Chef Alton Brown.
What are you doing in my lab? This is my kitchen.
Oh, hi, ahem, Bill. Uh...
Mine kind of burned down.
Your kitchen kind of burned down?
Yeah, just a little bit.
So, I'm borrowing yours to make primordial soup.
I have here ingredients in the primitive Earth oceans.
This is kind of like making an ocean back way before there was life.
It looks delicious.
It is. It is. I'm attempting to create new life.
- That was fun. - Yeah.
So, what's in there?
Well, what's most important is what's not in here.
This is completely devoid of life. No animal life, plant life,
no microscopic life, not so much as a germ.
But I've been adding all of the ingredients
that we think are necessary for life to take form.
We got water. I added some methane, some ammonia,
some hydrogen, and just a pinch of sulfur.
You're getting energy from the hot plate. That's like an ancient volcano.
Exactly. So, that means that essentially, this should look pretty close
to what early Earth looked like.
Cool.
- Has anything formed yet? - I don't know. Take a look.
Hello, fellow life forms.
Hello, fellow life forms, here on Earth and across the solar system.
Welcome to the show. I'm Bill Nye.
I'm here, dare I say it, to save the world.
Or...
the worlds, okay?
I wanna find out how we all got here.
This is one of the two deep questions.
Where did we all come from?
So, you see... let's go back,
back in time, about four and a half billion years ago.
The Earth was there in the icy blackness of space.
And it cooled off, and the ocean formed.
And then, as you may know, the atmosphere outgassed.
And then after about a billion years, some people think only a billion...
You know, only... Could've been a billion and a quarter, a billion and a half.
Then chemicals developed
that could make crude copies of themselves.
And then single cells formed.
Those cells found evolutionary advantage by working together
to form multicellular organisms.
And then we had flowers, 'cause they had sex.
And the flowers are just great at sex. And then...
No, they are. They go to a lot of effort. Look at that.
Then the dinosaurs emerged, the ancient dinosaurs.
They had feathers.
That's the current speculation, that ancient dinosaurs had feathers.
And then these other mammals formed,
because the Earth was hit with a big asteroid.
Except it was in space, so, it's just:
And then... and then these guys disappeared.
And then mammals emerged.
And this, I think, is my old boss.
And then somebody, the druids, built Stonehenge, and...
What? You guys, really?
- Are you screwing with me? - Yeah.
No, there's no freaking Noah's Ark.
I'm sorry, people. Did not happen.
But then humans developed farming,
and this allowed us to have cities, and technological progress,
and eventually... bobbleheads.
Meanwhile, on Mars...
also smoking red hot, four and a half billion years ago.
But it's smaller than the Earth.
So, it cooled off more rapidly.
Its ocean formed more quickly.
If it had an atmosphere, it happened faster.
And then Mars may have been covered with microbial life...
like Daytona Beach.
And then a different asteroid...
came hurtling in about three billion years ago.
And knocked a piece of Mars off into space.
And then... orbiting the sun:
It landed on the Earth...
in primordial times, and that's where life came from.
This hypothesis is very real.
It's extraordinary, but it's not wacky.
And it's called the transpermia hypothesis.
"Life across." It's a fascinating thing.
It's very hard to prove. And how would you find the evidence?
But just think...
If you and I are descended from ancient life forms on another world,
it would be an extraordinary thing to discover.
And we do this through space exploration.
So, along this line we now join our intrepid correspondent, Derek Muller,
as he looks for evidence of life.
This is such an awesome experience, to get up close and personal
with the Curiosity rover.
I mean, this isn't the exact one that's on Mars, obviously,
but it's basically identical.
I'm here at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California.
I don't know how we got in here, Bill. It's amazing.
This is the NASA center that's famous for building things like the Mars rover,
space probes, and rescuing Matt Damon from the red planet.
You must get sick of answering questions about The Martian.
Yes.
This is project scientist Ken Farley.
I spoke with him about life on Mars.
He's one of many scientists working on the first NASA mission in 40 years
designed specifically to look for life on another planet.
It's called Mars 2020.
If there were life on Mars, wouldn't we have found it by now?
No, we would not have found it by now.
But we've been looking.
There's been a number of missions, like the Viking landers
and Curiosity, for example.
Part of the problem is, we're not even sure what we're looking for.
Life on Mars may have been completely different from life on Earth.
Recent missions, like the Curiosity and Exploration rovers,
looked for and found evidence of water, a key ingredient for life.
Follow the water. Where was the water and when was the water?
And then looking for habitability, looking for places that could have supported life.
Now we know enough about Mars to look for ancient life,
instead of anything on the surface of Mars today.
There's no life on the surface of Mars.
Most likely, if there is life on Mars today,
it would be underground, underneath the ice caps.
In places that are very, very hard to investigate
with the sort of rovers and landers that we've sent so far.
We're talking moles, groundhogs?
Well, microscopic bacterial... moles.
- Not actual... - Not actual moles.
We're looking for... We call them biosignatures.
It's a pattern or a substance in the rocks that can only have been formed by life.
To find those biosignatures,
the 2020 rover is gonna need cutting-edge technologies,
developed here at JPL.
But for definitive proof of life, they'll need drill samples.
We need to take a core that's about the size of a piece of chalk.
We have to collect 37 tubes like this
that will be laid on the surface of Mars for a possible return in the future.
Mars 2020 is different from past missions,
because now NASA will need to bring those samples back to Earth
to test them for evidence of life.
If they are brought back to Earth,
we will be able to use all sorts of different kinds of techniques
many of which have not yet been invented
because nobody has been posed with this question.
So, in order to find life,
we'll have to return those samples from Mars,
something that's never been done before,
then test those samples with techniques that haven't even been invented yet.
So, I had to ask...
How good do you think your chances are at finding life?
Mm.
I'd say they're poorer than even just because I remain skeptical.
Regardless, we will learn about
what the early history of the solar system is like.
And that's the same environment,
the same solar system, that Earth was in when life was evolving.
If you wanna understand the origin of life on Earth,
'cause that's the only place we know life exists,
the rocks that recorded that are all gone.
So, in a way, looking at Mars is like looking at a version of Earth
frozen in time right about when life would have sprung.
That's, I think, the most exciting way to look at it.
It's just unbelievable.
The stuff that is happening here is just so far beyond anything else.
It's like, "What are you doing today?"
Are you in your cubicle on your computer?"
These guys are working on a freaking machine in outer space on Mars
that is trying to discover life.
This is cool.
It is cool.
It is really cool.
You saw the 2020 rover.
You gave deep thought.
You're a physicist.
- Great training in science. - Indeed.
What do you think the chances are of finding life on, let's say, Mars?
On let's say Mars, I think, life right now living in the soil
is probably very, very unlikely,
given the environment up there, lack of atmosphere,
- radiation bombarding. - Sterilizing, ultraviolet.
- It's a really tough environment for life. - Troublesome.
But life 3 billion years ago on Mars, maybe that's a possibility.
- Nothing to it. - Three or 4 billion years ago.
Do you think the 2020 rover has instruments needed to look for life?
You know, it has better instruments than anything we've sent before,
and better computers, and it's gonna be able to drill better
and resolve what's in the rocks better.
They've got great x-ray technology
that can give you fine, pixel-sized analysis
of basically what's in that rock.
Here's the thing, though.
None of the scientists there really bank on the idea
of claiming life on another planet based on something that the rover sees.
They want pieces of Mars in their hands that we can study on Earth,
because we've got much bigger labs, much better technology here on Earth
to analyze these samples.
While you're here I just wanna emphasize the stakes.
If we were to discover evidence of life elsewhere,
it would change the way everybody feels about being a living thing.
I really hope it would change the way everyone feels,
because right now, in terms of statistics, we have a sample size of one.
One planet has given rise to life.
But if we found life somewhere else, I mean it...
It's not just, like, one more. It's a hundred percent more.
- It's not... - And it's on a completely different world.
Does that have DNA, or is it a whole other thing?
Thank you. Great job.
- Derek Muller. - Thank you.
Mars is one place we're looking for life,
but what about other places in the solar system?
Well, I'm here with Earthlings Wil Wheaton...
Or "Wil Wheaton."
Moogega Stricker,
a planetary protection engineer at the Jet Propulsion Lab...
Hakeem Oluseyi...
old buddy of mine from Outrageous Acts of Science.
That's right.
You kids, you're crazy with your outrageous acts.
Now, uh, you guys, let's just start with this.
What do you think the chances are of finding life on another world?
- Okay. - I'd say that they are 100 percent.
It's just over time.
We have to develop the ability to get off of our own planet
so that we can get out into other parts of the universe with other planets
that could have life on them.
Do your fans, uh, believe strongly that we'll find life soon?
I think that people who are or were fans of Star Trek
have a real aspirational hope
that we are going to find and interact with some other form of intelligent life.
But everything we're talking about here is assuming...
You brought up intelligent life. The life isn't intelligent.
- And I've been wanting to say this. - Say it.
Bring it.
All these sci-fi scenarios have these aliens that come to Earth
- for conquest, right? - To trash the place.
Yeah, that's bogus.
Because there's nothing you could get once you get here that's worth the trip.
We have water.
We have doughnuts,
- and we have burritos. - But they already have that.
I know that they do not have...
The doughnut constant of the universe is something we've measured.
Do you think the bad things that we hear about aliens
is really us projecting our own badness?
Exactly.
And, you know, all aliens are like us.
They're about our size, in ships like we are.
Right? So, here's what I think would happen.
I think that, if they are like us, then we're gonna...
contact each other and have the same thing in mind.
"If we're gonna get in contact with each other, really,
- "we do this right." - It's hard to tell, too,
because we're kind of a blip in time in the history,
as far as life here on Earth.
And can we get off our planet and find life during its blip?
- The flashing bulb problem. - Yeah.
So, the... This is...
Everybody, this is an old, charming turn of phrase in the business,
where the Christmas lights are blinking,
so if you're gonna find them, they gotta both be on at the same time.
- What are the chances of that? - Yeah.
But wouldn't it be extraordinary?
It would be. And it would be extraordinary if it happened in our lifetimes.
- That would be great. - That would be cool.
But, look, we have thousands of planets
that we've discovered outside our solar system.
- Right? - Yes.
And many bodies inside our solar system that are great candidates for life.
And it looks like internal oceans are all the rage.
- All the rage. - That's right.
- Enceladus and Europa. - Enceladus, Europa.
- Pluto now. - Titan.
Titan has its methane lakes and rivers.
It's a moon of Saturn, Europa's a moon of Jupiter.
You can see with binoculars.
Twice as much seawater as the Earth.
Well, listen. Enceladus... They discovered...
It has been discovered
that there are hot springs under the ocean.
And up to temperatures of 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
So, you have the minerals, you have the chemistry,
you have the energy, you have the water.
It's like a black smoker on the Earth's ocean.
- Exactly. - Under the ice.
- Powered by Saturn. - Just a second.
We have to balance exploration, looking for life,
with showing up with our own germs and trashing the place.
Exactly. It's our responsibility as explorers
to make sure that if we search for life in the universe,
we have to do it responsibly.
We cannot affect their current ecosystem.
So, you're an engineer. You work on this.
Yeah, so right now, I'm working with the 2020 mission to make sure
that we abide forward contamination planetary protection rules.
Forward contamination planetary protection rules.
- So, they... - Is that the same as the Prime Directive?
- I mean, it's kind of a similar... - It's from the same chapter of the book.
Yeah, it's a parallel, for sure, with NASA.
We have to make sure we don't contaminate the environments
that we're trying to search for life on.
When I think about contamination,
we can just look back to our human history on our planet.
When European settlers came from Europe
and moved west and brought disease with them,
and began destroying civilizations,
and having a really negative impact on the indigenous people they encountered.
We have to think, on a planetary scale,
how we don't do that when we get someplace else.
Humans are a cesspool of bacteria.
And once we go there...
I mean, sometimes if we have some digestive problems,
we'll have a little Activia, a little yogurt.
Something to help us regulate our digestive system.
So, that's a positive infiltration of our ecosystem.
But if we go to a different planet, and we bring our own bacteria,
it doesn't necessarily have a positive result.
So, in the biggest picture...
Let's say this more practically.
If I may, more down-to-earth.
Are we gonna bring...?
Are we gonna bring pieces of Mars back to the Earth?
So, NASA has not signed up for a return mission yet,
but just like you guys were talking about earlier on,
we would love to have these samples that we collect for the 2020 mission
to be brought back to Earth and investigated for life.
If we brought life back to the Earth, could it...?
Could it harm us?
There's always a possibility.
But that's why NASA will have a plan by then.
Once they sign up for the job,
they're gonna have a very solid, bulletproof plan
on how to bring it back in a safe way so that we don't harm the humans on Earth.
Okay, so, along this line, I'm here for you.
- I am the CEO of the Planetary Society. - Please sign the check.
So, if you're out there, and you consider...
You wanna do something about space, consider joining the Planetary Society,
this is our Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment.
People say, "Microbes couldn't survive." They can survive...
You guys are gonna screen Andromeda Strain?
- Oh, yeah, yeah. - Yeah. Everybody's gotta watch it.
- We'll know. - It happens like that.
Yeah.
No, there'll be plans and protocols in place. We'll be fine.
Yeah, they're gonna store it in a tank of piranhas, so, if it gets out...
What if their long game is to form an alliance with piranhas
- and they've already done that? - That's why you're here.
- We played right into their game. - Yeah.
'Cause that's what we'd do. If we were surrounded by piranhas...
- we'd go, "Hey, let's hook up." - Yeah.
"We can take over this planet, once we get out of this aquarium."
We can work together to save the world. Thank you so much.
Let's have a hand for Wil, Moogega, and Hakeem.
Thank you, Bill.
If life came to Earth on an asteroid,
it had to survive the cold, harsh vacuum of space.
Seem impossible?
Well, there's actually a microscopic animal on Earth
that might be able to do it.
They may be no bigger than the period at the end of a sentence...
but tardigrades are teeny-tiny, spacefaring tough guys.
They have withstood the most severe environmental condition:
extreme heat, bitter cold, and the hard vacuum of space.
Their existence supports the idea
that life on Earth could've started elsewhere in the universe.
And the only dude hard enough to be the tardigrade
is six-time UFC champion Randy Couture.
The sun's giving off a hundred times more radiation than would kill all humans.
Good thing I ain't human.
You want some of me?
I want some of you, too.
Nothing...
Nothing hurts the tardigrade. Nothing.
I'm under so much pressure.
Enough pressure to crush a man.
But I love it.
Pressure makes me mad.
And when I'm mad, I get even.
Hey, what the hell, man?
Don't be so crabby.
Sorry... didn't mean to be so shellfish.
Nothing hurts the tardigrade. Nothing.
So many people trying to kill me has worn the tardigrade out.
Now...
I just wanna relax with my lady.
That must be her.
"Dear tardigrade, I love you...
but I met someone"?
"It's over"?
Sad emoji?
Eggplant emoji?
I guess one thing does hurt the tardigrade.
Words.
Come on, come on. Give it up. That was cool.
And now, here to explain panspermia to kids in song,
it's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend's Rachel Bloom.
♪ Pop, blam, wow Panspermia's how ♪
♪ Life started on Earth ♪
♪ Pop, blam, wow One day an alien said to his pal ♪
♪ "Let's throw some stuff at the Earth" ♪
♪ Pop, blam, wow ♪
♪ The alien said, "Hey, what should we throw?" ♪
♪ "Organic matter Sounds good to me, bro" ♪
♪ The aliens reached down Into their pants ♪
♪ They threw some poop And it landed in France ♪
Rachel.
Rachel, I really...
Of course, we all really appreciate you being here.
- But I gotta stop you right there. - Thank you. You should.
That isn't exactly how the panspermia hypothesis works.
Panspermia is the theory that the building blocks of life
originated elsewhere in the solar system
and got transported to Earth billions of years ago.
- And that's how life started here. - Yeah. Mm-hm. Yeah.
Um, mm-mm. No. Mm-mm.
- No, that's not. No, no. - So, you're just gonna go?
♪ Pop, blam, wow It's definitely how ♪
♪ Life started on Earth ♪
♪ Pop, blam, wow ♪
♪ The aliens thought They'd create some more ♪
♪ They got out some clay And made dinosaurs ♪
♪ The dinosaurs got depressed So, they died ♪
♪ The aliens said "Well, we plop dram tried" ♪
Rachel, I...
Rachel, I gotta say
that has absolutely nothing to do with the panspermia hypothesis.
Dinosaurs didn't die of depression.
That's not how they went extinct. What's going on here?
Are you saying that dinosaurs were always happy?
- I don't know. - Bill, let me talk to you for a second.
Just... Just... Yeah, go over there.
Listen, um...
The reason I'm doing this show is I wanted to be part of a science song
that would define an entire generation of kids.
- Entire generation? - Yeah, kind of like "Gangnam Style."
Except educational.
But right now, I have to say, you're really pissing on my piñata.
I'm what? That's not even a phrase.
I say it all the time, so, it obviously is.
So, what I need you to do is I need you to put your Nye back in your pants
and stop urinating on my papier-mâché pony,
so, all the kids can get their candy, okay? All right.
♪ Pop, blam, wow Panspermia's how ♪
♪ Life started on Earth ♪
♪ Pop, blam, wow ♪
♪ So, look at your dad And look at your mom ♪
♪ They are both space aliens ♪
♪ Blop, blam, blom ♪
♪ Mom is from Mars And Dad is from Saturn ♪
♪ Their goal is clear If you find the pattern ♪
♪ Life is uncertain But one thing is true ♪
♪ Your parents totally wanna kill you ♪
Rachel.
How is that explaining science? I mean, that's...
You know what, Nye? Can I talk to you again for a second?
Just over... Just... Again, over there.
Let me tell you something about kids today, all right?
I'm a millennial, I know.
Kids today don't want a nuanced explanation
of how the seeds of life could be prevalent in the universe,
and it's possible those seeds landed on Earth, and it helped propagate life.
Blah, blah, blah. Snore. I don't care.
These kids care about two things. The double D's:
drama and dinosaurs.
- The double D's? - Yeah.
♪ Pop, blam, wow Panspermia's how ♪
♪ Life started on Earth ♪
♪ Pop, blam, wow ♪
Your parents are gonna kill you.
Rachel, Rachel, Rachel.
Bye, kids. Okay.
Whee!
To be honest, that wasn't really what I had in mind.
Rachel Bloom, everybody.
The idea of panspermia is that an asteroid impact on Mars
sent tons of materials into space.
And teeny-tiny Martian microbes survived the trip and the landing,
and started life on Earth.
Now, to help me demonstrate this possible Martian invasion,
I thought, "Hey, Bill."
Oh, that's me.
"How can we talk about baseball?"
For everybody watching overseas, I really like baseball.
The U.S. pastime.
So, please, welcome San Francisco Giants All-Star Hunter Pence.
Hunter, so good you're here.
Hey, Bill.
- Glad to help populate Earth. - Yes.
So, today,
you'll be playing the part of that ancient asteroid.
My agent told me I get to be a comet.
Okay, you're a comet. A comet.
They're pretty similar. Comets have an ion tail, gas...
But that's all right.
Your job...
is to hit Mars with a ball.
I mean, an asteroid.
I mean... I mean, a comet.
A comet. And you'll shoot bacteria into space,
where they'll fall to Earth and find things to their liking, and...
get busy, you know, propagate.
Spread out all over the Earth.
Like Daytona Beach?
Yes, yes. Bacterial life everywhere.
Now, I know you've made plenty of clutch plays,
won a couple World Series, but remember, a hit here...
is for the existence of life itself.
- Right. - Yeah.
No pressure.
- All right, let's do it. - Go for it.
Life on Earth, huh? No big deal.
- Yeah. - No, it's easy.
Here we go, guys.
- Harder than it looks. - That's why they make them out of plastic.
That was your asteroidal impact. Or cometary.
- Cometary impact. - Comet. Cometary, yeah.
Whoa!
Aw! It's so beautiful.
It's so beautiful, oh, man.
Oh, my God. Yeah.
You populated the Earth!
Oh, my God. This is fantastic. I love you, man.
Thanks to you, there's life on Earth.
There's you and me, you...
panspermia'd all over the place.
I panspermia'd all over the place.
Yeah.
And that's it for the show, then, folks.
Thanks for watching. Now, go out... save the world.
Hunter Pence, ladies and gentlemen.
Oh, I love you, man.
Yes, yes.
Save the world, Bill... Nye.