NARRATOR : What if we could wear bodysuits
to give us superstrength?
Own an identical robot twin to work for us?
What if we could travel through time?
Technology is pushing from every direction. . .
. . . getting faster with each passing second.
Prepare yourself.
The future is closer than you think.
[ Classical music playing ]
A robot conducting a symphony orchestra.
Amazing as that is,
it's just one way reality is outpacing science fiction.
Every day, robots become even more sophisticated,
taking on additional human traits.
Until now, robots have mostly gotten the toughest jobs.
They work the assembly line
and defuse or even detonate explosive devices.
KUFFNER : The traditional tasks for a robot
has always been the three D's -- dull, dirty, dangerous.
But as the technology improves
and as researchers are working towards
developing these intelligent humanoids,
we're going to see our homes and offices occupied by robots.
l believe that humanoid technologies
will improve our lives in the 2 1 st century.
NARRATOR : The world capital of humanlike robots is Japan.
Half of the industrial robots in the world are in Japan.
Japan sees itself as a leader
in robot and humanoid technology.
NARRATOR : The country even has a new kind of celebrity --
a humanoid robot named Asimo.
KUFFNER : Asimo is probably
the world's most famous humanoid right now,
that was developed by Honda Motor Corporation.
H l ROSEl : [ Speaking Japanese ]
l NTERPRETER : The name Asimo
comes from the phrase ''revolutionary mobility''
in Japanese.
Asimo is the world's most advanced robot to date.
ASl MO: My creators have been at this for over 20 years.
At first, we looked like TV sets with legs.
Later, we looked more like humans.
KUFFNER : lt makes sense
that if you're going to build a general-purpose robot
that can perform any tasks that a human can do,
you'd like to make it anthropomorphic
and have a human shape.
NARRATOR : Asimo walks gracefully.
His creators studied motion-capture video
of both humans and animals.
Designed to detect the ground beneath him,
his body responds appropriately, so Asimo keeps his balance.
His appearance was also a careful choice.
H l ROSEl : [ Speaking Japanese ]
l NTERPRETER : Our goal was to place Asimo in the home.
For that reason, we came up with its size.
l am just under 4 feet tall --
the size of an 8-year-old boy.
KUFFNER : So he's a small-stature humanoid,
and in that way, he's very nonthreatening.
And people have an affinity for Asimo.
NARRATOR : Especially considering all that Asimo can do for us.
KUFFNER : They'll be able to assist us
much in the same ways our computers have.
But now, suddenly, this powerful computer is mobile,
and it can actually act upon your commands.
They'll be connected to the l nternet
so that if you need some information,
you don't have to go to a terminal and type a search term.
You can just ask your robot.
NARRATOR : l n the future,
we'll tell our robots to clean the house,
make dinner. . .
Car coming.
. . . even pick up the kids at school.
They'll monitor our family's health and home security. . .
WOMAN : Welcome home, Brian.
Kathryn has left the house.
NARRATOR : . . . and, if necessary, call 9 1 1 .
WOMAN ON RADlO: 1 380, 6 1 . 1 380, 6 1 .
They'll be our live-in nurses, monitoring our vital signs.
Eventually, they'll even replace the doctor.
KUFFNER : As we move towards these intelligent,
sort of autonomous domestic robots in the future,
the robots will be able to learn new skills
by observing other humans do them
or by learning from other robots.
NARRATOR : The day when we all have our personal Asimo
is not far off.
Some day in the near future, l will be sold to you guys.
l'm really looking forward to that.
lt's projected that more than 4 million homes
will soon have personal robots.
The South Korean government
hopes to put robots in every home no later than 2020.
KUFFNER : lf you learn from history,
l believe that, in the next 20 years,
the price will be cheap enough
that we'll be able to afford household robots.
And l believe, again, it will transform our society.
NARRATOR : Especially as robots begin to look and act
more like us.
Professor Hiroshi lshiguro
can literally be in two places at once --
skipping school to enjoy a day in the park. . .
. . .while at the same time
conducting a seminar at Osaka University.
[ Speaking japanese ]
That's because Professor lshiguro
has created Geminoid, his android double.
Geminoid looks exactly like lshiguro,
down to the tiniest of details.
To achieve this lifelike appearance,
lshiguro made a silicon mold of his body,
and he used real human hairs.
His purpose in re-creating himself?
The Geminoid can be remotely controlled
via a motion-capture system
that tracks lshiguro's mouth movements
and allows the robot to speak with lshiguro's voice.
[ Speaking japanese ]
lshiguro has also given his creation
other humanlike mannerisms.
To create this effect,
lshiguro installed hundreds of tiny actuators.
They twitch so realistically
that lshiguro could hardly believe his eyes.
lshiguro believes that in the near future,
we'll all have our own robot clones.
Just how ''human'' will robots become?
Will they ever reach a point
where they will truly think for themselves?
lt's a little dangerous to sort of attempt
to ascribe a verb like ''think'' to a machine.
Right now our computers
are good at lots of numerical calculations,
but they're still operating on programs that we wrote for them.
NARRATOR : But as computers become more and more powerful,
it's predicted that robots with human-level intelligence
could arrive as early as the year 2029.
A society of smart, undetectable androids in our midst
may seem alarming,
but for now, we'll still be the ones in charge.
We can always turn off the power.
NARRATOR : The science-fiction fantasy of humanlike robots
is already coming true.
And future technologies
will give humans the superpower of robots.
For now we're just getting metallic replacement parts.
But soon we may get an entire new body
we can take on and off like a suit.
An exoskeleton --
a wearable robot that gives an average person
physical ability beyond any world-class athlete.
The exoskeleton is the creation of engineer Stephen Jacobsen.
Strap it on and you'll be able to lift hundreds of pounds
without breaking a sweat. . .
. . .walk for miles without getting tired,
and still move with speed and dexterity.
JACOBSEN : The exoskeleton is an analogue to the human body.
lt has structures which replace bones.
lt has actuators which act as muscles.
So the actuators on the system are cylinders
that have hydraulic pressure in them
that's controlled by these valves,
which are controlled by the computers.
When the pressure goes up, this shaft is pulled on.
lt pulls on a metallic tendon, and that pulls on the joint
to make his arm go forward, for example, or back.
So you can see these cylinders going in and out
as he moves his arm up and down.
NARRATOR : All those components are pretty heavy.
JACOBSEN : When he's fully configured with power systems,
he can weigh up to 450 pounds.
NARRATOR : But it won't take a superman
to put on this super device.
lt's engineered to feel light on whoever wears it.
JACOBSEN : He can feel the mass of 450 pounds,
but he doesn't feel the weight.
l can move the system around now just with my fingers
if l use his input, so it basically floats.
When he picks it up, though, again,
and l try to push on him and he pushes on me,
he has great strength.
So the key is, he can put out large forces,
but he doesn't have to use much effort to do that.
NARRATOR : How much can an exoskeleton lift?
How much do you want to lift?
JACOBSEN : The computer can decide
to have anywhere from zero to 3, 000 pounds per square inch
inside the cylinder.
So the loads these cylinders can pull can be 1 , 000 pounds.
NARRATOR : What does that mean
for the human inside the exoskeleton?
JACOBSEN : He was pulling the 200-pound pulldowns.
He quit after 500 out of boredom
because the loads on him never got more than 5 pounds.
NARRATOR : This superstrength could come in handy
in an emergency.
JACOBSEN : There's many applications for the exoskeleton
in lifesaving activities, in going into situations
where you extract people that are injured
or where you move material that's hazardous to people.
NARRATOR : And the military wants to use it
to take the pain out of heavy lifting.
JACOBSEN : Many times with aircraft
and with other vehicles,
you want to load munitions into them, and they're heavy.
lf you had to keep doing that all day, you'd get very tired.
This is an issue of endurance.
We will add hands
that are either as simple as a hook for doing heavy work
or hands that actually have fingers like a human hand
that could do complex dexterity functions.
NARRATOR : At home, your exoskeleton will help you
with all sorts of manual labor.
lt will also let paralyzed and elderly people walk,
even climb mountains.
Eventually, this steel strong man
may even go climbing by himself.
JACOBSEN : lt's possible in the future
that the exoskeleton could not have the person in the cavities
but a series of electronic systems and sensor systems,
so it actually becomes an autonomous robot.
NARRATOR : Just how autonomous
will these superstrong robots become?
Could they conceivably organize themselves into an army
and turn against us?
They would be a formidable enemy.
Friend or foe,
the exoskeleton embodies our hopes and fears
about tomorrow's robots.
JACOBSEN : l think it's a window on the future,
and it's a matter now of just finishing the project.
NARRATOR : Owning a robot, especially a superstrong one,
is just one science-fiction fantasy that may soon come true.
What about having the power many of us have fantasized about --
the power of X-ray vision?
STETTON : Well, X-ray vision, obviously, comes from Superman.
He just had the magic power to look right inside of anything,
except for lead.
NARRATOR : George Stetton
is the inventor of the sonic flashlight --
. . . a device that puts the power of X-ray vision
in the palm of your hand.
STETTON : You can look at your muscles
and tendons and veins and your heart.
lt's a very simple concept.
lt has an ultrasound probe,
and it has a little display
mounted on the ultrasound probe, and a little mirror.
NARRATOR : The flashlight works
by superimposing the image captured by the ultrasound
onto what you're seeing on the outside.
The process is called ''augmented reality. ''
lt's capable of showing features up to 6 inches beneath the skin.
STETTON : You'll have them in your bathroom,
and you'll use them to look at a splinter in your finger
or a cut that doesn't heal
or anything that's going on inside your body.
NARRATOR : Doctors will use the sonic flashlight
to more easily insert needles and intravenous lines
deep inside the body
and find lumps and other potentially malignant masses.
You'll also be able to see through other things.
STETTON : l n the future, with the right kind of radar,
you could use this display technology
to actually look through the wall.
NARRATOR : Think what this could do for a hostage-rescue team
or other first responders.
STETTON : You could devise systems
that could be built into a fireman's helmet
and could deliver images
of what was in front of the fireman through the smoke.
NARRATOR : The sonic flashlight
is still in the development phase.
But one day soon, this X-ray vision
will join robots and the exoskeleton
as technological breakthroughs that will change our lives.
But no future machine could be more thrilling
than one that gives us the ability to fly without wings.
lt's every kid's dream to be able to fly,
have no constraints, and be completely free.
Wl DGERY: l think everyone has the passion to fly,
and that's the mystique of jet packs.
And we are developing jet packs for the average consumer.
NARRATOR : Which means everyone
will be able to fire up their personal rockets
and jet into the clouds.
STRAUSS: Jet packs were first developed in the '60s
to be able to try to fly around in space.
NARRATOR : The military was interested in jet packs, too,
but early systems were impractical --
too heavy and hard to use.
Troy Widgery and Eric Strauss
believe they've solved those problems
and that their jet-pack model
will usher in a new era of personal flight.
STRAUSS: We are experimenting with carbon fiber,
carbon nanotubes,
so as to make them lighter, stronger, and faster.
Wl DGERY: Jet turbines have become more efficient
and lighter and more powerful.
STRAUSS: Strapping on a jet pack
would be like strapping yourself to the front of a Corvette,
because it's like putting 800 horsepower
attached to your body.
NARRATOR : A jet pack is actually a hydrogen-peroxide rocket.
When hydrogen peroxide comes in contact with silver,
it creates superheated steam
powerful enough to launch you skyward.
The problem is today's jet packs can fly for only 45 seconds
before running out of fuel.
But tomorrow's jet packs will be far more practical.
STRAUSS: With going to a turbine system,
our flight times will get up to --
Five minutes is our main goal.
Five-minute flight right now would take you
probably from Boulder to Denver,
which is approximately 20 miles.
And then hopefully in the future we'll be able to go
a lot further and a lot longer than that.
22-minute flight could take you from --
an example would be Fort Collins to Denver,
which would be a 65-mile flight.
l n the future, l could see people buying jet packs
to commute back and forth to work 'cause it's so much easier.
You don't have to worry about traffic,
and you can fly directly from work to your yard
almost like you had a helicopter.
NARRATOR : Right now jet packs are for daredevils.
They fly below parachute height,
so if they malfunction, you risk certain death.
Controlling these personal rockets is also a challenge.
But Strauss and Widgery believe these problems
will soon be solved,
and all of us will be taking to the air.
SCOTT: The feeling of flying this machine --
like jumping off the ground and not having to come back down.
NARRATOR : But jet packs won't come cheap.
Their expected price -- $226, 000 including training.
SCOTT: You know, in 30 years,
you could probably get one 50, 60 grand
like you could pick up a Hummer or a Mercedes for.
And it'd be a lot cooler way to get to work, for sure.
NARRATOR : Other than to enjoy your personal rocket,
in the future you may never want to leave the house.
Your home will be self-sufficient
in ways you never dreamed of.
To begin with, you won't have to go shopping.
Your house will be able to make whatever you want
with a revolutionary new appliance
called a digital fabricator, or ''fabber. ''
Ll PSON : A fabber is a 3-D printer --
a machine that can deposit a variety of materials
in order to make three-dimensional objects.
NARRATOR : Hod Lipson's Fab at Home fabber
will make 3-D objects right on your desktop.
Just as your computer printer
creates two-dimensional documents and photos,
the fabber takes this process one step further,
turning digital data into solid physical objects.
l nstead of ink,
it uses whatever material the desired object is made of.
Ll PSON : We start off with a computerized model
of what the target object should look like.
And then these different materials
are extruded from the syringe, layer by layer,
in order to gradually create the three-dimensional object.
NARRATOR : Right now, Lipson's home version of the fabber
only works in simple plastics and metals.
The results are still crude and take a long time to complete.
Ll PSON : Currently, the Fab at Home printer
can fabricate something like a fork in a couple of hours.
l think eventually, you'll be able to use these machines
to print things in a matter of minutes.
NARRATOR : As the technology improves,
there's theoretically no limit to what the fabber can produce.
Ll PSON : Recently, we've been able to use a fabber
to make things like a functional three-dimensional battery,
circuitry, toys, parts of robots, and even food.
NARRATOR : Once all the kinks in this computerized cooking
are worked out. . .
Your fabber may become an essential kitchen appliance.
And expectations for the device don't stop there.
Ll PSON : This is a very universal type of technology
that's applicable to a wide variety of things.
And it is conceivable that you could print even large things,
such as cars or houses.
NARRATOR : While printing your own house seems like a stretch,
your fabber could download
and print the latest must-haves for your home
and eliminate the need for replacement parts.
You'll be your own factory and builder.
And with a fabber, you'll never again have to make
that last-minute run to the home-improvement store.
You could imagine a future where you shop online for items,
and once you find what you what,
you essentially purchase the blueprint
and print the device you've purchased
on your own desk at home.
NARRATOR : Even though your fabber
could produce many household items,
your future home may actually have
a lot fewer objects than today.
That's because the objects you have
will be infinitely more flexible.
A chair will morph into a chaise or anything else you want
through a new technology known as ''claytronics. ''
Claytronics is essentially gonna create a new media type.
Way back from the telephone,
we've had audio, which allowed us to send voice.
And then we had video,
which allowed us to send voice and pictures.
So with claytronics,
the idea is we could send not just sound and picture
but actually the 3-D shape itself.
NARRATOR : Seth Goldstein, a professor at Carnegie Mellon,
is one of the developers of claytronics.
GOLDSTElN : Claytronics is a form of programmable matter.
lt's a collection
of submillimeter computers, essentially.
NARRATOR : These tiny, programmable computers
are called ''catoms'' -- ''claytronic atoms. ''
Just like atoms are the building blocks
of everything in the universe,
catoms are the basic units of claytronics.
Put enough of these catoms together, give them a command,
and they can assemble themselves
into just about anything you want.
GOLDSTElN : l magine that each one of these little pieces of lead
is a catom, a claytronic atom.
So it's a computer that can move around,
communicate with other computers, change its color,
and then it works together with all the other units
to perform some global effect.
NARRATOR : One of the challenges of claytronics
is keeping these minicomputers attached to one another.
GOLDSTElN : l n all of these robots,
we're using electrostatic forces to hold the robots together.
This is the same kind of thing that happens
when you take a balloon, and you rub it on your hair,
and you put it on the wall.
NARRATOR : Then there's the challenge
of figuring out the right program.
GOLDSTElN : One of the ways to view
the programming problem of claytronics is
how we get what l call ''ensemble behavior'' --
getting all of the individual units
to cooperate together to perform a global task.
NARRATOR : lf Professor Goldstein can pull it off,
the results will be amazing.
The objects made out of claytronics
will be able to form lots of different shapes.
NARRATOR : And the more of these minicomputers there are,
the larger the objects that can be manipulated.
That's how your furniture will be able to do double duty,
adapting to your needs.
With claytronics, the art on your walls
could be changed depending upon your mood.
Your cellphone could turn into a laptop
and, when your work is done, back into a phone.
But its most extraordinary application
is how claytronics might revolutionize communication.
GOLDSTElN : One of the main goals of claytronics
is to improve human-to-human communication
even when the two people aren't in the same room.
So you can imagine having a call in the future
where you pick up your phone and you dial someone,
and instead of just hearing their voice,
you see them sitting across from you.
Of course, they're made out of claytronics.
They're still where they were originally.
And that way, you can have a very real experience
of being in the same place with somebody
that's voice, picture, and touch.
NARRATOR : Your future home may be self-sufficient,
creating its own furniture, your dinner --
even your dinner partner -- at the press of a button.
But what if being a homebody gets a little boring?
The home of tomorrow even has that covered,
allowing you to travel around the world without packing a bag.
Professor Susumu Tachi is the inventor
of a cutting-edge multimedia device called the Twister.
The Twister will give you
a three-dimensional, live, motion-picture experience.
A cylinder with 30 separate display units
rotates around the viewer
as fast as 1 . 6 revolutions per second.
As the units show
slightly different perspectives of the same image,
the sensation becomes both immersive and three-dimensional.
Science calls this the binocular parallax effect.
You will experience it as the ultimate virtual reality.
When connected to live video,
the Twister will give you the experience
of going anywhere in the world and visiting anyone.
The ultimate goal of virtual reality
is to create images and spaces so lifelike, so dimensional,
that it's impossible to distinguish them
from the real world.
Twister will make this dream come true,
turning tomorrow's home into a global environment.
Futuristic homes, humanoid robots, superhuman powers --
all represent science-fiction fantasies come to life.
And those fantasies are not limited to Earth.
No single planet has captured our imagination more than Mars.
And as our actual knowledge
of Earth's nearest cousin increases,
so do the odds that one day we might need to live there.
lt's because of what's happening here on Earth
that traveling to the red planet is considered so important.
McKAY: We may go to Mars
and learn things that may be incredibly important
to those that are still here on Earth.
We never know unless we go and explore.
ZUBR l N : Mars is the test
of whether life naturally evolves from chemistry
wherever you have the right
physical and chemical conditions.
That would mean the universe is filled with life,
and we can prove this by going to Mars.
NARRATOR : Chris McKay is a planetary scientist
at NASA's Ames Research Center in California.
Robert Z ubrin is president of the Mars Society.
Both believe that there may have once been
some form of life on Mars.
One of the components of life as we know it is water.
NASA probes have concluded
that there is ice on the planet's poles,
and there appears to be liquid water
just below the planet's surface.
ZUBR l N : Mars today is a polar desert.
There's water on Mars,
but it's all frozen into the soil as ice or permafrost.
McKAY: We know that early in Mars' history, it had water.
We think it had life.
That opens up the question of bringing it back to life --
making Mars in the future more like Earth is now.
This is sometimes called ''terraforming. ''
The basis of terraforming is the notion that,
early in Mars' history, it had life,
and it's recently dead.
''Recently'' for Mars means a couple billion years.
NARRATOR : McKay believes that, after all that time,
life could actually be revived on Mars.
The fundamental problem in bringing Mars back to life
is warming it up.
Mars is too cold.
NARRATOR : Meanwhile, because of global warming,
the atmosphere on our own planet is getting too hot.
McKAY: We humans have learned how to warm up planets.
We're doing it on Earth with super-greenhouse gases.
NARRATOR : l ronically,
to possibly revive some form of life on Mars,
we'd need to introduce the same conditions
that are threatening life here on Earth.
ZUBR l N : We establish human societies on Mars
with significant industrial capacity.
They could create these greenhouse gases there --
warm the planet.
lt would cause the water that's frozen into the soil
to start melting out,
running again in the streams and riverbeds of Mars,
filling the lakes and putting water vapor into the atmosphere,
and water vapor is a greenhouse gas.
McKAY: Mars would have an environment suitable for life,
suitable for plants, trees, grasses, insects.
NARRATOR : But before we can export cars, factories,
and other polluters to Mars,
we need to get there, and it won't be easy.
McKAY: When we go to Mars,
we are constrained by the position
of the planets around the sun.
NARRATOR : Though Mars is our nearest neighbor,
it's still very far away.
At their closest,
the Earth and Mars are over 34 million miles from one another.
And since the two planets move in different orbits
at different speeds,
they are usually even further apart.
A manned voyage to Mars will have to be timed just right.
The window of opportunity
to go from Earth to Mars or Mars to Earth
opens up only once every two years.
So a trip to Mars might involve taking six months to get there,
and then staying on Mars for two years.
Part of preparing to send humans to Mars
is to test out our equipment and procedures here on Earth.
NARRATOR : lt's safe to say that one day soon we will go to Mars.
lf you want to be among the first humans to go,
the time to prepare yourself is now,
which is exactly what the Mars Society is doing.
ZUBR l N : The Mars Society is an international organization
of people committed to furthering the exploration
and, ultimately, settlement of Mars.
NARRATOR : The first step to going to Mars
is acting as if you're already there.
ZUBR l N : We have simulated human Mars exploration stations
in the Canadian high Arctic and in the American desert,
where we can actually practice Mars missions
and see what might work and what won't.
The Mars Society has now run about 7 0 different crews
between the Arctic and the desert station.
McKAY: Through NASA's educational activities,
we've been working with the Mars Society
to encourage this sort of astronaut training.
NARRATOR : These trips give its participants
a taste of what awaits them on Mars.
Now, l'm gonna be in this position here.
l'm gonna be the geologist. l'll be scouting for samples.
One of the most important things we do here is our E.V.A. s --
our extravehicular activities.
When we go out for an E.V.A. , we have to put on our space suits,
depressurize in the airlock for one minute,
and then go out and conduct our E.V.A.
The airlock is important because we need to depressurize
down to the pressure of the Martian atmosphere
so that when we open the hatch,
it doesn't explosively decompress.
We're about 7 0 meters from our next location.
MAN #2 : Roger that.
The job on Mars, the work that they're there to do, is outside.
And that work has to be done in space suits.
NARRATOR : But what will the Martian space suits
of the future look like?
At M . l . T. , they're reinventing the space suit from scratch.
NEWMAN : Mars is a fantastic environment.
The Martian geography
makes Mount Everest and the Grand Canyon look very small.
So we really need a suit that we can lope and bend and climb.
And we want it to be a very light system, as well.
That's where we came up with our Bio-Suit invention.
NARRATOR : The Bio-Suit --
a lightweight, full-mobility space suit
designed for human exploration on Mars.
A space suit has to provide pressure
to keep someone alive in space.
NARRATOR : The atmospheric pressure on Mars
is about 1 l 1 00 of that on Earth.
Walking around in that kind of pressure. . .would be fatal.
[ Heartbeat ]
NEWMAN : You'd kind of asphyxiate.
Essentially, your fluids in your body would come out of solution.
And so you would essentially choke and die.
lt wouldn't be very pretty.
NARRATOR : A conventional space suit
keeps the astronaut in a hard shell that is gas pressurized.
For the astronaut, it's like being in a balloon.
The breakthrough with the Bio-Suit
is that it can apply the required pressure
right onto your body.
NEWMAN : The Bio-Suit squeezes a person.
We call it ''mechanical counterpressure. ''
lt provides enough pressure
to keep all the fluids in your body working.
NARRATOR : As an added bonus,
it's a lot cooler-looking than the old space suits.
NEWMAN : There's a very specific patterning to the suit.
l guess it kind of looks like a Spider-Man suit.
NARRATOR : The lines on the suit aren't just a fashion statement.
They're actually a kind of exoskeleton
that keeps the suit rigid.
NEWMAN : That pattern doesn't move,
and it's very much mapped to your musculature.
So as you can move your joints, your elbows, and your knees,
but these lines would stay very tight fitting to your muscles,
if you can imagine that --
so allowing you maximum mobility.
NARRATOR : Dr. Newman believes that, in the near future,
these suits will be available to everyone
and that everyone will have reason to wear one.
Well, l hope that you can go online, buy your Bio-Suit,
do some exploration.
l would love to see a human mission to Mars in 201 4, 201 8,
but absolutely by 2030.
WOMAN : l believe that going to Mars is within my lifetime,
and l think we have the means and the technology
to take us there and to survive there.
ZUBR l N : We are much closer today
to being able to send humans to Mars
than we were to being able to send men to the moon in 1 961 ,
and we were there eight years later.
McKAY: lt may be that the human exploration of Mars
is a long-term task.
l think of myself like maybe the architects and bricklayers did
who first started building the cathedrals in Paris.
Those who first started never saw the final cathedrals,
but they were an important part of the process
that led to that magnificent structure that we see today.
Well, in a sense, maybe Mars exploration is like that.
And those of us working on it now
take comfort in the fact that we are the first part
of this long-term process.
NARRATOR : One of the most provocative
science-fiction ideas of all time
is the notion of traveling through time itself.
lt may not be as far-fetched as you think.
DR. MALLETT: ''Time is only a kind of space.
We can move forward and backward in time
just as we can move forward and backward in space.
To prove this theory,
l invented a machine to travel through time. ''
NARRATOR : Dr. Ron Mallett
dreams of inventing the first actual time machine.
He's already published radical new theories
about light, space, and time.
Now he's ready to move his dream beyond science fiction.
DR. MALLETT: Well, my father was a television repairman,
and he loved electronics.
And he gave me a lot of inspiration
by giving me scientific toys
like gyroscopes and crystal radio sets.
And he was 33 when he died.
About a year after he died,
l came across a book that changed everything for me.
lf l could go back in time, then l could see him again.
NARRATOR : Dr. Mallett decided at that moment
to become a physicist.
He began studying black holes, quantum mechanics,
and the revolutionary ideas of Albert Einstein.
DR. MALLETT: Einstein said that time was something
that could be changed.
lt wasn't something that was fixed.
Normally, we think of time as a straight line,
going from the past to the present to the future.
lf space is being twisted vigorously enough,
then that timeline will be twisted into a loop,
so we can go from the future back into the past.
NARRATOR : According to Einstein,
as you approach the speed of light, time slows down.
lf we could somehow go faster than light,
time might reverse itself.
But how could we do that?
DR. MALLETT: So my inspiration was to use light.
l could build a time machine based on light.
NARRATOR : Dr. Mallett wants to use high-energy lasers
to stir the very fabric of time.
l magine that this skate park is my time machine
and Garret is a laser beam.
As Garret is moving around, he's moving the space around me,
and it's the energy of light
that is causing space and time to become twisted.
Once l understood that principle and the theory based on it,
then l realized that what was necessary
was to build the equipment.
NARRATOR : Dr. Mallett first hopes to prove his concept
by building a mini time machine for subatomic particles.
DR. MALLETT: And it would look something like
a cylinder with intersecting laser beams.
NARRATOR : The time machine itself will be small --
very small.
DR. MALLETT: The device itself
is going to have to be about the width of a human hair.
NARRATOR : Mallett plans to drop a subatomic particle
into the swirling vortex of light.
DR. MALLETT: What we would do is to send particles
that are very short-lived -- a millionth of a second.
When we send those particles in, it will change their lifetime,
and that will tell us that time is being changed.
NARRATOR : A quantum particle may not be a human time traveler,
but that doesn't discourage Dr. Mallett.
DR. MALLETT: lt's not really all that important
to send human beings in time.
l magine what it would be like
if we could send information back into the past.
We could warn ourselves of future disasters
and avert those catastrophes.
NARRATOR : One thing Dr. Mallett's device will not do
is let him achieve the dream that inspired him.
He still won't get to see his father.
DR. MALLETT: lt's the device itself
that's creating the effect.
So, prior to the time the device is turned on,
you can't travel earlier than that.
NARRATOR : But what about ''later, '' meaning the future?
Will Dr. Mallett find himself surrounded
by tomorrow's scientists who will answer his questions?
DR. MALLETT: We're not gonna know the answer to that
until we build a time machine.
The Wright Brothers back in 1 903 had this rickety craft
that they were able to get just a few hundred yards.
By the middle of the century, we had intercontinental jet travel.
lt's the same with time travel.
Even if we're only able to send subatomic particles
back into the past, once that is done,
then the technological explosion that results
could lead to the possibility of human time travel
within this century.
NARRATOR : Time travel is just one of the many
futuristic fantasies we may soon see come to life.
Here's what tomorrow's world will bring.
We can expect to have a cute and helpful robot
and a robot that looks exactly like us.
We will wear a power suit, see through walls, fly to work,
make all our belongings at home, spend virtual time in nature,
spend virtual time with a friend, live on Mars,
and -- just maybe -- slow down time.
Are you ready?