In the beginning, There was darkness,
And then, bang,
Giving birth to an endless,
Expanding existence
Of time, space and matter.
Every day, new discoveries
Are unlocking the mysterious,
The mind-blowing,
The deadly secrets of a place
We call the universe.
This cosmic world
Is unlike anything
You've ever seen
Or learned about.
Our galactic neighborhood
Is home to seven of the most
Mesmerizing, violent,
And otherworldly phenomena
In the universe:
A stunning planet
Whose iconic rings
Contain mountain ranges
That rival the alps,
A shimmering moon
Where massive geysers
Of water and ice
Spew from its surface.
Scale a mega volcano,
Then zigzag through a family
Of asteroids
Before diving into the eye
Of a super-sized hurricane.
Experience the newest,
Most mind-blowing discoveries
Revolving around our sun
As we venture
To the seven wonders
Of our solar system.
Sync by n17t01 www.addic7ed.com
The Universe - 5x01 August 29, 2010
If you think
Science has already uncovered
Every dangerous, strange
And extraordinary phenomenon
Under the sun, think again.
We are right now
In the midst of the greatest era
Of space discovery,
And many of the weird
And wondrous things
Are happening right here
In our own cosmic backyard.
Our solar system
Is a really fantastic place.
You know, we've now found
Other planetary systems,
And we've not yet found
Anything quite
Like our solar system.
You've joined us
On a magical journey
Through the seven wonders
Of our solar system.
We first head
For the orbit of Saturn.
Number seven...
It's midnight, November 2, 2009.
NASA's Cassini spacecraft
Orbits the planet Saturn.
Its cameras capture
Something bizarre
On one of its outer moons
Named Enceladus.
Most of the solar system's moons
Are geologically dead,
And looking at the glistening,
Icy surface of its South pole,
Enceladus seems
Like a peaceful world.
Then suddenly, without warning,
Gargantuan geysers
Of wer and ice
Eject from cracks
On its surface.
Enceladus is a fantastic moon
Of Saturn.
Though it's relatively small,
Enceladus is different
From the volcanism
That's here on earth
Where hot magma,
Which is basically molten rock,
Comes out from
Underneath earth's surface.
Enceladus has water,
Basically, liquid water
Coming out and freezing
And so it's called
Cryovolcanism.
The Cassini spacecraft
Flies directly
Through the energetic plumes
That blast hundreds of miles
Into space
At 1,400 miles per hour.
Enceladus has really
Caught our imagination recently
Because we see geysers
Coming out of the South pole.
We haven't seen
Anything like that
On any of the icy moons
In the outer solar system.
So something is going on
In enceladus,
And it's active
And we want to know why.
Scientists have counted
At least 30 geyser jets
Spouting from narrow
Geological fractures
Called tiger stripes
Located along enceladus'
South polar region.
A new infrared map of the area
Reveals warm
Surface temperatures.
The heat emanating
From the tiger stripes
May be due to the upwelling
Of water vapor
That propels the jets.
One of the few other places
To witness
This truly fascinating wonder...
Is on earth...
At a freshly groomed ski slope
Or on a movie set.
Wow.
Look at this snowmaking machine.
It's like a geyser
From enceladus.
All these ice particles
And water droplets freeze
When they encounter
That outside air,
And the expanding gases
Also help cool the dropls
And freeze them.
In the case of enceladus,
Heated liquid water
In a cauldron below the surface
Goes squirting out
Through some vents
In the South polar region.
And when that water comes out
And encounters
The cold surrounding space
It freezes, forming snowflakes
And ice particles,
Much like the ones coming out
Of this snowmaking machine.
So wow, I might as well be
On enceladus right now.
Scientists think
There must be two
Internal heat sources
Driving this icy volcanism
On enceladus.
One source could be
Radioactive elements
That decay and heat up
The interior,
Thereby keeping the water
In a liquid state.
The second could be
Tidal heating.
Suppose enceladus is like
This squishy balloon.
Now enceladus orbits Saturn
In a slightly elliptical,
Eccentric orbit.
So sometimes
It's closer to Saturn,
Sometimes it's farther away.
When it's close to Saturn,
Saturn's gravitational pull
Creates a greater
Tidal stretching of enceladus
Than when enceladus
Is farther away.
That leads to a rubbing
Of the interior materials
And a release of energy.
This tidal friction,
As it's called,
Helps melt the interior
Of enceladus and keep the water
In this molten
Or partly molten state.
One mystery is,
How much water actually exists
Beneath the surface.
Could the miniature moon
Be hiding an underground ocean?
We infer
That there is a liquid ocean
Because there needs to be
A source of water
To power these geysers.
The ocean may not extend
Under the entire
Globe of enceladus.
It may be just
Beneath these regions
Where the geysers are going off,
But there has to be
A significant reservoir
Of liquid water
Beneath the surface
Of enceladus.
If liquid water exists
Beneath the surface,
It could be teeming
With organic molecules.
These, along with
Relatively warm temperatures,
Are the essential ingredients
For creating life.
It would be incredible
If we were to find life,
Primitive life,
Underneath the surface
Of enceladus.
We don't expect
Complex creatures
Such as ourselves
Or rabbits or turtles,
But even primitive
Bacterial or microbial life,
Independent of life on earth
Would be one of the greatest
Discoveries ever.
Enceladus actually orbits
Within another wonder
Of the solar system.
Number six...
The rings,
Named in alphabetical order
As they were discovered,
Are among the most dazzling
Sights in the sky.
The voyager spacecraft
First visited Saturn
Quite a while ago,
And now with the new images
Provided by Cassini,
It's like putting
On a pair of 3d glasses
For the first time
To be able to see
With great detail
What's inside Saturn's rings.
Among the seven main rings,
It's estimated
That the gaseous planet
Has thousands of ringlets
Comprised of 35
Trillion-trillion tons
Of ice and dust,
Containing roughly
26 million times
The amount of water on earth.
Yet their origin
Has eluded scientists
For centuries.
We really don't know
Their origin.
They may consist of material
That never had a chance
To form into a moon
Because of
Gravitational influences
Of Saturn itself.
Or maybe, they're a moon
That wandered
Too close to Saturn
And got broken up,
Shattered by the tidal
Gravitational effects of Saturn.
Or possibly even, a comet
Came in too close to Saturn
And got tidally disrupted
By Saturn's immense
Gravitational field.
What's even more remarkable
Is that scientists have counted
62 moons
Embedded in Saturn's rings.
New images indicate
That these tiny satellites
Have taken the rings
To new heights.
August 11, 2009.
A rare equinox photo of Saturn
Shows her rings
"edge on" to the sun.
The image unveils
A shocking fact:
The bright bands
That once appeared
To be solid and flat
Actually contain ridges,
Spanning from a few feet
To mountain ranges
Taller than the alps.
When you look
At Saturn's rings
From a telescope on earth,
They look completely smooth
And featureless.
But now we see
That there are regions
Where the ring particles
Are piled up into,
What you could call mountains,
Which can be several miles high.
But how are these
Mile-high mountains formed?
NASA's Cassini mission
Actually captured images
Of embedded moons
Sweeping through Saturn's rings
Causing them to Twist and ripple
Creating ever-changing patterns.
In Saturn's "a" ring,
The outermost
Of the large bright rings,
The moon Daphnis
Has carved a vertical peak,
Which is over 2 1/2 miles high.
The moons are interacting
With Saturn's rings
In such a way
As to either pull material
Slightly above the ring
Or below the ring
As the moon goes round
Because s orbit
Doesn't quite match that
Of the ring itself.
The ring system
Surrounding Saturn
Is a spectacular sight.
But on a neighboring planet,
There's a very different scene,
One almost too monstrous
To believe.
It's number five
In our countdown
Of the seven amazing wonders,
A raging storm
That's nearly three times
The size of earth.
As we continue our countdown
Of the seven wonders
Of our solar system,
We leave behind number seven:
Enceladus and number six:
The rings of Saturn.
We now blast off to number five:
Jupiter's great red spot.
This mother of all storms
Is about three times
The size of earth.
We don't know exactly
How the red spot formed.
It's been there
As long as we've been looking,
As far back as the 165os.
So it was there
Before we started
Really paying attention.
The great red spot
Is actually an ancient storm
That's been spinning wildly
For centuries.
The super-sized vortex
Towers five miles
Above the planet's cloud tops
And dwarfs any storm system
On earth.
The 400-mile-an-hour winds
Measured in Jupiter's
Great red spot
Are faster than
Some of the most powerful winds
Measured in tornadoes
Here on earth.
Yet, tornadoes on earth
Only last,
Maybe a few tens of minutes
Or at most a couple of hours,
Whereas Jupiter's
Great red spot's
Been going strong
For at least 400 years,
And it's three times
The size of earth.
Now that's one storm
You don't want to get caught in.
Most tropical storms
In earth's Southern hemisphere
Spin clockwise
As our planet rotates.
But on Jupiter,
The great red spot
Follows an unearthly path.
The great red spot,
Which is in Jupiter's
Southern hemisphere,
Rotates counterclockwise.
It's anticyclonic,
And that's because
It's a high pressure system,
Unlike the low pressure systems
Here on earth,
Associated with storms.
So when you have
A high-pressure system,
The airflow is naturally
The opposite to that
Of a low-pressure system.
The origin of this
Long-lived storm
Has baffled astronomers.
But now, science may be
On the verge of unraveling
Its stormy secrets.
The Hubble space telescope
Recently snapped images
Of three smaller storms
On Jupiter called white spots.
Within three years,
The three white spots merged
To form one earth-size storm.
Then, the unexpected happened.
Over the course
Of only about a week,
The storm turned
From white to bright red.
It's now known as oval Ba
Or sometimes red junior.
Why it turned red
And exactly how that happened
Is still a mystery.
Astronomers now suspect
A similar merger
May have also created
The great red spot.
And like red junior,
The ferocious storm
May have originally been white.
But as its speed grew faster,
It began dredging up material
From deep
In Jupiter's atmosphere.
One of the compounds
Could actually be
A form of sulfur.
We don't fully understand
Why the red spot
Has its characteristic
Brick red color, but probably
There are chemical compounds
Which are reacting
With the sunlight
And are giving it this color.
Astronomers have been
Closely monitoring
The great red spot,
And in the last decade
They have detected
An astonishing change.
We've been watching
The great red spot shrink,
And actually become rounder
For some time now.
Who knows
If it's going to persist
For another 400 years
Or maybe disappear entirely.
The great r spot is by far
The biggest storm
In our solar system.
But after leaving Jupiter,
We head about 200 million miles
In the direction of the sun,
And have a close encounter
With another
Barely believable wonder.
Number four:
Scientists want to know more
About the origin
Of this cosmic junkyard
Of wayward debris,
Which is left over
From the formation
Of the solar system.
For a long time
We thought that, maybe,
There had been a planet there
That got pulverized,
And we were just
Seeing the debris
Of some major catastrophe.
But we pretty much now realize
That a planet
Never was able to form there.
E gravitational pull
From Jupiter
And the other planets
Just made it impossible
For material to coalesce
Into a planet.
We traverse through
100 million miles of rocks,
Some as small as several feet,
Others bigger than cities.
The belt probably contains
Millions of rocky pieces.
Yet, if all the asteroids
Were condensed into one boulder
It would be smaller
Than our moon.
We can start to learn more
About the history
Of our solar system
By studying the small bodies
In our solar system:
The asteroids.
We'd like to know
How they moved around,
How were they affected
By the giant planets,
And what is their ultimate fate?
What will happen to them?
Meteorite!
Popular movies have portrayed
The asteroid belt
As a cosmic obstacle course,
A place where spaceships
Dodge enormous boulders
That constantly collide
And jostle for position
Before hurtling down from space
To destroy planet earth.
But has Hollywood
Gotten it wrong?
How congested
Is the asteroid belt?
That's what one viewer
Wanted to ask the universe.
So Joel t.
From Kansas City, Missouri
Texted us...
Thanks for the question,
Joel.
I know this is a bit shocking,
But the asteroid belt
Hasn't always been portrayed
Terribly accurately
In most blockbuster movies.
If you were orbiting an asteroid
Inside our solar system's
Asteroid belt,
You wouldn't be able to see
Big cratered surfaces
Of other asteroids
Flying right next to you.
In fact, they probably look
Just like distant points
Of light.
That's because
The average separations
Between most asteroids
In the asteroid belt
Are much larger
Than their actual sizes.
So they'd really just look
Like dots.
In fact, an average distance
Between two asteroids
Can be one million miles.
However, among this spacious sea
Of odd-shaped rocks,
Exists a round ball.
Ceres is the biggest asteroid
In the solar system.
The awesome 600-mile wide rock
Contains a fourth
Of the entire mass
Of the asteroid belt.
Most asteroids
In the asteroid belt
Are lumpy shaped,
Kind of like potatoes,
But Ceres is different.
It's actually big enough
To have enough mass,
To have enough gravity,
To crush itself
Into a round shape.
Because of its
Spherical shape,
Ceres was upgraded.
Scientists recently listed it
As a dwarf planet,
The same designation
Given to Pluto.
The modern view of Ceres
Is that it's not big enough
To be called a genuine planet,
But it is big enough
For it to have formed
A roughly spherical shape,
But not big enough
To be a true planet.
This fourth wonder
Not only holds unique artifacts
From the formation
Of our solar system,
It also harbors
Potential weapons
Of mass destruction.
Many asteroids have escaped
The confin
Of the asteroid belt.
And at any moment,
One of these rogue space rocks
Could repeat history,
And no one will live
To talk about it.
So far, our journey
Through the seven wonders
Of the solar system
Has taken us
To the geysers of enceladus,
The rings of Saturn
And the great red spot
On Jupiter.
Now, we continue to travel
Through the fourth
Of our wonders,
The asteroid belt.
This band of leftover debris
Has even made it
To the big screen,
And the rocks Hollywood
Is obsessed with the most
Are those that escape
The asteroid belt
And head for planet earth.
Near-earth objects or neos
Are cosmic rocks
Like asteroids or comets,
Which strike earth
Almost every day.
We're really very interested
In near-earth objects,
Objects that pass
Across the orbit of the earth
Around the sun
Because occasionally they can
And do collide with the earth,
And if they're big enough
They can cause vast destruction
Here on earth.
On April 14, 2010,
Cameras caught sight
Of a 3-foot fiery asteroid
Streaming over the Midwestern
United States.
Fortunately, the cosmic rock
Broke into tiny pieces
Before hitting the ground.
But in the past,
Large asteroid impacts
Have created gigantic craters,
And even triggered
Mass extinction events
Like the chicxulub asteroid
That killed off the dinosaurs.
Over the last
Billions of years,
Earth has been hit many times
By asteroids of various sizes.
The impact that occurred
Roughly 65 million years ago
That perhaps wiped out
The dinosaurs
Was an example of something
That was about six miles across
That slammed into,
What is now Mexico,
And caused huge
Global ramifications
For the earth.
A number of new space surveys
Are currently tracking
All near-earth objects
That are large enough
To destroy a modern city,
Or even worse,
Ignite a global catastrophe.
We know of most
Of the objects
That are larger than a mile
That can intersect
The earth's orbit,
And so the effort now
Is going in to finding
These sort of stadium-sized
Objects,
That while not
Completely devastating
To the entire earth,
Would be a huge deal
If they hit the earth.
As we leave behind
The asteroid belt,
We chart a course to the next
Of our seven wonders,
Number three...
The largest volcano
In the solar system.
As we approach the planet mars,
We immediately catch sight
Of this mammoth mountain.
The base of it is about
Almost 350 miles across,
That's, as though, the base
Of the mountain
Were from Los Angeles
To San Francisco.
So even though it's so high,
The slope is very gradual.
You would barely know
You were climbing a mountain.
It's not like a steep volcano,
It's just...
It's a smooth, low slope,
But it just goes on forever.
Olympus Mons is located
In the tharsis bulge,
A region on the red planet
That's home to other
Massive volcanoes.
If you climb the 13 miles
To its summit,
You could take in a view
Of the very edge
Of the Martian atmosphere.
Olympus Mons
Is several times higher
Than the highest
Mountains on earth,
And its base
Is hundreds of miles across.
And it's been formed
Over the last billions of years
By eruption after eruption
After eruption,
Which has slowly surfaced it
With successive layers of lava.
100 million years ago,
Hot lava rivers poured down
From its peak to cover
Millions of square miles
Of the red planet.
Today Olympus Mons
Is 100 times the volume
Of earth's largest volcano,
Mauna Loa,
Located on the big island
Of Hawaii.
Olympus Mons got
So much larger
Than anything here,
For, well, a number of reasons.
One is certainly,
There was just
A lot of volcanic activity.
A second is that
Mare's gravity is much lower.
You weigh a lot less on mars.
So as the mountain built up,
It didn't compact back down.
It was able to build up
To a pretty huge volcano
Without collapsing.
The third and perhaps
Most important reason
Why Olympus Mons is so huge
Is that mars doesn't have
Plate tectonics,
The movement of crustal plates
That rest on top
Of the molten interior
Of bodies, such as earth.
Olympus Mons grew
To such a big size
Because of the lack
Of tectonic motions on mars.
The hot spot
From which the lava, the magma,
Emerged remained
At one location,
Allowing more and more material
To build up and create
A super mountain,
A super volcano.
Mars is now presumed
To be geologically inactive.
But is the volcanic beast
Really dead
Or merely a sleeping giant?
The European space agency's
Mars express mission
Recently captured
The highest resolution images
Ever taken
Of the planet's lava flows.
Some flows date back
115 million years,
But others are only
2 million years old,
And on geologic time scales
That's very recent,
Which suggests
There still may be some
Volcanic activity.
If we look at the surface
Of Olympus Mons,
We see especially
That there are lava flows,
Which have very few
Craters on them.
And so, we know that
Those lava flows are perhaps
10s-20 million years old
At the oldest.
But the eruptive activity
Has been going on
Until the relatively
Recent past,
If not right up
Until the present day.
Olympus Mons may have
Once produced
Vast amounts of lava,
But its hellish heat
Paled in comparison
To the current temperatures
Of number two on our countdown
Of the seven incredible wonders
Of our solar system.
This may look like
A ball of flames,
But its surface is an ocean
Of 10,000-degree plasma
With waves, winds
And massive eruptions
As explosive
As a billion tons of TNT.
Our next wonder
Of the solar system has been
Earth's best friend and foe.
It's bathed our planet
With heat and energy,
But it's also blasted us
With potentially deadly
Highly energetic
Particles and waves.
We now navigate
Around number two:
The sizzling surface of the sun.
The surface of the sun
Is really quite chaotic.
It's always boiling
And bubbling.
In particular,
There are hot cells of gas
That come out
From the interior up,
Radiate their energy, cool,
And then, come back down.
So this convection,
As it's called,
This boiling motion,
Similar to what you see
In a boiling pot of water,
Is occurring near the surface.
We have never been able
To look at the sun's surface
Up close until now.
At this very moment,
A new collection of satellites
Is capturing images
Of our home star.
These unprecedented movies
Make you feel like
You're an arm's distance away
From touching the sun's
Visible surface
Called the photosphere.
This is where solar storms
And other
Violent phenomena occur.
The surface of the sun,
If you were somehow
Able to go there
And protect yourself,
Is an incredibly noisy, hot
And violent place.
There are temperatures
Thousands of degrees,
There are continuous
Magnetic storms
That create huge,
Basically thunder-like sounds.
In this new movie, NASA's
Solar dynamic observatory
Recorded a prominence.
This is a relatively cool,
Dense cloud of plasma
That sits suspended
Above the solar surface,
Supported by magnec forces.
As seen here, prominences
Can occasionally rip free
And jet into space.
Our sun has an incredibly
Powerful magnetic field.
But every now and again,
Those field lines
Become connected to hot spots
On the surface of the sun,
And as the gas and plasma
Boils inside the sun,
Those magnetic field lines
Can disconnect or break,
Releasing huge bursts of energy.
And these throw up
Giant blasts of plasma
That come out
Along curious looking arcs,
But these are actually following
The magnetic field lines
Around the sun.
Eruptive prominences
Can occur in tandem
With another solar ejection
That can deliver a double punch,
If directed at the earth.
NASA's solar
And heliospheric observatory
Or Soho,
Recently took dramatic movies
Of coronal mass ejections
Or cmes.
These massive bubbles
Of hot ionized gas
Contain up to 10 billion tons
Of solar material.
They shoot out into space
At speeds of several million
Miles an hour.
Coronal mass ejections
Are incredibly powerful storms.
They can be as massive
As a billion h-bombs,
Just huge amounts of energy.
And sometimes those
Big blobs of plasma
Strike the earth
And lead to beautiful
Northern lights,
Aurorae displays.
They can also be very harmful
To the earth.
When large coronal
Mass ejections
Are blasted toward earth
They can trigger
Geomagnetic storms.
These blobs of ionized particles
Can damage or even
Terminate satellites
As well as fry
Our electrical grids.
What's more,
They're extremely hazardous
To astronauts
When outside of the protection
Of a spacecraft.
The cmes generate x-rays.
So, if you're out in space,
You would get
Quite a dose of radiation,
If you were in one
Of these cmes.
Luckily, our atmosphere
Absorbs most of the x-rays,
And we don't experience
The bad effects here
On the surface of the earth.
If you're high up
In an airplane,
Above most of the atmosphere,
Then you can get
A larger dose of radiation
If there's a large flare
Hitting the earth.
These latest images
Are chilling reminders
That our sun's surface
Is a force to reckon with,
And things may really heat up
On our home star
In the very near future.
Solar activity runs
Through an 11-year cycle.
In 2013, our sun will be
At the peak of this cycle
Called the solar maximum.
At this time,
The surface of the sun
Could create the perfect storm.
The sun has had in the past
Big solar storms
That have knocked out
Power grids and our
Communication satellites.
There will be more storms.
They might happen at any time
Or they may not happen,
You know, in our lifetime
Or even in the next millennium.
We just don't know.
That's one
Of the exciting things
About studying the sun
Is trying to be able
To understand
And maybe even predict
The storms
That we see on the sun.
But one thing a solar storm
Can't destroy is number one
On our countdown
Of the seven wonders
Of our solar system:
It's the fifth largest planet.
One tenth of its surface
Is permanently covered with ice,
And its hot interior
Has been churning up
Enough magma
To keep volcanoes erupting
For billions of years.
The exploration of our
Cosmic neighborhood climaxes
With a touchdown on number one
Of the seven wonders:...
The earth, without a doubt,
Is the single greatest wonder
In the solar system.
The earth is so perfect
For our existence.
There's liquid water.
There's an atmosphere.
There's comfortable
Temperatures.
It's just a great place.
Earth, the third planet
From the sun, is brimming
With breathtaking beauty.
Unlike any other body
In the solar system,
Liquid water covers
Nearly 2/3 of its surface.
Its continents inherited
A diverse landscape,
And it's the only planet
Confirmed to support life
In all its amazing forms.
Earth has a number
Of different features
That make it truly unique
In our solar system.
For one thing,
It's not boiling hot
And nor is it freezing cold.
It's just at the right distance
From the sun
To be a very
Moderate temperature
That supports life.
For another thing,
It's not completely
A water world
Nor is it completely
A dry desert either.
It's got just
The right mix of land and ocean
To support a wide variety
Of species.
Science is now getting closer
To solving the mystery
Of how life got started
By retracing the steps
Of our planet's formation.
4.6 billion years ago,
In the swirling disk of debris
Left over from the formation
Of our newborn sun,
Gas and dust particles
Began to clump together.
They eventually formed
Large boulders
Made of rock and ice
That we see today
As asteroids and comets.
For millions of years,
These bodies collided
And coalesced to form planets.
During this birthing process,
Earth acquired some
Special properties.
One unique feature on earth
Is abundant liquid water.
It is thought
That the earliest volcanoes
Spewed out
Massive amounts of steam,
Which condensed into rain
And supplied the planet
With water.
But recently, new sources
Of water have been suggested.
Some of that water
Might have come from comets
Or some of the water
Might have come
From an outer belt of asteroids
That was rich in water.
In other words,
Some of the water
Could have come from the rocks
That made the earth
Near the end of this era
Of heavy bombardment.
And water appears
To be a key component
For the origin of life.
It was previously theorized
That life began
In a primordial soup,
A warm pond containing energy
And atmospheric elements
To make amino acids.
However, the most recent
Pioneering research
Makes a strong claim
That the earth's own
Chemical energy
And rich proteins seeped up
Through hydrothermal vents
Deep under the ocean.
Over time, this mixture
Jump-started life
By producing living cells.
We know that liquid water
Is essential to life,
And life probably got started
In a water environment,
Whether it's in the deep ocean
At the volcanic vents
Or in a shallow pond,
We don't really know
Where and how precisely
Life got started here.
But it did.
And it's the only planet
That we know
Where life actually exists.
Regardless of how
Life started,
A fortunate event
Made it possible
For complex creatures to evolve.
About 3 billion years ago,
Ancient underwater bacteria
Began to use water,
Carbon dioxide
And the sun's energy
To produce carbohydrates
In order to survive.
This process,
Called photosynthesis,
Injected vast amounts of oxygen
Into seawater, and eventually,
Our atmosphere.
A huge step happened
In evolution
When the earth got polluted
With oxygen.
We didn't start
With a rich oxygen atmosphere.!
But later, the oxygen atmosphere
That developed on earth,
Basically from photosynthesis,
Allowed life to get
A lot more complex.
After a few billion years
Of planetary
And biological evolution,
The first plants and animals
Emerged from water on to land.
It's estimated
That modern humans
Came onto the scene
A mere 200,000 years ago,
And with our evolution
Came the technological
Revolution of the planet.
From ancient man-made monuments
To bustling metropolitan cities,
Human beings changed the way
Earth looks on the ground
And from space.
The earth's surface
Has started to be modified
Very significantly by cities,
By human activity.
We're part of the earth.
We've created all these changes
On its surface.
And so, the earth's geology,
In some deep sense,
Has been radically altered
By the appearances of cities,
By the appearances
Of all the things
That we do on the surface,
And that's something
That's remarkable, and which,
As far as we know,
Is not happening anywhere else.
Certainly, it's not happening
Anywhere else
In our own solar system.
Our cosmic tour has taken us
To seven wondrous sights:
The icy geyser-laden moon,
Enceladus,
Saturn's sensational rings,
Jupiter's great red spot,
The largest volcano,
Olympus Mons,
The mysterious asteroid belt
And our stormy sun.
But this unforgettable adventure
Would not have been possible
Without our home planet, earth,
A place with
Endless possibilities.
Over the last century,
Humans have manufactured metals
And other materials
From our planet's crust
To build spacecraft.
Our technology will enable us
To blast off to explore
The other wonders.
We'll be able to marvel
At these distant domains,
And realize that we're part
Of a much wider cosmic world.
These awe-inspiring phenomena
Allow us to ponder who we are,
And why we're here
In this magnificent place,
we call The Universe.
Sync by M@N