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(Applause)
Arrakis is a planet at the edge of the Arkanis system.
It's a totally desert planet
where there are hardly any resources,
but it is located near a very busy intergalactic trade route,
which makes it an amazing place for smugglers and the riffraff from the whole galaxy
take refuge on this planet and have a drink after doing their evil deeds.
On this planet, there are honest people, like Luke Skywalker,
who after a hard day helping at his uncle's moisture farm,
is used to going out to contemplate the sunset on Tatooine,
a sunset with two suns, Tatoo I and Tatoo II,
while he dreams of living adventures through the galaxy.
He doesnt know what's in store for him.
It's "Star Wars",
the first episode of the 3 original films,
and in the '70s, that scene where someone goes to contemplate a sunset with two suns,
contained a lot of fiction and little science.
But in the past few years, we have begun to detect planets orbiting other stars
and we have begun to detect very strange planets
which have nothing in common with the planets we tought might appear.
One of them is Kepler-16b.
It's a planet orbiting a two-sun system.
Two suns of distinct colour and size
that would produce sunsets exactly like those on Tatooine.
What was fiction in the '70s is now reality.
One day in a sequel to "Star Wars",
a long time from now, special effects may not be needed
for the scene in which Luke dreams of adventure looking at the sunset with two suns.
One day the film crew may go on Kepler-16b
and film the real sunset of two suns.
It's an imaginary planet that we're beginning to find existing for real.
And it's not the only one.
There's another imaginary planet, a very dark, cold world,
with an orange sun barely warming its surface,
on which a great civilization has developed the necessary technology
to create cities using quartz crystal and the ice crystals of the surface
with a technology we can't conceive.
But, despite their great technology,
they are unable to stop the planetary phenomenon that is going to destroy their planet.
Jor-El and Lara have just had a son.
Knowing that there's another planet very far away
on which a budding civilization with a lot of potential that can shelter their son,
they launch him in a capsule to try and save him.
The planet is totally destroyed.
But Jor-El and Lara's son reaches the Earth,
he's raised by farmers and he prospers.
And the moment comes when he says:
"Im going to use the abilities of my race to help the human beings."
If I tell you he's Kal-El, it won't ring any bell.
But if I tell you he's Superman, of course you know him, he's one of the most famous aliens.
Superman is a very strong man, who can fly, but that wasn't always the case.
Early Superman comics only gave him one superpower:
a tremendous strength.
In the early comics, Superman was just very strong
He was so strong and resistant,
that he was able to jump over the highest skyscraper in Metropolis in a single leap.
And thats was all he could do.
He couldn't fly, he didn't have X-ray vision, and he couldn't see through walls.
All that came later.
Actually, Superman's ability to fly got developed for the movies
because when the first Superman film was made,
it was much more difficult to make special effects for people jumping over skyscrapers
that for people who fly, as they only have to be placed in front of a screen.
And those superstrength abilities
came from the fact that on Krypton, Superman's birth planet,
gravity is much more intense than on Earth.
Much, much more intense. 20 times more intense than on Earth.
Therefore, to pick up a cup of coffee for Krytonians
is to lift a 600 kilo cup.
Of course, put a Kryptonian on Earth and they'll lift a bus
or they'll jump over a building because they're very strong.
It was an invented planet, but actually a planet has been discovered,
Gliese 581 c, the characteristics of which are very similar to Krypton's.
This planet is 5 times bigger that the Earth
and its gravity is twice as intense as Earth's.
What's most interesting about this planet that looks so much like Krypton,
if there appeared and developed some kind of humanoid species,
if they visited the Earth, they would be some Supermen able to jump over buildings
and to lift cars with just one hand.
Because Krypton -- I mean Gliese, sorry, I confused the planets --
is one of the exoplanets orbiting other stars where we are looking for potential life.
We are looking for life because this planet is one of the planets that may have water.
And from what we know about the way life works on Earth,
usually, where there's water, there's life.
It's a planet identical to Krypton, that has an intense gravity,
orbiting an orange sun and that could have water and perhaps life.
One day, we may find life on a planet like this one.
They are invented planets that become reality.
We could talk about many examples.
But one very important thing we are learning in planetology,
in the past few years, it's that all the planets we find are distinct.
There is no clear model for planets.
The solar systems we find around other suns, are not copies of our own system,
they don't even come close to it, each one is distinct
and each one has exquisite particularities.
Each of them is a nearly unique system.
The variety of solar systems and planets we are detecting
goes far beyond any invented or imagined planet.
Not only that, but we are detecting many of them.
This is a chart of all the stars we can see from Earth.
The Kepler space telescope, just observing this little square here,
detected 1235 planet candidates.
That's just 1% of the stars in our galaxy
and the Kepler space telescope is not very sensitive.
It only detects, in the best cases,
10% of the existing exoplanets there.
If we extend these data to the whole galaxy and to a system that could detect all those planets,
we can count billions of planets just in our galaxy.
There's all distinct.
And they can all look like Krypton, Tatooine or Avatar,
or any invented planet that you can imagine.
This is no fiction, it's science, it's what we find
and it's strange because 15 years ago, any primary school kid
could name all the planets by rote:
"Mercury, Venus, Earth, etc..."
But now they need an Excel database because there are thousands.
How much has changed in 15 years! How we are discovering the universe!
Including within our solar system, we find incredible similarities,
for example with the B-612 asteroid.
You may know about it. It's an asteroid with three volcanoes, one of which is not active,
in it lives an aristocrat
and from time to time and occasionally impertinent, lying slightly and unpleasant roses come out of it.
The dweller, who's an aristocrat, contrary to the regular aristocracy we know,
has to work, pull out baobab roots, clean the volcanoes...
That sort of things.
Sick of the intrigues of the rose, one day he decides to go and explore other planets,
which is a great idea.
No need to look outside of the solar system.
Within our own solar system, there's a small world called Io,
orbiting Jupiter, and you can see the similarity yourself.
Look carefully at those volcanoes. It's a tremendously erupting volcano on Io
It's a 300 km-high lava eruption.
To give you an idea, on Earth, at a 300 km-altitude,
you find the astronauts of the International Space Station.
And it is also a world filled with volcanoes, tiny,
but the difference is, either the aristocrat is gone,
or there is no aristocrat and no roses.
And that's the only big difference between the planets.
An idea. A really cool idea.
Knowing that all the worlds we are detecting are distinct,
each one more exotic than the next and overflowing our imagination.
Knowing that when you see a starry night,
it's all filled with planets,
-- around each star that you see on a starry night --
there will be several planets orbiting the next system and they are all distinct.
And knowing the variety and the amount of planets there are in the galaxy, in the universe,
an idea can become reality.
And it's that any imagined world or invented planet
from any film, any book
or anything you are inventing right now or you invented at some point or other,
surely matches a real world or the next best thing.
Science, in this case planetology, outreaches fiction.
So next time you see a kid drawing a strange planet,
don't look down on them,
because there's certainly a very similar world out there.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)