Brave New World with Stephen Hawking (2011) s01e01 Episode Script
Machines
Science is on the brink of changing your life.
Right now, men and women around the world are making amazing breakthroughs.
This is incredible.
Our team of leading scientists have chosen the discoveries they think matter most.
Whoa.
An almost limitless supply of clean energy.
It's these which are the basis of one of the most important of all conservation enterprises.
From the car you'll drive Argh! To medical advances that could save your life.
This miracle means that we can replace surgery.
On a journey that spans the jungles of Africa I'm here to join the hunt to find one of the biggest threats to human survival.
To the quads of Oxford.
This is arguably the most complicated thing in the universe.
We will show you how science is a force for good.
Prepare to see your future.
This is the beginning of that brave new world.
Our lives have been defined by machines.
Galileo's telescope Watt's steam engine Bell's telephone.
Now, we stand on the edge of a new era.
Tonight, we want to show you the five new machines we think are the most important.
Machines that read our minds.
That think like us.
That take control.
Machines that will change your world.
There's one machine that dominated the last century and continues to dominate this one.
We adore it, we idolise it, some even love it.
I'm talking about the car.
'I'm Kathy Sykes.
'I'm a scientist and I'm also a very cautious driver.
'But like most people, much of my life depends on the motor car.
' The invention of the motor car transformed the way we live and shaped our cities.
It gave us independence, it made us feel free.
But now, there's a car that's about to take the concept of freedom one step further.
Not everybody thinks the future of the car is about its engine or the kind of fuel it uses, but changing something far more fundamental who drives it.
It's the next leap forward that the auto industry has been chasing.
Only this one hasn't come from a car manufacturer.
It's from where thinking out of the box is just another day at the office.
One of the mavericks is Lead Engineer, Chris Urmson.
This is his passion the driverless car.
It puts technology firmly in the driver's seat.
'To demonstrate, Chris has pre-programmed it 'to drive a complicated circuit at considerable speed.
'He's behind the wheel but he won't be driving.
' I'm an awful passenger, usually.
I just don't trust almost anyone to drive well.
And now I'm going to get to see if I can trust a machine, OK? Why don't you start it? Shift X.
Mm-hm.
BEEPING LOW BEEP I'm scared.
The The steering wheel is moving all by itself and we're going so fast! A scanner on top of the car uses 64 lasers to send out pulses of light.
It measures the time it takes for the light to hit an object and come back again.
Then it knows how far away things are.
BEEPING Argh! Another system in the boot measures acceleration and rotation around the three axes of the car and combines this with GPS to estimate the vehicle's position.
Oh, my God! Argh! 'All that information, along with data from on-board cameras, 'is processed with tremendous speed by the software.
'That way, the system can make decisions very quickly 'and controls the steering, acceleration and braking 'with incredible speed.
' How do you manage to resist grabbing the steering wheel? Well, we've tested a lot and this point I kind of trust it.
To be honest, it's negotiating this course better than I ever could.
BEEPING I don't ever drive like this and we're going through every single one of those cones.
I can't believe it.
We should be breaking, surely? Here's the start/finish line.
That is absolutely mind bending.
Thanks.
It's totally terrifying and then you begin to trust it.
It's amazing how quickly it feels natural.
And I think I trusted this driverless car than I would've trusted you driving, Chris.
That's excellent.
Phew! (LAUGHS) It's not a mechanic behind this driverless future.
It's the inspiration of a robotics genius, who is determined to start a revolution on the road.
His name is Sebastian Thrun.
Ask yourself, would you want to go to work and push a button and say, "Wake me up when I'm at work?" The answer is, "Absolutely, yes.
" The cars never fatigue, never text.
They look in all directions at all times, so don't overlook things.
If you think further, when you go to a restaurant and look for parking, you don't have to look for parking, the car drops you off and parks itself.
In the future, we'll look back and tell these tales of the days when people drove their cars themselves.
As in the US, we tell the tales of people who came with horses and guns and so on.
For Sebastian, this isn't a gimmick.
After friends were killed in car accidents, he wanted to invent a safer way to drive.
Fundamentally, he wants to change our relationship with the car.
As humans, we often feel like we're the best at what we do.
It would be impossible to replace us with a machine.
But Sebastian doesn't see the driverless car as a replacement for us.
He sees it as an improvement on us.
To test his theory, we have to get away from the test track.
To take the car where things are less predictable.
We're going to take this car onto public roads and even a highway.
There will be other cars, pedestrians, traffic lights.
All of this with no driver.
'We've tested the driverless car on a pre-programmed course.
'Now it's time for the real challenge 'out on the open road.
' Right now, you're driving? Right now, I'm driving.
We're just warming up, making sure all the systems are running properly and just going through some diagnostic checks.
'Chris, the lead engineer, 'is behind the wheel to monitor the system.
'And because the technology is so new, 'another engineer sits in the passenger seat in case of problems.
'This time, the car is not pre-programmed.
'It's going to do what we usually do 'get from A to B, 'constantly reacting to the surrounding environment.
' Now I'm going to press the button here.
MACHINE BEEPS And now it's driving.
We've just gone driverless? Absolutely, yeah.
Show me your hands! (LAUGHS) And it's going quite fast.
Yes.
So it's looking at the speed limit, what's happening around, figuring out what speed it can safely drive at.
So it's my job to look out at the road and make sure it's behaving well, but often you can see more clearly what's going on around the car actually on the screen.
You know, it's looking all around the vehicle simultaneously.
'Even though it's relatively new, the driverless car system 'has already clocked up over 175,000 miles on the open road.
'So far, there hasn't been a single accident 'while the car was operating in driverless mode.
' Now, merging on the freeway sounds like a tricky thing to do.
I find that hard when I'm driving.
Was it a challenge? It is, because it's one of the most social things you do as a driver.
You know, you have to not just look at where the car is right now, but think about what they'll do and how much road do they have left and interact with that person.
'It's this kind of manoeuvre that's so easy for us humans to get wrong.
' 'Once on the freeway, 'the car doesn't change the radio station or open a bottle of water.
'It's distractions like these 'that cause thousands of deaths on the road each year.
' So is it a considerate driver? Absolutely, so it makes room for people as they're coming in.
I think it's more considerate than most people who drive on the freeway.
'The system is so considerate that its creators think 'driverless cars are not only safer, 'but could be stacked even closer on the highway.
' 'Because of that, they claim far fewer new roads 'would need to be built in the coming decades.
' It's funny, cos I understand all the different technologies that you've combined, but this feels like magic! 'Even though Google is a long way from bringing a car to market, 'one US state, Nevada, 'is already passing laws to allow autonomous vehicles on the road.
'When it does become available, 'it will be up to us to embrace this new driverless world.
'But are we ready to sacrifice 'the fulfilment we get when we sit behind the wheel?' I didn't expect to feel like this.
I'm so impressed by the technology and by the vision.
Persuading people who love driving that it's a good idea is going to be tough.
But sometimes, it's the most maverick of inventions that change the world in ways we never imagined.
The most important machine ever invented was probably the plough, because it heralded the birth of human civilisation.
I think there's some magic about steam engines.
And steam engines changed the world.
They produced a whole new way of looking at energy and engineering.
My favourite machine has to be a helicopter.
Any machine that thrashes mother nature into submission to fly gets my vote.
Our next story is about a breakthrough that could also be a game changer tapping into the power of the mind to create a new breed of machine.
'I'm Mark Evans.
'I'm a vet and also an amateur engineer.
'I've had a crack at building most things 'cars, motorbikes and even a helicopter.
'What intrigues me is the mechanics of how things work.
' That's why I'm fascinated to meet a group of researchers here in Switzerland who've done what used to be considered impossible they've created something that fuses man and machine.
'For almost a century, scientists and engineers 'have been struggling to harness the power of the brain.
'Here in Lausanne, they've actually done it.
' This remarkable man-machine combination is called a Brain Computer Interface, or a BCI.
Incredibly, the movement of that wheelchair is controlled by the driver's thoughts.
There are no hand controls, no foot pedals, no tricks, just the power of the human mind hooked up electronically to some really sophisticated technology.
'The brain behind the brain power is Professor Jose Millan.
' How did it feel for you the first time somebody sat in a chair and actually made it move by only using the power of their mind? I wanted to cry (LAUGHS) because it took me so many years.
How surprised were you that, actually, it worked? The immediate reaction is, "Oh, my God, it works!" and then, immediately say, "Let's test it again.
" (LAUGHS) And again and again! I need to be sure that this is true.
That this is not just a product of chance.
Are you confident that any human being could learn to control a machine like this, despite the fact that all our brains are different? I am convinced.
Our brain is an incredible machine that is capable to learn many different things.
I get how it works in theory, but to truly understand it, clearly I need to drive it.
I'm one of a select few given the chance to hook up to this machine, but first, I need some training.
'Expert operator Michele Tavella is going to teach me.
'The cap is the interface between me and the computer.
'It has 16 electrodes 'and each one acts like a microphone listening for signals in my brain.
' This is the bit I worried most about coming to Switzerland.
You hook me up to the computer and there is electronic silence No way! Don't worry.
And they go, "There's nothing in his brain.
" (LAUGHS) It's actually quite stressful, but I've got to be calm.
Completely calm and focussed.
'To get this to work, I need to learn to activate areas of my brain 'that are associated with specific parts of my body.
' So I want you to take your right hand and make sure that right hand is the only thing in your mind right now.
What I want you to do is bring your fingers as close as possible to each other without touching.
Just concentrate on the feeling.
Slowly stop moving the fingers, OK? Mm-hm.
But you need to make sure that the feeling is still there.
Gosh, that is hard, isn't it? 'Instead of actually moving my hand, 'I have to just imagine the movement.
'First my right hand, then my left hand, then my feet.
'Each command triggers a unique pattern in my brain.
'It's the detection of this pattern that'll control the wheelchair.
' Look, it's across then a cue.
You have to be very concentrated.
'Now the computer is recording my specific brain patterns.
'When I think right hand, when I think left hand 'or when I think feet, there should be a clear pattern.
'My job is simply to focus.
' So this is the most crucial thing.
If you cannot give the right examples to the computer, it's going to be very tricky.
I am hugely competitive and I'm trying to beat the computer now.
And I don't know whether what I'm doing is right or wrong.
I need Michele to say, "Actually, yeah, your right hand's cool, "your left hand's OK, your feet are rubbish.
" 'As I practise, Michele is analysing my brain patterns.
'But there's a problem.
'There needs to be a clear separation 'between the brain read-out for my right and left hand.
' So this represents the right hand and the black curve represents the left hand.
Ideally, the more far away they are, the better it is.
But they are very overlapping.
This could be a problem for Mark.
'Next door, I'm breaking out in a sweat.
'I've never concentrated this hard in my life.
' Now I'm analysing right hand versus feet and I think he stands a good chance to control the wheelchair.
So now, this is me trying to control what's going on on the screen, OK.
'Luckily, the brain patterns for my hands and feet are different enough.
'So I'll think moving my right hand to go right 'and think moving my feet to move left.
'This is a copy of the screen 'that'll be in front of me on the wheelchair.
' So it's feet to go left? Feet to go left.
'My brain 'this computer 'can they become one?' I've been attempting to learn how to use a brain computer interface so I can use the power of my mind to steer myself in a wheelchair.
I need to think "both feet" to move left and think "right hand" to move right.
So, it's feet to go left? Feet to go left.
Now it's time to test the system to see if I've got what it takes.
Go.
Wow.
The guy is good! That's really hard work.
That is amazing that I'm controlling that.
Wow.
Wow! You see that? That's amazing.
That's you, eh? Good job, man.
That's good.
That makes me feel better.
I was a bit worried that your degree of control could be lower, but this is seriously nice.
It's good! I'm really, really happy.
Michele trained for a week, so I'm pleased with my efforts after just a morning.
I feel like an astronaut walking out to the space shuttle for a launch, know what I mean? 'This is the moment of truth.
' Oh, my God.
Deep breaths.
You will have the bar on top of the screen.
Ready? Yeah.
Here we go.
This is incredible! Absolutely How does it feel? It feels bizarre.
This is where you have to trust going downhill.
Exactly.
'The wheelchair automatically moves forward, 'until I command it to change direction in my head.
' Yes! Yes, yes, yes.
'There are ten sonars and two webcams on board.
'Images from these go to the onboard computer 'to help me navigate around.
' 'The whole system is designed so my brain doesn't have to work too hard.
'They call it shared control.
' Oops.
"In other words, the machine does some of the thinking for me.
' It's stopped.
Look at that.
That's perfection.
I was getting quite stressed there, as you could tell by the look on my face.
This is such a wicked machine.
I love it.
When it works and it goes the way you want it to go, it is the most extraordinary feeling.
Come on, Mr Wheelchair.
Yes.
The discerning amongst you may have spotted that I'm going around in circles, but do you know what? I simply don't care.
I'm controlling this wheelchair with my mind.
'It's starting to dawn on me just how huge 'the potential of this technology is.
'If you can move a wheelchair by the power of thought alone, 'what else could you do?' Could I live in a house one day where I could sit in my armchair and just because I want to, I can switch my dishwasher on by thinking about it, I can close the curtains by thinking about it, I might switch lights on or off, is that a realistic possibility? This is a realistic possibility, but I hope that neither you or me will do so, because remember that we have a body, and we need to entertain that body if we want the body to be efficient.
How do you see this technology being used elsewhere? Astronauts in space, where, because of the absence of gravity, they cannot control their body as on Earth.
A brain computer interface could be a solution for them to act more safer in outer space.
This genuinely feels like a huge leap forward.
A machine that gets inside our head, that makes an intimate connection and blurs the boundary between them and us.
(STEPHEN HAWKING) In this new era we are creating machines that are better than us.
An improvement on us.
Now we are building a machine that is a little bit like us.
My name is Jim Al-Khalili, and I'm a theoretical physicist.
I use mathematics to look for answers to some of the deepest questions in the universe.
Of course, I haven't done that all my life.
As a child, I learned how to think and how to behave, and that has shaped the person I am today.
It's how we develop as children that's inspired a group of scientists here at the Italian Institute of Technology.
'They've designed a robot that looks like a child and acts like a child.
'But most importantly, it learns like a child.
'Its name is iCub, 'short for Cognitive Universal Body.
' Hey, Jim.
Here is iCub.
Oh, look, he recognises me, and he's smiling.
Very pleased to meet you! It's a friend of ours.
'Giulio Sandini is director of the team that brought iCub to life.
'He's been helping these toddler robots develop for seven years.
' Talk me through how it actually learns.
The first skill that the robot has to learn is how we control our own body.
Exploring its hands, exploring its world Yes.
"Is this mine?" Yes, exactly that.
'This iCub is in the early stages of development.
'Just like a newborn, the robot is exploring where it ends 'and the outside world begins.
'It repeats this action over and over 'until it learns where the boundaries are.
' The most difficult part of this task, is to detect its own hand.
To distinguish its own hand from the movement going on around.
'Once iCub knows where its limbs begin and end, 'it can start to use them.
' Now that he knows about his own body, he can start to learn how to reach for a ball.
If I give it a ball OK.
Oh, it wants it.
It wants it.
No.
You missed.
OK.
It's basically deciding with which hand Yeah, yeah is close to the ball.
In this case it is grasping Now, I think it is dropping It's smiling! It becomes disinterested very soon.
But it's exactly as you would expect a child It would get interested in it, and reach out and it's smiling.
You can have it if you It is a simple step, but it's a fundamental one.
We interact with the world to start playing with toys, to see what you can do if you push, or if you pull, or if you do these kind of actions.
So far, 20 iCubs have been built, and this extended family have migrated internationally.
So from Aberystwyth to Ankara, the robots are learning different tasks.
This is the original iCub.
It's still here in Italy, and Giorgio Metta is its mentor.
This iCub has now entered a new phase of development.
It's now responding to voices and building up a memory of the things it encounters.
(ICUB) Do you want me to play alone? No, I do not.
That's iCub talking? That's iCub.
Tell me what to do.
Track motion.
Did you ask me to track motion? Yes, I do.
So it wants me to give it something to track the motion of.
OK, here we go.
Have a look at this.
This is an octopus.
Remove your hands so I can watch the octopus.
There we go.
Now the robot moves and acquires a set of images to characterise the object from different points of view.
'When the iCub is learning and makes an error, 'it is able to change its programming to try and correct the mistake.
'And it can continue to do this 'until it gets it right.
'That's what makes it so special.
' I like the octopus very much.
Good.
Tell me what to do.
Grasp the octopus.
OK.
Grasping the octopus.
Very good.
'What you're seeing is a robot actively learning.
'iCub has recognised the object and hopefully lodged this 'in its artificial brain.
' Track motion.
'Now it's time to test iCub, 'introduce a new object, and see if it can tell them apart.
' This is a purple car.
Do you want me to learn the purple car? Yes, I do.
Remove your hands so I can watch the purple car.
I like the purple car very much.
Tell me what to do.
So now it's learnt about two objects.
It's learnt about the purple car and the octopus.
It can remember these, can it? Yes.
Touch the purple car.
OK, touching the purple car.
Very good.
'Just like when we encounter something new, 'iCub is learning by interacting with the world around it.
'It's learning by experience.
' You know, it's hard to believe the iCub isn't alive.
Its movements are so realistic, so human, the way it focuses on objects and concentrates and reaches out to pick them up.
You can almost see its artificial brain learning in front of your very eyes.
In 20 years' time, we have a system like the iCub which can learn from me, the way I learned from my father, behaving like an apprentice, you know? I don't think it's so far in the future.
There's no reason why iCub can't grow up.
It's only a matter of time.
Eventually, iCub could lead to robots in our homes and at work.
Machines that respond and react independently to the world around them.
A machine that's just a little bit human.
(STEPHEN HAWKING) We have seen how robotics is being used to create autonomous beings.
But science is also using this technology to restore the human body, giving paraplegics an ability they thought was lost for ever.
'I'm Joy Reidenberg, and as a comparative anatomist, 'I'm fascinated by the mechanics of the human body, 'especially the way we can do the most complicated things 'with what seems like no effort at all.
' Human walking is a complex balancing act.
Messages flash from our brain to our legs, our arms and our torso.
It's a fine-tuned routine that, when it all comes together, results in locomotion.
But when this ability is taken away by injury or disease, science has struggled to find a way to restore it.
Now, that is about to change.
Here at the Moss Rehabilitation Centre in Philadelphia, something remarkable, some might even say miraculous, is happening.
I'm here to meet people who are paralysed, but can now stand and walk on their own two feet.
This is the machine behind the miracle.
It's an exoskeleton.
ReWalk is a sophisticated combination of engineering and sensing electronics, giving people the chance to do something that they thought they would never do again.
Do you feel like you walk it, or it walks you? I definitely feel like I walk it, cos I, you know, stomp around and get mad when I don't do it right.
Jean Altomari was paralysed in a car crash.
After being in a wheelchair for two years, she's now learning to walk again.
And we're clicking.
MOTORS HUM The noise you hear is the four motorised joints at the knees and hips.
Are you ready? Yeah.
Let's walk.
There you go.
What does it feel like when you're doing this? I don't know.
Does it feel strange? No, it doesn't feel strange at all.
I mean, it feels like it's supposed to feel, I guess.
Like regular walking? Maybe not like regular walking, but I wouldn't say it feels abnormal.
I'd say this is like a new normal.
It feels like it's supposed to.
Incredibly sensitive motion sensors measure Jean's upper body movements.
These signals are processed by a computer in her backpack, which then drives the skeleton to walk in the right direction at the right speed.
So what's the hardest thing about using this? Having to take it off.
Definitely.
Having to take it off.
Besides allowing Jean to stand and walk, the exoskeleton also relieves the spinal and muscle pain she suffers from constantly sitting down.
Even though you can't feel your legs, you feel the stretching? Oh, yeah.
Everything feels better, and my pain level significantly decreases as soon as I put it on, and for hours afterwards.
When I saw this, I said, "This is it".
This is the beginning of really untethering people, letting them go where they want to go, getting them the opportunity to go from sitting to standing, to be able to hug their loved ones in a standing position, to look at anybody else at eye level.
'Agnes Fejerdy was also paralysed in a car accident.
'She is one of the more experienced users, 'and has been training with the suit for five months.
' What did it feel like the first time you were able to stand up in a suit like this? It was wonderful and very powerful.
These aren't for weight bearing, they're to keep you stable when you get up? Yes.
'Agnes has been using the suit 'for nearly half a year, so she can test its ability 'to keep up with her.
' I'm amazed at how fast Agnes is going.
She's like a speed demon.
I think she has it set on the highest setting possible.
She does.
It's really amazing how fast she can make it move, and how smoothly she makes it move.
'What you see is that individuals, as they get practice with this, ' can walk and walk and walk, and they're happy to keep walking because they're not being fatigued by the system.
'One day, we'll see this suit being worn first thing in the morning 'and taken off at the end of the day 'after the individual has used it to go everywhere they need to go.
' But ideally, you want people to take this out on the road and have that independence.
That will be the next step, for sure.
Exoskeleton technology is so remarkable that it can also enhance the ability of the able-bodied.
This suit, produced by Lockheed Martin, is called the HULC, the Human Universal Load Carrier.
It gives the wearer the ability to lift over 200lbs.
Even more Robocop is this prototype by Raytheon, called the XOS 2.
Its makers claim an operator can do the work of two or three men.
These suits could transform the way we build houses, deal with emergencies and fight wars.
To me, it's not just the technology that links these suits.
It's that they do what machines often do best give us the power to be better than we are.
My favourite machine is anything that lets me see some place I couldn't otherwise see, whether it's an MRI or a CAT scanner, or it's a microscope, or an endoscope, or a telescope.
I suppose my favourite machine is a Swiss Army knife.
I think it would have to be my laptop computer.
Because it gives me access to the internet, which is access to information.
The machine I find most exciting is the one that could help us establish life on another planet.
A machine that is looking deep into the Universe to find new worlds that we could one day call home.
'My name is Maggie Aderin-Pocock, and I'm an astrophysicist.
' As a child, I would look into the night sky and wonder what was out there, if there was another planet like ours.
It's a question we've been asking for thousands of years.
A question they're trying to answer here at La Palma in the Canary Islands.
I'm here because this mountaintop is home to one of the world's best telescopes.
Wow.
It is beautiful.
This is the GTC, the Gran Telescopio Canarias.
It acts as a time machine, and it's so powerful, it can look back to the beginning of the Universe.
That's fantastic.
I'm a little out of breath, partly from excitement, and partly because we're at 2,400 metres, so at that altitude you really feel it when you walk up the stairs.
But it's an amazing piece of engineering, and it's just so big.
The dome weighs 500 tons, and is nearly as high as Nelson's Column.
It's a very solid structure, but I think you need that, cos you've got to keep the telescope very stable as it pans across the night sky.
This is my favourite bit - the mirror.
And I'm not used to segmented mirrors, but this is huge! The enormous mirror is the heart of this telescope.
It's made up of 36 separate hexagons, each one almost two metres across.
The mirror acts like a light-gathering bucket, so the larger your mirror, the more light you can gather, which means you have a better ability to see fainter objects.
So the GTC can look deep into the Universe.
The vast segmented mirror is allowing the telescope to see objects in space that have never been seen before.
Astronomer Riccardo Scarpa shows me some of the images the GTC has collected.
This is the Whirlpool Galaxy, M51.
So this is a spiral galaxy like our own? Yes.
The images captured by the GTC are mesmerising.
From majestic spiral galaxies to star-forming nebula, the detail and clarity is extraordinary.
But there's a much deeper purpose to this telescope's work.
It's searching for one of astronomy's holy grails another planet similar to Earth.
In its hunt for other worlds, the telescope doesn't see the planets themselves, they're too far away.
But an exoplanet, a planet outside our solar system, can be detected by a dip in light as it passes in front of its sun.
And here is a graph of an exoplanet.
Where is this exoplanet? Is it an Earth-like exoplanet? It is an exoplanet orbiting a star in the constellation Lynx at about 150 light years away.
'The dip in the graph is the moment the exoplanet eclipses its sun.
'And this one is the size of Jupiter.
'But it's planets that are in orbits like ours 'that are more likely to sustain life.
' The technique is evolving in order to find smaller and smaller planets, so eventually we will find the Earth-size planets.
I look forward to that.
The team here want to find another Earth.
Another place in the Universe that in the distant future we might call home.
I feel that the Gran Telescopio Canarias fulfils a fundamental human instinct.
It's that desire to know if maybe somewhere out there, deep in space, there's a planet like ours.
A planet in orbit around a different star, part of a different solar system millions of light years away.
A planet that could potential harbour life like we have here on Earth.
(STEPHEN HAWKING) This has been a glimpse of the future.
A place where vehicles steer themselves, where machines read our minds, where robots think like us, and one man has the strength of three.
In the future it will be machines that allow us to reach into the cosmos and travel to other worlds.
It's my hope that we embrace this possibility and become explorers of the Universe.
Next time, health, and fighting the big killers.
We hunt for the next deadly virus It's at this point the virus crosses over from animal to humans.
Road-test the latest robotic surgery It's very much like a computer game, isn't it? '.
.
and the war against one of our oldest enemies.
' Oh, that's so cool! Science on the front line, battling for your future.
Red Bee Media and APOLLO
Right now, men and women around the world are making amazing breakthroughs.
This is incredible.
Our team of leading scientists have chosen the discoveries they think matter most.
Whoa.
An almost limitless supply of clean energy.
It's these which are the basis of one of the most important of all conservation enterprises.
From the car you'll drive Argh! To medical advances that could save your life.
This miracle means that we can replace surgery.
On a journey that spans the jungles of Africa I'm here to join the hunt to find one of the biggest threats to human survival.
To the quads of Oxford.
This is arguably the most complicated thing in the universe.
We will show you how science is a force for good.
Prepare to see your future.
This is the beginning of that brave new world.
Our lives have been defined by machines.
Galileo's telescope Watt's steam engine Bell's telephone.
Now, we stand on the edge of a new era.
Tonight, we want to show you the five new machines we think are the most important.
Machines that read our minds.
That think like us.
That take control.
Machines that will change your world.
There's one machine that dominated the last century and continues to dominate this one.
We adore it, we idolise it, some even love it.
I'm talking about the car.
'I'm Kathy Sykes.
'I'm a scientist and I'm also a very cautious driver.
'But like most people, much of my life depends on the motor car.
' The invention of the motor car transformed the way we live and shaped our cities.
It gave us independence, it made us feel free.
But now, there's a car that's about to take the concept of freedom one step further.
Not everybody thinks the future of the car is about its engine or the kind of fuel it uses, but changing something far more fundamental who drives it.
It's the next leap forward that the auto industry has been chasing.
Only this one hasn't come from a car manufacturer.
It's from where thinking out of the box is just another day at the office.
One of the mavericks is Lead Engineer, Chris Urmson.
This is his passion the driverless car.
It puts technology firmly in the driver's seat.
'To demonstrate, Chris has pre-programmed it 'to drive a complicated circuit at considerable speed.
'He's behind the wheel but he won't be driving.
' I'm an awful passenger, usually.
I just don't trust almost anyone to drive well.
And now I'm going to get to see if I can trust a machine, OK? Why don't you start it? Shift X.
Mm-hm.
BEEPING LOW BEEP I'm scared.
The The steering wheel is moving all by itself and we're going so fast! A scanner on top of the car uses 64 lasers to send out pulses of light.
It measures the time it takes for the light to hit an object and come back again.
Then it knows how far away things are.
BEEPING Argh! Another system in the boot measures acceleration and rotation around the three axes of the car and combines this with GPS to estimate the vehicle's position.
Oh, my God! Argh! 'All that information, along with data from on-board cameras, 'is processed with tremendous speed by the software.
'That way, the system can make decisions very quickly 'and controls the steering, acceleration and braking 'with incredible speed.
' How do you manage to resist grabbing the steering wheel? Well, we've tested a lot and this point I kind of trust it.
To be honest, it's negotiating this course better than I ever could.
BEEPING I don't ever drive like this and we're going through every single one of those cones.
I can't believe it.
We should be breaking, surely? Here's the start/finish line.
That is absolutely mind bending.
Thanks.
It's totally terrifying and then you begin to trust it.
It's amazing how quickly it feels natural.
And I think I trusted this driverless car than I would've trusted you driving, Chris.
That's excellent.
Phew! (LAUGHS) It's not a mechanic behind this driverless future.
It's the inspiration of a robotics genius, who is determined to start a revolution on the road.
His name is Sebastian Thrun.
Ask yourself, would you want to go to work and push a button and say, "Wake me up when I'm at work?" The answer is, "Absolutely, yes.
" The cars never fatigue, never text.
They look in all directions at all times, so don't overlook things.
If you think further, when you go to a restaurant and look for parking, you don't have to look for parking, the car drops you off and parks itself.
In the future, we'll look back and tell these tales of the days when people drove their cars themselves.
As in the US, we tell the tales of people who came with horses and guns and so on.
For Sebastian, this isn't a gimmick.
After friends were killed in car accidents, he wanted to invent a safer way to drive.
Fundamentally, he wants to change our relationship with the car.
As humans, we often feel like we're the best at what we do.
It would be impossible to replace us with a machine.
But Sebastian doesn't see the driverless car as a replacement for us.
He sees it as an improvement on us.
To test his theory, we have to get away from the test track.
To take the car where things are less predictable.
We're going to take this car onto public roads and even a highway.
There will be other cars, pedestrians, traffic lights.
All of this with no driver.
'We've tested the driverless car on a pre-programmed course.
'Now it's time for the real challenge 'out on the open road.
' Right now, you're driving? Right now, I'm driving.
We're just warming up, making sure all the systems are running properly and just going through some diagnostic checks.
'Chris, the lead engineer, 'is behind the wheel to monitor the system.
'And because the technology is so new, 'another engineer sits in the passenger seat in case of problems.
'This time, the car is not pre-programmed.
'It's going to do what we usually do 'get from A to B, 'constantly reacting to the surrounding environment.
' Now I'm going to press the button here.
MACHINE BEEPS And now it's driving.
We've just gone driverless? Absolutely, yeah.
Show me your hands! (LAUGHS) And it's going quite fast.
Yes.
So it's looking at the speed limit, what's happening around, figuring out what speed it can safely drive at.
So it's my job to look out at the road and make sure it's behaving well, but often you can see more clearly what's going on around the car actually on the screen.
You know, it's looking all around the vehicle simultaneously.
'Even though it's relatively new, the driverless car system 'has already clocked up over 175,000 miles on the open road.
'So far, there hasn't been a single accident 'while the car was operating in driverless mode.
' Now, merging on the freeway sounds like a tricky thing to do.
I find that hard when I'm driving.
Was it a challenge? It is, because it's one of the most social things you do as a driver.
You know, you have to not just look at where the car is right now, but think about what they'll do and how much road do they have left and interact with that person.
'It's this kind of manoeuvre that's so easy for us humans to get wrong.
' 'Once on the freeway, 'the car doesn't change the radio station or open a bottle of water.
'It's distractions like these 'that cause thousands of deaths on the road each year.
' So is it a considerate driver? Absolutely, so it makes room for people as they're coming in.
I think it's more considerate than most people who drive on the freeway.
'The system is so considerate that its creators think 'driverless cars are not only safer, 'but could be stacked even closer on the highway.
' 'Because of that, they claim far fewer new roads 'would need to be built in the coming decades.
' It's funny, cos I understand all the different technologies that you've combined, but this feels like magic! 'Even though Google is a long way from bringing a car to market, 'one US state, Nevada, 'is already passing laws to allow autonomous vehicles on the road.
'When it does become available, 'it will be up to us to embrace this new driverless world.
'But are we ready to sacrifice 'the fulfilment we get when we sit behind the wheel?' I didn't expect to feel like this.
I'm so impressed by the technology and by the vision.
Persuading people who love driving that it's a good idea is going to be tough.
But sometimes, it's the most maverick of inventions that change the world in ways we never imagined.
The most important machine ever invented was probably the plough, because it heralded the birth of human civilisation.
I think there's some magic about steam engines.
And steam engines changed the world.
They produced a whole new way of looking at energy and engineering.
My favourite machine has to be a helicopter.
Any machine that thrashes mother nature into submission to fly gets my vote.
Our next story is about a breakthrough that could also be a game changer tapping into the power of the mind to create a new breed of machine.
'I'm Mark Evans.
'I'm a vet and also an amateur engineer.
'I've had a crack at building most things 'cars, motorbikes and even a helicopter.
'What intrigues me is the mechanics of how things work.
' That's why I'm fascinated to meet a group of researchers here in Switzerland who've done what used to be considered impossible they've created something that fuses man and machine.
'For almost a century, scientists and engineers 'have been struggling to harness the power of the brain.
'Here in Lausanne, they've actually done it.
' This remarkable man-machine combination is called a Brain Computer Interface, or a BCI.
Incredibly, the movement of that wheelchair is controlled by the driver's thoughts.
There are no hand controls, no foot pedals, no tricks, just the power of the human mind hooked up electronically to some really sophisticated technology.
'The brain behind the brain power is Professor Jose Millan.
' How did it feel for you the first time somebody sat in a chair and actually made it move by only using the power of their mind? I wanted to cry (LAUGHS) because it took me so many years.
How surprised were you that, actually, it worked? The immediate reaction is, "Oh, my God, it works!" and then, immediately say, "Let's test it again.
" (LAUGHS) And again and again! I need to be sure that this is true.
That this is not just a product of chance.
Are you confident that any human being could learn to control a machine like this, despite the fact that all our brains are different? I am convinced.
Our brain is an incredible machine that is capable to learn many different things.
I get how it works in theory, but to truly understand it, clearly I need to drive it.
I'm one of a select few given the chance to hook up to this machine, but first, I need some training.
'Expert operator Michele Tavella is going to teach me.
'The cap is the interface between me and the computer.
'It has 16 electrodes 'and each one acts like a microphone listening for signals in my brain.
' This is the bit I worried most about coming to Switzerland.
You hook me up to the computer and there is electronic silence No way! Don't worry.
And they go, "There's nothing in his brain.
" (LAUGHS) It's actually quite stressful, but I've got to be calm.
Completely calm and focussed.
'To get this to work, I need to learn to activate areas of my brain 'that are associated with specific parts of my body.
' So I want you to take your right hand and make sure that right hand is the only thing in your mind right now.
What I want you to do is bring your fingers as close as possible to each other without touching.
Just concentrate on the feeling.
Slowly stop moving the fingers, OK? Mm-hm.
But you need to make sure that the feeling is still there.
Gosh, that is hard, isn't it? 'Instead of actually moving my hand, 'I have to just imagine the movement.
'First my right hand, then my left hand, then my feet.
'Each command triggers a unique pattern in my brain.
'It's the detection of this pattern that'll control the wheelchair.
' Look, it's across then a cue.
You have to be very concentrated.
'Now the computer is recording my specific brain patterns.
'When I think right hand, when I think left hand 'or when I think feet, there should be a clear pattern.
'My job is simply to focus.
' So this is the most crucial thing.
If you cannot give the right examples to the computer, it's going to be very tricky.
I am hugely competitive and I'm trying to beat the computer now.
And I don't know whether what I'm doing is right or wrong.
I need Michele to say, "Actually, yeah, your right hand's cool, "your left hand's OK, your feet are rubbish.
" 'As I practise, Michele is analysing my brain patterns.
'But there's a problem.
'There needs to be a clear separation 'between the brain read-out for my right and left hand.
' So this represents the right hand and the black curve represents the left hand.
Ideally, the more far away they are, the better it is.
But they are very overlapping.
This could be a problem for Mark.
'Next door, I'm breaking out in a sweat.
'I've never concentrated this hard in my life.
' Now I'm analysing right hand versus feet and I think he stands a good chance to control the wheelchair.
So now, this is me trying to control what's going on on the screen, OK.
'Luckily, the brain patterns for my hands and feet are different enough.
'So I'll think moving my right hand to go right 'and think moving my feet to move left.
'This is a copy of the screen 'that'll be in front of me on the wheelchair.
' So it's feet to go left? Feet to go left.
'My brain 'this computer 'can they become one?' I've been attempting to learn how to use a brain computer interface so I can use the power of my mind to steer myself in a wheelchair.
I need to think "both feet" to move left and think "right hand" to move right.
So, it's feet to go left? Feet to go left.
Now it's time to test the system to see if I've got what it takes.
Go.
Wow.
The guy is good! That's really hard work.
That is amazing that I'm controlling that.
Wow.
Wow! You see that? That's amazing.
That's you, eh? Good job, man.
That's good.
That makes me feel better.
I was a bit worried that your degree of control could be lower, but this is seriously nice.
It's good! I'm really, really happy.
Michele trained for a week, so I'm pleased with my efforts after just a morning.
I feel like an astronaut walking out to the space shuttle for a launch, know what I mean? 'This is the moment of truth.
' Oh, my God.
Deep breaths.
You will have the bar on top of the screen.
Ready? Yeah.
Here we go.
This is incredible! Absolutely How does it feel? It feels bizarre.
This is where you have to trust going downhill.
Exactly.
'The wheelchair automatically moves forward, 'until I command it to change direction in my head.
' Yes! Yes, yes, yes.
'There are ten sonars and two webcams on board.
'Images from these go to the onboard computer 'to help me navigate around.
' 'The whole system is designed so my brain doesn't have to work too hard.
'They call it shared control.
' Oops.
"In other words, the machine does some of the thinking for me.
' It's stopped.
Look at that.
That's perfection.
I was getting quite stressed there, as you could tell by the look on my face.
This is such a wicked machine.
I love it.
When it works and it goes the way you want it to go, it is the most extraordinary feeling.
Come on, Mr Wheelchair.
Yes.
The discerning amongst you may have spotted that I'm going around in circles, but do you know what? I simply don't care.
I'm controlling this wheelchair with my mind.
'It's starting to dawn on me just how huge 'the potential of this technology is.
'If you can move a wheelchair by the power of thought alone, 'what else could you do?' Could I live in a house one day where I could sit in my armchair and just because I want to, I can switch my dishwasher on by thinking about it, I can close the curtains by thinking about it, I might switch lights on or off, is that a realistic possibility? This is a realistic possibility, but I hope that neither you or me will do so, because remember that we have a body, and we need to entertain that body if we want the body to be efficient.
How do you see this technology being used elsewhere? Astronauts in space, where, because of the absence of gravity, they cannot control their body as on Earth.
A brain computer interface could be a solution for them to act more safer in outer space.
This genuinely feels like a huge leap forward.
A machine that gets inside our head, that makes an intimate connection and blurs the boundary between them and us.
(STEPHEN HAWKING) In this new era we are creating machines that are better than us.
An improvement on us.
Now we are building a machine that is a little bit like us.
My name is Jim Al-Khalili, and I'm a theoretical physicist.
I use mathematics to look for answers to some of the deepest questions in the universe.
Of course, I haven't done that all my life.
As a child, I learned how to think and how to behave, and that has shaped the person I am today.
It's how we develop as children that's inspired a group of scientists here at the Italian Institute of Technology.
'They've designed a robot that looks like a child and acts like a child.
'But most importantly, it learns like a child.
'Its name is iCub, 'short for Cognitive Universal Body.
' Hey, Jim.
Here is iCub.
Oh, look, he recognises me, and he's smiling.
Very pleased to meet you! It's a friend of ours.
'Giulio Sandini is director of the team that brought iCub to life.
'He's been helping these toddler robots develop for seven years.
' Talk me through how it actually learns.
The first skill that the robot has to learn is how we control our own body.
Exploring its hands, exploring its world Yes.
"Is this mine?" Yes, exactly that.
'This iCub is in the early stages of development.
'Just like a newborn, the robot is exploring where it ends 'and the outside world begins.
'It repeats this action over and over 'until it learns where the boundaries are.
' The most difficult part of this task, is to detect its own hand.
To distinguish its own hand from the movement going on around.
'Once iCub knows where its limbs begin and end, 'it can start to use them.
' Now that he knows about his own body, he can start to learn how to reach for a ball.
If I give it a ball OK.
Oh, it wants it.
It wants it.
No.
You missed.
OK.
It's basically deciding with which hand Yeah, yeah is close to the ball.
In this case it is grasping Now, I think it is dropping It's smiling! It becomes disinterested very soon.
But it's exactly as you would expect a child It would get interested in it, and reach out and it's smiling.
You can have it if you It is a simple step, but it's a fundamental one.
We interact with the world to start playing with toys, to see what you can do if you push, or if you pull, or if you do these kind of actions.
So far, 20 iCubs have been built, and this extended family have migrated internationally.
So from Aberystwyth to Ankara, the robots are learning different tasks.
This is the original iCub.
It's still here in Italy, and Giorgio Metta is its mentor.
This iCub has now entered a new phase of development.
It's now responding to voices and building up a memory of the things it encounters.
(ICUB) Do you want me to play alone? No, I do not.
That's iCub talking? That's iCub.
Tell me what to do.
Track motion.
Did you ask me to track motion? Yes, I do.
So it wants me to give it something to track the motion of.
OK, here we go.
Have a look at this.
This is an octopus.
Remove your hands so I can watch the octopus.
There we go.
Now the robot moves and acquires a set of images to characterise the object from different points of view.
'When the iCub is learning and makes an error, 'it is able to change its programming to try and correct the mistake.
'And it can continue to do this 'until it gets it right.
'That's what makes it so special.
' I like the octopus very much.
Good.
Tell me what to do.
Grasp the octopus.
OK.
Grasping the octopus.
Very good.
'What you're seeing is a robot actively learning.
'iCub has recognised the object and hopefully lodged this 'in its artificial brain.
' Track motion.
'Now it's time to test iCub, 'introduce a new object, and see if it can tell them apart.
' This is a purple car.
Do you want me to learn the purple car? Yes, I do.
Remove your hands so I can watch the purple car.
I like the purple car very much.
Tell me what to do.
So now it's learnt about two objects.
It's learnt about the purple car and the octopus.
It can remember these, can it? Yes.
Touch the purple car.
OK, touching the purple car.
Very good.
'Just like when we encounter something new, 'iCub is learning by interacting with the world around it.
'It's learning by experience.
' You know, it's hard to believe the iCub isn't alive.
Its movements are so realistic, so human, the way it focuses on objects and concentrates and reaches out to pick them up.
You can almost see its artificial brain learning in front of your very eyes.
In 20 years' time, we have a system like the iCub which can learn from me, the way I learned from my father, behaving like an apprentice, you know? I don't think it's so far in the future.
There's no reason why iCub can't grow up.
It's only a matter of time.
Eventually, iCub could lead to robots in our homes and at work.
Machines that respond and react independently to the world around them.
A machine that's just a little bit human.
(STEPHEN HAWKING) We have seen how robotics is being used to create autonomous beings.
But science is also using this technology to restore the human body, giving paraplegics an ability they thought was lost for ever.
'I'm Joy Reidenberg, and as a comparative anatomist, 'I'm fascinated by the mechanics of the human body, 'especially the way we can do the most complicated things 'with what seems like no effort at all.
' Human walking is a complex balancing act.
Messages flash from our brain to our legs, our arms and our torso.
It's a fine-tuned routine that, when it all comes together, results in locomotion.
But when this ability is taken away by injury or disease, science has struggled to find a way to restore it.
Now, that is about to change.
Here at the Moss Rehabilitation Centre in Philadelphia, something remarkable, some might even say miraculous, is happening.
I'm here to meet people who are paralysed, but can now stand and walk on their own two feet.
This is the machine behind the miracle.
It's an exoskeleton.
ReWalk is a sophisticated combination of engineering and sensing electronics, giving people the chance to do something that they thought they would never do again.
Do you feel like you walk it, or it walks you? I definitely feel like I walk it, cos I, you know, stomp around and get mad when I don't do it right.
Jean Altomari was paralysed in a car crash.
After being in a wheelchair for two years, she's now learning to walk again.
And we're clicking.
MOTORS HUM The noise you hear is the four motorised joints at the knees and hips.
Are you ready? Yeah.
Let's walk.
There you go.
What does it feel like when you're doing this? I don't know.
Does it feel strange? No, it doesn't feel strange at all.
I mean, it feels like it's supposed to feel, I guess.
Like regular walking? Maybe not like regular walking, but I wouldn't say it feels abnormal.
I'd say this is like a new normal.
It feels like it's supposed to.
Incredibly sensitive motion sensors measure Jean's upper body movements.
These signals are processed by a computer in her backpack, which then drives the skeleton to walk in the right direction at the right speed.
So what's the hardest thing about using this? Having to take it off.
Definitely.
Having to take it off.
Besides allowing Jean to stand and walk, the exoskeleton also relieves the spinal and muscle pain she suffers from constantly sitting down.
Even though you can't feel your legs, you feel the stretching? Oh, yeah.
Everything feels better, and my pain level significantly decreases as soon as I put it on, and for hours afterwards.
When I saw this, I said, "This is it".
This is the beginning of really untethering people, letting them go where they want to go, getting them the opportunity to go from sitting to standing, to be able to hug their loved ones in a standing position, to look at anybody else at eye level.
'Agnes Fejerdy was also paralysed in a car accident.
'She is one of the more experienced users, 'and has been training with the suit for five months.
' What did it feel like the first time you were able to stand up in a suit like this? It was wonderful and very powerful.
These aren't for weight bearing, they're to keep you stable when you get up? Yes.
'Agnes has been using the suit 'for nearly half a year, so she can test its ability 'to keep up with her.
' I'm amazed at how fast Agnes is going.
She's like a speed demon.
I think she has it set on the highest setting possible.
She does.
It's really amazing how fast she can make it move, and how smoothly she makes it move.
'What you see is that individuals, as they get practice with this, ' can walk and walk and walk, and they're happy to keep walking because they're not being fatigued by the system.
'One day, we'll see this suit being worn first thing in the morning 'and taken off at the end of the day 'after the individual has used it to go everywhere they need to go.
' But ideally, you want people to take this out on the road and have that independence.
That will be the next step, for sure.
Exoskeleton technology is so remarkable that it can also enhance the ability of the able-bodied.
This suit, produced by Lockheed Martin, is called the HULC, the Human Universal Load Carrier.
It gives the wearer the ability to lift over 200lbs.
Even more Robocop is this prototype by Raytheon, called the XOS 2.
Its makers claim an operator can do the work of two or three men.
These suits could transform the way we build houses, deal with emergencies and fight wars.
To me, it's not just the technology that links these suits.
It's that they do what machines often do best give us the power to be better than we are.
My favourite machine is anything that lets me see some place I couldn't otherwise see, whether it's an MRI or a CAT scanner, or it's a microscope, or an endoscope, or a telescope.
I suppose my favourite machine is a Swiss Army knife.
I think it would have to be my laptop computer.
Because it gives me access to the internet, which is access to information.
The machine I find most exciting is the one that could help us establish life on another planet.
A machine that is looking deep into the Universe to find new worlds that we could one day call home.
'My name is Maggie Aderin-Pocock, and I'm an astrophysicist.
' As a child, I would look into the night sky and wonder what was out there, if there was another planet like ours.
It's a question we've been asking for thousands of years.
A question they're trying to answer here at La Palma in the Canary Islands.
I'm here because this mountaintop is home to one of the world's best telescopes.
Wow.
It is beautiful.
This is the GTC, the Gran Telescopio Canarias.
It acts as a time machine, and it's so powerful, it can look back to the beginning of the Universe.
That's fantastic.
I'm a little out of breath, partly from excitement, and partly because we're at 2,400 metres, so at that altitude you really feel it when you walk up the stairs.
But it's an amazing piece of engineering, and it's just so big.
The dome weighs 500 tons, and is nearly as high as Nelson's Column.
It's a very solid structure, but I think you need that, cos you've got to keep the telescope very stable as it pans across the night sky.
This is my favourite bit - the mirror.
And I'm not used to segmented mirrors, but this is huge! The enormous mirror is the heart of this telescope.
It's made up of 36 separate hexagons, each one almost two metres across.
The mirror acts like a light-gathering bucket, so the larger your mirror, the more light you can gather, which means you have a better ability to see fainter objects.
So the GTC can look deep into the Universe.
The vast segmented mirror is allowing the telescope to see objects in space that have never been seen before.
Astronomer Riccardo Scarpa shows me some of the images the GTC has collected.
This is the Whirlpool Galaxy, M51.
So this is a spiral galaxy like our own? Yes.
The images captured by the GTC are mesmerising.
From majestic spiral galaxies to star-forming nebula, the detail and clarity is extraordinary.
But there's a much deeper purpose to this telescope's work.
It's searching for one of astronomy's holy grails another planet similar to Earth.
In its hunt for other worlds, the telescope doesn't see the planets themselves, they're too far away.
But an exoplanet, a planet outside our solar system, can be detected by a dip in light as it passes in front of its sun.
And here is a graph of an exoplanet.
Where is this exoplanet? Is it an Earth-like exoplanet? It is an exoplanet orbiting a star in the constellation Lynx at about 150 light years away.
'The dip in the graph is the moment the exoplanet eclipses its sun.
'And this one is the size of Jupiter.
'But it's planets that are in orbits like ours 'that are more likely to sustain life.
' The technique is evolving in order to find smaller and smaller planets, so eventually we will find the Earth-size planets.
I look forward to that.
The team here want to find another Earth.
Another place in the Universe that in the distant future we might call home.
I feel that the Gran Telescopio Canarias fulfils a fundamental human instinct.
It's that desire to know if maybe somewhere out there, deep in space, there's a planet like ours.
A planet in orbit around a different star, part of a different solar system millions of light years away.
A planet that could potential harbour life like we have here on Earth.
(STEPHEN HAWKING) This has been a glimpse of the future.
A place where vehicles steer themselves, where machines read our minds, where robots think like us, and one man has the strength of three.
In the future it will be machines that allow us to reach into the cosmos and travel to other worlds.
It's my hope that we embrace this possibility and become explorers of the Universe.
Next time, health, and fighting the big killers.
We hunt for the next deadly virus It's at this point the virus crosses over from animal to humans.
Road-test the latest robotic surgery It's very much like a computer game, isn't it? '.
.
and the war against one of our oldest enemies.
' Oh, that's so cool! Science on the front line, battling for your future.
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