52 | 0:41:53 | |
"What if there was a giant swarm of comets that was | 0:41:53 | 0:41:57 | |
"swooping down towards the star and blocking out the star light?" | 0:41:57 | 0:42:00 | |
And this seemed to be consistent with the observations that we had, | 0:42:00 | 0:42:05 | |
but it seemed a little bit contrived because it would take, you know, | 0:42:05 | 0:42:09 | |
hundreds if not thousands of comets to block out the star's light. | 0:42:09 | 0:42:13 | |
But nevertheless this was kind of the best idea, theory, | 0:42:13 | 0:42:18 | |
that we had to explain the data. | 0:42:18 | 0:42:20 | |
But there was another possibility. | 0:42:25 | 0:42:26 | |
That Tabby had detected the deep shadows | 0:42:28 | 0:42:31 | |
cast by a Dyson sphere constructed around the star. | 0:42:31 | 0:42:34 | |
The scale of these things is kind of hard to imagine, | 0:42:38 | 0:42:41 | |
but you can think of it this way. | 0:42:41 | 0:42:42 | |
So the Earth-Moon distance is about a quarter of a million miles | 0:42:42 | 0:42:46 | |
and the simplest element in one of these would be 100 times this size. | 0:42:46 | 0:42:51 | |
Now, imagine these in orbit around the star, | 0:42:52 | 0:42:55 | |
and you can see how it would produce anomalies | 0:42:55 | 0:42:58 | |
in the data that we detect. | 0:42:58 | 0:42:59 | |
Scientists are still trying to determine | 0:43:02 | 0:43:04 | |
the precise cause of the dimming. | 0:43:04 | 0:43:06 | |
But they have at least settled on a name. | 0:43:08 | 0:43:10 | |
Star KIC 8462852 | 0:43:11 | 0:43:14 | |
has become known as Tabby's Star. | 0:43:14 | 0:43:19 | |
-See you, bye! -OK, bye. | 0:43:35 | 0:43:37 | |
Along with the potential discovery of alien mega structures, | 0:43:47 | 0:43:51 | |
2013 also brought good news for Duncan Lorimer. | 0:43:51 | 0:43:56 | |
A group at Manchester University | 0:44:00 | 0:44:02 | |
announced the discovery of four more bursts. | 0:44:02 | 0:44:04 | |
There were coming from all over the sky and they were clearly real, | 0:44:05 | 0:44:08 | |
so it was a breakthrough moment. | 0:44:08 | 0:44:10 | |
It meant the Lorimer Burst was real, which was just great news. | 0:44:10 | 0:44:14 | |
And it also meant that we could learn a lot about these bursts | 0:44:14 | 0:44:18 | |
that we couldn't before - we'd be able to study the population | 0:44:18 | 0:44:20 | |
and the energetics and try to figure out exactly what's causing them. | 0:44:20 | 0:44:24 | |
I think up until that moment when the confirmation came through, | 0:44:24 | 0:44:27 | |
I certainly every now and again, would begin to doubt myself | 0:44:27 | 0:44:30 | |
and think, is it really just some bizarre form of interference | 0:44:30 | 0:44:33 | |
that causes that one object? | 0:44:33 | 0:44:35 | |
But as soon as you get those other objects, | 0:44:35 | 0:44:38 | |
all of those doubts go away and it's a very, very liberating feeling. | 0:44:38 | 0:44:43 | |
Duncan was very, very excited when these other bursts were announced | 0:44:43 | 0:44:46 | |
because, yeah, he felt vindicated. | 0:44:46 | 0:44:48 | |
He was very self-satisfied and had a little bit of a high and mighty air | 0:44:48 | 0:44:53 | |
for a few weeks because I'd sort of started to doubt | 0:44:53 | 0:44:56 | |
that the Lorimer Burst was real, and he had never given up. | 0:44:56 | 0:44:59 | |
He always said it was real, so he'd won the argument. | 0:44:59 | 0:45:02 | |
And he made it well-known that he was right. | 0:45:02 | 0:45:05 | |
I think I told her something like, "I told you so!" | 0:45:07 | 0:45:11 | |
By the end of 2013, | 0:45:15 | 0:45:17 | |
there had been six confirmed detections of fast radio bursts. | 0:45:17 | 0:45:21 | |
But what was causing them was still unknown. | 0:45:23 | 0:45:26 | |
Now that fast radio bursts are real, | 0:45:28 | 0:45:30 | |
it comes back to the idea of whether they could be caused by aliens. | 0:45:30 | 0:45:33 | |
And I've never really subscribed to that. | 0:45:33 | 0:45:36 | |
If I were looking for a signal from an extraterrestrial civilisation, | 0:45:36 | 0:45:39 | |
I'd be looking for it coming from a single point in the sky. | 0:45:39 | 0:45:41 | |
We have a population of sources all over the sky | 0:45:41 | 0:45:44 | |
which implies that the aliens are all over the place, | 0:45:44 | 0:45:46 | |
all over the universe, and that just seems highly unlikely to me. | 0:45:46 | 0:45:49 | |
But then, mathematical analysis of the known signals | 0:45:54 | 0:45:57 | |
seemed to show they were all placed at regularly spaced distances. | 0:45:57 | 0:46:01 | |
Maybe, whatever was responsible for the fast radio bursts | 0:46:06 | 0:46:10 | |
were put there by extraterrestrials, | 0:46:10 | 0:46:13 | |
perhaps even ones on the next level of the Kardashev scale. | 0:46:13 | 0:46:16 | |
Communication beacons placed across the Milky Way | 0:46:18 | 0:46:22 | |
by a Type III civilisation. | 0:46:22 | 0:46:24 | |
One with the ability to harness the power of an entire galaxy. | 0:46:25 | 0:46:30 | |
But, if the Milky Way were home to a Type III civilisation, | 0:46:41 | 0:46:45 | |
its presence should be written across the sky. | 0:46:45 | 0:46:48 | |
We know from thermodynamics that any energy usage that does useful work | 0:46:52 | 0:46:56 | |
produces waste heat. | 0:46:56 | 0:46:57 | |
Our car engines produce waste heat, | 0:46:57 | 0:46:59 | |
our laptop batteries produce waste heat, | 0:46:59 | 0:47:02 | |
so too does any energy usage by any technology, | 0:47:02 | 0:47:04 | |
whether it's human technology, or an extraterrestrial technology. | 0:47:04 | 0:47:08 | |
If there were a civilisation in our galaxy that was using the energy | 0:47:10 | 0:47:13 | |
of millions or billions of stars, | 0:47:13 | 0:47:15 | |
we would see evidence of that energy usage in the form of waste heat. | 0:47:15 | 0:47:19 | |
As more fast radio bursts were discovered, | 0:47:21 | 0:47:24 | |
so the regular pattern disappeared. | 0:47:24 | 0:47:27 | |
And nothing like the heat produced by a Type III civilisation | 0:47:28 | 0:47:32 | |
has ever been seen in our galaxy. | 0:47:32 | 0:47:34 | |
There are hundreds of billions of galaxies in our universe | 0:47:38 | 0:47:41 | |
so there's certainly still room for these very, | 0:47:41 | 0:47:43 | |
very advanced civilisations to exist somewhere in our universe. | 0:47:43 | 0:47:46 | |
But, wherever those civilisations might be, | 0:47:54 | 0:47:57 | |
for as long as we have been looking... | 0:47:57 | 0:47:59 | |
..they have remained elusive. | 0:48:01 | 0:48:03 | |
In the spring of 1960, | 0:48:23 | 0:48:25 | |
Frank Drake arrived in Green Bank | 0:48:25 | 0:48:27 | |
to fulfil the dream he'd had since childhood. | 0:48:27 | 0:48:31 | |
I had been waiting for many, many years for this opportunity | 0:48:42 | 0:48:47 | |
to answer that question, are there other civilisations out there? | 0:48:47 | 0:48:51 | |
It was very exciting, because at that time, for all we knew, | 0:48:54 | 0:48:57 | |
every star had a planet that was sending intelligent signals. | 0:48:57 | 0:49:01 | |
We might succeed the first day, in the first hour. | 0:49:01 | 0:49:03 | |
It was here that Frank conducted Project Ozma, | 0:49:05 | 0:49:08 | |
the first scientific search for extraterrestrials. | 0:49:08 | 0:49:12 | |
We did in fact attach a loudspeaker just in case a miracle happened | 0:49:12 | 0:49:17 | |
and we actually heard someone talking to us. | 0:49:17 | 0:49:20 | |
It was not out of the question. | 0:49:20 | 0:49:22 | |
We had a tape recorder that was recording everything coming in. | 0:49:22 | 0:49:25 | |
So when we first turned it on, | 0:49:25 | 0:49:27 | |
of course everybody was wondering, what are we going to hear? | 0:49:27 | 0:49:30 | |
What we heard was noise. | 0:49:30 | 0:49:33 | |
Static, nothing. | 0:49:33 | 0:49:35 | |
Project Ozma heard no alien communications. | 0:49:37 | 0:49:41 | |
And it's been the same story for every subsequent search. | 0:49:43 | 0:49:48 | |
We've done a great deal of searching in the last 50-plus years, | 0:49:50 | 0:49:54 | |
and we've learned that we're going to have to search | 0:49:54 | 0:49:57 | |
perhaps a million stars and countless frequency channels | 0:49:57 | 0:50:00 | |
before we have a good chance of success. | 0:50:00 | 0:50:02 | |
But, after more than half a century, | 0:50:05 | 0:50:08 | |
Frank's own search is drawing to a close. | 0:50:08 | 0:50:12 | |
If I had this to do all over, I would still do it. | 0:50:14 | 0:50:17 | |
In fact, probably put more time into it because I've come to realise | 0:50:17 | 0:50:20 | |
that's what's required to succeed. | 0:50:20 | 0:50:22 | |
And to me that time is not time wasted. | 0:50:22 | 0:50:26 | |
Because the eventual discovery is of such importance that it justifies | 0:50:26 | 0:50:32 | |
not just one human life being dedicated to succeeding, but many. | 0:50:32 | 0:50:37 | |
Are we alone? | 0:50:44 | 0:50:45 | |
If we are, then that tells us something | 0:50:47 | 0:50:49 | |
about the preciousness of life on Earth. | 0:50:49 | 0:50:52 | |
And if we're not alone... | 0:50:56 | 0:50:58 | |
..then what discovery could possibly be more important? | 0:50:59 | 0:51:02 | |
Come with us. | 0:51:19 | 0:51:21 | |
Breakthrough Listen takes the search for intelligent life in the universe | 0:51:24 | 0:51:29 | |
to a completely new level. | 0:51:29 | 0:51:31 | |
In 2015, Russian billionaire Yuri Milner | 0:51:33 | 0:51:37 | |
put down 100 million of his own money | 0:51:37 | 0:51:40 | |
to conduct the most comprehensive search for extraterrestrials | 0:51:40 | 0:51:43 | |
ever undertaken. | 0:51:43 | 0:51:45 | |
This was once a dream, | 0:51:47 | 0:51:49 | |
it is now a truly scientific quest. | 0:51:49 | 0:51:52 | |
The 20th century... | 0:51:52 | 0:51:54 | |
..we stepped out from our planet to space, | 0:51:55 | 0:51:59 | |
to the moon, | 0:51:59 | 0:52:02 | |
to the solar system. | 0:52:02 | 0:52:03 | |
In the 21st century, we'll find out about life on a galactic scale. | 0:52:03 | 0:52:08 | |
And the search begins with Tabby's Star. | 0:52:10 | 0:52:13 | |
KIC 8462852 is one of the best targets we've had in a long time | 0:52:16 | 0:52:20 | |
for study searches. | 0:52:20 | 0:52:22 | |
We're going to be using the 100-metre Green Bank telescope, | 0:52:24 | 0:52:27 | |
the largest fully steerable radio telescope on the planet, | 0:52:27 | 0:52:30 | |
paired with a brand-new set of instrumentation we've installed | 0:52:30 | 0:52:33 | |
as part of the Breakthrough Listen project. | 0:52:33 | 0:52:35 | |
This instrumentation allows us to conduct a very sensitive search | 0:52:35 | 0:52:39 | |
over a huge amount of the radio spectrum. | 0:52:39 | 0:52:41 | |
Now, if Tabby's Star does indeed have a Dyson sphere around it, | 0:52:42 | 0:52:46 | |
and it is inhabited by a very advanced civilisation, | 0:52:46 | 0:52:49 | |
perhaps that civilisation might have technology like we use on Earth, | 0:52:49 | 0:52:53 | |
perhaps radio technology. | 0:52:53 | 0:52:54 | |
And if they do, we could detect it with this telescope. | 0:52:54 | 0:52:57 | |
Tonight represents perhaps the best chance humanity has ever had | 0:53:00 | 0:53:04 | |
to make contact with extraterrestrials. | 0:53:04 | 0:53:07 | |
Hey, Dave. | 0:53:13 | 0:53:15 | |
Could you put Vegas back in mode one? | 0:53:15 | 0:53:17 | |
This evening is a very exciting night. | 0:53:17 | 0:53:20 | |
Turned back on and then... | 0:53:20 | 0:53:21 | |
We've been waiting for it for over a year, | 0:53:23 | 0:53:25 | |
so, yeah, I think we're all pretty excited about what's happening. | 0:53:25 | 0:53:29 | |
What's next? Is Tabby's Star next? | 0:53:29 | 0:53:31 | |
Tabby's Star is next, yes. | 0:53:31 | 0:53:32 | |
All right, time for you to push the button! | 0:53:32 | 0:53:35 | |
Right, here we go. | 0:53:39 | 0:53:41 | |
-We're off. -Here we go. | 0:53:43 | 0:53:45 | |
MOTOR WHIRS | 0:53:45 | 0:53:47 | |
Once it's moved into position, | 0:53:52 | 0:53:54 | |
the telescope begins to gather radio waves | 0:53:54 | 0:53:57 | |
that just might contain messages from an alien civilisation. | 0:53:57 | 0:54:01 | |
-There you go. It's coming in. -Right! | 0:54:05 | 0:54:07 | |
For six hours, the giant dish tracks the star across the sky, | 0:54:10 | 0:54:14 | |
scanning billions of radio channels simultaneously. | 0:54:14 | 0:54:18 | |
By 3:30am, the observations are complete. | 0:54:24 | 0:54:27 | |
These four plots represent about 800 megahertz of the radio spectrum | 0:54:28 | 0:54:32 | |
and this is only about one quarter of the amount of the radio spectrum | 0:54:32 | 0:54:36 | |
that we're observing. | 0:54:36 | 0:54:37 | |
So this plot shows the shape of the radio spectrum | 0:54:37 | 0:54:40 | |
as a function of frequency. | 0:54:40 | 0:54:42 | |
And here we see the radio spectrum as a function of time. | 0:54:42 | 0:54:45 | |
If there was evidence of technology in these data, | 0:54:45 | 0:54:48 | |
what we would expect to see is a spike in one of these plots, | 0:54:48 | 0:54:51 | |
a lot of electromagnetic energy in just one channel. | 0:54:51 | 0:54:53 | |
Now we don't see that yet, but in the coming days, | 0:54:53 | 0:54:56 | |
weeks and months, we're going to be looking at the data | 0:54:56 | 0:54:59 | |
in many different ways with much higher resolution, | 0:54:59 | 0:55:02 | |
that will allow us to be much more sensitive to evidence of technology. | 0:55:02 | 0:55:05 | |
For tonight at least, Tabby's Star is holding onto its secrets. | 0:55:09 | 0:55:14 | |
For the Breakthrough team, | 0:55:16 | 0:55:18 | |
the search for extraterrestrials is only just beginning. | 0:55:18 | 0:55:21 | |
I don't know if they're out there or not. | 0:55:24 | 0:55:26 | |
As a scientist I have to admit that. | 0:55:26 | 0:55:28 | |
But I think that it would be a pretty strange universe | 0:55:28 | 0:55:32 | |
in which life only arose once, and intelligence only arose once. | 0:55:32 | 0:55:36 | |
I think, to me, the most interesting property of the universe | 0:55:37 | 0:55:40 | |
is the fact that intelligence exists at all, | 0:55:40 | 0:55:42 | |
that somehow the universe has evolved a capacity to know itself, | 0:55:42 | 0:55:46 | |
to ask questions about itself, | 0:55:46 | 0:55:48 | |
and ultimately I think, until we answer this question, | 0:55:48 | 0:55:52 | |
we won't really understand the universe at all. | 0:55:52 | 0:55:54 | |
Since 2013, many more fast radio bursts have been discovered. | 0:56:13 | 0:56:18 | |
Duncan and Maura now have a theory for what might be producing them. | 0:56:20 | 0:56:24 | |
So whatever it is that is causing FRBs must be both very compact | 0:56:26 | 0:56:30 | |
and very energetic. | 0:56:30 | 0:56:32 | |
It must be compact because the width of the pulses is very narrow, | 0:56:32 | 0:56:36 | |
and they must be very energetic | 0:56:36 | 0:56:38 | |
because the distances that we infer are very far away. | 0:56:38 | 0:56:41 | |
It's thought, in fact, the bursts could be created | 0:56:43 | 0:56:46 | |
during the explosive collisions of neutron stars, | 0:56:46 | 0:56:50 | |
some of the densest, most energetic objects in the universe. | 0:56:50 | 0:56:54 | |
We observe binary systems of two neutron stars | 0:56:57 | 0:57:00 | |
that are in orbit around each other, | 0:57:00 | 0:57:02 | |
and when we observe these systems, we see them getting closer | 0:57:02 | 0:57:05 | |
and closer together all the time. | 0:57:05 | 0:57:07 | |
So what will happen eventually is that they're going to collide. | 0:57:07 | 0:57:10 | |
And when they merge, | 0:57:13 | 0:57:14 | |
the neutron stars will be completely destroyed and form a black hole. | 0:57:14 | 0:57:18 | |
As they annihilate, the two stars release in an instant | 0:57:19 | 0:57:23 | |
the same energy the sun produces in an entire month. | 0:57:23 | 0:57:28 | |
A blinding flash visible to our telescopes as a fast radio burst. | 0:57:30 | 0:57:36 | |
This theory perhaps solves the mystery | 0:57:37 | 0:57:40 | |
of these strange signals from space. | 0:57:40 | 0:57:43 | |
When you look at the energetics of these events, | 0:57:44 | 0:57:47 | |
you can easily explain the FRB energies with them. | 0:57:47 | 0:57:50 | |
You can also explain the durations of the FRB pulses | 0:57:50 | 0:57:53 | |
with the expected durations of these merger events. | 0:57:53 | 0:57:56 | |
So it's quite a plausible explanation. | 0:57:56 | 0:57:58 | |
Then, in 2016, a new burst was detected. | 0:58:05 | 0:58:09 | |
The distinctive pulse of radio waves | 0:58:10 | 0:58:12 | |
released as the neutron stars collided and were destroyed. | 0:58:12 | 0:58:16 | |
Followed by nothing. | 0:58:18 | 0:58:20 | |
Silence. | 0:58:20 | 0:58:21 | |
Just as the astronomers expected. | 0:58:23 | 0:58:25 | |
But then, when they looked again... | 0:58:30 | 0:58:32 | |
..the signal came back. | 0:58:36 | 0:58:37 | |
# It's not unusual to be loved by anyone | 0:59:03 | 0:59:07 | |
# It's not unusual to have fun with anyone | 0:59:08 | 0:59:12 | |
# But when I see you hanging about with anyone | 0:59:14 | 0:59:17 | |
# It's not unusual to see me cry. # | 0:59:19 | 0:59:22 |