All language subtitles for fireball.visitors.from.darker.worlds.2020.1080p.ATVP.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.Atmos.x264-TEPES-English

Mérida, on the Yucatán Peninsula,

is ground zero of the biggest
cataclysm that ever occurred to our planet.

A whole asteroid hit right here.

This happened millions of
years before human beings appeared,

and yet this fireball
ritual feels like a reenactment.

Certainly,
the ancient Mayas could not have known.

We do not know what in
the future is coming at us,

eventually destroying us.

But it will look like
this fireball over Siberia,

only much larger.

What simple dashboard cameras recorded

feels like science fiction.

Visitors from other worlds,

from the dark of the universe, have come.

And untold numbers are still on their way.

If something big is going to happen,

it will illuminate the
sky even in daylight.

But that may be millions of years away.

Meteorites have hit
our planet all the time,

and the bigger ones have
changed entire landscapes.

But they also have left a
deep impact on cultures.

A good example is Islamic culture.

According to ancient tradition,

a stone was sent down by God from heaven

as a guide for Adam and
Eve where to build an altar.

The meteorite came down

where later the holy
city of Mecca was built.

We are here at the holiest
site of the Muslim world.

In its center, the Kaaba.

Embedded in its eastern
corner, the Black Stone.

It was already venerated in
pre-Islamic times

for at least a millennium before the
prophet Muhammad founded Islam.

The Black Stone is
framed entirely in silver,

and nobody is allowed to analyze it,

but it is almost certainly a meteorite.

Islam is a religion
of 1.9 billion faithful.

For the pilgrims,

the Black Stone is among
the most revered of relics.

It attracts uncountable
millions of touches and kisses.

As non-Muslims, we are not allowed
even to set foot into the holy city,

and so we had to rely on cell
phone footage of one of the faithful.

Back in the silent vastness of
the Australian desert.

Clive Oppenheimer of Cambridge University,

who started our voyage
of this film, explains to me...

Scientists only became aware
of this huge hole in the ground in 1947,

when it was spotted from the air.

And the crater is about a kilometer across.

And it was formed when
a piece of iron asteroid,

the size of a battleship and
traveling at 15 kilometers per second,

plummeted into the ground.

And the crater walls around the floor here

are made of the ancient rocks

that were shattered by
the impact and thrown about.

The meteoroid itself was
almost completely vaporized,

and only a few fragments of it

have been found scattered
across the surrounding desert.

The pattern of ejecta

suggests that the bolide came
from that direction over there.

The temperatures are so phenomenal

that it generates a huge thermal plume

that punches up through the
atmosphere, into the stratosphere,

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

And,
of course, there's colossal seismic energy

that is generated by the impact itself,

so huge earthquakes.

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

but if you imagine this scenario
happening today in an urban environment,

this would be absolutely devastating.

To be hit by a meteorite has
barely ever happened?

There was a woman who
was struck by a meteorite

that came through her
roof, through her ceiling,

and hit her while she was
seated in an armchair watching TV.

The Sylacauga meteorite.

She survived it but had
a pretty horrific bruise.

As bleak and uninviting as the
country around the crater looks,

there were always
aboriginal people in this area.

Many of them make a living as artists.

Like those in the nearest
community of Billiluna.

They could not have witnessed the
impact more than 100,000 years ago,

but there were more recent events

that could have triggered
a cultural memory.

In their paintings, the crater
frequently appears as a motif,

but it goes deeper than that.

We met Katie Darkie,

one of the finest artists of the community.

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

Let's have a look at this one.

Now please tell us what
we're looking at here.

It's a beautiful painting.

This is the sand hill...

and this is the grass.

And it hasn't got any karnti.No potatoes.

Long time ago, the old people said...

one man went hunting through the creeks,
hunting for birds.

But he was walking through the
tunnel underneath the river,

but we call it a creek.

And it came out on the
other side of the crater

and then went walking
back to where he came from

when he was hunting.

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

What's the origin?

Well, in the kartiya world, there's
a meteorite fell in there.

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

Some say it's a star fell in there.

But the ancestors and the
old people were telling us

it's the Rainbow
Serpent who fell in the crater.

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

But it connects in one.

We always take the kids.

Every weekend we come and camp out there.

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

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

It's a very special place for us.

For our families as well.

Meteorites have fallen at random.

A significant one in the
Alsace region of France.

But right here it changed
human affairs. It influenced history.

In the distance, the town of Ensisheim.

In the 15th century, world
history was shaped here,

because the Hapsburg
Empire earned legitimacy

through a falling piece of rock.

A plaque marks a spot where it fell.

Clive brought Professor Simon Schaffer,

a colleague from Cambridge University.

He is a historian of science and
one of the few remaining polymaths.

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

So, on this extraordinary day,

a fireball appeared in the
southeast sky in that direction,

moving incredibly fast and
whistling as it came.

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

There was, according to most reports,

just one person standing in the field.

A shepherd boy.

And he would have seen the
most extraordinary thing.

He would have seen a
300-pound rock hit the field

and gouge out a hole.

The 7th of November, 1492,

the moment when this stone fell,

was only a few days after
another great landfall:

the arrival of Christopher
Columbus and his crew

in their New World, in the Caribbean.

It's thanks to Columbus, ultimately,

that there is corn growing in this field.

This is the result of the
eruption into European agriculture

of crops that up till then had
only grown in the Americas.

Indeed,
the fall of the stone was so important

that there are some
chronicles covering the year 1492

that only mention the Ensisheim stone

and simply leave Columbus out.

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

very near an extremely significant town,

Ensisheim in Alsace.

Ensisheim at that point

was the headquarters of the Austrian forces

in this part of the world.

And within two weeks of
the arrival of the stone,

the Austrian military commander,

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

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

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

For those people,

wonderful supernatural signs in
the heavens were messages.

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

to the subjects of Maximilian

to tell them that his rule was legitimate,

that he would defeat his enemies,

and that they should obey his commands.

Where do you get your fascination from?

I think one of the things that I find
completely obsessional about meteorites

is that they carry sense, that
they carry meaning.

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

With body part sand
frogs and rains of blood.

With plagues and other catastrophes.

Something like a meteorite is an organism,

an animal, almost, that speaks to us.

And I think that's a very
powerful and eloquent idea.

The idea that... meteorites have meaning,

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

Simon Schaffer could have continued,

without getting boring, nonstop
for the next eight hours.

But we wanted to see the remains of
the real stone in the local museum.

It feels unreal, inviting fantasies.

The mayor of town wanted to greet us,

here flanked by friends of the meteorite.

This emblem is taken from
a medieval woodcut.

You find it everywhere.

But today it means thinking
back and thinking ahead in centuries.

Did these members of the
brotherhood of the stone

have a far-off future in mind?

What are they thinking?

What far-reaching plans do they have?

What if the human race became extinct?

What would we leave for future
astronauts of an alien galaxy

to demonstrate that we would
not leave a fallen comrade behind?

Right next to the stone, we
discovered this installation.

"Hi, my name is Jean,"

says the simulacrum, hoping
the aliens speak French.

"I am a miner.

And this is how beautiful
our world looked."

"When danger for our
planet became visible in the night sky,

we took precautions.

We dug tunnels and built
shelters underground.

We think we have a chance to
survive a whole decade.

If a big firestorm comes,

I'm confident the human
race can survive it.

But I am not a prophet. I'm just a miner."

"I wish you a good end to your visit."

Next destination,
the big sports arena in Oslo, Norway.

It is so spacious that it
houses an entire football field.

But we were interested in its roof,

and we were interested
in this man, Jon Larsen,

Norway's most famous jazz musician.

But it is as a citizen scientist

that he has every
reason to be on this big roof.

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

I searched on... Google Earth

and found the largest
roof that I could see.

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

And then I realized the...

the small object will roll down
the side and accumulate along here

and end up close to the drain.

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

but within we will find
the cosmic dust particles.

How did you get started?

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

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

No. I've always collected
rocks and been interested in geology.

And that has been my hobby all my life.

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

I discovered a shining
black dot on my table

which hadn't been
there two seconds earlier.

And I picked it up with my finger,

and because of my background as
an amateur mineralogist,

I could see,"Wow,
this is actually a small rock."

And we were like,

"Where did it come from? Is it
from space perhaps? I don't know."

But then I started to Google and found out

that there are some
strange small cosmic dust particles

called micrometeorites.

And then it all began.

And you think there are some here.

What's the equipment that
you need to collect this goop?

My main weapon is this magnet.

And I use the magnet mainly because the...

micrometeorites are magnetic.

First I put the magnet itself into

just protecting small ziplock plastic bag,
like this.

And then the hook is handy, literally...

It is astounding that Jon
Larsen, with such primitive equipment,

has founded a completely
new branch of science.

And now this will be the sampling area.

I will move it down
on the ground, like this.

Heavy particles will roll down and
remain at the heaviest part.

This might be some
microscopic magnetic particles.

I'll look at it later under the microscope.

What's the flux of these cosmic
particles to the Earth per day?

Do we know the figure?

Yeah, approximately 100 metric tons.

Imagine two large trucks of sand pouring
cosmic dust over Earth every day.

But that equals one small particle

per year per square meter.

These particles are messengers,
aren't they?

This seemed to be a very
particular message for you.

Yeah, to me it is.

And they are the oldest matter there is.

Nothing has traveled further.

When I pick out one
micrometeorite and feel it on my finger,

no human being has ever
touched anything older.

I mean, it's really looking
the eternity in the eye.

This is the ashes of another generation,

previous generation of dying stars.

So it has a history that goes all
the way back to the big bang.

This is Jan Braly Kihle,

a geologist who will analyze
Jon's samples under the microscope.

We loved his outfit as Wyatt Earp.

He was born in Texas.

But there's more to him.

He's a four-time cancer survivor,

two times, according to
him, stark naked death sentences.

Wanting to contribute to cancer research,

he's now involved in pioneering
work with new cancer treatments.

This is the underworld.

This is where we try to make the
photographical documentation.

And this is Jan Kihle, my friend.-Hi.

We have worked together for years

to make high-resolution color
photographs of the micrometeorites

at such a magnification that it's
made nowhere else in the world.

How much magnification do you need?

You can see these particles are so small

it's practically not possible to see them.

We need 2,000,
or better, 3,000 times magnification.

And then the original photo will
be one meter in diameter.

That's what we need.

You know,
when everyone says this was impossible,

now we have made a
completely new kind of science.

And you recall the kind of
feedback we all got from colleagues.

They were laughing hilarious...-Yes. Oh,
yes.

...when they asked us,"What
you gonna do? What?

Everybody knows that that's impossible.

You know, the signal-to-noise
ratio, it's beyond one to one billion.

Make my day."

Did it hurt you, that time?

Of course not.

This is how science works.

It has nothing to do with
feelings. It's just about curiosity.

So this is from earlier today.

When we see that special type of texture,
then we know,

"Okay, this is a micrometeorite and
not an industrial particle."

And it's obviously quite
blurred at the moment.

Can we... Can we take a photograph of it?

No, we... No.-No.

If we just...

Our heartbeats, when we get too
enthusiastic, will make disturbances.

So it's not possible.

We'll have to leave the room when
we actually take the photos.

Where have these particles
come from in the first place?

That's a good question, because
we don't know the answer.

They come, obviously, from space.

So some of them are from the asteroid belt.

Others may come from cometary matter.

But, again, it might be particles from
other galaxies, other solar systems.

We don't know the parent
body of each individual grain.

It's just amazing.

Each Tuesday night when
Jon brings in new material

we're just flabbergasted.

It's like being a kid again.

These particles are small
and solitary also in space.

Some of them have never
reached the larger scale

of, let's say, building...

starting to build small
planets in the asteroid belt.

It's actually cosmic dust. Dust
is the currency of the cosmos.

Here on the top, you have, for instance,
this is iron-nickel alloy.

And here you have very
nice beginning of crystallization.

Started out with just glass.

And now it'll start to
crystallize olivine crystals.

And this outside is a very,
very thin rim of iron sulfides.

This looks like almost, sort of,
an icy exoplanet.

Looks like packs. Yeah, yeah.

With the icebergs breaking up.

This one,
I think, is particularly interesting.

It has a very high
temperature at atmospheric entry.

In the front, which is up,

that is the direction of
movement in the Earth's atmosphere.

Then when it starts to decelerate, the
heavy metal core is pushed forward

by the... inertia

and ends up like a metal
mound in the front of the particle.

Again,
the typical, with the iron-nickel in front.

So, I mean, though we have
collected now 2,500 different specimens,

none are identical.

So when you start to...

to get to know the micrometeorite sand
the cosmic dust particles,

then you will recognize them as very
different from the terrestrial geology.

They have been through a
process with speed, in hypervelocity,

50 times the speed of a rifle bullet

and temperatures from hell.

And then they end up like
treasures from space.

The beauty and strangeness that we
just saw can become even stranger.

This is what the pattern looks like.

If you hold it down,
I'll go up front to the board and...

The pattern that Clive is projecting here

is proof of something that
was believed to be unthinkable.

It has to do with matter of
crystalline structure

that seemed to be utterly impossible.

So-called quasicrystals.

This is the man who refused to
accept the impossibility.

He's a world-renowned cosmologist, Paul
Steinhardt of Princeton University.

You ended up finding evidence of a
quasicrystal, a natural quasicrystal,

from the universe found in a meteorite.

But, I mean, what is a quasicrystal?

So, a quasicrystal is a form of
matter that we thought was impossible.

For hundreds of years,
we were convinced that

we had proven that
it was impossible.

But, as we now know
today, not only is it possible,

but it was made in the universe long ago,

long before we ever imagined.

But let's begin with something simple.

Crystals follow a pattern of order,

like the tiling of your bathroom floor.

Okay.-Just simple squares.

Square tiles fit seamlessly.

But with pentagons, a fivefold symmetry,

you are quickly in trouble.

Let's come out this way a little bit.

And...

I can already see where the
problem's gonna come from.

Yeah, you see what's happening?

We've opened up a gap. So now
we have some choices to make.

We're not gonna be able to fill that in.

I could either put it there or there,

but there's never gonna
be a way to...-Yeah.

Atoms hate having gaps,

so the moment you
produce gaps with real atoms,

they're going to move
around and get rid of them.

Fivefold symmetry was
famously forbidden for matter.

But quasicrystals are even more
complex and mysterious than this.

Let's just take a look at a
quasicrystal pattern first

to get a visual impression of
what they're like.

So, a good example is this
tiling that you see on the table.

If you study it, you'll see it's made of
only two pieces, those two shapes.

They're chickens.

This looks like a puzzle for children,

but there is ingenious
mathematics behind it.

This pattern was discovered by
Sir Roger Penrose in the 1970s.

A mathematician and
sometimes a cosmologist as well.

It is astonishing that
a quasicrystal pattern

can be found in a shrine in Isfahan,
in Iran.

Without any knowledge of the
underlying mathematical principles,

artisans more than 500 years ago

solved the impossible
geometry of fivefold symmetry.

There we go.

Now, I should warn you...

The warning was justified.

Yes, indeed, it gets so complicated now

that we are not going
to torture you with details.

Just a sample.

So, instead of just one icosahedron, we
have an icosahedron of icosahedra.

And we said, "Oh, maybe that's a
way of building something ever outwards

that maintains this structure."

But we ran into trouble.

But this model here solved the problem.

It represents a true quasicrystal.

...and you could only
just build this plane...

Now Steinhardt wanted
to find one in nature.

You ended up doing fieldwork in Kamchatka.

That must've been
inspired through the theoretical...

Yeah. Inspired by this model.

Because what this model says:

"Well, actually, if the atoms have
forces that are like these interlocks,

they have no choice but
to form this structure."

It immediately got me to thinking,

"Is it possible that nature has made a
quasicrystal before humans did?"

And so that began a decades-long
search for a natural quasicrystal.

We eventually found a mineralogist in
Florence named Luca Bindi

who had in his museum a
tiny little sample of...

well, a rock, a complex rock,

which had inside it a
little grain of quasicrystal.

By studying that particular sample,

we had some hints that what we
had in hand was a piece of a meteorite.

But to prove the case, we had to
find out where that rock really came from

and see if we could gather more of
the sample to prove the case.

So Paul Steinhardt and Luca Bindi

set out on an expedition to
easternmost Russia,

close to the Bering Strait.

The red marker shows the
site of the meteorite fragments.

They were found along a
creek named Listvenitovyi,

of which nobody has ever heard.

The expedition included members of
the original Russian geological team

that had found the first
sample decades ago.

They had to negotiate uncharted terrain,

totally novel for Paul Steinhardt,

whose outdoor experience
did not extend beyond

the lawns of
Princeton University.

Myriads of mosquitoes tormented him.

Here we see him with a
mosquito net over his face.

His sleep was fitful.

Bears not only appeared in his
nightmares, they were really out there.

Their hard work to find
fragments of the meteorite paid off.

First inspection of their
findings looked promising.

Now Bindi and Steinhardt had
reason to celebrate,

although they could not yet
know if quasicrystals were present.

The X-ray diffraction pattern of
the newly found samples

revealed the forbidden fivefold symmetry,

proof there were
quasicrystals within the meteorite.

Could you describe your
emotion when you saw this?

I think everything... time seemed to
stop for me at that moment.

As...

Just seeing this image just
told me immediately

that everything we had
been trying to achieve for decades

had now been achieved.

Plus,
we had verified that this quasicrystal

not only was formed in nature, but
had been formed in space.

Leaving the arcane
mysteries of matter behind,

we turn toward some more average
rocks that had come down upon us.

...so we have some sticky mats here.

Arizona State University houses
a large collection.

The dirt that we have from
outside going into the clean vault.

But wild stories were waiting for us.

So when we go in,

make sure you just step on
thereto get the dirt off your feet.

All right.

Laurence Garvie, its curator, guided us.

We have a positive pressure in here, just
to keep sort of clean air coming in.

Got the dirt off? Good.-Yep.

And we're also on camera all the time.
Smile to the camera. Wave to the camera.

But really what's important here

is that, when we're in a
meteorite facility like this,

is to keep the meteorites as
clean as possible.

You know, usually we think
of trying to keep ourselves clean.

Here, we're trying to keep the
grease from our fingers off the samples.

So can you please wear some gloves,
and I'll put some gloves on as well.

And we're doing this
'cause I wanna show you

one of the most spectacular
meteorites, that only fell a few weeks ago,

and actually fell on Costa Rica.

And it's a meteorite that's
full of organic compounds.

And, you know, that's important.

'Cause that tells us
about our early solar system

and possibly the formation of
life in our solar system as well.

Now, I actually have the samples
here, in these special cabinets.

These are nitrogen cabinets.

Right? So we have nitrogen... dry nitrogen.

Here's what's important: dry
nitrogen being fed into the cabinets.

So when I open it you can actually hear the
nitrogen being fed into the cabinets.

And these meteorites are now preserved.

We don't have water going onto them. We
don't have oxygen going onto them.

So it's the best preservation that
we currently have.

And that's what the hissing is?

That's what the hissing is.

So, to give an example, here is...

one of the most amazing meteorites.

There, see what it's called?

"The Doghouse."

So let's just...

So...

have to add, do not drop this.

-I'll try not to.
Okay.-Please don't drop it.

So, this stone actually fell only
a few weeks ago in Costa Rica.

And this one actually
fell through a doghouse

with the dog that was still sleeping in it.

The dog was unharmed,
I hope.-It missed the dog by millimeters

and embedded itself in the
ground right next to the dog.

So what makes this one special as well,

it's actually got some
dog hair still stuck to it.

No way.

And what makes this one so amazing

is the fact that, if you smell it...

you can actually smell the
organic compounds that are in here.

These are 4.5 billion-year-old compounds

that were formed on an early planet...

that planet no longer exists...

and got trapped in this stone

and basically just resided in
the asteroid belt for 4 billion years

before,
for some reason, it left the asteroid belt

and landed in Costa Rica

and is now in our meteorite vault here.

What is that smell? It's a sort of...

We don't actually
know, but we think the thing...

it's similar to, like,
mothballs. Something similar.

Something similar to that compound.

Like a solvent or something?

Yeah, a little bit. A little bit.

I'm actually gonna put this one
back, unless you wanna hold it again.

No, I... By the way,

the red is from the roof of the doghouse.

And the white is from
the floor of the doghouse.

And did the dog instantly realize

that it had received a
visitor from the heavens?

Well, it didn't, but funny enough,

people have used dogs to look for
meteorites because of the smell.

They can be trained to find that smell.

Let's put this back now.

This is the Toluca iron from
the Jiquipilco region.

Here, try this one.

Don't drop it on your toe. It'll break.

Oh, my goodness.

So, I mean, that must weigh, what,

I don't know, 30 kilos,
40 kilos, just that one stone.

That's just pure iron ore?

That's just pure iron.
But nickel-rich iron.

-Here, let's not drop it.
Ready. Ready.-I'll give you that.

You know, one of the most amazing impact
phenomena never seen on TV

is this material, tektites.

Now, here we have... There
was an impact on the Earth

that basically melted large
amounts of the Earth's surface.

In this case, probably several
thousand square kilometers of ground.

It was almost instantaneously melted.

And then the shock from that impact

then sprayed this material over
about a third of the Earth.

When did this happen?

We think about... We've dated
it about 750,000 years ago.

So, you know, sounds like a long time ago,

but from a geological time
period, it's actually just yesterday.

It's a very recent phenomenon.-It's glass?

This is just... So,
what this stuff here... If you listen...

This is just glass, but this
is not extraterrestrial glass.

This is the Earth, of which
you had all this material melted,

just turned into a melt, and
then sprayed over the Earth.

And so you find this material in
Southeast Asia, Philippines,

through Indonesia, all the
way down through Australia

and then all the way down into Antarctica.

And so this was a humongous event.

Look at the shapes though. You
know what these shapes are telling us?

This is telling us that this stuff
was sprayed and then solidified in the air.

If we'd been there when
this thing came down,

that would've been the end of us?

I mean, everything.

Imagine... And I mean several
thousand square kilometers...

everything underneath that was
almost instantly turned to glass.

So, yes. You'd be sitting
there having your cup of tea,

you'd be turned to glass. Everything.

Each one of these stones from
darker worlds out there

has its own story.

Throughout history, meteorites have
captivated human imagination.

A tool as simple as the
light from a cell phone

extols the mysterious beauty of
these voyagers from afar.

What we have here is...

At the same Center for Meteorite
Studies in Tempe, Arizona,

we met Dr. Meenakshi Wadhwa,

one of the foremost
scientists of meteorites.

...40,000 different meteorites.

Including a piece by Barbara
Hepworth.-Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah,
and these are an incredible

resource for all of the
work that we do here.

What are we looking at here?

So that round object that you're seeing,

that is a tiny little...

you can imagine it as
the tiny little droplet

that was present in the earliest
history of the solar system,

something like 4.5 billion years ago.

Is this before the planets have accreted?

Yes. So this is when there
was just gas and dust.

Nothing else. There were no
planets, there was no Earth. Nothing.

And these are...

These have been described
as droplets of fiery rain

that were... just
condensing out of that nebula,

that cloud of gas and dust.

Probably because of some
sort of shock processes

that were happening in the
earliest history of our solar system.

And we don't really know, actually, where
those shocks were coming from,

but we think those are the kinds of
processes that were happening

in, you know,
other solar systems that are forming today.

And what elements do we find in there?

Yeah, so what you're seeing, you know,

this kind of beautiful stained
glass pattern that you're seeing?

That's a mineral called olivine.

And this kind of... When
I rotate it in this...

As you have this sort of transmitted
light going through these minerals,

you are polarize... the light is polarized,

and so the mineral itself

is sort of extinguishing
the light in certain directions.

And so you're kind of seeing this
brightening and then darkening.

It's like a beautiful stained glass window,
really.

I think it's kinda... Yeah.-It's gorgeous.

Here's a slice,

a thin slice of the very Mars
sample that I first looked at

at the very start of my
career studying meteorites.

And I was just fascinated, because,
you know,

it looked so familiar, but it
came from a completely different world.

We know that this rock came from
Mars because it has gases trapped in it

that have the exact same
composition as the Martian atmosphere.

And so when you take a piece of
this rock and you heat it up,

you release these gases, and you
can measure the composition of that gas,

and it's the exact composition

as what we measured using
the spacecraft on Mars.

Incredible.-Yeah, it's incredible.

Was Carl Sagan right, that
we're made of that stardust?

We are all stardust, absolutely.

I mean, every,
you know, every element in our body

was synthesized in other
stars before it got here.

So, yeah. We're all stardust.

Eventually.-A wonderful thought.

Yeah.

This was the only time throughout the
entire shooting of this film

where I could not resist.

I had to intervene from behind the camera.

I think I'm not stardust. I'm Bavarian.

Yeah, that's made of special stuff,
that is.

Yeah. That's right.

Our voyage took us

to wherever large fireballs had
plunged down to Earth.

We wanted to know if life
had come from outer space.

This is Ramgarh Crater in Rajasthan, in
Northern India, four kilometers across.

From space it immediately catches the eye,

but down on the ground you
barely notice you are inside a crater.

However, Hindu temples were
built here since the 10th century.

We were curious if
organic matter in meteorites

could have provided the
ingredients of life on our planet.

We were seeking the
expertise of Professor Nita Sahai,

who studies the transition from
chemistry to biology.

And we're in this... in
this huge crater here,

formed by a meteorite impact.

And we don't know whether
it was a carbonaceous one,

but we know that these
carbonaceous meteorites

have all kinds of organic
molecules in them.

What are the key ones that might
represent building blocks of life?

Actually, all of the building blocks of
life have been found in meteorites.

Amino acids that make up proteins,

lipid molecules that make up cell membranes

and, amazingly,
even ribose, which is a sugar.

I just find it astonishing, you know,

that you can find sugars and
things that make proteins in a meteorite.

Right.

Are they made geologically, like minerals,
or...

They're not like minerals,
in the sense that they're organic molecules

and minerals are inorganic,

but they have been formed presumably

by the interactions of organic
molecules with mineral surfaces.

For example, on interstellar grains,

as well as on the surfaces of
the meteorites themselves.

And, I mean, there's still a big step

from having these
ingredients to sparking life.

Right.-What do we need?

I guess we need some kind
of crucible to put this stuff in

and a heat source?

Yeah. So, you need to get
these simple building blocks

polymerized into longer chains,

because the longer chains have
the ability to fold and be functional.

What do you think of
the idea of panspermia,

that life is dispersed around the universe?

I mean,
is it conceivable that living organisms

could survive the intense
temperatures and radiation of outer space?

DNA has actually been
found to be quite robust.

And it's possible to survive in space.

And even an entire organism
might survive in a spore-like mode.

'Cause people have
actually dug deep into the Earth

and even a couple of kilometers down

they find bacteria
that have been

living there presumably
for millions of years.

And they survive in this state of, kind of,
suspended animation.

Do you have any idea why the
priests built their temples here?

I mean, and this one's dedicated to Shiva,
you know?

I mean, it seems too good to be true, on
the floor of a meteorite-impact crater.

It's kind of interesting that this
temple is dedicated to Shiva and Parvati.

And it's a tantric temple, which
represents creation.

And Shiva is also the god of destruction.

So, in Hindu mythology, there is this idea

of cycles of creation and
destruction of the universe.

And, appropriately, it's in a
meteor-impact crater site,

where the impact can wipe out life,

but then also deliver these
organic molecules

that could have seeded
life in the first place.

This was confirmed in a
similar way by a resident sadhu.

If humanity and all life becomes
extinct by war or a meteorite,

life will regenerate at this
place, at this crater lake.

We had to go where the most
colossal fireball came down.

It was at a place with an
unpronounceable name,

at the coast of the Yucatán
Peninsula in Mexico.

This is the very place where our
planet suffered an unimaginable apocalypse.

What came down from space right here

had the force of hundreds of millions...
possibly thousands of millions...

of atomic bombs Hiroshima's size.

Nothing out here is reminiscent of it.

Only leaden boredom weighs upon everything.

Chicxulub is a beach resort so
godforsaken you want to cry.

The dogs here,
like all dogs on this planet,

are just too dim-witted to understand

that three-quarters of all
species were extinguished

by the event that took place right here.

The dinosaurs have only
survived in a local museum.

Their eyes were made by
humans. They recognize nothing.

Only their footprints are authentic,

but they show they were ambling along,
not fleeing.

They were oblivious to the
sudden death of everything.

This godforsaken spot is at the center

of one of the greatest
geological cataclysms in Earth history.

It irreversibly changed the
course of life on the planet.

Some 66 million years ago,

an asteroid, perhaps 10 kilometers across,

came hurtling to the Earth at
speeds of 20 kilometers a second.

The force of the impact was so phenomenal

that it excavated a
hole 30 kilometers deep.

The crater that formed...

stretches out 100 kilometers out
to sea and 100 kilometers inland,

and the temperatures generated
in the crust from the impact

melted and vaporized the
crust and the bolide itself.

There were earthquakes of magnitude 11.

That's a hundred times
greater than any historical earthquake.

Mega-tsunami, 100-meter-high waves,

ravaged the shorelines of distant oceans,

and a vast pall of dust and
molten droplets and gases

soared into the atmosphere,

some of the material even reaching escape
velocity and exiting into space.

Those molten droplets rained
out over an area of 3,000 kilometers,

igniting firestorms on the land.

I love how movies depict it.

800 kilometers from the impact site,

the light is so intense

it causes the flesh of the
Alamosaurus to appear transparent...

and burns images of their
shadows onto the ground.

The scorching light sears their eyeballs.

They now can't see what's headed their way.

But they can feel it.

Now, mammals, they made it through,

and they took advantage of
the new ecological opportunities.

We probably wouldn't be here
ourselves, Homo sapiens as a species,

were it not for this colossal impact.

Nobody knew there is an
impact crater until the 1970s.

Gravity anomalies and borehole data
revealed its structure and immense size.

The only surface manifestation

is an enigmatic ring of
water holes called cenotes.

They are a geological echo of the impact.

Since there are no rivers and
lakes in the Yucatán Peninsula,

these water holes
attracted the ancient Mayas.

Without the presence of cenotes,

this cultural center of Chichén
Itzáwould never have been built.

They developed a high
culture with a writing system,

astronomy and monumental
architecture of pyramids and temples.

They even built an observatory before
there were telescopes.

They tracked the
position of celestial bodies.

Their calendar was much more precise than
anything at this historical time.

The Mayas had a deep
fascination of death and the afterlife.

In their belief,
there were nine underworlds and 13 heavens.

Wanting to see some of the underworld,

we descended to the
bottom of a nearby cenote.

Fátima Tec Pool, a cave
expert and archaeologist,

took us to one of the
abodes of the rain god.

This cenote was virtually
unknown until very recently.

Tell me, Fátima, what is the
relationship between the cenote,

the cave here,
and the ritual and belief of the Maya?

This place is
interesting because you can see

how the concepts of
water and caves combine.

And how the Mayans
used these spaces for rituals.

Inside, you can see walls which suggest the
Mayans used to make pilgrimages here

to pass through these sacred walls.

Can we go in?-Of course, let's go.

As the caves are seen
as entrances to the underworld,

we can see here how they made
use of the natural form of the cave,

to make ritual deposits of human remains,

possibly an ancestor of a Mayan family.

What era are they
from?-Possibly the Preclassic.

We can also see this portal.

This takes us further into the underworld.

There's something else interesting...

A human finger bone.

Deposited here in part of the wall.

Look closely and you can see ashes,
possibly a kind of mortuary treatment,

before being placed in the wall.

Is it safe for human
beings to enter the underworld,

the abode of the gods?

Yes, of course!

We timed our visit with the
Mexican Day of the Dead.

For the Mayans, death was an obsession.

There are endless
friezes with nothing but skulls.

Mérida, the central cemetery.

All this within the perimeter of
the Chicxulub crater.

The dead leave their
graves and join the living.

We are here in the serene park

of the pope's summer
residence of Castel Gandolfo.

However,
serious science is being done here.

There's an astronomical observatory famous
for its photographic celestial map.

Right next to the residence,
Lake Albano, a formidable volcanic crater.

The director of the observatory is a
Jesuit, Brother Guy Consolmagno.

He's one of the foremost
scholars in meteoritics.

Brother Guy,
at the heart of the Vatican Observatory

is this wonderful meteorite collection.

Quite a historical collection.

I certainly think so.

This is the stuff I've been working on for,
now, nearly 30 years.

Is this why you came here initially?

I didn't choose to come here.

I did this under a vow of obedience.

I had been a scientist and
then entered the Jesuits

and thought I was gonna be teaching at
a school like maybe Georgetown.

But under obedience they
ordered me to come to Rome

and eat that terrible food and
look at this miserable scenery.

And, oh, yes, there's a
collection of a thousand meteorites.

They didn't know that
the meteorites were here.

They didn't know that my
expertise was meteorites.

It was one of those divine coincidences.

It's phenomenal that we've got meteorites,

that we've got pieces of outer
space that have visited us here on Earth,

and that we can tell that
they're not from the Earth,

that they're made, chemically, of
completely different materials,

that they were formed
4.5 billion years ago.

That we have the ability to
understand these things

is itself a miracle.

And you would find it
perfectly reasonable that

life is elsewhere
in the universe,

life on Earth may have
originated elsewhere?

It's possible. I don't
know. I don't have the data.

You know, people will sometimes ask me,

do I believe that there's life
elsewhere in the universe?

And I think that's the right way to ask it.

It's a matter of belief. I
don't have the data.

But if you were to come
to me, as a scientist,

saying you wanted
resources to look for life,

and you had a great project, I'd say,
"Go for it."

On the other hand,
if you were saying you wanted to study

little green men coming
out of a flying saucer,

then I'm not so sure
I'd go along with that.

But if the green men arrived on
Earth, would you consider baptizing them?

Only if they ask.

Brother Guy invited us to
see the historical telescope.

...that were commissioned to
photograph the entire sky

and make a photographic atlas.

Why, throughout so much of
history and around the world,

have people thought of heaven as up there?

I don't know, but it's certainly true.

I mean, there are so many languages

where the word for "sky" and the
word for "heaven" are the same word.

All I can think of...

and maybe, you know, a professional would
come up with a better answer...

all I can think of is looking at the stars

give you that sense of
out-of-yourself that you need

to be able to be ready to encounter a god.

When you see a shooting star today,

is it an interesting scientific fact for
you, or do you gasp in wonder?

Yes. It is both.

And frankly, I think it's because I
know the science that I'm even more in awe.

It's one thing to say,"That's
a pretty bit of light."

It's another thing to say,

"I know what elements are
creating that light.

I know why it's that color.

I know what I can learn from this.

I hope some camera captured
it, so that I can measure

not only, 'Boy, was that pretty, '

but also, 'This is telling me
something about dust from a comet.'

A cloud of dust left behind a
comet that the Earth is barreling into,

and,
like snowflakes hitting your windscreen,

it's shots of light
hitting our atmosphere."

All of that adds to the joy. It
doesn't take away from it.

This brings to mind the dynamic of
different orders of knowledge,

the rational and the poetic, the
imaginative and the intellectual.

And it seems to me that you
marshal the same thought processes

to cope with matters that are so vast,
the cosmos,

and yet matters that are so intimate,
the soul.

You can't do the one without the other.

You can't do science...

You don't want to do science

if you don't have that sense
of awe, that sense of wonder.

You can't believe in a creator god

without experiencing creation.

Otherwise what's the point of believing?

And I know that you described
in the '70s, as a graduate student,

seeing Comet West.

And you said, "Was it impressive? No,
it was frightening."

It shook you to the core, you said. Why?

In the sky was a comet

that looked like every photograph of
a comet you'd ever seen.

The kind of thing that you
thought only existed in photographs.

And it didn't belong there.

And it was big. And it was scary.

And it wasn't there yesterday and,
"What's going on?"

And then you understood why
ancient people would look at comets

as a portent of something really,
really scary and different.

How might the church react if
the NASA telescopes detect

a really threatening near-Earth
object hurtling towards us?

I'll be honest. We'll
pray. What else can you do?

I want to show an excerpt of a movie

where physical and existential fear

are just the shudder audiences go for.

This is beautifully done.

Apart from Brother Guy's prayers,

there are practical
measures already in place.

We are here at Pan-STARRS,

the Panoramic Survey Telescope and
Rapid Response System,

located at the Hawaiian island of Maui.

Okay, brake is released.

Everybody stand clear. I'm
gonna bring it down.

Here,
one of the telescopes during maintenance.

We'll go for that, I guess.

Yeah. I'll try.-Yeah. Okay.

Dr. Joanna Bulger is entrusted, in a way,

with the safekeeping of humanity.

And so is her colleague, Dr. Mark Willman.

Just looking at their faces gave
us a good amount of confidence.

They allowed us to
intrude on their night watch.

Good evening.-Clive, hey.

I found you. The night
watch.-How's it going?

Come on. Have a seat.-Have a seat.

Helping to protect us from space
rocks that might have hostile intent.

We were just observing, but
we had to close up

because the humidity shot up.

So we're up to 90% now,

and we have to close
at 85 to protect the mirror.

We don't want moisture on the mirror.

And how do you communicate with
the controllers up at the telescope?

Well... we are the controllers.

There's nobody at the summit. It's
all remote observing now.

That's old school, where you
had to drive up at the summit.

It's 10,000 feet,

so it's much more
comfortable down here at 2,000 feet.

And so what have we got?

I mean, this screen, I guess,
is the night sky.

Yep, this is a map of the sky.

You can see there's the zenith.

That's just straight
overhead. And here's the telescope.

And this was the target we
were gonna observe.

We take about 60 images,

and we get four images of
the same spot in the sky.

And so we have a tiny
movie, a four-image movie then.

And then we can pick
out moving targets that way.

And you've got the
largest cameras on Earth.

Is that right?-We do.

I've got a 12-megapixel camera.

Twelve megapixels.-What's your camera?

Ours is over a billion pixels,

so it's... it's much larger

than a... a consumer camera like that.

What is going on with this image here?

Is this the pixel array itself?-Yeah,
exactly.

So this is actually the
raw image that we take.

So this is a 45-second exposure.

And you can see the
size of the camera itself.

So it... We're... We get a
three-degree field of view,

which is roughly seven
square degrees on the sky.

And the camera itself is stitched together

of an eight-by-eight
array of addressable CCDs.

So if you actually... We can
click on one of these images.

This one over here.-What's that?

Is that a meteor there?-Here?

No. These are two satellites that
we've caught in our field of view.

It is a satisfying job, because...

well, we don't wanna go the
way of the dinosaurs, and...

so it's worthwhile
looking out for these things.

Although the odds are slim that a
big one is gonna hit us anytime soon.

But sooner or later
there will be a big one,

so we're watching for it.

I do feel I can sleep more soundly at night

knowing that there is always
someone herein the night shift,

you know, looking for inbound
bolides. That's wonderful.

365 days a year, yeah. Every night.

Thank you. Thank you
very much for protecting us.

You're welcome. It's our privilege.-Yeah.

The photos of the night sky are
analyzed by Dr. Rob Weryk,

a planetary defense researcher from Canada.

I can't believe this is the first time
you've actually been to the telescopes.

Yeah, well, normally I focus on the
data analysis, reviewing the candidates.

So it's nice to have a chance to
come see the telescope.

Is it like seeing a sort of, you
know, brother that you've never met before?

That's true. That's true. Yeah.

They actually ended up opening at
the endow the night for an hour and a half.

We actually were able to
review the data this morning.

And so I found six new candidate objects.

"We" is "you."You found them.

Yes. I mean,
it's really a team effort overall,

but I'm the one that reviews it, so...

What's the most exciting
object that you've found?

So, the most exciting object we
found became known as 'Oumuamua.

It's actually the first interstellar comet.

It's a comet that came from
outside our solar system.

It's the first time we ever
saw an object like this. Yeah.

'Oumuamua?

'Oumuamua. So,
it's actually a Hawaiian word.

It means "first messenger from afar." Yes.

Okay.

So it's actually a two-step process.

The computer software isn't perfect, and
it still requires manual review,

and that's where I come in.

So my main responsibility is to
review all the nightly detections.

And things that are real,

they would show up as either a
series of dots or trailed objects.

Are you the first person who's seen this?

Yes. So while the
observers collect the data,

I'm actually the first person on
the planet to review and see this,

and my submitting it would sound the alarm

if there was an object that
was a hazard to the Earth.

The alarm would
instantly call the attention

of NASA's Planetary
Defense Coordination Office.

Only a few people know that it exists.

Responsible here is
Dr. Kelly Fast, an astronomer.

I've heard you describe asteroids

as the vermin of the solar system.

Why do you call them that?

Well, certainly astronomers who
are looking at things besides asteroids...

they might be looking at their target,

and asteroids are going to
photobomb whatever they're looking at.

So I guess from a point of view, if
you're looking at something else,

then they are the
vermin of the solar system.

From our point of view at NASA,

they're fantastic for
science, for spacecraft targets.

But we also want to keep an eye on them,

because it's never good when two

things occupy the same
space at the same time.

So we want to know if any of
them are going to intersect Earth's orbit

at a time when Earth is going to be there.

There's dust hitting Earth's
atmosphere all the time.

We see shooting stars,

that's just dust burning
up in the atmosphere.

But it's when things are larger,

when you get up to the size of asteroids...

Earth's atmosphere is
fantastic for burning things up,

but eventually things get
too big for that to happen.

Chelyabinsk,
20 meters. There was devastation.

Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908.

That was probably a 40-meter asteroid.

Eighty million trees were
flattened by the blast.

But not a single grain of the
asteroid has ever been discovered.

And defense? What can we do if
there's a big sucker coming in at us?

What can we do about it?

Well, yeah,
the best defense is preparation.

And so finding them first...

You don't know how to mount
a defense until you find them.

So that is the first order of business.

And that is going on with
ground-based surveys.

If you think of it as:

You've got the Sun,

you've got the Earth and the
other planets going around the Sun,

like being on a racetrack.

And then you've got all the asteroids going
around the Sun on the racetrack.

And so there are many times when
they might come close together.

In fact, we have that often, where
there's a "close approach,"

where an asteroid comes close to Earth,
which...

Close might mean,
you know, many lunar distances away.

But let's say this is really large.

It's a very large asteroid, and
you don't have a lot of time.

There are the movies that
show blowing them up.

You don't necessarily have to
do that. You still need a good push.

And you could use a
nuclear explosive device

that is used in some of these movies.

But the idea is you would
detonate it next to the asteroid,

and the energy from that
detonation would irradiate the surface,

and the material that blows
off the surface of the asteroid

would give it that
push in the other direction.

A softer, unaggressive approach

was actually performed by a
Japanese probe on Asteroid Ryugu.

How small the asteroid is

we can tell from the size of the
shadow the probe casts on its surface.

Gravity is so minimal that
the softest of landings

already threw great quantities of
debris away from it, into space.

Right here we see how meteorites originate.

The probe itself is already on
its way back to Earth,

bringing a single
gram scooped from the asteroid.

But for bigger
specimens, Antarctica is paradise.

It is not that more rocks
fall here than elsewhere.

They are visible on the vast glaciers that
cover almost the entire continent

that is larger than the United States.

We were invited to join the
hunt by South Korean scientists.

Their station, named Jang Bogo,

at the coast of East
Antarctica, houses about 50 people.

The austral summer
season lasts nearly five months,

during which the Sun never goes down.

Inside,
it is more spacious than we anticipated.

Only a few miles away, six
men of Scott's last expedition

endured a whole winter huddling in
a snow cave just nine feet across.

They were starving and freezing in squalor,

surviving on seal meat and
a ration of one biscuit a day.

From diaries of Scott's men,

we know they dreamt of banquets that were
ripped away from their ready forks.

Only one man managed
in his dream to actually eat,

and he was rightfully
hated by his comrades for this.

But we were not here
for lobster and kimchi.

We were itching to fly to the
Polar Plateau in the interior.

We knew there was an
overland expedition of trucks

that had left our station three weeks ago

and was nearing the meteorite hunting
grounds on the blue ice.

But first the helicopter has to
climb up some 2,000 meters.

From the station at the coast to
the ice plateau of the continent,

we are flying over
glacier ice cascading down.

Imagine crossing this on foot.

Each of these wildly tossed boulders

is larger than an apartment building,

and the mass is constantly
flowing towards the sea.

Finally we reach the Plateau.

Only a few mountains remain, sticking
out of the ice like islands.

It felt like entering into a
world that was not our planet.

From here begins the immense loneliness

of a vast continent covered by
ice two to four kilometers thick.

Through GPS data, we knew
the position of the caravan.

They were expecting us.

We were so looking
forward to meet Jong Ik Lee,

the leader of this expedition.

He was the one who
invited us to Antarctica,

and it felt like meeting an old friend.

I didn't think you'd make it.-Yes, yes.

I didn't know that we would make it.

My dream...

We had seen footage he
shot close to here a few years earlier.

He had found a large meteorite,

and we fell in love with
him, seeing his ecstasy of discovery.

This is science at its best.

Okay, down.

Something else I like about this
highly charged emotional moment,

something the stupid doctrine of
film schools would never allow.

Watch the background. A figure enters.

No recognizable motivation, wrong timing,

rear end approaching.

Back to the present.

Along with us,
Jong Ik's wife, Mi Jung, had arrived,

herself a renowned polar geologist.

Husband and wife reunited.

Minutes after our arrival we
found our first meteorite.

The sheer, blank ice,
not covered with snow,

is the ideal terrain to spot them.

The gigantic mass of ice is
moving slowly, like a conveyor belt

and exposes stones that may have
fallen hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Most of the meteorites are
carried all the way to the ocean.

But where the glacier is deflected upwards
by a mountain range deep down there,

the ice evaporates, leaving
its cargo at the surface.

Every stone out here is a meteorite.

Watch the man on the
right. He found something.

The lucky one turned out to be Clive.

It may look staged, but it was really him.

This is it! This is your sample!

Congratulations.

This is big. Biggest today.

I found one over there. A little one.

And then when I was...

It also turned out

this was the largest
meteorite of the entire season,

and the first assessment suggested it
was an extremely rare specimen.

We resumed our search, but
one thought crept up on us.

It would be a full five
months until night would fall,

and we could walk on for the next 5,000
kilometers without meeting a soul.

This is the ultimate experience
of space for those on foot.

But we knew of a place where not
our feet but our souls start to travel,

a place where we
transcend our human existence.

Our last journey took us to
one of the remotest islands

of the archipelago in the Torres Strait.

These islands are located between
Australia and New Guinea.

This tiny island called Merhas
a population of about 400.

We had heard of tribal
beliefs about shooting stars

that carry the souls of the
deceased to a new life somewhere else.

Doug Passi, one of the tribal elders,

knew stories about souls departing
by meteor to the netherworld.

One of my family members
was sent by the ghosts on a maier.

"Maier" is a meteor?-Falling star, yeah.

And she was actually on that maier itself,

burned with fire.

That's what I heard.

And they said that's a true story.

And that lady... old
lady... named Gizou Simbolo.

Was she alive, or was it her spirit?

She was alive. She was alive, yeah.

And when them family is ready to die...

the maier can tell us a story saying,

"Someone will go lost in a few days." Or...

Or... Or...

"Here he goes somewhere else."

The star... the falling star.
Maier.Sometime red. Sometime light blue.

It seems here that death is...

It's not so much an event. It's
the beginning of a journey.

Beginning of the new
journey on the new life. Yes.

They can come in different forms.

Form of a bird. Form of
a dog. Form of a person.

Or a shadow that you
can see move on the wall.

Or maybe a floating wood.

Floating wood on the ocean.

Because we came with a camera,

the islanders revived an
almost forgotten dance

that was not performed
here for half a century.

Alo Tapim, an elder,
instructed young men in the choreography.

The dance is about
maier, as you've indicated.

Maier is that star, comet.

And it's a special star.

Only on special times that this
star appears to the Meriam people.

The Meriam observe this star

when a loved one departs
this life to the next.

The transition is done through this star.

The dancers carrying Nair. Torches.

We call it Nair.

They carry them.

And they indicate when that star...

falling star lets go its embers.

It's indicated by the
fire sticks they carry.

And when two fire sticks, they clap...

they hit together,

clap together, the two fire sticks,
the embers...

And this is captured.

That tells... describes that star.

Yes. And this is our story.