LIFE BEYOND: Visions of Alien Life. Full Documentary Remastered (4K)

that we are on the verge of discovery. Throughout our lives, we will understand that there is

life

on other bodies in the solar system. Let's understand the implications of that for the evolution of

life

here on Earth. We will find planets around other stars that we can say we see potential signs of habitability in their atmospheres. All of that will happen in the next 10 to 20 years. How exciting is that? We're on the brink of things that people have wondered about for Milennia: "Are we alone?" And here we are, about to find out. If we find life out there, what will we discover about ourselves?

What chapter is Earth in the history of life? Our universe is about 14 billion years old and there are planets that are three times the age of Earth. With all that time to develop, there could be life out there much more advanced than us. Is life on Earth a newcomer to the cosmic stage? How old could life be? 100 thousand years ago 1 million years ago 5 million years ago 10 million years ago 50 million years ago 100 million years ago 200 million years ago 300 million years ago 400 million years ago 500 million years ago 1 billion years ago 2 billion years ago 3 billion years ago 4 billion years ago 5 billion years ago 10 billion years ago 13.8 billion years ago Event: The Big Bang During its first million years , the cosmos was too hot for life as we know it.

The ambient temperature would have boiled you alive. Event: The First Star When it finally became cold enough for life, there were no stars or planets. Just huge, heavy clouds of hydrogen. After 70 million years, gravity took hold of these clouds and spun them into the first generation of stars. The first stars were massive and bright, but there was no life to see them emerge. Vital heavy elements were still being forged in their cores. Vital heavy elements were still being forged in their cores. Not even the Big Bang was hot enough to create them. Vital heavy elements were still being forged in their cores.

Not even the Big Bang was hot enough to create them. The Big Bang created only the three lightest elements: The Big Bang created only the three lightest elements: hydrogen, helium and lithium. The heavier elements that make life possible were only created later in the ultra-dense cores of stars. And for those elements to end up inside your body, those stars would have to explode. Event: Death of a Star The explosive death of the first medium-sized stars seeded the cosmos with the ingredients for life. From its ashes a second generation of suns emerged, this time with rocky planets dancing around them.

This is the moment: the raw materials for life together for the first time, ~13.7 billion years ago. As the heat of the Big Bang faded, the universe went through a "goldilocks" era. About 15 million years after time began, the ambient temperature reached a comfortable 75º F (24º C). For millions of years, it was hot in all directions. For millions of years, it was hot in all directions, like an endless summer day on Earth. Stars and planets could have formed so early, in theoretical ultra-dense regions of space. If such regions existed, liquid water could have flowed in abundance, even on rogue planets far from any stars.

Could this have been the dawn of life? Could this have been the dawn of life? Extraterrestrial beings feeding on the heat of the Big Bang? Despite decades of searching, no sign of extraterrestrial life has ever been confirmed. So where is everyone? Could we really be alone? Perhaps primitive life is common, but intelligence is extremely rare. Perhaps space is too vast for feasible communication. Or maybe we will be the first. Could we be the opening chapter of an extensive story of life? 13.8 billion years 14 billion years 15 billion years 16 billion years 17 billion years 18 billion years 19 billion years 20 billion years The universe is young and the vast majority of the planets have not yet been born. 21 billion years The universe is young and the vast majority of planets have not yet been born. 22 billion years The universe is young and the vast majority of planets have not yet been born. 23 billion years The universe is young and the vast majority of planets have not yet been born. 24 billion years The universe is young and the vast majority of planets have not yet been born. 25 billion years The universe is young and the vast majority of planets have not yet been born. 30 billion years The universe is young and the vast majority of planets have not yet been born. 35 billion years The universe is young and the vast majority of planets have not yet been born. 40 billion years The universe is young and the vast majority of planets have not yet been born. 45 billion years The universe is young and the vast majority of planets have not yet been born. 50 billion years The universe is young and the vast majority of planets have not yet been born. 55 billion years The universe is young and the vast majority of planets have not yet been born. 60 billion years The universe is young and the vast majority of planets have not yet been born. 65 billion years 70 billion years 80 billion years 90 billion years 100 billion years 110 billion years 120 billion years 130 billion years 140 billion years 150 billion years The ingredients of life will continue to cook for another 100,000,000,000,000 years. 200 billion years The ingredients of life will continue to cook for another 100,000,000,000,000 years. 250 billion years The ingredients of life will continue to cook for another 100,000,000,000,000 years. 300 billion years The ingredients of life will continue to cook for another 100,000,000,000,000 years. 350 billion years The ingredients of life will continue to cook for another 100,000,000,000,000 years. 400 billion years The ingredients of life will continue to cook for another 100,000,000,000,000 years. 450 billion years The ingredients of life will continue to cook for another 100,000,000,000,000 years. 500 billion years The ingredients of life will continue to cook for another 100,000,000,000,000 years. 600 billion years The ingredients of life will continue to cook for another 100,000,000,000,000 years. 700 billion years The ingredients of life will continue to cook for another 100,000,000,000,000 years. 800 billion years The ingredients of life will continue to cook for another 100,000,000,000,000 years. 900 billion years 900 billion years From this perspective, we are the dawn: the opening melody of a symphony of life. 1 billion years From this perspective, we are the dawn: the opening melody of a symphony of life. 2 billion years From this perspective, we are the dawn: the opening melody of a symphony of life. 4 billion years From this perspective, we are the dawn: the opening melody of a symphony of life. 8 billion years From this perspective, we are the dawn: the opening melody of a symphony of life. 16 billion years From this perspective, we are the dawn: the opening melody of a symphony of life. 32 billion years From this perspective, we are the dawn: the opening melody of a symphony of life. 32 billion years 64 billion years 70 billion years 80 billion years 90 billion years 95 billion years ~100 billion years later Event: last star dies ~100 billion years later Event: last star dies ~100 billions of years later What could come long after us?

Red dwarf stars can live up to 10 billion years, bathing their planets in starlight for eons. Life is much more likely on these time scales, where conditions are stable over extended periods of time. Any being living near these stars would have to face violent solar flares that continually threaten extinction. Many of these planets would be tidally locked: one side permanently exposed to the sun and the other frozen in darkness. But as Earth has taught us, life is remarkably adaptable. What forms might life take when it has billions of years to evolve? One day, somehow, the story of life will come to an end.

If we are the first chapter of that story, if we are the first chapter of that story, we have the opportunity to carry the torch of life into the future. And if biology persists into the distant future, then we live in a privileged time. In later chapters, the universe will look very different. Distant galaxies will disappear from view, stars will die, and night skies will darken. Perhaps life in the far future will wonder: Perhaps life in the far future will wonder: What was it like to live in the bright early days of the universe? We are lucky to know the answer.

All we have to do is look up. If there is extraterrestrial life out there, if there is extraterrestrial life out there, will we know it when we see it? What would other trees of life really be like? Imagine a museum containing all types of life forms in the universe. What strange things would a museum like this house? What is possible according to the laws of nature? LIFE LIFE BEYOND CHAPTER II CHAPTER II The Museum of Extraterrestrial Life To have any hope of finding extraterrestrial life, we have to know what to look for. But where do we start?

How can we narrow down a seemingly infinite set of possibilities? There is one thing we know for sure: nature will have to follow its own rules. No matter how strange extraterrestrial life may be, it will be limited by the same physical and chemical laws as us. On top of this, each

alien

environment will further limit the type of life forms that can evolve there. Despite these natural limits, the possibilities are amazing to imagine. Trillions of planets, each a unique cauldron of chemicals undergoing their own complex evolution. To guide our thinking, this museum of extraterrestrial life will be divided into two exhibits: Life as we know it, home to beings with biochemistry like ours; and life as we do not know it, home to beings that challenge our concept of life itself.

Before we venture too far into the unknown, we should ask ourselves: What if extraterrestrial life was more like us than we thought? If there is one trait that unites us with the rest of the specimens in this museum, it is carbon. Carbon is ubiquitous, it is one of the most common elements in the universe and is very good at forming large, stable molecules. Carbon has the rare ability to form four-way bonds with other elements and to bind itself into long, stable chains. , allowing the formation of huge complex molecules. This versatility makes carbon the centerpiece of the molecular machinery of life.

And the same carbon compounds we use have been found far from Earth, attached to meteorites and floating in distant clouds of cosmic dust. The building blocks of life, floating like snow through the universe. And if extraterrestrial life has selected other carbon compounds for its biochemistry, they will have plenty to choose from. Recently, scientists identified more than one million possible alternatives to DNA, all carbon-based. If we ever discovered other carbon-based life forms, we would be fundamentally related. They would be our cosmic brothers. But would they look anything like us? If they come from Earth-like planets, we might have even more in common than just our biochemistry.

What would life be like on other planets, if it evolved? Would it be like the current world here on Earth or would it be completely different? There are those who argue that, based on the argument of convergent evolution, if conditions on other planets are similar to those here, then we would see very similar life forms: organisms similar to animals and plants that look very familiar. On Earth, certain features such as vision, echolocation, and flight have evolved several times independently in different species. This process of convergent evolution could extend to

alien

planets like Earth, where creatures face similar environmental pressures.

It's no guarantee, but there could be certain universalities in life. The greatest successes of evolution are repeated throughout the universe. Each feature would be in tune with its local environment. Dimly illuminated planets would produce huge eyes to absorb extra light, like nocturnal mammals. Some people have even gone so far as to say that human-like, humanoid organisms will exist on other planets. The existence of other human-like organisms seems unlikely, given the long and complicated chain of events that produced us. But we cannot rule it out.If just one in a hundred billion Earth-like planets produced a human form, there could still be thousands of creatures like us out there.

But in reality, we're more likely to find something further down the food chain. Convergent evolution is also widespread in plant life, and C₄ photosynthesis has arisen independently more than 40 times. Would the alien plants look like our own or something completely different? On Earth, plants appear green because they absorb the other wavelengths of the Sun's light spectrum. But stars come in many colors and alien plants would evolve different pigments to fit the unique spectrum of their sun. Plants that feed on hotter stars could appear redder as they absorb their energy-rich blue light. Around faint red dwarf stars, vegetation could appear black, adapted to absorb all visible wavelengths of light.

The Earth itself may have once had a purple appearance due to a pigment called retina that was one of the first precursors of chlorophyll. Some think retina's molecular simplicity could make it a more universal pigment. If so, we may discover that purple is life's favorite color. But the color of alien vegetation is more than just a curiosity: it's chemical information that can be seen from light years away. Land plants leave a characteristic "bump" in the light reflected by our planet. Finding a similar sign from another world could point the way to alien vegetation. Perhaps this is our first glimpse of extraterrestrial life: a vibrant hue cast by a distant world.

But the greatest influence on life will not be its host star; It will be your home planet. What happens when you change the length of a planet's day? What happens when you change the tilt of a planet? What happens when you change the shape of the orbit? What happens when you change the gravity of a planet? Planets with long, elliptical orbits would suffer drastic seasons. There could be worlds that seem dead for thousands of years and suddenly come to life. Most of the rocky planets discovered so far have been massive "super-Earths." How would life evolve on these worlds?

In the seas, gravity may not matter much. A high gravity planet is not one everywhere. If you are in the sea and that is where all life begins, there is almost no gravity because you have the same density as the things around you. It is when animals come onto land that they feel gravity. High G forces would require large bones and muscle mass in complex terrestrial life. They would also require a more robust circulatory system. And plant life could be hampered by the energetic cost of transporting nutrients under stronger gravity. Low-gravity planets would more easily lose their atmospheres to space and lack a magnetic field to protect them from cosmic rays.

But smaller worlds could harbor secret oases: huge cave systems that provide hiding places for life. With more stable temperatures and protection from cosmic rays, life could thrive underground on planets with deadly surfaces. The smallest possible habitable planets are estimated to be 2.5% the mass of Earth. If surface life evolves on these worlds, it could be a sight to behold. Plant life could grow to towering heights, capable of transporting nutrients higher with less gravity. And without the need for bulky skeletons and muscle mass, animals could have mind-numbing body types. Despite our enthusiastic imaginations, large, complex life forms are probably a cosmic rarity.

Here on Earth, it took evolution three billion years to produce complex plant and animal life. Simpler organisms are more resistant, more adaptable and more widespread. The museum's largest collection of extraterrestrial life is probably the "Hall of Microbes." However, finding even the smallest alien microbe would be a profound discovery. And a life the size of a bite could leave a big mark. Like stromatolites on Earth, layers of microbes could build up over time to form huge mounds of rock, leaving behind eerie structures. And in large enough quantities, some alien bacteria could leave a distinct biosignature by exhaling gases that wouldn't coexist naturally, such as oxygen and methane.

There are ways to produce oxygen without life, there are ways to produce methane without life, but having them together in the atmosphere is almost impossible unless you have biology producing those gases at the surface. And it would leave a mark on the planet's color spectrum. Next-generation space telescopes could find a signal like this on a world not far from home. The closest Sun-like star with an Earth-like exoplanet in the habitable zone is probably only 20 light-years away and can be seen with the naked eye. But there may be a goal even easier to reach than small Earth-like planets.

Brown dwarfs: too small to be stars, too big to be planets. Most brown dwarfs are too hot to support life as we know it. But some are cold enough. All the primary elements for life have been detected within their atmospheres. And within these clouds, some layers would provide ideal temperatures and pressures for habitability. There could be photosynthetic plankton in these skies, kept aloft by churning winds. And with enough strength, these upwind winds could even support larger, more complex life. Predators... There are more than 25 billion brown dwarfs in our galaxy alone. There are more than 25 billion brown dwarfs in our galaxy alone, and their sizes will make them easier targets to study.

It is possible that the first specimen we discover in the museum of life does not come from any planet. This raises a crucial question: what if we've been looking in the wrong places? What if nature has other ideas? Most of the universe is either too cold or too hot for liquid water and the biochemistry that supports life as we know it. But in case our prejudices are misleading, we have to cast a wide net: look for life outside the habitable zone, in places that seem tremendously hostile to us. Exotic environments will demand exotic biochemistries, and while no element can match the versatility of carbon, one contender is the favorite.

At first glance, silicon appears similar to carbon. It forms the same four-way bonds and is also abundant in the universe. But a closer look reveals that these two elements are false twins. Silicon bonds are weaker and less likely to form large, complex molecules. Despite this, they can withstand a wider range of temperatures, which opens up intriguing possibilities. Life based on the silicon atom, rather than carbon, would be more resistant to extreme cold, providing a whole new range of strange shapes. But silicon has a problem: in the presence of oxygen, it bonds to solid rock. To avoid turning to stone, silicon beings could be confined to oxygen-free environments, such as Saturn's icy moon Titan.

Its vast lakes of liquid methane and ethane could be an ideal medium for life based on silicon or other radical biochemistry. Without enough sunlight, beings on worlds like Titan would likely be chemosynthetic and would get their energy by breaking down rocks. These life forms could have ultra-slow metabolisms and life cycles measured in millions of years. And frozen worlds are not the only possible port for exotic life. At high temperatures, the typically rigid bonds between silicon and oxygen become more flexible and reactive, triggering more dynamic chemistry. This has led to a truly strange proposal: silicon-based life forms living inside molten silicate rocks.

In theory, these forms could even exist deep within the Earth within magma chambers as part of a shadow biosphere. If so, then aliens are right under our noses. Other shadow biospheres (life forms that live alongside us that we don't even know are here) have been proposed, including tiny RNA-based life small enough to go undetected by existing instruments. Dust clouds and empty space may seem like the last place one would expect to find anything alive. But when cosmic dust comes into contact with plasma, a type of ionized gas, something strange happens. Under simulated conditions, dust particles have been observed to spontaneously self-organize into helical structures resembling DNA.

These plasma crystals are even beginning to exhibit realistic behavior; replicate, evolve towards more stable forms and transmit information. Could these crystals be considered alive? For some researchers, they meet all the criteria to qualify them as inorganic life forms. So far we have only seen them in computer simulations. But some speculate that we might find them among the ice particles in Uranus's rings. Plasma is the most common state of matter in the universe. If complex, evolving plasma crystals really exist, and if they can be considered life, they could be its most common form. Or perhaps life lurks in the opposite polar environment: Or perhaps life lurks in the opposite polar environment: within the hearts of dead stars.

When massive suns explode, some collapse, forming ultra-dense cores called neutron stars. Gigantic masses of atomic nuclei, packed together like sardines. Conditions on the surface are mind-boggling: gravity is a hundred billion times stronger than Earth's. But beneath its crust of iron nuclei lies something strange: a dense, hot sea of ​​neutrons and subatomic particles. Stripped of their electronic shells, these nuclei would obey completely different chemical laws, based not on the electromagnetic force, but on the strong nuclear force that binds the nuclei together. In theory, these particles could join together to form larger macronuclei, which could then combine into even larger "supernuclei." If so, then this puzzling environment would mimic the basic conditions for life: heavy nucleon molecules floating in a complex ocean of particles.

Some scientists have proposed the unimaginable: exotic life forms drifting through the strange sea of ​​particles, living, evolving and dying on incomprehensibly fast time scales. There is probably no chance of detecting such a strange species of life. But there may be hope of finding an even more exotic form. Life is not something that has to evolve naturally. It can be designed. And once intelligence is introduced into the evolutionary process, a Pandora's box opens. Freed from typical biological limitations, synthetic and machine-based life could be the most successful of all. It could thrive almost anywhere, including the vacuum of space, opening up vast frontiers unavailable to biological organisms.

And compared to the glacial pace of natural selection, technological evolution allows for exponentially faster growth, adaptability, and resilience. By some estimates, autonomous, self-replicating machines could colonize an entire galaxy in just a million years. We can't predict how hyperintelligent life would organize itself, but in theory, there could be convergent evolution at play. Silicon's electrical properties could make it a universal basis for artificial intelligence, a redemption for its biological deficiencies. With all its protensional advantages, machine life may even be a universal endpoint: With all its protensional advantages, machine life may even be a universal endpoint: the apex of the evolutionary process.

As the universe ages, perhaps artificial intelligence will come to dominate and natural biological life will be seen as a quaint starting point. Perhaps we ourselves will lead this transition, and the great human experiment would simply be a first link in an expanding intergalactic chain of life. In the end, we are still the only beings we know in the museum of extraterrestrial life. To truly know ourselves, we will have to know: To truly know ourselves, we will have to know: Are we the only ones? Loren Eiseley has said that one does not find oneself until he catches the reflection of an eye other than the human eye.

One day that eye may be that of an intelligent alien. And the sooner we abandon our narrow view of evolution, the sooner we can truly explore our ultimate origins and destinies. We've seen what could be out there. And we know how we could find it. There's only one thing left to do. Go tolook for. (SUBS FOR THE THIRD AND FINAL CHAPTER OF LIFE BEYOND WILL BE AVAILABLE SOON!) Finding even a tiny alien microbe would be historic. But we're not just looking for tiny microbes. We are looking for giants. Are they out there? Will we ever make contact?

How powerful could they be? After 60 years of searching, After 60 years of searching, the game is about to change. New research is revealing astonishing possibilities. From the planetary to the galactic and beyond. melodysheep presents: LIFE LIFE BEYOND CHAPTER III CHAPTER III In Search of Giants The most complex object known in the universe is the human brain. These 86,000,000,000 neurons have given us the power to transform our planet. But is this the best that nature can do? We now know that there are something like 10 billion trillion habitable planets in the universe. There is a 10 billion trillion chance that the brain will be eclipsed by something else.

The search for intelligent life is more than just scientific curiosity. It is driven by a deep desire to connect with something bigger. Finding an alien civilization would not only reveal that we are not alone; could chart a new course of evolution for our species. And unlike primitive life, extraterrestrial intelligence could be detected thousands of light years away, making them potentially easier to find. What do they know that we don't? And how do we make contact? We are not the first to wonder. I I MESSENGERS I MESSENGERS ᴿᵉᵛᵉᵃˡᶦⁿᵍ ᵂᵉ'ʳᵉ ᴺᵒᵗ ᴬˡᵒⁿᵉ 200 years ago we dreamed of lighting huge rings of fire in the Sahara Desert to signal our presence.

And in the 1860s, a French poet proposed a mosaic of giant mirrors, bringing sunlight to Mars in the shape of The Big Dipper. But if you want to send a signal across an ocean of space, bonfires and reflected sunlight won't help you much. Even a nuclear war on a nearby planet would be virtually impossible to detect with current technology. To really convey your message you need a form of light that you can't even see. Radio waves are ideal for transporting information over long distances because, compared to other forms of light, they travel more freely through interstellar gas and dust.

That's why SETI - That's why SETI - The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, has focused almost entirely on the search for radio signals, whether intentional messages or byproducts of technology. Our own radio transmissions have so far traveled 100 light years and reached 75 star systems, some of which include potentially habitable planets. And if alien intelligence lies beyond this signal bubble, they could still infer life on Earth by detecting oxygen in our atmosphere. Thanks to the SETI Institute and the recent 'Breakthrough Listen' project, we have now scanned tens of millions of stars for signals. But despite all this, after 6 decades of searching...

Nothing. Just a series of false alarms and dead-end clues. We call it The Great Silence. But in reality the search has only just begun. There are another two billion galaxies that are still too far away for practical study. If space or the size of the entire Earth were oceans, we would have looked for signs of intelligent life in less than a pond of water. On top of this, we may even be looking for the wrong thing. There is more than one way to communicate through space. Extraterrestrial life could see radio as a primitive technology. We have to consider all possible alternatives.

From the practical to the unimaginable. Now a different type of signal is being sought. One that we could even detect with the naked eye: laser light. High-power laser bursts can eclipse a star thousands of times and can carry much more data per second than radio. We would have to be in direct line of sight to detect the beam. But if they were spread over many light years, they would expand to encompass entire planets and moons. Fleets of laser beacons could be used to sweep the entire galaxy, like alien beacons, in a Cosmic Sea. Thanks to a recent crowdfunding effort, plans are now underway to monitor the entire night sky for laser pulses.

But while these bright flashes would be relatively easy to find, advanced life could be using something much more elusive... neutrinos... tiny subatomic particles that stream past us in trillions every second. These ghost particles can traverse entire planets and not touch a single atom. It takes a giant room like this to detect just a handful of them per day. But researchers recently showed that neutrino communication is possible by sending a simple message through 240 meters of rock. If advanced life uses them to communicate, their signals could travel anywhere, through any obstacle, at the speed of light. Their messages could be transmitting through us right now and we would have no idea.