One Strange Rock (2018) s01e02 Episode Script

Most people go through life
trying to not get hit.
-What's up man?
-All good.
-Did you see that fight?
-Oh did I? I think I could've won.
The trick is to roll
with the punches
and hope that you don't
get floored by one.
Again.
Our world was born
out of violence
and a storm that has raged
since the beginning of time.
A storm with the power
to destroy planets.
One mighty collision
can change everything.
It's done it before
and it could do it again.
Most of us live in blissful
ignorance of the chaos around us.
But,
eight astronauts
with over 1,000 days
in space between them
can tell us how being 'up there'
helped them to truly understand
what goes on down here.
Everyday
the earth ploughs through
about 40 tons
of material in space.
There is so much activity,
so much action,
and our planet is right
in the middle of it.
Space isn't vast and
empty space but
a dynamic,
cosmic storm.
It's a storm that could kill us,
but without it
we wouldn't be here at all.
This is a story about
the weird connections,
the near misses,
the lucky breaks
that created this amazing world.
For 4.5 billion years our
planet has been battered and
bruised and punched
and pummelled
but we're still standing.
It's actually the
battle that's built us,
and this is the
tale of the tape.
-Thanks guys, awesome.
-Al right.
Nicole Scott is an engineer,
pilot
and oh yeah
These are cool, huh?
she lived for three
months in space.
You can even stick
your hand in it.
Left hand.
Okay I'm coming out.
Nicole, your right waist tether
to the forward UIAD ring.
Frankly she's a bad ass.
Now imagine them all
pressurized and you're having
to work against it really hard.
Here I was, it was
so unbelievable.
I'd spent almost 20 years
helping build spaceships and
now here I was myself on one
just amazing.
Okay I am clear Nicole.
Remember watching
me do a space walk?
-Yeah.
-Yeah.
Was that fun?
-Scary.
-Yeah, why was it scary?
Cause I thought you
were gonna fall off.
When you're in space, 250
miles above our planet
and looking at these things
you thought you knew,
you see them in a
totally new way.
For example, the
first time I saw a
shooting star
from the space station
was this very visual
reminder that there's
a lot of other things
travelling through
the same space,
in space.
What did I see and the
first time I saw it,
it kind of startled me was,
a shooting star
coming in below us.
That's a micro meteorite
coming into the earth
and burning up in
the atmosphere and
you see this sort of firework
display thing going on.
I was doing earth observation
and I'm taking a photo and
all of a sudden I see a hole
just magically appear about
that big in the solar panel,
you know, that was probably
hit by a grain of sand,
something that size,
coming at 17,500 miles an
hour in a different orbit.
You get hit by rocks
all the time,
you can hear them
ricocheting off the hull.
You can see the scars of them
in the windows of the spaceship.
It's a little mind boggling,
when you think about
how much is really out there.
Mostly the stuff up
there is pretty small,
burns up in the atmosphere,
nothing to get worked up about,
but there are some pretty
big rocks up there too,
ask the dinosaurs.
We believe the asteroid
that caused the extinction
of the dinosaurs started way
out in the solar system.
You know, travelling
that distance,
it's incredible that
it found this target of earth.
Bad for the dinosaurs but
ultimately good for us.
We all think we know this story,
but there's something special about
the place where it happened,
in the jungles of Mexico.
Here in Mexico I have the
chance to dive in what is
the most magical place
to free dive
in the entire world.
This incredible
place was created
with very strong violence
when the asteroid hit.
And the result of this is
this calm place,
this paradox.
This place
which is now very quiet
was, at some point, where
something dramatic happened.
Life almost disappeared.
But at the same time, this is
where our story started and
this is why we are here now.
When this area was scanned,
we saw that hundreds of these
flooded Mexican caverns
connected together into
a vast semi-circle.
The edges of a huge crater,
110 miles across
and 12 miles deep.
An asteroid that big hitting
the planet anywhere
is going to be devastating,
but scientists think it was
especially devastating
because of where it hit.
A bulls eye strike on a
large Sulphur reserve.
The Sulphur rock vaporized
sending billions of tons of polluting
gas into the atmosphere
blocking out the sun.
The earth froze and
the dinosaurs died.
So this big old asteroid
has been journeying
for billions of years
through space before
it gets to us
and the earth spins, right.
So if the rock had arrived
just a few seconds later,
it would have crashed
out in the deep ocean,
no bulls eye,
no fire storm,
no dino extinction.
Earth's history is full
of moments like this.
It's a tale of
destructive good fortune
that connects the
death of a planet,
ten million African bats,
a clock in the sky
and tiny rocks from the
birth of our solar system,
some about the size of my fist.
There's a lot of rocks
hitting us from space.
If they make it through
our atmosphere
and hit the surface
of our planet,
people go in search of these
in very remote places
to try to find them.
They're extremely valuable
because they contain
really the story of where
our earth came from.
Boom!
In Morocco we have
a couple of buzzes every year
of something that's way cool,
a super awesome meteorite.
If a meteorite is
found in the desert
and word gets out
especially if it's
of extreme value.
then there is like a gold rush.
We're talking about the
building blocks of our planet.
Some of the most
valuable meteorites
are carbonaceous
chondrite meteorites.
They're the oldest form of solid
material in the solar system.
All the universities want it,
all the museums want it.
The Bedouins are getting amazingly
good at recognizing these things.
To the untrained eye,
these might just look
like a normal rock,
but the really old ones
contain all the raw materials
to build a planet like earth.
4.6 billion years ago,
where earth is today,
there was just a giant
cloud of gas and dust,
all swirling around
the new born sun.
This was where the
cosmic storm started.
First off with tiny particles
attracted by an
electrostatic force.
It's a slow process
but eventually clumps
grew into solid matter.
Still only as big
as a grain of sand,
but now with just enough
gravity of their own,
to pull other grains in.
These grains fused into rocks,
and as they smashed and clumped,
the collisions
grew in intensity.
Under immense heat and pressure,
the rocks began to
build our planet.
There seems to be nothing subtle
about the way earth was built.
It would almost be like
building a space station
with a sledgehammer.
All those bits
smashing together,
they were everything we needed
to build a living planet.
The calcium in our bones, the
gold in our wedding rings,
even the iron in our ships
was all here from the beginning,
except one thing was
in short supply,
water,
but it was on its way
and coming in fast.
A lot of astronauts
will tell you
that from six years old,
watching the moon
landing that they knew
from that moment on
that astronaut was a job
that they wanted to do.
For me, it wasn't that way.
My background is
aeronautical engineering.
I wanted to do something with
flying that allowed me to learn
about how things fly
and then ultimately if you
wanna know how things fly,
I can't imagine not wanting
to know how rocket ships fly.
And then one day I
got this phone call
to say that I was
assigned to fly
a long duration flight on the
International Space Station.
Nicole didn't set out
to fly on the ISS,
her job was to build the thing,
but once she got up there,
she still had an eye for design.
So as an engineer
you can imagine,
I couldn't help but look
at the earth and wonder,
how does that work?
What's blindingly obvious
when you look at earth,
is water is the key.
But earlier it didn't look
like this blue planet that I
saw, it was a dry
and baron rock.
For life to thrive
like it has done,
the earth needed
delivery of water.
We believe soon after
the earth was formed,
our water came from space
in a hail of violence.
It must have been brutal.
We think it lasted for
about 100 million years.
Icy comets and asteroids
collided with the
planet in that.
To supply us with that
top off of water.
But unlike Mars and Venus,
who were surely bombarded
by the same storm,
we kept our water.
As luck would have it,
the sea that would one day grow,
into earth as we know it,
found its place
at the perfect
distance from the sun,
what we now call the
Goldilocks zone.
Not too hot, not too cold.
The solar system is vast.
Earth could have easily
wound up somewhere
where every drop of water
either froze up or boiled away.
But here it's solid, gas
and liquid all the time.
It only takes a tiny
change like a sunrise
for things to get a
little bit slippery.
Solid,
liquid,
gas.
Earth's water,
it's a shape shifter,
constantly changing forms
and as it moves
from snow to sea,
from stream to steam
it helps make the weather
that keeps this planet
a paradise for life.
From space you can see clouds
at the tops of the Amazon Basin
but you can also see
them evaporating
on the oceans and so these
systems are all interconnected.
That natural, seemingly
inevitable process
of turning the oceans into rain,
it's the very essence of
life itself on earth.
Without it
they'd be no rivers,
no ground water,
no plants,
no animals.
The continents would be dead.
It actually surprised me
how dynamic the planet is,
clouds whirling,
lightning storms propagating
over the surface,
the ocean currents visible
and you realize this thing is
not a dead rock down there,
this thing is alive.
So we can thank our lucky
stars I suppose that
the seed that started earth
was in the right place
for water to exist
in its three states.
Our planet was born out
of cosmic dust then
watered by a storm from above,
but all those blows were
nothing compared to one that
literally ripped
the earth apart.
You see earth had a twin.
A twin that threatened
our existence.
The earth
is the result of many,
many collisions
but the most violent
collision of all,
was unknown to humankind,
unknown that is,
until we went to the moon.
I have really vivid memories
of our first moon landing.
Sitting in front of the
black and white TV,
for some reason I remember having a
grilled cheese sandwich, who knows?
We thought, how could there
possibly be anything
in common between the earth and
all its beautiful earthly colours
and the grey of the moon.
Oh that looks beautiful
from here Neil.
This cratered surface.
It's different but it's
very pretty out here.
What we found surprised us,
moon rock and earth rock
had striking similarities.
-We'd like you to press on.
-Yeah right.
Suggesting that both
the earth and the moon
had somehow originated
from the same place.
It's one small step for man
Well there's only a handful of
ways that could have happened
and none of 'em are pretty.
The prominent theory is that
there was something else
in the Goldilocks zone.
Another planet called Theia
and it was on an intersecting
orbit with earth.
In space when
two things are in an
intersecting orbit,
with enough time,
it's inevitable that
those two things will
collide.
Both planets became
molten on impact.
We have debris thrown
out into space.
When this cloud of
debris eventually cools,
it condenses into a new
cosmic partnership.
Planet earth and a
uniquely large moon.
Our moon was ripped
right out of us,
because of that,
it's big and close and
has a lot of pull,
pulls the sea in,
pulls the sea out,
tides,
simple right?
But things get harder
when that same sea
is covered by ice.
Which is something
that grand dads know
and modern kids could
stand to learn.
Lukasi knows when
the moon is full,
the tide is strongest
and he'll have a few more
minutes under the ice,
the best chance to
grab their catch.
We shouldn't underestimate
how influential
the moon is in all of our lives.
Those regular tides
also help give us
another kind of rhythm,
one you might assume had
been with us all along.
The collision that ended
up forming the moon
sent the earth just spinning.
A day back then was
just five hours long.
It was the drag of the tides
that eventually
slowed the earth down
to where a day became 24 hours,
like we know now.
The 24-hour day;
waking up, having breakfast,
working eight hours.
Making dinner,
day in, day out.
These cycles,
they're embedded in our DNA.
The violent whack that
gave us our moon,
our tides and our 24-hour day,
it gave us one more thing too;
summer in Philadelphia.
When I think of the
space station,
I think of this, like, beautiful
masterpiece in space,
just hanging there.
The ultimate engineering
challenge was,
how do you make your spaceship
as much like earth as possible?
Crossing the hatch
from the space shuttle into the
space station the first time.
I remember thinking,
wow, it's not the neatest
place I've ever seen.
There was wires and cables and
computers and equipment all
strung along these walls.
The way we live there is,
we've essentially mimicked
what we have naturally
occurring on our planet.
We have to generate the
oxygen to breathe.
We have to generate
the electricity
to power all of our systems.
We have to figure out a
way to clean the air,
so we can continue to breathe.
Because we're human beings and
can only live comfortably
really within a certain
temperature range,
the whole space station,
all of the systems are working
really hard to maintain
that environment for us.
And then you look down at earth
and you realize that's exactly
what nature is doing,
just on a mind-blowing scale.
And we've got that
cosmic collision
that made our moon
to thank for it.
Wow.
That collision between earth
and Theia was so violent
that it actually knocked
earth off its axis.
There you go.
So let's just pretend,
this is our sun
and this is our earth
and our earth is tilted,
due to that collision, tilted
23 and a half degrees.
For six months of the year
the northern hemisphere
is favouring the sun
and for six months of the year,
the southern hemisphere
is favouring the sun.
The shift in the sun's
energy from north to south
throughout the year
is constantly trying to move
the hot areas to the cold areas
and the cold areas
to the hot areas.
This tilt of the earth
results in our seasons.
The seasons constantly
change in shape and contour
the land underneath.
The world is constantly
adjusting itself.
From the vantage point of space
you can see the ever-changing
planet through the seasons from
snowcapped mountains
to desert plains.
I really never thought of
this until just very recently
you know, I'm seeing all
the seasons at once,
so I'm seeing the winter
in the northern hemisphere
and it's summer in the
southern hemisphere.
If we had no tilt,
nearly half the planet
could be frozen all year round.
Nicole would be fine in Florida
nearer the equator but
growing up in Philly,
there'd be a glacier
in my backyard.
Because of our tilt,
there really are few
places on this planet
where life can't thrive.
Life on our planet has
synchronized with our seasons.
Raising its young in the spring
and readying them for winter.
Four and a half
billion years ago
we started with a smash
that created a tilt
that made our seasons,
that gave us the
rhythms of existence.
But more than that,
it gave us the diversity
of life we see around us.
Hard to imagine
but for most of the year,
not a single one of
these bats lives here.
All ten million arrive
from across Africa,
chasing the rains,
to gorge on ripening fruits.
These bats are essentially
a flying forest delivery system.
The tilt of the earth means cold
moves to hot and hot to cold,
means winter gives way to spring
just as summer yields to fall.
It means
bats fly across a continent
seeding forests as they go.
The world is connected
in a 1,000 ways
and all because of
one massive whack.
So is the danger all the in past
or is the calm
before another storm?
This planet is only here
because we've weathered
just enough body blows
to build our world.
So far it's been
a perfect storm that's
made our perfect home,
one that feels stable,
safe,
reliable.
It isn't.
Imagine yourself on a boat.
Out in the middle of the ocean.
In the middle of a storm.
A big storm.
It's very real to you.
It might even be a
little bit scary.
But if you had the
opportunity to just zoom in
on one of these tiny
little droplets
and see that
inside that little droplet
are these tiny little
micro-organisms that are just
oblivious to this storm
going on around them.
And if we look at our earth,
if we look at where we live,
this planet that's out in space,
we in some ways
go about our daily lives
oblivious to all the action
that's going on around us,
in space,
in the solar system,
in the universe.
This cosmic storm that actually
has a violent nature to it,
is the reason why we're here.
The reason why we're able
to live so comfortably
on this planet.
Before flying in space I tried
really hard to learn from
the people who had
flown before me,
to get some idea of what the
experience meant to them.
These astronauts had seen
the whole earth from space.
While they described it as a
really incredibly beautiful place,
there were also some that said,
they felt a sense
of insignificance.
From the very first time
I looked out the window,
I felt like this is significant.
The significance of it to me
is how something so
overwhelmingly beautiful
could have come from chaos,
violence and collisions.
It's just amazing
to think about this
fine line, this,
this balance between
being here surviving,
thriving and not.
The storm has not
been our enemy.
We aren't here in spite of it.
We're here because of it.
And when the storm blows over,
it's anything but blue
skies and rainbows.
Next time
Here comes the sun.
It is the fuel of life,
but it is not our friend.
The sun is a planet killer.