NARRATOR: Spring 2013,
the Mars One project
solicits candidates for their
proposed settlement on Mars.
Over 200,000 people
apply for the chance
to be the first humans to
colonize the red planet.
Only 24 will be selected.
None are expected to return.
Well, the Mars One mission
is a very ambitious mission.
They've canvassed the whole
world's aerospace contractors
and tried to make heavy
use of the experience
on the space station where
they've made living modules.
Those same modules
can be brought to Mars
and support human life.
NARRATOR: Scientists
are testing working
models of living quarters for
Mars such as NASA's Deep Space
Habitat.
Engineers designed these
pods to be constructed
remotely before humans arrive.
Once built, the habitats
will supply oxygen and water
and minimize the harmful
effects of atmospheric radiation
to humans.
Yet even these
engineering feats won't
allow humans to live on Mars
for extended periods of time.
We have tried experiments
with actually making
a survivable
environment in a pod,
and it seems to
be very, very hard
to do for a very long scale.
If we want long-term
habitation on Mars
and colonization of
Mars, personally I
vote for terraforming.
NARRATOR: Terraforming
is the process
of turning an environment
unsuitable for human habitation
into one that
mankind can live in.
Scientists are
currently researching
the various ways
we might someday
terraform an entire planet.
When you think about
terraforming Mars,
the key really is getting
a dense atmosphere that
forms protection from the
radiation from the sun,
makes the temperature
really high enough,
and gets things going with
plant life and oxygen.
So one question is where did
you get that denser atmosphere?
Couple of options.
There is various
amounts of gases
trapped in the polar caps.
So you can imagine melting
those and releasing the gas.
NARRATOR:
Ancient-astronaut theorists
propose that if humans
are planning to one day
give Mars a
breathable atmosphere,
extraterrestrials may have
done the same thing with Earth
millions of years ago.
There's a distinct
possibility that the Earth
could have been terraformed.
When you look at the development
of Earth, what you see
is that at every stage the
planet got exactly what it
seemed to need to develop
into this beautiful blue world
that we live on.
When we needed oxygen, there
was bacteria introduced
into the ecosystem
that actually sucked
up carbon dioxide and methane
gas and pumped out oxygen.
We're looking at
what Mars is, and we're
thinking of trying to build an
atmosphere and everything else.
And the first question
you'd have to ask
yourself is, did
extraterrestrials come
here and do the same thing?
There's always been a
problem about life on Earth.
Did it actually
start here on Earth
or come here from
somewhere else?
There's no known transition
from nonlife to life
that we can all agree on.
The thing is we don't know
how life began and it's up
for grabs, but we know on
Earth it was microbes that
made the oxygen atmosphere.
NARRATOR: Although
scientists agree
that Earth's oxygenated
atmosphere most likely
can be attributed to the
presence of microbes,
many theories exist
as to where exactly
these organisms came from.
One intriguing speculation
that has caught the attention
of ancient-astronaut theorists
involves grooved metal balls
called Klerksdorp spheres.
These mysterious
round objects were
found scattered in
mineral deposits
in South Africa that date
back 3 billion years.
There are people that argue
that these spheres are natural,
but there's really no
natural objects that bear
any resemblance to them at all.
And the fact that they're
buried in rock that is so old
indicates that somebody
sort of scattered
them throughout the planet.
They appear to be metallic
constructed spheres in which
you could have placed bacterial
life that would definitely have
been able to then spill
out into the ecosystem,
multiply, divide, and change
the environment exactly
as we're proposing
to do on planet Mars.
We might say that this is
just a natural occurring thing
on Earth, but this
may be evidence
that Earth was seeded by some
kind of bacteria or microbes
brought here and
what we have today
has been purposely created by
beings with tremendous powers
and knowledge.
