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NARRATOR: Is Earth the only

planet of its kind in the universe?

Or is there somewhere
else like this out there?

Is there life beyond Earth?

The search for alien life

is one of humankind's greatest

technological challenges.

And scientists are seeking

new ways to find answers.

We're pushing the

boundary of information

of where life can exist

past the Earth and out

into the solar system.

NARRATOR: Leading the search

are sophisticated telescopes

that scan the sky

and an armada of robotic probes

exploring the outer reaches

of our solar system...

all revealing the planets,

moons, asteroids and comets

like never before.

WOMAN: We can go
places and see things

that there's no other way

we could have ever seen.

NARRATOR: The search reveals evidence

of strange and unexpected worlds--

places with lakes, storms and rain,

violent places driven

by powerful forces

deep underground.

Worlds that may have hidden oceans

hundreds of millions of miles
from the heat of the sun.

The pace of discovery, just

in the last couple of years,

is just mind-boggling.

NARRATOR: New missions are

helping to unlock the mysteries

of what makes a planet habitable,

raising the question of whether

the building blocks of life

are more prevalent than

previously imagined,

not just in our own solar system,

but possibly throughout our galaxy.

We now have for the first

time in human history

definite planets out

there among the stars

that remind us of home.

NARRATOR: "Finding
Life Beyond Earth,"

up now on NOVA.

Major funding for NOVA

is provided by the following:

And...

And the Corporation

for Public Broadcasting.

And by:

Additional funding is provided

by Millicent Bell through:

NARRATOR: After a seven-year,

two-billion-mile voyage,

the spacecraft Cassini

enters orbit around Saturn.

Cassini heads towards the

largest of Saturn's 62 moons...

Titan.
Bigger than the planet Mercury,

Titan is hidden by
a thick orange haze.

No one has ever seen its surface.

But a small probe named Huygens,

released by Cassini,

is about to change everything.

This mission will

challenge long-held notions

of where life could

exist beyond Earth.

These are the actual

images Huygens takes

as it breaks through
the clouds and haze.

Titan is a land of
mountains and valleys,

a place that looks

surprisingly like Earth.

Then, images reveal

something no one expects.

The surface is littered

with smooth rocks,

the type normally found

in river beds on Earth.

CHRIS McKAY: My response was shock.

We look out on the surface and

we see what looks like a desert

and at the same time,

the data from the probe

told us that the ground

around the site was wet.

NARRATOR: Hundreds
of miles overhead,

Cassini's radar
sweeps the surface.

The images show a landscape

covered with what appear
to be hundreds of lakes.

This one covers an area

of 6,000 square miles,

about the size of Lake

Ontario, one of the Great Lakes.

It's a surprising discovery.

It's the only world

other than the Earth

that has a liquid on its surface.

NARRATOR: But what

exactly is this liquid?

Titan is minus-290
degrees Fahrenheit.

If it's water, it
should be frozen solid.

Then, one of Cassini's

instruments analyzes

the infrared light

reflected off the lakes.

The readings are

consistent not with water

but with liquid methane and ethane,

substances that on Earth are

volatile, flammable gases.

The data from Cassini are

so detailed, scientists can imagine

what it would be like to stand

on this cold, distant world.

McKAY: Standing on
the surface of Titan,

you see Saturn just

sitting there in the sky,

big, huge, stationary object,

almost like a door

to another dimension.

Here we see lakes,

lakes of liquid methane.
And in the horizon,
we see mountains.

These are mountains made

of ice, made of water ice,

frozen so hard that

it acts like rocks.

And the features that we see in them

are carved by the liquid methane

that's forming these lakes.

Looking across the horizon on Titan,

you might see a thunderstorm

or a range of thunderstorms

coming at you.

We see rain coming down.

It's not drops like we're

familiar with on Earth.

This is methane instead of water.

It falls much more slowly

due to the low gravity

and the drops are bigger.

NARRATOR: So what are the implications

of finding a liquid flowing

on Titan's surface for a

scientist like Chris McKay?

McKAY: Liquid seemed

to be the key to life,

so maybe there's life

in that liquid on Titan,

little things swimming

in liquid methane,

being quite happy at these

low, cold temperatures.

NARRATOR: There is no evidence

that living things like

microbes exist in these lakes.

But if such evidence

were found here,
it would fundamentally
change perceptions

about life beyond Earth.

If life could evolve

on worlds as drastically different

as the Earth and Titan,

then perhaps life could

evolve in many other ways

on many different worlds.

NASA's director of planetary

science is Jim Green.

GREEN: One of the questions

that we all want to know,

I think, deep down inside,

is, "Are we alone?"

I mean, that's really fundamental.

NARRATOR: Jim is at the forefront

of a global effort to understand

whether the conditions for

life exist beyond our planet.

GREEN: We're pushing the boundary

of information of
where life can exist

past the Earth and out

into the solar system.

NARRATOR: So, where in our solar

system could life potentially exist?

Heading out from the sun,

the first planet is Mercury.

It's an extremely
hostile environment.

In March 2011, NASA's

Messenger probe becomes

the first spacecraft to orbit

this small ball of rock and iron.

These are some of the

first images sent back.

Three times closer to

the sun than Earth is,

Mercury bakes in 800-degree

heat on its side facing the sun,

while on the night side,

temperatures plummet to minus 290.

Mercury is the
ultimate desert world.

Life of any kind

here seems unlikely.

Mercury's closest neighbor,

Venus, is almost as hostile.

Though nearly twice

as far from the sun,

temperatures here
exceed 880 degrees.

Decades of observations
have revealed

a planet shrouded in carbon dioxide

and toxic clouds of sulfuric acid.

These radar images reveal

thousands of ancient volcanoes

on a surface hot
enough to melt lead.

And with an atmospheric

pressure that is 90 times greater

than on Earth,

it is hard to imagine that

anything could live down here.

But based on chemical

analysis of the atmosphere,

scientists believe that water

once flowed on Venus's surface.

If life ever did exist here,

evidence has yet to be found.

So what is it about Earth, the

third planet out from the sun,
that makes life possible?

The answer lies in

three key ingredients.

First, all life is made

up of organic molecules

consisting of carbon in
compounds that include nitrogen,

hydrogen and oxygen, among others.

Although organic molecules

aren't alive themselves,

they are the basic building

blocks of every living organism.

Life also needs a

liquid, like water.

In water, the basic organic

molecules can mix, interact

and become more complex.

The last ingredient is an

energy source like the sun

to power the chemical reactions

that drive all life, from

the smallest microbe...

to us.

When these three

ingredients came together

billions of years ago, life

found a way to take hold...

and today persists even in

the most extreme environments,

like here.

This is the Mojave Desert, Nevada.

It is one of the hottest,

driest places on our planet.

McKAY: This part of the desert

is particularly interesting to me,

because it's the driest part.

There's an axis of dryness here.

If we go either east or
west, it becomes wetter.

NARRATOR: Surprisingly, even here,

with only a foot of rainfall a year,

all three ingredients

for life are present.

The rocks provide just enough shade

to prevent water from

evaporating completely.

McKAY: Underneath the white rocks,

we can find the most amazing thing.

We see this layer of green.

This is bacteria.

The rock provides a little shelter.

It's a little wetter

and a little nicer

living under the rock than

it is in the soil around it.

In addition, the white

rocks are translucent.

Hold them up to the sun and

see light coming through.

These organisms are

photosynthesizing

here in the desert where

nothing else will grow.

So they're living in a
miniature little greenhouse.

NARRATOR: This place shows

that even in some of Earth's

most extreme environments,

under the right conditions,

life has a chance.

For scientists like Chris

McKay, the question is:

Is Earth the only planet

with the essential
conditions for life?

One way to know is to investigate

how planets like ours formed

to have these ingredients

in the first place.

That story starts

4.6 billion years ago,

with the birth of our solar system.

As a vast cloud of dust and

gas collapses in on itself,

pressures increase.

Temperatures at the center

rise to millions of degrees...

until energy from the early sun

blasts away some of the cloud.

This lights up the

young solar system,

revealing the beginnings of planets.

The mystery has always been

how did this spinning cloud of dust

become the massive

planets we see today?

SCOTT SANDFORD: How does one go from

microscopic grains to golf-ball size things,

and how do golf-ball

size things go from there

to ten-meter size things?

How do those go to
planetary embryos?

And there's a lot of steps in there

we don't quite understand.

NARRATOR: Many scientists believe

the answers are

hidden in asteroids...
the oldest rocks
in the solar system,

leftover debris from

its earliest days.

In 2003 the Japanese probe

Hayabusa sets out

on an audacious mission.

The goal: to land on an asteroid,

collect samples of dust and

then return them to Earth.

The target is asteroid Itokawa,

a third of a mile long

and speeding through space

at 56,000 miles per hour.

Landing on it would be like

trying to hit a speeding bullet

with another speeding bullet.

SANDFORD: Hayabusa
in Japanese

means falcon, and the idea was to do

like a falcon
grabs a rabbit--

swoop down, sort of

just touch the surface,

get your sample and go.

NARRATOR: In 2005, 180 million miles

from Earth, Hayabusa makes contact.

It stays just long

enough to grab a sample.

It will take five years

before Hayabusa
returns asteroid dust to Earth.

But in the meantime,

using lasers on board,

Hayabusa takes measurements

of Itokawa's size and mass.

These allow scientists

to determine the asteroid's
internal structure.

What they discover

could be a blueprint

for how planets like

Earth first formed.

SANDFORD: It's not one solid

lump of rock, but, in fact,

it consists of a
pile of smaller rocks,

of many sizes all the way from

houses down to dust grains.

NARRATOR: If we could see

inside asteroid Itokawa,

this is what it would look like:

a loose mixture of smaller asteroids

that are held together by gravity.

SANDFORD: Maybe 40% of the internal

volume of the asteroid is empty space.

You probably could just take

your hand and just go like this

and just push it down

into the asteroid.

NARRATOR: Is this the first step

in building rocky
planets like Earth?

GREEN: Asteroids are

just not lumps of rock.

These are the basic parts or

building blocks of planets.

NARRATOR: Over hundreds

of thousands of years,

asteroids like Itokawa

continue to collide,

growing bigger and hotter.

As their gravity increases,

they attract even more asteroids
until eventually,
as temperatures rise,

they become spheres of

rock with hot molten cores--

protoplanets.

Computer simulations suggest

that within ten million years

of the solar system's birth,

up to a hundred protoplanets

ranging in size
from our moon to Mars

were orbiting close to the sun.

So why does the solar system

look so different today?

This is proto-Earth four-

and-a-half billion years ago.

Planetary geologist
Stephen Mojzsis believes

this world was very different

from the one we see today.

MOJZSIS: Looking at the surface

here, this landscape is dominated

by lava, black and

blasted by impacts.

Underfoot we find
mostly basaltic rock.

It is the frozen
product of molten rock.

These planetary surfaces

weren't molten boiling cauldrons.

But instead, for most

of their early histories,

they were solid and cool.

NARRATOR: The atmosphere

is thick with carbon dioxide

and laced with sulfuric acid,

the result of intense

volcanic activity.
MOJZSIS: The embryonic Earth
would have an atmosphere

denser than the one we have

and a sky yellow and red and

thoroughly unbreathable to us.

NARRATOR: How does this

toxic and inhospitable world

eventually become the

Earth we know today?

Ironically, it will
take a cataclysmic event

to create a planet
capable of harboring life.

A protoplanet the size of

Mars slams into early Earth.

The collision is so violent

it melts the surface,

creates an even larger planet,

and blasts molten rock back

into space that will coalesce

and eventually form our moon.

Earth isn't the only planet

that gets transformed

by giant impacts.

Over tens of millions of years,

all the protoplanets of

the early solar system

repeatedly collide,

becoming larger
bodies with each impact

in a destructive game
of planetary billiards.

This process eventually formed

the four rocky planets seen today:

Mercury...

Venus...
Earth...

and Mars.

SARAH STEWART: So the final

planets that we have today

are really the ones

that won the competition

in that some planets

were literally destroyed

or thrown out of the solar system

and others survived

to be here today.

NARRATOR: Sarah Stewart

is a planetary scientist.

She's trying to determine

how these impacts

created a habitable world.

There's some magic set of

conditions that has to occur

in a solar system to give

you an Earth-like planet.

NARRATOR: Figuring out what happens

when a massive planet the

size of Mars hits Earth

is no small feat.

It requires smashing things together

at extremely high velocities.

We want to simulate what happens

when materials strike the

Earth at very high speeds.

What we can do in the lab

is study little
pieces of the process

and, using the information we

gather from many experiments,

we build computer models

that try and recreate
the whole event.

NARRATOR: This requires a

special piece of hardware,

a 20-foot cannon that

uses an explosive charge

to fire projectiles at up
to 6,000 miles per hour.

At the other end is

a pressure chamber

and the target, representing

a planet like Earth,

wired up with precision sensors.

STEWART: We have
a 40-millimeter gun

that launches 100-gram

bullets into rocks or ices,

and we study what happens

as that shock wave travels

through the material.

NARRATOR: The gun is set to fire.

(gunshot)

Each test measures the

temperatures and shock waves

generated in different materials

when they are slammed

into each other.

The results are fed

into computer models

of the final stages of

a planet's formation.

STEWART: Over the past few years,

we've realized how important

the last giant impact is to

the final state of a planet.

That last impact could

fundamentally change
major parts of the
planet, and that could lead

to something that's Earth-like

or something that's
more Mercury-like.

NARRATOR: Sarah's work, though

not yet conclusive, suggests

that giant impacts could

play a role in producing water

on a planet's surface.

Her results indicate the

collisions were so violent,

they could heat rock

to 2,700 degrees,

hot enough to release water

trapped deep beneath

the surfaces as steam.

Sarah believes this

may have happened

during Earth's final

catastrophic collision.

In its aftermath,

as the raging hot planet

cools over millions of years,

this steam condenses

and falls as rain,

covering the surface

with seas and oceans.

If this hypothesis is correct,

then several million

years after forming,

Earth has two of the three

ingredients needed for life:

water, and energy from the sun.

But what about organic molecules,

the chemical building

blocks of life?
How did they get to Earth?

Some scientists believe

the answer may lie

in the furthest reaches

of the solar system...

beyond Jupiter...

Saturn...

Uranus...

and even Neptune.

Here, three billion

miles from the sun,

is a vast ring of comets

and other debris

called the Kuiper Belt.

Like asteroids,

comets are remnants from

the dawn of the solar system,

but as well as rock,

they are also made of ices

that only freeze

this far from the sun.

Astrobiologist Danny Glavin

and his team think comets

are the key to understanding

how the final ingredients

necessary for life

arrived on Earth.

GLAVIN: The reason that comets

are so important to study

is that they really are

windows back in time.

These things formed four-

and-a-half billion years ago,

before the Earth even formed,

and so we're looking at the

chemistry in these objects
that was frozen in time.

NARRATOR: But analyzing

actual comet material

when the closest sample is more

than three billion miles away

is a major challenge.

Fortunately,

icy comets occasionally

fly in closer to Earth.

As they approach the

sun, comets warm up

and the ice starts to vaporize,

spitting out tiny

particles of ice and dust.

GLAVIN: So when you're

looking at a comet in the sky,

what you're actually seeing

is predominantly the tail.

You don't see that

tiny rocky ice nucleus,

because it's being dominated

by the sublimation
of ices and rocks.

So you see that long

tail and the solar wind,

which is just dragging it

for millions of miles behind.

NASA ANNOUNCER: Zero and lift-off

of the Stardust spacecraft.

NARRATOR: A Delta II
rocket blasts into space.

Onboard is the probe

Stardust.

ANNOUNCER: Gone through mach 1,

vehicle looks very good, burning nicely.

NARRATOR: The aim: to meet up

with a comet speeding through space

at nearly 60,000 miles per hour,

then, fly through the ice and dust

and bring some of it back to Earth.

240 million miles from Earth,

Stardust approaches
the comet named Wild 2.

It heads to the heart of the comet

and takes these images

of its solid icy nucleus.

The surface is broken and jagged,

and shooting out of it are

jets of dust and ice particles.

Astronomer John Spencer is an expert

on objects from the

outer solar system.

SPENCER: The cometary

surface is pretty treacherous.

We have crazy spires that may

be several hundred feet high.

We have overhangs,

we have upturned layers

where the surface really seems

to have been torn apart.

This is a very, very

bizarre landscape.

We have a surface
that is mostly black,

but scattered around within

that we have fresh ice.

We see a mostly black sky

because the atmosphere

is almost negligible.

That black sky is punctuated

by these geyser-like
jets of ice particles

that are shooting up at

supersonic velocities.
NARRATOR: These icy geysers
bombard Stardust.

These particles hit at

almost 14,000 miles per hour,

six times faster than

a speeding bullet.

NARRATOR: Stardust
survives intact

and on January 15, 2006,

the samples return to Earth.

GLAVIN: The samples fell

down on Utah and boom--

we had the first

comet sample materials

and there were astrobiologists

all over the Earth

that were, you know,

kind of screaming inside,

because we knew this

was our first chance

to actually analyze comet material.

NARRATOR: Inside,
scientists discover

over 1,000 grains of comet dust.

Glavin and his team analyze

this material for three years.

Then, they make an

incredible discovery.

In the dust from the comet

are traces of the

organic molecule glycine,

an integral part of living things.

Probably frozen into

the comet when it formed,

glycine consists of simple elements

found in the cloud of gas and dust

that gave birth to our solar system.

Now, glycine is an amino acid.

It's one of the

building blocks for life.

GLAVIN: These make life go.

They make up proteins and enzymes,

they catalyze all the

reactions in our bodies,

they're fundamental to life.

Without these we
could not exist at all.

NARRATOR: All life on Earth,

from these bacteria to us,

uses amino acids.

Glycine is special

because it's the most common

of the 20 amino acids needed

to make proteins, part of

the very fabric of life.

The discovery means that comets

could have been one source

of the organic materials

necessary for life on Earth.

We've proved that in fact

comets could have delivered

the raw ingredients of

life to the early Earth.

NARRATOR: But what

could cause comets

to fly in from the furthest

edges of the solar system,

slam into Earth and deliver

these organic compounds?

The clues to one possible process

lie back out in the Kuiper

Belt, the disk of icy objects

that orbits the sun at the

edge of our solar system.
HAL LEVISON: We expected
when we found the Kuiper Belt

that we would just see

objects in nice circular orbits

about the sun.

NARRATOR: But observations reveal

that the Kuiper Belt objects

are not orbiting as predicted.

Out here, it's chaotic.

When we look at the Kuiper

Belt, we see something that looks

like somebody took the

solar system, picked it up

and shook it real hard.

And that's what started us thinking

that something really

strange has happened there.

NARRATOR: Levison theorizes

that the reason for this mayhem

likely is connected with

the two largest planets

in the solar system.

Jupiter is so big it could

swallow more than 1,300 Earths,

and Saturn, with its

vast rings of ice,

is 95 times Earth's mass.

With their enormous size comes

an enormous gravitational pull.

LEVISON: Everything that we see

is a result of what
Jupiter and Saturn did.

NARRATOR: Levison wonders if

the chaos of the Kuiper Belt

could have resulted from

a planet smashing into it.
To find out, he runs a number
of computer simulations.

One model creates the

conditions in the Kuiper Belt

that we see today.

3.9 billion years ago, as

Jupiter circled the sun twice,

Saturn made one complete orbit.

Each time these orbits coincided,

there was a powerful

gravitational surge.

That pushed Saturn's

orbit further from the sun

and destabilized the orbits

of the two outermost planets,

Uranus and Neptune.

Jupiter and Saturn sort

of tugged each other,

and that drove the orbits

of Uranus and Neptune

absolutely nuts.

NARRATOR: Uranus and Neptune

are sent careening outwards

towards the Kuiper Belt.

Comets ranging in
size from a mile across

to objects the size of Pluto

are blasted out of their orbits

by the planetary invasion.

The disk went kaplooey.

Think of it as sort of a bowling

ball hitting bowling pins.

These things got scattered

all over the place.

NARRATOR: The end result is

a hundred-million-year period

when comets, kicked out

into the solar system

by Uranus and Neptune,

smash into anything in their path.

It's a period scientists call

"the late heavy bombardment."

Earth doesn't escape.

LEVISON: This was so violent

that probably every square

inch of the surface of the Earth

was hit by a comet during this time.

NARRATOR: This is one

theory that might explain

how massive amounts

of organic molecules,

the building blocks of life,

made their way to Earth.

Possible evidence of the late

heavy bombardment can be seen

on the surface of other planets

and moons in the solar system.

Impact craters.

Literally the seeds of

life, the amino acids

would have been delivered

to all the planets

and their moons in our solar system.

NARRATOR: So if life's building

blocks were delivered by comets

throughout the solar system,

could life also have sprung

up on worlds other than Earth?

It is unlikely that living

organisms exist today

on Venus or Mercury,

as space probes have found

no evidence on these planets
of the other vital ingredient
life needs: liquid water.

But what about Mars?

Organic compounds have

yet to be found here,

but scientists are

searching the planet

for the other preconditions of life.

There have been many missions

to Mars, and nearly all suggest

that water once

flowed on the surface.

These detailed images from

satellites orbiting Mars

reveal vast canyons

blasted out by epic floods

and valleys carved by raging rivers.

But the evidence indicates

that all this water disappeared

from the surface

billions of years ago

as Mars cooled down

and lost its atmosphere.

But on May 25, 2008,

a spacecraft called
Phoenix touches down

near Mars' north pole.

Digging a few inches down,

it exposes a white material

that vaporizes after a few days.

Soil analysis reveals

it is water ice.

We landed 68 degrees north, poof!

Just a few centimeters below the

ground there was a layer of ice.

NARRATOR: Satellites analyze

radar waves bouncing back
from both polar caps.

They reveal that beneath a

layer of frozen carbon dioxide

there is a lot of water ice.

If it all melted, it would

cover the whole planet

in an ocean more than 80 feet deep.

GREEN: When we look at Mars

and we see the

reservoirs of water there,

it's completely surprised us

in terms of the amount of water

and how much water is

actually trapped underground.

NARRATOR: The same satellites

orbiting Mars are discovering

that buried ice is also widespread

beneath the desert floors.

McKAY: When we look at Mars, we

see what looks like a desert world

with no water, but in fact,

Mars has lots of water--

it's ice.

Mars is an ice cube covered

with a layer of dirt.

NARRATOR: But this doesn't mean

that finding life here is imminent.

Ice doesn't melt the same way

on Mars as it does on Earth.

The atmospheric pressure here

is 150 times lower than ours.

It's impossible for

water to exist as a liquid

at the surface.

McKAY: Ice on Mars behaves

like dry ice does on Earth.
A piece of dry ice on Earth

goes directly from

the solid ice to vapor.

It doesn't form a liquid.

That's why we call it dry ice.

On Mars the pressure is so low

that water ice does the same thing.

NARRATOR: No liquid water

on the surface of Mars today

means that vital chemical

reactions cannot take place.

It seems impossible that

life could exist there.

But could it exist in

the buried ice itself?

An expedition to one of
the coldest places on Earth

is looking to answer that question.

These are the dry

valleys of the Antarctic,

one of the world's

most extreme deserts.

Here, beneath a layer of dry dirt,

is buried ice similar to Mars.

If life can exist here,

could it exist on Mars too?

We're doing in the Antarctic

exactly what we want to do on Mars.

We drill down into

this Mars-like soil,

we collect Mars-like ice,

and we look for what we hope

are Mars-like microorganisms.

NARRATOR: At the point

where the dirt meets the ice,

the team discovers a

thin film of liquid water.

And when they look at the

samples under a microscope,

to their surprise, there

is something moving.

We're finding at the

ice there is life,

which is quite remarkable.

NARRATOR: Microorganisms thrive

in this thin film of water,

but only for a short time.

McKAY: They spend most of the year

frozen and dormant,

and they're only active

for a few weeks each summer,

when temperatures get warm.

NARRATOR: On Mars, summer

temperatures at the equator

can reach 70 degrees.

Could the buried ice melt

here and create conditions

similar to those
found in the Antarctic?

McKAY: We may be able

to find conditions

where the ice is close

enough to the surface,

close enough to the equator that

even under today's conditions,

there's a small chance

of liquid water and life.

NARRATOR: If probes were to

find liquid water on Mars,

it would be an
extraordinary discovery,

but water alone does not equal life.

STEVE SQUYRES: There

is a better match today

between conditions that we

know can support life on Earth

and conditions that we know

either exist or once existed

on other planets
within our solar system.

But that still begs the question,

what conditions are required

for life to emerge

in the first place?

How does this process of genesis,

life emerging from nonliving

material, take place?

Are the conditions that

once existed on Mars

adequate for that?

We don't know.

We simply don't know.

NARRATOR: So how could

scientists find out

if life is possible
below Mars' surface?

One recent discovery, still

open to debate, provides a clue.

Measuring wavelengths
of infrared light,

a NASA telescope on Earth

detects something mysterious

in Mars' atmosphere--
evidence of methane gas.

It's an intriguing find.

Some methane gas on Earth

is produced by geological
activity like mud volcanoes,

but most of the methane

found in our atmosphere
is a waste product
generated by microorganisms.

Methane has a very interesting

connection to life in many ways.

It could be a product of life.

It could be something that

life has made, evidence of life.

GREEN: Well, the

discovery of methane

was really one of the fabulous

discoveries that have come out

just in the last several years.

NARRATOR: New observations

by the Keck telescopes suggest

that certain areas on Mars

are releasing thousands of tons

of methane gas every year.

So where is the methane coming from?

It's seasonal.

We seem to have more methane emitted

during the summer season on Mars

than we do at any other time.

NARRATOR: There is
not enough data yet

to tell scientists what

is producing the methane.

But whatever the source,

it's a tantalizing clue

that could change our

understanding of Mars.

Methane could be biological,

which would be amazing,

or it would indicate

that there's some geological

process making methane,

which would also be amazing

because that would indicate
that Mars is an active world.

NARRATOR: To find out, NASA is

going back to the red planet.

This time, one of its

key missions is to search

for organic molecules, the

building blocks of life.

If we were to find
organic molecules on Mars

and confirmed that

they're actually from Mars

and not something we

brought along, wow!

That would be spectacular.

NARRATOR: If found, it might mean

that all three ingredients for life

are here, opening the possibility

that life could take hold.

Of course we're all human, right?

And we want certain things.

Nobody wants us to be alone, right?

But it's important in science

to maintain an open mind.

NARRATOR: To find organic molecules,

NASA is launching a Mars

rover the size of a compact car

named Curiosity.

GREEN: Curiosity will be

our first great chance, I believe,

to look for life on Mars.

NARRATOR: Curiosity holds

the most advanced set of

science instruments yet sent

to the planet.
It will zap, grind
and bake Martian rocks

and use spectroscopic analysis

to reveal if the samples contain

any of the chemical

ingredients for life.

It is not just a geologist,

it's an astrobiologist.

It can look at rocks and

everything else around it

in ways that we've never

looked at the material before.

NARRATOR: Even with an

advanced set of instruments,

finding organic molecules

will still be a challenge.

SQUYRES: It's going

to be a tricky problem.

There are lots of processes that

can destroy organic molecules.

Radiation from space

can destroy them.

Oxidizing compounds in
the Martian atmosphere

can destroy them.

So you're looking
for organic molecules

that have somehow been protected

from the Martian environment

for a while.

NARRATOR: And the bar is set even higher,

because Curiosity will search

for specific organic compounds

that are the product

of living things,

evidence that life

once existed here.

That's what Jennifer

Eigenbrode's experiment
is designed to uncover.

EIGENBRODE: Organic
molecules tell a story

about where they came from

and what happened to them,

and that's the story that I'm

trying to uncover in Mars rocks.

GREEN: That experiment may very

well change our impression of Mars

as a lifeless body

and change it to harboring life.

NARRATOR: If Curiosity
turns up any evidence

that life once existed on Mars,

it will have enormous implications.

If right here in our own little

solar system life started twice,

then it would say that

life is just everywhere.

NARRATOR: Curiosity and

other missions may one day reveal

if life once existed

on places like Mars

and if it still exists today.

But even if scientists

ultimately conclude

that there is no life on

the planets closest to Earth,

it doesn't mean it's not out there.

Beyond Mars are other worlds

waiting to be explored...

The distant moons that orbit

the giant planets

Jupiter and Saturn...

Moons just as strange as

the orange-shrouded Titan...
One pockmarked with
hundreds of volcanoes...

Others glistening with ice and

covered in mysterious lines...

And one tiny moon etched

with deep fissures.

GREEN: We're now finding when

we look at these giant planets

and their moons

that they are almost like mini

solar systems in themselves.

NARRATOR: Probes are making

discoveries on these moons

that are changing our understanding

of where life can exist.

They're finding evidence

of new sources of energy,

hidden oceans of liquid water,

and organic molecules

blasting into space.

And far beyond these worlds,

scientists are exploring

entire new solar systems

around other stars.

GEOFF MARCY: Surely billions,

hundreds of billions of the

Earth-like planets out there

have the conditions

suitable for life.

NARRATOR: As scientists race

to explore these distant places

with more and more

advanced technologies,

they are finding that

the conditions for life

are not exclusive to Earth

and that the natural

forces set in motion here

might be active elsewhere

in our galaxy and beyond.

We now return to NOVA's

"Finding Life Beyond Earth."

NARRATOR: Are we
alone in the universe?

This age-old question

is yielding some
provocative new answers.

Recent discoveries suggest

that the conditions for life

might be more prevalent

than ever imagined.

JIM GREEN: Science fiction didn't

tell us in any way, shape, or form

what we're finding out now.

NARRATOR: Missions to our neighbor

Mars are revealing evidence

that water, a key ingredient

for life, may be present.

CHRIS McKAY: Mars has lots of water.

Mars is an ice cube covered

with a layer of dirt.

NARRATOR: And probes are finding

the essential chemical

building blocks of life

in unexpected places.

DANNY GLAVIN: Literally

the seeds of life

would have been delivered to

all the planets and their moons

in our solar system.

NARRATOR: But what about

the colder, outer reaches

of our solar system and beyond?

Could life exist out here, too?

New missions are
revealing strange worlds,

moons that could have

vast oceans concealed

beneath miles of ice...

Landscapes littered with

hundreds of active volcanoes.

ASHLEY DAVIES: So now

the zone where life

could possibly exist has

expanded out from Earth

to the outer reaches

of the solar system.

NARRATOR: And places where jets

erupt hundreds of miles into space.

CAROLYN PORCO: We
could hold in our hands

evidence for
extra-terrestrial life.

NARRATOR: And the same epic forces

that gave birth to our solar system

are at work throughout the universe.

Tens of billions of planets

are estimated to be orbiting

other stars in our own galaxy alone.

Could there be an
Earth-like planet among them?

GEOFF MARCY: We will find

habitable worlds for

sure, if not this week

or next month or next

year, sooner or later.

NARRATOR: Finding "Life Beyond

Earth," up now on NOVA.

Major funding for NOVA

is provided by the following:

And...
And the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting.

And by:

Additional funding is provided

by Millicent Bell through:

NARRATOR: The possibility of life

beyond Earth is a tantalizing idea,

long prompting our species to wonder

if there are other

worlds where life exists.

Now, as space technology advances,

the chances of finding

it are greater than ever.

GREEN: I would love to find

life beyond Earth.

I'd like to think

that we could do that,

and I'd like to think

that we could do that

in the next several years.

NARRATOR: The search focuses

on three key ingredients.

The first one is life's

basic chemical building blocks

made from simple elements found

in the cloud of gas and dust

that gave birth to all

the planets and moons.

These chemicals were

possibly delivered

throughout the solar system

billions of years ago...

by comets and asteroids.

They are compounds called organics,

containing carbon, oxygen,

hydrogen and nitrogen.

Next, life needs a liquid like water

that allows these compounds
to mix and interact.

And finally, an energy

source like the sun

to power the chemical reactions

that make life possible.

Scientists were once convinced

that all three ingredients

could only be found, if at all,

on planets that are at just

the right distance from the sun.

Too close and it's too hot.

Any further away than

Mars and it's too cold.

But now, missions to

the outer solar system

are calling this

assumption into question.

This is Jupiter as seen by the

space probe Voyager 1,

launched decades ago to

explore the outer solar system.

Half a billion miles from the sun,

it seems unlikely that

life could exist out here

in such extreme cold.

Voyager approaches Io, one

of Jupiter's more than 60 moons,

orbiting in the shadow

of the gas giant.

Io should be a frozen,
icy, barren world.

But Voyager spots

something completely unexpected.

These actual images of Io's surface

reveal hundreds of
giant, active volcanoes.
Later probes expose vast
lakes of molten lava.

On Earth, volcanic activity is

driven by heat in the interior,

but Io is so small

that it should have cooled

down billions of years ago.

There must be another source

of energy inside the moon.

The discovery of
active volcanism on Io

was one of the greatest discoveries

of planetary science.

NARRATOR: By observing
Earth's volcanoes

and studying the huge amount

of data gathered from Io,

Ashley Davies pictures

what walking on Io's

surface would be like.

DAVIES: Walking across

the surface of Io,

it's a very, very

hostile environment.

It's either very, very

cold or it's very, very hot

where there's volcanic

activity taking place.

Of course, there's no atmosphere.

There'd be a bounce in your step

because the gravity of Io is

about the same on the moon:

one sixth of the Earth.

You could feel the crunch underfoot

as you head from one

volcano to another

across these vast plains.

Well, here we are in the middle
of a vast lava flow field.

It's dark, it's quite hot.

This is comprised of lava flows

that have erupted from

one of Io's many volcanoes

like that one over there.

NARRATOR: The probe New

Horizons flies past Io.

It takes this photograph

of an enormous eruption from

a volcano called Tvashtar.

A vast plume of sulfur

shoots 200 miles into space.

These actual images reveal

the plume as it spreads out

and rains back to the surface.

DAVIES: On Io, we see these

large volcanic eruptions.

The gases that are

coming out of the lava

blast this material high into

space, into the vacuum of space.

It's very, very spectacular.

NARRATOR: What could be

generating so much energy

in a moon that should

be frozen solid?

And where is the power coming from?

The key to understanding

Io's volcanic activity

is its parent planet, Jupiter.

Io orbits Jupiter in a slight

ellipse rather than a circle.

With every orbit, Io experiences

gravitational pushes and pulls
from Jupiter and other moons.

When Io is closest
to the giant planet,

it is stretched by
more than 330 feet.

Over billions of
years, this has created

an immense amount of
friction deep inside the moon.

DAVIES: This continual

flexing of the satellite

is like bending a piece

of metal-- it heats up.

And this is the ultimate

source of Io's volcanic energy

and its volcanic heart.

NARRATOR: The powerful tidal force,

generated by the massive

gravitational pull of Jupiter,

creates an alternate
source of energy

far from the warmth of the sun,

a source of energy that could,

in principle, support life.

DAVIES: What's so important about

Io is that it moves our perceptions

away from a habitable

zone around the sun

where energy is just derived

completely from the sun.

So now the zone where

life could possibly exist

has expanded out from Earth

to the outer reaches

of the solar system.

NARRATOR: But the chances of life

existing on Io itself are slim.

Even though it has an energy source

and could have the right
chemical building blocks,

possibly delivered by comets and

asteroids billions of years ago,

scientists have not yet detected

the third key ingredient:

a liquid like water.

But Io is not the only

moon circling Jupiter.

NASA's unmanned space

probe Galileo

flies by the next moon out, Europa.

GREEN: It passed by Europa

12 times and only 12 times.

Virtually everything
we know about Europa

is from those 12 passes.

And each and every one of them

has excited us beyond belief.

NARRATOR: Slightly
smaller than our own moon,

Europa is covered with ice.

Data collected by
Galileo shows

that the surface is

minus-260 degrees Fahrenheit,

surely hostile to life.

But as the probe gets

closer, it takes these images.

A mysterious network of dark cracks

is etched into Europa's icy surface.

JOHN SPENCER: We see

places where very clearly

the ice has cracked and

two sides have spread apart.

Material has come up and frozen

in the middle to fill the gap.

NARRATOR: In addition
to the dark cracks,

the probe also reveals

vast jagged areas of ice

that appear to have

melted, broken apart,

and frozen back together again.

SPENCER: There's something

very dramatic happening

to destroy the
existing surface there.

NARRATOR: To an expert eye,

it's a familiar pattern.

Sea ice found on Earth

looks very similar.

Then Galileo takes readings

of Europa's magnetic field.

These indicate an electric

current flowing inside,

consistent with an ocean

of salty liquid water.

It's very hard to get that pattern

without having an ocean

underneath the ice.

NARRATOR: The magnetic field

data suggests that miles down,

beneath Europa's icy surface,

there is an ocean that

could be 60 miles deep.

This small moon could have

twice as much liquid water

as in all the oceans on Earth.

Something must be melting

the moon from deep inside.

And again, the key is Jupiter.

The same gravitational forces

that flex Io's rocky interior,
turning it into an ocean of magma,

are melting Europa's ice

to produce its hidden

ocean of liquid water

and creating the cracks

on the moon's icy surface.

SPENCER: The ice is

creaking and groaning around.

That generates a huge

amount of friction

and a huge amount of heat.

NARRATOR: But the question is,

could anything live in

this cold, liquid ocean

concealed beneath miles of ice

where there is no
energy from the sun?

To find out, biologist Tim

Shank explores the oceans

here on Earth that most

resemble Europa's icy depths.

200 miles from the North Pole,

Tim sends robots to search for life

12,000 feet beneath

the Arctic ice sheets,

where the sunlight never reaches.

TIM SHANK: Exploring

the deep Arctic Ocean

is not unlike exploring

another planetary body

in our solar system.

You have to deal with immense

pressures, temperatures,

extremes where life might exist.

NARRATOR: Here, volcanic activity

is pushing apart the sea floor.
Scientists believe that
something similar may be at work

under the ocean on Europa.

GREEN: We believe
it has a rocky core,

that rocky core is under

tidal forces and influences

and it's flexing also, just

as the rest of the planet does.

And that heat has

got to go somewhere.

NARRATOR: On the restless

floor of the Arctic Ocean,

Tim's robots discover evidence

of an extremely hostile environment.

Volcanic vents are spewing out water

that is super-heated to 700 degrees

and laden with toxic chemicals

like hydrogen sulfide.

Tim believes that vents like this

could also exist on

Europa's ocean floors

and, clustered around the

vents in pitch darkness,

Tim's team finds life.

SHANK: We discovered
new forms of life,

microbes that cover miles

of the sea floor there.

There's life even

in the coldest waters

in the deepest regions

of our polar oceans

that we didn't know about before.

NARRATOR: Instead of using

sunlight to trigger vital reactions,
microbes like these use
sulfur, hydrogen, and methane

as chemical sources of energy.

And the microbes form the basis

of an extensive food chain.

The discovery of life here

raises the possibility

of life on Europa.

SHANK: It's clear to me that the

basic components, the basic elements,

the chemical elements that we

need for life are on Europa.

There's nothing that I can think of,

no component that's missing

from the Europan ocean.

I would be surprised if we
didn't find life there, really.

NARRATOR: With liquid

water, an energy source,

and the necessary

chemical building blocks

perhaps delivered by
comets and asteroids,

Europa opens up the possibility

that life could exist

in places never imagined.

GREEN: And so the moons,

as they go around the

planets, are generating heat,

melting water, creating--

under ice shell-- oceans

and producing a potential

environment for life.

That is a revolution
in our thinking.

NARRATOR: But getting a probe

safely to the surface of Europa

to test these theories is

just one of the challenges

in looking for life half

a billion miles away.

STEVE SQUYRES: You've got to build

something that can get through

what is surely kilometers of ice.

That's hard to do on Earth.

Then you've got to have

something that can swim.

It's going to happen.

I would love to live to see

it, but it's a tough one.

NARRATOR: Europa isn't

the only intriguing place

this far out in the solar system.

Could similar conditions

exist on other moons

orbiting other planets even

further away from the sun?

One mission launched to find

out is the probe Cassini.

It is heading for the

ringed planet, Saturn,

one billion miles from the sun.

Its mission:

to explore Saturn, find out

how its vast rings formed,

and investigate some of

its more than 60 moons.

PORCO: Cassini's
mission from the outset

was to investigate everything

we could about the Saturn system.

It is a major
exploratory expedition.

NARRATOR: Cassini gives

scientists their best view yet
of this mysterious planetary system.

Cassini was outfitted

with the most sophisticated suite

of scientific
instruments ever carried

into the outer solar system.

It has cameras, spectrometers.

It is really the
farthest robotic outpost

that humanity has ever

established around the sun.

NARRATOR: Seven years after launch,

Cassini finally
enters orbit around Saturn.

These images reveal the

rings in unprecedented detail.

They stretch out across

hundreds of thousands of miles,

yet in places they are

just tens of feet thick.

Using its instruments to analyze

wavelengths of reflected light,

Cassini confirms
these majestic rings

are made of billions

of shining particles

of almost pure water ice.

They range in size

from a grain of dust

to the size of a mountain.

After nearly eight

months collecting data

of Saturn and its rings,

Cassini makes its way

to one of the closer moons.

This tiny ball of ice only

300 miles across is Enceladus.
These Cassini images
reveal a glistening white surface

unlike any other of Saturn's moons.

It is carved with crevasses,

ridges, and cracks,

and stretching out

across the south pole,

Cassini photographs
these strange large cracks--

seen here in blue--

four parallel fissures

scientists named the Tiger Stripes.

They are 75 miles long

and hundreds of feet deep.

They look a lot like

fault lines on Earth.

PORCO: Enceladus was a major focus

for the Cassini mission.

It was clear that there had been

something going on on Enceladus

in the past.

The question was,

was there anything going

on on Enceladus at present?

NARRATOR: On another flyby,

Cassini's thermal imaging sensors

reveal something unexpected.

At the south pole,

the Tiger Stripes should be colder

than the rest of the moon,

but they are radiating heat.

Though still a frigid

minus-120 degrees,

the cracks are more

than 200 degrees warmer

than most of the moon.

Then, as Cassini
changes its orientation,

it sees Enceladus
silhouetted by the sun...

and vast jets of ice

erupting into space.

These actual images reveal

the jets are blasting

hundreds of miles out

from the Tiger Stripes.

Carolyn and her team are stunned.

PORCO: Never did we expect that

we were going to see something

like a whole forest of jets

shooting hundreds of kilometers

into the sky above Enceladus.

It was like nothing

we'd ever seen before.

NARRATOR: Could Enceladus also

have an internal energy source

like Io and Europa?

Scientists believe

that when Enceladus

orbits the massive Saturn,

friction from gravitational forces

causes it to heat up, melting

ice in the moon's interior

in the same way as on Europa.

They believe the jets

consist of liquid water,

vaporizing and freezing as it

meets the cold vacuum of space.

They shoot upwards at

1,200 miles per hour.

PORCO: Enceladus is being

flexed as it's orbiting Saturn.

That's like flexing a paperclip;

it creates heat inside,
and we think the heat maintains
the liquid under the surface.

NARRATOR: Excited by this discovery,

the team programs Cassini

to fly through the jets

and collect particles.

After several fly-throughs,

Cassini's spectrometers
detect in the jets

some of the basic chemical

building blocks of life.

That was tremendously

exciting to find

because not only do we think

there's liquid water there,

not only is there an enormous

amount of excess heat,

but we also have organic materials.

That's the trifecta

that we are looking for,

the three main ingredients

for a habitable zone.

NARRATOR: But could this strange and

alien world actually support life?

Carolyn imagines
what it would be like

to hunt for the answer on

the surface of Enceladus.

PORCO: Walking on the

surface of Enceladus,

as you approach the

Tiger Stripe fractures,

you would first encounter a region

that is continually
blanketed in snow.

The sky is inky black.

Walking is like floating,

it has very little gravity.
If we had the sun at our
back, we wouldn't see anything.

But if we put ourselves

in the right geometry,

looking in the direction of the sun,

then suddenly we see something

that I think would be

the greatest spectacle

this solar system has to offer:

giant ghostly fountains

shooting skyward.

Fine, sparkly, icy crystals,

most of which
eventually fall back down

and coat the surface

in a blanket of snow.

If we are correct, that

the jets of Enceladus

derive from pockets of liquid water

in which life might

have gotten started,

a scoop full of Enceladan

snow might-- just might--

contain the remains of

microscopic living organisms.

NARRATOR: Since
Cassini's instruments

cannot detect the

signatures of life itself,

there is no evidence yet

of microscopic
organisms in these jets.

But the discovery makes

Enceladus a prime candidate

for future missions.

To me it's like there's a

sign on Enceladus that says,
"Free samples, take one."

We just gotta fly through the

plume and collect the stuff.

We don't have to drill,

we don't have to dig,

we don't have to scurry

around looking for it.

It's being injected into space.

NARRATOR: The discovery

of a new energy source

and the possible

oceans of liquid water

inside planetary moons

point to potential
new footholds for life

in our solar system.

Meanwhile, discoveries here on Earth

are revealing that

life can withstand

an even wider variety of conditions

than previously thought.

Missions to extreme environments

are showing that microbes

can live in dry deserts

and thrive in lakes full

of poisonous arsenic.

Bacteria survive in slimy

colonies on cave walls

dripping with sulfuric acid,

living off noxious

hydrogen sulfide gas.

And microbes flourish

in toxic rivers

of corrosive industrial waste.

GREEN: We now know it's

possible for microorganisms
to exist in these large acidic
and even poisonous regions.

SHANK: The more we look at

the extreme habitats on Earth,

the more we find life there.

We're pushing back the limits of

where life can live all the time

through our own discoveries.

NARRATOR: From freezing glaciers

to super-heated hot springs...

from high deserts blasted

by ultraviolet radiation...

to deep mines miles underground...

and ocean trenches where

sunlight never penetrates,

scientists are discovering

that life finds a way

to adapt and thrive.

McKAY: Life on Earth can exist

in many extreme environments,

and it can do many

remarkable things.

And we're learning more every day

about how flexible and remarkable

life on Earth really is.

NARRATOR: So, could

environments on other worlds

previously thought too harsh

for life be worth a second look?

GREEN: We've really

gotta put ourselves

out there in terms of thinking

what the possibilities are.

McKAY: When we first started looking

for life on other worlds,

we were looking for

Earth-like conditions.
"Okay, well, we got to have water,

got to have an energy

source, got to have carbon."

But to me, the number one

question-- the big question--

is: Is there another type

of life on another world

somewhere in our solar system?

NARRATOR: So Chris wants to know,

if life could develop in new ways,

perhaps even using

different kinds of chemistry,

then could even the

most inhospitable places

offer surprising new

footholds for life?

One such place is

one of Saturn's moons

visited by the space

probe Cassini--

Saturn's largest moon, Titan.

Cassini detects
organic building blocks

in the atmosphere,

and the spacecraft's radar

reveals something mysterious

beneath clouds at the south pole.

It looks like a lake of water.

Further flybys reveal

it's just one of hundreds

scattered across both

the north and south poles.

It was exciting and mysterious

to see all these different lakes

and to try to understand

what's going on.

NARRATOR: Titan is the first

world other than the Earth

known to have a
liquid on its surface.

But at minus-290 degrees,

this liquid can't be water.

Analysis of infrared light

reflected off the lakes

reveals that they are filled

with super-chilled
liquid methane and ethane.

On Earth, these hydrocarbons

are gases we use as fuel.

Data now reveals that methane

on Titan carves river valleys,

forms clouds, and

even falls as rain.

Liquid methane acts a

lot like water on Earth.

But could it act the way water does

as an essential foundation for life,

allowing organic molecules

to dissolve, mix and interact?

It's a question astrobiologist

Chris McKay is investigating.

McKAY: Our general theory of life,

based on our one example on Earth,

is that we need a liquid.

Some people would argue that

that liquid has to be water.

Well, on Titan, we
can ask the question,

"Well, what about another liquid?

Could some other liquid

besides water do the trick?"

NARRATOR: For life

to exist on Titan,

Chris believes one fundamental

process has to happen first,

a process that, according to

the most widely accepted theory,

took place on early Earth

and ultimately produced us.

In this scenario, the

raw ingredients of life--

organic molecules--
dissolved in water.

And once in this liquid,

they came together and reacted

to form bigger, more

complex molecules

that would eventually

somehow become living things.

For life to have a chance on Titan,

the building blocks would have

to dissolve in liquid methane.

Chris is now trying to find

out if this is possible.

He first has to replicate

the organic building blocks

that Cassini's
instruments detected

high in Titan's atmosphere.

Simulating an energy source,

Chris fires an electric

spark that hits gases

inside the test tube that

are known to exist on Titan.

This creates organic molecules

similar to those in
Titan's atmosphere,

the brown residue at

the bottom of the tube.

And we trigger the same

reactions in the flask,

and as a result we produce

the same kind of solid
organic material in the flask

that is being produced

in Titan's atmosphere.

NARRATOR: Then Chris recreates

Titan's remarkable lakes.

He fills the test

tube with methane gas

and then cools it

below minus-290 degrees

using liquid nitrogen.

Now the methane liquefies,

just as it does on
Titan's frigid surface.

So in the flask we'll have

a miniature little lake,

a little puddle of liquid methane,

swirling around in
that organic material.

Will anything dissolve

in that organic material?

That's the question.

And will that over time

build up organic complexity?

Could it be the start of what

could be another type of life?

NARRATOR: No one knows

exactly how life gets started.

But the question

Chris is interested in

is can organic compounds

dissolve in liquids

like methane?

If so, it would suggest

that even at extremely

cold temperatures,

the chemistry needed for life

could be possible in
liquids other than water.

McKAY: We know that

there's conditions there

that maintain liquid,

there's energy sources,

there's organic material,

there's nutrients,

there's an environment that

may be suitable for life.

But if there's life there, it's

going to be completely different

than anything we have on Earth.

NARRATOR: Chris's experiment

is one step toward understanding

whether there could

be life on Titan.

McKAY: To me the most

exciting possibility

is that there's life on Titan

because then that would show

not just that life started twice,

but it's started twice in

very different conditions.

It would show us that

life is a natural process

that's going to pop up

on many different worlds,

many different planets

around many different stars.

NARRATOR: Titan,
Enceladus, Europa, and Io

show that even within

our solar system

there are places where

some scientists believe

life could potentially

gain a foothold.
GREEN: Might be extreme life,

might be life that

we've never seen before

in terms of its structure

and its composition.

But we're now realizing

that those environments

could harbor life.

NARRATOR: The three

vital factors--

energy, liquids and

chemical building blocks--

are more widespread than

has ever been realized.

And if it's possible here,

then could the right

conditions also exist

beyond the boundaries

of our own solar system?

GREEN: By understanding
our own solar system,

I believe we'll then

be well on our way

to understanding the
conditions that could occur

around other stars and

throughout our galaxy.

It really changes our

view of this universe.

NARRATOR: Is there
somewhere out there,

a star like our sun,

orbited by habitable planets

that are teeming with life?

There are billions of stars just

like our sun within our galaxy.

And the odds suggest that

tens of billions of planets
are orbiting around them.

If there is life out

there, can we find it?

Astronomer Mario Livio is at

the forefront of the search.

He's using the

Hubble space telescope

to look deep into space

to where new stars, like our

sun, are bursting into life.

This is the Orion

nebula as seen by Hubble.

Here, 1,500 light years

beyond our solar system,

new stars are being born inside

a vast cloud of dust and gas.

LIVIO: So when we
look at the nebula now,

it's almost like

looking into a cave.

We see this hollow part where

gas and dust has been blown away

and inside where these

stars are being born.

NARRATOR: And right inside,

among all the shining stars,

is what looks like

a small, dark smudge.

In fact, it is a young sun

surrounded by a dense disk

of dust and gas more than

50 billion miles across.

This smudge represents the

dawn of a new solar system.

In this case we see the disk

edge on, and therefore the disk

completely obscures
the light from the star,

and this is why you

don't see the star.

NARRATOR: Other images

show similar disks

tilted to reveal the

star at the center.

These spinning clouds

of matter may one day

form planets and moons,

as particles of dust, ice and

gas collide and clump together.

This is the same process that

is thought to have created

the planets of our solar system.

Hubble has revealed that

swirling disks like this

are extremely common.

The fact that we

see these very often

tells us that these raw materials

from which planets form

are very, very common.

And so that planetary systems

form probably around most stars.

NARRATOR: But do these young solar

systems produce Earth-like planets

containing the right ingredients

needed to sustain life?

Astronomer Josh Eisner

wants to find out.

He has come to Mauna Kea, Hawaii,

to look at the clouds of

gas and dust in more detail.

EISNER: We'd really

like to understand

are there building

blocks of life there?

Are things that we associate

with at least life on our planet
available for planet
formation around other stars?

NARRATOR: Analyzing gas

and tiny bits of dust

from hundreds of light

years away is no simple feat.

It requires instruments of
great sensitivity and precision:

the Keck telescopes.

14,000 feet up on the

summit of a dormant volcano,

these twin telescopes are among

the most powerful on Earth.

Josh uses both of them together.

And with a spectroscope

to analyze infrared light

emitted from inside

the early solar systems,

he can tell what they're made of.

EISNER: We're actually trying

to map a detailed picture

of the dust and what

that hot gas is made of.

Is there water vapor there

that might get incorporated

into an atmosphere one day,

or into an ocean one day?

NARRATOR: His findings

are encouraging.

In some of the
distant solar systems,

Josh is detecting evidence of

carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen,

three key elements needed

to produce the chemical building

blocks on which life depends.

Even more intriguing

is that in some disks

those ingredients also appear

to be at the right distance

from their stars to form planets

with Earth-like qualities.

So much for theory.

The question is: Do such

planets actually exist?

Geoff Marcy is one astronomer

trying to directly
answer that question.

He's a planet hunter, scanning

the heavens for signs of planets

that may have already

formed around other stars

thousands of light years

away from our solar system.

It is actually quite a
challenge to find planets

around other stars, and

the reason is very simple--

planets don't shine.

Planets are essentially dark.

NARRATOR: By using
advanced telescopes,

dedicated planet hunters like Geoff

have found ways to

overcome this challenge.

If you watch a star,

it ought to have the same

brightness all the time, 24/7.

But if there's a planet

orbiting that star,

when the planet crosses

in front of the star,

the planet will block a

little of the starlight
and you'll see the
star dim, a tiny amount,

every time the planet

crosses in front,

over and over in a repeated way.

And, marvelously, you can

learn the size of the planet,

because the bigger the planet is,

the more light from

the star it blocks.

And so we learn an enormous

amount of information

about these planets just

by watching stars dim.

NARRATOR: Not surprisingly, most of

the planets astronomers have found

this way are giant ones that

block a lot of star light.

By also observing
the gravitational pull

they have on their stars,

Geoff calculates that

most of these giant planets

are made of gas and are

unlikely to be habitable.

But the holy grail is to find

far smaller, rocky worlds,

like Earth, where the

conditions for life could exist.

MARCY: The challenge of finding

Earth-sized planets is enormous.

When an Earth crosses

in front of a star,

it blocks only one one

hundredth of one percent

of the light from the star.

NARRATOR: The Kepler space telescope

is designed to detect
this subtle dimming.

Its mission: to focus

on one tiny spot of space

and scrutinize 150,000 stars

for signs of planets

the size of Earth.

Sensitive enough to detect

minute dips in a star's light,

Kepler is already
producing mountains of data,

and thousands of new planet

candidates are being discovered.

MARCY: Kepler has

now already discovered

a few planets that have

a diameter and a mass

that indicates clearly

the planet is rocky.

And so we now have for the

first time in human history

definite planets out

there among the stars

that remind us of home.

NARRATOR: These first rocky planets

are too close to their

stars to sustain life.

But the sheer number of

smaller planets being found

is transforming our view of

solar systems beyond our own.

MARCY: We've learned that nature

makes some large planets, the

size of Jupiter and Saturn,

but nature makes even more

of the smaller planets

the size of Neptune,

and even more of the planets

the size of the Earth.

The number of planets

is sort of like

the rocks and pebbles

you see on a beach.

There are a few big boulders;

there are many more rocks;

and there are an uncountable

number of grains of sand

that represent the Earth-sized

planets we see in the cosmos.

NARRATOR: Geoff believes

it's only a matter of time

before we find a habitable planet.

I suspect that this scene we

see here is one that's reproduced

billions of times over

among the Earth-like planets,

the habitable planets,

in our Milky Way galaxy.

NARRATOR: But even if we find

a world just the right size

and in just the right place,

with oceans of liquid water,

could we detect life from a

distance of trillions of miles?

The James Webb space telescope

may be able to do just that.

Due to go into orbit

later this decade,

this new telescope is three

times more powerful than Hubble.

It will be able to analyze starlight

passing through the atmospheres

of the closest Earth-like worlds,

looking for the telltale

signs of life itself.

I think the chances are very

good that if you find a planet

with oxygen, methane,

carbon dioxide, nitrogen,

like our own Earth,

there's probably plant

life on that planet

that is producing the oxygen.

NARRATOR: As telescopes see farther

and spacecraft voyage

closer to distant worlds,

new discoveries are transforming

what we thought we knew

about our solar

system and our galaxy.

GREEN: I am constantly awestruck

by the data that's coming in

our current fleet of missions.

Science fiction didn't tell

us in any way, shape or form

what we're finding out now.

SQUYRES: Years from now, people

are gonna look back on this

as being the golden age of

exploration in the solar system.

You can only go someplace for

the first time once, right?

And we're doing that now.

NARRATOR: Scientists are

finding organic molecules,

the raw ingredients that

life needs to take hold,

in our solar system and beyond.

GLAVIN: I think we'd

be nave to think

that this chemistry

and life here on earth

is the only place that it's

happening in the universe.

I mean the fact is that we've

got billions of galaxies,

you know, trillions of

star-forming environments

that probably have the

same chemistry going on.

NARRATOR: The right conditions

that make a world habitable

could be more widespread

than ever imagined.

All of this leads us to think

that life should be an

easy start on another world.

NARRATOR: And the same forces

of nature that forged life here

could be playing out

elsewhere in our galaxy.

A lovely exercise for everyone to do

is to look up into the night sky,

look at the twinkling lights

and realize that those stars

by and large all have planets.

And that's just our galaxy.

There are hundreds of

billions of galaxies out there

like our Milky Way,

and so the number of

planets in our universe

is a truly uncountable number.

NARRATOR: So the race is now on

to see if life actually

exists beyond Earth.

Will life first be discovered

on a moon such as Enceladus?

Will it be found by
an advanced telescope?
Or will it be found at all?

Whatever the answer,

many believe this is a

turning point in history,

when we at last have the

technology and the know how

to find out if there

is life beyond Earth.

The exploration continues

on NOVA's website,

where you can watch any part

of this program again,

take a tour of
the solar system,

find out how we can

detect distant planets

where life might be possible,

and dig deeper into space and

flight with expert interviews,

interactives, video
clips and more.

Follow NOVA on Facebook

and Twitter, and find us online

at pbs.org.

A 5,000-year-old man,
a homicide victim,

preserved in ice since

the Stone Age.

MAN: This changes forever

what we think about the past.

Now, investigators
do the unthinkable

and defrost the Iceman.

Will this unusual autopsy

help solve the mystery

of the Iceman's murder?

Next time,

on a NOVA/National
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