All language subtitles for How The Universe Works S04E01 How The Universe Built Your Car_ENG_Subtitles01

*

Did you ever stop to wonder
where your car came from?

Where it really came from?

Every component has been
on a mind-blowing journey,

through time, space...

..and the most violent cosmic events
since the Big Bang.

The history of your car
is the history of the universe.

How old is a car?

My car is about five years old.

My car was assembled in 2001.

The car I drive is pretty old.

It was manufactured in 1991,

but that's just when the pieces
and parts were assembled.

The materials that make up
the cars we drive today

were created long before 1991.

Your car began its life
billions of years ago,

billions of miles away
in deep space.

The things that make up cars, those
atoms, most of them were forged

well before our Earth was born.

You think your car is a clunker?

It's actually
13.8 billion years old.

All right. Let's do it, sir.

The best way to find out
what a car is made out of

is to tear one apart.

Iron, plastics, oils and rubber
are the first to be removed.

In another half-hour or so,

this baby's going to be
completely stripped.

I can't wait to see it.

Then aluminium, silicon, copper

and finally, precious metals
like platinum and gold.

Each of these materials
is crucial for building a car...

..but in the earliest days
of the universe,

none of them existed.

13.8 billion years ago,

the universe was born
in a monumental event...

..the Big Bang.

The early universe was filled
with nothing but energy.

After the Big Bang,

it was just a chaotic glob of stuff,
nothing like what you see today.

As the early universe cools,

the energy gave way
to unstable matter and antimatter.

Then protons and neutrons,

and finally, atoms.

But not the iron, silicon
or carbon atoms that we use in a car,

the universe was almost
entirely made up of hydrogen.

Something had to happen to
give us everything else

and everything was actually made
from hydrogen building-blocks.

An atom of hydrogen is the simplest
and lightest atom in the universe -

just a single positively-charged
proton bound to a single electron.

The universe built up bigger atoms
such as carbon and iron

by joining hydrogen atoms together.

Everything starts
from simpler origins.

An iron atom is actually lots
and lots of simple hydrogen atoms

that were stuck together.

But hydrogen atoms
don't naturally stick together.

Protons are positively charged.

So as you push them closer together,

they're gonna resist
coming closer together.

They really don't want to hang out.

This repulsion makes
the early universe

a maelstrom of hydrogen atoms
swerving to avoid each other.

But if you can get them to a point

where you can
shove them together enough,

at some point,
they're going to lock together.

Pushing atoms together
so strongly that they fuse

is called nuclear fusion.

It's the first step
in turning a universe full of gas

into one filled with
the ingredients for planets,

people and cars.

Getting two atoms to fuse
is child's play...

at least it is
if your name's Taylor Wilson.

Taylor's been fusing atoms
in his garage since he was 14.

Yeah, the neighbours
know about the radioactive stuff

that's in the garage,
and so does the government.

It's all relatively low-level.

(BEEPING)

It's my watch going off.

I think I'm the only person

I've ever met with
a Geiger-counter watch.

The centrepiece of
Taylor's nuclear man cave

is a precision-engineered
fusion reactor

which he built when
he was still in high school.

OK, I'll let in some gas now.

The first ingredient - hydrogen gas.

And it will be flowed
into the chamber

through this very precise
sapphire leak valve.

The next ingredient -
high-voltage electricity.

Hm.

Oh, I wonder what the problem is!

You forgot to plug it in.
The power supply is not plugged in.

OK, let's try that again.
That's embarrassing.

We'll get power from
the laundry room now.

Taylor passes a high voltage

through a small spherical cage
that sits inside the reactor.

The negatively-charged cage

quickly pulls
the hydrogen ions towards it.

So it's taking all those ions
and sucking them towards the centre.

And as they fly in,
they get confined,

and hopefully they collide
with each other and fuse.

The temperature of the atoms
inside the cage is now so great

that hydrogen atoms
are fusing together,

creating heavier helium atoms
and a burst of energy hotter
than the surface of the sun.

That little tiny blob of plasma
inside those grid wires,

that's kind of
like a star in a jar.

13 billion years ago,

the universe used gravity
instead of an electrical cage

to fuse atoms together.

Across the cosmos,

vast clouds of hydrogen gas
collapsed under their own gravity.

Pressure and temperature built as
more and more gas was sucked in.

Eventually, fusion sparked deep in
the core of these giant balls of gas,

and the first stars
started to manufacture

many of the heavy elements
that make up cars today.

A star is basically a machine

for turning lighter elements
into heavier elements.

Fusion took place inside
the core of these first stars,

fusing hydrogen atoms
together to create helium.

And when all the hydrogen
in the core had been used up,

the star finds new fuel to burn.

After you burn hydrogen
to form helium,

the core of the star begins
to collapse and get hotter.

And there is enough energy then

to fuse three helium
nuclei into carbon...

..and then that fuses to form
nitrogen, oxygen, silicon, iron.

But this incredible production line
of elements can't go on forever.

The heavier atoms you ram together,
the less energy you get out.

So you turn hydrogen into helium,

helium becomes carbon,
nitrogen, oxygen.

But every time, there's
a bit less energy to be had,

until you get to iron.

The iron that is in your car

is actually, essentially, a deadly
poison when it comes to a star.

It's robbing that star of the heat
needed to keep itself up.

So the star collapses,
dies and explodes

at the moment you
create iron in the core.

I mean, literally,
the fraction of a second.

I'm not kidding. That's how dramatic
and weird the steel in your car is.

The explosion, called a supernova,

is one of the brightest and most
violent events in the universe.

It releases enough energy

to dwarf what the sun puts out
over its entire lifetime.

And all of the elements
that it has created

are then dispersed out into space.

The gassy remains of the explosion
are called a supernova remnant,

an expanding bubble of gas
containing hydrogen that survived
in the star's outer layers,

mixed in with carbon, oxygen, silicon
and iron from the star's core.

This 13 billion-year-old stardust
helped you drive to work last week.

This was once in the core
of a dying star.

And who knows? Maybe some
of the iron atoms in this brake disc

were forged in the heart of
the very first generation of stars

that illuminated the universe.

When you're pumping iron,
you're pumping the universe.

The first stars created
the materials in a car's chassis,

body, windshield and seats.

But key components, like the copper
for the car's electronics,

are yet to be manufactured.

To create this crucial metal,

a new generation of stars
must die an even stranger death.

*

*

Picture the scene
13 billion years ago...

..as the universe's very first stars
are coming to the end of their lives.

The sky is filled with flashes

as star after star
violently explodes.

These supernovas hurl a rich
cocktail of elements into space...

..carbon, silicon,
aluminium and iron,

materials that will one day
be used to build cars on Earth.

But some even heavier elements

needed to build a car
are still missing.

Elements like copper and gold,
used in the car's wiring.

So far, the universe hasn't
created these heavy metals,

but it's about to.

In the case of copper,

the secret to its formation
is reincarnation.

Copper is one metal that
your car can't live without.

It turns out, there's over a mile
of copper in the average car.

And the reason why

is because copper is
an excellent electrical conductor.

Copper's also used
to conduct heat in radiators.

It stops bearings from failing
when you need to go fast.

And when you need to stop...

..copper provides the friction
in your brake pads.

But the story of how that copper
came to exist and be on Earth,

that's a truly remarkable story.

Copper can't begin to form

until the first generation
of stars have died.

The expanding supernova remnants

crash into neighbouring
clouds of gas...

..creating a shock wave of pressure,

a perfect nursery for
a new generation of stars.

There are cycles to the universe.

Stars form,
they live out their lives.

They die, they blow
off winds and they explode,

seeding their material into gas
clouds which then form new stars

with heavier elements in them,
which will repeat the cycle again.

So if you wanna think
about it that way,

the universe
is the ultimate recycler.

The gas that forms
these second-generation stars

is peppered with the carbon,
aluminium and iron

thrown out by the supernova.

The biggest of these new stars
burn extremely brightly,

but only for a few million years...

..then they undergo
an incredible metamorphosis.

The star rapidly expands
to 100 times its previous size...

..then it cools
and turns a ghostly red.

A second-generation star
has transformed

into a red supergiant.

And in its diffuse outer layers,

iron is slowly converted
into copper...

..but not by fusion.

That iron nucleus has 26 protons.

That's a serious electric charge,

so it's going to repel any protons
we try to shoot in there.

How do we get more protons in?

The way we get those protons
in there is we trick the nucleus.

Instead of shooting in protons,
we shoot in neutrons.

Colliding atoms
in the outer layers of a star

sometimes spit out neutrons.

Neutrons don't have a charge,
so they're not repelled

by the positively-charged protons
in the iron stardust.

These neutrons are able to stick
to the iron atoms around them.

An atom is a very tiny thing
and makes a very small target.

But there's a lot of particles
flying around near a star,

and if, by chance, a neutron
can hit an atom, it can stick,

and that will actually make
the nucleus of the atom larger.

Neutron by neutron can hit an atom

and then that neutron can
actually decay into a proton.

The neutron spontaneously splits
into an electron, which is ejected,

and a proton, which is left behind.

The process transforms iron
into copper.

Scientists call this
magical conversion "beta decay".

So you can build up
heavy elements very slowly

over the course of
thousands or millions of years,

just by capturing neutrons.

Eventually, the core of
the red supergiant runs out of fuel

and the star explodes...

..blasting its copper-rich
outer layer into space.

Thanks to the life and death
of two generations of stars...

..we can equip our car
with copper wiring.

But we're still short
of some even heavier metals,

such as lead for the battery,

and gold for
the electrical connectors.

To make these truly massive atoms...

..the universe must create
the most spectacular explosions

since the Big Bang.

To make a car, you need
some seriously heavy metal.

Metal like iridium,

a supersized atom with 77 protons

that's used to coat
the tips of spark plugs.

Heavier still is gold,
with 79 protons.

This shiny conductor
resists corrosion,

making it ideal
for exposed electrical connections.

These connectors here
for this airbag assembly are gold,

and so this thing
can react really quickly

if there's an accident
and save your life.

The heaviest atom
found in a car is lead,

with 82 protons.

Only lead can deliver
the short burst of high power

needed to start an engine
over and over again.

But until very recently,

how the universe
made these oversized atoms

was a complete mystery.

You can't make gold atoms
in a normal star.

You can't make gold atoms
in a massive star that's dying.

In order to make atoms this big,
with this many neutrons,

you need a truly cataclysmic event.

Just a few years ago,

most scientists
believed that supernovas

were cataclysmic enough
to do the job.

But astronomer Edo Berger
had doubts.

If you open any one of these books
and flip to the page

that tells you where gold came from,

it will tell you that gold
came from supernova explosions.

But nobody had directly
observed supernovas

producing elements like gold.

And inside computer simulations,

virtual supernovas lacked the energy
to forge these oversized atoms.

Clearly, something was wrong.

But if supernovas
weren't powerful enough,

what in the universe was?

To form heavy elements
requires a lot of neutrons,

and so another possible theory
was that the heaviest elements

were produced in the mergers of two
neutron stars in a binary system.

Neutron stars are some of the
strangest objects in the universe.

They're formed from
the collapsed cores of giant stars.

You're taking a couple
of times the mass of the sun

and squeezing it down into a ball
that's only a few miles across.

The electrons and the protons that
are flitting around inside of that

combine to form neutrons.

And what you're left with is an
extremely dense ball of neutrons

about the size of a city.

Neutron stars are extremely dense.

If you take just a teaspoon
of the neutron star material,

it's actually a billion tonnes.

If neighbouring stars die together,

it's possible for the two
neutron stars they leave behind

to form a spinning binary pair.

But the partnership is doomed.

What you're left over with
is two incredibly compact,

dramatic objects
spiralling around each other.

Over time, they move in together,
until finally, they can coalesce

in the most violent explosion
since the Big Bang.

The explosion is called
a neutron-star merger.

The amount of energy
in this explosion is crushing.

There's almost no way
to describe it.

It's like taking
all of the sun's energy

that it will ever emit
over its entire lifetime

and releasing it in a single second.

Berger suspected
that this colossal explosion

forged iridium, gold and lead...

..but to rewrite the textbooks,
he needed hard evidence.

It was difficult
to convince the community

that this was a potential channel

for the production
of heavy elements.

The proof is to actually see this
process happening in the universe.

June 2013.

NASA's Swift satellite
spotted a short burst of gamma rays

from a nearby galaxy...

..a sign that a neutron-star merger
had just taken place.

For Berger, it was the lucky break
he'd been waiting for.

As soon as we knew that there
was a gamma-ray burst nearby,

we knew that this was our one
chance, for perhaps several years,

to obtain the right kind
of measurements to test
the formation of heavy elements.

Once Swift had identified the burst,

the Hubble Space Telescope
swung into action to capture images.

We grabbed them right away
and we just looked.

We knew exactly where to look,
at the centre of this red circle.

And what we saw was this source
right there in the middle

that is the direct signature

of the production of very
heavy elements, including gold.

Berger's theory was right,

but the rate of production
was far higher than he'd expected.

Well, in that one event,

the amount of gold that was produced
was more than the mass of the Earth.

If we can bring it all here,

it would be worth quadrillions
and quadrillions of dollars.

The theory is still very new,

but it's possible that
ancient neutron-star mergers

made all the heavy metals
we see in the world today...

..including the last remaining
ingredients for our car.

But all these elements
were floating free in space.

They still have to be pulled together
into one giant fabrication plant...

..the Earth.

*

*

Before the Earth was born,

all the materials that would
one day go into making your car

looked like this.

A vast, swirling cloud
of gas and stardust,

the exploded remnants
of ancient stars.

The clouds between
the stars of the galaxy

are made of everything that
the Earth, your body

and your car is made of.

There's everything
that you need floating

in gaseous form between the stars.

Four-and-a-half billion years ago,

this interstellar gas
collapsed once more.

This time to create a rather
ordinary mid-sized star...

..our sun.

Close to the young sun, all of
the lighter stuff got blown away.

What was left behind
was the heavier, denser stuff.

There was carbon,
there was iron, there was gold,

everything in-between.

Over time, these free-floating
elements began to coalesce.

Dust became rock.

Rocks joined to form
larger objects called planetesimals.

Finally, planetesimals
joined to form the Earth.

Our planet was born with all the
ingredients needed to build a car...

..but these ingredients were
about to go their separate ways.

The Earth is a big planet

and it's done something
that not all planets do,

it's differentiated, it melted.

Copper and lead dissolved in sulphur

and floated to the top
of the molten Earth,

making these metals
easy to mine today.

But precious metals
like iridium and gold

sunk to the Earth's core
and most of the iron sunk with them.

It's kind of a pain, actually.

All the heavy elements
that are super-useful, like iron,

they've sunk to the middle of the
Earth where we can't reach them

and there's not a whole
lot of it in the crust.

3.8 billion years ago,
the oceans formed

and water dissolved
the last remaining traces of iron

from the Earth's surface.

In fact, there was
so much iron in the sea

that the Earth would've been green,
not blue like it is today.

The Earth's crust seemed
destined to be practically iron-free.

Then along came
the most unlikely saviour...

..green slime.

I want to show you
a couple of examples of rocks

that we recently
brought back from South Africa.

Caltech geobiologist Woody Fischer

traced the history of iron through
the Earth's earliest rocks.

This is an example of a rock
that was deposited on the seafloor

a little over
two-and-a-half billion years ago,

and there's not a lot
of iron in this sample.

Now, what's so interesting is you
go to the same place on the Earth

200 million years later,

and what you find is that
things have really changed.

And you'll note this
very rusty colour to it.

This is from the presence
of iron oxides,

and in fact, the rock itself
is incredibly heavy, very dense.

Why did the Earth's geological record
change so quickly and so profoundly?

One clue is that the sudden
appearance of iron-rich rocks

coincides with the rise
of the first simple plants.

This is a microorganism
called a cyanobacterium.

Each of the individual cells
that are present in that medium

are green and they're
conducting photosynthesis.

This group of cyanobacteria
is gathering energy from light,

using that to split water,
and in so doing,

they produce
copious amounts of oxygen.

In the early oceans,

this newly formed oxygen
reacted with the dissolved iron,

forming a heavy rust
that settled on the ocean-floor.

For the first time in
Earth's history, there was oxygen,

free oxygen, in the air.

That combined with the iron

and the iron, basically,
sank to the bottom of the ocean.

These ancient rusty deposits
form the iron ore that we mine today.

So in the process of making a car,
mining the iron ore,

life was an essential part
of that first step.

You have to wait
until after these guys evolve

in order to be able to concentrate
the raw materials that you need.

The life of early plants
brought us iron,

but their death
was perhaps even more helpful,

because without dead plants,
most cars wouldn't run.

So what's the final ingredient
for getting a car to actually go?

You need to add fuel,

and we, right now,
use hydrocarbon-based fuel.

We use oil.

Oil is actually
the remnant of dead plant life

from billions of years ago.

It amazes me to think that as
you're driving your car around,

what you're actually
running the car on

is ancient dead life.

These hydrocarbons are also processed

to help make rubber and plastics
for the tyres and interior trim.

Now we have almost all the
components needed to complete a car.

All that remains is a spark
to bring the engine to life...

..but to get that spark,

the Earth must pay
a catastrophic price.

65 million years ago,
the Earth's crust is missing

one crucial group
of super-tough metals.

This is a spark plug.

And the way it works is that
100,000 volts are put

across this gap here...

..and that ignites gasoline vapour
in the cylinder of your motor.

This tip has to survive
in very harsh conditions...

..so it must be made of a very,
very sturdy, robust material,

and the material in this spark plug
is a metal known as iridium.

Like gold and lead,

iridium was created inside
the biggest bang since the Big Bang -

a neutron star merger.

Although the Earth originally
contained a large amount of iridium,

it sank out of reach while
the Earth was still molten,

falling to the core
under the influence of gravity.

The iridium that we mine
on the Earth's surface today

came from somewhere else.

This exposed rock face in Colorado
reveals a clue -

a mysterious layer
in the Earth's geological record

that wraps around the entire planet.

There's something
particularly interesting

about this clay layer here.

If you analyse
the concentration of rare metals
like iridium in this layer,

you'll find that there's about
100 times as much iridium here

as in the other rocks around us
in the crust of the Earth.

It's rather bizarre, actually,

to find so much iridium
concentrated in one place

here in crustal rocks.

And it turns out
that the entire budget

of the iridium in the Earth's crust

is pretty much
contained in this layer.

When geologists discovered
the iridium layer in the late '70s,

it became one of
the biggest mysteries in science.

How could so much of this
rare metal end up concentrated

in such a thin layer?

Astronomers had measured similar
concentrations of iridium before...

..inside rocks that had come
from the asteroid belt.

Billions of years ago, planets were
forming all over our solar system,

but there was an area
in-between Mars and Jupiter

where the gravity of Jupiter
pretty much pulled apart
anything that tried to form.

And what got left over
were a bunch of large, rocky chunks

that we call the asteroid belt.

Now, some of the asteroid belt
is made of rock.

Other asteroids are
richer in metals.

From time to time,

asteroids are thrown out of orbit
by another asteroid,

or by the long reach
of Jupiter's gravity.

Sometimes these asteroids
smash into the Earth.

Could the iridium layer

be the scattered remains of a single
giant, metal-rich asteroid impact?

30 years ago,
this idea sounded far-fetched.

Only an asteroid the size of a city
would've had enough power

to blast debris around
the entire planet.

If you could imagine the magnitude,

the enormity of the violence
of an event like that.

And to have inches of dusty debris

come booming over the horizon
and settling out of the sky

and raining on top of you
and burying you in this layer,

that should make a pretty big
crater someplace on the Earth.

Although it sounded incredible,

the asteroid hypothesis also
solved a long-standing mystery.

The dinosaurs were wiped out
around the same time

the iridium layer was laid down.

Could the two events be linked?

The puzzle was solved
when an asteroid-impact crater

was discovered down in the Yucatan.

The crater age turned out to be
exactly 65 million years old,

the same age as this deposit.

And the crater size turned out

to be just the size
of crater you would get

from the size of an asteroid
it would take to make this layer.

So it turns out that
in a lot of ways

you can think of asteroids as sort
of a cosmic iridium-delivery system

for us here on
the surface of the Earth.

And it's not just iridium
we have to thank asteroids for.

There were probably several times

in the history of our solar system
where there was heavy bombardment,

all kinds of asteroids and comets
falling in toward the Earth.

Well, the Earth had solidified
to some degree by that time,

so not everything
sank down into the core.

So some of the metals
we find around us

are products of
this later era of bombardment.

The Earth's history
is a violent one.

Over the course of time, we've been
hit over and over and over again

by asteroids of all sizes.

Some of them have actually delivered

quite a bit of heavy elements
to the surface of the Earth.

These asteroid-borne materials

include most of
the gold, platinum and nickel

we use in cars today.

Asteroid impacts will form
little pockets of concentrations

of some of those ore minerals
and ore metals for us

that we can then mine
in greater abundance on the surface.

In many cases, when you go to a mine
to dig up these heavy elements,

what you are doing is tapping
into an asteroid impact.

But these mines are relatively rare.

As humanity continues to grow,

our precious metals will be
the first metals to run out.

If we want to get more,

the only option will be
to mine the asteroid belt itself.

I don't think we can
keep making cars here

on the surface of the Earth forever.

And as population grows and our
need for these minerals grows,

at some point,
you know, we're gonna...

you're gonna mine the Earth
as much as it can be mined

and you have to start
to look someplace else.

And fortunately,

there are mines in the sky
out there by the billions,

and they're called asteroids.

A lot of asteroids have platinum,
iron, nickel, gold in them.

It's very expensive to go up there
and grab them and tow them back,

but just the raw materials
in an asteroid

could be worth hundreds
of billions of dollars.

NASA recently estimated the value

of the precious metals
and materials on the asteroid belt

as being about $600 quintillion,

or about $100 billion for every
person alive on the Earth today.

But I do not expect to be
seeing any of that money myself.

We'll have to wait for
rocket technology to get cheaper

before asteroid-mining
becomes a viable proposition.

Until then, we'll continue
to rely on the asteroids

that have hit the Earth.

Metal-rich asteroids
are the final piece of the puzzle.

We can now reconstruct the journey
of every atom of our car

through time and space.

From the moment of the Big Bang,
through generations of stars

to the birth of the Earth,
and eventually,

the showroom floor.

Over the course of the multiple
supernovae in our universe

and the birth and death of stars,

we were able to collect
all of the materials needed

to assemble these cars.

That's pretty fantastic.

I think we don't fully
appreciate how complicated

the elements that make up
our car really are

and how special they are.

They really are star stuff.

But not every car is like
the one we've just pulled apart.

These days,
not every car runs on petrol.

Electric vehicles
require a magical element

that's made in space...

..by cosmic ray guns.

*

*

This car doesn't have a petrol tank.

It's part of a new generation
of electric vehicles.

The key to these high-tech cars
is their rechargeable batteries...

..a technology that relies on
one of the Earth's rarest metals.

This here is a battery pack
from an electric car,

and in today's electric cars,
the metal of choice is lithium,

and lithium has one of the most
amazing stories in the universe.

After hydrogen and helium,
lithium is the lightest element,

with just three protons
and four neutrons.

Its lightness makes it
ideal for electric cars.

If the battery weighs
more than the car,

then we are just wasting energy
on moving the battery around.

If we can build a light battery,
for example, a lithium-ion battery,

then we can provide
the power without the penalty

of having to carry those
heavy batteries along with the car.

Lithium is rapidly becoming

one of the most
sought-after metals on Earth,

but it's also a cosmic curiosity.

The Big Bang creates
a trace of lithium,

but as the first stars form,

this lithium disappears.

Unlike hydrogen and helium,

which are fairly stable
on an atomic scale,

lithium is a little bit fragile.

It can actually be broken apart
into its components.

As time goes by, these first stars

manufacture a little
lithium on their own,

but it doesn't last long.

It is so fragile
that the instant it's made,

it's destroyed once again by the
conditions in the core of the star.

The lithium we have on Earth

isn't made in a star
like iron, copper and iridium.

Instead of fusing
lighter elements together,

lithium is created
when larger atoms are blasted apart.

The answer for where
lithium comes from

is an amazing thing,
it's almost like a sci-fi answer.

It kind of comes from
ray guns from space.

The ray guns are supernovas
and their bullets are cosmic rays...

..high-velocity particles
that streak through space

at close to the speed of light.

Cosmic rays are subatomic particles.

They are atomic nuclei that
are accelerated to high speed

in a supernova explosion.

If another atomic nucleus
gets in the way,

it can hit them and shatter them,

and one of the pieces of shrapnel
from this explosion is lithium.

The process is a bit
like going bowling,

where the bowling ball
is the cosmic ray

and the pins together
are some other atomic nucleus.

When the bowling ball
smashes into the pins,

it sends them
scattered in all directions...

..and one of those pins
could be lithium.

Cosmic rays are travelling
throughout all of space,

between galaxies and in galaxies.

So the cosmic rays
that are forming lithium

by breaking other elements apart

are literally doing it
in the space between the stars.

Almost all the lithium on
Earth today was made this way,

atom by atom
in the vastness of space.

And then swept up
into the clouds of gas

that formed our solar system.

Oh, yeah, baby.

For our cosmic car, this may
look like the end of the line,

but the production line
for the universe keeps on rolling.

This is pretty awesome.

These atoms in this car here

have been travelling
across the cosmos.

They came to us from,
maybe, 13 billion years ago,

a billion years after
the formation of the universe.

Now guess what?

They were used and we're returning
them back to where they came from.

The atoms in our car
will not be in our car forever.

In fact, our car will
probably be destroyed

within a single human lifetime.

Time to crush.

It'll be recycled
into other things on Earth,

but eventually, even the atoms
on Earth will be recycled

with the rest of the cosmos.

How cool was that?

You could imagine my car
gets destroyed with the Earth

and eventually makes its way
to another planet.

It gets built into some
other kind of transportation mode

by an alien race.

I mean, that's totally possible,

and I think that's
kind of a cool idea.

From stars being born
billions of years ago,

to cosmic rays,
to even the Big Bang itself.

It's amazing to contemplate
all of the things

that had to come together
in the universe for us to have cars.

You really are driving around

in the end product
of something that started

13.7 billion years ago.

That "new car" smell, that's
actually "old universe" smell,

because that smell is traceable
all the way back to the Big Bang.

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How do you like that?

That guarantees
the last word in the show.