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.
