Stargate SG-1: True Science

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Stargate SG-1:
True Science

Welcome to Stargate Command.

I'm Amanda Tapping and

I play Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter.

Samantha is chief scientist

and leader of an elite team called SG-1.

SG-1's mission is to travel through

an amazing device called a Stargate

to planets on the far reaches of the galaxy.

There they fight unspeakably evil aliens,

commune with higher beings,

and use fantastic technology.

Oh... and of course they often save humanity

and the galaxy from complete annihilation.

On the show "Stargate SG-1", we take pride in pushing

science fiction to the limits of human imagination.

alien parasites,

parallel universes,

time travel,

wormholes through space and time.

Some might say it's just fantasy,

but amazingly,

it doesn't mean it's not true.

In the next hour,

we're going on a different journey

not just through the set of Stargate

but also into the world of real science

to see that what seems like crazy sci-fi fantasies

might actually be true.

Callie Sullivan

Science fiction and science seem to be

getting closer and closer all the time,

and I think there's a good reason for that.

They're both about the human imagination;

they're both about asking "What if?" questions;

they're both about trying to understand

our place in a very complex universe.

We read the newspaper and current science magazines,

watch the news,

look for things that are sort of interesting,

hot button issues

that often come up and will inspire us.

We read up on black holes, we read

Stephen Hawking and most of it goes over my head but

the fun part of what you read is,

"Oh, I can use that, that'll be fun for the story."

Science fiction takes the narrative route,

it's story telling, but

the people writing the stories have to solve

the same kind of problems that the scientists do,

and in many cases I think the science fiction writers

are coming closer to the truth than the scientists.

It's so grounded in true scientific terminology and

things that can actually happen in the universe

that, for the people that are more knowledgeable and

don't just watch it for the fantasy and escapism,

can find their hook into it

in the actual science of it.

Science is great, but in fiction you still need

a battle between good and evil.

From the very beginning of the series,

SG-1 have had to face humanity's nemesis,

a race of aliens so evil, they won't rest

'til they've enslaved the entire galaxy.

They have filled our nightmares,

they have made us take terrible risks.

At times we thought we had lost the battle.

They are...

the Goa'uld.

Now the idea of this creature burrowing

inside your body, taking over your brain

and dominating your behaviour

is one of the scariest things

that occurred in "Stargate".

It happened to my character Samantha early on

in the show, and let me tell you, she hated it.

Sci-fi writers have come up with

some pretty evil aliens over the years,

but the Goa'uld must certainly rank

as one of the nastiest.

In true sci-fi style, the snake-like

parasites, the Goa'uld,

took over the minds of their army

of warrior slaves, the Jaffa,

and then set about trying to rule the galaxy.

But one brave Jaffa slave, Teal'c, saw the truth

and broke free from the parasites' control.

He joined up with us, the team from Stargate,

and the battle for the universe began.

Exciting stuff, eh?

This parasitical race of beings

could only survive in a host body,

so they actually went to ancient Egypt

and acquired a bunch of human hosts,

inhabited their bodies and controlled them

until they were mature enough

to take on a permanent host, so basically a Jaffa is

an incubator for the larval form of the Goa'uld.

It's not something you can shoot or run away from,

it's inside you and it's controlling you,

and there's this icky factor to it, you know,

it's gross and they're pretty disgusting,

these snaky things that sort of burrow

their way into the back of your head.

As an intelligent and totally evil parasite,

the Goa'uld are terrifying adversaries,

but we don't have to look far on our own planet

to find creatures equally as horrifying.

If you were a visitor from outer space

and came to Earth

and really studied its living organisms objectively,

and then went back home,

what would you say to the folks back home?

"Most of what's living down there is a parasite."

Professor Janovy is the world's leading expert

on a very creepy kind of creature.

This is Monesia expansa, a tapeworm from sheep.

At the University of Nebraska, he runs one

of the world's most unusual museums,

with over one hundred and fifty

thousand stomach-churning exhibits.

These are Fasciloides magna which came out of

the liver of a white-tailed deer.

Each of the creatures in his museum succeeds by

sucking the very life force from another living creature.

This is Ascaris lumbercoides, or roundworms.

These worms infect about one ou

of every four people on Earth.

That's the one schoolkids get, remember?

You see, we humans are

a perfect snug and warm place

for parasites.

This is Taenia saginata, the beef tapeworm,

that human beings get from eating uncooked beef.

I think if we laid that out on a table and measured it,

it would probably be fifteen or twenty feet long, easily,

and humans can have any number of these things.

Disgusting parasites like this are nature's vampires.

They take advantage of other creatures

using their body as a free lunch.

They are ruthless, taking what they need,

reproducing, and then moving on.

And revoltingly, we humans are

the perfect place for them to live.

Yuck!

There are a big variety of parasites

that infect human beings:

lice, ticks, flukes that live in the bloodstream.

There are large nemetodes that live in your intestines,

there are parasites that live in your mouth.

Some of them cause very

destructive erosion of the skin,

others are very damaging

to the spleen and to the liver.

There are at least two hundred species that some of us,

at least, have been infected with over the years.

What makes the Goa'uld so particularly scary

is that they totally take over their human host.

But, you guessed it, it turns out this crazy science

fiction fantasy is actually based on real science.

There are many reported cases in nature of parasites

being able to change the behaviour of their hosts.

These are pictures of Dicrocoelium dendriticum.

They live part of their life cycle

within an ant's body and brain.

It's a parasite, just like

the Goa'uld, only a bit smaller.

Its larva digs its way to the ant's brain

where it perverts the ant's natural instincts,

so instead of the ant cowering safely

in the undergrowth like any good ant would,

it suddenly becomes compelled to self-destruct

by climbing to the top of a blade of grass

where passing sheep will eat it.

Once in the sheep, the parasit

can continue its revolting life cycle.

Oh, but it doesn't just happen in ants, oh no!

Hold onto your stomachs,

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