"[orchestral music playing]" "[William Shatner] Somewhere in time's own space, there must be some sweet pasture place where creeks sing on, and tall trees grow." "Some paradise where horses go." "For the love that guides my pen," "I know that great horses live again." "[William Shatner] In the grand adventure of life, there's nowhere I feel more at home, more at peace, than with my horses." "The horse is a symbol of human progress." "The unsung hero whose power carried us into the modern age, plowing our fields, building our cities." "It was on horseback that we set out to explore the world." "Beautiful boy." "[murmuring]" "[neighing] [orchestral music playing]" "The horses teach you to live in the moment and by some nonverbal way, whether it's the way they look, the way their body moves, they're communicating." "What a sweetheart." "That's the first time I've touched her." "Ah, a whole new thing." "How they feel, what they think." "And they're reading you in the same way." "This is where the horses are bred, babies grown up and they begin their life." "So the baby dives into life, and I've been there at that moment when the baby looks around, and I was the first thing the baby saw." "I was brought to tears by the experience because it was seeing a life form, seeing the world for the first time." "It's that connectivity that fascinates me." "From the point of the stars, the galaxies, the star dust of which we are made, nature is magical in its connection." "We're all connected to the stars, to the earth, to the horses." "[controller] T-minus ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, [engines firing] three, two, one, zero, and lift off of the Space Shuttle Atlantis on a mission to build," "resupply, and to do research on The International Space Station." "[engines firing] [controller] Houston now controlling," "Atlantis begins its penultimate journey to shore up" "The International Space Station." "[dramatic music playing]" "[William Shatner] We humans are naturally born dreamers." "We have an innate curiosity for the deep mysteries of life." "What is our reason for being?" "What is out there?" "Are we alone?" "Dreams are at the intersection of science fiction and science fact." "They inspired the creators of Star Trek, too." "Imagine a future three centuries from now where we have developed the technology and the know how to explore and colonize distant galaxies." "How much of that is fantasy?" "How much will actually come to pass, and how is it possible for something like Star Trek to illuminate a path to the future?" "My name is William Shatner and this is a voyage to probe the most brilliant and creative minds on the planet to find out if" "The Truth Is In The Stars." "[dramatic music playing]" "[William Shatner] More than a half a century ago," "I started traveling through the stars in the 23rd Century, exploring the galaxies, discovering new worlds and alien life." "Yes, boldly going where no one had gone before." "So, you would think that as captain of the USS Starship Enterprise, that I would know everything there is to know about the mysteries of the universe." "But so many of my questions remain unanswered." "The vast expanse of the universe, dark, mysterious," "stretching off into infinity." "How did it begin?" "Where's it going?" "How will it end?" "[announcer] Good evening, ladies and gentlemen." "From the Meridian Room in The Park Plaza Hotel in New York City, we bring you the music of Ramon" "[William] Science Fiction has long been a part of our entertainment culture." "When Orson Welles frightened a nation in 1938 with his broadcast of War of the Worlds the imagined future was dark and foreboding." "[Orson Welles] Ladies and gentlemen," "I have a grave announcement to make." "Incredible as it may seem, both the observations of science and the evidence of our eyes lead to the inescapable assumption that those strange beings who landed in the Jersey farmlands tonight are the vanguard of an invading army from the planet Mars." "[radio announcer] Bringing the news of the world for millions of readers." "[William Shatner] The Martian invasion was all imagined, but The Second World War and The Cold War that followed indoctrinated a sense of fear." "[public service announcer] Here they are on their way to school on a beautiful spring day, but no matter where they go or what they do, they aways try to remember what to do if the atom bomb explodes right then." "It's a bomb, duck and cover!" "[William Shatner] But The Cold War was about to take a new turn." "The race to space had begun." "[President John F. Kennedy] And this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space." "[announcer] The countdown is once again underway at Cape Canaveral, in the attempt to launch astronaut John Glenn into orbit around the world." "For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom" "and peace." "We have vowed that we" "[William Shatner] Sensing this renewed optimism, a screenwriter by the name of Gene Roddenberry developed a concept that would transform science fiction." "[Star Trek theme tong playing]" "[James T. Kirk] Space, the final frontier." "[William Shatner] When Star Trek premiered in 1966, it envisioned a promising and hopeful future where the world was united in a peaceful quest to explore the universe." "[James T. Kirk] To boldly go where no man has gone before." "[Star Trek theme song playing]" "[William Shatner] Star Trek has fundamentally altered the course of my life, but I could never have guessed how it could influence so many other lives and inspire people to literally reach for the stars." "[Star Trek theme song playing]" "[James T. Kirk] Sulu, activate Tractor Beams." "Tractor Beams activated." "We have it, sir." "Try to bring it aboard the hangar deck." "Aye, sir." "Lieutenant Uhura, send a security team to the pressure doors on the hangar deck." "Aye sir." "Mr. Spock, come with me, Scotty." "[dramatic music playing]" "[Sulu] Hangar doors opened and preparing for entrance of shuttlecraft." "Shuttlecraft approaching hangar deck." "[dramatic music playing]" "[communicator whistling]" "[Sulu] Bridge to Captain Kirk." "[James T. Kirk] Kirk here." "[Sulu] Hangar doors are closed and hangar deck is pressurizing." "[James T. Kirk] Acknowledged." "[indistinct chattering]" "Evening, sir, do you have a ticket, sir?" "I..." "I need a ticket?" "Yeah, you need a ticket, sir!" "I'm uh, I'm the guy that played Captain Kirk." "Really?" "I still need a ticket?" "Yeah." "Wow." "[dramatic music playing]" "If you can believe it." "[dramatic music playing]" "[man] Hello, Captain." "[William Shatner] More than 50 years later," "Star Trek still captures the imagination." "All these fans," "and I'm about to meet one of the biggest Trekkies of them all." "[Gorn gurgling] [dramatic music playing]" "[thud]" "[Gorn gurgling] [dramatic music playing]" "The actual Gorn head." " Is it really?" " That's what they say." "I thought it-it was tearing at me with its teeth." "Does it look familiar?" "Yeah, well, it was a hot desert day." "Yes, at Vasquez Rocks, right?" "Vasquez Rocks, exactly." "Right." "Yes." "He was a powerful guy back then, in that suit." "Yeah, there was some great-great wrestling that happened in that and that's his outfit." "Now this is supposedly the laurel wreath that you wore in Plato's Stepchildren." "Why do you say supposedly?" "Well, it's all been verified, but, you know," "I have to believe the people who I gave the money to that this is all real because the auction" " You have to believe that." " It has to be real." "Right, it has to be real." "But maybe you can be the final" "Oh, that looks real to me, certainly." "So this is what you wore for the first interracial kiss on television." " Fantastic." " Yeah." "[romantic music playing] [applauding]" "[Ben Stiller] Then over here is, uh, the jumpsuit from What Are Little Girls Made Of?" " When you get spun into" " Oh, yeah." "[Ben Stiller] The android." "[William Shatner] Now that looks really real, that's the material." "[Ben] It looks like that could fit you, right?" " Yeah, yeah." " Yeah, that's it." "No, but seriously though, it's cool to see you" " looking good. [laughs]" " If I suck it in I guess but" " That's-that's incredible." " That's it!" "Isn't that cool?" "Ben, yeah the whole thing is cool!" "And-and were you, uh, were you born with this in your mouth?" "This is the silver spoon that I was born with, that's right." "[both chuckle]" "The original one was a little bit bigger, actually." " That's great, Ben." " Okay." "These auctions started to happen, right, where props from movies and television shows would become available, and so the idea of having a piece of the real thing that, you know, and of course, you know," "the artifice of it all is so interesting, that it's all kind of, you know, cardboard and paint, and all these things that, you know, but they mean so much to you as a kid," "when you're watching them because it's so real to you." "So, what do you think you're doing" " when you're buying that?" " Yeah, yeah." "I mean, you're spending real money uh, for a piece of cardboard." "What-what-what do you think you're doing?" "Just solidifying my status as a nerd, is like probably the biggest part of it." "[William Shatner] I don't think you need to" "Well, that's what, once-once you've done that, and you've committed that kind of money to getting, you're saying basically," " that's what I am." " You're basically a nerd." " Yes." " Okay." "You know, the idea, to me, it's just that idea of having touching the real thing or something, that is actually, that was actually there, a piece of history, in a way." "Did this um, intrigue your imagination?" "Did this make you think in those terms?" "Yeah, I mean, it was more than intriguing." "I mean, it was kind of one of those shows where it was like, wow, this is the coolest thing." "I love this." "I started going to conventions and um, you know, but I don't know if you know, like you don't analyze it when you're at that age." "I think, you know, there are movies and television shows that you see at a young age that have an impact, and then they either stay with you later, or they don't, but they're never gonna affect you" "like they affect you at that age and I think that's part of it, too." "This is Star Trek's 50th anniversary." "So, it's 50 years since I was, uh, playing the part." "From my vantage point, 50 years later," "I don't know where it went, I mean, uh, and-and-and it's both appalling and, uh, and intriguing when somebody looks at me and says, you know, uh," ""Are you-- are you Captain Kirk?"" "Thinking of me 50 years ago." "I've talked to, uh, quite a few people about time." "About the passage of time and how time goes," " of course" " Fascinating, isn't it?" "[stuttering] It is." "Have you talked about the phenomenon of time going faster as you get older?" "Feeling that time" "Tell me about that." "Just the feeling that time goes by quicker as you get older." "They find that time does slow down as you approach the speed of light, did you know that?" "I've heard that." "Well, they've proven that if you could go at the speed of light somewhere, time would cease to exist." "And, would-would aging, then, slow?" " You'd stop aging!" " Right." "Now, I don't know how that works, 'cause then when you come back, uh, the Earth would've gone on around the Sun that many times and you would not have." "So you'd be your age, and-and your kids would be your age as well." "I stopped understanding what you were saying about 30 seconds ago." "I have to be honest." "Most people find that, no matter what the subject is, that's the problem." "[William] If we could travel at the speed of light, we could reach the planet Jupiter in just 43 minutes." "NASA's Juno Spacecraft is already there, probing the moons of the planet for signs of life in the vast oceans of liquid water beneath their icy crusts." "Clues, perhaps, to life on earth, and the origins of our Solar System, these baby steps to the stars have been inspired by Science Fiction." "But what role did Star Trek play?" "[William] Talk to me about scientific curiosity." "[Tracy Drain] Oh, I will!" "When you take any child, three year old, five year old, six years old, and watch them wander around and explore the world, it's all about being a scientist." "They see something." "They touch it, they taste it, they poke it." "So now that's my attitude." "That's wonderful, and does science fiction have anything to do with that?" "Oh, 100%." "My mom was a huge science fiction fan." "We watched Star Trek all the time!" "No, kidding!" "Oh, yeah, she freaked out when I told her" "I got to meet you." "Oh, my gosh!" "Completely passed out." "And did you-were you intrigued by science fiction and Star Trek?" "Absolutely, 100%." "A lot of engineers and scientists who work here are big science fiction fans, that's kinda how we got our start when we were young and the-the idea that Europa might have a huge ocean of water beneath that ice cap," "we can, we can think about it in a practical way." "Okay, maybe all the elements of life are there, maybe there's microorganisms there, but we just can't help that little piece in the back of our head that says" ""Maybe there's underwater cities there!"" "It's just an extra little spark of coolness" " to go and explore." " Oh, how wonderful." "[William Shatner] So sort of a science fiction version of science fact." "[Tracy Drain] That's right!" "[William Shatner] Oh, that's wild!" "I love it!" "But one of the reasons I am an engineer in this business is because we get to support the scientists who dream up these questions that they wanna know about the world and we can help them go get the data they need" "Okay, so tell me how that works." "It's that-that spirit of discovery, of exploration, of always knowing you can go out looking and there's going to be something fascinating just over the next horizon." "Uh, the idea, I think too, that I get from Star Trek is that, so many of the surprises were good ones, and even when there were surprises that were dangerous for the crew, or dangerous for people," "there was always a way to-to work out a solution so that things were okay in the end." "[engines rumbling] [controller] System this is NASA." "[rumbling] [cheering and applauding] [controller] All stations on Juno coord, we have the tone for burn cutoff on Delta B." "Juno, welcome to Jupiter." "[cheering]" "[Emily Lakdawalla] Science fiction and science fact are constantly playing off of each other." "We need people imagining the future of scientific exploration, the future of human exploration, and that's the role of-of science fiction, uh, writers and actors and futurists." "We need that kind of imagination in order to come up with ideas for what we can do to actually explore our solar system." "Star Trek was an optimistic view of what we could do if we put our minds to international collaboration." "To putting down the conflict between our governments and just collaborating on an individual level among people whose goals were just to understand things that we didn't understand yet." "I think that Star Trek wasn't necessarily a reflection of what was going on, but it was an expression of hope of what could go on in the future." "I think because we were one of the first shows that came along that said, hey, there is a tomorrow, and-and not only that, but, uh, we've just begun to invent things." "We've just begun to explore and we're a young race, we're just getting started, and I think everyone of a young mind has got to believe that, that wow, science fiction is, is just really philosophy in motion." "[Whoopi] No, it's fine, you'll be fine." "[William Shatner] Whoopi Goldberg is an actor who has similarly been inspired by Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future." "Playing a character, who, having lived for centuries, was able to dispense enormous wisdom to those willing to listen," "Hi, Bill." "[William Shatner] I wonder if she has any insights into immortality." "Whoopi." "Yes, Bill." "My darling," "I'd love to hold onto something permanent." "Well, the only thing you got is what you've done, and now we have the ability to hold onto films and television that was made, so we gain immortality as performers." "Would you be interested in living immortally, for example?" "I'd like to stay for at least 140," "I'd commit to that." "A hundred, you mean live to 140 years?" "Yeah!" "I wanna see it!" " And-and see what happens?" " Yeah!" "Well, that's" "That's the" "That's the job of science fiction, isn't it?" "Not anymore!" "[chuckles]" "And you started all of this." "Everything rolls back to Star Trek." "I'm just telling you that." "Gene created this show, and messed everybody's head up, and it's gone on for 50, what, 50 years?" "When Star Trek first came on, and Nichelle Nichols was there as the Communications Officer, it was the first time anyone in the world was aware that people of color would be in the future because before Star Trek," "in every sci-fi movie, we don't exist there." "So, for me, it was a signal to say," ""No, no, you're in the future, and this is what you have to look forward to."" "So, when they did, uh," "Next Generation, and I went and said to Gene," "Can I be on the show?" "And he said," ""Why?"" "I said, "Because," "I wanna be that for some little girl."" "[Guinan] One juice." "You aren't like the other grownups." "[Guinan] Oh, no?" "They don't think Isabella's real." "Well, most grownups have a hard time with things they can't see." "[William Shatner] Whoopi, one more question before I let you go, and that has to do with art, and creativity, and its place in the world." "What do we know about art?" "We know that people who don't have art in their lives don't have as rich a life as they could." "That's why the cavemen-- cavemen painted, and cavewomen painted stuff on the wall and it made it look nice, made it feel homey." "You know, we can't live without art." "We can't live without theory, we can't live without creativity." "It just doesn't work for us as a-as a race of humans." "Human beings make art." "Right." "I'm pretty sure it's just us, but you know, who knows what's out in the universe?" "There might be other beings making art." "I think cats make art, but they don't tell ya!" "[William Shatner] My quest for knowledge will ultimately lead me to one of the great geniuses of modern science," "Stephen Hawking." "It's once in a lifetime opportunity to ask the big questions, so I must be prepared." "On the edge of Central Park sits the Hayden Planetarium." "I've come here to see the world renowned astrophysicist" "Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is also host of the television series Cosmos." "[Neil] All too often, people like dividing the kingdom of human thought." ""Well, you're an artist, but you're not a scientist." "You're a scientist, you're not an artist."" "When I think of science fiction," "I think of the juxtaposition of all branches of civilization." "I think if you're gonna take your civilization into space, you gotta organize that, you need the engineers, the scientist, you need the artists have to imagine that." "And it may be that what comes out of that collaboration is the only future any of us should be striving for and that's one of peace and harmony, and one where we can celebrate the discoveries of science and technology" "and how art makes it tasty." "Star Trek, and frequently is referred to by a lot of people in the sciences as being an inspiration, that when they were kids, uh-uh, and it stirred their imagination." "Did Star Trek have anything to do with you in that way?" "As a kid you're not thinking complex sociological thoughts, you just do what feels good." "You play in your sandbox." "My sandbox was an interest in the universe, and I wasn't thinkin' about much else." "And then I'd walk out into the street, and then I'd hear some racial epithet yelled out of a fast moving car." "I said," ""Oh, I'm also black."" "The world outside my telescope was not really ready to accept me." "[William Shatner] Science fiction world?" "The science fiction world was." "And Star Trek reflected all that?" "Yes, in the 1960s we had a Cold War with the Soviet Union, and a hot war in Southeast Asia, and the civil rights movement, and here's Star Trek portraying" "Earth, where all the countries of the world were at peace." "Who makes tomorrow come, if not the dreamers and the scientists and the technologists who enable it?" "So, this is an occasion to not feel separate from life, but to feel one." "How does entanglement enter into that?" "And tell me what entanglement is." "It's a... [laughs]" "So, uh, quantum physics is a, it's a spooky branch of the physical universe." "I say spooky only because we have the power to predict exactly what's gonna happen." "Entanglement is one of these things." "You can have, each particle is also a wave." "What does that mean?" "Doesn't make sense, does it?" " No." " Get over it." "[both laughing]" "The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you." "[William Shatner] Stardust, and you and I are all entangled." "We're all one." "[Neil] We are composed of stardust." "We have an iron meteorite downstairs, and if you take all the iron in the hemoglobin of every living human, and put it together as one mass, you would get a hunk of iron the size of that meteorite." "So, we have an iron kinship with one another and that meteorite, because we all have the same point of origin." "That's a gift of modern astrophysics to civilization, to realize the oneness we have with one another biologically, with the earth chemically, and with the universe atomically." "Occasionally people ask me, what do I-- what do I think the future will bring?" "And I say no," "I don't know if I'm the best person for that." "And they say, "Well, why not?"" "And I just, all I do is tell 'em about Star Trek, and I remember as a kid," "and I said, okay, warpdrives," "I'm good with that for the future." "A little card you put in a box to get data," "I'm good with that, but those doors that open up just by walking towards them?" "That'll never happen!" "Somehow I was in complete denial" "No, it was real!" "Of-of automatically opening doors." "That's hysterical." "And I said we will never have that for-for a millennium." "That's the fantasy." "The reality is, there was a guy hidden behind that door with a little peephole, here he comes, and every so often that guy fell asleep, and I'd hit the door that wouldn't open." "[James T. Kirk] Captain's Log, Stardate 8169.7," "The Enterprise has just discovered a strange new planet in the Gammafallopia Star System." "[door thudding]" "Hi, I'm William Shatner, my car broke down while I was on my way to give a speech about how TV keeps families together." "[William Shatner] You might ask how Family Guy is connected to my quest for enlightenment." "I love schnitzel." "[William Shatner] Well, apart from doing a brilliant sendup of me" "Oh, my God, I hit William Shatner!" "Light growing dimmer, can't breathe." "Beam me up, God." "[stomach sloshing]" "[William Shatner] Producer Seth MacFarlane is also responsible for reviving Cosmos, the number one science show on television." "If I give him a sandwich maybe he'll be nice to me." "Yeah, are ya hungry?" "Uh, you know, I just ate, but I can eat again for you." "The ultimate sacrifice." "Exactly!" "Look, I-I can't believe what I'm lookin' at." "Yeah, this is, um, the infamous bowl of spaceships." "That's the one I was on!" "It's amazing, we were talking about this yesterday, what a brilliant design this was." "This whole thing is novel!" "It's so simple, its silhouette is instantly identifiable." "It's a very underratedly brilliant piece of design." "You know, one of the reasons I got into TV was because of the small character stories, the morality plays that you guys did and the characters never set those phasers on kill unless they had to, and it affected me," "and it's the reason that nowadays, if I find a spider in my house," "I gotta catch it and put it outside, because Star Trek set out to teach us that everything has a right to exist." "Wow!" "Until it screws up." "Then you kill it!" "Then it's gone." "I'm fascinated by the idea that you, with your reputation of animation and comedy and outrageous comedy suddenly veer into producing Cosmos, and you were instrumental in reviving it with the host of Neil deGrasse Tyson." "[Seth] It all goes back to when I was a kid, when I was a teenager, I was in high school," "I had your show and the show following, to present an optimistic view of, which by the way, is something that's very lacking right now." "Science fiction has gotten very, very dystopian." "A lot of people get their science from entertainment, and I wonder what that's doing." "I wonder what the absence of that exciting, hopeful, optimistic vision that you guys presented, without that I wonder what-- what-what's exciting kids today who are into that genre?" "If you were going to go to Dr. Stephen Hawking" "Mm-hmm." "What would you ask him?" "I would say, what's your best guess?" " At?" " That would be my question" "At everything, and is there some higher dimensional uh, lens that we're seeing our world through?" "So, I would say to him, with everything that you know, and your knowledge of mathematics and quantum physics and such, what-what-what is your best guess uh, as to the actual physical nature of the universe?" "And-and, uh, and-and I'm sure he would, 'cause he's a responsible guy," "I'm sure he would say," ""I have no fuckin' idea." [chuckles]" "[William Shatner] Okay, this may be the greatest deli sandwich you've ever had." "There's no way this is gonna be all over my shirt?" "[William Shatner] Oh, my God." "Yeah, you know what we forgot?" "We forgot napkins." "No, didn't forget that at all." "Your magic sack." "It goes on, it's endless!" "I have a spaceship in there!" "[William] New York's Central Park is an oasis of calm in a hectic world." "An ideal place for a conversation on deeper subjects, time, space, and the mysteries of the universe." "Michio Kaku is a renowned futurist and theoretical physicist." "Some say he's pushing the boundaries of modern physics, dreaming in the realm of science fiction." "I'm about to find out." "Michio." " Ah, Mr. Shatner!" " How are you?" "Great honor!" "Bill, please, please." "So, I've asked you to come here" "Yes." "Uh, in the park, because all life is connected." "The religious philosophies by, by people who lived before technology, they deduced intuitively that everything was connected." "Many religions believe that the universe is one." "Think of The Big Bang, when the entire universe came out of something smaller than an electron." "Everything you see around us was connected at the instant of The Big Bang." "[William Shatner] Oh!" "[Michio Kaku] And when the Bang took place, we got separated, but in some sense all matter in the universe has connection with every other piece of matter, 'cause we all came from the same bang." "[William Shatner] Well I love that idea." "The Big Bang is an-an incredible concept as to the beginning of this universe." "I mean, nobody thought of that before." "That's right." "See Einstein had the theory, but The Big bang was too much for him." "Nature has two hands." "One hand is a theory they're very big." "The other theory is the quantum theory." "The theory of little tiny electrons." "But why should nature have two hands but you don't talk to each other?" "How can nature combine the big with the small into a single theory?" "How?" "That is the number one problem in physics today." "That's the mystery!" "Yeah, it's still a mystery, we don't know." "The leading theory is string theory." "We think the string theory, in fact, is the only candidate which can meld the big and the small into a single, comprehensive theory that works." "I understand the English, but the sense of it, what does that mean?" "Well, we think that ultimately, particles are made out of tiny vibrating strings." "From a distance they look like a particle, but up close they're really vibrating strings." "[soft string music playing]" "[Michio Kaku] The only paradigm of nature that is rich enough to explain this enormous variety of things we see around us is music!" "Strings have many frequencies." "Each frequency corresponds to a particle, to a whole universe of interactions." "And as it vibrates it creates quantum mechanics, all the quantum particles, and as it moves in space and time it forces the stage of life to curl up exactly as Einstein predicted." "So in a very simple way, we can combine both Einstein's theory and the quantum theory and together they comprise everything." "[string music playing]" "[Michio Kaku] So the music of the string is all the particles and chemistry is nothing but the melodies you can play on these vibrating strings." "I love what you're doing." "And then the universe is a symphony of strings." "Ah!" "[Michio Kaku] These are the exact quotes of Einstein." "He said he wanted to, quote," ""Read God's thoughts."" "The leading candidate for reading the mind of God is cosmic music." "Cosmic music resonating through eleven dimensional hyperspace." "[William Shatner] Wow, that's the theory and that would go along with the unifying idea of everything is unified." "Right." "That's right." "And you're looking to prove what you just said," " you're looking to prove that?" " That's right." "Oh, my Lord, I never understood that!" " You got it!" " I got it!" " You got it!" " I got it, by God, I got it." "[soft orchestral music playing]" "[William Shatner] Star Trek has fundamentally altered the course of my life but I could never have guessed how it could influence so many other lives and inspire people to innovate, to create, to literally reach for the stars." "This is the space shuttle" "Enterprise, with its name inspired by Star Trek." "It was the prototype for the shuttles that followed" "A giant step forward in our ability to reach for the stars." "But where exactly is that quest taking us?" "We're literally at the crossroads of science fiction and science." "Right." "And you are a pure scientist, and I'm a pure ignoramus." "[laughing] Nonsense." "So-so, there's," "I'm fictional, in every sense, and you're pure science." "[Neil Turok] It's all about dreaming, and science fiction, although entertainment is about dreaming and imagining, and that is the most powerful force that we know." "Until this moment I've never fully understood that the science you're in is about dreaming the possible, the what ifs." "But it's the what ifs based on the knowledge of scientific principles, and science fiction is also based on that," " with a more elusive" " Open minded." " Open minded." " Open minded." "Yes!" "Where the possibilities are less likely." "[Neil Turok] Right." "So science fiction illustrates, perhaps better than anything, the extraordinary power of the human mind to do much more than it knows because the human mind dreams of things before they happen." "Based on all this, where do you think we'll be in Star Trek's time, 250 years from now?" "Anything-anything I say that far ahead is bound to be wrong." "Of course." "What I know is that the quantum technological revolution is coming." "We know that the devices we use today, as awesome as they are, laptops and cell phones, will be abacuses ten or 20 years from now." "We're going to have, I believe, new sources of energy." "The dark matter in space, the dark energy in space" "I think one day is gonna be used-used." "That will allow us to travel in space." "Where does Dr. Stephen Hawking and you as his, uh, what would we call you?" " Collaborator." " Collaborator?" "Yes." "You, I mean, just be mentioned in the same breath is really phenomenal, isn't it?" "For him!" "[both laughing]" "But [stuttering] where do you guys fit into this phenomenal uh gallery of people?" "I am inspired by Stephen." "His main contribution to physics was to say we can unify quantum theory with gravity and let's try and do that, we have to do that to describe black holes, we have to do that to describe The Big Bang." "We're on the verge of discovering it." "Is that string theory?" "No." "We're on the verge of discovering it, it's not string theory." "String theory has become a nightmare theory." "What we're finding observationally is that as we go to bigger scales, the universe simplifies, and in a sense it's finite." "You know, we're taught" "We're used to talking about an infinite universe, but the part we will ever see is actually finite because of the dark energy." "So the dark energy is causing the universe to accelerate its expansion away from us." "Stuff which is further than a certain distance today is going to travel away from us so fast, we will never see it." " So here we are" " Yes, yes, yes!" "Human beings sticking our fingers out to explore like children looking in the dirt." "Absolutely." "We're looking into the sky, trying to find an answer." "What is the answer?" "What is the question?" "Why are we doing this?" "[stuttering]" "What will we discover?" "Will we discover the beginning?" "Or how does this-- What are we doing?" "It's who we are." "We are the leading edge of evolution." "We arose in the" "We are the leading edge of evolution." "We represent the self-consciousness of the universe." "[William Shatner] This thing behind us isn't thinking about what's out there and how does it work." "[Neil Turok] Through us it is." "Through us." "Through us it is." "We are the self-consciousness of the universe." "Are you the leadings" "Are you the special forces in the battle to-for knowledge?" "Absolutely, that is what physics is." "Wow, you're the Green Berets of-of education." "That's what the-that's what physics is." "[William Shatner] The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics." "This is where dreamers like Stephen Hawking are exploring mind-bending ideas about the nature of our universe, asking the what ifs." "What if we can bend space and time?" "What if we can control gravity?" "What if we can peer deep into a black hole?" "What if we can harness the power of dark energy?" "What if we can travel faster than the speed of light?" "What if?" "[William] Mike Lazaridis, you and your associates invented the very first smartphone." "What a thing to be able to say because of the way smartphones have changed the world." "Not just our culture but every culture." "You sell Blackberry and you make a lot of money and you use that money in a philanthropic way." "You endow an institute that you call Perimeter and the object of that money is pure research." "How do you get to that?" "The lenses of our imagination are the most powerful optics you could ever imagine." "They're much more powerful than our eyes, they're much more powerful than our instruments because they allow us to see things that our instruments can't see but can only interpret." "Everything that we basically take for granted in our industrial world and our lives and our society and our technology, our industry, all the wealth creations come from theoretical physics discoveries that have explained parts of nature." "Let me take you to this really amazing place." "This is where we're growing the future." "So this may appear like science fiction and in many ways it is." "But this is the kind of technology you need in order to invent the future because you're dealing with materials that you can't see." "We can grow materials, keep them completely isolated from impurities and contamination, and we can not only grow them here atom by atom, layer by layer, we can build completely imaginative, new substances that are gonna help us define the quantum future." "Scientific discovery and technology industry, they change everything." "No matter how wild-eyed we are, we tend to, um, underestimate the future potential of a discovery, of a physics discovery, or a-a, you know, technology discovery." "Physics is magic that works." "[William Shatner] The universe transcends the English language." "We simply don't have the words to describe its magnitude." "But with mathematics, scientists are able to comprehend the universe to see music in the stars, and equations in its blackness." "It occurs to me that these complex scientific theories occupy an imaginative realm much like magic." "As Kirk," "I explored the universe unafraid of what surprises lay beneath the black cloak of human ignorance." "I've come back to familiar surroundings to meet with an actor I directly inspired and, oh, yes, a slick hand at magic, too." "[Jason Alexander] Where the magic is, you have to believe that it's there." "That's magic." "Magic is-is merely saying," ""That can't be done"" "and then you do it." "And when you first do it, they go, "That's a great trick, that's a great trick"" "and then eventually, you go," ""Well, that thing can be done."" "The reason my wife doesn't like magic, is she goes," ""It's not magical if you can do it, now it's just a thing, it exists"" "and I think, that's fascinating." "Let's create the illusion of how it could be done, and then that illusion becomes your reality." "If I say to you this coffee is hot, when it's not, and I believe it, for me it's hot!" "[William Shatner] Your perception is that it's hot." "When I was eight or nine years old," "I discovered Star Trek, and I became immediately addicted, and my addiction was specific," "I mean I love the whole thing, but your work as Kirk was so inspiring to me, the idea of this guy who was brilliant, um, instinctual, romantic, masculine" "That's me!" "This sense of humor, where I went [gasping]" ""That's what I wanna do."" "Now what I really wanted to do was pilot the Enterprise." "I didn't know that they were-- they were two different things, but, that was the beginning of my interest in when watching you through those episodes," "Kirk was always moving through this galaxy, this mission, with a sense of awe." "The writers of Star Trek had some brilliant ideas." "Yeah, they certainly were able to articulate the challenge" "in a way that invited dialog." "The most powerful episode you ever did on which the, the divide between peoples were, they were one guy was black on the right side, and one guy was white on the right side and out of that was this enmity," "and this hostility, and this death match until they literally, completely destroyed each other." "[William Shatner] That was one of my favorite episodes, too." "[Jason] It's just brilliant." "You're coming back to pay for your crimes!" "[Jason] And long after you and I are gone, people will watch those episodes, and they may seem kitschy and they may seem outdated, but the integrity that you all brought to it made it real for us," "and it left a mark." "You were on Star Trek." "Voyager, I made it to that one." "Voyager, yeah." "As you well know, there is-there is a magic, and especially if you're a Star Trek fan, to walking onto the ship and they close the door that gets you onto the ship and now, wherever you look, you're on the ship!" "I mean, if you look out a window there's a starfield and if you walk down a corridor it leads to a real room." "That's why we go into acting." "There is one other individual who rounds out our group." "[electronic chattering]" "An artificial intelligence." "[electronic chattering]" "The mind of a mathematician, and the soul of an artist." "[William Shatner] Take me on this wonderful journey you're taking me, to a man like Dr. Stephen Hawking." "If you were going to go see" "Dr. Stephen Hawking in Cambridge, what would you ask him?" "The question that I think is kinda fun, is," ""Why?"" "I'm fascinated as to the why of it all." "Yeah." "If this is all purposed in some way, what is that purpose?" "You know, how did the universe begin," "Big Bang, I go, "Okay," "I'm with you, Big Bang."" "The second before the Big Bang, there was nothing, and then suddenly there was something?" "Well, what was in the nothing?" "What was in the nothing that made the Big Bang?" "What" " If you keep going back, go back one more, go back one more, go back one more." "It leads me to have to embrace the idea of a Creator that put the motion of the universe into play." "That is why I have spirituality, because I believe we have an intended purpose for existence in time and space." "♪ Ground control To Major Tom ♪" "♪ Lock your Soyuz hatch And put your helmet on ♪" "♪ Ground control To Major Tom ♪" "♪ Seven, six ♪" "♪ Commencing countdown, Engines on ♪" "How are ya?" "[indistinct chattering]" "[man] So, are you guys ready to go to Mars?" "[William Shatner] Absolutely." "[Chris] Any time." "So, the first thing I wanna point out is that this is more than just a panorama you're fully tracked so you can move" "[William Shatner] This is real?" "[man] Yeah, this is all made from real data." "[William Shatner] I've skied in this area." "[Chris] Yeah." "I welcome you to move around in this space, 'cause what you're seeing is a full 3-D world." "[William] You have a beam coming out of your eye." "[laughing]" "[Chris] Like a superhero." "[William Shatner] That is so wild." "What's the Rover doing now?" "I mean, these days, what's it up to?" "So, it's continuing to explore, and one of the great things about this tool is, so, every time we get new images of Mars, the world round you will just fill in with more and more data." "So our goal is to drive about a third of the way up that big mountain, and 180 degrees around in the other direction" "[William Shatner] 180 degrees around this direction is" "[Chris] Yeah, so this is remarkable here." "[William Shatner] Yeah." "Do we know the qualities of the soil?" "Is it earth-like?" "Can you get a corn crop going there?" "[Chris] I think there's a lot of radiation." "[Emily Lakdawalla] What Bill and Chris are walking on is a sediment." "It's made of broken bits of Mars' rock, and so it's actually not so alien, because almost all of Mars' rock is this volcanic material called basalt." "It's the most common kind of rock in the solar system." "We have it erupting in Hawaii and Iceland right now." "It's all over the surface of Venus." "It's all over the surface of asteroids, and forms this sediment across the surface and if you picked it up and kind of brushed it in your hand, it would just look like a red sand." "[William Shatner] It looks totally navigable." "I mean, that Rover looks like it could go almost anywhere." "It looks like Arizona in a way." "[Chris] Looks like a place the water went away." "[man] Yeah, some places you go, it's just sand for as far as the eye can see, and then other places there's just giant, rocky boulders everywhere." "[William Shatner] Do you see that thing move?" "A dark shadow behind that hill?" "Uh, Sasquatch that would be my guess," "Sasquatch probably." "He's everywhere." "Wouldn't it be funny if somethin' popped out, there?" "Jesus, look at that!" "It's a Hominid!" "So, Chris, uh, Mars Rover, huh?" "It's amazing!" "Chris Hadfield, great Canadian astronaut, teacher, scientist, thinker, writer" "Fellow Spaceship Commander." "And a Spaceship Commander." "[controller] Station, this is Houston, are you ready for the event?" "[Chris] I'm ready for the event." "[controller] Mr. Shatner, this is Mission Control, Houston." "[William Shatner] Last time we talked, you were 250 miles straight up above Los Angeles and we had a ten minute window of communication." "In preparation for you to call me," "I was thinking, how do you-how do you welcome" "Captain Kirk on board your spaceship?" "Open arms." "Yeah, open arms, but-but, you know, there's the military tradition so I thought, you know, when someone comes on the ship, you blow the bosun's pipe." "[bosun pipe whistling]" "[Chris] It's that standard hailing bosun's whistle, and I managed to get a copy of it, and I got it set up so that as you and I started" "I'd like push play and hold the microphone so you could hear this silly noise." "So picture me scrambling around on the ship tryin'-tryin' to properly welcome you aboard, but it was delightful to have you on board my spaceship, the-the International Space Station for a while." "[William Shatner] It was a delight to talk to you." "We're here at JPL, and the head of JPL says," ""Hey, Chris, you're the best." "You're gonna go and you are gonna uncover bacteria and water on Mars."" "Would you go?" "Would you go?" "No." "Oh, I'd go." "What will I do with my horses?" "[chuckles] Someone else could" "Who will ride them?" "Could lead them and feed them for a while." "So you'd go?" "The willingness to take a personal risk in order to-to uncover uh an idea, to turn over a rock, to push back the edges of some black cloak, that, to me, is the really interesting part of it." "Got it, but what about your little granddaughter waving her bum in the air when you play the guitar?" "You won't see that for two years." "Uh, I agree." "There is always a trade off of what you're dreaming of doing and what you'd like to do right now, and as my wife pointed out to me a long time ago, giving up on your dreams does not come for free either." "The-the first people that we either send to go start permanently living on the moon, which I think will happen within our lifetimes." "And then eventually, figure it out that we can send people as far as Mars." "We need people who have everything going for them that you possibly can." "In our lifetimes, all space flight has occurred." "You know, no human being had-had flown in space, when I was born, when you were born." "All that has happened in less than a lifetime, and yet, we've permanently left Earth in that short period of time." "There's six people up on a space station right now." "They've been up there for over 15 years, coming in on 16 years, rotating crews." "We've been in this really small place for so long, and suddenly, we have developed the capability to start to see everything else." "What's it like to float in space?" "What's happening to your stomach and you tongue and your eyes?" "We are-we are all living under the ultimate oppressor, which is gravity." "It actually physically, we accept it like, because we have nothing to compare it to, but physically, it is like this actual, physical weight trying to drive you under its heel into the dirt." "The-the instant that the engines shut off and you can float from your seat, you all-- everybody laughs." "Is this what you did, you float, is that what you do?" "Yeah, you burst out laughing 'cause" "No kidding!" "If it happened right now you would just start laughing." "You'd love it." "You-you can tumble and fly, it is instantaneous magic." "It's just magic!" "[William Shatner] Your music and your pictures, which are so well known, tell me what that does for you and brings to us." "[Chris] Sometimes you go to the window of a spaceship and you say," ""I'm not gonna take a picture." "I just wanna look at the world,"" "and you're seeing something, but it's goin' by at five miles a second." "You can't keep up, you can't cognitively or emotionally keep up with the huge variety of geology and history, and human culture and" "I found every time my hand would grab one of the cameras and go in, 'cause I wanted to be able to see it later." "I didn't wanna miss it, 'cause I couldn't soak it up fast enough and so I would take pictures and then, now, three years later," "I can flick through them and go," " wow, look what I saw" " Yeah, yeah, yeah." "Look what it was underneath me." "Just like exploration on a spaceship, music is an amazing human adventure, and something that needs to be shared." "It shouldn't be kept to yourself." "And so, music, to me, is almost a way to explain your life to yourself." " 'Till next time." " [plays guitar]" "[William Shatner] As this fictional captain I piloted a spaceship." "But in reality, if you had that, uh, kind of spaceship, at warp speed, you could go anywhere, within your lifetime you could go anywhere in the universe..." "I think, as a central precept," "I would be looking for life, but think of what you discover along the way." "Think of all the other questions you'd answer." "Think of how you would wanna have" "Stephen Hawking on your crew" "So it's a voyage of discovery." "Just as-as the ultimate voyage of discovery." "[William Shatner] That'd be interesting." "When you stand in eastern Canada, and the sun sets and and the blackness of uh, of the night envelops you, and you're looking up into the skies, what are you thinking, what are you seeing?" "What's really special for me, Bill, is there are little moving points of light up there, especially in Canada where the sun can take a long time to set because of the northern latitude, and those little satellites," "those little specks of human creativity, go silently like little human stars across the sky." "And if it's-if it's a lucky night for me, uh, I get to watch the Space Station go over." "Imagine if you actually were Kirk and you'd lived out that whole career, and you had settled back to the place you loved the most, and you walked out on a dock and looked up and watched some young captain flying your ship," "you could see the point of light, and you know that point of light so exquisitely and completely." "You know every valve in it and you understood it and you studied it, and you know what life on that ship is like, you know what it feels like, smells like, what it sounds like, what the camaraderie's like." "It was almost an extension of yourself, but now you're just this person standing on a dock, trying to connect that little point of light with everything, uh, that you are." "[Chris in space] Just one moment Katie and I will answer that question for ya." "[William Shatner] I stand on the axis where dreams intersect reality." "I've always wondered what it takes to understand the nature of the universe, to know it confidently like the crew on board The Starship Enterprise." "If we can literally look up into the sky and see the past, see within 400,000 years of The Big Bang," "I'm comforted that time might not be the aggressor we perceive." "I see a shooting star, and in some ways," "I'm not yet born." "For as long as Star Trek has been around the esteemed environmentalist and broadcaster," "David Suzuki, whose years on Earth almost match my own, has been focusing his message on preserving and protecting our planet." "His wisdom is shared by North America's First Nations, whose intricate totem poles rise up to the sky as symbols of myths and legends, reflecting their kinship with Mother Earth." "Hello, brother!" " Hello, brother." " How ya doing?" "Look at how firm and strong you are!" "You're pretty firm yourself!" "Well, I ride horses, what do you do?" "Jesus, you should feel his arms!" "I walk around like this for people to feel my arms." "I'm older than you." "I bet that's the first person who's said that to you." "You're a little bit older." "When I'd enter a room, I used to go," ""Wow, I'm the youngest here, now I'm the oldest, I can't figure it out."" "A lot of people when they get older, they take themselves very, very seriously, and I love the fact that you send yourself up in-in commercials and things." "What would happen if I was really being truthful?" "[both laughing]" "And you thought I was sending myself up?" "No, I mean, you know, you know, uh, on a deeper level, it's over so briefly," "I mean, how can you take it seriously?" "Yeah!" "The cosmic joke is, we think it's important, but we're just a continuation, aren't we?" "Exactly." "Why don't we talk about that?" "I mean, the water is right there." "The ocean is right by your doorstep." "Will it be in your doorstep at some point?" "[David] Well, that's the big question." "Fortunately, we're high up enough here where even with a sea level rise of, say, a meter, it still won't be here, but the storms will come into our yard for sure." "All right, so, now people as old as us say, well, you know, [stammering] the water isn't up yet, well we're good, but then you look at your children," "what do the children do?" "And what do the children do?" "[David] They've gotta tell their parents, who have all the power and the money now, if you really love me, you bloody well have to get us onto a different path." "[William Shatner] We know that climate change and the change in the world is happening at an accelerating pace far faster than you thought 40 years ago." "I learned about climate change in the '70s and then I-I wrote an article." "I said, this is a slow-motion catastrophe." "It was only in the late '80s I said," ""Oh, my God, we gotta act now!"" "This is the time in geological history when humans are the major force shaping the physical, chemical, and biological properties of the planet." "We are the force that is determining where the planet itself is going." "When they sent astronauts into outer space, one of the things they did, is they went and took a picture of Earth and that picture of Earth from space gave us a view of our home, like we never had before." "It was-was one single system, the air, the water, the land, they were all just a part of that beautiful marble of blue." "Humans invented the idea of a future, and because of that, we are the only creature that realized we can affect the future by what we do today." "But look at what a lot of people say," ""Well, we've ruined this planet, we've gotta find somewhere else."" " Let's talk about that." "Okay." " "Let's go to Mars." "Let's go to Mars"." " Let's ruin Mars." " The nuttiest" "The nuttiest idea." "We're gonna go to Mars and terraform it." "We're gonna make it into like Earth." "It's crazy!" "Fuck up your own planet and then say we're so smart, we're gonna go and colonize somewhere else." "I mean, what the hell?" "Let's take care of our home first." "There goes science fiction." "Our lives are very, very brief, but you and I have something no other group in society has." "We've lived an entire life." "You've lived life enough for five or six people." "We've had a lot of experiences!" "Those experiences are lessons!" "We've learned a lot through that life." " No we haven't." " Yes we have, and if you" "Yeah, but I don't know anything!" "Come on." "I'm this old guy and I have no idea what I'm doing." "That is a lesson well worth knowing!" "That's the lesson." "Nobody knows anything." "I don't know shit!" "[William Shatner] But we're both looking at the end." "What do you see happening?" "[David] Well, one thing I've learned is that we're not separate from our environment." "It's embedded in us." "When we die, we don't suddenly disappear." "Our atoms, they're all still there, they just take a different form, and when you put them out like that, they're recycled, but that's our immortality." "Perfect." "So it is a great city, isn't it?" "[William Shatner] Ah, God, yeah." "What a humbling experience I've had, trying to get to know some of the exquisite mysteries of our universe and the people who devote their lives to its understanding." "It's been said that magic is the knowledge of angels." "In fact, the great thinkers of ancient times were considered not scientists, but sorcerers, and so, my journey has taken me to Cambridge, England, one of the pillars of knowledge in the modern world," "and the home of Professor Stephen Hawking." "Founded in 1209," "Cambridge University is where Sir Isaac Newton established the principals of modern physics, where Charles Darwin proposed the theory of evolution, where the atom was split for the first time." "Great minds of the past, 800 years of knowledge." "[lively instrumental music playing]" "[William Shatner] Xu Zhimo, a Chinese poet, came to Cambridge." "Round 1928, he wrote a poem." "He wrote a poem that became famous in China." "China sent over a large stone to commemorate the poem, placed it under the willow tree to which he wrote this poem, and since then, thousands have come to Cambridge to pay respect to the poet and the poem." ""The golden willows by the riverside" "Are young brides in the setting sun" "Their glittering reflections" "On the shimmering river" "Keep undulating in my heart" "That pool in the shade of elm trees" "Holds not clear spring water, but a rainbow" "Crumpled in the midst of duckweeds," "Where rainbow-like dreams settle" "Yet now I cannot sing out loud," "Peace is my farewell music" "Quietly I am leaving," "Just as quietly as I came" "Gently waving my sleeve," "I am not taking away a single cloud"" "King's College Chapel, more than a century to build, its construction overseen by a succession of kings, kings I know through the words of William Shakespeare as an actor on stage in some of those plays." "Time traveling, this place echoes with the passage of time." "Imagine what has been accomplished over those centuries and where will we be in the era of Star Trek?" "That's just 250 years from now." "How will future generations judge us when they look back on our time in 800 years?" "I've come to the chapel to collect my thoughts before meeting one of the great minds of our time," "Professor Stephen Hawking." "[soft organ music playing]" "[softly humming]" "[softly humming]" "[softly humming] [bell distantly tolling]" "[William Shatner] Meeting Professor Hawking is a rare privilege." "Being invited into his home, what an honor." "What do I ask a man of such genius?" "Without technology his dreams would be trapped, so I've had to prepare my questions long in advance so he could spend time composing his answers." "[echoing of previous guest conversations]" "[Jason] If this is at all purposed in some way, what is that?" "[Neil] So many people can't do math at all, and he's just doin' it in his head." "[Seth] What is your best guess as to the actual physical nature of the universe?" "[Whoopi] The only thing you got, is what you've done!" "We gain immortality." "[Jason] This is all an illusion." "[Chris] We have an unprecedented moment in time to move beyond the earth." "[David] To colonize somewhere else it is crazy!" "[Michio] So the probability that there are intelligent life forms in the universe other than us is near a 100%. [echoing] [whirring]" "Dr. Hawking." "How are you?" "I'm so delighted to be here." "Uh, I've been waiting a long time, not only here but for a long part of my life to meet you." "I've been waiting so long I feel like it's a lost lover and you've come, finally, and we're meeting once again." "How nice to see you." "Thank you so much for taking the time and letting us come into your house." "[Stephen Hawking] Greetings, Captain Kirk." "I have not met you before, but I appeared on The Enterprise as a hologram in a poker game arranged by Commander Data." "But then I said," ""In that frame of reference, the perihelion of mercury would have recessed in the opposite direction."" "[laughing]" "That is a great story!" "Quite amusing, Dr. Hawking." "You see, Sir Isaac, the joke depends on an understanding of the relativistic curvature of spacetime." "Do not patronize me, sir." "I invented physics." "The day that apple fell on my head was the most momentous day in the history of science." "[Stephen Hawking] Not the apple story again." "I won 141 Federation credits, but I don't know the exchange rate." "Oh, it's tremendous, but now that uh, that you've left the European Union, it's a lot less." "I made you laugh." "I probably have succeeded beyond my wildest dreams." "I've made you smile." "I've traveled a great distance through time and space to come here to see you today." "It's a great honor to meet you in person and I" "I hope to find answers to the deepest questions of the universe." "My question, therefore, is" "Star Trek explored many of the mysteries of the universe, time travel, warp speed, teleportation, alien civilizations, black holes, parallel universes." "What role do you think Star Trek plays in inspiring humanity?" "Many of the things Star Trek foresaw have come to pass, or will in the not too distant future." "We have discovered many black holes and space travel is now commonplace." "We can travel forward in time by moving at almost the speed of light." "But I have shown that it is not possible to warp spacetime so much that one can travel into the past." "Hmm!" "Yuri Milner and I have announced plans to use radio telescopes to listen to signals from alien civilizations." "We plan to send miniature nanocraft pushed by a giant laser at 20% of the speed of light to Alpha Centauri and search for alien life." "What were your favorite aliens, and why?" "[William Shatner] For you to ask me that is really funny, when I imagine you thinking of life on other worlds uh, and what they must look like." "So, first of all there was The Horta." "who we thought was a terrible thing, uh being, and it turned out it was a mother protecting its young." "The best Star Treks had the best aliens, and they were the best aliens because they had a purpose and a reason, and a being, those were my favorite aliens, the-the intelligent ones." "Why do we wanna believe that we're not alone?" "It seems that life arose spontaneously on Earth." "We also believe that the universe is infinite." "The discovery of even primitive alien life would have a profound effect on our view of the universe and our place in it." "When I was Captain of the Starship Enterprise, we came across alien life forms, some of them good, some bad." "What should we expect when we discover intelligent beings?" "Intelligent aliens are likely to be much more advanced because they have had galactic time skills to evolve." "Whereas our civilization is less than 10,000 years old." "If the alien life is intelligent, it is likely to be much more advanced." "We could learn a lot, that is, unless civilizations become unstable when they reach a certain level of technology and destroy themselves." "This is a depressing thought, but it could explain why we haven't received any signals from aliens." "Looking back I've come to conclusion that" "Star Trek and other science fiction are part of our mythology, our way of seeking to explain the things we don't understand." "Tell me if and-and how" "Star Trek has inspired and influenced you?" "Star Trek inspired me to want to go into space." "Wow!" "[Stephen Hawking] I took a flight on the Vomit Comet in 2007 to experience zero gravity." "This is the training astronauts have." "Since then," "I have been waiting for Virgin Galactic." "Me too." "I will be one of the first passengers if my doctors allow me to go." "Well, we might be passengers together." "Maybe I'll sit beside you as we go into space together." "The focus of your research right now is on black holes." "Do your dreams lead to research, or does your curiosity lead to your dreams?" "My research is inspired by curiosity, curiosity about the universe and the laws that govern it." "If one understands the laws, one controls the universe, in a sense." "My ultimate aim would be to find a complete unified theory that combines general relativity with the other laws of physics." "That may be string theory, but this is not yet clear." "The advances in-in medicine and technology since you were diagnosed with Motor Neuron Disease, have enabled you to have a career that would have been unimaginable even ten years earlier." "What do you think your life would be like in the 23rd Century?" "I hope it would be much better." "It seems my condition may be caused by a defect in the repair mechanism for nerve damage." "We have identified that gene responsible and hopefully by the 23rd Century, we shall be able to correct it." "Well, I'm a lot older than you, and uh, the end is near, and I've been born too early as well." "I'd love to be able to extend my life." "We've always dreamed of immortality, and we're afraid of dying and losing all of this." "Do you think science at some point in the future will help us achieve immortality?" "Nothing is immortal." "The human repair mechanisms wear out like everything else." "To extend life further would require a major redesign of the human genome, which is unlikely to happen by the time of Star Trek." "Thank you so much for taking the time." "Um, it was very generous of you, and I personally have fulfilled a, a longing to meet you and to see you and this, um, this, uh, show, this, uh, program," "has become basically my journey to see you." "What a privilege [stutters] and how grateful I am for you to have let us into a small part of your life." "That is a wrap!" "Sure, you're in a movie part once, and now you're an actor, sure!" "[chuckles] [applauding]" "How wonderful!" "How wonderful!" "God, I wish I could have an evening with you and-and, uh, talk about those things." "I had the best time." "I felt like I was beside a holy man." "I would love to stay for dinner." "What a remembrance I'll have for the rest of my life." "Wow!" "Holy cats!" "In this little cottage by the Cam River, came into contact with somebody who is gigantic." "Wow!" "Okay, I wonder what's for dinner?" "[laughing]" "He invited me for dinner." "He invited me for dinner!" "[water gurgling]" "[William Shatner] University, universe, two words united in meaning, symbolizing a universe that connects each and every one of us." "The River Cam runs through the heart of Cambridge, past the colleges where the seeds of great ideas are sown." "Darwin once lived here." "Newton's tree is just around the corner." "As I sit back and take in the history," "I can reflect on what I've learned." "Even to the people smarter than me, the future will always be mysterious." "There will always be questions unanswered." "And I'm reminded of Shakespeare's words." ""All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." "They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts." "His acts being seven ages." "Last scene of all, that ends this strange eventful history, is second childishness and mere oblivion."" "As Captain Kirk, I was born in 2223, 200 years from now." "While I would love to see that time, and was born too soon," "I'm grateful for the small role" "I have played in this discourse, as captain of a starship in the 23rd Century, offering up a hopeful vision of the future." "I have taken a journey down the river of knowledge, and I realize that the truth is not in the stars, but in the minds of the people who imagine a future of infinite possibility." "[birds twittering]" "[water splashing] [inspirational music playing]"