All language subtitles for One.Strange.Rock.S01E01.Gasp.720p.HDTV.x264-DHD[eztv]

♪ ♪

WILL SMITH: I'm gonna
tell you about the
most incredible place.

It might be the weirdest
place in the whole universe...

Full of liquid rock, crystal
caves and alien landscapes...

And you know what?

You're walking on it.

We think we know our home,
but once you've seen it
from space it hits you...

CHRIS: I really wish
that everyone could see the
world the way that I've had

a chance to see it.

NICOLE: First you look at it
and really are wondering what
it even is that you're seeing.

-Just like I lived
my whole live in a semi
dark room and somebody

flipped on the lights.

MAE: A living, breathing,
working planet.

-It's all just
so wonderfully unlikely,
and yet it's here.

WILL SMITH: Eight
astronauts, with over 1,000
days in space between them,

can tell us how
being up there...

Helped them to truly
understand what
goes on down here.

The weird connections.

The near misses.

The lucky breaks.

That built our amazing world.

The strangest place in
the whole universe might
just be right here.

Oh, you ready
this morning, huh?

Here you go.

Let's have some fun.

There you go.

We take Earth for granted.

Come on, come on.

Come on.

We take so much for granted.

Hey, come on.

In fact, there's one thing
that comes so naturally we
don't even think about it.

Breathing.

Yes, come on.

Come on, come on.

But if you knew even
half of what it takes to
make the oxygen we need,

it would take
your breath away.

You wanna know
about breathing?

Ask this guy.

-My first spacewalk,
holding on to the
outside of the spaceship,

with nothing except the
sound of my own breathing.

In my one hand is my entire
link with my own history.

Everything that's human, every
story that's going on down
on the surface of the world,

everybody I've ever met,
with the whole universe
in the other direction.

And then...

I let go.

That's when you really
appreciate the significance

of that thin blue line.

It contains everything
that's important to us.

It contains life.

And then Houston called to
get back to work, I grabbed
back onto the handrail

but while I
was working, suddenly...

I had a searing
pain in my left eye.

Like somebody had
just stabbed me.

My eye just snapped shut
and it started tearing up.

But the trouble is, without
gravity tears don't fall.

The tear just gets
bigger and bigger.

It got big enough that
it became a little lake of
water that went across the

bridge of my nose...

Into my other eye.

So I call down to
Houston, "Houston, I'm
having a problem here.

I can't see.

I'm blinded in both eyes."

"What did
he just say?
He's blind?"

Houston looked at
what all the symptoms
were and said...

"Maybe it's the
worst-case problem.

You may have contamination
in your suit."

"And you're gonna
have to flush it out."

I reached up, turned
this little valve, popped
it and suddenly could hear,

"Ssssss, sssss".

As my precious supply
of oxygen hissed out into
the empty vacuum of space.

(heart monitor beeping)

(baby crying)

There is nothing more
natural than breathing.

Yet as far as we know,
this is the only planet
where that happens.

The only planet with an
oxygen-rich environment.

Without that, life
would be something
very different indeed.

♪ ♪

WILL SMITH: This is
Felipe's favorite place.

Even though the air is toxic.

The ground spits acid, and
there is no fresh water.

No birds sing here.

No insects fly.

No plants grow.

WILL SMITH: It's hard
to imagine anywhere
less inviting...

But Felipe has found
one thing that calls
this hellhole home.

And it doesn't use oxygen.

It lives in a lake of acid.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

-It's hard to
imagine sometimes just how
important oxygen is to us,

as the way to release energy.

Every time I breathe
in, oxygen-rich air mixes
with the food I've eaten

and creates energy.

Power that enables
larger, more complex
creatures to exist.

WILL SMITH: Our planet is
literally bursting with life,
so how on earth is there

enough oxygen for everyone?

The answer takes in some
pretty surprising stuff.

Giant dust storms,
tiny snowflakes,
flying rivers;

and the most important living
thing you've never heard of.

But it begins in a desert.

A desert made of salt.

♪ ♪

(chopping)

(speaking in native language)

WILL SMITH: The people
here rely on this
desert and so do we.

But not because of the salt.

(wind)

♪ ♪

JEFF: Dust storms can
be pretty amazing when
you see them from space.

And sometimes they're huge.

JERRY: You know, I had seen
little dust storms blowing
and you kinda look hard.

This you didn't
need to look hard.

It was a continent
of Northern Africa basically
obscured by thick brown dust.

And as I orbited, I
couldn't wait to come back.

And then when I did,
I saw that dust storm
that was over Africa now

over the Atlantic Ocean.

And my next orbit
I see it hitting the
coast of South America.

-Every year about
27 million tons of that
African dust we can see

from orbit drops out of the
sky into the Amazon Basin.

And it turns out,
it's the perfect fertilizer.

♪ ♪

And as they grow, the
plants and the trees turn
carbon dioxide into oxygen.

One single tree can
produce enough oxygen
to support two people.

And the Amazon Rainforest...

Is ten times the size of Texas,

producing 20 times
more oxygen than all the

people on the surface of the
Earth could consume.

But, not one breath of
it leaves the Amazon.

There are so many animals
living in the Amazon Basin
that the life there uses all

that oxygen up.

WILL SMITH: For all these
years I've been thinking
the rainforest is the lungs

of the planet.

Now sure, it makes a lot of
oxygen, but it uses it all.

The rainforest does
help us breathe, but
not because of air.

There's a river in the
Amazon, no, not that one,
there's another river,

a river in the sky.

WILL SMITH: For the most
part, I know this world from
standing on its surface.

I mean, I've been
up to the top of the
Empire State Building,

put my quarter in the scope,
and I've even jumped out
of planes a couple times.

But that's nothing.

The International
Space Station clocks
in at 1 million feet.

CHRIS: Whenever there's a
free moment on the spaceship,
we try and get to the window

to take pictures.

And during my three
space flights, I took
about 45,000 photographs.

And some parts of
the world are easy to
take pictures of...

Like the outback of Australia.

It's always a sunny day there.

But there are parts of the
world that you almost never
get a good picture of.

One of those is
the Amazon Basin.

So it makes ya think...

What's going on down there?

♪ ♪

WILL SMITH: For the last
ten years, Rosa has been
working in the Amazon,

uncovering the surprising
way the rainforest helps
the whole planet breathe.

WILL SMITH: She's not
kidding about special.

This is the tallest structure
in all South America.

Rosa has tried to climb
this tower twice before,

but she's never
made it to the top.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

WILL SMITH: Now that's
a pretty cool climb, but
something else is rising too.

If you could look
inside the trees...

You'd see water sucked
up from the forest floor.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

When the water hits the
top, the combination
of sun and wind...

Turns it into a mighty river.

A flying river.

CHRIS: This river of cloud
flows across South America,

obscuring everything
beneath it...

Until it runs
into a brick wall.

5,500 miles long and
up to 4 miles high.

The Andes.

The clouds condense
into raindrops, which
then race down the slopes and

flow directly back into
the Amazon Basin...

Eroding the rock and
turning it into sediment...

Until all those nutrients
are dumped into the ocean
and a whole other world.

And waiting for
those sediments is an
extraordinary organism,

four times thinner
than a human hair.

It's called a diatom.

Diatoms are the secret to
the Earth's oxygen supply.

They use silica from
the ground up rock
to create new shells,

which allows them
to reproduce.

Their population
doubles every day...

And they begin to
photosynthesize...

Each one starting
to produce oxygen.

WILL SMITH: Take a breath.

Now take another.

Now think about this:

one of those breaths
was entirely provided by

those little fellas
under the sea.

-Looking at the oceans
from space, sometimes you
see a local area that's

an entirely different color.

And amazingly enough,
what you're looking at
is microscopic life.

Diatom blooms that reflect
the light differently, so
that they show up from space.

JEFF: Biggest one I think
I ever saw was huge.

It covered hundreds of miles.

JERRY: You know,
when you swim in the ocean

you don't notice
the diatoms around you.

But when you're
in space, you see the
vibrant colors of life.

NICOLE: It's just so stunning,
the blues and the greens.

But also, like, wow, those
things are keeping us alive.

WILL SMITH: But you know what?

Diatoms are important not
just because of what they
do when they're alive,

but also what they
do once they're dead.

CHRIS: I spent 166
days off the world.

Underneath you,
the planet is silently,

intimately revealing
itself to you,

more and more,
every single time around.

And from a spaceship, Earth
is definitely the Blue Planet.

And pretty much
everywhere that there's
water, there's diatoms.

There are trillions
of them in every ocean,

and they can't all
rely on flying rivers.

So diatoms around the world
have to get their nutrients
in different ways.

Some about as far away
from tropical rainforests
as you can get.

HEIDI (over radio):
Okay guys, off you go.

Okay, yeah, slow down...

You can stop right there, yeah.

(inaudible)

MAN (over radio): Okay.

WILL SMITH: These
glaciers are unusual.

They can slide
in sudden spurts.

Still too slow
to see in real time, but
fast enough to hear...

if you know how to listen.

(low frequency rumble)

Sometimes they move
300 times faster than
their normal glacial pace.

Heidi can hear them crushing
a huge amount of rock,
as they grind their way

down the valley.

And when ice meets sea,
it makes a familiar sound.

WILL SMTH: The popping
is a heads up for the team.

The ice face is
about to crash.

(bubbles popping)

HEIDI: I'm hearing
increased activity, you
need to come back, okay?

(bubbles popping)

Wow!

♪ ♪

WILL SMITH: Diatom
dinner time.

Now sometimes these
glaciers move really fast,
dumping tons and tons of

nutrients into the sea.

Boom!

Sparking a feeding frenzy
and a population explosion.

But then, just as
quickly as it started,
dinner time is over.

The glaciers come to a
grinding halt and lie dormant,
sometimes for decades.

Boom becomes bust.

-When the nutrients run
out, the blooms fade and
most of the diatoms die.

Their carcasses slowly
fall to the ocean floor...

Where they carpet it in a
layer half a mile thick.

We call it 'marine
snow', and that's exactly
what it looks like.

Snowflakes.

But unlike snowflakes,

they never melt and
over millions of
years the sea beds rise...

The ocean levels fall
and the ocean floor
becomes a salty desert.

The desert that blows all
the way to the Amazon...

That was once a sea bed.

And the dust that makes
the rainforest grow?

Diatom shells.

It just goes to show how
incredibly interlinked
everything is.

-There is absolutely nothing
on one side of the planet
that isn't connected in

some way with the other
side of the planet.

MAE: It's astounding how
all the systems down there
must work together in order

for us to breathe.

WILL SMITH: Which is great...

But you only have to mess
with oxygen a little bit

for things to start
going really wrong.

ee, two, one.

Lift off, lift off.

♪ CHRIS: Though I've
flow 100,000 miles,
I'm feeling very still. ♪

♪ Planet Earth is blue and
there's nothing left to do. ♪♪

I love the fact that the
Earth has a blue sky.

You can look up
and all of the various
shades of it, you know,

the deepness of it and
the way the colors change

close to the horizon
and that's everything
that we breathe,

and keeps us alive.

And you sort of fool
yourself into thinking,
it's really, really deep.

Like it goes on
sort of forever.

But when you're on
board a spaceship and
you look straight down,

you hardly see the
atmosphere at all.

It's only when you look
to the horizon that you
can see just how thin our

atmosphere truly is.

The thinnest of
delicate blue lines.

It's because the gravity of
the Earth is pulling every
single one of those air

molecules and pressing
it against the ground.

But the further up you
go, the thinner it gets.

It's sort of like if you
pluck a string on a guitar...

When does the note stop?

And our atmosphere is
like that guitar string.

It just gets less and
less the higher you go.

But what's surprising is,
how fast that happens.

That blue line is so thin
that you can walk to where
the oxygen starts to run out.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

WILL SMITH: Being a doctor
in La Rinconada means that
you have 25,000 patients,

living year-round in a town
as high as Everest base-camp.

WILL SMITH: When Spanish
settlers first arrived here,
the lack of oxygen killed many

of their babies at birth.

Yet, people still live here.

They still work here.

Because in these mountains,
there's something that's
lured people through history.

The promise of gold.

This is the limit though.

Humans can't live any higher.

CHRIS: Without enough
oxygen, our organs can
start shutting down...

And it can happen
surprisingly quickly.

So astronauts actually
train to recognize their own
symptoms of a lack of oxygen.

Of hypoxia.

In my case,
there's a slight dizziness.

My vision starts to get
a little bit narrow.

The colors become
a little more brittle,

like maybe a certain
type of painter's way

of using only the
primary colors.

Sound changes a little for me.

It becomes a little bit
more staccato, sort of a
snappy sound to everything

that's going on around me.

And as soon as I put all
those things together,

I realize I'm running
out of oxygen.

Houston, I'm having a
serious problem here.

Serious problem.

Blinded in both eyes.

"What did he just say?"

Can't see, purge your oxygen.

My precious oxygen.

I wasn't really sure how that
was gonna turn out, but as
the oxygen hissed through and

out my purge valve,
the tears that were coming
out of my tear ducts

slowly started evaporating.

My vision began to return,
bit by bit, and what had
caused it was pretty simple.

It was the anti-fog on my
visor had been picked up by
floating water in my suit and

gotten into my eye.

With confidence, I could
reach up and close the
valve and stop venting my

precious oxygen out to
the rest of the universe.

It's vital that we get
enough oxygen; but too much
can be just as dangerous.

You see it when you blow
on a little tiny fire.

Just blowing that little
bit of oxygen turns that
tiny spark into a flame.

And it's exactly the same
for the whole planet.

A rise in oxygen levels
can threaten life on Earth.

WILL SMITH: 300 million years
ago, there was a lot more
oxygen in the atmosphere.

So much that the
planet just burned.

But don't think that
danger's all in the past.

Too much oxygen and we fry.

Too little and we choke.

We're walking a tightrope
with death on either side,

and just like a tightrope walker

the only thing that can
save us is balance.

CHRIS: Balance is crucial...

For the makeup of
the atmosphere, and
for life itself.

The thing is, we don't
fully understand how
the Earth manages it.

Despite diatoms having
to wait for glaciers and
South American trees having

to wait for African dust,

and despite the fact
that human population has
been steadily increasing,

the relative amount of
oxygen in the atmosphere has
been surprisingly constant.

MIKE: For millions of
years, oxygen has made up
20.95% of our atmosphere.

MAE: Exactly 20.95%.

JERRY: Everything's somehow
buffering out and keeping
things pretty darn stable.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

(chanting inaudibly)

WILL SMITH: 100,000
Buddhists gather here for
the festival of Magha Puja.

Each one lights a candle.

They celebrate with their
flames at a temple made
from a million Buddha's.

(chanting inaudibly)

♪ ♪

WILL SMITH: Every breath we
take, 16 breaths a minute,

23,000 breaths a day,

every inhale, every exhale
of that precious oxygen

couldn't happen without
earth, water, wind and fire.

The whole planet works as one
to create that thin blue line.

The mark of a living
world we've seen nowhere
else in the universe.

-I really wish that
everyone could see the
world the way that I've

had a chance to see it.

You have to wrench yourself
away from the wonder
and the strangeness of it.

And the beauty of space
flight is you come back

with a real sense that
this Earth is one place.

One shared place.

We're all crew mates
on the same ship.

WILL SMITH: We're not just
rare, we're not just special,
we are unique and that's what

makes this One Strange Rock.

Next time on One
Strange Rock...

Our paradise planet came from
collisions, carnage and chaos.

And the impact is
still shaping us.

Captioned by Cotter
Captioning Services.