60 Minutes - Sunday, January 8, 2017

Episode Date: January 9, 2017

The parents of a publicly murdered hostage talk to Lesley Stahl about the U.S hostage policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Grocer $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. I am Stephen Joel Sotloff. I'm sure you know exactly who I am by now and why I am appearing before you. Stephen Joel Sotloff was beheaded by ISIS in September of 2014.

His execution was seen around the world on video. Did you ever watch it? I have viewed Stephen's body with his head on his chest. I had to see that because I needed to be sure that that was him. Stephen's parents have been shattered by it and by their strong belief that the American government could have saved his life. You've seen drones before, but never like this.

A swarm of autonomous drones flying themselves. It's the start of a military revolution. Now it's looking at me. Machines operating on their own. It's the start of a military revolution. Now it's looking at me. Machines operating on their own. It recognized you instantly. Using artificial intelligence to make decisions faster than humans and raising questions the Pentagon

is only beginning to grapple with. So if the machine's better, why not let it make the decision? This goes to the ethics of the question of whether or not you allow a machine to take a human life without the intervention of a decision. This goes to the ethics of the question of whether or not you'll allow a machine to take a human life without the intervention of a human. I would say at this point, I am certain. Certain. Yeah. That's a rare thing to say for a prediction for a scientist, and I'm willing to say it. You do know how mind-boggling this sounds. I mean,

a new planet hasn't been discovered for 170 years. I believe you think it looks like this animation over my shoulder here. We think that it's somewhere between 10 and 20 times more massive than the earth. I'm Steve Croft. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm David Martin. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. Welcome to Play It, a new podcast network featuring radio and TV personalities talking business, sports, tech, entertainment, and more. Play it at play.it. In the long, bloody history of terrorism, few acts of violence have been more savage or shocking than those carried out by ISIS,

including the beheadings of young American hostages in 2014. The videos went viral and catapulted ISIS onto the world stage. For the parents of one of those Americans, Art and Shirley Sotloff, the murder of their 31-year-old son Stephen was shattering because of the brutality of his execution and because they think he could have been saved, if not for what even the White House now admits was its own ineffectiveness in dealing with the crisis. But what really sealed their son's fate, the Sotloffs believe, is the government's policy against paying ransom.

I am Stephen Joel Sotloff. I'm sure you know exactly who I am by now and why I am appearing before you. Stephen Joel Sotloff was beheaded by ISIS. His execution on September 2, 2014, was seen around the world on a video. Did you ever watch it? I have viewed Stephen's body with his head on his chest. I had to see that because I needed to be sure that that was him. Stephen was born and raised in Miami, attended college in Israel, and became a freelance journalist reporting from war zones

where information was scarce, like Yemen, Benghazi, Libya, and Syria, where he went in the summer of 2013. Just before he crossed into Aleppo, he called his dad. He contacted me and told me not to worry, but if I don't hear from him within four days, that I should get in touch with one of his colleagues. Ooh, that's ominous. He didn't hear from his son, not just for four days.

It was four excruciating months. Then finally, they got a ransom letter with demands for the government to free all the Muslims in U.S. custody. Then there's a last option. 100 million euros will secure Stephen's release. Which is something like... 137 million. What was your reaction?

The reaction was, how the hell are we going to get this money together? They thought the U.S. government would help them, but they were bewildered and then infuriated when they say they met a stone wall, the U.S. policy forbidding the paying of ransom. It's some of the hardest work that I've done. Lisa Monaco, assistant to President Obama for counterterrorism, oversaw the hostage crisis. These are horrible choices. On the one hand, if you don't pay a ransom, you are putting an innocent life at risk.

On the other hand, if you do, you're fueling the very activity that's put them at risk in the first place. Did you feel ever that the policy might be wrong? The policy, and it's been a decades-old policy of not paying ransom, I think is the right policy. So you didn't question that? We didn't. We believe that that was important to maintain. But with the exception of the UK, most European countries do pay ransom without publicly admitting it. Stephen was held with 22 other hostages, including the three Americans, James Foley, Peter Kasich, and Kayla Mueller, who were all killed. Once the European governments paid ransom, ISIS released their citizens, one of whom smuggled out this letter from Stephen. He was speaking how he can't stand seeing all the captives leave

from all different countries. How could the United States just stand by and not do anything? As the European hostages came out and spoke of mock executions and water boardings, the Saltlofts decided they would try to raise at least some of the money themselves. But then they and the other U.S. families attended a meeting in Washington with officials on the National Security Council. All of us were saying, well, why can't we try to save our kids? And they said, because it's against the law. We do not negotiate with terrorists.

Did they say you would be prosecuted? They said you could be prosecuted, and also your donors could be prosecuted. So if I gave you money, I could be prosecuted? Yes. Correct. Did anybody say, are you kidding me? Yes. So it was a little bit contentious? Oh, yes. We kind of verbally fought back. They were threatened that they could be prosecuted. Is that true? So what's true is that some families felt threatened. And that was unacceptable. And that should never have happened.

Are you suggesting they may not have been threatened? No, what I'm suggesting is I wasn't present when any threats were made. But what matters, Leslie, is that these families felt that way as they were going through the most horrific time they will ever encounter. But was that the policy? Was that true? Could they have actually been prosecuted? Could someone who contributed to pay ransom also be prosecuted? So what's true is that the Justice Department has never prosecuted a family or friends of a family that has paid a ransom. But was it the policy? Well, the policy is the United States government will not pay ransoms or make concessions to terrorist hostage takers. That

policy is based in part on a presumption that paying ransom invites more hostage taking. But that is refuted by a new study that examined the case of every known Western hostage taken since 9-11. It was co-authored by Peter Bergen, a counterterrorism expert for the nonpartisan New America Foundation. They don't know necessarily you're American when they take you as sort of a target of opportunity. So some countries are known to pay ransom, the French, the Germans, the Spanish. Even though they don't admit it. They don't admit it, but they do. Their citizens have much better outcomes than Americans.

Americans are huge outliers here. You're twice as likely to have a negative outcome compared to every other Western hostage. When you say negative outcome, you mean murdered. Murdered, dying in captivity, or just remaining in captivity. Fourteen of the European hostages held with Stephen made it home. Those from countries that don't pay ransom didn't. Four Americans and two Brits died. I keep playing in my own head this horrible situation

where the American hostages watch the other ones be set free. And I wonder if it wouldn't have been better if our government did what the European governments did, which was pay ransom but then deny it in order to save their citizens. Why couldn't we have done that? We'd still be fueling their terror activity, whether it's hostage-taking or whether it's terrorist plots to kill Americans here in the homeland or elsewhere is not activity that the United States government should be in the business of funding. What do you say to critics of the policy of not paying ransom, that the beheadings of the Americans ended up having more value to ISIS than any money would have been.

That's really what put them on the international map. These beheading videos were a goldmine for ISIS. Do you see it that way? I don't. And I think it's giving brutal, murderous thugs too much credit. What about the argument that if you pay ransom, you're just encouraging them to kidnap more? Also, that the money is going to go toward terrorism. And so what's the comeback to that?

It's a hard thing. Going back to what President Obama said to us in person, that he would do anything in his power to save his children if he was in the same situation. And I say that he should put himself in the same situation. And I think that the government has a responsibility to protect its citizens in whatever way that they can. What do you say when you hear people argue that Stephen knew he was putting his life at risk

by going into Syria at that point, and, you know, kind of the burdens on him? Stephen was driven by truth, that he had to report the truth. He saw that there wasn't information coming out of these areas. And that's really what drove him. In the summer of 2014, nearly a year after Stephen was abducted, President Obama ordered a military operation to rescue the hostages. This involved a number of, a large number of military service members and special operators. Putting their lives on the line. Putting their lives on the line. Going in to the heart of ISIL territory in Syria. And as we were monitoring the operation, word came back, some very devastating words.

It's a dry hole, which meant that they weren't there. This is James Wright Foley. About seven weeks later, James Foley became the first of three American hostages beheaded. Stephen appears at the end of the video. The life of this American citizen, Obama, depends on your next decision. The Salt Lofts then received an audio message that sounds like Stephen was forced to record, designed to pressure the U.S. government.

It was given them by the FBI. This is always tough for me because it's actually his voice and it just makes me feel like he's still in the room with us. To mom, I do not have much time and will probably not get this opportunity again. So I would like to get straight to the point. My life depends on Obama's next decision. Mom, please don't let Obama kill me. Mom, you can still save my life. Just like the families of my previous cellmates, who I'm sure you've met, fight for me. I love you.

Powerful. I get a blue-point notice. I'm sorry. I could excuse myself. It's cool, Barry. I don't know what they wanted us to do. And always saying, Mom, like that. Mom. Mom.

Mom. Yeah. They learned of Stephen's death a few days after that. And he's in a much better place. We know he's in a better place. And, you know, he isn't suffering anymore. A couple of months later, they met with President Obama. I asked the president, I said,

how did you feel when my son was being held up by his neck, and they were saying that this message is for you, President Obama. Stephen's life depends on your next decision. How do you feel about that? And he looked down and he really couldn't answer the question. I guess it's a question that shocked him. Or is it shocked me that I even asked him that? How do you feel now about what happened, maybe your role, with the families whose kids were beheaded?

I feel like, in many respects, we did not do right by these families, that we failed them. You feel you've failed the families? We have Americans who were brutally killed. After the beheadings, she put together a task force to review how the government handles hostage taking that included a meeting with the families. It was a lot of raw emotion and a lot of frustration and grief. Anger at you? Anger at us. anger at the loss of their loved ones, anger at the government. One of the task force's conclusions was that the various government agencies working on hostages were not coordinating with each other, which led to the creation of this new unit. Have we seen any claims of responsibility?

Not yet. Led by the FBI, it brings together all the key agencies that work on hostages, including the CIA, defense, and state departments, in one place to work side by side 24-7. They share intelligence and keep the families informed. Any results? No, sir, not yet. However, the no-ransom policy was not changed.

It wasn't even reviewed, though the Justice Department, in this public document, all but promised not to prosecute a family or their friends who do pay ransom to terrorists. Is it a good policy now? Are you happy with the way it has turned out? It's a better policy than what it was. I mean, now it gives at least people the opportunity to try to save their family members. But I think it's far from really solving the problem because there's still money that has to be raised and paid, and the average family just can't do that. And you think our government should? Absolutely.

It's a human life. How do you let an American go like that, just let them be killed and murdered? Every human is valuable. Everybody has a family, and they want them to come home. The Sotloffs have started a foundation in Stephen's memory called Two Lives that, among other things, funds safety training for freelance journalists traveling to war zones. Today, there are still dozens of Americans being held hostage. In 12 days, Donald Trump will have to decide on the best strategy for getting them home.

Welcome to Play It, a new podcast network featuring radio and TV personalities talking business, sports, tech, entertainment and more. Play it at play.it. One of the biggest revolutions over the past 15 years of war has been the rise of the drones, remotely piloted vehicles that do everything from conduct airstrikes to dismantle roadside bombs. Now, a new generation of drones is coming. Only this time, they are autonomous, able to operate on their own without humans controlling them from somewhere with a joystick. Some autonomous machines are run by artificial intelligence, which allows them to learn, getting better each time.

It's early in the revolution, and no one knows exactly where it is headed. But the potential exists for all missions considered too dangerous or complex for humans to be turned over to autonomous machines that can make decisions faster and go in harm's way without any fear. Think of it as the coming swarm. And if that sounds like the title of a sci-fi miniseries, well, stay tuned. As we're about to show you, it's already a military reality. This swarm over the California desert is like nothing the U.S. military has ever fielded before.

Each of those tiny drones is flying itself. Humans on the ground have given them a mission to patrol a three-square-mile area, but the drones are figuring out for themselves how to do it. They are operating autonomously, and the Pentagon's Dr. Will Roper says what you're seeing is a glimpse into the future of combat. It opens up a completely different level of warfare, a completely different level of maneuver. The drone is called Perdix, an unlikely name for an unlikely engine of revolution. Roper, head of a once-secret Pentagon organization called the Strategic Capabilities Office,

remembers the first time he saw Perdix, which is named after a bird found in Greek mythology. I held it up in my hands, about as big as my hand, and I looked at it and said, really? This is what you want me to get excited about. You know, it looks like a toy. Perdix flies too fast and too high to follow, so 60 Minutes brought specialized high-speed cameras to the China Lake Weapons Station in California to capture it in flight. Very nice. Developed by 20- and 30-somethings from MIT's Lincoln Labs, PURDIX is designed to operate as a team, which you can see when you follow this group of eight on a computer screen. We've given them a mission at this point,

and that mission is, as a team, go fly down the road. And so they allocate that amongst all the individual PURDIX. And they're talking to each other? They are. By what? So they've got radios on and they're each telling each other not just what they're doing, but where they are in space. How frequently are they talking back and forth to each other? Many, many times a second when they're first sorting out. I mean, it looks helter skelter. You want them to converge to a good enough solution and go ahead and get on with it. It's faster than a human would sort it out.

Cheap and expendable, Perdix tries to make a soft landing. Nice. But it's no great loss if it crashes into the ground. All units down, all units go. Perdix can be used as decoys to confuse enemy air defenses or equipped with electronic transmitters to jam their radar. This one looks like it has a camera. As a swarm of miniature spy planes fitted with cell phone cameras, they could hunt down fleeing terrorists.

There are several different roads they could have gone down and you don't know which one to search. You can tell them, go search all the roads, and tell them what to search for, and let them sort out the best way to do it. The Pentagon is spending three billion dollars a year on autonomous systems, many of them much more sophisticated than a swarm of purdigs. This pair of air and ground robots runs on artificial intelligence. I'm going to say, start the reconnaissance. They are searching a mock village for a suspected terrorist, reporting back to Marine Captain Jim Pinero and his tablet. The ground robot's continuing on its mission while the air robot is searching on its own. The robots are slow and cumbersome, but they're just test beds for cutting-edge computer software which could power more agile machines,

ones that could act as advanced scouts for a foot patrol. I would want to use a system like this to move maybe in front of me or in advance of me to give me early warning of enemy in the area. This time I'm the target. The computer already knows what I look like, so now we'll see if it can match what's stored in its memory with the real thing as I move around this make-believe village. The robot's artificial intelligence had done its homework the night before, Tim Faltenmeier says, learning what I look like.

We were able to get every picture of every story that you've ever been in. So how many pictures of me are there out there? When we ran this through, we have about 50,000 different pictures of you that we were able to get. Had we had more time, we probably could have done a better job. So because you've got 50,000 images of me, how certain would you be? Very. Now it's looking at me. It recognized you instantly.

And so what we reported today on our scores were about a 1 in 10,000 chance of being wrong. While the robot was searching for me inside an auditorium at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia. This will give us a technological advantage. Lieutenant Commander Raleigh Wicks was watching from a missile boat in the Potomac River. What I was doing was I was turning over control of the weapon system to the autonomous systems that you've seen on the floor today. Had Wicks given permission to shoot, the missile would have struck my location using a set of coordinates given to shoot, the missile would have struck my location using a set of coordinates given to it by the robots. They were controlling a remote weapon system.

They were controlling where that weapon system was pointing with me supervising. It will be about three years before these robots will be ready for the battlefield. By then, Captain Pinero says, they will look considerably different. Will those robots, when they reach the battlefield, will they be able to defend themselves? We are looking into that. We are looking into defensive capability for armed robots. Shoot back? Correct. This Pentagon directive states autonomous systems shall be designed to allow commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force.

What that means, says General Paul Selva, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the military's man in charge of autonomy, is that life or death decisions will be made only by humans, even though machines can do it faster and in some cases better. Are machines better at facial recognition than humans? All the research I've seen says about five years ago, machines actually got better at image recognition than humans. Can a disguise defeat machine recognition?

If you think about the proportions of a human body, there are several that are discrete and difficult to hide. The example that I will use as I look at you is the distance between your pupils is very likely unique to you and a handful of other humans. A disguise cannot move your eyes.

So if I have a ski mask on, that doesn't help? Not if your eyes are visible if you have to see you can't change that proportion so if the machine's better why not let it make the decision this goes to the ethics of the question

of whether or not you allow a machine to take a human life without the intervention of a human do you know where this is headed? I don't. Virtually any military vehicle has the potential to become autonomous. The Navy has begun testing Sea Hunter, an autonomous ship to track submarines. Program manager Scott Littlefield says that when you no longer have to make room for a crew, you can afford to buy a lot of them. You could buy

somewhere between 50 and 100 of these for the price of one warship. I've heard somebody describe this ship as looking like an overgrown Polynesian war canoe. Why does it look like it does? To be able to go across the Pacific Ocean without refueling, this hull form, the trimaran, was the best thing we could come up with. What is its range? We can go about 10,000 nautical miles on a tank of gas, 14,000 gallons. Sea Hunter is at least two years away from being ready to steam across the Pacific on its own. Among other things, it has to learn how to follow the rules of the road to avoid collisions with other ships. When we went aboard, it had only been operating autonomously for a few

weeks, and there was still a human crew just in case. When testing is done, this pilot house will come off and the crew will be standing on the pier waving goodbye. From then on, this will be a ghost ship commanded by 36 computers running 50 million lines of software code. And these lifelines will have to come off, too, since there's no need for them with no humans on board. It has a top speed of 26 knots and a tight turning radius, which should enable it to use its sonar to track diesel-powered submarines for weeks at a time. Many countries have diesel submarines.

That's the most common kind of submarine that's out there. China? China has them. Russia? Russia has them. Iran? Iran has them. North Korea?

Yes. I think I get the picture. Yeah. But of everything we saw, Tiny Perdix is closest to being ready to go operational, if it passes its final exam. Will Roper and his team of desert rats are about to attempt to fly the largest autonomous swarm ever, 100 Perdix drones. This is one of the riskiest, most exciting things that's going on right now in the Pentagon.

Risky not only because the swarm would be more than three times larger than anything Roper's ever done before, but also because 60 Minutes is here to record the outcome for all to see. Why are you letting us watch? A couple of reasons, David. When this first came up, I have to be honest with you. My first response was, that sounds like a horrible idea. It's just human nature. I don't want this to fail on camera, but I did not like

the fear of failure being my only reason for not letting you be here. And we also wanted the world to see that we're doing some new things. This time, the Perdix will be launched from three F-18 jet fighters, just as they would on a real battlefield. There they are. All right. A little piece of... A little piece of the future. Five, four, three... The F-18s are traveling at almost the speed of sound.

Mark, release. So the first test for Perdix is whether they will survive their violent ejection into the atmosphere. 104 alive. That's 104 in the swarm, David. 104 alive. That's 100 swarm. There they are. You see them? Look at them. Look at them.

They flash in the sun as they come into view. Oh, there they go. As the Perdix descend in front of our cameras, they organize themselves into a tighter swarm. Imagine the split-second calculations a human would have to make to keep them from crashing into each other. Look at that. Everywhere you look, they're just coming into view. It does feel like a plague or locust.

Yeah, so they're running out of battery. There are reams of data that still have to be analyzed, but Roper is confident Perdix passed its final exam. One vehicle down. Could become operational as early as this year. I've heard people say that autonomy is the biggest thing in military technology since nuclear weapons. Really? I think I might agree with that, David.

I mean, if what we mean is the biggest thing is something that's going to change everything, I think autonomy is going to change everything. Welcome to Play It, a new podcast network featuring radio and TV personalities talking business, sports, tech, entertainment, and more. Play it at play.it. How many planets are there? Nine is what we were taught. But as telescopes get stronger and astronomers learn more about our solar system, long-accepted facts become fallacies. Pluto had been considered a planet for 76 years,

but Pluto lost its planet status after an astronomer at Caltech discovered that Pluto wasn't so special after all. His name is Mike Brown. Brown and other astronomers have since found hundreds of large balls of ice like Pluto circling the sun at the far reaches of our solar system. Demoting Pluto leaves us with eight planets. But Mike Brown is preparing another surprise. He is sure there is a real ninth planet way out far beyond Pluto. He hasn't seen it yet, but he expects too soon.

He believes the real Planet 9 is huge, and it's out there. I would say at this point, I am certain. Certain. Yeah. That's a rare thing to say for a prediction for a scientist, and I'm willing to say it. You do know how mind-boggling this sounds. I mean, a new planet hasn't been discovered for... 170 years.

I believe you think it looks like this animation over my shoulder here. You know, we took a little artistic license and put some lightning on the dark side of it because it might have lightning on the dark side of it. We think that it's somewhere between 10 and 20 times more massive than the Earth. And we haven't seen it? We can't see it? It's so far away that it's actually just at the edge of what our biggest telescopes on the ground can possibly see because it's so far away.

50 billion miles away. It's also hard to find because it has an enormous orbit. Planet 9, we think, takes something like 15,000 years to go around the sun. 15,000 years? 15,000 years. To make one orbit? One orbit. To search for Planet 9, Brown goes up Mauna Kea, the big mountain on Hawaii's Big Island, to use the big telescope, the Subaru. Brown doesn't look directly through the telescope.

He monitors pictures it's taking of the same sections of sky on successive nights and then compares them hunting for movement. We have to very systematically look at every patch of sky here, here, here, here. And what we're looking for is actually kind of simple. We take a picture one night, we come back the next night, all the stars, all the galaxies are in the same spot night after night after night, and Planet 9, when we see it, will slowly move across the sky. And we'll look something like this, Brown's discovery 11 years ago that changed the way we think of the solar system.

Using pictures from successive nights, Brown discovered this Pluto-sized object, which led to the demotion of lovable Pluto. You didn't love Pluto growing up? I loved Pluto. I was totally fascinated by Pluto. When I started in astronomy, I started looking at this region of the sky

because I thought it was so interesting out there. When Pluto was first discovered, it was thought to be a big planet. You can go back and find the New York Times headline on the day that the discovery was announced, and it says, ninth planet discovered in the outer solar system, possibly larger than Jupiter. Jupiter's the biggest planet, but Pluto, it turned out, was no Jupiter. These are all the planets and other objects at their real relative sizes. This is Jupiter.

Jupiter is huge compared to the other things. This is Jupiter. This is Saturn without its rings. Uranus, Neptune, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars. And at the very edge of the solar system, as we now think of it, is Pluto. It's only wrong by a factor of 50,000. So it went from being a monster planet to being a dwarf planet. A dwarf planet, one of many that are out there that are part of this region of the sky. This region is the Kuiper Belt at the edge of our solar system, a vast realm of frozen debris created during the birth of the solar system

four and a half billion years ago. The Kuiper Belt keeps Brown up all night hunting for discoveries. It's the most exciting thing I can think of doing. You know, it's not just that it's hard to stay up all night and so I force myself to do it. I am excited every night I go out there about what I might find.

When Mike Brown found that Pluto-sized object, it was the biggest of a group of hundreds of Pluto-like objects recently discovered. So Brown wondered, should Pluto really be a planet? But demoting Pluto would mean that every textbook showing planets would have to be changed. That was fine with Brown, who believes planets must be significant and that the eight large planets are. Their strong gravitational fields control everything around them. Planets are the big bullies of the planetary system that basically ignore everybody else around them and everybody else has to deal with the planets.

Those are what the planets are. And Pluto didn't fit that concept. Neptune controls Pluto's orbit. Neptune is the bully of that neighborhood. To resolve the issue, astronomers from all over the world gathered in Prague in 2006. The International Astronomical Union would decide whether to demote little Pluto

or give planet status to hundreds of similar objects. 6A is concerned with Pluto and Pluto-like objects. Astronomers voted overwhelmingly to go down to eight planets, and Brown became known as the guy who killed Pluto. I think that's probably true. The Pluto vote was ill-timed for NASA. Just seven months before Pluto's demotion, NASA launched a mission to Pluto to learn about its surface and origins.

Scientists are still analyzing spectacular pictures from NASA's flyby. They show Pluto's mostly icy surface and close-ups of craters. Now the spaceship is heading deeper into the Kuiper Belt. Although Pluto was demoted 10 years ago, Pluto lovers still send Brown hate mail and voicemail. He kept this one. Hey, Pluto's still a planet, you jackass. Even Brown's 11-year-old daughter, Lila, didn't like what he had done to Pluto. What did you tell him that he should do to make up for that? Well, I told him that if he found a new planet, it might make up for the fact that he killed a

planet that everybody loved. Seems that he actually went out and did that. Yeah. What do you think of that? It's really great. I'm very proud of him. She's referring to the huge Planet 9 we mentioned earlier. No one was more surprised by that discovery than Brown himself. Until recently, he believed our planets would only be the Big 8.

And we had explored so much of the solar system beyond those 8 Until recently, he believed our planets would only be the Big Eight. And we had explored so much of the solar system beyond those eight that if there were anything else like a planet, we would have found it. After all, NASA's spaceships have flown past every known planet, capturing pictures of Saturn's rings, the pockmarked surface of Mercury, the gassy atmosphere of Jupiter. And well beyond our solar system, the Hubble telescope is busy taking pictures of distant galaxies. NASA says this single image shows 10,000 galaxies. Other pictures show signs of black holes millions of light years away.

And this one, a glimpse of stars being born no wonder Brown had thought we'd found all our planets so now you think there's another pretty big planet out yeah I am pretty dead certain that it's out there what makes you think that as we were studying these objects out beyond Neptune Pluto and the other objects in the Kuiper Belt, when you get to the most distant ones, they all look like they're being pulled off in one direction. And you think the thing that's pulling them is a big planet? Yes.

Couldn't there be some other explanation? We tried many different explanations trying to prove that it wasn't a planet. Nothing works. I am 100% convinced. Brown's partner, Konstantin Batygin, a planetary science professor at Caltech, came up with this mathematical proof. Proof, he says, that Planet 9 is pulling those remote objects in similar oblong orbits. It looks like mathematical gibberish to our untrained eye, but Batygin told us his equation melds 10 accepted formulas, and when coupled with more than 8,000 lines of computer

code, it describes Planet 9's orbit. So, he says, he doesn't have to see it to know it exists. The mathematics proves it. And it's like being, you know, downtown and hearing an ambulance a few streets away. You haven't seen it, but your other senses provide you with the information that really this ambulance is really there. Here, instead of hearing it, you see it in the math. This is a roadmap to Planet Nine. Exactly. This, in the end, tells you where to look on the sky. To speed up the search, Batygin and Brown published their roadmap so other astronomers could join the hunt. Foremost among them is Scott Shepard of the Carnegie Institution. It was Shepard who first spotted the odd orbits in the Kuiper Belt that led Mike Brown to conclude there's a huge planet out there.

Now Shepard, like Brown, compares the pictures taken on consecutive nights hoping to spot Planet Nine. We just found some more small objects very far in the solar system that continue to show the trend that there should be a Planet 9 out there. Is it important to you whether you are the first to find it or another astronomer finds it? It would be great to be the first one to find it. It is a race. There's a lot of people looking for it.

But just to have it found is what we want. When do you think we might actually identify, spot, Planet 9? I think that within three years, we will be able to cover that swath of sky that we need to cover. Is this giant Planet 9 the last planet we'll find in our solar system, or is there a Planet 10? Yeah. We don't know. Planet 9 is already far enough away that it requires the biggest telescopes we have to find it.

Planet 10 is even further. Planet 9 is our generation's planet. It's the perfect planet to find right now. Planet 10, this is when I talk to kids. I tell them, Planet 10, it's yours. Go find it. In the mail this week, we heard from viewers about our investigation into the surge in murder and violent crime in Chicago. Last year, 762 people were murdered, over 4,300 shot. That's more than Los Angeles and New York combined. After the Chicago police shooting of a young black man, Laquan McDonald, and the outcry and investigations that followed, department

statistics show an 80% drop in routine investigative police stops, while murder and violent crimes soared. They are truly in a no-win situation. Stop potential criminals, and they're accused of profiling. Do not stop potential criminals, and they're not doing their job. Instead of highlighting the true reasons for the increase of violent crime in Chicago, which would be the criminals themselves, your reporter chose to blame the Chicago Police Department. I'm Bill Whitaker. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes. to blame the Chicago Police Department. I'm Bill Whitaker.

We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.