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00:00Celebrating 30 years of Star Trek, this is BBC Two, your space station.
00:10We're back to nine.
00:23Sometime, somewhere in the universe, there's a memorial to Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, with the phrase,
00:33I cannot change the laws of physics, Captain!
00:36With the help of proper grown-up scientists, Star Trek Knight now investigates whether the show's spaced out scientific vision tallies with today's scientific fact.
00:54You know, sometimes I feel like a small particle in a very large nucleus.
01:00I wanted to be a spaceman, that's what I wanted to be.
01:06But now that I am a spaceman, nobody cares about me.
01:12We're doing a show that helps shape the way people view the future, even down to their sense of style and design.
01:18It's all of our aspirations about what the world will be like if science does a good job.
01:24I want you to make a good run, I want you to go to the moon.
01:31And it's had a real significant influence on the way people view science and technology, and even the way some scientists view their own work.
01:37But my job is to make sure that the show appears scientifically possible.
01:43And in here is what we have to make fly.
01:50Hi, I'm Andre Bormannis, I'm the science consultant for the Star Trek series.
02:07Andre who?
02:08Bormannis.
02:09Bormannis, can you spell that for me?
02:10Andre Bormannis, subatomic particle in the vast chain of interactions that produce Star Trek, is science advisor to the show.
02:17Trained as an astrophysicist, he used to work for NASA.
02:24But now he's employed by Paramount Studios, where Star Trek has been filmed for the past 30 years.
02:32Fire main bases!
02:36It's Andre's job to make sure the accuracy of the photon torpedo, the healing powers of Dr. McCoy, the range of the transporter,
02:44and the stability of the warp drive, abide by the laws of physics.
02:51And every day he struggles to bring scientific credibility to the work in progress.
02:56His role is to tech the writers' scripts.
02:59Some tech help with this part right here.
03:02Okay, we're talking about electrical resistance in a person's skin.
03:06Sometimes the writers aren't aware of how much they're really asking me to stretch science.
03:11And that's a bit of a challenge.
03:13Yeah, and it needs to be some actual, like, tech biochemical, like, real change that happens in this ritual that lets them deal with this energy field.
03:20We had an episode that involved the crew devolving to earlier forms of life, and that was particularly hard to rationalize in scientific terms.
03:27Oh, okay. Great. I'll take care of it.
03:29Sometimes I just invent new terms, like,
03:31Dueletic field.
03:32And that seemed to be a sort of a simple answer to the problem that needed to be addressed in that episode.
03:38All right, let's go.
03:42Action!
03:43Shut up!
03:45Andre is a busy man.
03:48Every Star Trek episode throws up a new script and a new science problem.
03:52Are you going to help me or not?
03:55Andre, can I talk to you about this for a second?
03:57Okay, so we're in this dilapidated prison, and there's this force field keeping these guys from getting out, Kim and Paris.
04:03And I've got to come up with some believable way that they can gather up some materials and kind of short out this force field.
04:08So you remember that time that you...
04:10Here's an example of a place where we have a certain amount of conflict between the science of the episode and the action that we're trying to sell in the story.
04:17Harry could probably fashion some sort of a circuit that would short out a force field.
04:21You know, he could take some wires and make some coils.
04:23Should we call it a circuit? He's creating a ground.
04:25Yeah, Star Trek is trying to portray a plausible vision of the future, so it has to be based as much as possible in real science.
04:31But sometimes the action demands of the story maybe make it hard for me to come up with something that's as scientifically accurate as I might like it to be.
04:40I can't change the laws of physics. I've got to have 30 minutes.
04:45But in Cleveland, Ohio, Andre's efforts are being judged by a fan who knows better than anyone whether Star Trek has obeyed, avoided or completely ignored the laws of physics.
04:59Professor Lawrence Krauss has written a book on the physics of Star Trek.
05:04I see where you're going. We ship down, then kick hard into warp nine. Yeah! Come back, fight! Woo-wee!
05:10Can we do it, Jordy?
05:11Ask me after it's done, sir.
05:13That's great. This episode is called The Last Outpost.
05:17You see, I had to watch almost every episode of the series.
05:20And in fact, I use it occasionally in my lectures.
05:22In each episode, the Enterprise has to explore a new part of the galaxy.
05:26And the galaxy itself is over 100,000 light years across.
05:29Captain's log, stardate 3192.1.
05:32The Enterprise is en route to star cluster NGC 321.
05:37So even at the speed of light, you can't get very far in a single episode.
05:40Now, this creates all sorts of marvelous physics challenges, in fact, from getting to the speed of light in a few seconds to even exceeding it.
05:48E sub i, j of t, st approaches infinity.
06:01Hmm?
06:02Einstein's famous equation, E equals mc squared, produced tremendous obstacles to actually trying to travel at the speed of light.
06:09For example, first of all, time slows down as you get near the speed of light.
06:15And that means it might take 25,000 years in your frame for the Enterprise to make it to the center of the galaxy.
06:21But for the people aboard the Enterprise, it might only take five years.
06:24But also, as you get closer to the speed of light, the mass begins to increase.
06:29In fact, become infinitely large if you hit the speed of light.
06:32Well, as impossible as that may sound, the writers of Star Trek got it right when they said,
06:37Warp speed, Mr. Silver.
06:39Because in order to do this, you'd actually have to warp space-time itself.
06:44In order to travel faster than the speed of light, the Enterprise itself can't move at any great speed at all.
06:52Warp two.
06:54But the warp engines could create a wave in space-time.
06:59There she goes.
07:01So instead of the ship moving, the space around it moves, allowing the Enterprise to surf through the galaxy without incurring any of the penalties of high-speed travel.
07:11So the Enterprise can get to places faster than light.
07:23And if it can warp space, it can also warp time.
07:26Star Trek has to suppose that one can go faster than light to keep a human interest in their stories.
07:38But if you can go faster than light, you can also go back in time.
07:45Something Star Trek producers have known for years.
07:51More recently though, Stephen Hawking, Cambridge professor and Star Trek Extra, has worked out how time travel too may be within the laws of physics.
08:03We are used to thinking of time as a single railway line on which one can go only in one direction.
08:12But what if the railway line had loops and branches so that one could come back to the same station?
08:19It seems that Einstein's general theory of relativity may allow this kind of behavior.
08:26Explain. I can't.
08:28Time and space are combined together in spacetime. This means that time as well as space can be warped or distorted.
08:38That is how time travel may be possible.
08:43One might be able to go off in a rocket ship, go through a wormhole, and come back before you set out.
08:51That is a great story.
08:56Quite amusing, Dr. Hawking.
08:58You see, Sir Isaac, the joke depends on an understanding of the relativistic curvature of space-time.
09:04If two non-inertial reference frames are in relative motion...
09:07Do not patronize me, sir. I invented physics.
09:11But if physics has moved on since Newton, and time travel is possible, the implications are enormous.
09:18At Oxford University, Professor Roger Penrose has been musing on the dangers of journeying into the past.
09:25Here's a picture of my grandfather.
09:27Well, if you could travel backwards in time, you could kill your grandfather, and then you'd never have been born.
09:33But if you were born, that's an inconsistency.
09:36Please, Spock, do me a favor, and don't say it's fascinating. No.
09:41Well, more to the point would be killing my father, but he's such a cute little fellow, I'm sure I wouldn't want to do that.
09:46Of course, I could do something which he might remember, and he obviously didn't, so it can't have happened.
09:52Interesting.
09:54More relevant, I suppose, is when people talk about going back and meeting yourself, and you obviously remember yourself.
10:01And so if you didn't meet yourself earlier in time, then that's illogical.
10:08Your logic can be most annoying.
10:14But elsewhere in space-time, another Oxford physicist, David Deutsch, is convinced time travel does make sense.
10:23Quantum mechanics tells us that the universe we see around us is not the whole of physical reality.
10:29There are many such universes all running along in parallel.
10:32What happens when there's time travel is that when you go back into the past and try to change it, for instance, to prevent yourself from being born, you really go into the past of another universe, and you prevent the version of yourself that would have been born there from being born.
10:49Never mind, Mr. Spark. Doesn't make much sense to me either.
10:52So the problem of time travel that remains is a technological one. How can we construct a pathway into the past?
10:59Sensors indicate an energy fluctuation directly in our path, source unknown.
11:04Well, sometimes it's suggested that you could make use of what are called wormholes to travel backwards in time.
11:10Very likely. Small and extremely unstable wormholes have been mapped near 39 T Torrey systems in the last 100 years alone, sir.
11:17We could take a piece of space-time, a little tunnel, any idea, and you glue it back to some much earlier point in time.
11:26So you have this little tube which reaches back into something earlier.
11:32But for Professor Krauss, journeys through wormholes have drawbacks.
11:37At the mouth of the wormhole, you in fact would need a very special kind of matter to create that curvature and keep the mouth of the wormhole open,
11:44because normal matter will tend to make the mouth collapse.
11:48The other problem is, to curve space at that amount, you need incredible amounts of energy.
11:53The sun, for example, bends light by merely one one-thousandth of a degree.
11:57So you can imagine how much energy you'd need to really bend space and create a wormhole.
12:02What the hell is happening out there?
12:05I don't know.
12:08They're just gone.
12:15All right, so these are some of the engineering consoles here on the bridge of the bird of prey.
12:19We're trying to convey some fairly difficult scientific concepts, and that's really very central to the whole idea of Star Trek.
12:26We're typically dealing with technical problems that require technical or scientific solutions.
12:31We've got to take a look at how we're going to get the plasma from the warp reactor out to the wing through the conduit that we talked about.
12:41Rick Sternbach is responsible for much of the technical design in Star Trek.
12:45He and Andre work together on the specifications of new ships.
12:50Right, they'd have to monitor each of the pods individually and keep them isolated so that we would not have any sort of, you know, antimatter containment breach.
12:59Rick and I are basically trying to solve the problem of how we would describe the technology that allows us to take the energy generated by a reaction of matter and antimatter and distribute that to different parts of a starship.
13:12And we want to make sure that those solutions are scientifically credible, that they're built on plausible theories or extrapolations of theories and known science.
13:20So the matter-antimatter reaction chamber is here. A good example of this is the engineering of the ships. What drives these ships?
13:28Well, the most powerful source of energy we know of today is antimatter.
13:33One day soon, man is going to be able to harness incredible energies, maybe even the atom, energies that could ultimately hurl us to other worlds in some sort of spaceship.
13:49And those are the days worth living for.
13:54Thirty years ago, antimatter was the stuff of unbelievable science fiction. Today it's the stuff of impenetrable particle physics.
14:02Gentlemen, ready?
14:0422nd April 1996. We are continuing our antimatter experiments.
14:10They're injected from the ring now.
14:13These experiments could help the Enterprise fly.
14:16And last year, at the CERN Particle Accelerator in Switzerland, Dr. Walter Ohlert created antihydrogen, the world's first complete atoms of antimatter.
14:27They're in the machine now.
14:28Okay, so here is where it all happened, where we found the first antihydrogen atoms.
14:34This is the Lear accelerator ring, where anti-protons always circulate in this ring round and round like a merry-go-round.
14:42And what we did now as a trick, we put in the way of the anti-protons xenon target.
14:49Okay, the anti-protons left the accumulator.
14:52Anti-protons, which are tiny fragments of antimatter atoms, smash into a cloud of xenon gas and create anti-electrons.
15:01Occasionally, an anti-electron bonds with an anti-proton and a complete atom of anti-hydrogen is formed.
15:08Crude methods, but effective.
15:11Millions of particles are created and we saw some of those in our detector system.
15:17So we had to analyze them.
15:19And that's why out of this garbage of data, we really had to ask where could the anti-hydrogen be.
15:27It's a mystery. And I don't like mysteries.
15:30And finally, after a long, long period, we found these 11 events.
15:36So here you are the witness of the first 11 anti-hydrogens ever seen in the world.
15:41Help, warp one, engage!
15:46Those 11 atoms have such extraordinary properties that by the 24th century they could be a staple fuel.
15:53Now the thing about antimatter is that it has the opposite properties of normal matter.
15:58So say a proton is positively charged, while an anti-proton is negatively charged.
16:04Now, when antimatter comes into contact with matter, the two can annihilate completely, producing 100% energy.
16:11Which is why matter-antimatter annihilations are so efficient at powering the warp drop.
16:18No, no, no. We don't have any plans to use antimatter here at NASA.
16:24I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely.
16:31At Mission Control in Houston, NASA aren't relying on those 11 atoms of anti-hydrogen.
16:37Five, four, three, two, one, zero.
16:42They're taking a different route into space, charted by flight director Wayne Hale.
16:49Here at Mission Control, our job is to get the astronauts safely into space and bring them safely back home,
16:54to make sure that we can do the most with the shuttle that we can in low Earth orbit.
16:59It's not like Star Trek. We don't fly off at warp speed to planets far distant in the galaxy.
17:05We don't bend the laws of physics. We don't play relativistic games.
17:10We're basically in low Earth orbit for the duration.
17:13Well, I think our role as astronauts today is really on a very early step toward what you see in Star Trek episodes.
17:24I love being in space. So far, I've never gotten over the excitement of being able to see the planet beneath us and the stars all around.
17:31Well, today we only go two or three hundred miles above the Earth's surface, low Earth orbit.
17:38Someday soon we'd like to go to the near Earth planets, Mars, Venus.
17:42To go to a planet around another star, as they do in Star Trek, you have to accelerate to very high velocities
17:48and you have to accelerate in a very short amount of time.
17:51And actually that acceleration, the g-forces on the biological system, the people, are what are going to limit us.
17:57During a shuttle launch, we go from basically sitting on the launch pad to a speed of seventeen thousand five hundred miles per hour in about eight and a half minutes.
18:07And the g-forces vary during that time. During the last minute or so, you are under about three g's and it feels basically like someone's standing on your chest.
18:18It may seem trivial compared to the problem of flying at all, but g-forces are a physical fact that could limit manned space travel.
18:27It can't leap for mankind.
18:30So the problem with g-forces is that every time Picard says...
18:33Engage.
18:34...he's committing suicide. In fact, the crew would be turned into chunky salsa.
18:40You see, when you take off from a stoplight, you go from zero to sixty miles per hour in a few seconds.
18:46You get pushed back in your seat.
18:48But with the impulse drive, you're going from zero to, say, half the speed of light in a few seconds.
18:53And half the speed of light is about a hundred thousand miles per second.
18:56So you'd never survive.
18:58But the designers of the Enterprise think they've found a scientifically plausible way to counteract g-forces.
19:04So this is the Star Trek The Next Generation technical manual.
19:10And in order to deal with the problem of the extreme accelerations of the ship and all of those thousands of g-forces that we encounter, we have an inertial damping system.
19:19What it does is it generates a force field that counteracts the force of acceleration that the ship experiences.
19:25See, we push and they push back with equal force.
19:29Sir.
19:31So this is one of the solutions to the problem of living in space that we've come up with.
19:35And this is one of the things that makes life possible and pleasant aboard a starship.
19:43Honey?
19:44I'm home!
19:49And just as the crew on the Enterprise can make themselves at home, so can the crew on the International Space Station.
20:02They've never had it so good.
20:08This is the habitation module for the International Space Station.
20:12And this module will provide living and sleeping and eating quarters for four crew members.
20:16And these are their home comforts.
20:20We have a sleeping bag here and some personal area that they can use to read or book or use a computer and some storage area too.
20:28Over here we have the bathroom and hygiene area and next to it a shower area.
20:34A shower will be something that'll be quite a luxury, but it'll be really nice for people staying in space for weeks or months.
20:39Oh, that's quite understandable.
20:43And then next to it we'll have an area in which we can actually gather around as a crew and eat together.
20:49Are you hungry?
20:51Uh huh.
20:52What would you like?
20:54This is an example of a typical shuttle meal for an astronaut.
20:57Uh, it's comprised of a thermostabilized entree, which would be, uh, it's ready to eat, it's just heat and eat.
21:06Well, I like a lot of the foods that we have on the space shuttle today.
21:10This is a thermostabilized pouch.
21:12The addition of the water is made through a septum adapter assembly.
21:16What is that?
21:17And we're looking to add a lot of international food menu items.
21:21Hippious claw.
21:23This is heart of targ.
21:24Similar to your canned stews and soups that you have at home.
21:28This, of course, is gaga.
21:30You'd heat this in the oven on the shuttle and then it would be ready to eat.
21:34That doesn't sound very appealing. What else is there?
21:37We have a variety of chicken dishes, we have spaghetti, macaroni, even a kind of a steak that we heat up.
21:43Scallop, potatoes, mutton shanks, oxtails and cabbage.
21:48But the way these dishes are created is entirely different in the 24th century.
21:53Really, it's quite simple.
21:56You just tell the computer what you want and it prepares it for you.
22:00Oh.
22:01Now, I don't see food replication as an option.
22:06Um, we hope to have refrigerators and freezers to make our food taste better.
22:10But food replicators, with the ability to turn energy into matter, can prepare any dish in the galaxy.
22:20And they're all easy to eat, unlike food on the shuttle.
22:26We have to design the food so that we can eat it without it floating around the cabin.
22:30And the same way with drinking and with fluids.
22:32Water.
22:34Specified temperature.
22:35I don't care.
22:36Just give me water.
22:38And in fact, the fluids in our body act a little bit differently, too, in zero gravity.
22:42And they shift to different portions of the body.
22:44And there are health problems that can occur.
22:47Round and around and around and around and around.
22:51So bring me back down.
22:52How you doing?
22:53Good.
22:54Got a couple of questions for you.
22:56Andre Bourmanis doesn't have to worry about the medical effects of weightlessness.
23:00But he does wrestle with other health problems.
23:03Sometimes he needs advice.
23:05There are various experts I consult with when I need to.
23:09One of the key people I talk to is John Glasgow.
23:11He's a pathologist here in town.
23:13Well, we're doing a scene on Deep Space Nine where we need to transport a fetus from one woman's womb into another woman's womb.
23:20We want to make sure that in medicine especially, the language and the details are as right as we can get them.
23:27So the entire fetal placental complex has to be transported, not just the fetus itself.
23:32People really care about medicine.
23:33They care about their health.
23:35And there's a lot of expectations out there that medical science will deliver us miracle cures.
23:40As it has in the hypospray.
23:43An idea that always seemed fantastic in Star Trek is now being used on people with a fear of needles.
23:48Are you ready? Relax your arm.
23:53That didn't hurt at all.
23:55But the Star Trek medicine most closely matched by 20th century developments is the use of imaging.
24:03May 21st, 1996.
24:06Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.
24:09We are starting the preoperative planning for surgery tomorrow.
24:12The patient is presented with a difficult aneurysm.
24:15However, we are hoping the modeling of her brain will allow us to operate successfully.
24:21Right now we are making the skin incision and we're beginning the craniotomy.
24:25Dr. Philip Stieg is about to perform a delicate operation to stop potentially fatal bleeding into this patient's brain.
24:32My God, man. Drilling holes in his head is not the answer. The artery must be repaired.
24:38This is exactly what Dr. Stieg is planning to do.
24:42Mike, will you bring in the soft tissue, overlay the blood vessels.
24:48Okay, hold on.
24:49Hold on.
24:50But in this procedure, Stieg is guided by a quantum leap in medical imaging.
24:57It gives him X-ray vision.
25:00On Star Trek we try to make credible predictions about the future.
25:03Science fiction generally tries to create sort of plausible visions of what tomorrow might be like.
25:09One of the areas I think we've gotten right is this medical scanning,
25:12the idea of being able to see what's going on inside a person's body.
25:16Another thing that we've predicted is non-invasive procedures.
25:21Being able to do something about a person's medical condition without actually having to cut into human flesh.
25:27Needles, sutures, all the pity.
25:34He's had to cut and sew people like garments.
25:39Something Dr. Stieg still needs to do.
25:41But this enhanced reality imaging will one day permit non-invasive surgery.
25:47Can you bring out the blood vessels now, please?
25:49Yes, here they are.
25:50Okay.
25:52Great.
25:53So now what I am able to do is define where my hands are in relation to the vessels
25:58and determine what the next move should be in terms of dissection.
26:04And what I can also see is the anatomy sufficiently well enough to know where the aneurysm is.
26:12A model of the patient's brain has been built up as a composite from different types of medical images.
26:17Laser mapping allows it to be precisely aligned to a live action video during the operation, giving the surgeon pinpoint accuracy.
26:27It may seem that we are using large holes, or craniotomies is the term we use, to get to the abnormal tissue.
26:34It is our goal to try to reduce this and perform surgery in areas that were inoperable.
26:43Thank you, Doctor.
26:44The big picture in Star Trek is really trying to harness science and technology toward more humane ends.
27:04My job is to focus more on the details, the specific language and concepts within the story.
27:08And to keep myself abreast of what is happening out in the real world, I often go out and visit real research laboratories.
27:23V-O-Y-A-G-E-R.
27:26Voyager.
27:31Voyager 6.
27:33NASA.
27:35National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
27:37Jim.
27:39This was launched more than 300 years ago.
27:42But things at NASA have moved on since Voyager took off.
27:46Cassini is being prepared for launch on October the 6th, 1997, to the planet Saturn.
27:54This is the command and data. All the spacecraft commands come from there.
27:58Arden operates the show.
28:00Tom Gavin is the spacecraft manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a mine of technical information.
28:05This is where the data comes in.
28:06This is where the data comes in.
28:07The data will come in.
28:08Four gigabits a day.
28:09Wow.
28:11Cassini's mission is to deliver the Huygens probe to Titan and then orbit Saturn.
28:17Its objective, to explain the mysterious rings that circle the planet.
28:21Cassini is a nuclear-powered spacecraft using RTGs, radioisotope heater, because the solar intensity
28:28of Saturn is one one-hundredth of the solar intensity of the Earth, making solar panels impractical.
28:34Okay, this is one of four thruster clusters on the Cassini spacecraft.
28:41The thruster clusters are hydrazine thrusters which we use to turn the spacecraft.
28:45This is the Fields and Particles palette, charged particles, plasma.
28:49This is the remote sensing platform of Cassini.
28:52Spectrometers, AMRA's imaging systems, the infrared and visible channels, visual imaging mapping spectrometer,
28:57the composite infrared spectrograph, the two imaging cameras, and the stellar reference unit which we use to track stars and navigate.
29:12We fly radar to map Titan.
29:14We fly magnetometers to look at the magnetic fields of the planet, the interaction with the satellites.
29:20From here we control the spacecraft.
29:22So the analogy is to Captain Kirk or Captain Picard on the bridge of the Enterprise.
29:26He's surrounded by communications.
29:28He deals with his computer.
29:30He deals with the guidance and control, navigation, and we do the same thing here on the test complex.
29:36Magnify.
29:38Star Trek is a magnification of what it is we want to do.
29:41At some point, whether it's the 24th century or the 30th century, we will pick up where Star Trek is.
29:46It appears to be a pro, Captain.
29:51From an intelligence unknown to us.
29:53Continue transmitting universal peace and hello in all known languages.
29:57Get me Starfleet Command.
30:01Well, it was very interesting.
30:02I learned a couple of things about the magnetometers that I didn't know.
30:05But most of that stuff I know pretty well, having worked for a couple of years in the space program.
30:10The main thing that I try to do in terms of visiting research laboratories is making sure that we try to stay ahead of what's on the cutting edge of scientific and technical research these days.
30:21But it's becoming more difficult for Andre to stay ahead.
30:25Science is chasing the enterprise.
30:29And recently, astronomers have discovered a strange new world.
30:3430th of December, 1995, Berkeley, California.
30:39Paul Butler spotted the signal of a planet around 70 Virginis.
30:43It is the first planet found outside our solar system that could support life.
30:49Star Trek has influenced so many millions of people.
30:51And we've been led to believe that Jean-Luc Picard and Captain Kirk dart from planet to planet outside our solar system across the galaxy.
30:59And in fact, we astronomers have no such evidence that planets are so common.
31:04And what's really exciting is that only in the last few months have we discovered the first planets ever around solar-like stars.
31:14Legends were true, Captain.
31:16Fantastically beautiful planet.
31:19Eden.
31:21Is this what they believe they find?
31:23It was not just a planet, but the first planet that could be defined as M-Class.
31:27With life-supporting water that Paul Butler and his colleague Jeff Marcy had found.
31:37The big problem with finding planets around other stars is that the stars themselves are so bright that the glare of the star washes out the planet.
31:47So we use an indirect technique in which we just watch the star.
31:50Is it within visual range?
31:52Coming within visual range now, Captain.
31:55And we watch to see if the star wobbles around due to the gravitational pull of a planet far away, too faint to see.
32:03Put it on the screen. Extreme magnification.
32:05And it was just this kind of wobble that Paul Butler had detected.
32:08It was really an absolutely astonishing sight.
32:12I'd looked at so many stars that didn't have any planets, obviously, that to see one that's so incredibly had a planet.
32:18And it was such a huge signal and such an obvious signal that I was, I was just dumbfounded.
32:23Fascinating.
32:24I phoned Jeff at home, and I was still speechless.
32:27And I was all I could do to stutter out, Jeff, the office.
32:31You! What planet is this?
32:34Well, this planet that we call Goldilocks has a distance from its star of about a half of an Earth-Sun distance.
32:42So it would be a little warmer than the Earth, something like 85 or 90 degrees Celsius,
32:48sort of the temperature of a hot cup of tea, but not so warm that water would boil.
32:54And for that reason, life itself might spring forth.
32:56I'm almost certain that there is alien life out there somewhere.
33:18But my scientific sense of what that might be like is not really relevant to the show.
33:24Aliens on Star Trek tend to be much more sort of a metaphor for certain kinds of social conditions
33:33or certain kinds of psychological issues that we want to explore in the context of the show.
33:39I am Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise, representing a federation of planets in this part of the galaxy.
33:47Can you identify whoever or whatever you are?
33:50Aliens have their uses for scientists, too.
33:55Calling occupants of interplanetary craft.
34:01August 1977, Robert Dixon of Ohio State University received a signal that might have been extraterrestrial.
34:07It certainly bore all the hallmarks of a signal from space.
34:10But was it truly extraterrestrial?
34:13Calling occupants of interplanetary craft.
34:20There is a major science initiative to locate extraterrestrials.
34:25And at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, astronomers Seth Shostak and Frank Drake are getting paid to listen out for aliens.
34:32What we're trying to do here is actually quite simple.
34:39We're trying to eavesdrop on any telephone calls, as it were, from extraterrestrials.
34:44Nothing yet, Lieutenant.
34:45Nothing, Captain. Hailing frequencies are open.
34:48This equipment here is actually designed to find the dial tone, as it were, not so much the message.
34:52Hello?
34:53If we were able to pick up a message, of course, that would be very important.
34:56It might revolutionize our civilization.
34:59But honestly, I'm not so sure we would understand that.
35:01It would be pretty much like giving a video signal to Neanderthals, but not giving them a television set.
35:07I run all frequencies a second time, Captain. There's no...
35:10Now, unfortunately, E.T. never told us where on the dial he might be broadcasting.
35:13So we're obliged to search through millions of channels.
35:16In fact, this equipment looks at 28 million channels simultaneously, and try and find that faint radio signal
35:22that would betray the presence of an extraterrestrial society.
35:27And according to Frank Drake, there should be plenty of aliens broadcasting.
35:32We want to find N, the number of detectable civilizations in our galaxy.
35:37And that number is going to be related to the rate of star formation.
35:42Obviously, the more stars you make, the more possible abodes of life there are.
35:47And that rate of production of suitable stars is about 10 per year.
35:52The Drake equation gives the number of stars, relates this to the number of planets,
35:57this to the planets on which intelligent life might evolve, and this to the lifetime of any intelligent civilization.
36:03And in that case, N turns out to be, with the numbers I've given you, about 10,000.
36:1010,000 detectable civilizations in our galaxy.
36:14But for other scientists, Frank Drake's numbers don't add up.
36:18Aliens. Why aren't there any aliens?
36:22There may be 10,000 broadcasting civilizations, but no one has got through to Marvin Minsky,
36:30professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
36:34This is really quite a problem, because the universe is 10 or 15 billion years old, depending on who you believe.
36:41And the solar system is supposed to be about 4.3 billion years old, and life started only a few hundred million years ago.
36:54So why aren't there other lives that appeared much earlier in the history of the universe,
37:00and why aren't they all over the place visiting us every few minutes?
37:03Why haven't they done anything?
37:05Well, it's a bit frightening that we have not made contact with aliens yet.
37:10They're studying us.
37:11No, I've never seen any kind of aliens other than the other crew members that we have on board.
37:16We're totally alone.
37:20But Seth Shostak remains optimistic.
37:24Maybe there's a lot of life in the galaxy, but there's not very much intelligent life.
37:27I mean, it could be that Captain Kirk will go out there and find sponges and insects,
37:32and not too many guys spouting philosophy at him.
37:35Yes, my children.
37:37Zeus, Athena, Aphrodite, Artemis, a gallant band of travelers.
37:43We knew your Earth well 5,000 of your years ago.
37:46We've been observing your love
37:49And one life will make a contact with you
37:57Hello?
37:59Hello?
38:01Hello?
38:03We are your friends.
38:05I really doubt that they would look like us.
38:08And personally, I'm not even sure they're going to be biological.
38:11They might not be walking protoplasm the way we are.
38:14They might be machine intelligence.
38:15Machines would have tremendous advantages when it comes to dispersing through the galaxy,
38:20and they may be the dominant life-form around.
38:22I believe in miracles
38:26Where are you from?
38:29You sexy thing, sexy thing
38:32The producers of Star Trek, though, have no doubt about which sort of aliens are likely to be dominant.
38:39We tend to favor humanoid aliens because it's much easier to do alien makeup on human actors,
38:44and we want our characters to be able to interact with these aliens as well.
38:48And in terms of machine intelligence, we have our character Commander Data.
38:54He's, in effect, the ultimate user-friendly computer.
38:57Of course, but...
38:59He's somebody that people can feel comfortable around.
39:01You jewel!
39:03And he allows us to explore the very question of what it means to be human.
39:05This question is also being explored in the conception of 20th century machine intelligence.
39:16So this is COG.
39:18COG is the first serious attempt at building an intelligent humanoid robot.
39:23At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Professor Rodney Brooks is trying to build a robot, like Data, who will be able to relate to the world.
39:32COG has the characteristics of a human. We've got a left arm here, no right arm yet.
39:36We have the head with the eyes tracking me around as I move.
39:40Maybe I can attract COG's attention over here.
39:43And you see COG has two eyes which can move around much as human eyes can.
39:47And what we're trying to do here is build a robot which is able to interact with people in the way that people interact with people.
39:54Would you care for some dinner as well?
39:56As part, I guess, of the quest that all us science fiction fans grew up with of wanting to build a robot which was just like a human.
40:07A quest that Data himself has embarked on.
40:10I was able to provide law with more realistic skin and eye colour than my own.
40:14Only in his case, Android has spawned Android.
40:17Congratulations, Data. It's a go.
40:23But giving birth is just the beginning. The major challenge is Android education.
40:30While motor coordination has improved 12%, reflexes still need to develop.
40:35Visual comprehension is especially difficult for law.
40:43Translating her vast data banks into recognizable applications may improve with additional transfers.
40:50She is also learning to supplement her innate Android behaviour with simulated human responses.
40:56And it is interesting to note that as I observe Lal learning about her world, I share in her experience.
41:13This happens because Lal's brain is identical to Data's.
41:17In this respect, COG represents a fundamentally different approach to Android training.
41:22We can't do that with COG. We can't download our brain contents directly into COG.
41:29Instead, we have to build a brain and then let COG try and learn about the world in the same way that human infants learn about the world.
41:37I can't believe that Rod thinks COG is going to be like a child.
41:40It is not a child!
41:42Well, why should biology, rather than technology, determine what's a child?
41:45A new life out of his own being. To me, that suggests a child.
41:48But it obviously can't be like a child because its body is so different.
41:53You've never been a parent.
41:55But whatever its status, the offspring is learning.
42:01We caught it!
42:03COG itself is not going to live up to the expectations of Commander Data by any means.
42:08This is what it means to feel.
42:09We're trying almost an impossible goal for now.
42:14But by trying to reach that goal, we're finding out the limitations of our current theories.
42:19This is what it means to feel.
42:21And while it may display many characteristics of intelligence, I think it's wishful thinking to think that in our first serious attempt we're going to get enough of it right to make it really, truly be intelligent.
42:31And it's pretty much doomed to failure because it is such an experiment.
42:36Thank you for my life.
42:43Flirting.
42:46Laughter.
42:48Painting family.
42:53Female.
42:56Human.
43:01Most days, the messenger from Paramount comes by and brings me my package of scripts.
43:14Usually there's a script plus various revisions.
43:17Star Trek is sort of an interstellar soap opera.
43:32We have a regular cast of characters and every week we see them at home, see what's going on in their lives, watch the various challenges that they face.
43:39Often they're facing life and death situations.
43:42Great.
43:43We do 26 shows a year and the boxes that you see there are filled with the scripts that I've worked on.
43:51I read them, write up my notes and then fax the notes back over to the studio.
43:55Where Andre's own efforts are judged.
43:58But from a starter consistency point of view, it doesn't make sense.
44:01Yeah, but Mike, I mean in terms of the basic principles of the system, the way that we've established that it operates, I don't see why you can't literally resurrect the dead.
44:07Well, I'm not arguing from a scientific point of view.
44:10Michael Okuda is the show's scenic arts supervisor and he is clear about the concessions science must make to Star Trek.
44:17You establish certain capabilities and you hit this button and you move someone from one point to another.
44:23The way we try to deal with science in Star Trek is first you try to start with what's scientifically plausible.
44:27But then you try to filter that through what looks good for television.
44:32And besides, if I push some buttons here, it's really cool.
44:34Then you filter that through what we can afford to do on a television or a motion picture budget.
44:39For example, one of the most brilliant aspects of Star Trek is Gene Roddenberry's invention of the transporter.
44:45Landing a spaceship on a planet surface every week would be just tremendously expensive.
44:49So we put our people into a transporter chamber, they disappear, and then they materialize on the planet.
44:56But transportation is the Star Trek science that causes physicists the most problems.
45:02Lawrence Krauss has worked out what's involved.
45:06So on the transporter, say you want to dematerialize someone, well then what you're doing is turning matter into energy.
45:12The molecules in your body are converted into energy, then beamed into this chamber and reconverted back into their original pattern.
45:20Okay, well that sounds pretty good, except it's an awful lot of energy.
45:23In fact, rather environmentally unfriendly.
45:25Say you took a 100 kilogram person.
45:28Well, if you turn that 100 kilograms into energy, then the energy equivalent would be something like a 1,100 megaton nuclear explosion.
45:37Well, that's a pretty big bang.
45:42Now the other option, which may initially seem a little less frightening, is to transport not the atoms, but rather the information or the bits associated with the human being.
45:51Billions of kiloquads of data.
45:54Now that would involve learning exactly where every single atom is in your body, then recording that information, then transporting the information from here to there,
46:02then using some atoms I already have over here to make a replica of you.
46:04Well, if I didn't know so much about these things, maybe they wouldn't scare me so much.
46:08But if I did that, I'd have two copies of you, and I'd have to get rid of the first copy.
46:12You know, maybe ignorance really is bliss.
46:15Reg, transporting really is the safest way to travel.
46:18The advantages of a transporter over any other forms of transport mean that in spite of the slight technical difficulties, there are scientists working on the problem.
46:34If whatever comes our way.
46:38Get out of the way.
46:39And John Rarity is a physicist in a hurry.
46:41All of the world is a loving place.
46:45Fire all of the guns and watch them explode into space.
46:50In a space.
46:51In a space.
46:56Fiber optics.
46:58June 6th, 1996.
47:00The Defence Research Agency, England.
47:02Switching on helium neon laser.
47:04With my colleague, Paul Tapster, I've been testing a theory that might allow for the teleportation of all the information that describes matter.
47:11Turning on the main laser beam and lights.
47:17It's light that John Rarity and Paul Tapster are trying to teleport in this experiment.
47:24They want to transport information about photons, the tiny particles that make up light beams.
47:30But they've hit an obstacle.
47:32One of physics most fundamental laws.
47:35In order to teleport something, we need to measure it extremely accurately, right down to the level of the individual molecules, atoms and photons that make up that object.
47:49And this is where we come up against Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.
47:54And that principle states that it's impossible for me to know exactly where every atom is in your body and what it's doing at the same time.
48:01And of course, that's precisely what I have to know to transport someone.
48:06Now this means it could never transport an exact replica of you, but really only an approximation at some level.
48:12Where things might be different.
48:14Like Diana could end up completely naked.
48:22I should have known. Even their transporters can't be trusted.
48:26Now, the Star Trek writers got around this by creating Heisenberg compensators.
48:31I once had someone call me on the phone and ask me,
48:34well, how does the Heisenberg compensator work?
48:36And the only thing I could say was, very well, thank you.
48:39So what we need is a way around the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
48:44And this serious bit of kit allows us to send the information contained in the object without measuring it directly.
48:54Energising.
48:55Energising.
48:57And this is how the kit works.
48:59This violet laser goes into this crystal here, where the laser beam is split into pairs of identical particles of light, or photons, which are then fired down to the far end of the apparatus.
49:13One of the identical pair is sent to the location they are transporting to, the other to the place they're transporting from. Here it is compared to the particle they want to transport.
49:26The final stage of the experiment is to communicate that information to the other half of the identical pair. And then to change it by exactly that difference.
49:38Isn't this exciting? We are going to witness a moment in history.
49:42It then becomes identical to the particle that you wanted to teleport.
49:47It should be interesting.
49:50But we never had to measure the original particle, so it hasn't been changed.
49:59So there we are, our transporter. Beam me up Scotty.
50:03Beam me up Scotty.
50:08So here's the catch, or as physicists like to say, a non-trivial problem.
50:13The average person is made up of about 10 to the 28th atoms.
50:18And you have to know the position and state of each of those 10 to the 28th atoms if you want to transport someone.
50:23And that takes, I've estimated, about 10 to the 28th kilobytes of information.
50:28I can still remember the day in Dr. Olufsen's transporter theory class when he was talking about the body being converted into billions of kiloquads of data.
50:37If you wanted to store that much information, you'd have to stack hard drives from here about a third of the way to the center of the Milky Way galaxy, 10,000 light years away.
50:46In fact, it would take longer than the age of the universe to transport that much information.
50:50Kind of takes away the excitement, doesn't it?
50:53One atom out of place, and poof!
50:56You never come back.
50:58Action!
51:02Star Trek is not really a representation of what science will be like in the 24th century.
51:08Could you, uh, could you turn a little more towards us, please?
51:12Nobody really knows what science will be like.
51:14So what we're dealing with on the show is not so much the science of Star Trek, but rather Star Trek science.
51:20You're trying to help.
51:21Yes, exactly. That's me. I'm the one.
51:23Okay, I never do that. That's good.
51:25Ha!
51:27Sometimes I read what it's going to be and then it says, uh,
51:30Tech.
51:31I go, what the hell are they going to come up with for this one?
51:33What we try to do on Star Trek is portray a very positive vision of the future.
51:38Um, how and whether that vision is achieved comes down to the real scientists and engineers.
51:42Which leads back to the fundamental question, could the Enterprise ever fly?
51:48And to the hope contained in 11 atoms of antimatter at CERN.
51:52The problem with these antihydrogen atoms is that we don't have them anymore.
51:58After creating them, they only lasted for something like 30 nanoseconds
52:02because they were traveling along Lear with nearly speed of light.
52:06And at the exit of Lear, we had our detectors.
52:09Our detectors are made out of normal matter.
52:11And if antimatter smashes into matter, it annihilates.
52:17Well, Scotty, now you've done it.
52:20Aye, the haggis is in the fire for sure.
52:22The first big problem with antimatter is one of containment.
52:26On small scales, that just means it's hard to hold antimatter in a vessel.
52:30But on large scales, if antimatter were released from the warp core of the Enterprise,
52:35the whole thing could be destroyed in a massive explosion.
52:41The engines!
52:46Luckily, the problem is under investigation.
52:49Pardon?
52:52But we're not doing Star Trek science at all.
52:55No, we're doing serious science, of course.
52:57But the scientists at CERN are working on the containment of antimatter.
53:01OK, Mr. Gabbas, activate the systems.
53:04And their success or failure will have implications for the Enterprise.
53:08OK, one second, please.
53:09Let me just check things over.
53:13The problem with experiments is that a million things are going wrong.
53:17When you see ready, we're ready.
53:21Ready?
53:22First, we've got to trap it.
53:23OK.
53:24Next, we've got to cool it down.
53:25Three...
53:27Two...
53:29One...
53:30Computer errors.
53:31How was that?
53:32They're not doing their job right.
53:34I left my heart to a starship...
53:37This time, it's not my fault.
53:39Things didn't go as well as I'd hoped.
53:42Even to all the anti-protons take such a heroic effort,
53:46that making anti-hydrogen, for me, seems a long way in the future.
53:49Not in my lifetime.
53:50I left my heart to a starship trooper...
53:52I left my heart...
53:56So the problem at the moment is that the Enterprise simply would not fly.
54:01I'll say it again.
54:02It would never get there.
54:04Bridge, we have a new problem.
54:05We're five minutes from a warp core breach.
54:07There's nothing I can do.
54:11The physics problems include the incredible g-forces needed to accelerate to near light speed.
54:16The unimaginable amount of energy that it would take to get there.
54:20The need to warp space and time with exotic matter.
54:24All hands, brace for impact!
54:26Not to mention the current world shortage of dilithium crystals.
54:33It's not a future without problems.
54:38But it is a future.
54:39And it does say that we as the human race will survive into the 24th century and beyond.
54:46You're gonna miss this ship.
54:49She went before in time.
54:52This is the height of the new engine room.
54:56What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived.
55:00Now this is the warp core for the new ship then?
55:02This is the warp core.
55:03Okay.
55:05I always thought I'd get a shot at this chair one day.
55:08We're hoping to make this ship warp 10 capable.
55:12Perhaps you still will.
55:14Somehow I doubt that this will be the last ship to carry the name Enterprise.
55:21We're talking about the biggest warp engine we've seen on a starship today.
55:25Wow, that's going to be really amazing.
55:28We are to Farragut.
55:30Two to beam up.
55:35But you know, no matter how daunting are the obstacles encountered by the Enterprise,
55:39or how far removed it may seem from the physics of today.
55:43Truth is stranger than fiction.
55:45And I think the best is yet to come.
55:47The life is yet to come.
55:51The life is yet to come.
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