WILLIAM SHATNER: Geneva, Switzerland, November 1995--
astronomers from the University of Geneva
announce an incredible discovery in the pages
of the journal "Nature."
They reveal that by analyzing slight changes in the light
generated by the distant star known as 51 Pegasi,
they were able to confirm the existence of an exoplanet
around another star in our galaxy for the very first time.
An exoplanet is just a planet around somebody else's star.
It's not orbiting the sun.
Before 1995, we thought there might be a lot of planets
out there, but we didn't know it.
And since then, there are a lot of exoplanets
that have been found-- in fact, thousands of them.
That's a lot of planets.
MICHIO KAKU: Right now, we have cataloged
about 5,000 exoplanets orbiting other stars,
and that's just in our own vicinity
of the Milky Way galaxy.
And we have encyclopedias documenting
the size and the characteristics of these planets.
Every day, we discover a new planet out there that
potentially could carry life.
WILLIAM SHATNER: Since it's true that our galaxy is teeming
with planets, could some of them be
home to extraterrestrial life?
According to astronomers, the answer is yes.
And they claim that these planets can be found in what is
known as the Goldilocks Zone.
JEFF COUGHLIN: In terms of the Goldilocks Zone,
that's the right distance from the star where you're not too
hot and you're not too cold.
You're just right.
If you're on the Goldilocks Zone,
you can have liquid water in the surface without it
freezing or without it boiling off.
And where there's liquid water, there could be life.
SETH SHOSTAK: Earth is obviously in the Goldilocks
Zone for the sun.
Those are the kind of planets you want to find because you
probably need water for life.
And thanks to telescopes, we know
that every second or third star has
at least one planet more or less the same size as our own
in the Goldilocks Zone.
WILLIAM SHATNER: Will we ever be able to prove that planets
located in the Goldilocks Zone are, in fact, home
to other life forms?
Well, some scientists believe that we may soon find out.
July 11, 2022, Washington, DC.
Today is a historic day.
WILLIAM SHATNER: At an event at the White House,
President Joe Biden unveils the first image taken by NASA's
James Webb Space Telescope.
JOE BIDEN: It's a new window into the history
of our universe.
We can see light from the oldest galaxies, the oldest documented
light in the history of the universe,
from over 13 billion years ago.
WILLIAM SHATNER: The $10 billion instrument
is armed with the most powerful infrared imaging
technology ever created.
And what's even more remarkable is that the telescope
was specifically designed to analyze
planets that lie in the Goldilocks Zone
for evidence of life.
The James Webb telescope, it's an infrared telescope,
so it's sensitive to heat.
But that's really not the big deal.
The big deal is that it can look,
for example, at a planet around another star
and actually see it.
It might only look like a dot on a photo,
but you take the light from that dot, put it through a prism,
and you could tell what's in the atmosphere of that planet.
The James Webb Space Telescope is like a magnifying glass.
It's going to look in extreme detail.
And the great thing is, for the first time,
we can actually start to study the atmospheres
of Earth-sized planets.
If we look at a planet and we can see chemicals that we know
don't occur naturally in its atmosphere, that's
a really good indication that they're produced
by industrial processes.
So if we see those in an exoplanet,
that's a good sign that they're produced
by some alien industry.
It tells you there's very likely an intelligent civilization
like our own on that planet producing those chemicals.
MICHIO KAKU: Given the fact that we have now the Webb
telescope up there giving us even more information,
given the fact that we keep on cataloging more
and more exoplanets, we are now flooded with information
about potential life forms in the galaxy,
perhaps even intelligent life.
And so this is a game changer.