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<i>Mérida, on the Yucatán Peninsula,</i>

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<i>is ground zero of the biggest cataclysmthat ever occurred to our planet.</i>

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<i>A whole asteroid hit right here.</i>

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<i>This happened millions of yearsbefore human beings appeared,</i>

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<i>and yet this fireball ritualfeels like a reenactment.</i>

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<i>Certainly, the ancient Mayascould not have known.</i>

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<i>We do not knowwhat in the future is coming at us,</i>

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<i>eventually destroying us.</i>

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<i>But it will look like this fireballover Siberia,</i>

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<i>only much larger.</i>

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<i>What simple dashboard cameras recorded</i>

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<i>feels like science fiction.</i>

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<i>Visitors from other worlds,</i>

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<i>from the dark of the universe, have come.</i>

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<i>And untold numbers are still on their way.</i>

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<i>If something big is going to happen,</i>

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<i>it will illuminate the skyeven in daylight.</i>

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<i>But that may be millions of years away.</i>

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<i>Meteorites have hit our planetall the time,</i>

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<i>and the bigger oneshave changed entire landscapes.</i>

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<i>But they also have lefta deep impact on cultures.</i>

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<i>A good example is Islamic culture.</i>

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<i>According to ancient tradition,</i>

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<i>a stone was sent down by Godfrom heaven</i>

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<i>as a guide for Adam and Evewhere to build an altar.</i>

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<i>The meteorite came down</i>

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<i>where later the holy city of Meccawas built.</i>

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<i>We are here at the holiest siteof the Muslim world.</i>

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<i>In its center, the Kaaba.</i>

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<i>Embedded in its eastern corner,the Black Stone.</i>

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<i>It was already veneratedin pre-Islamic times</i>

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<i>for at least a millennium beforethe prophet Muhammad founded Islam.</i>

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<i>The Black Stoneis framed entirely in silver,</i>

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<i>and nobody is allowed to analyze it,</i>

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<i>but it is almost certainly a meteorite.</i>

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<i>Islam is a religionof 1.9 billion faithful.</i>

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<i>For the pilgrims,</i>

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<i>the Black Stoneis among the most revered of relics.</i>

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<i>It attracts uncountable millionsof touches and kisses.</i>

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<i>As non-Muslims, we are not allowedeven to set foot into the holy city,</i>

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<i>and so we had to rely oncell phone footage of one of the faithful.</i>

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<i>Back in the silent vastnessof the Australian desert.</i>

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<i>Clive Oppenheimerof Cambridge University,</i>

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<i>who started our voyage of this film,explains to me...</i>

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Scientists only became aware ofthis huge hole in the ground in 1947,

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when it was spotted from the air.

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And the crateris about a kilometer across.

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And it was formedwhen a piece of iron asteroid,

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the size of a battleshipand traveling at 15 kilometers per second,

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plummeted into the ground.

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And the crater wallsaround the floor here

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are made of the ancient rocks

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that were shattered by the impactand thrown about.

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The meteoroid itselfwas almost completely vaporized,

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and only a few fragments of it

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have been foundscattered across the surrounding desert.

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The pattern of ejecta

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suggests that the bolidecame from that direction over there.

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The temperatures are so phenomenal

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that it generates a huge thermal plume

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that punches up through the atmosphere,into the stratosphere,

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and it's raining out molten debrisover a very wide area.

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And, of course,there's colossal seismic energy

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that is generated by the impact itself,

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so huge earthquakes.

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I mean,we're in the middle of the desert here,

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but if you imagine this scenario happeningtoday in an urban environment,

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this would be absolutely devastating.

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To be hit by a meteoritehas barely ever happened?

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There was a womanwho was struck by a meteorite

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that came through her roof,through her ceiling,

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and hit her while she was seatedin an armchair watching TV.

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The Sylacauga meteorite.

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She survived itbut had a pretty horrific bruise.

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<i>As bleak and uninviting asthe country around the crater looks,</i>

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<i>there were always aboriginal peoplein this area.</i>

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<i>Many of them make a living as artists.</i>

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<i>Like those in the nearest communityof Billiluna.</i>

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<i>They could not have witnessed the impactmore than 100,000 years ago,</i>

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<i>but there were more recent events</i>

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<i>that could have triggereda cultural memory.</i>

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<i>In their paintings,the crater frequently appears as a motif,</i>

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<i>but it goes deeper than that.</i>

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<i>We met Katie Darkie,</i>

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<i>one of the finest artistsof the community.</i>

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This is one ofyour very own paintings, isn't it?

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Let's have a look at this one.

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Now please tell uswhat we're looking at here.

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It's a beautiful painting.

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This is the sand hill...

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and this is the grass.

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And it hasn't got any <i>karnti</i>.No potatoes.

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Long time ago, the old people said...

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one man went huntingthrough the creeks, hunting for birds.

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But he was walking throughthe tunnel underneath the river,

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but we call it a creek.

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And it came outon the other side of the crater

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and then went walking backto where he came from

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when he was hunting.

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And in this story, the crater,how was it formed?

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What's the origin?

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Well, in the <i>kartiya</i> world,there's a meteorite fell in there.

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-That's our story, the whitefellas' story.-The whitefella stories.

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Some say it's a star fell in there.

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But the ancestorsand the old people were telling us

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it's the Rainbow Serpentwho fell in the crater.

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So that's how we gotthree different stories about the crater.

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But it connects in one.

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We always take the kids.

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Every weekend we come and camp out there.

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And that's where we feel the presenceof our ancestors and our family,

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that they are looking after uswhen we go down and visit the crater.

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It's a very special place for us.

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For our families as well.

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<i>Meteorites have fallen at random.</i>

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<i>A significant onein the Alsace region of France.</i>

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<i>But right here it changed human affairs.It influenced history.</i>

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<i>In the distance, the town of Ensisheim.</i>

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<i>In the 15th century,world history was shaped here,</i>

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<i>because the Hapsburg Empireearned legitimacy</i>

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<i>through a falling piece of rock.</i>

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<i>A plaque marks a spot where it fell.</i>

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<i>Clive brought Professor Simon Schaffer,</i>

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<i>a colleague from Cambridge University.</i>

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<i>He is a historian of scienceand one of the few remaining polymaths.</i>

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What happened on that day in--7th of November, 1492?

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So, on this extraordinary day,

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a fireball appearedin the southeast sky in that direction,

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moving incredibly fastand whistling as it came.

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And then it hit this fieldat about 11:30 in the morning.

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There was, according to most reports,

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just one person standing in the field.

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A shepherd boy.

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And he would have seenthe most extraordinary thing.

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He would have seen a 300-pound rockhit the field

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and gouge out a hole.

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The 7th of November, 1492,

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the moment when this stone fell,

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was only a few daysafter another great landfall:

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the arrival of Christopher Columbusand his crew

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in their New World,in the Caribbean.

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It's thanks to Columbus, ultimately,

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that there is corn growing in this field.

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This is the result of the eruptioninto European agriculture

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of crops that up till thenhad only grown in the Americas.

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Indeed, the fall of the stonewas so important

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that there are some chroniclescovering the year 1492

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that only mention the Ensisheim stone

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and simply leave Columbus out.

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It had fallen, perhaps by divine design,as they thought,

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very near an extremely significant town,

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Ensisheim in Alsace.

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Ensisheim at that point

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was the headquartersof the Austrian forces

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in this part of the world.

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And within two weeksof the arrival of the stone,

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the Austrian military commander,

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the commander in chief, Maximilian,also arrived in the town.

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But, for heaven's sake,why did this stone fall here at this time?

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The reason this stone fell in this fieldwas exactly for heaven's sake.

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For those people,

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wonderful supernatural signsin the heavens were messages.

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This was, as it were,an e-mail sent from God

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to the subjects of Maximilian

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to tell them that his rule was legitimate,

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that he would defeat his enemies,

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and that they should obey his commands.

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Where do you get your fascination from?

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I think one of the things that I findcompletely obsessional about meteorites

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is that they carry sense,that they carry meaning.

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They arrive, so it was thought,with other kinds of falls.

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With body partsand frogs and rains of blood.

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With plagues and other catastrophes.

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Something like a meteoriteis an organism,

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an animal, almost, that speaks to us.

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And I think that'sa very powerful and eloquent idea.

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The idea that... meteorites have meaning,

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and the task of humanityis to interpret what that meaning is.

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<i>Simon Schaffer could have continued,</i>

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<i>without getting boring,nonstop for the next eight hours.</i>

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<i>But we wanted to see the remainsof the real stone in the local museum.</i>

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<i>It feels unreal, inviting fantasies.</i>

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<i>The mayor of town wanted to greet us,</i>

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<i>here flanked by friends of the meteorite.</i>

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<i>This emblem is takenfrom a medieval woodcut.</i>

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<i>You find it everywhere.</i>

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<i>But today it means thinking backand thinking ahead in centuries.</i>

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<i>Did these membersof the brotherhood of the stone</i>

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<i>have a far-off future in mind?</i>

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<i>What are they thinking?</i>

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<i>What far-reaching plans do they have?</i>

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<i>What if the human race became extinct?</i>

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<i>What would we leavefor future astronauts of an alien galaxy</i>

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<i>to demonstrate that we would not leavea fallen comrade behind?</i>

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<i>Right next to the stone,we discovered this installation.</i>

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"<i>Hi, my name is Jean,</i>"

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<i>says the simulacrum,hoping the aliens speak French.</i>

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<i>"I am a miner.</i>

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<i>And this is how beautifulour world looked."</i>

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<i>"When danger for our planetbecame visible in the night sky,</i>

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<i>we took precautions.</i>

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<i>We dug tunnelsand built shelters underground.</i>

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<i>We think we have a chanceto survive a whole decade.</i>

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<i>If a big firestorm comes,</i>

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<i>I'm confidentthe human race can survive it.</i>

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<i>But I am not a prophet. I'm just a miner."</i>

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<i>"I wish you a good end to your visit."</i>

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<i>Next destination, the big sports arenain Oslo, Norway.</i>

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<i>It is so spaciousthat it houses an entire football field.</i>

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<i>But we were interested in its roof,</i>

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<i>and we were interested in this man,Jon Larsen,</i>

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<i>Norway's most famous jazz musician.</i>

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<i>But it is as a citizen scientist</i>

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<i>that he has every reasonto be on this big roof.</i>

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How did this all start?How did you find this place?

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I searched on... Google Earth

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and found the largest roofthat I could see.

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And this sports arena was probablythe largest in Oslo at that time.

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And then I realized the...

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the small object will roll down the sideand accumulate along here

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and end up close to the drain.

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And, as we can see,there is a lot of dirt here,

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but withinwe will find the cosmic dust particles.

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How did you get started?

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You've had a four-decades-long careeras a successful musician.

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Why have you ended up on rooftops?Was it to escape your fans?

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No. I've always collected rocksand been interested in geology.

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And that has been my hobby all my life.

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So ten years ago, when suddenly onthe breakfast table one morning, outdoors,

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I discovered a shining black doton my table

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which hadn't been theretwo seconds earlier.

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And I picked it up with my finger,

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and because of my backgroundas an amateur mineralogist,

236
00:19:37,010 --> 00:19:39,680
I could see,"Wow, this is actually a small rock."

237
00:19:40,264 --> 00:19:41,598
And we were like,

238
00:19:41,682 --> 00:19:45,602
"Where did it come from?Is it from space perhaps? I don't know."

239
00:19:45,686 --> 00:19:49,815
But then I started to googleand found out

240
00:19:49,898 --> 00:19:54,987
that there are some strangesmall cosmic dust particles

241
00:19:55,070 --> 00:19:56,405
called micrometeorites.

242
00:19:56,488 --> 00:19:57,614
And then it all began.

243
00:19:57,698 --> 00:19:59,074
And you think there are some here.

244
00:19:59,157 --> 00:20:02,494
What's the equipment that you needto collect this goop?

245
00:20:03,203 --> 00:20:05,289
My main weapon is this magnet.

246
00:20:05,372 --> 00:20:08,208
And I use the magnet mainly because the...

247
00:20:08,792 --> 00:20:10,961
micrometeorites are magnetic.

248
00:20:11,044 --> 00:20:14,173
First I put the magnet itself into

249
00:20:14,256 --> 00:20:17,593
just protecting small ziplockplastic bag, like this.

250
00:20:18,635 --> 00:20:20,929
And then the hook is handy, literally...

251
00:20:21,013 --> 00:20:25,934
<i>It is astounding that Jon Larsen,with such primitive equipment,</i>

252
00:20:26,018 --> 00:20:29,646
<i>has foundeda completely new branch of science.</i>

253
00:20:30,022 --> 00:20:33,275
And now this will be the sampling area.

254
00:20:33,358 --> 00:20:35,694
I will move it down on the ground,like this.

255
00:20:37,070 --> 00:20:42,201
Heavy particles will roll downand remain at the heaviest part.

256
00:20:42,993 --> 00:20:46,830
This might be some microscopicmagnetic particles.

257
00:20:47,372 --> 00:20:49,791
I'll look at it laterunder the microscope.

258
00:20:49,875 --> 00:20:53,754
What's the flux of these cosmic particlesto the Earth per day?

259
00:20:53,837 --> 00:20:55,297
Do we know the figure?

260
00:20:55,380 --> 00:20:57,799
Yeah, approximately 100 metric tons.

261
00:20:57,883 --> 00:21:04,181
Imagine two large trucks of sandpouring cosmic dust over Earth every day.

262
00:21:04,264 --> 00:21:08,101
But that equals one small particle

263
00:21:08,185 --> 00:21:11,855
per year per square meter.

264
00:21:12,314 --> 00:21:14,942
These particles are messengers,aren't they?

265
00:21:15,025 --> 00:21:17,861
This seemed to bea very particular message for you.

266
00:21:17,945 --> 00:21:19,029
Yeah, to me it is.

267
00:21:19,112 --> 00:21:22,824
And they are the oldest matter there is.

268
00:21:23,408 --> 00:21:25,202
Nothing has traveled further.

269
00:21:25,285 --> 00:21:29,331
When I pick out one micrometeoriteand feel it on my finger,

270
00:21:30,082 --> 00:21:34,127
no human beinghas ever touched anything older.

271
00:21:34,211 --> 00:21:38,465
I mean, it's really looking the eternityin the eye.

272
00:21:38,549 --> 00:21:42,302
This is the ashes of another generation,

273
00:21:42,386 --> 00:21:44,513
previous generation of dying stars.

274
00:21:45,055 --> 00:21:49,268
So it has a history that goesall the way back to the big bang.

275
00:21:52,187 --> 00:21:53,897
<i>This is Jan Braly Kihle,</i>

276
00:21:53,981 --> 00:21:59,611
<i>a geologist who will analyze Jon's samplesunder the microscope.</i>

277
00:21:59,695 --> 00:22:02,072
<i>We loved his outfit as Wyatt Earp.</i>

278
00:22:02,614 --> 00:22:04,199
<i>He was born in Texas.</i>

279
00:22:05,158 --> 00:22:06,660
<i>But there's more to him.</i>

280
00:22:07,286 --> 00:22:09,913
<i>He's a four-time cancer survivor,</i>

281
00:22:09,997 --> 00:22:14,793
<i>two times, according to him,stark naked death sentences.</i>

282
00:22:15,711 --> 00:22:19,089
<i>Wanting to contribute to cancer research,</i>

283
00:22:19,173 --> 00:22:24,052
<i>he's now involved in pioneering workwith new cancer treatments.</i>

284
00:22:24,553 --> 00:22:25,971
This is the underworld.

285
00:22:26,054 --> 00:22:29,808
This is where we try to makethe photographical documentation.

286
00:22:30,601 --> 00:22:32,936
-And this is Jan Kihle, my friend.-Hi.

287
00:22:33,020 --> 00:22:34,479
We have worked together for years

288
00:22:34,563 --> 00:22:39,610
to make high-resolution color photographsof the micrometeorites

289
00:22:40,110 --> 00:22:44,948
at such a magnificationthat it's made nowhere else in the world.

290
00:22:45,866 --> 00:22:47,659
How much magnification do you need?

291
00:22:47,743 --> 00:22:49,995
You can see these particles are so small

292
00:22:50,078 --> 00:22:52,289
it's practically not possible to see them.

293
00:22:52,372 --> 00:22:57,127
We need 2,000, or better,3,000 times magnification.

294
00:22:57,544 --> 00:23:00,964
And then the original photowill be one meter in diameter.

295
00:23:01,048 --> 00:23:02,132
That's what we need.

296
00:23:02,549 --> 00:23:04,718
You know, when everyone saysthis was impossible,

297
00:23:04,801 --> 00:23:07,596
now we have madea completely new kind of science.

298
00:23:07,679 --> 00:23:12,309
And you recall the kind of feedbackwe all got from colleagues.

299
00:23:12,392 --> 00:23:14,645
-They were laughing hilarious...-Yes. Oh, yes.

300
00:23:14,728 --> 00:23:17,689
...when they asked us,"What you gonna do? What?

301
00:23:18,148 --> 00:23:20,192
Everybody knowsthat that's impossible.

302
00:23:20,275 --> 00:23:24,488
You know, the signal-to-noise ratio,it's beyond one to one billion.

303
00:23:24,571 --> 00:23:25,739
Make my day."

304
00:23:27,241 --> 00:23:29,868
Did it hurt you, that time?

305
00:23:29,952 --> 00:23:31,078
Of course not.

306
00:23:31,703 --> 00:23:33,330
This is how science works.

307
00:23:33,413 --> 00:23:37,042
It has nothing to do with feelings.It's just about curiosity.

308
00:23:37,668 --> 00:23:39,962
So this is from earlier today.

309
00:23:40,754 --> 00:23:43,799
When we see that specialtype of texture, then we know,

310
00:23:43,882 --> 00:23:48,136
"Okay, this is a micrometeoriteand not an industrial particle."

311
00:23:48,220 --> 00:23:50,264
And it's obviouslyquite blurred at the moment.

312
00:23:50,347 --> 00:23:52,432
Can we-- Can we takea photograph of it?

313
00:23:53,267 --> 00:23:54,643
-No, we-- No.-No.

314
00:23:54,726 --> 00:23:55,811
If we just--

315
00:23:55,894 --> 00:24:00,148
Our heartbeats, when we gettoo enthusiastic, will make disturbances.

316
00:24:00,232 --> 00:24:01,275
So it's not possible.

317
00:24:01,358 --> 00:24:04,069
We'll have to leave the roomwhen we actually take the photos.

318
00:24:04,778 --> 00:24:07,406
Where have these particles come fromin the first place?

319
00:24:07,489 --> 00:24:10,617
That's a good question,because we don't know the answer.

320
00:24:11,118 --> 00:24:13,203
They come, obviously, from space.

321
00:24:13,287 --> 00:24:15,706
So some of themare from the asteroid belt.

322
00:24:15,789 --> 00:24:17,916
Others may come from cometary matter.

323
00:24:18,417 --> 00:24:23,839
But, again, it might be particlesfrom other galaxies, other solar systems.

324
00:24:24,673 --> 00:24:27,759
We don't know the parent bodyof each individual grain.

325
00:24:28,343 --> 00:24:29,803
It's just amazing.

326
00:24:29,887 --> 00:24:33,724
Each Tuesday nightwhen Jon brings in new material

327
00:24:34,224 --> 00:24:35,726
we're just flabbergasted.

328
00:24:35,809 --> 00:24:37,895
It's like being a kid again.

329
00:24:37,978 --> 00:24:41,857
These particles are small and solitaryalso in space.

330
00:24:41,940 --> 00:24:46,820
Some of them have never reachedthe larger scale

331
00:24:46,904 --> 00:24:49,031
of, let's say, building--

332
00:24:49,114 --> 00:24:52,284
starting to build small planetsin the asteroid belt.

333
00:24:52,743 --> 00:24:56,788
It's actually cosmic dust.Dust is the currency of the cosmos.

334
00:24:57,289 --> 00:25:01,293
Here on the top, you have,for instance, this is iron-nickel alloy.

335
00:25:02,920 --> 00:25:07,633
And here you have very nicebeginning of crystallization.

336
00:25:07,716 --> 00:25:09,593
Started out with just glass.

337
00:25:10,552 --> 00:25:13,013
And now it'll start to crystallizeolivine crystals.

338
00:25:13,722 --> 00:25:18,227
And this outside isa very, very thin rim of iron sulfides.

339
00:25:18,310 --> 00:25:21,355
This looks like almost,sort of, an icy exoplanet.

340
00:25:21,438 --> 00:25:22,898
Looks like packs. Yeah, yeah.

341
00:25:22,981 --> 00:25:25,651
With the icebergs breaking up.

342
00:25:25,734 --> 00:25:28,153
This one, I think,is particularly interesting.

343
00:25:28,237 --> 00:25:34,117
It has a very high temperatureat atmospheric entry.

344
00:25:34,201 --> 00:25:36,453
In the front, which is up,

345
00:25:36,537 --> 00:25:40,082
that is the direction of movementin the Earth's atmosphere.

346
00:25:40,165 --> 00:25:45,337
Then when it starts to decelerate,the heavy metal core is pushed forward

347
00:25:45,420 --> 00:25:49,049
by the... inertia

348
00:25:49,508 --> 00:25:53,929
and ends up like a metal moundin the front of the particle.

349
00:25:54,763 --> 00:25:58,475
Again, the typical,with the iron-nickel in front.

350
00:25:58,559 --> 00:26:04,147
So, I mean, though we have collected now2,500 different specimens,

351
00:26:04,231 --> 00:26:05,858
none are identical.

352
00:26:06,817 --> 00:26:08,861
So when you start to--

353
00:26:08,944 --> 00:26:11,989
to get to know the micrometeoritesand the cosmic dust particles,

354
00:26:12,072 --> 00:26:16,702
then you will recognize them as verydifferent from the terrestrial geology.

355
00:26:16,785 --> 00:26:21,164
They have been through a processwith speed, in hypervelocity,

356
00:26:21,248 --> 00:26:23,959
50 times the speed of a rifle bullet

357
00:26:24,418 --> 00:26:26,503
and temperatures from hell.

358
00:26:26,587 --> 00:26:29,506
And then they end uplike treasures from space.

359
00:27:08,253 --> 00:27:13,509
<i>The beauty and strangenessthat we just saw can become even stranger.</i>

360
00:27:13,592 --> 00:27:15,219
This is what the pattern looks like.

361
00:27:16,094 --> 00:27:19,556
If you hold it down, I'll go up frontto the board and...

362
00:27:19,640 --> 00:27:22,476
<i>The pattern that Clive is projecting here</i>

363
00:27:22,559 --> 00:27:26,480
<i>is proof of somethingthat was believed to be unthinkable.</i>

364
00:27:26,563 --> 00:27:30,108
<i>It has to do with matterof crystalline structure</i>

365
00:27:30,192 --> 00:27:32,945
<i>that seemed to be utterly impossible.</i>

366
00:27:33,028 --> 00:27:35,489
<i>So-called quasicrystals.</i>

367
00:27:36,281 --> 00:27:40,369
<i>This is the man who refusedto accept the impossibility.</i>

368
00:27:40,827 --> 00:27:46,750
<i>He's a world-renowned cosmologist,Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University.</i>

369
00:27:46,834 --> 00:27:52,881
You ended up finding evidenceof a quasicrystal, a natural quasicrystal,

370
00:27:52,965 --> 00:27:55,259
from the universe found in a meteorite.

371
00:27:55,342 --> 00:27:57,261
But, I mean, what is a quasicrystal?

372
00:27:58,387 --> 00:28:02,891
So, a quasicrystal is a form of matterthat we thought was impossible.

373
00:28:03,392 --> 00:28:07,145
For hundreds of years, we were convincedthat we had proven that it was impossible.

374
00:28:08,230 --> 00:28:12,067
But, as we now know today,not only is it possible,

375
00:28:12,150 --> 00:28:14,611
but it was made in the universe long ago,

376
00:28:14,695 --> 00:28:16,280
long before we ever imagined.

377
00:28:16,363 --> 00:28:17,990
But let's begin with something simple.

378
00:28:18,824 --> 00:28:21,660
<i>Crystals follow a pattern of order,</i>

379
00:28:21,743 --> 00:28:24,413
<i>like the tiling of your bathroom floor.</i>

380
00:28:24,496 --> 00:28:27,374
-Okay.-Just simple squares.

381
00:28:27,457 --> 00:28:30,169
<i>Square tiles fit seamlessly.</i>

382
00:28:30,252 --> 00:28:33,839
<i>But with pentagons, a fivefold symmetry,</i>

383
00:28:33,922 --> 00:28:35,465
<i>you are quickly in trouble.</i>

384
00:28:35,924 --> 00:28:38,177
Let's come out this way a little bit.

385
00:28:38,677 --> 00:28:40,095
And...

386
00:28:40,512 --> 00:28:42,264
I can already seewhere the problem's gonna come from.

387
00:28:42,347 --> 00:28:44,183
Yeah, you see what's happening?

388
00:28:44,266 --> 00:28:47,436
We've opened up a gap.So now we have some choices to make.

389
00:28:47,519 --> 00:28:49,313
We're not gonna be able to fill that in.

390
00:28:49,396 --> 00:28:51,023
I could either put it there or there,

391
00:28:51,106 --> 00:28:53,192
-but there's never gonna be a way to...-Yeah.

392
00:28:54,401 --> 00:28:55,986
Atoms hate having gaps,

393
00:28:56,069 --> 00:28:58,280
so the moment you produce gapswith real atoms,

394
00:28:58,363 --> 00:29:00,490
they're going to move aroundand get rid of them.

395
00:29:00,574 --> 00:29:04,077
Fivefold symmetry was famouslyforbidden for matter.

396
00:29:04,536 --> 00:29:09,208
<i>But quasicrystals are evenmore complex and mysterious than this.</i>

397
00:29:10,083 --> 00:29:13,545
Let's just take a lookat a quasicrystal pattern first

398
00:29:13,629 --> 00:29:16,298
to get a visual impressionof what they're like.

399
00:29:16,381 --> 00:29:20,677
So, a good example is this tilingthat you see on the table.

400
00:29:20,761 --> 00:29:25,098
If you study it, you'll see it's madeof only two pieces, those two shapes.

401
00:29:25,641 --> 00:29:26,808
They're chickens.

402
00:29:27,684 --> 00:29:30,145
<i>This looks like a puzzle for children,</i>

403
00:29:30,229 --> 00:29:33,315
<i>but there is ingenious mathematicsbehind it.</i>

404
00:29:34,316 --> 00:29:38,487
This pattern was discoveredby Sir Roger Penrose in the 1970s.

405
00:29:39,446 --> 00:29:43,367
A mathematician and sometimesa cosmologist as well.

406
00:29:44,201 --> 00:29:47,579
<i>It is astonishingthat a quasicrystal pattern</i>

407
00:29:47,663 --> 00:29:51,708
<i>can be found in a shrinein Isfahan, in Iran.</i>

408
00:29:52,167 --> 00:29:56,964
<i>Without any knowledge ofthe underlying mathematical principles,</i>

409
00:29:57,047 --> 00:30:00,092
<i>artisans more than 500 years ago</i>

410
00:30:00,175 --> 00:30:04,596
<i>solved the impossible geometryof fivefold symmetry.</i>

411
00:30:05,597 --> 00:30:06,807
There we go.

412
00:30:09,226 --> 00:30:10,352
Now, I should warn you...

413
00:30:10,435 --> 00:30:12,563
<i>The warning was justified.</i>

414
00:30:13,021 --> 00:30:16,733
<i>Yes, indeed, it gets so complicated now</i>

415
00:30:16,817 --> 00:30:20,279
<i>that we are not going to torture youwith details.</i>

416
00:30:20,737 --> 00:30:22,239
<i>Just a sample.</i>

417
00:30:22,948 --> 00:30:27,911
So, instead of just one icosahedron,we have an icosahedron of icosahedra.

418
00:30:28,495 --> 00:30:31,790
And we said, "Oh, maybe that's a wayof building something ever outwards

419
00:30:31,874 --> 00:30:33,375
that maintains this structure."

420
00:30:34,042 --> 00:30:35,252
But we ran into trouble.

421
00:30:35,961 --> 00:30:38,964
<i>But this model here solved the problem.</i>

422
00:30:39,047 --> 00:30:41,967
<i>It represents a true quasicrystal.</i>

423
00:30:42,050 --> 00:30:44,052
...and you could only just buildthis plane...

424
00:30:44,136 --> 00:30:47,848
<i>Now Steinhardtwanted to find one in nature.</i>

425
00:30:50,225 --> 00:30:53,353
You ended up doing fieldwork in Kamchatka.

426
00:30:53,437 --> 00:30:55,606
That must've been inspiredthrough the theoretical--

427
00:30:55,689 --> 00:30:57,524
Yeah. Inspired by this model.

428
00:30:57,608 --> 00:30:58,901
Because what this model says:

429
00:30:58,984 --> 00:31:02,779
"Well, actually, if the atoms have forcesthat are like these interlocks,

430
00:31:02,863 --> 00:31:05,324
they have no choicebut to form this structure."

431
00:31:05,407 --> 00:31:06,950
It immediately got me to thinking,

432
00:31:07,034 --> 00:31:11,413
"Is it possible that nature has madea quasicrystal before humans did?"

433
00:31:11,496 --> 00:31:16,627
And so that began a decades-long searchfor a natural quasicrystal.

434
00:31:17,169 --> 00:31:21,882
We eventually found a mineralogistin Florence named Luca Bindi

435
00:31:21,965 --> 00:31:25,802
who had in his museuma tiny little sample of--

436
00:31:26,303 --> 00:31:28,889
well, a rock, a complex rock,

437
00:31:28,972 --> 00:31:32,226
which had inside ita little grain of quasicrystal.

438
00:31:32,976 --> 00:31:35,229
By studying that particular sample,

439
00:31:35,312 --> 00:31:39,274
we had some hints that what we hadin hand was a piece of a meteorite.

440
00:31:39,358 --> 00:31:44,655
But to prove the case, we had to find outwhere that rock really came from

441
00:31:44,738 --> 00:31:47,616
and see if we could gather moreof the sample to prove the case.

442
00:31:48,158 --> 00:31:51,203
<i>So Paul Steinhardt and Luca Bindi</i>

443
00:31:51,286 --> 00:31:54,915
<i>set out on an expeditionto easternmost Russia,</i>

444
00:31:54,998 --> 00:31:56,959
<i>close to the Bering Strait.</i>

445
00:31:59,878 --> 00:32:04,091
<i>The red marker shows the siteof the meteorite fragments.</i>

446
00:32:05,008 --> 00:32:09,763
<i>They were found along a creeknamed Listvenitovyi,</i>

447
00:32:10,180 --> 00:32:12,099
<i>of which nobody has ever heard.</i>

448
00:32:13,141 --> 00:32:18,438
<i>The expedition included membersof the original Russian geological team</i>

449
00:32:18,522 --> 00:32:22,317
<i>that had found the first sampledecades ago.</i>

450
00:32:36,874 --> 00:32:39,918
<i>They had to negotiate uncharted terrain,</i>

451
00:32:40,002 --> 00:32:42,921
<i>totally novel for Paul Steinhardt,</i>

452
00:32:43,005 --> 00:32:49,636
<i>whose outdoor experience did not extendbeyond the lawns of Princeton University.</i>

453
00:33:00,397 --> 00:33:03,817
<i>Myriads of mosquitoes tormented him.</i>

454
00:33:04,318 --> 00:33:07,696
<i>Here we see him with a mosquito netover his face.</i>

455
00:33:08,280 --> 00:33:10,365
<i>His sleep was fitful.</i>

456
00:33:10,782 --> 00:33:15,370
<i>Bears not only appeared in his nightmares,they were really out there.</i>

457
00:33:16,622 --> 00:33:20,584
<i>Their hard work to find fragmentsof the meteorite paid off.</i>

458
00:33:21,710 --> 00:33:25,172
<i>First inspection of their findingslooked promising.</i>

459
00:33:26,215 --> 00:33:30,344
<i>Now Bindi and Steinhardthad reason to celebrate,</i>

460
00:33:30,427 --> 00:33:35,307
<i>although they could not yet knowif quasicrystals were present.</i>

461
00:33:37,351 --> 00:33:41,647
<i>The X-ray diffraction patternof the newly found samples</i>

462
00:33:41,730 --> 00:33:44,900
<i>revealed the forbidden fivefold symmetry,</i>

463
00:33:44,983 --> 00:33:49,363
<i>proof there were quasicrystalswithin the meteorite.</i>

464
00:33:49,446 --> 00:33:52,199
Could you describeyour emotion when you saw this?

465
00:33:52,950 --> 00:33:56,662
I think everything-- time seemedto stop for me at that moment.

466
00:33:58,247 --> 00:33:59,248
As...

467
00:34:00,832 --> 00:34:04,336
Just seeing this imagejust told me immediately

468
00:34:04,419 --> 00:34:07,464
that everything we had beentrying to achieve for decades

469
00:34:07,548 --> 00:34:09,424
had now been achieved.

470
00:34:09,507 --> 00:34:13,762
Plus, we had verifiedthat this quasicrystal

471
00:34:13,846 --> 00:34:17,516
not only was formed in nature,but had been formed in space.

472
00:34:19,101 --> 00:34:22,312
<i>Leaving the arcane mysteriesof matter behind,</i>

473
00:34:22,771 --> 00:34:27,525
<i>we turn toward some more average rocksthat had come down upon us.</i>

474
00:34:27,609 --> 00:34:30,070
...so we have some sticky mats here.

475
00:34:31,905 --> 00:34:36,534
<i>Arizona State Universityhouses a large collection.</i>

476
00:34:36,618 --> 00:34:39,663
The dirt that we have from outsidegoing into the clean vault.

477
00:34:39,746 --> 00:34:42,666
<i>But wild stories were waiting for us.</i>

478
00:34:42,748 --> 00:34:43,583
So when we go in,

479
00:34:43,667 --> 00:34:45,752
make sure you just step on thereto get the dirt off your feet.

480
00:34:45,835 --> 00:34:46,670
All right.

481
00:34:46,753 --> 00:34:49,464
<i>Laurence Garvie,its curator, guided us.</i>

482
00:34:49,547 --> 00:34:53,927
We have a positive pressure in here,just to keep sort of clean air coming in.

483
00:34:54,011 --> 00:34:55,637
-Got the dirt off? Good.-Yep.

484
00:34:55,721 --> 00:34:59,308
And we're also on camera all the time.Smile to the camera. Wave to the camera.

485
00:34:59,933 --> 00:35:02,519
But really what's important here

486
00:35:02,603 --> 00:35:05,355
is that, when we're ina meteorite facility like this,

487
00:35:05,439 --> 00:35:08,734
is to keep the meteoritesas clean as possible.

488
00:35:08,817 --> 00:35:10,694
You know, usually we think oftrying to keep ourselves clean.

489
00:35:10,777 --> 00:35:13,822
Here, we're trying to keep the greasefrom our fingers off the samples.

490
00:35:13,906 --> 00:35:16,700
So can you please wear some gloves,and I'll put some gloves on as well.

491
00:35:16,783 --> 00:35:18,660
And we're doing this'cause I wanna show you

492
00:35:18,744 --> 00:35:23,123
one of the most spectacular meteorites,that only fell a few weeks ago,

493
00:35:23,207 --> 00:35:24,875
and actually fell on Costa Rica.

494
00:35:24,958 --> 00:35:28,962
And it's a meteoritethat's full of organic compounds.

495
00:35:29,046 --> 00:35:30,464
And, you know, that's important.

496
00:35:30,547 --> 00:35:32,257
'Cause that tells us aboutour early solar system

497
00:35:32,341 --> 00:35:35,636
and possibly the formation of lifein our solar system as well.

498
00:35:35,719 --> 00:35:39,223
Now, I actually have the samples here,in these special cabinets.

499
00:35:39,306 --> 00:35:40,849
These are nitrogen cabinets.

500
00:35:40,933 --> 00:35:43,018
Right? So we have nitrogen-- dry nitrogen.

501
00:35:43,101 --> 00:35:46,605
Here's what's important: dry nitrogenbeing fed into the cabinets.

502
00:35:46,688 --> 00:35:51,401
So when I open it you can actually hearthe nitrogen being fed into the cabinets.

503
00:35:51,485 --> 00:35:53,612
And these meteorites are now preserved.

504
00:35:53,695 --> 00:35:56,740
We don't have water going onto them.We don't have oxygen going onto them.

505
00:35:56,823 --> 00:35:59,660
So it's the best preservationthat we currently have.

506
00:35:59,743 --> 00:36:00,994
And that's what the hissing is?

507
00:36:01,078 --> 00:36:02,329
That's what the hissing is.

508
00:36:03,372 --> 00:36:06,458
So, to give an example, here is...

509
00:36:08,502 --> 00:36:11,380
one of the most amazing meteorites.

510
00:36:12,089 --> 00:36:13,674
There, see what it's called?

511
00:36:14,216 --> 00:36:15,551
"The Doghouse."

512
00:36:16,802 --> 00:36:17,803
So let's just...

513
00:36:21,807 --> 00:36:23,100
So...

514
00:36:23,183 --> 00:36:24,977
have to add, do not drop this.

515
00:36:25,060 --> 00:36:27,646
-I'll try not to. Okay.-Please don't drop it.

516
00:36:30,858 --> 00:36:35,988
So, this stone actually fellonly a few weeks ago in Costa Rica.

517
00:36:36,071 --> 00:36:37,781
And this one actually fellthrough a doghouse

518
00:36:37,865 --> 00:36:39,908
with the dogthat was still sleeping in it.

519
00:36:39,992 --> 00:36:43,287
-The dog was unharmed, I hope.-It missed the dog by millimeters

520
00:36:43,370 --> 00:36:46,373
and embedded itself in the groundright next to the dog.

521
00:36:46,999 --> 00:36:49,168
So what makes this one special as well,

522
00:36:49,251 --> 00:36:51,170
it's actually got some dog hairstill stuck to it.

523
00:36:51,253 --> 00:36:52,379
No way.

524
00:36:52,462 --> 00:36:55,174
And what makes this one so amazing

525
00:36:55,257 --> 00:36:57,759
is the fact that, if you smell it...

526
00:36:59,094 --> 00:37:02,890
you can actually smellthe organic compounds that are in here.

527
00:37:02,973 --> 00:37:06,476
These are 4.5 billion-year-old compounds

528
00:37:06,560 --> 00:37:09,313
that were formedon an early planet--

529
00:37:09,396 --> 00:37:11,440
that planet no longer exists--

530
00:37:11,523 --> 00:37:13,275
and got trapped in this stone

531
00:37:13,358 --> 00:37:17,446
and basically just residedin the asteroid belt for 4 billion years

532
00:37:17,529 --> 00:37:19,865
before, for some reason,it left the asteroid belt

533
00:37:19,948 --> 00:37:21,325
and landed in Costa Rica

534
00:37:21,408 --> 00:37:23,952
and is now in our meteorite vault here.

535
00:37:24,036 --> 00:37:26,163
What is that smell?It's a sort of...

536
00:37:26,246 --> 00:37:28,624
We don't actually know,but we think the thing--

537
00:37:28,707 --> 00:37:31,126
it's similar to, like, mothballs.Something similar.

538
00:37:31,210 --> 00:37:33,045
Something similar to that compound.

539
00:37:33,128 --> 00:37:34,880
Like a solvent or something?

540
00:37:34,963 --> 00:37:36,632
Yeah, a little bit. A little bit.

541
00:37:36,715 --> 00:37:38,800
I'm actually gonna put this one back,unless you wanna hold it again.

542
00:37:38,884 --> 00:37:40,177
-No, I---By the way,

543
00:37:40,260 --> 00:37:42,387
the red is from the roof of the doghouse.

544
00:37:43,430 --> 00:37:46,892
And the whiteis from the floor of the doghouse.

545
00:37:46,975 --> 00:37:49,019
And did the dog instantly realize

546
00:37:49,102 --> 00:37:51,688
that it had receiveda visitor from the heavens?

547
00:37:51,772 --> 00:37:54,399
Well, it didn't, but funny enough,

548
00:37:54,483 --> 00:37:58,946
people have used dogs to lookfor meteorites because of the smell.

549
00:37:59,029 --> 00:38:01,114
They can be trained to find that smell.

550
00:38:02,074 --> 00:38:03,242
Let's put this back now.

551
00:38:09,665 --> 00:38:12,501
This is the Toluca ironfrom the Jiquipilco region.

552
00:38:12,584 --> 00:38:13,585
Here, try this one.

553
00:38:13,669 --> 00:38:15,629
Don't drop it on your toe. It'll break.

554
00:38:15,712 --> 00:38:16,713
Oh, my goodness.

555
00:38:16,797 --> 00:38:18,882
So, I mean, that must weigh, what,

556
00:38:18,966 --> 00:38:22,219
I don't know, 30 kilos, 40 kilos,just that one stone.

557
00:38:22,302 --> 00:38:23,595
That's just pure iron ore?

558
00:38:23,679 --> 00:38:25,556
That's just pure iron.But nickel-rich iron.

559
00:38:25,639 --> 00:38:28,225
-Here, let's not drop it. Ready. Ready.-I'll give you that.

560
00:38:29,643 --> 00:38:33,313
You know, one of the most amazingimpact phenomena never seen on TV

561
00:38:33,397 --> 00:38:35,691
is this material, tektites.

562
00:38:35,774 --> 00:38:40,445
Now, here we have--There was an impact on the Earth

563
00:38:40,529 --> 00:38:44,449
that basically meltedlarge amounts of the Earth's surface.

564
00:38:44,533 --> 00:38:47,786
In this case, probably several thousandsquare kilometers of ground.

565
00:38:47,870 --> 00:38:50,455
It was almost instantaneously melted.

566
00:38:50,539 --> 00:38:52,291
And then the shock from that impact

567
00:38:52,374 --> 00:38:55,669
then sprayed this materialover about a third of the Earth.

568
00:38:55,752 --> 00:38:56,753
When did this happen?

569
00:38:56,837 --> 00:38:59,590
We think about--We've dated it about 750,000 years ago.

570
00:38:59,673 --> 00:39:01,675
So, you know, sounds like a long time ago,

571
00:39:01,758 --> 00:39:04,511
but from a geological time period,it's actually just yesterday.

572
00:39:04,595 --> 00:39:06,680
-It's a very recent phenomenon.-It's glass?

573
00:39:06,763 --> 00:39:09,266
This is just-- So, what this stuff here--If you listen...

574
00:39:10,434 --> 00:39:13,562
This is just glass,but this is not extraterrestrial glass.

575
00:39:13,645 --> 00:39:18,317
This is the Earth,of which you had all this material melted,

576
00:39:18,400 --> 00:39:22,613
just turned into a melt,and then sprayed over the Earth.

577
00:39:22,696 --> 00:39:26,450
And so you find this materialin Southeast Asia, Philippines,

578
00:39:26,533 --> 00:39:29,244
through Indonesia,all the way down through Australia

579
00:39:29,328 --> 00:39:31,496
and then all the way down into Antarctica.

580
00:39:31,580 --> 00:39:34,333
And so this was a humongous event.

581
00:39:34,416 --> 00:39:37,211
Look at the shapes though.You know what these shapes are telling us?

582
00:39:37,294 --> 00:39:41,965
This is telling us that this stuff wassprayed and then solidified in the air.

583
00:39:43,133 --> 00:39:45,260
If we'd been therewhen this thing came down,

584
00:39:45,344 --> 00:39:46,887
that would've been the end of us?

585
00:39:46,970 --> 00:39:48,180
I mean, everything.

586
00:39:48,263 --> 00:39:50,974
Imagine-- And I meanseveral thousand square kilometers--

587
00:39:51,058 --> 00:39:54,937
everything underneath thatwas almost instantly turned to glass.

588
00:39:55,312 --> 00:39:57,689
So, yes. You'd be sitting therehaving your cup of tea,

589
00:39:57,773 --> 00:39:59,942
you'd be turned to glass. Everything.

590
00:40:04,863 --> 00:40:08,742
<i>Each one of these stonesfrom darker worlds out there</i>

591
00:40:08,825 --> 00:40:10,327
<i>has its own story.</i>

592
00:40:21,672 --> 00:40:26,635
<i>Throughout history, meteoriteshave captivated human imagination.</i>

593
00:40:27,427 --> 00:40:30,639
<i>A tool as simpleas the light from a cell phone</i>

594
00:40:30,722 --> 00:40:35,602
<i>extols the mysterious beautyof these voyagers from afar.</i>

595
00:41:04,381 --> 00:41:05,799
What we have here is...

596
00:41:05,883 --> 00:41:10,596
<i>At the same Center for Meteorite Studiesin Tempe, Arizona,</i>

597
00:41:10,679 --> 00:41:13,307
<i>we met Dr. Meenakshi Wadhwa,</i>

598
00:41:13,390 --> 00:41:16,852
<i>one of the foremost scientistsof meteorites.</i>

599
00:41:16,935 --> 00:41:19,062
...40,000 different meteorites.

600
00:41:19,146 --> 00:41:23,567
-Including a piece by Barbara Hepworth.-Yeah. Exactly.

601
00:41:24,943 --> 00:41:29,698
Yeah, and these are an incredible resourcefor all of the work that we do here.

602
00:41:29,781 --> 00:41:31,783
What are we looking at here?

603
00:41:31,867 --> 00:41:34,953
So that round object that you're seeing,

604
00:41:35,037 --> 00:41:37,664
that is a tiny little--

605
00:41:37,748 --> 00:41:40,334
you can imagine itas the tiny little droplet

606
00:41:40,417 --> 00:41:43,420
that was present in the earliest historyof the solar system,

607
00:41:43,504 --> 00:41:46,381
something like 4.5 billion years ago.

608
00:41:46,465 --> 00:41:48,258
Is this before the planets have accreted?

609
00:41:48,342 --> 00:41:51,929
Yes. So this iswhen there was just gas and dust.

610
00:41:52,012 --> 00:41:54,890
Nothing else. There were no planets,there was no Earth. Nothing.

611
00:41:55,474 --> 00:41:57,059
And these are--

612
00:41:57,142 --> 00:42:00,896
These have been described asdroplets of fiery rain

613
00:42:00,979 --> 00:42:04,233
that were... just condensingout of that nebula,

614
00:42:04,316 --> 00:42:06,443
that cloud of gas and dust.

615
00:42:06,527 --> 00:42:09,530
Probably because ofsome sort of shock processes

616
00:42:09,613 --> 00:42:12,491
that were happening in the earliesthistory of our solar system.

617
00:42:12,574 --> 00:42:15,702
And we don't really know, actually,where those shocks were coming from,

618
00:42:15,786 --> 00:42:18,205
but we think those are the kindsof processes that were happening

619
00:42:18,288 --> 00:42:20,958
in, you know, other solar systemsthat are forming today.

620
00:42:21,583 --> 00:42:23,460
And what elements do we find in there?

621
00:42:23,544 --> 00:42:25,963
Yeah, so what you're seeing, you know,

622
00:42:26,046 --> 00:42:29,591
this kind of beautiful stained glasspattern that you're seeing?

623
00:42:29,675 --> 00:42:32,052
That's a mineral called olivine.

624
00:42:32,636 --> 00:42:36,932
And this kind of--When I rotate it in this--

625
00:42:37,015 --> 00:42:40,561
As you have this sort of transmitted lightgoing through these minerals,

626
00:42:40,644 --> 00:42:43,397
you are polarize--the light is polarized,

627
00:42:43,480 --> 00:42:45,148
and so the mineral itself

628
00:42:45,232 --> 00:42:48,235
is sort of extinguishing the lightin certain directions.

629
00:42:48,318 --> 00:42:53,115
And so you're kind of seeingthis brightening and then darkening.

630
00:42:53,740 --> 00:42:56,994
It's like a beautifulstained glass window, really.

631
00:42:57,077 --> 00:43:00,247
-I think it's kinda-- Yeah.-It's gorgeous.

632
00:43:00,330 --> 00:43:02,833
Here's a slice,

633
00:43:02,916 --> 00:43:08,547
a thin slice of the very Mars samplethat I first looked at

634
00:43:08,630 --> 00:43:11,967
at the very start of my careerstudying meteorites.

635
00:43:12,050 --> 00:43:15,679
And I was just fascinated,because, you know,

636
00:43:15,762 --> 00:43:18,682
it looked so familiar, but it camefrom a completely different world.

637
00:43:19,474 --> 00:43:23,687
We know that this rock came from Marsbecause it has gases trapped in it

638
00:43:23,770 --> 00:43:27,399
that have the exact same compositionas the Martian atmosphere.

639
00:43:27,482 --> 00:43:30,277
And so when you take a pieceof this rock and you heat it up,

640
00:43:30,360 --> 00:43:34,448
you release these gases, and you canmeasure the composition of that gas,

641
00:43:34,531 --> 00:43:36,992
and it's the exact composition

642
00:43:37,534 --> 00:43:40,621
as what we measuredusing the spacecraft on Mars.

643
00:43:40,704 --> 00:43:43,081
-Incredible.-Yeah, it's incredible.

644
00:44:06,688 --> 00:44:10,108
Was Carl Sagan right,that we're made of that stardust?

645
00:44:10,192 --> 00:44:11,860
We are all stardust, absolutely.

646
00:44:11,944 --> 00:44:16,031
I mean, every, you know,every element in our body

647
00:44:16,114 --> 00:44:20,744
was synthesized in other starsbefore it got here.

648
00:44:20,827 --> 00:44:22,704
So, yeah. We're all stardust.

649
00:44:23,872 --> 00:44:26,124
-Eventually.-A wonderful thought.

650
00:44:26,208 --> 00:44:27,042
Yeah.

651
00:44:27,125 --> 00:44:31,088
<i>This was the only time throughoutthe entire shooting of this film</i>

652
00:44:31,171 --> 00:44:33,423
<i>where I could not resist.</i>

653
00:44:33,507 --> 00:44:36,468
<i>I had to intervene from behind the camera.</i>

654
00:44:37,010 --> 00:44:40,222
I think I'm not stardust. I'm Bavarian.

655
00:44:44,685 --> 00:44:47,187
Yeah, that's made ofspecial stuff, that is.

656
00:44:47,813 --> 00:44:49,857
Yeah. That's right.

657
00:44:58,782 --> 00:45:00,367
<i>Our voyage took us</i>

658
00:45:00,450 --> 00:45:04,496
<i>to wherever large fireballshad plunged down to Earth.</i>

659
00:45:05,372 --> 00:45:09,293
<i>We wanted to knowif life had come from outer space.</i>

660
00:45:10,252 --> 00:45:16,425
<i>This is Ramgarh Crater in Rajasthan,in Northern India, four kilometers across.</i>

661
00:45:17,259 --> 00:45:20,262
<i>From spaceit immediately catches the eye,</i>

662
00:45:20,345 --> 00:45:24,850
<i>but down on the groundyou barely notice you are inside a crater.</i>

663
00:45:25,392 --> 00:45:30,230
<i>However, Hindu temples were built heresince the 10th century.</i>

664
00:45:32,482 --> 00:45:36,403
<i>We were curiousif organic matter in meteorites</i>

665
00:45:36,486 --> 00:45:41,033
<i>could have provided the ingredientsof life on our planet.</i>

666
00:45:42,367 --> 00:45:46,788
<i>We were seeking the expertiseof Professor Nita Sahai,</i>

667
00:45:46,872 --> 00:45:51,001
<i>who studies the transitionfrom chemistry to biology.</i>

668
00:45:52,127 --> 00:45:56,173
And we're in this--in this huge crater here,

669
00:45:56,256 --> 00:45:58,175
formed by a meteorite impact.

670
00:45:58,258 --> 00:46:00,802
And we don't knowwhether it was a carbonaceous one,

671
00:46:00,886 --> 00:46:03,722
but we know thatthese carbonaceous meteorites

672
00:46:03,805 --> 00:46:06,308
have all kindsof organic molecules in them.

673
00:46:06,391 --> 00:46:10,562
What are the key ones that might representbuilding blocks of life?

674
00:46:10,646 --> 00:46:14,441
Actually, all of the building blocksof life have been found in meteorites.

675
00:46:14,525 --> 00:46:17,069
Amino acids that make up proteins,

676
00:46:17,152 --> 00:46:20,072
lipid molecules that make upcell membranes

677
00:46:20,155 --> 00:46:23,075
and, amazingly, even ribose,which is a sugar.

678
00:46:23,158 --> 00:46:25,577
I just find it astonishing, you know,

679
00:46:25,661 --> 00:46:30,332
that you can find sugars and thingsthat make proteins in a meteorite.

680
00:46:30,415 --> 00:46:31,250
Right.

681
00:46:31,333 --> 00:46:35,170
Are they made geologically,like minerals, or...

682
00:46:35,754 --> 00:46:39,341
They're not like minerals, in the sensethat they're organic molecules

683
00:46:39,424 --> 00:46:40,759
and minerals are inorganic,

684
00:46:40,843 --> 00:46:42,970
but they have been formed presumably

685
00:46:43,053 --> 00:46:46,974
by the interactions of organic moleculeswith mineral surfaces.

686
00:46:47,057 --> 00:46:50,727
For example, on interstellar grains,

687
00:46:50,811 --> 00:46:53,772
as well as on the surfacesof the meteorites themselves.

688
00:46:54,356 --> 00:46:56,650
And, I mean, there's still a big step

689
00:46:56,733 --> 00:47:00,445
from having these ingredientsto sparking life.

690
00:47:00,529 --> 00:47:02,322
-Right.-What do we need?

691
00:47:02,406 --> 00:47:04,992
I guess we need some kind of crucibleto put this stuff in

692
00:47:05,075 --> 00:47:06,785
and a heat source?

693
00:47:06,869 --> 00:47:10,205
Yeah. So, you need to getthese simple building blocks

694
00:47:10,289 --> 00:47:12,541
polymerized into longer chains,

695
00:47:12,624 --> 00:47:17,546
because the longer chains have the abilityto fold and be functional.

696
00:47:17,629 --> 00:47:19,631
What do you think of the ideaof panspermia,

697
00:47:19,715 --> 00:47:23,302
that life is dispersedaround the universe?

698
00:47:23,385 --> 00:47:26,054
I mean, is it conceivablethat living organisms

699
00:47:26,138 --> 00:47:29,975
could survive the intense temperaturesand radiation of outer space?

700
00:47:30,517 --> 00:47:33,353
DNA has actually been foundto be quite robust.

701
00:47:33,437 --> 00:47:37,524
And it's possible to survive in space.

702
00:47:37,983 --> 00:47:42,696
And even an entire organism might survivein a spore-like mode.

703
00:47:42,779 --> 00:47:46,450
'Cause people have actuallydug deep into the Earth

704
00:47:46,533 --> 00:47:50,120
and even a couple of kilometers down

705
00:47:50,204 --> 00:47:54,791
they find bacteria that have been livingthere presumably for millions of years.

706
00:47:54,875 --> 00:47:59,505
And they survive in this state of,kind of, suspended animation.

707
00:47:59,588 --> 00:48:02,841
Do you have any idea why the priestsbuilt their temples here?

708
00:48:02,925 --> 00:48:05,302
I mean, and this one'sdedicated to Shiva, you know?

709
00:48:05,385 --> 00:48:09,765
I mean, it seems too good to be true,on the floor of a meteorite-impact crater.

710
00:48:09,848 --> 00:48:14,394
It's kind of interesting that this templeis dedicated to Shiva and Parvati.

711
00:48:14,478 --> 00:48:19,900
And it's a tantric temple,which represents creation.

712
00:48:19,983 --> 00:48:22,110
And Shiva is also the god of destruction.

713
00:48:22,569 --> 00:48:25,072
So, in Hindu mythology,there is this idea

714
00:48:25,155 --> 00:48:28,784
of cycles of creationand destruction of the universe.

715
00:48:28,867 --> 00:48:32,704
And, appropriately,it's in a meteor-impact crater site,

716
00:48:32,788 --> 00:48:36,124
where the impact can wipe out life,

717
00:48:36,208 --> 00:48:38,794
but then also deliverthese organic molecules

718
00:48:38,877 --> 00:48:41,129
that could have seeded lifein the first place.

719
00:48:45,592 --> 00:48:50,180
<i>This was confirmed in a similar wayby a resident sadhu.</i>

720
00:48:51,014 --> 00:48:56,645
<i>If humanity and all life becomes extinctby war or a meteorite,</i>

721
00:48:56,728 --> 00:49:01,108
<i>life will regenerate at this place,at this crater lake.</i>

722
00:49:10,450 --> 00:49:14,663
<i>We had to go wherethe most colossal fireball came down.</i>

723
00:49:15,622 --> 00:49:19,084
<i>It was at a placewith an unpronounceable name,</i>

724
00:49:19,168 --> 00:49:22,880
<i>at the coastof the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico.</i>

725
00:49:24,882 --> 00:49:30,804
<i>This is the very place where our planetsuffered an unimaginable apocalypse.</i>

726
00:49:31,597 --> 00:49:34,850
<i>What came down from space right here</i>

727
00:49:34,933 --> 00:49:40,105
<i>had the force of hundreds of millions--possibly thousands of millions--</i>

728
00:49:40,189 --> 00:49:43,066
<i>of atomic bombs Hiroshima's size.</i>

729
00:49:44,610 --> 00:49:47,571
<i>Nothing out here is reminiscent of it.</i>

730
00:49:48,113 --> 00:49:51,992
<i>Only leaden boredomweighs upon everything.</i>

731
00:49:54,203 --> 00:50:00,292
<i>Chicxulub is a beach resortso godforsaken you want to cry.</i>

732
00:51:12,489 --> 00:51:15,826
<i>The dogs here,like all dogs on this planet,</i>

733
00:51:15,909 --> 00:51:19,121
<i>are just too dim-witted to understand</i>

734
00:51:19,204 --> 00:51:22,708
<i>that three-quarters of all specieswere extinguished</i>

735
00:51:22,791 --> 00:51:25,627
<i>by the event that took place right here.</i>

736
00:51:31,550 --> 00:51:35,304
<i>The dinosaurs have only survivedin a local museum.</i>

737
00:51:38,265 --> 00:51:42,477
<i>Their eyes were made by humans.They recognize nothing.</i>

738
00:51:44,062 --> 00:51:46,690
<i>Only their footprints are authentic,</i>

739
00:51:46,773 --> 00:51:50,527
<i>but they showthey were ambling along, not fleeing.</i>

740
00:51:51,612 --> 00:51:54,781
<i>They were obliviousto the sudden death of everything.</i>

741
00:52:13,550 --> 00:52:15,928
This godforsaken spot is at the center

742
00:52:16,011 --> 00:52:19,681
of one of the greatest geologicalcataclysms in Earth history.

743
00:52:20,182 --> 00:52:24,436
It irreversibly changed the course of lifeon the planet.

744
00:52:24,520 --> 00:52:26,605
Some 66 million years ago,

745
00:52:26,688 --> 00:52:29,066
an asteroid, perhaps 10 kilometers across,

746
00:52:29,149 --> 00:52:34,029
came hurtling to the Earthat speeds of 20 kilometers a second.

747
00:52:34,905 --> 00:52:37,574
The force of the impactwas so phenomenal

748
00:52:37,658 --> 00:52:41,495
that it excavated a hole30 kilometers deep.

749
00:52:42,246 --> 00:52:44,373
The crater that formed...

750
00:52:44,456 --> 00:52:49,670
stretches out 100 kilometers out to seaand 100 kilometers inland,

751
00:52:50,212 --> 00:52:54,508
and the temperaturesgenerated in the crust from the impact

752
00:52:54,591 --> 00:52:59,805
melted and vaporized the crustand the bolide itself.

753
00:53:00,597 --> 00:53:03,308
There were earthquakes of magnitude 11.

754
00:53:03,392 --> 00:53:07,938
That's a hundred times greaterthan any historical earthquake.

755
00:53:08,021 --> 00:53:10,691
Mega-tsunami, 100-meter-high waves,

756
00:53:10,774 --> 00:53:14,152
ravaged the shorelines of distant oceans,

757
00:53:14,236 --> 00:53:19,658
and a vast pall of dustand molten droplets and gases

758
00:53:19,741 --> 00:53:21,285
soared into the atmosphere,

759
00:53:21,368 --> 00:53:25,998
some of the material even reachingescape velocity and exiting into space.

760
00:53:26,665 --> 00:53:31,044
Those molten droplets rained outover an area of 3,000 kilometers,

761
00:53:31,128 --> 00:53:34,214
igniting firestorms on the land.

762
00:53:34,298 --> 00:53:36,717
<i>I love how movies depict it.</i>

763
00:53:36,800 --> 00:53:40,012
<i>800 kilometers from the impact site,</i>

764
00:53:40,095 --> 00:53:41,805
<i>the light is so intense</i>

765
00:53:41,889 --> 00:53:45,142
<i>it causes the flesh of the Alamosaurusto appear transparent...</i>

766
00:53:47,811 --> 00:53:50,981
<i>and burns images of their shadowsonto the ground.</i>

767
00:53:54,568 --> 00:53:57,154
<i>The scorching light sears their eyeballs.</i>

768
00:53:57,237 --> 00:53:59,740
<i>They now can't seewhat's headed their way.</i>

769
00:54:00,741 --> 00:54:02,117
<i>But they can feel it.</i>

770
00:54:04,703 --> 00:54:06,622
Now, mammals, they made it through,

771
00:54:06,705 --> 00:54:10,125
and they took advantageof the new ecological opportunities.

772
00:54:11,376 --> 00:54:14,796
We probably wouldn't be here ourselves,Homo sapiens as a species,

773
00:54:14,880 --> 00:54:17,382
were it not for this colossal impact.

774
00:54:18,967 --> 00:54:23,889
<i>Nobody knew there is an impact crateruntil the 1970s.</i>

775
00:54:24,431 --> 00:54:30,896
<i>Gravity anomalies and borehole datarevealed its structure and immense size.</i>

776
00:54:31,563 --> 00:54:33,941
<i>The only surface manifestation</i>

777
00:54:34,024 --> 00:54:38,654
<i>is an enigmatic ring of water holescalled cenotes.</i>

778
00:54:39,363 --> 00:54:42,449
<i>They are a geological echo of the impact.</i>

779
00:54:43,617 --> 00:54:47,454
<i>Since there are no rivers and lakesin the Yucatán Peninsula,</i>

780
00:54:47,955 --> 00:54:51,208
<i>these water holes attractedthe ancient Mayas.</i>

781
00:54:52,543 --> 00:54:55,170
<i>Without the presence of cenotes,</i>

782
00:54:55,254 --> 00:54:59,842
<i>this cultural center of Chichén Itzáwould never have been built.</i>

783
00:55:02,010 --> 00:55:05,639
<i>They developed a high culturewith a writing system,</i>

784
00:55:05,722 --> 00:55:10,686
<i>astronomy and monumental architectureof pyramids and temples.</i>

785
00:55:20,404 --> 00:55:24,783
<i>They even built an observatorybefore there were telescopes.</i>

786
00:55:25,284 --> 00:55:28,287
<i>They tracked the positionof celestial bodies.</i>

787
00:55:29,746 --> 00:55:35,419
<i>Their calendar was much more precisethan anything at this historical time.</i>

788
00:55:37,588 --> 00:55:42,176
<i>The Mayas had a deep fascinationof death and the afterlife.</i>

789
00:55:43,093 --> 00:55:48,140
<i>In their belief, there werenine underworlds and 13 heavens.</i>

790
00:55:53,854 --> 00:55:56,648
<i>Wanting to see some of the underworld,</i>

791
00:55:56,732 --> 00:56:00,110
<i>we descended to the bottomof a nearby cenote.</i>

792
00:56:06,033 --> 00:56:11,038
<i>Fátima Tec Pool,a cave expert and archaeologist,</i>

793
00:56:11,121 --> 00:56:14,374
<i>took us to one of the abodesof the rain god.</i>

794
00:56:17,503 --> 00:56:21,089
This cenote was virtually unknownuntil very recently.

795
00:56:21,173 --> 00:56:24,801
Tell me, Fátima, what is the relationshipbetween the cenote,

796
00:56:24,885 --> 00:56:28,472
the cave here, and the ritualand belief of the Maya?

797
00:56:29,556 --> 00:56:32,309
This place is interestingbecause you can see

798
00:56:32,392 --> 00:56:36,021
how the concepts of waterand caves combine.

799
00:56:36,605 --> 00:56:39,024
And how the Mayans usedthese spaces for rituals.

800
00:56:39,566 --> 00:56:45,656
Inside, you can see walls which suggestthe Mayans used to make pilgrimages here

801
00:56:45,739 --> 00:56:47,783
to pass through these sacred walls.

802
00:56:47,866 --> 00:56:50,077
-Can we go in?-Of course, let's go.

803
00:56:58,585 --> 00:57:01,004
As the caves are seen asentrances to the underworld,

804
00:57:01,588 --> 00:57:06,510
we can see here how they made use ofthe natural form of the cave,

805
00:57:06,593 --> 00:57:09,596
to make ritual depositsof human remains,

806
00:57:09,680 --> 00:57:13,809
possibly an ancestor of a Mayan family.

807
00:57:13,892 --> 00:57:17,396
-What era are they from?-Possibly the Preclassic.

808
00:57:19,648 --> 00:57:22,734
We can also see this portal.

809
00:57:22,818 --> 00:57:24,987
This takes us further into the underworld.

810
00:57:26,113 --> 00:57:29,283
There's something else interesting...

811
00:57:35,205 --> 00:57:37,040
A human finger bone.

812
00:57:38,083 --> 00:57:42,087
Deposited here in part of the wall.

813
00:57:42,171 --> 00:57:47,050
Look closely and you can see ashes,possibly a kind of mortuary treatment,

814
00:57:47,676 --> 00:57:50,679
before being placed in the wall.

815
00:57:50,762 --> 00:57:53,682
Is it safe for human beingsto enter the underworld,

816
00:57:53,765 --> 00:57:55,058
the abode of the gods?

817
00:57:55,142 --> 00:57:56,894
Yes, of course!

818
00:58:14,203 --> 00:58:18,040
<i>We timed our visitwith the Mexican Day of the Dead.</i>

819
00:58:18,790 --> 00:58:21,502
<i>For the Mayans, death was an obsession.</i>

820
00:58:22,461 --> 00:58:26,507
<i>There are endless friezeswith nothing but skulls.</i>

821
00:58:39,853 --> 00:58:42,481
<i>Mérida, the central cemetery.</i>

822
00:58:43,023 --> 00:58:46,652
<i>All this within the perimeterof the Chicxulub crater.</i>

823
00:58:49,404 --> 00:58:52,950
<i>The dead leave their gravesand join the living.</i>

824
01:01:23,934 --> 01:01:25,811
<i>We are here in the serene park</i>

825
01:01:25,894 --> 01:01:29,731
<i>of the pope's summer residenceof Castel Gandolfo.</i>

826
01:01:30,148 --> 01:01:33,861
<i>However,serious science is being done here.</i>

827
01:01:35,112 --> 01:01:41,368
<i>There's an astronomical observatoryfamous for its photographic celestial map.</i>

828
01:01:42,786 --> 01:01:48,292
<i>Right next to the residence, Lake Albano,a formidable volcanic crater.</i>

829
01:01:51,128 --> 01:01:56,550
<i>The director of the observatoryis a Jesuit, Brother Guy Consolmagno.</i>

830
01:01:57,759 --> 01:02:00,971
<i>He's one of the foremost scholarsin meteoritics.</i>

831
01:02:01,972 --> 01:02:05,267
Brother Guy, at the heartof the Vatican Observatory

832
01:02:05,350 --> 01:02:07,352
is this wonderful meteorite collection.

833
01:02:07,436 --> 01:02:09,188
Quite a historical collection.

834
01:02:09,271 --> 01:02:10,439
I certainly think so.

835
01:02:10,522 --> 01:02:13,567
This is the stuff I've been working onfor, now, nearly 30 years.

836
01:02:13,650 --> 01:02:15,569
Is this why you came here initially?

837
01:02:15,652 --> 01:02:17,613
I didn't choose to come here.

838
01:02:17,696 --> 01:02:20,282
I did this under a vow of obedience.

839
01:02:20,365 --> 01:02:23,202
I had been a scientistand then entered the Jesuits

840
01:02:23,285 --> 01:02:26,955
and thought I was gonna be teachingat a school like maybe Georgetown.

841
01:02:27,039 --> 01:02:30,751
But under obediencethey ordered me to come to Rome

842
01:02:30,834 --> 01:02:34,087
and eat that terrible foodand look at this miserable scenery.

843
01:02:34,171 --> 01:02:37,424
And, oh, yes, there's a collectionof a thousand meteorites.

844
01:02:37,508 --> 01:02:39,968
They didn't knowthat the meteorites were here.

845
01:02:40,052 --> 01:02:43,138
They didn't know that my expertisewas meteorites.

846
01:02:43,222 --> 01:02:46,099
It was one of those divine coincidences.

847
01:02:46,183 --> 01:02:48,644
It's phenomenal that we've got meteorites,

848
01:02:48,727 --> 01:02:53,023
that we've got pieces of outer spacethat have visited us here on Earth,

849
01:02:53,106 --> 01:02:55,400
and that we can tellthat they're not from the Earth,

850
01:02:55,484 --> 01:02:58,403
that they're made, chemically,of completely different materials,

851
01:02:58,487 --> 01:03:01,073
that they were formed4.5 billion years ago.

852
01:03:01,156 --> 01:03:04,243
That we have the abilityto understand these things

853
01:03:04,326 --> 01:03:05,994
is itself a miracle.

854
01:03:06,703 --> 01:03:11,166
And you would find it perfectly reasonablethat life is elsewhere in the universe,

855
01:03:11,250 --> 01:03:14,253
life on Earthmay have originated elsewhere?

856
01:03:14,336 --> 01:03:17,381
It's possible. I don't know.I don't have the data.

857
01:03:17,464 --> 01:03:19,675
You know, people will sometimes ask me,

858
01:03:19,758 --> 01:03:22,219
do I believe that there's life elsewherein the universe?

859
01:03:22,302 --> 01:03:24,429
And I think that's the right wayto ask it.

860
01:03:24,513 --> 01:03:27,850
It's a matter of belief.I don't have the data.

861
01:03:28,559 --> 01:03:30,644
But if you were to come to me,as a scientist,

862
01:03:30,727 --> 01:03:32,771
saying you wanted resourcesto look for life,

863
01:03:32,855 --> 01:03:35,148
and you had a great project,I'd say, "Go for it."

864
01:03:35,232 --> 01:03:37,150
On the other hand, if you were sayingyou wanted to study

865
01:03:37,234 --> 01:03:39,820
little green mencoming out of a flying saucer,

866
01:03:39,903 --> 01:03:42,322
then I'm not so sureI'd go along with that.

867
01:03:42,406 --> 01:03:47,035
But if the green men arrived on Earth,would you consider baptizing them?

868
01:03:47,452 --> 01:03:48,745
Only if they ask.

869
01:03:50,831 --> 01:03:54,835
<i>Brother Guy invited usto see the historical telescope.</i>

870
01:03:54,918 --> 01:03:57,588
...that were commissionedto photograph the entire sky

871
01:03:57,671 --> 01:03:59,298
and make a photographic atlas.

872
01:03:59,798 --> 01:04:02,801
Why, throughout so much of historyand around the world,

873
01:04:02,885 --> 01:04:06,597
have people thought of heavenas up there?

874
01:04:07,973 --> 01:04:09,641
I don't know, but it's certainly true.

875
01:04:09,725 --> 01:04:11,518
I mean, there are so many languages

876
01:04:11,602 --> 01:04:14,605
where the word for "sky" and the wordfor "heaven" are the same word.

877
01:04:15,939 --> 01:04:17,149
All I can think of--

878
01:04:17,232 --> 01:04:20,611
and maybe, you know, a professionalwould come up with a better answer--

879
01:04:20,694 --> 01:04:24,364
all I can think of is looking at the stars

880
01:04:24,448 --> 01:04:29,745
give you that sense of out-of-yourselfthat you need

881
01:04:29,828 --> 01:04:32,623
to be able to be readyto encounter a god.

882
01:04:33,790 --> 01:04:35,918
When you see a shooting star today,

883
01:04:36,001 --> 01:04:40,088
is it an interesting scientific factfor you, or do you gasp in wonder?

884
01:04:40,172 --> 01:04:42,299
Yes. It is both.

885
01:04:43,634 --> 01:04:48,055
And frankly, I think it's because I knowthe science that I'm even more in awe.

886
01:04:48,805 --> 01:04:51,558
It's one thing to say,"That's a pretty bit of light."

887
01:04:51,642 --> 01:04:52,935
It's another thing to say,

888
01:04:53,018 --> 01:04:55,562
"I know what elementsare creating that light.

889
01:04:55,646 --> 01:04:57,773
I know why it's that color.

890
01:04:57,856 --> 01:05:00,817
I know what I can learn from this.

891
01:05:00,901 --> 01:05:03,612
I hope some camera captured it,so that I can measure

892
01:05:03,695 --> 01:05:06,073
not only, 'Boy, was that pretty,'

893
01:05:06,156 --> 01:05:10,285
but also, 'This is telling me somethingabout dust from a comet.'

894
01:05:10,369 --> 01:05:15,040
A cloud of dust left behind a cometthat the Earth is barreling into,

895
01:05:15,123 --> 01:05:17,709
and, like snowflakeshitting your windscreen,

896
01:05:17,793 --> 01:05:21,880
it's shots of lighthitting our atmosphere."

897
01:05:22,840 --> 01:05:27,344
All of that adds to the joy.It doesn't take away from it.

898
01:05:27,427 --> 01:05:31,223
This brings to mind the dynamicof different orders of knowledge,

899
01:05:31,306 --> 01:05:35,352
the rational and the poetic,the imaginative and the intellectual.

900
01:05:35,435 --> 01:05:39,523
And it seems to me that you marshalthe same thought processes

901
01:05:39,606 --> 01:05:43,902
to cope with mattersthat are so vast, the cosmos,

902
01:05:43,986 --> 01:05:46,530
and yet mattersthat are so intimate, the soul.

903
01:05:47,406 --> 01:05:50,742
You can't do the one without the other.

904
01:05:51,159 --> 01:05:52,911
You can't do science--

905
01:05:52,995 --> 01:05:55,080
You don't want to do science

906
01:05:55,163 --> 01:06:00,002
if you don't have that sense of awe,that sense of wonder.

907
01:06:00,752 --> 01:06:04,506
You can't believe in a creator god

908
01:06:04,590 --> 01:06:07,301
without experiencing creation.

909
01:06:07,759 --> 01:06:09,970
Otherwise what's the point of believing?

910
01:06:11,138 --> 01:06:14,516
And I know that you described in the '70s,as a graduate student,

911
01:06:14,600 --> 01:06:16,268
seeing Comet West.

912
01:06:16,351 --> 01:06:20,647
And you said, "Was it impressive?No, it was frightening."

913
01:06:20,731 --> 01:06:23,442
It shook you to the core, you said.Why?

914
01:06:24,651 --> 01:06:26,695
In the sky was a comet

915
01:06:26,778 --> 01:06:30,282
that looked like every photographof a comet you'd ever seen.

916
01:06:30,365 --> 01:06:33,619
The kind of thing that you thoughtonly existed in photographs.

917
01:06:33,702 --> 01:06:35,245
And it didn't belong there.

918
01:06:35,329 --> 01:06:37,289
And it was big. And it was scary.

919
01:06:37,372 --> 01:06:40,042
And it wasn't there yesterdayand, "What's going on?"

920
01:06:41,001 --> 01:06:44,755
And then you understood why ancient peoplewould look at comets

921
01:06:44,838 --> 01:06:50,135
as a portent of somethingreally, really scary and different.

922
01:06:50,802 --> 01:06:55,349
How might the church reactif the NASA telescopes detect

923
01:06:55,432 --> 01:06:59,311
a really threatening near-Earth objecthurtling towards us?

924
01:06:59,937 --> 01:07:03,815
I'll be honest. We'll pray.What else can you do?

925
01:07:08,111 --> 01:07:10,781
<i>I want to show an excerpt of a movie</i>

926
01:07:10,864 --> 01:07:13,742
<i>where physical and existential fear</i>

927
01:07:13,825 --> 01:07:16,912
<i>are just the shudder audiences go for.</i>

928
01:07:17,371 --> 01:07:19,164
<i>This is beautifully done.</i>

929
01:07:54,116 --> 01:07:56,785
<i>Apart from Brother Guy's prayers,</i>

930
01:07:56,869 --> 01:07:59,913
<i>there are practical measuresalready in place.</i>

931
01:08:00,497 --> 01:08:02,916
<i>We are here at Pan-STARRS,</i>

932
01:08:03,000 --> 01:08:07,963
<i>the Panoramic Survey Telescopeand Rapid Response System,</i>

933
01:08:08,046 --> 01:08:11,633
<i>located at the Hawaiian island of Maui.</i>

934
01:08:11,717 --> 01:08:13,844
Okay, brake is released.

935
01:08:14,595 --> 01:08:17,639
Everybody stand clear.I'm gonna bring it down.

936
01:08:17,723 --> 01:08:21,602
<i>Here, one of the telescopesduring maintenance.</i>

937
01:08:44,582 --> 01:08:46,417
We'll go for that, I guess.

938
01:08:46,502 --> 01:08:48,962
-Yeah. I'll try.-Yeah. Okay.

939
01:08:52,424 --> 01:08:56,136
<i>Dr. Joanna Bulger is entrusted,in a way,</i>

940
01:08:56,220 --> 01:08:58,596
<i>with the safekeeping of humanity.</i>

941
01:09:01,850 --> 01:09:04,895
<i>And so is her colleague, Dr. Mark Willman.</i>

942
01:09:05,812 --> 01:09:10,567
<i>Just looking at their faces gave usa good amount of confidence.</i>

943
01:09:14,071 --> 01:09:17,448
<i>They allowed usto intrude on their night watch.</i>

944
01:09:17,533 --> 01:09:19,868
-Good evening.-Clive, hey.

945
01:09:19,952 --> 01:09:22,371
-I found you. The night watch.-How's it going?

946
01:09:22,453 --> 01:09:24,997
-Come on. Have a seat.-Have a seat.

947
01:09:25,624 --> 01:09:30,546
Helping to protect us from space rocksthat might have hostile intent.

948
01:09:30,629 --> 01:09:32,840
We were just observing,but we had to close up

949
01:09:32,923 --> 01:09:34,800
because the humidity shot up.

950
01:09:34,883 --> 01:09:37,051
So we're up to 90% now,

951
01:09:37,135 --> 01:09:39,680
and we have to close at 85to protect the mirror.

952
01:09:39,763 --> 01:09:42,057
We don't want moisture on the mirror.

953
01:09:42,140 --> 01:09:45,560
And how do you communicatewith the controllers up at the telescope?

954
01:09:45,644 --> 01:09:49,398
Well... we are the controllers.

955
01:09:49,481 --> 01:09:52,317
There's nobody at the summit.It's all remote observing now.

956
01:09:52,401 --> 01:09:54,945
That's old school,where you had to drive up at the summit.

957
01:09:55,028 --> 01:09:56,488
It's 10,000 feet,

958
01:09:56,572 --> 01:09:59,157
so it's much more comfortabledown here at 2,000 feet.

959
01:10:00,659 --> 01:10:01,952
And so what have we got?

960
01:10:02,035 --> 01:10:04,371
I mean, this screen,I guess, is the night sky.

961
01:10:04,454 --> 01:10:06,039
Yep, this is a map of the sky.

962
01:10:06,123 --> 01:10:08,166
You can see there's the zenith.

963
01:10:08,250 --> 01:10:10,752
That's just straight overhead.And here's the telescope.

964
01:10:11,879 --> 01:10:15,007
And this was the targetwe were gonna observe.

965
01:10:15,090 --> 01:10:16,842
We take about 60 images,

966
01:10:16,925 --> 01:10:21,805
and we get four imagesof the same spot in the sky.

967
01:10:21,889 --> 01:10:24,808
And so we have a tiny movie,a four-image movie then.

968
01:10:24,892 --> 01:10:27,019
And then we can pick outmoving targets that way.

969
01:10:27,102 --> 01:10:29,146
And you've gotthe largest cameras on Earth.

970
01:10:29,229 --> 01:10:30,480
-Is that right?-We do.

971
01:10:30,564 --> 01:10:31,982
I've got a 12-megapixel camera.

972
01:10:32,065 --> 01:10:34,151
-Twelve megapixels.-What's your camera?

973
01:10:34,234 --> 01:10:37,321
Ours is over a billion pixels,

974
01:10:37,404 --> 01:10:40,282
so it's-- it's much larger

975
01:10:40,365 --> 01:10:44,328
than a-- a consumer camera like that.

976
01:10:46,496 --> 01:10:48,957
What is going on with this image here?

977
01:10:49,041 --> 01:10:51,043
-Is this the pixel array itself?-Yeah, exactly.

978
01:10:51,126 --> 01:10:53,337
So this is actually the raw imagethat we take.

979
01:10:53,420 --> 01:10:56,215
So this is a 45-second exposure.

980
01:10:56,298 --> 01:11:01,053
And you can see the sizeof the camera itself.

981
01:11:02,346 --> 01:11:05,724
So it-- We're--We get a three-degree field of view,

982
01:11:05,807 --> 01:11:08,352
which is roughly seven square degreeson the sky.

983
01:11:08,936 --> 01:11:11,355
And the camera itselfis stitched together

984
01:11:11,438 --> 01:11:16,026
of an eight-by-eight arrayof addressable CCDs.

985
01:11:16,527 --> 01:11:19,404
So if you actually--We can click on one of these images.

986
01:11:19,488 --> 01:11:21,198
-This one over here.-What's that?

987
01:11:21,281 --> 01:11:23,325
-Is that a meteor there?-Here?

988
01:11:23,408 --> 01:11:27,287
No. These are two satellitesthat we've caught in our field of view.

989
01:11:27,704 --> 01:11:29,873
It is a satisfying job, because...

990
01:11:32,417 --> 01:11:36,004
well, we don't wanna go the wayof the dinosaurs, and...

991
01:11:36,088 --> 01:11:38,173
so it's worthwhile looking outfor these things.

992
01:11:38,257 --> 01:11:43,345
Although the odds are slim that a big oneis gonna hit us anytime soon.

993
01:11:44,096 --> 01:11:47,140
But sooner or laterthere will be a big one,

994
01:11:47,224 --> 01:11:49,309
so we're watching for it.

995
01:11:50,769 --> 01:11:53,272
I do feel I can sleepmore soundly at night

996
01:11:53,355 --> 01:11:56,650
knowing that there is always someone herein the night shift,

997
01:11:56,733 --> 01:12:00,153
you know, looking for inbound bolides.That's wonderful.

998
01:12:00,237 --> 01:12:02,322
365 days a year, yeah. Every night.

999
01:12:02,406 --> 01:12:04,658
Thank you. Thank you very muchfor protecting us.

1000
01:12:05,284 --> 01:12:07,369
-You're welcome. It's our privilege.-Yeah.

1001
01:12:07,953 --> 01:12:13,000
<i>The photos of the night skyare analyzed by Dr. Rob Weryk,</i>

1002
01:12:13,083 --> 01:12:16,211
<i>a planetary defense researcherfrom Canada.</i>

1003
01:12:17,462 --> 01:12:20,299
I can't believe this is the first timeyou've actually been to the telescopes.

1004
01:12:20,382 --> 01:12:23,677
Yeah, well, normally I focus on the dataanalysis, reviewing the candidates.

1005
01:12:23,760 --> 01:12:25,679
So it's nice to have a chanceto come see the telescope.

1006
01:12:25,762 --> 01:12:29,057
Is it like seeing a sort of, you know,brother that you've never met before?

1007
01:12:29,141 --> 01:12:30,517
That's true. That's true. Yeah.

1008
01:12:30,601 --> 01:12:33,979
They actually ended up opening at the endof the night for an hour and a half.

1009
01:12:34,062 --> 01:12:36,398
We actually were ableto review the data this morning.

1010
01:12:36,481 --> 01:12:38,901
And so I foundsix new candidate objects.

1011
01:12:38,984 --> 01:12:40,277
"We" is "you."You found them.

1012
01:12:40,360 --> 01:12:42,070
Yes. I mean, it's reallya team effort overall,

1013
01:12:42,154 --> 01:12:43,822
but I'm the one that reviews it, so...

1014
01:12:43,906 --> 01:12:46,283
What's the most exciting objectthat you've found?

1015
01:12:46,366 --> 01:12:49,369
So, the most exciting object we foundbecame known as 'Oumuamua.

1016
01:12:49,453 --> 01:12:51,330
It's actually the firstinterstellar comet.

1017
01:12:51,413 --> 01:12:53,707
It's a comet that camefrom outside our solar system.

1018
01:12:53,790 --> 01:12:56,335
It's the first time we ever sawan object like this. Yeah.

1019
01:12:56,418 --> 01:12:57,586
'Oumuamua?

1020
01:12:57,669 --> 01:12:59,880
'Oumuamua.So, it's actually a Hawaiian word.

1021
01:12:59,963 --> 01:13:01,965
It means "first messenger from afar." Yes.

1022
01:13:02,049 --> 01:13:03,050
Okay.

1023
01:13:03,759 --> 01:13:05,844
So it's actually a two-step process.

1024
01:13:05,928 --> 01:13:09,306
The computer software isn't perfect,and it still requires manual review,

1025
01:13:09,389 --> 01:13:10,849
and that's where I come in.

1026
01:13:10,933 --> 01:13:14,478
So my main responsibility is to reviewall the nightly detections.

1027
01:13:14,561 --> 01:13:16,313
And things that are real,

1028
01:13:16,396 --> 01:13:20,400
they would show up as eithera series of dots or trailed objects.

1029
01:13:20,484 --> 01:13:22,653
Are you the first person who's seen this?

1030
01:13:22,736 --> 01:13:25,322
Yes. So while the observerscollect the data,

1031
01:13:25,405 --> 01:13:28,492
I'm actually the first personon the planet to review and see this,

1032
01:13:28,575 --> 01:13:30,452
and my submitting it would sound the alarm

1033
01:13:30,536 --> 01:13:32,871
if there was an objectthat was a hazard to the Earth.

1034
01:13:34,498 --> 01:13:37,543
<i>The alarmwould instantly call the attention</i>

1035
01:13:37,626 --> 01:13:41,255
<i>of NASA's Planetary DefenseCoordination Office.</i>

1036
01:13:42,089 --> 01:13:45,175
<i>Only a few people know that it exists.</i>

1037
01:13:45,884 --> 01:13:50,264
<i>Responsible here is Dr. Kelly Fast,an astronomer.</i>

1038
01:13:50,347 --> 01:13:52,516
I've heard you describe asteroids

1039
01:13:52,599 --> 01:13:54,101
as the vermin of the solar system.

1040
01:13:54,184 --> 01:13:55,769
Why do you call them that?

1041
01:13:56,478 --> 01:14:01,108
Well, certainly astronomers who arelooking at things besides asteroids...

1042
01:14:02,192 --> 01:14:03,652
they might be looking at their target,

1043
01:14:03,735 --> 01:14:08,031
and asteroids are going to photobombwhatever they're looking at.

1044
01:14:08,115 --> 01:14:11,118
So I guess from a point of view,if you're looking at something else,

1045
01:14:11,201 --> 01:14:13,412
then they are the verminof the solar system.

1046
01:14:14,121 --> 01:14:15,873
From our point of view at NASA,

1047
01:14:15,956 --> 01:14:20,586
they're fantastic for science,for spacecraft targets.

1048
01:14:20,669 --> 01:14:22,421
But we also want to keep an eye on them,

1049
01:14:22,504 --> 01:14:27,009
because it's never good when two thingsoccupy the same space at the same time.

1050
01:14:27,092 --> 01:14:30,804
So we want to know if any of themare going to intersect Earth's orbit

1051
01:14:30,888 --> 01:14:33,307
at a time when Earth is going to be there.

1052
01:14:33,390 --> 01:14:35,976
There's dust hitting Earth's atmosphereall the time.

1053
01:14:36,059 --> 01:14:37,936
We see shooting stars,

1054
01:14:38,020 --> 01:14:39,980
that's just dust burning upin the atmosphere.

1055
01:14:40,063 --> 01:14:43,025
But it's when things are larger,

1056
01:14:43,108 --> 01:14:45,903
when you get up tothe size of asteroids--

1057
01:14:45,986 --> 01:14:49,865
Earth's atmosphere is fantasticfor burning things up,

1058
01:14:49,948 --> 01:14:52,159
but eventually things get too bigfor that to happen.

1059
01:14:52,242 --> 01:14:55,454
Chelyabinsk, 20 meters.There was devastation.

1060
01:14:56,246 --> 01:14:58,707
Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908.

1061
01:14:58,790 --> 01:15:02,294
That was probably a 40-meter asteroid.

1062
01:15:04,379 --> 01:15:08,342
<i>Eighty million treeswere flattened by the blast.</i>

1063
01:15:08,425 --> 01:15:13,096
<i>But not a single grain of the asteroidhas ever been discovered.</i>

1064
01:15:16,225 --> 01:15:19,937
And defense? What can we doif there's a big sucker coming in at us?

1065
01:15:20,020 --> 01:15:21,980
What can we do about it?

1066
01:15:22,064 --> 01:15:24,691
Well, yeah, the best defenseis preparation.

1067
01:15:24,775 --> 01:15:26,652
And so finding them first--

1068
01:15:26,735 --> 01:15:29,363
You don't know how to mount a defenseuntil you find them.

1069
01:15:29,446 --> 01:15:31,490
So that is the first order of business.

1070
01:15:31,573 --> 01:15:34,076
And that is going onwith ground-based surveys.

1071
01:15:34,535 --> 01:15:36,203
If you think of it as:

1072
01:15:36,286 --> 01:15:37,120
You've got the Sun,

1073
01:15:37,204 --> 01:15:39,957
you've got the Earth and the other planetsgoing around the Sun,

1074
01:15:40,040 --> 01:15:41,208
like being on a racetrack.

1075
01:15:41,291 --> 01:15:44,169
And then you've got all the asteroidsgoing around the Sun on the racetrack.

1076
01:15:44,253 --> 01:15:47,005
And so there are many timeswhen they might come close together.

1077
01:15:47,089 --> 01:15:49,925
In fact, we have that often,where there's a "close approach,"

1078
01:15:50,008 --> 01:15:53,011
where an asteroidcomes close to Earth, which--

1079
01:15:53,095 --> 01:15:56,390
Close might mean, you know,many lunar distances away.

1080
01:15:56,849 --> 01:15:58,517
But let's say this is really large.

1081
01:15:58,600 --> 01:16:02,062
It's a very large asteroid,and you don't have a lot of time.

1082
01:16:02,688 --> 01:16:06,233
There are the moviesthat show blowing them up.

1083
01:16:06,316 --> 01:16:09,361
You don't necessarily have to do that.You still need a good push.

1084
01:16:09,444 --> 01:16:12,823
And you could usea nuclear explosive device

1085
01:16:12,906 --> 01:16:14,283
that is used in some of these movies.

1086
01:16:14,366 --> 01:16:18,245
But the idea is you would detonate itnext to the asteroid,

1087
01:16:18,328 --> 01:16:23,375
and the energy from that detonationwould irradiate the surface,

1088
01:16:23,458 --> 01:16:26,211
and the material that blows offthe surface of the asteroid

1089
01:16:26,295 --> 01:16:28,297
would give it that pushin the other direction.

1090
01:16:30,340 --> 01:16:32,885
<i>A softer, unaggressive approach</i>

1091
01:16:32,968 --> 01:16:38,307
<i>was actually performed bya Japanese probe on Asteroid Ryugu.</i>

1092
01:16:39,391 --> 01:16:41,602
<i>How small the asteroid is</i>

1093
01:16:41,685 --> 01:16:46,815
<i>we can tell from the size of the shadowthe probe casts on its surface.</i>

1094
01:16:49,651 --> 01:16:53,906
<i>Gravity is so minimalthat the softest of landings</i>

1095
01:16:53,989 --> 01:16:58,702
<i>already threw great quantitiesof debris away from it, into space.</i>

1096
01:17:00,621 --> 01:17:03,749
<i>Right herewe see how meteorites originate.</i>

1097
01:17:05,042 --> 01:17:08,962
<i>The probe itself is alreadyon its way back to Earth,</i>

1098
01:17:09,046 --> 01:17:12,799
<i>bringing a single gramscooped from the asteroid.</i>

1099
01:17:13,842 --> 01:17:18,138
<i>But for bigger specimens,Antarctica is paradise.</i>

1100
01:17:21,767 --> 01:17:25,062
<i>It is not that more rocks fall herethan elsewhere.</i>

1101
01:17:25,812 --> 01:17:31,401
<i>They are visible on the vast glaciersthat cover almost the entire continent</i>

1102
01:17:31,485 --> 01:17:34,571
<i>that is larger than the United States.</i>

1103
01:17:35,989 --> 01:17:41,078
<i>We were invited to join the huntby South Korean scientists.</i>

1104
01:17:41,745 --> 01:17:45,249
<i>Their station, named Jang Bogo,</i>

1105
01:17:45,332 --> 01:17:49,837
<i>at the coast of East Antarctica,houses about 50 people.</i>

1106
01:17:53,048 --> 01:17:57,052
<i>The austral summer seasonlasts nearly five months,</i>

1107
01:17:57,469 --> 01:18:00,013
<i>during which the Sun never goes down.</i>

1108
01:18:03,183 --> 01:18:06,895
<i>Inside, it is more spaciousthan we anticipated.</i>

1109
01:18:08,522 --> 01:18:13,610
<i>Only a few miles away,six men of Scott's last expedition</i>

1110
01:18:13,694 --> 01:18:19,825
<i>endured a whole winter huddlingin a snow cave just nine feet across.</i>

1111
01:18:20,659 --> 01:18:23,620
<i>They were starving and freezingin squalor,</i>

1112
01:18:23,704 --> 01:18:28,417
<i>surviving on seal meatand a ration of one biscuit a day.</i>

1113
01:18:29,418 --> 01:18:31,837
<i>From diaries of Scott's men,</i>

1114
01:18:31,920 --> 01:18:37,634
<i>we know they dreamt of banquets thatwere ripped away from their ready forks.</i>

1115
01:18:37,718 --> 01:18:42,014
<i>Only one man managed in his dreamto actually eat,</i>

1116
01:18:42,097 --> 01:18:45,767
<i>and he was rightfully hatedby his comrades for this.</i>

1117
01:18:50,147 --> 01:18:53,317
<i>But we were not herefor lobster and kimchi.</i>

1118
01:18:53,817 --> 01:18:57,988
<i>We were itching to flyto the Polar Plateau in the interior.</i>

1119
01:18:58,822 --> 01:19:02,910
<i>We knew there wasan overland expedition of trucks</i>

1120
01:19:02,993 --> 01:19:05,954
<i>that had left our station three weeks ago</i>

1121
01:19:06,038 --> 01:19:10,626
<i>and was nearing the meteoritehunting grounds on the blue ice.</i>

1122
01:19:20,928 --> 01:19:25,766
<i>But first the helicopter has to climb upsome 2,000 meters.</i>

1123
01:19:26,266 --> 01:19:30,729
<i>From the station at the coastto the ice plateau of the continent,</i>

1124
01:19:30,812 --> 01:19:34,691
<i>we are flying over glacier icecascading down.</i>

1125
01:19:35,400 --> 01:19:37,569
<i>Imagine crossing this on foot.</i>

1126
01:19:38,237 --> 01:19:41,281
<i>Each of these wildly tossed boulders</i>

1127
01:19:41,365 --> 01:19:43,992
<i>is larger than an apartment building,</i>

1128
01:19:44,076 --> 01:19:47,621
<i>and the mass is constantly flowingtowards the sea.</i>

1129
01:19:51,416 --> 01:19:53,794
<i>Finally we reach the Plateau.</i>

1130
01:19:54,628 --> 01:19:59,842
<i>Only a few mountains remain,sticking out of the ice like islands.</i>

1131
01:20:01,677 --> 01:20:06,390
<i>It felt like entering into a worldthat was not our planet.</i>

1132
01:20:11,645 --> 01:20:14,523
<i>From here begins the immense loneliness</i>

1133
01:20:14,606 --> 01:20:20,737
<i>of a vast continent covered by icetwo to four kilometers thick.</i>

1134
01:20:26,285 --> 01:20:30,539
<i>Through GPS data,we knew the position of the caravan.</i>

1135
01:20:31,999 --> 01:20:33,959
<i>They were expecting us.</i>

1136
01:20:52,978 --> 01:20:56,315
<i>We were so looking forwardto meet Jong Ik Lee,</i>

1137
01:20:56,398 --> 01:20:58,692
<i>the leader of this expedition.</i>

1138
01:20:59,526 --> 01:21:03,280
<i>He was the one who invited usto Antarctica,</i>

1139
01:21:03,363 --> 01:21:06,325
<i>and it felt like meeting an old friend.</i>

1140
01:21:07,576 --> 01:21:09,328
-I didn't think you'd make it.-Yes, yes.

1141
01:21:09,411 --> 01:21:11,330
I didn't know that we would make it.

1142
01:21:11,413 --> 01:21:13,290
My dream...

1143
01:21:13,373 --> 01:21:17,878
<i>We had seen footage he shotclose to here a few years earlier.</i>

1144
01:21:18,962 --> 01:21:21,548
<i>He had found a large meteorite,</i>

1145
01:21:21,632 --> 01:21:26,220
<i>and we fell in love with him,seeing his ecstasy of discovery.</i>

1146
01:21:27,012 --> 01:21:29,681
<i>This is science at its best.</i>

1147
01:22:10,180 --> 01:22:12,474
Okay, down.

1148
01:22:21,024 --> 01:22:25,445
<i>Something else I like aboutthis highly charged emotional moment,</i>

1149
01:22:25,529 --> 01:22:30,075
<i>something the stupid doctrineof film schools would never allow.</i>

1150
01:22:31,702 --> 01:22:34,454
<i>Watch the background. A figure enters.</i>

1151
01:22:34,538 --> 01:22:38,458
<i>No recognizable motivation,wrong timing,</i>

1152
01:22:38,542 --> 01:22:40,544
<i>rear end approaching.</i>

1153
01:22:59,062 --> 01:23:00,856
<i>Back to the present.</i>

1154
01:23:01,690 --> 01:23:06,195
<i>Along with us, Jong Ik's wife,Mi Jung, had arrived,</i>

1155
01:23:06,278 --> 01:23:09,448
<i>herself a renowned polar geologist.</i>

1156
01:23:21,251 --> 01:23:23,128
Husband and wife reunited.

1157
01:23:24,588 --> 01:23:29,009
<i>Minutes after our arrivalwe found our first meteorite.</i>

1158
01:23:30,260 --> 01:23:34,097
<i>The sheer, blank ice,not covered with snow,</i>

1159
01:23:34,181 --> 01:23:36,767
<i>is the ideal terrain to spot them.</i>

1160
01:23:37,684 --> 01:23:42,940
<i>The gigantic mass of ice is moving slowly,like a conveyor belt</i>

1161
01:23:43,023 --> 01:23:48,612
<i>and exposes stones that may have fallenhundreds of thousands of years ago.</i>

1162
01:23:51,782 --> 01:23:55,369
<i>Most of the meteoritesare carried all the way to the ocean.</i>

1163
01:23:55,911 --> 01:24:02,000
<i>But where the glacier is deflected upwardsby a mountain range deep down there,</i>

1164
01:24:02,084 --> 01:24:06,255
<i>the ice evaporates,leaving its cargo at the surface.</i>

1165
01:24:08,090 --> 01:24:11,593
<i>Every stone out here is a meteorite.</i>

1166
01:24:55,345 --> 01:24:58,473
<i>Watch the man on the right.He found something.</i>

1167
01:25:12,154 --> 01:25:14,948
<i>The lucky one turned out to be Clive.</i>

1168
01:25:15,574 --> 01:25:18,619
<i>It may look staged, but it was really him.</i>

1169
01:25:23,415 --> 01:25:29,296
This is it! This is your sample!

1170
01:25:29,379 --> 01:25:31,548
Congratulations.

1171
01:25:31,632 --> 01:25:34,218
This is big. Biggest today.

1172
01:25:34,301 --> 01:25:38,013
I found one over there. A little one.

1173
01:25:38,096 --> 01:25:39,431
And then when I was...

1174
01:25:39,515 --> 01:25:41,141
<i>It also turned out</i>

1175
01:25:41,225 --> 01:25:45,020
<i>this was the largest meteoriteof the entire season,</i>

1176
01:25:45,103 --> 01:25:50,442
<i>and the first assessment suggestedit was an extremely rare specimen.</i>

1177
01:26:03,872 --> 01:26:08,252
<i>We resumed our search,but one thought crept up on us.</i>

1178
01:26:09,086 --> 01:26:13,048
<i>It would be a full five monthsuntil night would fall,</i>

1179
01:26:13,799 --> 01:26:19,471
<i>and we could walk on for the next5,000 kilometers without meeting a soul.</i>

1180
01:26:42,786 --> 01:26:47,666
<i>This is the ultimate experience of spacefor those on foot.</i>

1181
01:26:49,168 --> 01:26:55,174
<i>But we knew of a place where not our feetbut our souls start to travel,</i>

1182
01:26:55,924 --> 01:27:00,137
<i>a place where we transcendour human existence.</i>

1183
01:27:05,267 --> 01:27:09,605
<i>Our last journey took usto one of the remotest islands</i>

1184
01:27:09,688 --> 01:27:12,774
<i>of the archipelago in the Torres Strait.</i>

1185
01:27:13,859 --> 01:27:18,238
<i>These islands are locatedbetween Australia and New Guinea.</i>

1186
01:27:20,032 --> 01:27:25,412
<i>This tiny island called Merhas a population of about 400.</i>

1187
01:27:26,747 --> 01:27:30,959
<i>We had heard of tribal beliefsabout shooting stars</i>

1188
01:27:31,043 --> 01:27:35,506
<i>that carry the souls of the deceasedto a new life somewhere else.</i>

1189
01:27:38,175 --> 01:27:41,553
<i>Doug Passi, one of the tribal elders,</i>

1190
01:27:41,637 --> 01:27:47,142
<i>knew stories about soulsdeparting by meteor to the netherworld.</i>

1191
01:27:49,436 --> 01:27:55,400
One of my family members was sent bythe ghosts on a <i>maier.</i>

1192
01:27:55,484 --> 01:27:58,237
-"<i>Maier</i>" is a meteor?-Falling star, yeah.

1193
01:27:58,320 --> 01:28:03,075
And she was actuallyon that <i>maier</i> itself,

1194
01:28:03,158 --> 01:28:04,284
burned with fire.

1195
01:28:06,912 --> 01:28:07,913
That's what I heard.

1196
01:28:08,872 --> 01:28:11,458
And they said that's a true story.

1197
01:28:12,167 --> 01:28:16,380
And that lady-- old lady--named Gizou Simbolo.

1198
01:28:16,463 --> 01:28:18,090
Was she alive, or was it her spirit?

1199
01:28:18,173 --> 01:28:19,925
She was alive. She was alive, yeah.

1200
01:28:20,551 --> 01:28:23,345
And when them family is ready to die...

1201
01:28:24,721 --> 01:28:27,307
the <i>maier </i>can tell us a story saying,

1202
01:28:27,391 --> 01:28:31,645
"Someone will go lostin a few days." Or--

1203
01:28:32,396 --> 01:28:34,022
Or-- Or...

1204
01:28:34,857 --> 01:28:38,026
"Here he goes somewhere else."

1205
01:28:39,444 --> 01:28:44,199
The star-- the falling star. <i>Maier</i>.Sometime red. Sometime light blue.

1206
01:28:46,159 --> 01:28:47,995
It seems here that death is--

1207
01:28:48,078 --> 01:28:51,957
It's not so much an event.It's the beginning of a journey.

1208
01:28:53,208 --> 01:28:57,129
Beginning of the new journeyon the new life. Yes.

1209
01:29:02,342 --> 01:29:04,052
They can come in different forms.

1210
01:29:04,761 --> 01:29:09,099
Form of a bird. Form of a dog.Form of a person.

1211
01:29:11,143 --> 01:29:14,313
Or a shadow that you can seemove on the wall.

1212
01:29:14,980 --> 01:29:16,857
Or maybe a floating wood.

1213
01:29:17,941 --> 01:29:20,360
Floating wood on the ocean.

1214
01:29:27,826 --> 01:29:29,995
<i>Because we came with a camera,</i>

1215
01:29:30,078 --> 01:29:33,749
<i>the islanders revivedan almost forgotten dance</i>

1216
01:29:33,832 --> 01:29:36,877
<i>that was not performed herefor half a century.</i>

1217
01:29:44,092 --> 01:29:49,556
<i>Alo Tapim, an elder, instructed young menin the choreography.</i>

1218
01:30:48,240 --> 01:30:54,288
The dance is about <i>maier</i>,as you've indicated.

1219
01:30:55,747 --> 01:30:59,918
<i>Maier</i> is that star, comet.

1220
01:31:00,794 --> 01:31:02,713
And it's a special star.

1221
01:31:06,967 --> 01:31:11,221
Only on special times that this starappears to the Meriam people.

1222
01:31:11,305 --> 01:31:14,099
The Meriam observe this star

1223
01:31:14,766 --> 01:31:18,937
when a loved onedeparts this life to the next.

1224
01:31:20,647 --> 01:31:23,734
The transition is done through this star.

1225
01:31:26,195 --> 01:31:31,408
The dancers carrying <i>nair.</i> Torches.

1226
01:31:32,618 --> 01:31:34,578
We call it <i>nair</i>.

1227
01:31:35,412 --> 01:31:36,538
They carry them.

1228
01:31:38,248 --> 01:31:43,420
And they indicate when that star--

1229
01:31:43,504 --> 01:31:48,425
falling star lets go its embers.

1230
01:31:50,010 --> 01:31:52,721
It's indicated by the fire sticksthey carry.

1231
01:31:54,181 --> 01:31:57,142
And when two fire sticks, they clap...

1232
01:31:58,769 --> 01:32:00,771
they hit together,

1233
01:32:01,605 --> 01:32:04,942
clap together,the two fire sticks, the embers...

1234
01:32:06,902 --> 01:32:08,987
And this is captured.

1235
01:32:12,824 --> 01:32:17,621
That tells-- describes that star.

1236
01:32:19,831 --> 01:32:21,750
Yes. And this is our story.



