NARRATOR: Portsmouth, England, December 21, 1872.
The HMS Challenger sets out on a three-year scientific
expedition to survey the Earth's oceans
and search for new marine life.
At the time of its departure, the mainstream scientific
viewpoint is that life cannot exist
more than 1,800 feet beneath the surface of the ocean.
But in March of 1875, after more than two years at sea,
the crew of the HMS Challenger makes a remarkable discovery.
Using a deep-sea dredge, they uncover an abundance of life
at depths well beyond 1,800 feet.
Every time they dredged the waters of the ocean,
they kept bringing up weirder and weirder creatures
at deeper and deeper levels.
It quickly became apparent that the oceans
are teeming with life.
Throughout time, we tend to sort of impose
our own limitations and our own perspectives
on sort of our view of the universe, right?
And so our idea of the deep ocean was similar to that, too.
We thought that probably nothing else
could live at great depths.
Because we certainly couldn't survive.
Our bodies couldn't take the pressure--
sort of biased, I think, our interpretation
of life in the deep ocean.
DAVID WILCOCK: They found over 4,700
different types of new life.
It was a wealth of data so vast that it filled 50 volumes
with 30,000 pages of information and was
essentially a scientific revolution for its time.
LEONID MOROZ: It was fascinating.
It only was five scientist, 220-plus crew--
only five scientist.
NARRATOR: In addition to finding new species of marine life,
the Challenger crew also made the first discovery of what
are called cosmic spherules, nickel iron micrometeorites
from outer space.
According to some scientists, these spherules
could be capable of carrying extraterrestrial life.
MAN: A lot of those rocks would have carried a microbial cargo.
Cocooned inside of rocks, a microbe
could be quite happy in the harsh conditions of space.
In particular, it would be shielded from radiation
by the depth of rock.
It could probably stay in a dormant phase out in space
for, certainly, thousands if not millions of years.
WILLIAM HENRY: When scientists explored these nickel iron
spherules in depth, they discovered
that they contained iron that was extraterrestrial in origin.
Is it possible that this extraterrestrial substances
were brought here by alien beings
and deposited in the oceans of Earth
along with other forms of life?
NARRATOR: Is it possible that the Challenger
discovered the conveyance of extraterrestrial life
on the seafloor?
Might the deepest parts of the ocean be as alien to us
as the farthest reaches of outer space?
KEN GERHARD: We seem so fixated on finding
life on other planets.
Yet, there's so much potential here on Earth.
If there's anything that we've learned from history,
it's that anything is possible.
We can't discount the possibility that somewhere
in the vast, unexplored ocean depths lies some
highly-intelligent and highly-dangerous
life form we haven't seen yet--
deep sea aliens, if you will.
75% of our planet is ocean.
JASON MARTELL: Today, as we look deeper
into our own solar system and beyond,
we realize the importance of H2O and that water isn't only
a life force for us but possibly other organisms
within the galaxy.
[boom]
And knowing that our oceans are as deep as they are,
it's very possible there's a whole other world
of exploration waiting for us.
We might even discover that there
are other races living on the planet Earth
but at the deep parts of our oceans.
[booming]
[music playing]
NARRATOR: Is it possible that extraterrestrials inhabit
our waters all over the world?
Perhaps when we finally make contact with alien beings,
it will not be in the furthest reaches of space
but right here on Earth lurking in the deep.