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FURTHER is an original series exploring the intersection of science and humanity. In the wake of Kepler-452b, Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at SETI Research weighs in on the potential for alien life. Producer: Marco Patricio & Vinny Verma Director: Vinny Verma & Stuart Langfield Animation: Stuart Langfield Additional Animation: Jennifer Mackie Original Composition: Jim Guthrie Click here to subscribe to our channel » https://www.youtube.com/user/shopify ------------------------ "On July 23rd 2015, NASA's Kepler Mission confirmed the existence of a near earth-size planet in the habitable zone around a sun-like star. Kepler-452B, the older cousin to earth. One of the strangest questions I ever get at cocktail parties - not that I got to a lot of cocktail parties, but - is do you really think the aliens are there? Of course I do. I mean, you know, I didn't take this job because I like the color of the furniture. Right. It's because we now know enough about the sky. We now know enough about how the universe came into being to say, you know, this is probably not all that special. You know when I was a kid I was interested in astronomy. I'd go to the local planetarium and they'd give you a show and show you dull constellations and everybody fell asleep but they would also tell you that doggonit planet might be very rare. You know obvious they're nine planets around the sun - well these days eight - but you might not find too many other starts with planets. Now we know that's wrong. Most stars have planets. That's new. That's new information. That's something in the last couple of years. And in the last year we've learned that maybe one in five stars will a planet that might have liquid oceans or atmospheres. In other words a planet that could have life. So that gives a lot of encouragement I would say to the kind of experiment we're doing here because now we know yeah it's not just an interesting idea that there might be aliens out there but there's a lot of real estate for them to live on and that's been shown by observation. That's proven science. What if we found a signal? People ask that all the time. So how will that effect me? I think in the beginning it's just going to be a huge news story that's all. Everybody will want to know so you found life in space? Everybody's going to want to know tell me more. I want to know more. How far away are these guys? Where are they? And you'll say well it's that star system there and they're so many lightyears away and so forth. Every telescope in the world will immediately begin looking in that direction hoping to see if they can find any planets around there. If they can learn anything. We might be able to learn more. We might even get a message. If we get a message who knows what it might be. It might be really very informative. On the other hand let's assume that - in the conservative case if you will - that you don't get a message. You can't pick it up or you can't decode it. You'll never know what it means. All you know is that there's somebody up there who's clever enough to build a radio transmitter. And how does that affect you? Are you gonna say I'm not going to work this week because doggonit they found aliens. You're not going to say that! You're going to go to work you're going to go to school - of course you are. But at least you'll know something that's really important. You'll know that what's happened here on earth has happened many other places. Something similar."