All language subtitles for Underland.2025.WEB-DL.1080p.English.mp42

A mile to the west of a hill marked by
nine burial mounds, there stands an old

ash tree.

Her crown reaches skyward.

Her roots dive deep into the land.

Many have been this way before, passing
through the old ash.

and into the world beneath.

What is this strange song that calls us
below?

Why do we seek the void?

...in the High Sierra.

Strong gusts and heavy rain moving
overhead in the latter part of the

Travel conditions moving forward right
through to the morning. Meanwhile,

northern areas continue to enjoy milder
conditions than usual.

Thank you.

Our journey begins somewhere beneath the
skin

of the earth where darkness thickens

and

sounds stir.

Yet, even here, just inches below the
surface, this is a place so alien to

ours above.

Nothing is familiar.

And all is strange.

El sonido.

Eso es lo que te golpea primero.

Crecí en esta región de México.

Aquí tenemos muchas cavernas.

La verdad es que desde niña me
fascinaban las cuevas.

Pero no solo me fascinaban las cuevas en
sí.

Thousands of years ago, there was an
ancient population that lived in this

region.

They were the so -called Mayans.

They considered the caves as entrances
into the underworld.

They called it Xibalba.

The Mayas entered the caves and
performed various rituals inside.

Siempre esperamos encontrar evidencia de
las actividades que ahí desarrollaron.

Sus huellas, sus artefactos, todo eso
que ellos fueron dejando a

través del tiempo.

Pero en realidad nunca sabemos si las
vamos a encontrar.

Así que es necesario explorar tan
profundo como podamos y estar preparado

cualquier cosa.

As I descend, the first thing that hits
me is the smell.

It's kind of a smell of a cave in the
making.

Wet concrete and trash.

Maybe sewage.

You know, after years, decades,
exploring the underground, those smells

completely associate with the feeling of
freedom.

When you're in the main system, all of
the smaller systems dump into it.

You wouldn't necessarily know if it was
raining on the surface until all of

those veins start pumping.

And it's going to turn into a
subterranean flash flood in an instant.

Maybe the past 20 years of my life I've
spent exploring underground spaces.

I actually began my career in
archaeology.

Eventually, I ran into these urban
explorers.

These incredible groups of people who
were sneaking into abandoned places and

photographing them.

And it seemed to me like a kind of
archaeological practice.

I feel like I was really pulled into the
underground.

This is just now what I do.

I guess I've made a whole career out of
writing about things that I find

underground.

As a species, our presence on the earth
extends further into the ground than our

buildings do into the sky. And one day,
after we've gone, I think this will be

all that's left.

So what I want to know is...

What do these traits say about us, about
humanity?

What does it say about who we actually
are as a species?

It's so dark in the cage.

You can't see much at all.

It just adds to the sense of fear.

I mean, even for people who go
underground a lot, I guess.

Most of them never go two kilometers
down.

I think even when I was a child, I
always was trying to make sense of the

around me.

My grandmother would call me Miss Y.

I'd ask her things like, you know, what
are those stars in the sky? Why are they

there? How was our universe born?

Why do we exist?

The answers just got thinner and thinner
until at the end you realize you've

asked a question that nobody in the
world knows the answer to.

As scientists, when we know we need to
try to look for hard things, we are

pushed to the extremes.

Extreme energies or temperatures or
distances.

In this particular case, we're being
pushed to extreme depths.

That's because sometimes the experiments
you want to conduct are so sensitive

that you just can't do them on the
surface.

There's too much interference from all
the radiation that bombards the planet.

But when you're underground, at the
bottom of a deep mine,

you can pretty much filter all that out.

That means that you can look for things
that you just can't see up there.

In my case, the thing we're looking for,
if we can actually find it, would go

some way toward answering the question
of how our universe developed and why

we're even here.

The only problem is, this thing we're
looking for has never been directly

detected.

Ever.

So the question for me is, how do you
catch a ghost?

Deeper we dream.

Far beneath the roots of the old ash
tree.

Down through an ancient rift of stone.

Where living walls show we have long
been making these journeys below.

Though those early human eyes
encountered simply so much darkness.

Since they could not fill that dark with
light, they filled it with story.

In some of these stories, this world was
a perfect inversion of the human realm,

where the feet of the dead walked soul
to soul with those of the living.

In others, It was a place from which the
roots of a giant world tree drew its

power.

One which linked the heavens and the
earth to this land of eternal

night.

A menudo pienso en lo poco que habrían
podido ver acá abajo.

Si solo lo que tenían era fuego.

Hoy tenemos nuevas herramientas.

Si podemos usarlas para visualizar los
tipos de viajes que nuestros ancestros

hicieron bajo la tierra,

Tal vez podamos acercarnos a entender
por qué vinieron aquí.

Para mí eso es lo importante.

Los mayas son mi herencia.

Mi familia desciende de ellos.

Y por eso decidí estudiar arqueología.

Yo quería estudiar a la gente con la que
estoy profundamente conectada.

Porque el trabajo ahora es muchísimo más
rápido con esta nueva tecnología.

Correcto. Antes teníamos que estar
dibujando manualmente. Con tu mano

Ya viste, esta es la distancia que hemos
recorrido.

No sabemos de qué tamaño es la cueva.

Creo que podría ser largo, ¿no?

Eso creo.

To do what I do, descending is not
enough.

I need to find ways to augment my
vision.

That's when you really start to see.

Sometimes in the drains, you encounter
what looks like trash.

But then you look closer and you see
what it really is.

People live down here.

People who don't have homes at the
surface and who need to escape the heat

the constant surveillance by police.

You know, in cities, they often say that
wealth rises up into towers, into

skyscrapers.

But it's also true that poverty sinks.

It sinks underground.

Unfortunately, that means that when it
rains, people die.

Part of what I do is to document stories
like these, to make them visible.

The underground is full of secrets like
this.

And documenting those secrets is the

preoccupation of a global community of
people.

But wherever we are, the drive, the
obsession...

this community is about a feeling that
this stuff is just too precious to rot

the dark.

Unseen.

So we have to do everything we can to
figure out ways to light it up and to

bring that back to the surface.

These labs have to be kept incredibly
clean.

Only the equivalent of a teaspoon of
dust is allowed to pass through them

the course of an entire year.

That's to protect all the equipment that
we have down here, equipment that's

helping in the search for what we call
dark matter.

Dark matter is, well, we don't know what
dark matter is. That's the issue.

Black is the midnight sky on a moonless
night.

We think it's a substance or a material,
just one that we

haven't been able to detect directly.

It's never been seen, heard, or touched.

That's why some call it the ghost.

The only reason we know the ghost is
there is because we can see the

gravitational effect it has on things
like the motion of galaxies,

even the path of light.

That's how we've actually been able to
map how dark matter appears to be

distributed across the universe.

And from these maps, we can see it's
pretty prevalent.

In fact, it makes up around 85 % of the
total mass of the universe itself.

For someone like me, that just makes it
all the more

frustrating that we don't actually know
what it is.

The leading theory is that it's actually
made up of particles,

but just ones that mostly pass through

regular matter.

But if, even if only rarely, one of
those dark matter particles were to

with, say, the nucleus of an atom.

Well, that could tell us a lot about
what dark matter actually is.

The challenge is, how do you build
something that could catch one of those

events as it actually happens?

all around the world in deep underground
labs.

We've built these massive detectors.

Some of them are more than 15 meters
across, and they sit in flooded caverns

ultra -pure water, which filters out any
cosmic

radiation that might have made it this
far down.

Down here, only a ghost would get
through.

The hope is that if we run the right
experiment, one of these detectors,

giant eyes, will see a collision between
a dark matter particle and something in

our world.

Asking why is one of the most powerful
things we can do.

It's an act of refusing to accept a
state of not knowing.

In some sense, it's like having a load
of doors to choose from. You go through

one, and then you meet another.

Well, I mean, I think if we open enough
of these doors, then we'll actually end

up finding dark matter and ultimately
solve one of the biggest mysteries there

is, the biggest whys.

We've worked out all of the data
analysis.

We'll be good to go with the unblinding
one more time.

Yeah. It's not worth touching.

It's just so good.

Every time I get to do this, to actually
run one of our experiments,

I can't help but wonder, is today going
to be the day?

And the pressure?

Great. Is this going to be the door?

And then we wait.

But it's a waiting game.

Time. It flows differently in the
Underland.

Down here there are no minutes or hours,
only epochs

and aeons.

Some call this deep time, the dizzy
expanse of the Earth's history that

stretches away from the present.

But for those who descend, deep time is
also another way of seeing.

One in which things that seemed inert
come alive.

Stone flows.

The earth has time.

And I breathe.

Ice itself is a recorder of deep time.

In the frozen underland of the
cryosphere, matter has sealed it into

Layers containing ancient bubbles of air
trapped at the moment of snowfall many

millennia ago.

These deep time messengers draw a
curious view from the world above into

labyrinths carved by meltwater.

Or down great tunnels of time drilled
from the surface.

in search of air that is more than a
million years old.

Yet, the deeper and older we go,

tighter the Earth's grip and the greater

its power to hold.

En ocasiones, durante las expediciones
el pasaje se estrecha a solo unos

centímetros de ancho.

Le llamamos restricción.

Pero en estas cuevas tenemos otra
dificultad.

Hay una restricción de oxígeno.

Asar demasiado tiempo en estas secciones
puede resultar.

As speleologists, we all know stories.

And they play in your mind.

in the narrow shaft 1 000 feet below the
surface all attempts to free the man

failed and he eventually suffocated in
the foul air his body now to be

permanently left in the cave to avoid
further risk on a narrow ledge in a

flooded cave and that's the situation
unfolding in thailand right now where a

team of young soccer players await
rescue amid the chaos handwritten notes

passed from the boys to the dive team
telling their parents on the surface not

to

And I think it's raining up there.

You need to go right now.

A veces me pregunto por qué nuestros
antepasados se arriesgaron tanto

para hacer todo esto con solo la luz del
fuego,

de sus antorchas.

¿Qué pasaba si las antorchas se
apagaban?

¿Cuáles eran las razones que los estaban
motivando?

being so far underground, you know, you
don't see sunlight. You don't see the

day -to -day motions going on outside
the window.

And you go through all of that pew to
answer a question.

That answer might come.

Or it might not.

All this human effort, all the theory,
the engineering, the hours spent

underground.

Might it all be for nothing?

No.

From the conception of our ancestors, it
was believed that when you

died, you would go to the Chivalba.

But they had to cross the river of the
underworld to get to them.

Deep in the earth, the rift turns again.

We follow as ancient waters gather.

Starless rivers of myth that mark a
threshold between the worlds of the

and the dead.

Here in the Underland lie the remains of
some 60 billion humans.

Many adorned with treasured objects to
aid their passage through the Nether.

In once dry cave systems, now flooded by
rising seas, there rests bones that

have not seen sunlight for 10 ,000
years.

Though we cannot know if these were
tombs to worship or ones to avoid.

For into the earth we not only place
what we love and wish to say, but also

we fear and wish to lose.

These mines are some of the eeriest
places.

It's so quiet.

These voids, these mineral voids.

Most people go underground to search for
things that are special.

My journeys have always been a little
bit different.

When I go underground, it's not to find
things that are special

necessarily, but to find what we've
tried to forget.

Those things tell just as much of the
story.

Around the world, we've turned so many
of these old mines into dumping grounds.

People come to these cracks in the
surface just above, and they chuck in

old cars and broken fridges, thinking, I
guess, that the Earth would forget.

But of course the Earth doesn't forget.

As a species, we've blasted our way
through the periodic table.

We've taken all of these elements from
the earth. We've taken treasure.

And we've thrown it back as trash.

But the thing is, this isn't even the
worst of it.

There's one element that we've mined
that haunts us more than any other.

Uranium. It's actually pretty hard to
spot.

Until you shine a black light on it.

And then the uranium lights up like
crazy.

The base level of radiation in some of
these places is six times higher than

Chernobyl site is today.

That's why I use the drone.

So this is what I mean when I say the
underground tells a story.

And this particular story is about how
we took something from the earth and

created a monster.

And it's a monster that we now have to
contain.

From the violence of celestial
explosions more than six billion years

uranium was born.

As common in Earth's crust as tin or
tungsten, but with a force beyond

imagination.

One which can power entire cities Or

destroy them

But

this astonishing element we pulled from
the earth leaves another deeper problem

A legacy of toxic waste that must one
day be

returned to the Underland.

Into sealed tombs designed to outlast
their makers.

Burial sites for this, the darkest
material a species has ever made.

In this deep dark, it can be hard to
dream.

To remember why we're here.

When the cave is too big, it's
impossible to do it in one day.

Although in the cave it doesn't matter
if it's day or night.

We have to decide to stop for a moment.

We believe that we are close to the end.

Maybe not.

Fatima? What?

Do you feel the silence of the fire?

No, because there's a lot of noise.

I can't breathe.

Jose? Jose.

But no, no.

It's Felix who's talking.

Can't you hear him?

Los sueños que tengo cuando estoy bajo
la tierra no se parecen a los que tengo

en la superficie.

Ya he tenido este sueño antes.

Estoy en la tierra.

Tal vez yo sea la tierra.

¿Por encima de mí?

Hay una grieta a través de la cual el
calor del sol me da en la

cara.

Y entonces...

Quiero

salvarla.

Pero no puedo Así que

caemos juntos

Más

profundamente en la tierra

Al cabo de un rato, ya no aparece que
estemos cayendo.

No sé lo que significa.

When an experiment doesn't end up
finding dark matter,

it can be really frustrating.

You sort of ask yourself, well, are we
ever going to find it?

The experiments can run for months,
sometimes even years.

We keep tweaking the parameters for them
to look in as many ways as they can.

After a certain point, if they continue
to return null results,

then it will be shut down.

And then at that point as a community,
we need to decide where to explore next.

But there are plenty of other

experiments to run.

Many doors.

We just have to keep opening them.

Until there's nowhere left to look.

I think the cave ends here.

I know many caves in the region and I
had never seen anything

like this.

Hands with different motives.

We can see the carbon particles that
were used to mold them.

The designs made with the fingers, with
the hands, with the dolls.

The blackish coloration is very likely
to be

carbon pulverized.

Esta película de calcio ha permitido que
se conserven.

Conservado durante miles de años.

Poder tocar las manos a través de las
sombras

El

tiempo

se derrumbará en momentos como este

Muy bien. Y había... Ajá.

Es que tú puedes doblar los dedos.

Como que en un ok.

Ahí. No lo puedo. Así.

Más o menos.

Más o menos.

Estoy viendo mis propias raíces.

Mira los detalles, las texturas.

Ver la cueva así me hace pensar en lo
difícil que debió ser este

viaje para nuestros ancestros.

Por eso Quizá los mayas decidieron
escoger esta

cueva como un lugar especial.

No estamos hablando de una cueva de uso
cotidiano. Estamos hablando de una cueva

ritual.

Estamos hablando de un espacio sagrado.

Here, at our deepest point, stone falls.

The rift ends.

We can go no further.

Our oldest and most treasured stories
are of descents made into the earth.

of those who answered the call of a
strange song that beckoned them

To this place is secret, thus to the
dark.

Though now it is the surface that sings,
that strange

and sunlit overworld.

I've definitely thought about what it
would be like if the answers never came

over the course of my lifetime.

And have come to terms with that as a
very realistic possibility.

The first person to discover dark matter
might be someone out there right now.

Maybe some little girl looking up at the
night sky, bugging her grandma by

always asking why.

Every time I venture into the
underground and witness the things that

down here, I can't help but imagine some
future civilization exhuming this

stuff, studying this stuff, and
therefore studying us.

Sometimes I even imagine myself as this
future archaeologist.

Thousands of years from now, I imagine
finding a sign in the earth warning me

of what's buried there, telling me not
to dig it up.

These signs are things we're actually
making now, in the present.

And of course, on one level, it's
horrific.

But the fact that we're thinking about
the well -being of future generations,

maybe even in 10 ,000 years, gives me
hope that humanity has some care.

And you see there a possibility of
moving beyond just thinking about

or the next generation. We move into
deep time.

A space where...

we can imagine ourselves as ancestors.

Poco a poco, me voy acercando a entender
lo que querían

expresar nuestros antepasados.

Todo está intercontado.

Todo está intercontado.

Ferryman, ferryman, carry my memory on

Out to the island, on the

horizon Following the path of the

sun Following the

path...

Over the side

the sun

for

the dumb ones and pros

Following part of that.

Ferryman, ferryman, carry my memory on.

Out to the island, on the...

Huh?