Are We Alone?

S1 E2: World-famous scientist Stephen Hawking sets three ordinary people a series of fun physical and mental challenges. Can they think like a genius? The task is to work out the likelihood of alien life, out there in the universe. Cue an extraordinary journey of discovery, involving tons of sand, huge machinery, some straightforward thinking and several amazing, head-exploding reveals. The team discovers how many stars there are in the night sky, how to look for planets around those stars and how many of those planets could harbor life. To watch the team members struggle with their own discoveries is almost as much fun as guessing the outcomes of the experiments. Along the way, Genius also explains how the great minds of history reached their conclusions about the likelihood of alien planets and their possible inhabitants. We travel around the world to find out how these breakthroughs were made, and how important they still are, according to the world’s top thinkers. Finally a devastating realization lands – and the team have their minds blown in a way they were never expecting...