4 More Hours Of Amazing Space & Science Facts To Fall Asleep To

[Music] Jupiter vast mysterious the largest planet in the solar system made almost entirely of gas this violent world of 400 mph winds and storms twice the size of Earth may also be the blueprint for how planets are formed and on one of Jupiter's four largest moons May lie the answer to the most important question of all beneath these vast ice sheets mankind could finally discover if alien life exists Cutting Edge space missions are unlocking the secrets of this enigmatic giant [Music] Jupiter in the last 50 years space missions have revealed worlds we never could have

imagined from the mountains of Mars to the methane Lakes of Saturn yet One Planet captures our imagination more than any other the greatest of them all Jupiter most of what we know about Jupiter comes from One mission Galileo launched aboard the space shuttle Atlantis in 1989 each new discovery it makes deepens our understanding of Jupiter and its moons it may also uncover evidence of how the solar system itself was [Music] formed 11 times bigger than the earth yet probably without a solid surface Jupiter is a ball of gas and liquid 90 ,000 M across with

lightning superbolts a thousand times more powerful than the strongest strikes on Earth and a ring system like Saturn's but too faint for our telescopes to see the Great Red Spot a single vast storm with 250 mph winds so huge it could swallow the Earth three times over 63 moons orbit this giant Galileo will study four of them IO Europa ganam and Kalisto Each of which would be a a beautiful Target for a space mission in and of itself scientists expect dead and lifeless worlds 500 million miles from the Sun IO Jupiter's closest moon is slightly

larger than Earth's Own moon but IO is far from l liess huge plumes of sulfur dioxide reach hundreds of miles into space very peculiar surface with Reds and yellows someone nicknamed at the pizza Moon ganam the largest moon is a world of scars and Frozen [Music] slush and Europa most mysterious of all its icy surface May hide a liquid ocean below where there's water there could be life a new generation of probes are set to explore the mysteries of the Jovian system Juno Europa Explorer and the underwater probe endurance three missions one goal to At

Last reveal the secrets of these alien worlds [Music] before Galileo previous missions could only look from afar in the 1970s and early 80s Pioneer and Voyager gave us tantalizing glimpses of Jupiter and its moons but they raised more questions than they answered how did Jupiter form what powers its vast storms and why are its moons so geologically active before these questions can be answered the team have to overcome a simple problem Galileo is unable to carry enough fuel to reach its destination NASA Engineers need another way to get to Jupiter and they came up with

a brilliant solution we wouldn't go to Jupiter at all we'd start by going to Venus by flying close to Venus and then Earth using a gravitational slingshot method G Alo steals some energy from the planets to accelerate itself toward its final destination Jupiter when Galileo arrives after a journey of 6 years a small sub probe will detach and Plunge Into the Depths of Jupiter's atmosphere it will have less than an hour to analyze its surroundings before being crushed by the extreme pressure everyone expects Galileo to beam back extraordinary information [Music] as the spacecraft nears the

end of its Journey it coincides with a massive comet on a collision course with Jupiter Galileo is in an ideal position to watch it could find Clues to one of the most important questions about Jupiter's history how was it made up until now scientists believe that Jupiter is made from the leftovers from the birth of the Sun a primordial planet frozen in time if so the Sun and Jupiter will have very similar chemical compositions the comet's impact will stir up chemicals from below the surface enabling the team to analyze them and see if the theory

holds true they are about to get more than they bargain for I just couldn't believe that we were going to get a chance to see one body in the solar system smash into another one we had an upclose and personal view of this unique event the comet's name is Shoemaker levy9 or sl9 David Levy is part of the team that first discovers it this was going to be the first time that a comet collided with a planet the first time in recorded history and we had no idea what we were going to learn from it

the day arrives on mountaintops and in space more telescopes are trained on the same part of the sky than ever before some scientists believe Jupiter's thick atmosphere will simply swallow the comet Without a Trace others hope the impact will dredge up matter from deep inside the planet giving us vital Clues to its composition we were talking about the largest biggest planet in the solar system being hit by a tiny comet most scientists thought it would be a fizzle boy were're we lucky as the comet approaches Jupiter's massive gravity tears it to pieces now 20 separate

fragments will strike the planet some a mile or more across astronomers across the globe are about to witness something amazing yeah that's it one by one the fragments hit the largest releases as much energy as 300 million atomic bombs a fireball shoots 2,000 Mi above the top of Jupiter's clouds each fragment produces a separate impact Cloud visible as dark black bruises in Jupiter's southern hemisphere they're the size of the Earth the first thing we saw with each impact was either the plume of dust and gas uh as seen by either Galileo or the Hubble Space

Telescope the next thing we saw was the formation of the large jet black cloud all over Jupiter's southern hemisphere but the real surprise doesn't come from the clouds it comes from the shock waves the impact send through the upper atmosphere there's only one explanation and to astronomers it's a revelation when uh Su Le 9 crashed into Jupiter uh it's sort of like a rock going into a pool it sent out waves waves and the speed of the Waves depends on the amount of water in the atmosphere and uh the speed was faster than we thought

and and so we inferred that there was more water than we had expected uh you could sort of see it here just well you can see the ripples spreading out uh and it was the speed at which the circles grew uh that told us there was more water than we expected the Discover Y is a surprise it means that the composition of Jupiter is different from the Sun it threatens to overturn everything scientists think they know about Jupiter's formation a new theory is needed in 17 months Galileo will arrive and analyze Jupiter's chemistry firsthand only

then can the team solve the mystery [Music] one year after the comet sl9 strikes Jupiter Galileo is on its Final Approach there's a lot at stake scientists now know Jupiter may have 10 times more water than previously thought if so they may need to find a whole new explanation for how this strange World formed Galileo's first task will be to directly measure the chemistry of Jupiter's atmosphere including the amount of water Galileo will release a a small probe into Jupiter's clouds the probe will also measure the wind speeds and temperatures at different depths to try

and explain why the weather is so violent as well as answering the big question is Jupiter a long-lost cousin of the Sun or something else [Music] entirely as the probe dives into Jupiter's atmosphere scientists are convinced they'll find the layer of water vapor the comet reveals giving vital Clues to the planet's creation and I even announced a prediction at a scientific meeting uh offering to bet anyone in the audience uh $ that uh the probe would find uh more than a certain amount of water but instead of water the probe drifts through thin wispy gases

it has flown into a downdraft a dry Gap in the clouds where is the water they were expecting to find Jupiter must have both dry areas and W spots it's not what they expect what they discovered was that Jupiter has some long-term weather patterns spots that move around that they didn't really realize were there before the Galileo team holds their breath the probe Dives deeper but still there is almost no evidence of water less than an hour of data is about to trigger a revolution in our understanding of how the solar system formed the probe

does detect a high proportion of heavier elements like argon Krypton carbon and nitrogen it finds levels 2 to three times higher than found in the sun these elements only condense at extremely low temperatures lower than the temperature found at Jupiter's present position we learned that it uh the atmosphere of Jupiter has chemical constituents that came in with very cold material from the outer solar system for astronomers the discovery is a bombshell the presence of these elements means Jupiter must have formed in a different way than the sun this little probe in one felt swoop showed

us that all of our ideas of how planets were formed were wrong we didn't understand how the planet were made and we didn't understand the early solar system the small probe's discoveries shocked the scientific Community could the giant planet have formed further out in the solar system where it's colder then migrated into its current position or did comets or asteroids bring the heavy elements and water to it after 58 minutes and before the answers become clear the probe B silence burning up in Jupiter's inner atmosphere the probe has given scientists some remarkable insights into Jupiter

its atmosphere and how it formed but the big question goes unanswered in 2011 a new Mission Juno will attempt to find the answer it will fly closer to Jupiter and ga GA more information than ever before when Galileo's small probe plunged through Jupiter's atmosphere it hit a dry spot just how much water Jupiter holds is still a mystery Juno will take a different approach using the latest microwave technology a radiometer it will scan for water around the entire planet scientists hope that finding the missing data will finally solve the mystery of how Jupiter was formed

what we're really after with Juno is the ingredients from the ingredients of Jupiter we're going to figure out the recipe and that's what's going to tell us how planets are made with the probe having completed its work it's now time for Galileo 130,000 Mi above Jupiter to turn its attention to another longstanding mystery the planet's weather how can storms three times the size of Earth get so big and last for over 300 years Jupiter's weather is a mestrom of swirling clouds lightning storms and massive hurricane-like vortices for the Galileo team it's a mystery on Earth

weather like this is powered by the heat of the Sun but Jupiter is 500 Million Miles Away so there must be some other source of power it's most famous feature is the Great Red Spot a storm whose clouds Tower 5 miles above the atmosphere and plunge deep into a chemical soup below the red spot is red uh because of uh the chemicals uh that are trapped there in the center of the red spot uh have been baked and cooked by ultra light and have turned red astronomers have watched the great red spot for at least

300 years on Earth even the biggest storms only last about 2 weeks so how does the biggest storm in the solar system three times wider than the earth get enough energy to rage unchecked for centuries scientists believe smaller thunderstorms could hold the answer in order to solve the mystery they had planned to video the Great Red Spot and other smaller storms in action understanding the mechanics of these turbulent weather systems the Galileo team hoped to reveal the source of their power with the High Gain antenna out of action this simple solution won't be possible the

team back at Mission Control need a new approach instead of making long continuous movies we made uh three-step movies uh you you watch the red spot you come back a few hours later you watch it again and and so it's just a three-step movie instead of a continuous moving Galileo homes in on a turbulent area of small white spots caused by what they think is convection or rapidly Rising air if these are storms they will need to find proof they need to locate another of Jupiter's most extraordinary features lightning bolts a thousand times more powerful

than on Earth but these are only visible at night Jupiter is 11 times bigger than the earth it's it's it's really big if you look at this uh Globe you can see a few intense white colored spots uh small intense white colored spots and uh when we got around behind Jupiter and looked at the night side it was those uh very white colored spots that had the lightning in them and no place else so uh that identified where the thunderstorms were having identified the thunderstorms the next step is to find out whether these small white

spots can grow into larger ones Galileo is in the right position at the right time there were some uh White ovals that formed in the 1930s three of them and they had been around for 60 years when suddenly two of them merged Galileo watches as two of the ovals merge to form a larger more powerful Storm 2 years later the third oval also merges forming one large storm in a belt below the great red spot and then it had slowly turned red uh so that it resembled the great red spot but not quite as Big

Nick name the red spot junr observations of its birth may also help to solve the mystery of where these large storms get their energy Jupiter's storms are cannibalistic they swallow smaller storms this is how something as large as the Great Red Spot came into being it's like a food chain where the big fish eat the little fish and the little fish eat smaller fish and the primary Harvesters of energy on Jupiter are the little thunderstorms this accounts for the source of all the energy but it doesn't explain why these vast storms last so long conditions

on Jupiter are so turbulent that the storm should blow themselves apart on Earth vortices such as tornadoes soon die out but on Jupiter vortices last for years Jupiter is the fastest spinning planet in the solar system turning 22 times faster than Earth ironically scientist John Arno thinks this rapid spin explains the stability of Jupiter storms in rapidly rotating systems vortices can be long lived it's very surprising normally we would think they'd shred themselves they never do what we've learned from these missions is that it's very coherent is that it's very stable when two different colored

dyes are mixed in a rotating jar of water the results are startling that's first what looks like it's going to be a mess quickly turns out not to be a mess instead we generate two large scale vortices that you'll see are going to be very long lived and coherent and this is the idea in rotating fluid systems when you try to mix them instead of just destroying any D signal or any signal in the fluid you get large scale structures similar to a great red spot [Music] Galileo has revealed why some storms get so big

and last so long but scientists are still mystified by Jupiter's most distinguishable characteristic its parallel red white and brown Stripes it was assumed that some colors are rising gases and others sinking but Galileo finds this may not be [Music] true although its atmosphere is hundreds of miles deep only the surface layer is visible here high velocity winds blow in opposite directions causing these multicolored patterns to be dragged across the surface the colored bands are associated with vertical motion and some of them are mapping out Rising motion and some of them mapping out sinking motion it

may be that the rising motion is happens at one level and the sinking motion happens at the same bands but a different level they won't find out until the Juno mission in 2011 looks through the top layer of Jupiter's atmosphere to see just how the planet is spinning is it all spinning as one solid body like the Earth does and and and what we see on the surface is just a bunch of clouds of surface mological layer or is is it inside a little bit like an onion where there's different layers layers and each layer

is spinning in a different direction and a different speed we don't actually know that answer Juno will orbit Jupiter 32 times each lasting 11 days the orbits will pass over Jupiter's North and South Poles shifting longitude with every flyby to scan a new section of the planet for the first time Juno will map Jupiter's entire atmosphere down to a depth of 350 Mi Jupiter's vast weather systems May finally yield their [Music] secrets scientists now realize that the planet's fast rotation maintains Jupiter's Long Live storms but more importantly it also drives Jupiter's most powerful force its

magnetic field and we can study that system and compare it with what goes on at Earth and uh learn a lot that will help us understand Earth as well the Earth's magnetic field is generated by the churning motion of molten iron around the core Jupiter is made of gas but at its core the hydrogen is so compressed it acts like liquid metal the magnetic field is is created deep down in the planet where the pressures are so great that the hydrogen in Jupiter has become metallic it actually behaves like a metal and so it's moving

around and currents are being created and these manifest themselves onto the magnetic field that surrounds the planet the metallic hydrogen churning in Jupiter's core creates an incredibly powerful magnetic field around the planet it stretches across the solar system to Saturn and Beyond holding in its grasp charge particles and gases it's enormous 50 to 100 times Jupiter's size in going across and the tail is dragged out by the solar wind all the way back to Saturn's orbit Jupiter's magnetic field is the largest object in the solar system if we could see it from Earth with a

naked eye it would appear larger than our moon it's also strong enough to divert the constant stream of sulfur emitted from the huge volcanoes on Jupiter's closest Moon IO this material also funnels down toward Jupiter's poles creating a breathtaking light display like Earth Jupiter has Northern and Southern Lights called auroras for the first time Juno will analyze the charged particles and magnetic fields that create these huge displays we're flying close we'll dive underneath the radiation belts and out the other side and we'll fly through the charged particle that bombard and light up the atmosphere with

the northern Aurora the team hopes the study of Jupiter will yield a better understanding of the dynamic processes that create Earth's Own magnetic field but the Jovian system has other secrets to offer its moons are not cold and inactive but Dynamic worlds that may hold the answer to the ultimate question is there life beyond Earth the Jovian system is immense 63 moons orbit the planet some large enough to be planets in their own right they are also an enigma small planets and moons usually cool faster so how can these moons be so hot and geologically

active now the answer may also contain a clue to the Holy Grail of science is there life on other worlds the four largest moons are ganam Kalisto IO and Europa each one is profoundly different and holds incredible surprises where every time ganam goes around once Europa goes around twice and IO goes around four times it's not a coincidence these moons have evolved into this wonderful Cosmic dance astronomers had expected Jupiter's moons to be cold dead lumps of rock and Ice what Galileo finds are active Dynamic worlds first stop the mysterious ganade the largest moon in

the solar system if it orbited the Sun instead of Jupiter astronomers would call it a planet these NASA images show its mountains valleys craters and Frozen lava [Music] flows almost immediately the team finds something extraordinary Galileo's magnetometer is picking up unexpected readings I was flabbergasted the evidence right there that there was a magnetic field uh caused me to say I don't believe it gamed is the only moon in the solar system with its own magnetic field but it's a puzzle the moon should be frozen solid if ganim's got a magnetic field it must have a

molten core people had thought that a body of the size of ganam would have cooled off so much in the 4 billion years that the solar system has been around that it would have been solid all the way through so we had to change our view of the evolution of ganam made the discovery of ganim's magnetic field only deepens the mystery of how planets form something must have happened in ganim's past something catastrophic enough to have heated up this Moon Galileo showed us that ganam is a fascinating world one that's gone through a very complex

history a world in its own right but as well as detecting ganim's normal magnetic field Galileo finds a second varying field that's telling us that it's probably also a liquid water ocean within ganam scientists suspect this ocean is buried deep beneath the moon's Rocky crust the team is eager to investigate but Galileo's orbit means it must leave gamed and move on more surprises await next next the outermost of Jupiter's four largest moons Kalisto has its own Mysteries it's cold and Rocky the oldest and most heavily cratered landscape in the solar system its surface is scarred

with ancient meteorite impacts scientists are perplexed by craters with strange bright rims it seems dark surface material has slipped away exposing the the lighter material below nothing like it has ever been seen on Earth so what's the material made of that's slumping down what's the process that's causing it to slump off and it certainly proved to be a much more interesting body upon close examination than we ever thought although the surface is a chilly - 279 de F Galileo's data suggests that just like ganam Kalisto can't be frozen solid it detects a very weak magnetic

field suggesting it too may have an ocean but the data is confusing other instruments aboard Galileo suggest that 125 M beneath its surface Kalisto consists of a mixture of rock metal and ice right down to its core it's another mystery the standard theory of how moons and planets form says that they should heat up when the material they're made of first joins together the heat should then separate the Rock from the ice strangely on Kalisto it hasn't that would mean it never got really hot in there how do you make such a large Moon and

not have it heat up we still don't really understand kisto like so much of the Jovian system Kalisto raises more questions than it answers we don't know what's going on inside the moon we don't even know what material covers its surface the story of Jupiter's next moon is equally bizarre IO is the same size as our moon and is the closest of Jupiter's four large moons it is the most volcanically active body in the solar system with over 400 volcanoes up to 124 M across if you could have a bird's eye view of AO it

it would be really extraordinary you would see these uh plumes that are hundreds of miles high these enormous lava flows and uh big lava laks just boiling and bubbling away on the surface that is all really strange and has this colors of a pepperoni pizza volcanoes constant reshape io's surface Galileo's pictures are totally different from the ones Voyager sent back some 20 years before but how can a landscape change so dramatically in such a short space of time huge craters seem to come and go the cause of their disappearance seems to be giant plumes of

sulfur gases shooting around 200 Mi above the surface we concluded that it was was the plumes that were depositing fine material on the surface and actually erasing these craters over long periods of time but as with Jupiter's other moons there is a further mystery this much volcanic activity requires an immense amount of heat but where does it come from IO 500 million miles from the sun should be too cold but clearly it's not could the answer be gravity Jupiter's gravitational field keeps IO in orbit but as it goes around it passes on the inside of

Jupiter's other moons their gravity pulls IO in the opposite direction that distorts io's shape it's the Distortion that creates the heat as Jupiter's large moon orbit around the planet they're pulled and pushed and squeezed as they go around in their orbit and this creates heat friction and causes melting within IO of the rock to power its volcano it raises tides on iO very much like the moon raises tides on the oceans on Earth on the onio the whole surface goes up by over 300 ft can you imagine what it would be like on earth like

here in Los Angeles if the crust of the Earth was Rising 300 ft it's an astonishing Discovery a world shaped by forces so violent it's pulled apart like taffy yet amazing as it sounds of all Jupiter's moons IO may not be the strangest the next moon on Galileo's path Europa its surface is covered in strange geological shapes and parallel tracks that cut across the ice it's an ice world with an extraordinary secret could it Harbor the ingredients for [Music] life images of Jupiter's moon Europa from earlier missions reveal a pinkish white world but galile finds

fewer meteor craters than expected that means something is erasing the craters after they form because europa's surface is ice scientists believe water could be welling up from below this moon is so intriguing the team wants a better look but to do so means spending more time at Europa than planned the original schedule called for only three flybys of the Moon Eur Europa but the evidence was so compelling that it compelled uh the mission to be extended in length and to go back several more times Galileo's first job is to image the moon in Greater detail

the question is how active is europa's surface are the processes that erase impact craters fast or glacially slow the team Begins by assuming the process could take billions of years that changes fast I'm listening to them discussing the age of Europa surface dropping oh well maybe it's a couple billion years old and then the next flyby well it might even be a 100,000 years old uh and then the next fly by it it may be currently active while measuring europa's magnetic field Galileo uncovers another mystery as the moon orbits Jupiter its magnetic field shifts Europa

must have a conductive layer which allows Jupiter's magnetic field to pass through it there is only one thing that could cause this and it's a big surprise for the Galileo team we were able to interpret these signatures as being produced by a global ocean beneath the surface of the ice scientists believe europa's ocean is vast it covers the whole globe to a depth of 100 Mil making it the largest body of liquid water in the solar system if so the team must first address a fundamental problem europa's surface temperature can reach-2 200° F why doesn't

such a huge ocean so far from the Sun freeze astronomers think the answer may be the same one that drives the volcanoes on iO Jupiter's gravity stretches and compresses the moon creating heat within it's the heat that keeps the surface in constant motion this could also explain some unusual features found on Europa Galileo images showed that ridges crisscross the surface of Europa these are bizarre features that travel across the surface for up to 1,000 kilm and typically in pairs that is Ridge with a depression in the middle and another Ridge these are bizarre features like

nothing we see on the earth at first these ridges are a puzzle but researchers soon come up with a solution planetary scientist Bob papalardo reproduces the effect with ice blocks in the lab as Europa is flexed by Jupiter's gravity its surface bends and cracks and makes fractures through the ice well as it's squeezed and bent the ice slides back and forth along these fractures now this can create heat as these blocks move by one another and that heat can warm the ice on either side of the block and that warm ice Rises up to form

these strange ridges that we see these tracks that seem to go across the tundra of Europa Galileo reveals a world in constant motion evidence of heat hidden below the ice flows of material on the surface are possible evidence of ice volcanoes or geysers brown red stains stretch across the ice where it has cracked open and salty material from the interior has welled Up From Below we see pits and spots and domes on the surface of Europa that might be related to the rise of blobs of warm ice that move up through the shell sort of

like a lava lamp heat from the interior of the Moon may even drive hydrothermal vents in the ocean on earth hydrothermal vents on the seaf floor Are hotpots For Life Galileo's data also suggests there's carbon dioxide Frozen on europa's Surface possibly welling up from the ocean below if so the find is huge because CO2 is vital for life does this mean there's life on Europa I'm in the camp that where there's water there's a very good chance that there's life and where there's materials for that life to use and on Europa we seem to have

the materials and we have the water if we search and find life within the ocean of Europa that'll be an enormous leap in understanding whether we're alone in the universe or whether like life may be everywhere the search for life is an irresistible lure scientists are desperate to go back to Europa and near the end of the next decade they hope to launch a groundbreaking mission to orbit the Moon the Europa Explorer will take the first steps toward answering the biggest question of all is there life on other worlds it will surve the ice on

europa's Surface as well as analyzing its structure it will search for spots where we could one day break through to the ocean beneath we need to measure the gravity in detail we need to do radar studies we need to look at the surface composition we need to understand the geology we need to understand that tidal flexing that heats the interior and causes that thick lay of ice to flex with the tidal forces the Explorer 's main tool is radar it will give scientists a 3D map of europa's crust this will tell them just how thick

the icy shell is how far beneath the surface the ocean is if it's a global ocean um how deep it is how how thick the ocean layer is these are crucial questions once scientists know how thick the ice is the next step is to work out how to get beneath it and that will mean a completely new Mission a probe that will not only orbit Europa but land and explore its subsurface ocean endurance is already at work in Antarctica a robotic submarine it's the first of a new breed of underwater probes that can also operate

under the ice the aim is to create a vehicle that needs no instructions from home endurance must make decisions all by itself every vehicle we've sent to space so far has the ability to talk back to Earth get commands from Earth and have people in the loop this will be a whole new ball game and it's something that we're going to be able to test in Antarctica endurance is currently investigating a lake hidden under nearly 15 ft of ice in Antarctica perhaps one day a vehicle like this will search for life on Europa but first

it has to get through the ice that thick ice cover takes a lot of energy to melt ice people don't usually appreciate that but we'll need some kind of nuclear uh system that will melt that ice and it will take weeks perhaps months to get through that ice we might imagine a Lander spacecraft that melts its way all the way down to the ocean and explores what's really down [Music] there the discovery of Life on another world would be one of the greatest fines of all time we're not talking about fish or whales or Loch

Ness monster we're talking about microbes could there be tiny single cell organisms within the ocean of Europa I mean if you just find bacteria it would be fascinating but who knows you know maybe there's something more sophisticated is something swimming around who knows even the simplest life forms would have profound implications if life exists in the ocean of Europa that would tell us that life probably exists almost anywhere there's a waterr environment that would be an amazing [Music] Discovery Jupiter and its moons have already transformed our understanding of our place in the solar system now

New Missions to Europa May finally prove that life on Earth is not unique and if there's life on Two Worlds then why not on many Jupiter and its moons May one day give us hope we will find not just life but intelligence Out Among the Stars [Music] diamonds 4 billion years old and they still Dazzle us but these rocks aren't just for show anymore hidden inside are powers that could change your life the future of diamond is very exciting and opens up what many of us have been calling the new diamond age to reach that

shining future scientists have to outdo nature and build a better Diamond the new synthetic diamonds that's a technology that's going to take us places we've never been before it's a dazzling challenge can science do the unnatural and make a super diamond [Music] diamonds are like no other substance they're four times harder than any mineral on the planet they resist corrosion the best are completely transparent and they conduct heat some can conduct electricity what you have is a material such as Diamond that has a a fantastic range of unique properties and it's the combination of these

unique properties that makes diamond special if science can harness the powers of these Stones it could revolutionize our lives from the microchips in our phones to the machines that explore space they be super durable they'd last forever they'd be resistant to heat and cold and the other kinds of extremes it said diamonds are forever but they aren't most contain natural flaws flaws that can't withstand extreme heat and pressure to transform technology science must do something unnatural create the ultimate diamond in the lab nature is the guideline and the question is can we improve upon it

the race now is to to produce a super diamond a super diamond would have all the properties of a natural diamond but could be manufactured in any shape or size most of all they would mimic the properties of the rarest gems like this [Music] one the Hope Diamond perhaps the world's most perfect natural diamond it's kept behind bombproof glass in the Smithsonian institution in Washington DC at 452 karat this gem is over a 100 times bigger than the average diamond ring it's one of the largest and most valuable diamonds ever discovered worth around $250 million

but that's not all this gem has some unusual properties that highlight what makes d so [Music] special Jeffrey post the curator of the national gem collection is researching this Stone in the lab he demonstrates a phenomenon that sets the Hope Diamond apart from most others we can take an ultraviolet light and we can expose the Hope Diamond to the ultrav light and we'll leave it on for about 10 or 15 seconds also notice that one of the white diamonds on the outside flues very bright blue and so now we're going to turn the room lights

off and I'll turn off the ultraviolet light and we can see the intense orange glow the property called phosphorescence for years this glow was attributed to a curse cast Over The Diamond when it was stolen from an Indian temple centuries ago but post isn't superstitious so here you've got supposedly a cursed Diamond that glows this blood red color well you know that's a great story in itself but then the scientist in many of us says well why does it do that post and his team investigate using a spectrometer and an instrument that analyzes wavelengths of

light the spectrometer shows that the hopes distinct Hue comes from two colors aqua and red the team can now Identify two chemical elements in the diamond Boron and nitrogen suddenly now I understand what is going on when this Di is phosphoros boron makes the stone blue when combined with nitrogen the stone shines red chemicals not a curse make the Hope glow it's not the red glow that excites scientists but the element that makes the Hope blue Boron Boron does more than color diamonds it also allows them to conduct electricity blue diamonds because of the Boron

present in them are in fact semiconductors of electricity which makes them very different than other diamonds that are pure carbon pure white diamonds are electrical insulators try to pass a current through them and nothing happens but blue Boron Rich diamonds like the hope are electrical conductors the extra atoms of boron interact with the existing Diamond atoms letting an electrical current pass through but all diamonds not just blue diamonds have another useful property they transfer heat better than any material [Music] known if science could make synthetic diamonds that both conduct electricity and transfer heat they could

revolutionize a critical component of daily life the semiconductor semiconductors are the vital component in nearly every electronic device in transmitting electricity to the Precision control of microchip technology for the past 50 years these devices have been made almost exclusively from Silicon but silicon has a major drawback the more electricity it carries the hotter it gets the result most silicon chips require complex cooling technology if they exceed about 300° F they'll shut down one of the huge hurdles that are facing manufacturers is that they have to be able to remove the heat away from these electronic

systems you know think of your own laptop at home as you're operating it it's gets hot and so this becomes a big problem right now they're using Metals mostly to do that but diamonds in fact are much better conductors of heat than metals are with the discovery that blue diamonds transfer heat and conduct electricity scientists can imagine the unimaginable a world Beyond silicon a world where everything from your cell phone to a spacecraft runs on diamonds diamonds can carry 30 times more power than silicon and operate three times faster and they're so efficient at transferring

heat they could run a computer at speeds that would melt a silicon chip they also resist temperatures over 1, 1800° F to be able to coat Electronics with diamond or use pieces of diamond as the heat sinks would certainly offer a whole new direction for the manufacturer of even smaller more uh more powerful electronic devices despite their eye-catching Sparkle Diamond's real potenti potential has been overlooked for centuries the possibilities for technology are almost endless but there's one problem diamonds are rare and expensive natural semiconducting diamonds like the hope are thousands of times more rare and

they don't come in the right shape or size for industrial use so scientists are trying to create a synthetic super diamond with all the powers of a natural blue diamond but in a size and shape of our [Music] design to succeed in creating a super diamond scientists must first discover how Nature Made hers and for the answer they look to the Stars for scientists to create a synthetic super diamond they must first Get Back to Basics and investigate the ingredients of a natural diamond for all their Rarity diamonds are made from one of the most

familiar elements on Earth carbon carbon is so fundamental it forms the basis of everything around us even we are 18% carbon it's so common it's estimated that our planet contains over 100 million billion tons of it but carbon doesn't originate on Earth it comes from long ago and far away a star on the brink of death a red giant astrophysicist Neil degrass Tyson studies carbon's dramatic formation well the universe is born without any carbon our sort of birth ingredients or hydrogen and helium and just Trace Amounts of lithium so carbon comes later carbon is forged

in the cores of stars this red giant star once looked like our Sun but as it ages it grows over a thousand times bigger instead of glowing white hot it glows red as it reaches the end of its life it's running out of [Music] fuel its core is now composed almost completely of helium in its death throws a nuclear reaction in the core breaks down helium and F uses it together in a new configuration carbon dying red giants are the universe's carbon factories eventually the star explodes in a white hot flash so strong that billions

of tons of carbon are flung out into the farthest reaches of space what happens is the star collap collapses and the entire core in response to this collapse rebounds and explodes Titanic explosion we call a supernova and its guts are scattered everywhere and it's it's a spectacle it's so much of a spectacle that you can see these stars explode halfway across the universe in time the vast cloud of debris from the explosion is pulled into orbit around a New Star as this debris spins it clumps together over millions of years these clumps grow and planets

begin to form this is how our solar system and our planet itself was born and it's why Earth holds the raw ingredient for diamonds bu deep in huge quantities carbon for scientists hoping to create a super diamond a problem the form carbon usually takes is weak carbon in its most familiar form is graphite great for pencils but far too soft for High-Tech products Bob Hazen research scientist at Washington DC's Carnegie Institution is an expert on carbon and diamond formation you know what's amazing diamond and graphite are made out of the same element carbon but they're

so vastly different graphite has these planes of weakness and you can see how every one of these black dots the carbon atoms are connected to three other carbon atoms in a triangle but in Diamond every carbon atom is now connected to four adjacent and this trellis this network this lattice so diamond is strong in every direction that's the difference for scientists hoping to create a super diamond making it hard will be tough they have to recreate a diamond's lattice-like [Music] structure to do that they have to figure out how nature turns basic carbon into a

dazzling in Diamond scientists are on a quest to figure out how to make a super diamond their search begins here South Africa Diamond capital of the world diamonds were discovered in these rocks in the 19th century hundreds of thousands have been mined here but only recently did scientists learn how they actually formed Professor Steve haggardi is an expert on how diamonds are created diamonds were real mystery in terms of the origin they were found in clusters so you found one diamond and by goly there would be others to be found as well so that led

to the notion that the process in which the diamonds were brought to the surface was possibly deep diamonds form deep within the Earth in an area called the mantle the layer between the Earth's crust and its superheated core down here intense pressure changes the molecular structure of carbon by crushing its atoms together and forcing them into a new lattice-like structure under extreme pressure and temperatures carbon becomes diamonds the temperatures have to reach about 1500° centigrade and the pressures about 50 kilbom that's 2,700 de F and the weight of over 4,000 grown men standing on your

foot the journey from a dying star to a diamond mine is almost complete 100 Mil still remain between their Source in the mantle and the Earth's surface luckily they're fast tracked to the surface by a substance called kimberlite kimberlite is a rock it's the host Rock to Diamonds even though the diamonds do not form in the Rock it's the transporter kimberlite is a volcanic rock that forms deep within the Earth as it moves to the surface it creates a carrot-shaped pipe filled with molten rock mantle fragments and diamonds when it breaks through the crust it

erupts in small but violent volcanoes I like to think of these as Volcan of opportunity these rows they picked up the diamonds from their safe deposit box es deep in the earth about 200 km down and then were explosively erupted at the surface magma builds up a mound of volcanic material that eventually cools and hardens hidden within the rock are diamonds incredibly rare perfectly formed crystals surrounded by [Music] kimberlite rarer still are blue boron diamonds like the Hope less than one in 100,000 Form This Way 4 billion years from a dying star to the Earth's

surface yet in a matter of days scientists aim to turn raw carbon into Super diamonds in order to produce anything of that nature it would require extraordinarily High high temperatures and pressures it turns out that it's not very easy to transform graphite into Diamond the attempt began in the 1950s when General Electric launched project super [Applause] pressure their goal to create the first synthetic diamond they develop machines to crush graphite at nearly 800,000 lb per Square in and heat it above 2500° F replicating the very forces in the Earth's mantle it takes 5 years and

millions of dollars but finally in February 1955 GE announces they've done it the world's first synthetic industrial diamond over 50 years later just outside Johannesburg South Africa a lab called element 6 continues the Quest for synthetic diamonds following ge's lead they synthesized diamonds on a mass scale not for jewelry but for heavy industry scientist Richard Bodkin is a pioneer of industrial Diamond research we have Banks and banks of presses that are capable of producing diamonds in no fewer than 45 minutes to see such technology room after room is absolutely amazing the diamonds they produce start

as a highly pure form of graphite powder it's baked inside a pressure chamber between 2500 and 3600 de f effectively you're stacking 20 sedan motor cars on it and heating it between 1400 and 2,000 de C the result is a diamond 50% harder than those found in nature and element six can produce handfuls these diamonds have revolutionized the drilling and Mining Industries the friction from drilling into hard rocks like Granite generates high temperatures that can damage ordinary drills but Diamond tip drills transmit heat away from the drill tip oil and gas drilling benefits immensely from

diamonds simply because we can drill faster and deeper with diamonds one shortcoming industrial diamonds are small the next challenge is to create diamonds large enough to be printed with circuit boards or shaped into other high-tech devices it's a challenge that the Sarasota Florida company gemesis is tackling using a special machine they actually grow large diamonds they start with a seed a microscopic Diamond either natural or artificial and Surround it with graphite it's a delicate process that shows how hard it is to create large diamonds in charge of the process is Chief Operating Officer Clark mccuan

we take graphite and we put it along with a an actual diamond seed into an environment that emulates what happens within the Earth these two forms of carbon the diamond seed and the graphite are placed inside the chamber where they're heated and crushed by a powerful hydraulic press as you apply that temperature and pressure what happens is that graphite turns into individual carbon atoms and those atoms permeate down and it finds that diamond seed and it attaches to it it it it acts as a template as the graphite melts it releases carbon atoms which crystallize

on top of the diamond seed molecule by molecule the diamond grows what nature does in 4 billion years they do in 4 days the result a large artificial gem up to three times larger than the seed with this breakthrough scientists can now consistently make large diamonds but the real breakthrough that scientists need is Yet to Come gemesis can't grow diamonds in the shapes needed for High-Tech use we haven't gotten there yet but we're constantly working on improving the process and making larger and better quality diamonds scientists are trying to create a large diamond with all

the properties of a real diamond but in shapes and sizes not found in nature from circuit boards to scalpel blades the uses could be endless as scientists struggle to Perfect The Diamond a clue hurdles toward Earth from an unlikely place [Music] after years of research scientists discovered how to make gem siiz diamonds one hurdle remains to making a true super diamond making them in any shape and size science needs a breakthrough and it comes from space these strange objects look like burnt Stones they've been found in South America and Central Africa tests reveal a surprise

the stones are actually diamonds black diamonds these are two of the famous black diamonds called carbonado because of the uh similarity to Charcoal carbonado has been known for centuries but how it forms remains a mystery only recently has its potential value to science [Music] emerged George harlo of the American Museum of Natural History is investigating what makes carbonado so special carbonado is a conundrum because it it it doesn't have the characteristics that we associate with diamonds that formed in the mantle on Earth diamonds originating in Earth's mantle form under immense pressure and high temperature so

they're Compact and dense not black diamonds using a microscope scientists find they're riddled with holes it's got a lot of void space in it now deep within the Earth the void would have to be filled with something well the something ain't there normal diamonds contain very little void space as they form deep in the earth they're crushed into a single Crystal carbonado seems to form differently [Music] unlike normal diamonds it's composed not of one Crystal but Millions all linked [Music] together scientists conclude carbonado formed not under high pressure like normal diamonds but low pressure but

just where does carbonado come from once again research leads to the last gasp of a Dying red giant the current theory for the origin and Genesis of carbonado is that these the small diamonds formed in Supernova explosions haggardi believes the vacuum of space explains carbon's unique structure the diamonds were hot at one Diamond bashing into the other and they finally became glued at to form a large Diamond during its explosive formation specs of mineral dust are also trapped making the large Diamond appear black the diamonds are then transported to Earth by a meteorite when the

meteorite hit it showered diamonds so this must have been a truly amazing site with carbonado diamonds being liberated from the meteori on impact it's not just the large size of space diamonds that Fascinate scientists carbonado has another advantage over regular diamonds its multicrystal structure makes it not only larger but tougher it's almost impossible to cut not so a natural diamond although it's one of the hardest materials known it has its weaknesses you know Diamond's incredibly hard but it can be broken along certain planes they're called cleavage planes and it just happens that there's certain directions

in Diamond where there are few fewer strong bonds and that's the direction the diamond opens a natural single crystal diamond will split cleanly where its chemical bonds are weakest by following this cleavage plane a gem cutter can split the stone perfectly for scientists this weakness in single crystal diamonds is a fatal flaw diamonds that might fracture aren't durable enough for High-Tech use [Music] the key to making a tough super diamond lies in replicating carbon's multicrystal structure their theory of how carbonado forms in the vacuum of space yields another breakthrough a whole new way to make

diamonds the space dim have now taught us that in fact we don't need pressure at all that's going to be done in a vacuum carbonado sets the stage for a new kind of super diamond one tougher and larger than ever that can be made into multicrystal shapes not found in nature the key is using low pressure to simulate the vacuum of space how do you make a diamond in a vacuum when diamonds only stable at high pressure and the way you do it is by fooling the carbons into being so energetic so excited that when

you cool them down they find a more stable configuration and the first one they find is diamond and they don't go any [Music] farther this process is called chemical vapor deposition cvd for short it begins with a T diamond seed sealed inside a vacuum chamber slightly below atmospheric pressure the chamber is heated to 3,600 de F then methane a carbon bearing gas is pumped in then hydrogen the gases are bombarded with microwaves which agitates them forcing the high hydrogen and methane molecules to collide this process releases a cloud of carbon atoms that settle on the

seed and gradually the diamond grows this was the seed they started with 24 hours later it doubles in size at the US Naval research laboratory in Washington DC James Butler is taking this cvd process to the next level they're growing not single stones but wafer thin Diamond sheets one of the materials we grow starts with a non-diamond material for example a silicon wafer onto which we put a very thin layer of these little diamond seeds think about shaking salt onto the kitchen table and having a whole bunch of salt crystals there and then put them

in the cvd environment and they will grow and as they they grow together they bump into each other and they become this Mass so it's all diamond but with many different grains of different orientations each diamond crystal bonds to another to form a mesh of crystals across the wafer less than a 50th of an inch thick they can be made up to 8 in wide the shape of the template determines the shape of the diamond sheet perfect for making a wafer to replicate silicon they're much tougher than natural diamonds they conduct electricity and resist extreme

[Music] heat these are true super [Music] diamonds Super diamonds have been filmed with image intensifiers that show how much more efficient diamonds are at conducting heat than than the copper traditionally used in electronic components the left plate is made of synthetic diamond on the right copper the two plates are placed in ice and attached to a thermal image intensifier which records heat as it travels through an object as the diamond plate on the left shows it conducts heat faster than copper up to five times times faster it's this unparalleled quality that puts the super in

super diamond scientists are excited for the first time they have a material that could challenge the domination of silicon microchips made from Diamond Wafers can run electronic devices at higher speeds and with more power without overheating faster smaller and more efficient razor thin computers longlasting cell phones and picture perfect TV screens I think the future of diamond is very exciting particularly I think cvd Diamond opens up what many of us have been calling the new diamond age electronics are only the beginning today scientists can make diamonds in shapes and sizes for uses that could revolutionize

[Music] tomorrow researchers at the Carnegie Institution in Washington are trying to solve some of science's biggest mysteries from how compressed gas can conduct electricity to how microscopic life can survive in extreme conditions these investigations need extremely high pressures which they create using a powerful Vice called a diamond Anvil cell it squeezes an object between two Diamond tips creating a tiny environment of high pressure between [Music] them it can recreate forces as Extreme as pressure in the center of the Earth for the Carnegie team's experiments this wasn't extreme enough but when they push the pressure higher

they hit a snag the diamond shattered Russ Hemley director of the geophysical lab decided to upgrade the Anvil by making an ultra hard super diamond well our group has been very interested in using diamond for high pressure experiments for many many years and we basically needed to take this to the next level we needed better Diamond stronger diamond larger Diamond that could be provided by Mother Earth or from uh conventional processes to create his super diamond Hemley used a version of the cvd method to speed up the growth rate the team then exposed the crystals

to a high pressure high temperature treatment to further Harden them the result another leap forward for super Diamonds the diamond not only grew many times faster it also grew bigger 15 carats in just 6 days they created a stone 1/3 the size and 50% stronger than the Hope Diamond a gem that took nature billions of years to forge the new super diamond was so tough it broke hemley's hardness gauge when used in the diamond Anvil this new super diamond proved the Breakthrough he needed this can produce pressures that are millions of times the pressures found

at the surface of our planet now he can simulate forces so extreme they've never been studied before like those deep in the Earth's mantle where pressures reach up to 1300 kobs that's nearly 20 million lbs per square in this improved instrument lets Hemley study some of our biggest questions like is there life in outer space hemley's team takes two common strains of bacteria including eoli they place them in a liquid and crank up the super diamond Anvil the liquid turns into a dense form of ice under the intense pressure most of the bacteria are destroyed

but incredibly 1% survive if bacteria can survive these harsh conditions maybe life exists in outer space perhaps on other [Music] planets thanks to Super diamonds created under low pressure diamonds will reshape the future super diamonds will change Communications everywhere especially on the battlefield in constant use and battered by the elements equipment like radios often break down in the harsh conditions of [Music] combat but imagine if they were made of super diamonds all already they can be shaped into tiny sound transmitters called nanoresonators making vital radios and computers more robust and efficient they can vibrate up

to 100 billion times per second to create the highest quality sound yet achieved yet they're tough as Nails all this from a diamond a thousand times smaller than the width of a human head it's not just soldiers who will benefit Diamond resonators will eventually be used in everyday devices like cell phones allowing longer talk time and Crystal Clear reception the same Sparkle that attracts us to Diamond Jewelry reveals another of its Secrets its Clarity it's transparent to light it slows down light that passes through it as light enters a diamond the dense carbon structure slows

it down to less than half its normal speed as it reflects inside the stone the light appears to hang around longer you can actually Force light to completely internally reflect and come out at some other angle that's why diamonds look radiant cuz light comes in from One Direction comes out another it makes you think it's gener its own light but it's not all it did was redistribute the light coming in from other angles it's remarkable now you know why diamonds sparkle the unique Optical Clarity of diamond the perfect material for Hightech Optical uses diamond is

transparent across a huge spectrum of light from ultraviolet to infrared it's the only substance through which light passes virtually unaltered the 8 from Super diamonds NASA can make super hard super clear windows the possibilities for super diamonds are endless soon you may find a diamond everywhere from your desk to your Galaxy the future of diamond just seeing the very beginning of it and uh I mean the the the stars are are the uh the limit when it comes to what we're going to be able to do with diamond in the future nature took billions of

years to Perfect The Diamond now we make super diamonds in days tougher bigger and better the new synthetic diamonds that's a technology that's going to take us place we've never been before it's going to take science new directions it's going to allow us to do things we could never do before so the natural diamond we treasure that as an object the synthetic diamond that will give us knowledge like steel transistors and silicon synthetic diamonds could revolutionize [Music] life Welcome to the age of super diamonds oh [Music] Venus Earth's evil twin it's clouds made of battery

acid at 900° its surface hot enough to melt lead Venus is pretty much uh like the the biblical vision of hell today this may be the most hostile real estate in the solar system yet billions of years ago Venus looked a lot like Earth why it changed nobody knows a new prob is on a mission to find out what turned Venus from a promising Eden into an infernal Wasteland and is Earth destined to end up like Venus [Music] November 9th 2005 a Russian sawu rocket launches from Kazakhstan carrying a tiny European spacecraft called Venus express

its mission to travel the 250 million miles to Venus and find out why the planet evolves so differently from Earth for centuries Venus's surface remained an enigma obscured by layers of dense clouds because Venus is closer to the Sun than earth scientists assumed it would be hot and humid some even imagined a tropical Paradise the perfect hot house for [Music] Life Venus should be about the same temperature as the Earth um and that's what we thought back in the 50s and early 60s we thought Venus should be like Miami [Music] Florida what was really going

on beneath the clouds in the 1960s and70s while NASA explored Mars the Soviet Union launched a probe to Venus codenamed Venera the craft beam backed the first images of the planet surface not a Tropical Paradise but a hostile desert lots of dust and no water Venus resembles its twin earth in in many ways similar in size and composition they were probably formed from the same cloud of gas over 4 billion years ago but unlike Earth 85% of its surface is made up of extinct volcanoes and solidified lava the clouds are composed of deadly sulfuric acid

atmospheric pressure is 90 times greater than on Earth enough to crush a car but the biggest surprise is temperature the atmosphere is nearly all carbon dioxide as on Earth this gas acts like glass in a greenhouse admitting light but trapping heat on Earth increasing levels of carbon dioxide are raising temperatures a few degrees but on Venus the greenhouse effect has pushed temperatures through the ceiling to levels hot enough to melt lead we get there to find out that it's 900° fenhe and it was very shocking the surface is so hot rocks glow in the dark

Venus would disorient a visitor from Earth under permanent cloud cover you'd lose your bearings No Stars no sun no Shadows to find out how these two identical twins Venus and Earth grew to be so different Venus Express carries state-of-the-art instruments designed to unlock the planet secrets but the spacecraft's first challenge is just getting there in one piece 5 months and 250 million miles later the spacecraft nears Venus and the most dangerous stage to achieve orbit we'll take perfect speed and timing space is never really safe there's always something that can go wrong and uh you

have to kind of provide for contingencies for that too fast and Venus Express will fly off into endless space too slow and the planet's gravitational pull will bring it crashing to the surface uh the actual day of of arrival you have about an hour an hour and a half that you're it's really kind of tricky you want to make sure you hit the right spot relative to Venus and that you're bending around Venus the right way to get into orbit Venus Express must reduce speed by 3,000 M an hour April 11th 2006 the engine fires

to slow down the [Music] craft for 10 minutes Venus Express vanishes behind the planet if it fails to achieve orbit it's lost no Second [Music] Chances a 4-year Mission hangs on hitting the brakes just right the most critical Maneuvers happening out of sight and out of sound from the earth so it's a very hairing time because you do lose Communications for for 10 minutes and and everybody's on pins and needles to see what what happens at 9:57 a.m. Venus Express transmits a signal to Earth the spacecraft's pioneering orbit begins a multi-million dollar quest to unlock

Venus's Secrets but first it has to get closer on an elliptical course around the planet's poles the craft drops down from 40,000 m above the surface to just 155 miles now the work Begins the technology on board is a Quantum Leap Forward from the last mission to Venus in 1990 before a probe couldn't analyze Venus's surface without Landing all the probes had a short life crushed by the pressure melted by the Heat and corroded by the acid with this Mission scientists have found a way to study the surface without landing and keep their probes safe

Venus Express views the planet using infrared a wavelength not visible to the human eye unlike visible light the infrared can penetrate areas of cloud that are less dense allowing the probe to peer through the clouds to the clear atmosphere below now for the first time scientists can reveal Venus in 3D from the ground up with Venus when you look at the visible eye you're limited to the very top 1% of the atmosphere the upper regions you see these hazes when you get the ability to look with the infrared light that allows you to pierce right

through all these hazes and see down much lower into the atmosphere in fact you can go to the surface from 155 miles up scientists will exploit these infrared Windows to map the surface in detail never never before seen their map will document exactly how Venus and Earth differ then they hope to find out [Music] why despite Decades of exploration our sister planet can still surprise us and soon Venus Express makes a stunning discovery a spacecraft orbits Venus on a mission to solve a mystery Venus should be like Earth but billions of years ago our twin

went its own way and evolved into the burning rock it is [Music] today while studying the outer edge of the atmosphere Venus Express discovers the first clue to what went wrong it detects particles escaping into space mainly helium hydrogen and oxygen hydrogen and oxygen make water for years scientists debated whether Venus's atmosphere held any water some argued if early Earth had water so did Venus perhaps enough to form an ocean covering 90% of the planet yet Venus Express detects only a small amount of water vapor in the atmosphere if you condensed all that Vapor onto

the whole planet it would create a layer of water barely an inch deep if Venus once had a vast ocean what happened to it most scientists once thought it simply boiled away but as Venus Express orbits the planet scientists are forming a new Theory they believe the culprit is still the Sun but the cause is more than simple event evaporation the sun sustains life on Earth it also blasts out a constant stream of deadly charged particles they race out at speeds of up to 1,800,000 M an hour it's called the solar wind and it can

devastate unprotected planets surrounding Earth is a magnetic field field that safeguards our atmosphere this field is formed by movement in our iron core as the planet spins but Venus has no magnetic field scientists believe it may rotate too slowly to generate one the rotation is so slow a day here lasts almost 2/3 of an earth year on Earth one rotation takes 24 hours on Venus 2 43 days well without a magnetic field like Earth's Venus is much more vulnerable to being affected by the solar wind and by energy in the upper atmosphere stripping the atmosphere

off into space scientists now believe a combination of evaporation and solar wind stri the planet of its moisture Venus is closer to the Sun than we are therefore hotter its primeval Seas evaporated into the atmosphere that water vapor might still be trapped in the clouds if not for the solar wind the oceans ultimately boil off and then when you have all that water as vapor in the atmosphere it's very vulnerable to being broken up by ultraviolet sunlight into hydrogen and oxygen and then the hydrogen escapes into space and uh there you have it after a

few billion years youve lost your oceans the solar wind smashes into the atmosphere ripping the molecules from the clouds over billions of years the water is Lost in Space the oxygen and hydrogen detected in the atmosphere are the last drops of those ancient oceans loss of water turned Venus from a warm Wet Planet to a burning Rock the atmosphere changed too from water vapor to carbon dioxide ancient volcanoes released trillions of tons of CO2 and set off a chain reaction a a runaway greenhouse effect leading to global warming gone mad the energy for both climate

and weather on planets all comes from sunlight so now imagine that this is sunlight heading towards the surface of a planet and on a planet like Earth where there's not much atmosphere as represented by these atmospheric molecules here in blue most of the sunlight will miss the atmosphere and just make it to the surface and occasionally you'll have sunlight scattering off an atmospheric molecule but for the most part you just have these yellow rays of sunlight reflecting off the surface now let's set up again and uh look at what happens on Venus and I'm putting

much more gas in the atmosphere because now we're simulating Venus which has 100 times as thick an atmosphere as Earth okay so here's our thick venusian atmosphere here we are back out in space and let's see what happens to the sunlight in this much thicker atmosphere on Venus and you'll see maybe a very occasional Ray of sunlight hits the surface but in almost all cases it gets absorbed in the atmosphere the trapped sunlight heats up Venus's atmosphere and any sunlight that reaches the surface worsens the [Music] situation so here we are on Venus our hot

surface radiating infrared and is it making it out into space generally no not only is it getting absorbed into the atmosphere but some of it is bouncing back to the surface Surf and so on Venus the infrared radiation is trapped by the thick atmosphere and the surface and the atmosphere end up heating up the process resembles what's happening on Earth but on Venus it's out of control Earth's twin is now the hottest planet in our solar system even hotter than Mercury the planet closest to the Sun Venus is the poster child for climate catastrophe devastating

global warming and a cosmic hellhole if Earth were nearer to the sun it would look like Venus the major difference between Earth and Venus in terms of the evolution of the planets is all about Venus being closer to the Sun uh we think that they formed kind of as identical twins and then it is a different uh sort of experience of growing up in slightly different neighborhoods closer to the Sun and farther from the Sun that led to this huge Divergence we see today life on Earth may be a lucky break but in the end

we share the same fate if you think of the long-term future of the Earth Earth will go the direction of Venus because the sun is heating up and I'm not talking about on a short time scale if we think about billions of years in the future really you know cosmological time scales then Earth is destined to end up like Venus scientists long guessed Venus was once like Earth Venus Express has shown how it evolved into a Barren world more Revelations lie beneath the clouds on the surface the clouds look calm but when the spacecraft switches

on its infrared thermal imaging spectrometer its images show how the scene transforms violent storms rip across the planet at the poles monstrous Cyclones churn the atmosphere storm systems that make earth worst weather look like a [Music] breeze as scientists study this mysterious planet they make a startling observation while Venus rotates slowly its atmospheric winds travel fast Venus Express observes winds circling the planet in a mere four Earth days that's 60 times faster than the planet's rotation [Music] speed scientists call this super rotation if Earth were like Venus winds would whip around the planet in just

30 minutes a speed of 50,000 mph and you think about the rotation of the earth uh you know you've got the rotation rate of the solid Planet 24 hours um and and then uh the atmosphere sort of going along for the ride but uh with Venus it's almost as if the atmosphere doesn't really care what the solid surface is doing it's got a mind of its own and is rotating much faster than the solid surface on earth wind speed nearly matches rotation speed so why do Venus's winds travel so much faster than the planet spins

the answer lies in the clouds on Venus the cloud layer is up to 12 Mi thick so thick only a small amount of solar energy reaches the surface much of this energy is retained in the upper clouds 40 m above above the surface this Energy starts the clouds moving at break neck speeds because Venus is closer to the Sun than Earth the greater the solar energy in its clouds and the greater the wind speeds winds rare on Earth over 200 M an hour are typical on Venus Venus Express is equipped to solve a riddle found

by an earlier Mission a vortex at Venus's North Pole similar to vortices on Earth we call them hurricanes on Earth they form when warm moist air from the ocean is heated by the Sun and Rises to form clouds as more energy enters the system the clouds start to to spin creating a hurricane but Venus has no warm oceans for fuel so what powers its hurricanes Venus Express swings down to the southern hemisphere for a closer look what it finds blows scientists away a vast hurricane likee Vortex 12200 M wide and 13 M deep four times

larger than the largest hurricane on Earth not one but two rotating eyes scientists believe the cause of the vortices is not only super fast winds it's the very motion of the planet a huge Vortex is caused by all the air flowing in from the equator and then it has to sink somewhere which causes this enormous Vortex which is some 2,000 km across Wilson believes air from the equator flows to the poles where it's sucked down to form the vortex but this air doesn't move in a straight line the planet's rotation deflects its motion He suggests

this process called the Coriolis effect produces the giant vortices let's explain the Corola effect using this rotating table it's the same for a rotating Planet if I let this ball roll across the table you'll see that it runs in a straight line and that's because you the Observer are stationary you're not rotating with the table whereas if on the other hand we switch to a camera angle or another Observer who's rotating with the planet uh this ball will appear to travel in a curve trajectory so if you if the Observer is rotating with the planet

then uh it appears that objects experience a force to the right and this works not only for balls but also for Parcels of air in the atmosphere if the air at Venus is heated at the equator and moves towards the poles it's then bent towards the right uh if it's in the Southern Hemisphere or towards the left if it's in the northern hemisphere as the winds move toward the poles the Coriolis effect makes the spin which creates the vortex Wilson's Theory seems logical vortices also occur at Earth's poles but while Earth's polar vortex is relatively

stable the double-eyed monster on Venus is an Ever shifting Whirlwind to find out what makes the vortex so chaotic recreate [Music] it Wilson uses water to simulate Venus's atmosphere we've got the rotating atmosphere simulated by the rotating tank and then we've got this thin ring here which spins at a different speed faster than the rest of the atmosphere and what we find is that the flow in this region is unstable sort of oscillates in and out and we think that's quite representative of what happens around the edges of the polar vortex on Venus when Wilson

adds die his simulation reveals the shifting shapes at the edge of the [Music] vortex these chaotic winds show the power of Venus's atmosphere but vortices aren't the only bizarre weather on June 9th 2006 Venus Express discovers an eerie phenomenon the spacecraft detects an intermittent disturbance that sounds like a whistle a brief lowf frequency electromagnetic burst this is the actual recording to anyone else baffling but to the mission team a revelation the signature of lightning UCLA's Professor Christopher Russell has long believed lightning occurs on Venus the spacecraft's discovery presents a riddle on earth water drives thunderstorms

warm moist air collides with cold air water droplets and ice crystals rub together creating positive and negative charges the electrical buildup discharges as Lightning Venus's atmosphere has little water most of it has been Stripped Away by the solar wind so what else could produce lightning thanks to data from Venus Express a controversial Theory gathers new weight Russell's candidate for the cause of lightning clouds of sulfuric acid on Earth sulfuric acid clouds form when sulfur dioxide is released from volcanoes and mixes with water vapor the same thing happens on Venus two decades ago project mellan the

first spacecraft to map Venus discovered widespread evidence of a volcanic past over eons volcanoes release trillions of tons of sulfur d oxide some remained as a gas the rest mixed with water vapor to form sulfuric acid clouds the speeding winds energize these acid clouds and create ideal conditions for lightning we think now that it's sulfuric acid clouds and Venus's winds and the winds can then uh provide the energy source in the cloud for the charge separation sulfuric acid does on Venus what water does on Earth acid drops rub together and create positive and negative charges

I was uh looking for lightning and looking for the uh proof that it uh really existed and to find it is like a personal Victory the discovery of lightning is electrifying lightning is an ingredient of Life an even greater shock was in store the hellish Planet might not be dead eons ago Venus's volcanoes spewed out vast clouds of sulfur but today tests show the level of sulfur is fluctuating since volcanoes discharge lots of sulfur only when they erupt the fluctuations mean one thing the volcanoes on Venus must still be active scientists have found active volcanoes

in only a few places besides Earth in 2007 the New Horizon's probe captured an eruption on iO one of Jupiter's moons to find active volcanoes in the inner solar solar system is big news it means Venus may not be a dead Rock but a living planet Venus Express takes a closer look the probe exploits the infrared Windows to peer through the clouds below mountains and valleys smooth Plains impact craters and flat top features like pancakes all made of [Music] lava 85% of Venus's surface is paved with lava why so much puzzled scientists to understand Venus's

vast lava Fields scientists look to its calmer twin Earth's crust is made up of interlocking tectonic plates that drift over its liquid mantle most of our planet's volcanic activity is found where these plates move together or pull apart allowing heat from the core to escape no Mission has ever found evidence of plate tectonics on Venus its crust is solid without plate Tech tonics to cool Venus scientists suggest heat from The Core built till it couldn't be contained then virtually the whole planet erupted releasing so much lava it recycled the crust and resurfaced the planet this

is a demonstration of the Venus resurfacing we're going to demonstrate with some pudding in a pan over a hot plate and this heat from the hot plate represents radioactive heat from the inside of Venus and here we're seeing the first signs of the Interior heating the crust on the surface and that crust is stagnant it's not moving it's keeping the heat inside and perhaps at this moment the surface might even crack in some places and the uh molten material the molten rock under the crust would erupt and flow out onto the surface covering up all

the crater and all the mountains and at this point we can see several small volcanic eruptions along those fissures scientists date the resurfacing to 500 million years ago a slow process that took tens of millions of years this cataclysmic series of eruptions released trillions of tons of sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide replenishing what the solar wind removed yet surveys of Venus reveal not all the planet was resurfaced rocks in the highlands are much older than the lava covering most of the planet they offer a clue to conditions in the distant past Kevin Baines discovered these

rocks weren't born on dry land on Venus most of the rocks are basalts made out of volcanoes spewing out their lava but we have found a very interesting result in the last few months that is the highlands are special on the highlands the tall mountains of Venus we're finding evidence of rocks that were created in the presence of water as if billions of years ago they were formed perhaps in an ocean and then geologic processes have risen them up since then the Rocks provide hard proof that Venus once had oceans which raises a provocative question

on Earth life began in the oceans the other ingredient to Kickstart life is lightning and lightning occurs on Venus if Venus had water and lightning did it once have life scientists have plenty of proof that Venus and Earth were once Twins and that Venus had two of the ingredients of Life water and lightning lightning is important because it's uh something that produces exotic species uh for example nitrogen and oxygen combined to produce uh nitrogen oxides which are important for life and important for producing chemicals that can't be produced any other way in a planetary environment

with water and the means to Kickstart Evolution perhaps Venus once had life and maybe still does the first Clues arrive from Venus Express 155 Mi above the surface a camera is switched to ultraviolet unlike infrared the shorter wavelength of UV is scattered by Venus's Cloud layer enabling the scientists to explore the upper regions of the atmosphere their images reveal intriguing dark markings where more UV is being absorbed this shows that something beside sulfuric acid is trapping sunlight the mission team calls the dark areas absorb ion patches there's been great interest in the ultraviolet absorbers on

Venus they absorb about half of the sunlight that's hitting the planet they're in the Clouds of Venus and it's been suggested that they might be associated with life forms life forms like microbes living in Hurricane force winds and sulfuric acid clouds using UV light in some weird photosynthesis but what kind of life could survive such conditions biologist Lyn Rothchild studies organisms that live in extreme environments she has discovered microbes called extremophiles thriving in some of the harshest conditions on earth like Yellowstone National Park with the highest concentration of thermal Springs in the world it opens

a window into how life might survive on [Music] Venus what you see behind me is really Ground Zero for where people started to understand organisms that could live in extremely acidic conditions before that people thought conditions like oh like lemon juice would be totally outside the realm of where a living organism could be these geysers powered by volcanoes mimic conditions on Venus hot and acidic this um stream is just phenomenal it's about o ph3 it's about 40° Centigrade little little hotter than warm to the ouch actually it's fairly warm to the touch what you see

in here is almost a pure culture of some red algae I know it looks green but they are actually red Al don't have a red pigment extremophiles like these can survive in battery acid and temperatures above boiling point these organisms have evolved to survive not only the Heat and the acid but levels of other chemicals that would kill most life these particular organisms cyanidium are really neat because not only do they live at low ph and a warm temperatures and they photosynthesize but they've been shown to be able to survive in pure CO2 pure carbon

dioxide even Venus doesn't have as high a carbon dioxide level as that the organisms show life can survive hot acidic carbon dioxid Rich environments like [Music] Venus if life can survive in yellow Stone why not on Venus scientists believe the surface itself is too Savage temperatures reach 900° and the pressure is bone crushing but not in the clouds 30 m up temperatures reach only 176° much closer to the kind of heat microbes endure on Earth could life have begun in Venus's ancient oceans when the water evaporated the microbes may have gone with it here in

the cooler acidic clouds they could survive but how can life exist without water there is water vapor up in the clouds in Venus and we have some indication that organisms on the earth for example lyans can use water Vaper as their source of water so that's pretty encouraging for Life In The Clouds at least in terms of having water available to see if life exists in moist acidic clouds Rothchild collects air samples above a hot spring the acidic steam mimics the clouds of Venus I can see a little green on the mouse here that's encouraging

maybe there really is something in there analysis shows microbes can exist in hot acidic steam suggesting life may survive in Venus's clouds to further test the theory Lynn sends organisms High into the atmosphere she's launched a whole spectrum of microbes once it clears that weight by itself that matches the we or summ to over 100,000 ft a Zone where temperature and pressure drop so low most life would die okay now let's hope we put enough in it many of her subjects survived some researchers have even found organisms that can reproduce high up in the atmosphere

the clouds on Venus are continuous and longlived so you could imagine creatures that live in the clouds and reproduce in the clouds and even seed other Cloud particles and they're not going to last forever because they're going to fall out but as long as they last long enough to reproduce themselves then you could have a self-sustaining colony of life in the clouds research shows life in hot acidic clouds is theoretically possible perhaps microbes live in the Clouds of Venus hidden in those strange dark patches Venus Express has traveled 87 million miles around the planet and

completed 100 weeks of collecting data it proved that Venus once looked like Earth a habitable climate vast oceans perhaps even life but too near the sun Venus was doomed Earth blossomed Venus burned yet even here life may Thrive maybe tucked in blankets of clouds we may have to wait years for the secret to be revealed but someday another mission to Venus may find the Holy Grail of space life beyond our world [Music] Steven Hawking is the world's most famous scientist he's on a quest to answer the biggest question of all how did everything in the

universe come to [Music] exist if we find the answer to that we would know the mind of God Hawking's goal is to discover a blueprint for the universe but he's locked in a battle with a disease that has left him paralyzed and it's advancing can he unlock the secret of creation before his time Runs [Music] Out Steven Hawking is one of the greatest thinkers of all time he's on a quest to understand the moment of creation when the universe is born 20 years ago he writes a book on the subject that becomes an international bestseller

it promises that soon he will have a single Theory so powerful it will explain all the mysteries in the cosmos why did the universe bring into life and will it ever come to an end a theory of everything we are getting close to answering the age old questions why are we here where did we come from his determination to find answers has kept him alive far longer than any doctor predicted Steven has got a tremendous determination to to solve the problems of the universe and and I think that's one of the the the key factors

which has kept him going all these years but he lives his life on borrowed time the idea that my father had a very short lifespan was always present um I think it was there every single day Hawking will not rest until he unlocks The Secret of how the universe came to be my goal is simple it is a complete understanding of the universe why it is as it is and why it exists at all born in 1942 Steven Hawking has always been fascinated by the world around him as a healthy child he wonders what made

the Stars by the time he's a teenager he wants to find out where the entire universe came from in the 1960s scientists have yet to answer that question many believe our universe had no beginning it is timeless and unchanging but a new Theory gains ground everything in our universe exploded from one tiny Point like a shower of fireworks scientists nickname it the Big Bang but how can we suddenly go from nothing to everything in one moment of creation just 20 years old Steven Hawkings first mission is to find out in 1962 he's just started his

PhD at Cambridge University where he's eager to prove himself according to his old friend Kip Thorne Steven was beginning to develop a reputation at that stage but just barely beginning it was not at all obvious at that point that he was going to come to Tower over all the rest of us but it's around this time that Hawking notices he's becoming very clumsy a visit to the hospital leads to a startling diagnosis doctors discover he has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS the disease wastes his muscles before long he will be completely paralyzed within 2 years

he will be dead Hawking is just 21 his dream of unraveling the mysteries of the universe crashes down around him I had just been diagnosed with alss and I didn't know if I would live long enough to finish my doctorate it's the darkest period of his life according to his daughter Lucy Hawking he became very depressed and very saddened um he was casting around at the time for PhD topic but he didn't really see any point in going on so um I think everything seemed very Bleak and very hopeless to him but then Hawking meets

Lucy's mother and they fall in love despite his death sentence getting engaged and getting married to her was for him the turning point that that was the event for him that turned him around and gave him hope and made him decide that he was going to carry on Hawkings sets out to discover the the origin of the universe before his time Runs [Music] Out does the universe in fact have a beginning or an end and if so what are they like scientists remain skeptical that something can come from nothing as the Big Bang predicts Hawking

wants to find out his first break comes in 1965 he attends a by a brilliant mathematician named Roger Penrose Hawking hear something that grabs his interest Steven was in the audience at the back of the room and he was asking some very pertinent and difficult questions penro suggests something astonishing there's a hole in space where huge objects disappear if matter disappears into nothing maybe it can also appear from nothing this could be Hawking's first step towards proving the Big Bang but how can there be a hole in space the answer might lie with gravity Einstein's

general theory of relativity says gravity isn't just a force of attraction it actually bends space Oxford University physicist Pedro Ferrera studies gravity's impact on the universe Einstein realized that gravity wasn't this force that acted between two bodies it was something much more elegant and beautiful Einstein pictures space and time as a fabric planets and stars press on this Fabric and create dips in a stroke of Genius he realizes gravity is not a force but the bends in this fabric the dips pull objects towards them let's imagine this rubber sheet is space these glass balls that

I'm holding in my hand are planets and stars now if you place a planet or a star in the universe on Space it'll create a dip and the bigger the object you place the bigger the dip imagine that the Earth is this coin and I just send it coasting round our sun it'll settle nicely into an orbit it's just following the deformed nature of the fabric of space that's what gravity is and that's what Einstein realized so what we experience as gravity ity is actually the curve of SpaceTime around us the theory of relativity does

force us to fundamentally change our ideas of space and time when that fabric gets stretched to Breaking Point something dramatic happens a hole in space opens up a hole down which things can disappear this chain of events starts when a star dies it begins to collapse in on itself getting smaller and denser if a star 20 times the size of the Sun dies it has a drastic effect on the fabric of SpaceTime if you imagine what this means in terms of the fabric of SpaceTime you're just pressing down on it incredibly hard you're pressing so

hard on it that at that point it almost tears the depression is so deep that nothing can climb out not even light this is known as a black hole if this star is big enough it'll collapse to a tiny minute Point incredibly dense and it will leave it'll create a dip in space so deep that if an object tries to pass by it'll be sucked in it'll be sucked all the way down into that point that's a black hole Roger Penrose discovers that at the center of a black hole is a point of Pure Gravity

it's called a singularity as you go into a black hole you will encounter something which goes against the laws of physics as we previously understood it roughly speaking you could say Singularity is where space and time come to an end a singularity is like a drain a hole in space everything that falls down it disappears Hawking wonders if the opposite could be true according to the Big Bang Theory all the universe suddenly sprang from a point of nothing could this hole be the key to explain how this happened in a moment of Genius he sees

the solution it's elegantly simple I soon realized that if one reversed the direction of time in penrose's theorem the collapse became an expansion instead of sucking everything in a reverse black hole explodes out in a shower of space matter and time exactly as the big bang theory predicts against a sea of skepticism Hawking proves the universe suddenly appeared from nothing nothing it sprang from inside a singularity the debate is over the universe must have had a beginning in time this was finally proved by pen Ros and myself on the basis of Einstein's theory of relativity

Hawking found the origin of time but he hasn't found a way to stop it ticking he's now 26 years years old his disease has advanced up the muscles in his legs he can no longer [Music] walk but his brain is alive with questions Hawking now knows a moment of creation happened but not what caused it to explode into being this will prove his biggest challenge yet can he find the answer before his body collapses Steven Hawking has discovered where the universe began a tiny hole in space known as a singularity this exploded in a big

bang to create everything in the universe but he doesn't understand what made it explode why are we here where did we come from to find the origin of the universe Hawking used Einstein's general theory of relativity relativity explains how gravity acts on large objects like stars and planets but when the universe was born it was smaller than an atom so to understand how it grew he needs the theory of the very small quantum [Music] mechanics the trouble is atoms are unpredictable they don't follow the ordered rules of gravity the theories of general relativity and quantum

mechanics are incompatible unfortunately these two theories are known to being consistent with each other they cannot both be at Nasa Godard space flight center Kim Weaver is interested in the conflict between the theories in a way this ball can be used to represent the tension or the battle actually that's going on between general relativity and quantum mechanics quantum physics the surface is smooth it represents a large scale general relativity gravity acts on a very large scale and we can predict what's going to happen based on those equations but if we zoom into the quantum World

things are very chaotic and these larger scale laws don't [Music] apply we used to think that electrons orbited around the nucleus of an atom like planets around the Sun but scientists now know that electrons pop up and disappear at random they can even be more than one place at the same time normally gravity appears to play no part in this chaotic world but at the moment of the Big Bang there was a huge amount of matter held together in a tiny space so gravity must have had a role bringing these two ideas of general relativity

and quantum mechanics together into a unified hole is what stepen Hawking set out to do he wants to combine the two theories into a theory of everything in order to find out what triggered the moment of creation if we find the answer to that it would be the ultimate Triumph of human reason Hawking knows the theories of gravity and quantum mechanics Clash at the instant of the Big Bang but he believes they also clash in inside a black hole this is where a huge amount of matter crushes to a tiny point so he returns to

black holes to investigate if he can unite the two theories here it could help him understand the Big Bang relativity says nothing can exist on the edge of a black hole everything is sucked in but quantum mechanics states that space is never empty it's full of tiny pairs of particles space is essentially empty to us and it is empty when we look at it it appears to be empty but at this very tiny level it's not at all in fact it's filled with virtual particles coming into existence and annihilating each other all the time energy

waves in space create tiny particles every particle has an anti-particle one has positive energy and the other has negative energy these pairs appear but then Collide and destroy each other quantum mechanics was very well established but no one knew how it played into the larger Scale of the Universe and that's where Steven took those two things and said let me now play with this in my mind how does this work if I put a virtual pair next to a black hole what happens to unlock the secrets of a black hole Hawking must discover what happens

to these particles now 28 his body is wasting away but his mind doesn't let him down he has a flash of inspiration the answer lies with the fact that the particles are positive and negative and what Hawking realized what's really fascinating about this is when a pair of particles like this appears near the Event Horizon of a black hole the one with negative energy falls into the black hole and the one with positive energy escapes as radiation the negative particle is pulled into the black hole but the positive particle has just enough energy to avoid

getting sucked in it's released as a particle of radiation Hawking has proved black holes give off heat and these positive energy particles are the source it's called Hawking radiation the Revelation that something can escape the grip of a black hole shocks the world when I first announced the results of my calculations I was greeted with incred by their definition black holes are not supposed to emit anything Hawking proves that while gravity sucks in the negative particle quantum mechanics allows the positive particle to escape the two theories can work together it's the closest anyone's ever come

to a Theory of Everything but while the world celebrates Hawkings Discovery privately he is concerned his Theory of Everything has a fatal flaw Steven Hawking is on a quest to unite the two opposing sides of modern science general relativity and quantum mechanics if he achieves it he will have a theory of everything one equation that could reveal the underlying plan of the universe [Music] it might even explain how it exploded into being to find it Hawking needs to piece back together an explosion that detonated 14 billion years ago the Big Bang but how his starting

point is an astonishing prediction black holes explode and in a way way that makes them very similar to The Big Bang Hawkin discovered that unlike negative particles positive particles can escape the gravity of a black [Music] hole now he takes his theory a step further and discovers that over time a black hole begins to evaporate like a puddle in the hot sun over billions of years it sizzles away as it gets smaller it gives off more radiation it shrinks faster and faster until it shrivels right out of existence and at that moment something dramatic happens

the most reasonable guess is that it would Disappear Completely in a tremendous final burst of emission equivalent to the explosion of millions of H bombs it's this tremendous explosion from a tiny point that grabs Hawking's interest the Big Bang resembles a black hole explosion but on a vastly larger scale so Hawking's question is could anything come out of the black hole when it explodes if it is similar to The Big Bang will it release a high energy stew of particles like in the early universe an understanding of how black holes create particles will lead to

a similar understanding of how the big bang created everything in the universe it could be a mini version of the moment of creation but all of this is theoretical no one knows if black holes do explode now for the first time we may actually see this happening on June 11th 2008 NASA launches a state-of-the-art telescope called thermy the telescope will search the vast expanse of space for the last gasp of a tiny black hole as it dies it should release a huge blast of high energy particles called [Music] Gamay that's what fery should see you

guys working toward something Steve Ritz is the lead scientist what we be searching for is a tiny object a microscopic object no bigger than an individual proton the core of a nucleus and yet it's shining apparently like one of the brightest objects in the whole sky but fairy's search for these black holes isn't easy there's a flood of gamma rays from exploding stars that could Mass an exploding black hole so here's what the whole Sky would look like if you had Gamay eyes we'd hope to see the individual black hole at the very end of

its lifetime making an explosion and that could happen really anywhere on this uh image and that's why it's so incredibly interesting because one of those contributions could be the individual primordial black holes producing their Hawking radiation Ritz's team continues to search for a black hole explosion caused by Hawking radiation these events are rare but the payoff is huge so the search continues it would be incredibly exciting if we discovered a family of gamra bur that had no other explanation uh than the Hawking radiation from microscopic black holes it would be a revolution in science while

thy searches for Clues to How the Universe kickstarted into life Hawkings uncovered a mystery that could derail his quest for a theory of [Music] everything in the moment after the big bang something strange happens to gravity for some reason it suddenly changes gear and gets weaker and this is crucial to our existence today If gravity hadn't weakened it would have yanked all matter back in on itself the universe we know today wouldn't exist the mystery is why did Gravity weaken just enough to stop the universe from Rec collapsing Hawking needs to find a way to

explain this if we want to know what happened when the Universe began we have to have a theory to explain gravity on a very small scale gravity is actually the least understood force in nature it's much weaker than the other forces consider electromagnetism for instance electromagnetism is the force that tears up our skies and violent storms it also binds atoms together into everything we see around us at the instant of the Big Bang scientists think electromagnetism and gravity are the same strength as the universe expands gravity dramatically weakens Shan Caroll is a cosmologist who studies

gravity at the moment of the Big Bang gravity is something we notice every day we drop things we have to work against it to climb a set of stairs or to move around it seems to us like a powerful important force in our lives so the puzzle is that in fact gravity isn't really as strong as we think I can take something very very tiny like a set of keys and if I drop it it could smash something far below nevertheless something as small as this magnet can be more powerful than gravity just because the

electrical and magnetic forces here are intrinsically more powerful just a tiny little magnet is able to overcome the gravitational force exerted by the entire Earth nobody knows why after the big bang gravity changed gear and became weaker Hawking's Theory of Everything should reveal the inner workings of the universe but it can't explain this something is wrong with the blueprint he sets to work trying to puzzle it out he now has the top mins in the field working with him but only a few members of this Inner Circle can understand his [Music] speech he must painstakingly

dictate his scientific papers the process is slow but he is making progress his family worry he is pushing himself too hard there was always this terrible terrible fear whenever anything went wrong or when he started choking or coughing or he got an infection that this was it because you just never knew what might happen next then in 1985 on a trip to Geneva Switzerland tragedy strikes age 44 Hawking collapses with pneumonia an emergency tracheotomy saves his life but severs his vocal cords unable to communicate completely cut off from the world Hawking plunges into his own

black hole 6,000 M away in Lancaster California speech software designer Walt walos gets an urgent call from a friend about a new client he mentioned that he was a physics professor at Cambridge I said uh ge that sounds like Steven Hawking you know and he said well I'm not allowed to say and I said well I'll tell you what if it is I'll donate whatever he needs Hawking is able to make a slight movement with his fingers so he can use a switch walos designs an ingenious system that helps predict the words Hawking will use

I choose the letter b and I'm going to choose the word black here now after I selected the word black and in Steven's case the word black is almost always going to be followed by the word hole now if I want to speak that I can just choose the speak command here black hole radiation walto sends the machine to Hawking and the voice we hear today is born I like my present voice even though it has an American accent it's the Breakthrough Hawking needs to carry on with his work the first time I came back

to see him after the the initial time he was scanning at 10 steps per second this is blinding speed he have risen like the Phoenix From the Ashes to be this new character with an American electronic voice he's so sort of good humored about it that you just felt admiration I suppose never in these circumstances have I ever seen him show frustration he just keeps going at it Hawking returns to Cambridge and click by click presses on with his work he employs a team of graduate students to help with the computations I'm going to talk

about he's been given another shot at cracking the theory of everything and he's more determined than ever particular in gravitation Steven Hawking has spent three decades trying to discover a Theory of Everything a powerful set of laws that governs the entire universe from the tiniest particle to the largest galaxy it's been the Holy Grail of theory itical physics for over a century Hawking painstakingly lays the groundwork for this Theory but he could be beaten to the finish line by a radical new Theory String Theory one of its Architects is physicist Michael Green it represents such

a profound change in our way of thinking of the universe both in the very small and in the very large that it should have all sorts of repercussions String Theory could even be a candidate for The Theory of Everything it unifies every single thing in the universe from atoms to stars planets to people because they are all made from one ingredient strings strings are so tiny there's no way to see them directly equations show they could be a trillionth trillion I the size of an atom to get an idea of how small this is Imagine

an atom blown up to the size of our solar system the nucleus would be the size of our sun but even in this scaled up World strings are tiny smaller than the earth smaller than the smallest state about as Tiny as one person in our entire solar system [Music] I would be the size of a string strings are the building blocks of everything we see around us the entire universe is a gigantic mesh of these vibrating strings we're all made of string and we're moving in a stringy space time and everything is stringy to correctly

describe our universe with string theory requires something incredible the world we see around us is made up of three spatial Dimensions width height and length but green and his colleagues think that we are actually surrounded by at least nine [Music] Dimensions this may sound like science fiction but green suspects these extra dimensions are hidden from our view clearly since we don't see these extra dimensions in everyday life they must in some sense be very small and and not directly observable green collaborated on his theory with Caltech physicist John Schwarz we have the perception that we

live on in this three-dimensional world even though it may in fact be more Dimensions but how can there be Dimensions that we haven't noticed this is a line which is a one dimension object but if we turn it around and look inside we can see that it's actually a rolled up piece of paper which is a three-dimensional world we can see that there's an inside and if we put an ant in here the ant can go around in three directions so the ant sees it as a three-dimensional world the extra Dimensions reveal themselves if like

this ant you're small enough to see them Schwarz believes these extra dimensions are curled in on themselves curled up into tiny knots that are so small we can't see them but the fact that we don't see them doesn't mean that they don't have a profound effect on the universe we live in Schwarz and green believe these extra Dimensions explain why gravity is so weak they believe at the moment of the Big Bang gravity is strong but then the universe expands gravity spreads out into the extra Dimensions weakening as it goes this explanation removes the final

stumbling block to The Theory of Everything let's consider an analogy in which gravity is like music when I'm close it's loud and as I walk away it gets quieter the music disperses in different directions as it does so it weakens here the music is almost inaudible and that's because it's spread out over space now imagine instead of music that we're talking about gravity and imagine that there are extra dimensions in space extra dimensions in which the gravity can spread out even more more dimensions in space mean more directions to spread across this in turn makes

gravity even weaker String Theory explains how the universe we see today exists after the big bang as the universe expands gravity spreads out through these tiny extra dimensions and weakens gravity weakening is what stops the universe from collapsing back in on itself it's the missing piece in Steven Hawkings Quest For The Theory of Everything he concedes that Green's string theory is the best Contender to explain how the universe came to be stevenh Hawkings relationship to string the is very intriguing I my I I think he's um he's a big admirer but not necessarily a Believer

his ideas have had a profound influence actually on many things that have happened in string theory and with a bit of luck string has had some influence on his ideas as well we believe that there is one fundamental theory that describes Dimensions that are curled up so small that we don't notice them nevertheless this hidden Dimensions affect physical quantities like gravity one hitch is that none of this has ever been proved string theory and the extra dimensions exist only on paper like so many of Hawking's own discoveries there is no proof but that might be

about to change and the earliest moments of the universe could soon be revealed this is the CERN laboratory in Geneva Switzerland home of the Large Hadron Collider the biggest experiment expent ever built deep below ground scientists are attempting to recreate the conditions that existed just after the big bang to reveal how everything around us came into being scientists will search for Clues to what happens in the high energy environment like the one that followed the instant of creation it's the moment Steven Hawking has been waiting for why is the universe the way it is a

new window and the very early universe will be opened scientists will fire subatomic particles in opposite directions the particles will travel for almost 17 miles accelerating to close to the speed of light then they will slam into each other with a force trillions of times more powerful than Dynamite this high energy Collision will produce particles similar to those in the aftermath of the Big Bang it should reveal the key ingredients of the universe and possibly the recipe behind them the Large Hadron Collider will take us as close as humanly possible to the moment of creation

and in an incredible onew punch it could prove that both string theory and Steven Hawking are [Music] right string theory predicts that we are surrounded by tiny extra Dimensions these extra Dimensions trap gravity if this is true particles colliding in a small region could feel Ultra strong gravity this could trigger matter to collapse in on itself into a mini black hole exactly as Hawking predicts so rather than a big bang machine the collider could become a black hole Factory the black hole might actually grow because over time the black hole will pull material into itself

it could uh grab bond to molecules in the atmosphere so its mass will increase I have no idea what will really happen in that case but that means that the experiment does need to be controlled well researchers estimate it's theoretically possible they could create many black holes at the rate of one per second some people fear that just one black hole could swallow the Earth it's a terrifying thought [Music] scientists at CERN however are putting their faith in Steven Hawking Hawking predicts that small black holes will evaporate they should burn up almost instantly lighting up

like a Christmas tree they will produce little black holes which will then radiate and Decay and disappear um according to Steven Hawking predicted many many years ago and that would be of course truly exciting if black holes do appear it will reveal the secret of why gravity weakens after the big bang tiny extra dimensions in space if they found proof of extra Dimensions I would be completely staggered it would be extraordinary because we would have finally found that space had more than three dimensions which is fundamental A Fault In The Complex Machinery delays the big

startup until spring 2009 even then it may take years to comb through the data for proof of extra dimensions and tiny black [Music] holes after searching for a theory of everything for almost half a century Hawking desperately wants to live to see the culmination of his life's work so once again he faces a battle against time there are grounds for cautious optimism that we may now be near the end of the search for the ultimate loss of nature though much more work will be needed Steven Hawking is nothing if not a fighter he has taken

on the biggest mysteries in the universe and cracked them he found the birthplace of the universe he forced the two opposing sides of modern science together to prove that it is possible to escape a black hole an achievement he has mirrored in the battle with his disease the greatest thing I've learned from my dad is if you fall into a black hole don't give up you can get out of it again that's so clearly what he's done with his life Hawking has outlived his death sentence by over 40 years to become one of the longest

surviving sufferers of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in the world but questions M and a single equation powerful enough to describe all of existence still eludes him Steven's grit his stubbornness have contributed to his uh continuing vigorously ever so much longer than anybody ever expected I'm hopeful that he may still be around working on this uh 20 years from now Steven Hawking is as determined as ever to find a def definitive Theory of Everything for our universe [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] planet Earth 4 and 1/2 billion years old a solid ball of rock weighing 6 trillion trillion

tons we are on a quest to destroy it using Cutting Edge physics and planetary science we will explore what could destroy our planet completely a black hole it might seem harmless but it's gravity is strong enough to destroy the entire planet Earth a collision with the Sun and before you know it the Earth is falling into a fiery plummet a huge antimatter bomb poof okay had a huge Annihilation a giant rock from space you wouldn't want to be standing here 50,000 years [Music] ago or perhaps a swarm of self-replicating robots this is being a a

nightmare of [Music] sci-fi these ideas may sound like science [Music] fiction but they're all grounded in proven scientific fact [Music] our planet is seriously tough it has survived everything a hostile Universe could throw at it for 4 and5 billion years yet in the past few decades we have developed Technologies so powerful that some people fear we could literally destroy the Earth it's time to find out if they're right six top scientists are about to reveal what it would really take to destroy an entire planet our first candidate is a black hole the greatest destructive force

in the universe a black hole is what's left when a giant star collapses in on itself the result gravity so strong that nothing can escape not even light soon we may be able to create black holes right here on Earth physicists use huge particle accelerators to try to recreate what happen after the big bang but when they smash particles together they also risk creating a black [Music] hole think of a black hole as Niagara Falls and the water going over like space getting sucked in this unfortunate kayaker has gotten too close just like a star

getting too close to a black hole Dr Phil plate astronomer and author the water going over the lip of the waterfall is just like space itself falling into a black hole if you're kayaking no matter how fast you paddle once you go over that lip you're going down that's the point of no return and it's the same thing with a black hole no matter how fast you try to get out it's going to take you down the gravity in a black hole is fundamentally different from the gravity we experience in normal life normal gravity you

can escape from at least in theory cosmologist and golfer Professor Lawrence Krauss it's commonly said that what goes up must come down but that's not always the case for example if I hit this golf ball here and I hit it well it would go Fairly far but it would still come back down to earth if I hit it harder it would go further and still come back down but if I hit it with a speed of 5 m per second it would escape from the Earth's gravitational field but for the ball to escape from a

black hole it would have to move faster than the speed of light and that is simply not possible what goes into a black hole planets or even Stars never comes out our small planet wouldn't stand a chance for anyone looking for a way to destroy the Earth black holes are a good place to start the trouble is there are none close by enough to do the job unless we make one that's where the atom Smashers come [Music] in with a lot of math and a gigantic machine physicists can now generate atomized explosions that may be

powerful enough to create microscopic black holes they are trying to study the Big Bang the force of the impacts recreates the particles that made up the universe in its earliest moments some of those particles May create microscopic black holes that doesn't mean our planet is doomed in theory black holes this small would just evaporate like tiny soap [Music] bubbles to destroy this you need something bigger lock holes come in all sorts of different sizes for example at the center of our galaxy there's a black hole of 1 million solar masses if you took the mass

of our sun and compressed it down to be a black hole it would be the size of a large American city like Phoenix here on the other hand if you took something like this mountain here which is maybe a million tons and made it a black hole it would be smaller than the size of a single Atomic nucleus somewhere along that scale black holes get powerful enough to cause serious [Music] damage to destroy the Earth it turns out you need a black hole that weighs about the same as the earth the earth is 8,000 M

across but a black hole weighing that much would be the the size of a marble Professor Clifford Johnson physicist here I have a marble-sized black hole it might seem harmless but its gravity strong enough to destroy the entire planet Earth what would eventually happen is that it'll start sucking things in slowly at first and then it will grow in size it will grow and grow and grow until it swallows the whole Earth to imagine what that marble would do to the Earth picture what it does to a physicist the gravity is much stronger on one

side of an object closer to the black hole than it is on the other side of an object producing an effect that's called spaghettification as that object is stretched out and pulled apart as it falls into the black hole a big enough black hole could do this to our whole planet there's no way even the most powerful Atom Smasher could make a black hole this big to destroy the Earth we need to find one ready [Music] made astronomers think there are 10 million or so black holes in our galaxy if one of them strayed into

our neighborhood it could rip our planet to Pieces Earthbound telescopes may not even detect it humans would only know it was approaching when its immense gravity triggers huge floods and earthquakes as it plunges into our atmosphere the black hole acts like a vacuum cleaner sucking with a force over 1 and a/ 12,000 times Earth's gravity then it begins to distort the shape of the whole planet Earth's surface stretches and tears apart finally the hole hits and flies straight on in Heating and VAP rizing matter as it goes it starts to orbit the earth inside the

planet itself all the time devouring everything in its path gradually the orbit slows the black hole spirals down into the Earth's core eventually it eats the entire planet all that's left is the black hole itself it's a devastating end for planet Earth but fortunately for us it's unlikely ever to happen if you want to destroy a planet a black hole is a great way to do it but the problem is it depends on the kind of black hole a microscopic black hole would just pass right through the Earth and it really wouldn't do that much

damage a black hole with the mass of the Earth would be about the size of a marble and that would do a considerable amount of damage passing through the Earth but but again it might not destroy the planet if you want to do the job right you need a stellar Mass black hole something with about three times the mass of the Sun that thing would come in and it would tear the Earth apart and Gobble down the pieces and it would be game over the problem is we don't know how to make any of these

black holes technologically we just can't do it and with a naturally existing one we don't know how to move them so there's got to be a better [Music] way so if black holes don't work time for a new approach one Surefire way to destroy the Earth is to change its distance from the Sun move the planet closer and it bakes move it out and we freeze sending us into another Ice Age scientist have recently begun to realize that moving a whole planet might actually be possible in fact we use the same principle to slingshot space

probes around the solar system planet Earth could be just a few well-placed flybys away from a fiery death what would it take to incinerate an entire planet answer a nuclear furnace nearly a million miles across it sounds crazy but the truth is this will happen it's just a matter of time as the sun gets older and older it's going to actually get brighter and brighter and within about 2 billion years the earth will be in an uninhabitable Zone it'll be like Venus there'll be a runaway greenhouse effect all the water on Earth will be destroyed

and the surface temperature will be about 1,000° eventually the sun will swell and Scorch the Earth unless we somehow move the Earth Earth away from the Sun to save it alternatively if you were sufficiently evil I suppose you could imagine doing exactly the opposite um harnessing sufficiently large objects to transfer gravitational energy to kick the Earth's orbit closer to the Sun easy to say not so easy to do the Earth weighs in at Six Trillion trillion tons pushing something that big is quite a challenge but there is a way it's called gravity assist space probe

Engineers use gravity assists all the [Music] time take Saturday 's Cassini hyan probe it's the size of a school bus one of the biggest probes ever built to build up enough speed to fling the probe out to Saturn it had to swing by Venus twice and earth once each flyby stole energy from the planet and added it to the [Music] probe the probe got a lot faster by altering the planet's core just a little the name of the game we take a rock about a mile or two across and we move it so that it

just passes the Earth the right way and it'll steal energy away from the earth the asteroid will go flying off and the Earth will move in toward the Sun but we shouldn't just waste the asteroid when we can recycle it if we're clever we can take the asteroid and have it go toward the planet Jupiter and then if we pass Jupiter in just the right way it'll take that extra energy it stole from the Earth give it to Jupiter and then fall back toward the Earth and if we aim everything just right we get a

conveyor belt of energy we steal it from the earth give it to Jupiter and then come right back and in fact we can use hundreds or even thousands of asteroids this way continuously stealing Earth's energy and dumping it toward Jupiter and before you know it the Earth is falling into a fiery plummet first you need to catch an asteroid it's as big as a mountain and it's traveling around 10 m a second next you need to attach rockets and boost the asteroid onto the perfect course next repeat thousands and thousands of times very slowly over

thousands of years the earth will fall towards the sun right now we're just over 90 Million Miles Away by 70 million the Earth is a superheated desert like Venus then things start to get really bad as the Earth slowly spirals into the Sun a series of events unfolds which unfortunately spells Doom for our planet as the Earth approaches is the sun the atmosphere heats up and blows off and the oceans boil basically turning the earth into a giant Comet but there's worse to come as the Earth gets closer to the Sun the Sun's gravity pulls

on the near side of the earth more than it pulls on the faride and the Earth stretches like putty at some point it gets close enough to the Sun that the Sun's gravity can overwhelm the Earth's gravity and it shatters pulverizes our planet the the Earth is dead but its ghost could remain a faint ring of material around the Sun Peter Schulz planetary impact geologist if the Earth or any object gets too close to an another object like the sun eventually the tides will rip it apart as that happens it was simply we broke it

into many small pieces that would then encircle the Sun as if it were a ring the sun would resemble Saturn with its own faint ring of rocks and dust a fiery death and a ghostly Remnant if you want to destroy a planet this could be the way to go a great way to destroy the Earth is to drop it into the sun let it plummet to a fiery death and we can do this all you need to do is to pass enough asteroids near the Earth in succession to gravitationally drop it into the Sun and

we have that technology we know how to move asteroids it's just a matter of getting them on a precise enough orbit to be able to do it maneuvering billion ton chunks of Rock with pinpoint Precision at hundreds of miles a minute is quite a stretch not to mention the amount of time it would take to capture enough asteroids we've tried to crush it and burn it it's time for another [Music] plan an antimatter [Music] bomb physicists have been searching for over a century for a theory that unites our understanding of the large scale Universe planets

galaxies and stars with what we know of the subatomic World electrons protons and quarks their theories are bringing to light some pretty destructive phenomena one of them could be a world [Music] killer antimatter theorized in the 1920s detected in the 30s [Music] now we can create antimatter in modern particle [Music] colliders and the base ingredient for the biggest explosion possible antimatter is the most explosive substance ever found pound for pound it's far more powerful than even a hydrogen [Music] bomb but antimatter is hard stuff to find everything we see around us out to the most

distant galaxies is matter created 13 billion years ago in the Big Bang [Music] it created antimatter too they look similar in fact they are entirely opposite put them together and they wipe each other out cosmologist Lawrence Krauss now I have a proton here an antira over there has an antiproton and when we bring them together we're going to make an incredible explosion okay let's annihilate this is what happened to all the antimatter created in the big Big Bang it annihilated if we want to use some for a bomb we need to make it [Music] ourselves

making antimatter is a bit like firing a gun at a Target if I shoot a gun at a paper Target the paper that flies out of the target is like matter and the hole that's left behind is the antimatter it takes energy to create a matter anti matter particle pair in this shooting range analogy the bullet provided the energy in reality the gun is a particle accelerator like the one it CERN in Switzerland fire protons in a giant tube steer them around with powerful magnets use the same magnets to accelerate the protons to near the

speed of light then slam the beam into a block of metal for every million protons that hit you get one [Music] antiproton it's as if plates handgun only left a hole once in every million shots in an accelerator you only get one particle any particle pair out of every million collisions or so and so it's really hard to find that one Annie matter particle floating around it's a lot like coming to Niagara Falls and trying to get that one particle out of all the mist and that's why it's so hard to create an matter on

a large scale assuming we can obtain enough antimatter the next challenge is to make it into a bomb nothing is more unstable than an antimatter bomb you have to find a way to hold the antimatter without it touching any ordinary matter if it does it will explode so I have a bunch of antimatter above my hand here well it it better not touch my hand because if it does poof okay at a huge Annihilation but worse it can't interact with the air around it because uh the air is made of matter and again you'd get

an incredible explosion researchers need a special container to study antimatter and this is it a Penning trap powerful magnets suspend the antimatter in a vacuum so if I want to store this antimatter what I have to do is somehow keep it levitated above my hand which means I'd have to produce huge magnetic fields in just the right way to keep the part charged particles in the antimatter from touching my hand but I also have to stored at an incredibly High vacuum because any air in the container would again cause an explosion and so the energies

and and and Technology required to produce those magnetic fields keep that ultra high vacuum would mean that you wouldn't have such a you wouldn't have a small object you'd have to have surrounded with massive amounts of Machinery yet for all that trouble an antimatter bomb isn't just Theory we can make antimatter we can capture it and we can store it but where do we plant it for maximum effect if we want to destroy the whole planet the bomb has to go off near the Earth's [Music] core that's nearly 4,000 M straight down further away than

London from [Music] DC right right now that's impossible the deepest man-made bore hole stops at just 7 and 1/2 miles but what if we [Music] could so far mankind has managed to create a grand total of 20 nanog of antimatter that's a 100 million times lighter than a dime in your pocket so the bomb is going to be too small even to see well 200 ft away in this test range in Arizona we have the explosive equivalent of TNT so let's see how big of a bang that makes wow 20 nog of antimatter makes quite

a blast but it's way short to destroy planet Earth we would need 2 and 1/2 trillion tons of the [Music] stuff that's a bomb the size of Mount Everest at the bottom of a hole 4,000 M deep if it were possible the result would split the earth into thousands of pieces with a powerful enough bomb the pieces would fly out into space and are lost with a slightly weaker bomb the pieces fall back under the force of their own gravity collapsing into a molten ball an eerie echo of Earth's creation 4 and 1/2 billion years

ago it could happen in theory but there are a few technical details to iron out first so what's the matter with antimatter well if you're trying to destroy the Earth it'll work it'll do the job the problem is you need about the energy that the sun puts out in an entire week so it's a huge amount and we just don't have the technology to create that right now at the present rate of production making the bomb would take more than the age of the universe the other problem is getting it to the Earth how do

you do that well you'd have to get it to the Center of the Earth and that means digging a hole several miles across and 4,000 M deep so in the end don't think anim is probably the most efficient way of destroying the planet so as a way of destroying the Earth maybe antimatter has some problems but we know the next approach works because it already happened once before in Earth's ancient past [Music] space is a dangerous place it's full of debris rocks the size of Pebbles up to rocks near the size of a planet there

are impact craters everywhere including our moon these asteroids can hit us as well an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs maybe a bigger asteroid could destroy the planet entirely meteor crater Arizona almost a mile across nearly 600 ft deep today science can reconstruct what happened here thousands of years ago Dr Dan Dura planetary scientist you wouldn't want to be standing here 50,000 years ago this iron meteorite about the size of a small office building or so it's made out of stainless steel from space it's about to strike the desert with an impact energy of somewhere between

1 and 10 megatons and it's that energy that's going to excavate and open up this crater behind me which is nearly a mile across the impact ultimately devastated an area the size of New York City with 600 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb and that was small 65 million years ago a real monster struck it was 6 miles across sat on the ground it would out toop Everest by half a mile the crater was over a 100 miles wide the impact wiped out the dinosaurs and destroyed most of life on Earth an even bigger

Space Rock could destroy the planet already developing Technologies to protect against future impacts ironically you could use those same Technologies to make an impact happen one approach is to hover a space probe near the [Music] asteroid the probe's mass generates a tiny gravitational pull on the rock [Music] over time that can change the asteroids course enough to miss the Earth or to guarantee a hit another protection technology that we could use is a technique called solar sublimation this diverts an asteroid or Comet using nothing more than sunlight [Music] to demonstrate the effect Dura starts by

building a homemade Comet some fraction of near objects are comets so let's examine what comets they made out of let's let's actually make a comet take some soil add dry ice then water and some chocolate we'll put in a few per of organic material into our Comet and of course in the outermost solar system there's a little bit of ammonia here and there we'll let that be represented by this ammonia cleaner let's see if we can pack this up and make ourselves a little Comet nucleus a magnifying lens completes the [Music] apparatus if one were

to uh actually Focus the light from the sun onto the surface one could cause some of that that water to vaporize away and just like on this Comet nucleus the jetting action of those evaporating gases act a little bit like little artificial Rocket Motors attached to the object and over time they really do cause it to be pushed slightly off course the power of sunlight alone is enough to divert a space Rock onto a collision course with Earth but solar sublimation may not be effective on a an object big enough to pulverize our planet to

destroy the Earth our space missile needs to be big like Mars big we know this for certain because it's happened before 4 and 1/2 billion years ago a rock the size of Mars struck the earth a glancing blow the impact debris creat the moon if it had hit head on none of us would be [Music] here we've come here to the vertical gun range at Nasa ases in California for proof this 12T gun fires beads up to 4 m per second six times faster than a rifle bullet Professor Peter Schulz a planetary impact geologist uses

the gun to simulate a mars-sized object represented by this small projectile hitting our planet head [Music] on the space environment chamber is ready Schultz makes his final adjustments but will our scale model Earth break apart completely [Music] that hurt that really hurt look at this thing just this is worse than a science fiction movie that's that's just glorious disaster there's nothing [Music] left a head-on strike destruction guaranteed so the things that destroy an object is going to be combination of the size of the object the speed of the object and the angle the lower the

angle the less likely it'll completely bust it apart so to really destroy the Earth you need something that's humongous and needs to hit straight on now we know what it takes to use an impact to destroy planet Earth asteroids and comets are just too small we need to move something the size of a planet onto a collision course that's a level of Technology we won't be reaching anytime soon now we can move asteroids around and we can move comets around but those are only a few miles across the problem here is that we need something

really big Mars is about a third of the size of the Earth and even that hitting the Earth won't destroy it we would need something almost as big as the Earth itself something like Venus and even then we just don't have the technology to be able to move something that big with that kind of precision to aim it at the Earth and blow it up destroying the Earth with a space Rock just isn't going to happen perhaps the killer punch won't come from space but from right here on Earth [Applause] genetics robotics nanotechnology researchers hope

machines will lead us to A Brave New World already robots can learn build other robots and cooperate with each other it could be the beginning of a new age it could also be the beginning of the end right now we can only build robots that work with humans in control but science is working towards machines that can think for themselves and even reproduce robots that can make copies of themselves without human control could one day take over the [Music] world hod Lipson professor of Robotics Lipson is a Pioneer in robot replication if this robot could

make another robot identical to itself and then those two robots can make four robots and so forth these robots could fill up a space such as this here uh fairly quickly once the first replicate is made there's no stopping the process but first we've got to make them at Cornell's robotics lab Lipson and his team already make robots that learn robots that build and and robots that build [Music] themselves this is the world's first self-replicating robot Supply it with building blocks and it assembles them to make a copy of itself it needs Lipson and his

labex to keep it stocked with plastic cubes so this robot is pretty benign to destroy the Earth we need to develop robots that use smaller blocks and eventually individual atoms we've been trying to make robots made of much tinier cubes uh on the order of half a millimeter and you can uh barely see them there's about 10 of them in this container here we're trying to get these very small units to combine together and the smaller they get the faster and more easy it is to replicate Lipson thinks that advances in robotics will revolutionize design

design and manufacture but where there's progress there's also danger in theory nanosiz machines could start to replicate out of control self-replicating Nano machines could in theory destroy all life on [Music] Earth to destroy the planet itself we need something more to reprod use a robot needs energy and raw materials in other words food the more food there is the more copies our robots can make and the biggest source of food on the planet is the planet itself the ultimate uh kind of self-replicating process is something that's inspired by Nature so if we can have a

machine that can essentially self-replicate using resources in the environment food and energy then that would be a pretty big achievement and the biggest natural resource on Earth is Rock design a self-replicating robot that feeds on rock and it has 6 trillion trillion tons of food right under its feet some living creatures already use rock rock feeding bacteria live in the Earth's crust even several miles deep but Nature's Rock eaters are good for the planet they help form soil and keep life ticking there's a whole Suite of rock eating bacteria that we've now uncovered on the

earth which will go and chew up and eat and use the materials in the rocks for their sources of energy and for the sources of compounds they use to build other biologic molecules there are literally biologic organism that do just this eat rock rock eating self-re ating robots but they've got to be smart they need to cooperate Professor Alan Winfield roboticist in charge of the simen project to design robots that swarm like insects Syrian is a 5-year project to try and build a swarm of self assembling robots perhaps as many as as 30 or 4

will physically join and then behave and act as a single organism the big challenge is going to be how to get the robots to first of all decide what to be a foot bot or a knee bot or a sensor bot or a brain bot and then work cooperatively so that for instance the organism can stand up and walk we can already make Ro robots that reproduce we can make robots that cooperate put them together and at last we may have our planet [Music] killer here's the math say each robot takes one day to replicate

then after a single month you have over 1 billion robots after a year you have trillions Earth is covered with machines that do nothing but gobble Rock in the end no more rock just a huge ball of self-replicating [Music] machines now what are robots made of well iron magnesium aluminum and silicon the same things the earth is made up and so all you have to do is create one of these self-replicating robots and let it out into the wild it'll make a zillion copies of itself and they will consume the Earth and eventually there'll be

nothing left success at last perhaps not in our quest to destroy the planet we've tried devouring it incinerating it pulverizing it blowing it up and breaking it down planet Earth is a proven Survivor it has taken everything the universe can throw at it for 4 and2 billion years and one thing is certain we're still here [Music] [Music]