One Strange Rock (2018) s01e04 Episode Script

When I was little,
my grandmother gave
me an old compass.
She wanted me to know
where I was going.
I was always much more intrigued
by where we came from.
I mean, I knew she was from
Pittsburgh, but before that,
her grandmother and her
grandmother's grandmother,
where did they come from?
You go back far
enough and everyone,
every living thing,
we all come from the same place,
a moment when a dead
rock came to life.
Only a few of us have
been able to see
just how extraordinary life is.
Ignition and lift-off.
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.
I look down and I can
see where we came from.
This living, breathing bubble of
life in the blackness of space.
It's hard to imagine
anywhere else
where everything could have
fallen into place so magically.
We're so used to life
that we start to think of life
as being really simple
and easy to do.
It's not.
We may never know exactly
how life got started,
but we do know it
was a strange brew.
A dash of magical liquid
A sprinkle of stardust
And a crackle of energy.
Mixed together in a
big bubbling cauldron
to make our rock come alive.
Mae Jemison sees life
differently from most of us
And not just because
she's an astronaut.
Go on my mark,
three, two, one
Okay Mae, we copy.
She's also a doctor.
She's spent her
life studying life.
Houston now controlling.
Houston, Endeavour
switching into roll.
Roger roll Endeavour.
At an age when I was just running
around writing rhymes in Philly,
she was pondering life's
biggest questions.
As a child I was fascinated
by the question,
who am I?
What am I?
I remember once when we were
driving from Chicago to Alabama
we stopped on the side of
the road and I looked up
and there was this
incredibly star-studded sky.
It just made the whole
universe very magical.
And 30 years later, I had a
ringside seat to the stars.
When I was in space, I felt
an incredible connection
to the rest of the universe.
And it's true.
We're made of the
stuff of stars.
The carbon, the
nitrogen, the oxygen,
the elements that are the
key components to our body
were actually generated inside
of stars that exploded.
All of the stardust scattered
across the universe,
clumping together into rocks
to form planets like ours.
And the great mystery of Genesis
is about how stardust
came to life.
You, me, the dog,
we're all made of
the same dead dust
that built the planet.
It's just mixed up different.
The big mystery is,
what's the mixer?
Lechuguilla is probably one
of the most difficult places
to visit on Earth.
When you're deep in Lechuguilla
you're more than 1000
feet underground.
Lechuguilla cave is
almost 150 miles long
which makes it one of the most
complex maze caves in the world.
The trail's down here.
It's a big pretty big
drop-off into this room.
Got it.
That's amazing.
Absolutely.
Most of these formations are a couple
of hundred thousand years old.
We'd better not touch anything.
Yeah, let's get through
without touching anything.
You'd imagine these deep
dark caves to be lifeless.
There's no energy
from the sun here,
but the cave walls are not
as dead as they seem.
If you were to put on
special glasses
You'd see this
kaleidoscope of organisms,
living in the caves.
Billions of bacteria
on every surface you look at.
Lechuguilla is cut off
from the surface.
But there is something
above all else
that is essential for life.
Water.
It takes
up to 10,000 years for water
to work from the surface
into the lake.
You take the water
out of the equation
and you have no
bacteria in the cave.
Water is required for
life as we know it
here on Earth.
One of the important things
you learn in medicine
is that bacteria are made
up of just one cell.
And cells are the
basic units of life.
Tiny bubbles or membranes
filled with water.
Floating around this solution,
we've got the
ingredients of life.
Yet, it all depends on water.
And when looking at our
planet from space,
I was struck by just how
much water there is.
It is definitely
the blue planet.
These bodies of water are
massive around the Earth.
You're over the
ocean, ocean, ocean,
and then you hit a
continent like Africa,
like, ooh, Africa,
big continent.
In just a couple of
minutes it's gone and
you're over the ocean again.
Looking at the Nile
Delta from space,
you can see how
important water is,
because all along the Nile river
is this thin beautiful
green strip of life.
That H2O is magic,
and so when you're
looking for life,
the key is to find water.
We can last way
longer without eating
than we can without drinking.
Food gives us energy.
What does water give us?
Turns out that plain old H2O
is the universal champ
at one crucial thing.
We've come here to Angel Falls
to climb this huge overhang.
One of the biggest in the world.
You just feel like you're flying
when you're hanging from the wall.
The sound of the waterfall
is like a constant storm.
Climbing Angel Falls
is very dangerous.
I want to keep climbing.
You want to take the lead?
Yeah. Of course.
Where the rock has been more
exposed to the water
The rock, it's crumbly.
It's very sandy, so I'm going
to put one protection here.
Got to be really careful
in this, you know.
And the other hand,
where there is no water at all,
you can see the rock is
completely different.
It's extremely hard.
Are you going to climb?
Yeah, I will try.
When you get to see this
landscape from above
You can see how the water is
a big destroyer in a way.
It dissolves the rocks.
It continues, the flow of
water, for millions of years,
like these incredible
islands in the sky.
Water has special properties.
You know the same water we drink
can dissolve almost anything.
It will even dissolve
rock over time.
So that means lots of
different molecules
can be mixed together in it.
And interact with one another,
making something new.
And that's what makes
Earth so special.
With all the liquid
water we have,
our planet's like some type
of giant chemistry lab.
Water takes dust from the stars,
breaks it down and shakes it up.
But life isn't
going to bubble up
just because you stirred
up some muddy stardust.
If you want to brew
the soup of life,
you need to kick it up a notch.
If you want to make
stardust into life
There's a bit more to it
than, just add water.
A recipe is more than a
list of ingredients.
It also tells you how to
put them all together.
Imagine a big pot of
all these ingredients,
you throw them in,
but if you throw in the celery,
tomatoes and the pepper,
you're not gonna get
a spaghetti sauce,
unless you add some heat.
I usually start my day
with a hit of caffeine,
but Lee Koon Yau,
his job gives him all
the jolt he needs.
Lee is up top to check
the lightning conductor.
He's testing it to make sure
it conducts electricity
right down to the ground.
You and I may only see
lightning a few times a year,
but the Earth is constantly
crackling with energy.
To see it, you have to go way
higher than a skyscraper.
Viewed from space, the
Earth is dynamic.
It's full of energy.
I remember seeing
these big flashes of light
that sort of come
through the clouds.
You know, the lightning
just propagates literally
for thousands of miles across
the surface of the Earth.
It looks like its nervous system
spreading across the planet.
They're spectacular.
They almost seem to be
communicating to each other.
There are over 100 lightning
strikes per second.
That's eight million a day.
And at the start of our planet,
billions of years ago,
there was even more
energy on display.
That's what life
needed to get started.
Energy.
The first experiment
to reveal this
really captivated me as a child.
I grew up in Chicago
and two scientists
from my home town
Urey and Miller,
took the components
that were believed to be Earth's
primitive lifeless atmosphere.
Then they subjected it
to electrical charges.
They were able to generate
organic molecules.
The basic building
blocks of life.
The thought that energy
could make lifeless stuff
come alive
was just about as exciting
as life could get for me.
I mean, wow.
Now we have a lot more
knowledge about early Earth.
Billions of years ago,
there were many more
sources of energy
than just lightning.
Meteors rained down.
There were volcanic eruptions.
Super-tides churned these seas.
The Earth was a much more
energy-rich, violent place.
Very lively, right?
Lots of things are happening.
But out of this lifeless system,
and over a long period of time,
we actually got life.
And one of the best contenders
for where life started,
is a place we might believe nothing
could ever survive at all.
Deep on the floor of the oceans,
something very
mysterious happens.
Cracks in the Earth's
crust open up down there.
And heated water and
gases spew out.
Hydrothermal vents.
Chemicals, energy, water.
All in one place.
Some are even cooking up
organic molecules today,
life's building blocks.
And that's why many
scientists believe
it's some place like this
where life first started.
So the origin of all of us,
all the way back,
was fired out of a chimney
at the bottom of the ocean.
But it would have been
nothing more than hot mud
if there wasn't one very special
element in that stardust.
Space offers an incredible
platform to study
life as it evolved
here on Earth.
It's fascinating to think
that for us to be here now,
the right combination
of stardust,
energy and water had
to come together.
And not just any
bit of stardust
When you look at life
in its most basic form,
you find that
there's one element
that acts like a backbone
and holds it all together.
And you only get to see
how important it is for life
when you encounter death.
For the Hindus of Bali,
death is a part of
the cycle of life.
Not the end.
It's up to all the
members of the family
to make sure the
spirits of the dead
get to the right place.
They burn the bodies
to return the elements
of the universe
back to their source.
The goal?
To convert the body into ash.
When you burn something
that was once alive,
and drive off all the water,
what emerges in the flame
is the essential bit of stardust
that makes life possible.
That charred black
stuff, carbon.
Everything is our body
has carbon in it.
From our bones to our muscle
to our neuro-receptors.
It might be hard to understand
what makes carbon
so great for life,
but it turns out
that carbon is the
ultimate building block.
It can connect with other
elements in almost infinite ways
to generate all the
different molecules
needed to create a living cell.
Carbon is like the coolest
Lego brick you can imagine.
My kids loved playing
with this stuff,
but if carbon was one
of those blocks,
it'd be the one that
they'd all fight over,
because you can snap
it together just about
any way you like.
Take something with a
lot of carbon in it.
Spider silk.
Now spider silk is
finer than hair,
stronger than steel,
stretchy as elastic
and sticky as gum.
All of those qualities
just depend
on how you snap
together that carbon.
Carbon's versatility
enables a construction
of a miraculous molecule
inside nearly every living cell.
DNA.
Our DNA is one of the
most complex molecules
in the entire universe.
Billions of carbon
atoms combined
to help hold it together,
and this beautifully
tangled formation
is like an organic
super-computer.
It contains the instruction
manual for life.
And every facet and every detail
that makes you, you.
And it's not just us humans.
DNA is at the heart of
almost every living cell
that ever existed.
And you couldn't build
it without carbon.
Now hang on a sec,
something doesn't add up,
alright. I'm no scientist but,
growing up, I made a lot
of instant noodles,
and I'll tell you one thing,
if you take your flavour
packet and throw it
into a swimming pool,
you are not going to get
a nice bowl of Ramen.
So how are you
supposed to make DNA
in the middle of
an endless ocean?
Take a pinch of star,
splash of water,
turn up the heat,
and bam.
Happy Birthday Life.
Not quite.
There's still something
missing from our recipe.
The pot you cook it all up in.
Everything alive needs to be
held together and protected.
That's true if you're
a strand of DNA
or an astronaut.
The space station is
like a cell in a way.
It's like a bubble of life.
You really have this
sense of being enclosed,
you know, just a few
inches in front of my eyes
is the vacuum of space,
and if I were out there,
I'd be gone in 10 seconds.
Inside we have all
the ingredients
and the systems
to keep us alive.
It's the same for living cells.
Just at a microscopic level.
Water is a critical
solvent for life.
But if there's too much water
The solution might be dilute,
and the molecules of life
never bump into one another.
So you need something
to contain them.
Think of a bubble that we blow.
That surrounds this
pocket of air.
And it keeps the air contained.
There's something similar
encasing all living cells.
Membranes.
The holy grail for me
is to find out how the
first membranes formed.
It could have formed
in a hot spring,
in an ice pool
underneath an ice sheet.
It's a huge mystery.
I've come to Iceland because it's
a fantastic natural laboratory.
This is Liane, come in.
I'm heading north,
I'm at 460 meters altitude and
I'm heading to direction 71.
It's snowing outside.
I'll be there in an hour. Over.
Today in Iceland you see
volcanoes underneath icecaps.
You also see hot springs.
Bubbling pools where life
could have started as well.
Even in the hottest
environments,
if you take a sample and
you analyse its DNA,
there is life there.
In the early Earth,
you can envisage these
bubbling mud pools,
where water dissolves the
rocks and makes clay.
As the gas comes out,
it forms a membrane
which then bursts.
So think of that membrane
not bursting and actually
preserving at a very,
very small scale
And then if you mix
organic molecules inside,
you all of a sudden have
an organic molecule
inside a membrane
to form a cell.
Without membranes we
would be on a planet
covered by a dilute ocean of
the building blocks of life.
But with membranes,
finally there was a way to keep all
those building blocks together.
I believe there were many
opportunities for life to arise.
We may have had other types of
lifeforms that came and went,
but didn't take, right?
They didn't hit and stick.
But one of them made it.
It's called LUCA,
which stands for the Last
Universal Common Ancestor,
for all life here on Earth.
LUCA could protect
itself with a membrane
and reproduce itself.
Everything came together
in just the right way,
to create the first living cell,
with DNA at its heart.
Fast forward
billions of years
And we find that all life today,
uses the same basic chemistry.
And this points to one thing,
it all originated in that
first primitive cell.
Alright, now my grandma,
you know, she was kind of small.
But LUCA,
the great, great, great
times a gazillion
grandmother of us all,
she was tinier than a dot.
As far as we know,
that cell was the single and
only origin of all life.
Well, at least on Earth.
If you check out pretty much
anywhere in the universe,
you're going to find
the same ingredients
to cook up life.
They're not exotic,
they're staples.
Now sure, mixing them
up just right is hard,
but the universe is vast.
So does that mean there's
a big piping hot
serving of life somewhere
else out there?
That's what one group of
explorers is trying to find out.
Hunting for strange lifeforms,
not off-planet,
but right here,
in parts unknown.
There's an alien world
right beneath our feet.
As you drop into this blackness,
you have no sense that you're
still on this planet anymore.
It can be completely
disorienting.
You're spun around,
and which way is up,
which way is forward,
which way is backwards.
These underwater caves
are one of the least
understood parts of our planet
because of the dangers
of going down into them.
My desire to understand
how life began on Earth
also reaches out to the stars,
because the ingredients for life
probably exist in many places.
In our solar system,
in our galaxy and
in the universe,
stardust
water
and energy.
Out there we're finding
water on different moons
that surround some of the
planets in our solar system.
The icy moons of Jupiter
and Saturn have
oceans of liquid water
underneath the ice.
Enceladus is a water-world,
but with a hot rocky centre
and plumes of water spraying
out into the universe.
So maybe there's
primitive life on a moon
of Saturn right now.
I always wondered,
will we find life
on other planets?
Will we find life outside
of our solar system?
And as we look beyond the Earth,
and explore other rocks,
I believe that it's likely
we will find simple life.
It'll look different,
it will be different,
but our rock, our planet,
is important to us.
It's special and it's unique,
because it's our home.
It's where we evolved.
Think of that fragile moment,
billions of years
ago, where you and I
and all of us began.
A tiny moat of life suspended
in a ripple of water.
The promise of
everything that is alive
or ever lived in our world.
It's the moment nothing
turned to something.
That stardust sparkled to life.
The moment one rock
in a remote corner
of the universe
became most wonderfully strange.
Genesis is the
bright side of life.
Next time,
life's dark shadow
Death.