LIFE BEYOND II: The Museum of Alien Life (4K)

Supported by

Supported by
Protocol Labs

Supported by
Protocol Labs
Follow your curiosity.

Supported By
Protocol Labs
Follow your curiosity.
Lead humanity forward.

Protocol Labs
Follow your curiosity.
Lead humanity forward.

Follow your curiosity.
Lead humanity forward.

"In all the universe,

"In all the universe,
there stands only one known tree of life."

"Does it stand alone?

"Does it stand alone?
Or is it part of a vast cosmic wilderness?"

"Imagine a museum
containing every type of life in the universe."

"What strange things would such a museum hold?"

"What is possible under the laws of nature?"

LIFE BEYOND

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER II
THE MUSEUM OF ALIEN LIFE

To have any hope of finding alien life,

we have to know what to look for.

But where do we begin?

How do we narrow down a seemingly
infinite set of possibilities?

There's one thing we know for sure:

nature will have to play by her own rules.

No matter how strange alien life might be,

is going to be limited by the same physical
and chemical laws that we are.

On top of this, each alien environment will further
limit what kinds of life forms can evolve there.

Despite these natural boundaries,

the possibilities are staggering to imagine.

Trillions of planets, each a unique
cauldron of chemicals,

undergoing their own
complex evolution.

To guide our thinking, this museum of alien life
will be divided into two exhibits:

Life as we know it: home to beings
with bio-chemistries like ours.

And life as we don't know it: home to beings
that challenge our concept of life itself.

Before we venture too far
into the unknown,

we have to ask ourselves:

what if alien life is more
like ours than we think?

EXHIBIT I

EXHIBIT I
LIFE AS WE KNOW IT

EXHIBIT I
LIFE AS WE KNOW IT
CARBON & WATER BASED

If there's one feature that unites us with
these other specimes in this museum, is carbon.

Carbon is ubiquitous, is one of the
most common elements in the universe

and is very good at forming
large stable molecules.

Carbon has the rare ability to form four way
bounds with other elements

and to bind to itself in
long, stable chains.

Enabling the formation of
huge complex molecules.

This versatility makes carbon the center piece

in the moleculary machinery of life.

And the same carbon compounds that we use
have been found far from Earth,

clinging to meteorites

and floating in far off
clouds of cosmic dust.

The building blocks of life drifting
like snow through the universe.

And if alien life has selected other carbon
compounds for the biochemistry,

they will have plenty to choose from.

Scientists recently identified over a
million possible alternatives to DNA:

all carbon based.

If we ever discover other
carbon based life forms,

we will be fundamentally related.

They will be our cosmic brother.

But would they look anything like us?

If they hail from Earth like planets,

we could share even more in common,

than just our biochemistry.

What would life be like in another
planets, if its evolved?

Would it be like, the world
today here on Earth?

Or would be completely different?

There are those, who argue that

from the argument of convergent evolution,

if conditions on other planets are similar to here, then we will see very similar life forms;

animal and plant-like organisms, that look very familiar.