Original subtitles

2022, a year of breakthrough advances

.

in science and technology,

..

historic artifacts uncovered around the globe,

shattering barriers, and questioning assumptions.

We're rewriting the textbooks about our sun.

Stories that take us into the future,

or follow rivers to the past.

Startling discoveries from super reefs

to flying cars in future cities,

and amazing accomplishments, like mapping the human genome,

to smashing into an asteroid on purpose.

We have impact.

(group cheering and applauding)

Join us for an exclusive look

at the top science stories of 2022.

(intense upbeat music)

And here we go.

Hydrogen burn off igniters initiate.

Seven.

Six

Five.

A first step in rekindling the space program

of yesteryear has begun.

Two. One.

Boosters in ignition.

And lift off of Artemis I.

We rise together, back to the moon and beyond.

The Artemis I mission

has successfully launched its most powerful rocket ever,

the space launch system, or SLS,

carrying an uncrewed Orion space capsule around

the moon and back.

This 35-day slingshot around the moon

will pave the way for future Artemis missions

to the moon and beyond.

We wanna go to the lunar surface,

we wanna build an outpost,

we want to live on the moon in order to understand

what it will take us to go to Mars.

In the next decade,

NASA envisions the beginnings

of a long term settlement on the moon,

one in which a rotating cast of astronauts lives

in a modular base camp, mining water and other resources

from the moon itself, all while performing

the kind of science that will help us

in our quest to colonize Mars.

So, the success of Artemis I for the future

of space exploration is really foundational.

(inspirational music)

For the Artemis mission,

using Apollo's Saturn rockets was never an option.

One of the biggest differences between Apollo

and Artemis is we're trying to get to the south pole.

Apollo did some fantastic science,

but it was all in the equatorial regions

of the near side of the moon,

and that was where Apollo could get to.

Artemis I's unmanned, 26-day mission

will chart a path for future Artemis astronauts.

But it's the effort it takes to get off the earth

in those first few minutes of flight

that is the reason the SLS is so massive and complex.

So, you actually light everything up,

you get all that thrust going,

and then you pull the hold-down bolts off

and it jumps off the pads.

The two boosters give us over 6 million pounds

of thrust for the first two minutes,

and at that point, then it separates from the core stage,

and then the core stage then goes

on for another six minutes,

giving us an additional over 2 million pounds of thrust.

So that gets us into low Earth orbit.

From there, the interim cryogenic propulsion

stage takes over and delivers Orion into lunar orbit.

(mysterious celestial music)

Atop Artemis I, Orion is following a trail blazed

by the Apollo space capsule,

but the similarities between the two only go so far.

While Apollo could only hold three astronauts for 13 days,

Orion can hold four astronauts for up to 21 days.

It's 1.5 times larger than Apollo,

and unlike its predecessor,

which only flew men under six feet tall,

Orion is designed for a diverse astronaut core

of men and women.

On Artemis I, engineers will be keeping a close eye

on the crew, but on this first test flight,

they won't be human.

So, inside Orion, on Artemis I,

there's gonna be a few human humanoid features.

One of them, the moonakin, as they've been calling him,

is a fully outfitted crash test dummy.

In addition, a pair of phantom torsos,

nicknamed Helga and Zohar, will be on board to evaluate

an experimental vest designed to protect future astronauts

from the elevated radiation levels

they may experience in space.

I believe there's over 1200 sensors outfitted on Orion

to record things like the temperatures,

and the vibrations, and the loads.

There'll also be radiation sensors inside the cabins,

so we'll be able to measure a bunch of what

the crew will experience in the future.

The successful launch of Artemis I ushers

in a new era of human space exploration

that'll pick up where Apollo left off

over a half century ago.

(dramatic music)

Wow, we did it.

Now, there's thousands of people that have been working

on this for years, myself included,

and to see it all come together finally,

it's like a huge validation.

(dramatic music continues)

And everyone across the whole country needs

to have a huge amount of pride.

This is America's rocket.

(rocket engine roaring)

An historic year for space exploration

continues beyond the lunar landscape.

(celestial music)

Today, the Event Horizon Telescope is delighted

to share with you the first direct image

of the gentle giant in the center of our galaxy,

Sagittarius A star.

(audience applauding) (soft music)

A ring of light surrounding a darkness.

But until now, we didn't have

the direct picture confirming that Sgr A star

was indeed a black hole.

(soft tense music)

In the constellation of Sagittarius,

it's the super massive black hole,

just over 27,000 light years away,

in the heart of our own Milky Way galaxy.

(intense music)

Compared to other black holes, Sagittarius A star

may be small, but it's still the largest,

most massive single object within

the entire Milky Way galaxy,

weighing in with a mass roughly

the same as 4.3 million suns.

(intense music)

Yet, for all their power and mystique,

black holes are one of nature's simplest creations.

The main elements of the image that we observe

are the ring of brightness that is caused

by this gas that's swirling around the block hole,

and as it makes its way down, it gets hotter,

it emits light, and that's why we see any image at all.

The hole itself is inside

the dark central region of the photo.

Astronomers call this region,

"The shadow of the black hole."

The existence of this shadow is a testament

to the unchecked power of gravity.

Around the hole the gas is so hot it changes to a plasma.

Sagittarius A prime is engulfed by a storm in space,

a plasma storm.

There will be enormous amounts of wind circulation.

Everything is orbiting around the black hole

at very, very high speeds.

Hidden inside the event horizon

is an object so small it has no height, width, or depth,

yet it retains all of the gravitational power

of every object it ever captured.

They call it the singularity.

While the gargantuan scale of an event horizon grabs

the headlines, it's the singularity

that holds all the mysteries.

What happens to matter crushed down to this level

is completely unknown.

(soft celestial music)

Here, the laws of quantum physics that govern

the tiniest, most fundamental building blocks

of nature, crash into Einstein's general relativity,

which addresses the physics of the very large.

General relativity describes what happens as you go in,

but not at the very center.

At the very center, you're divide by zero,

as it were, you know?

You can picture like a function that gets steeper,

and steeper, and steeper as you approach zero,

and then goes to infinity.

Well, the formal physics would say it goes to infinity,

but that just means we don't know what happens.

But the things we can see

and have now photographed, the ring of light

and the shadow of the black hole

in the heart of our galaxy,

not only expands our understanding

of our place in the cosmos, but demonstrates the power

of the creative inquisitive human mind to probe and learn.

You go from here to there, and there is a much richer

and elaborate place, 'cause we know black holes exist.

We've seen them with our eyes,

we've found it with our instrumentation.

That is the most incredible story about this.

From the skies to the earth,

new imaging technologies are making breakthroughs.

(air whooshing)

2022 began with a boom.

A massive volcanic eruption underwater,

in the South Pacific near the island nation of Tonga.

Witnessed from space,

the eruption measured roughly 10 mega tons,

about 500 times more powerful than

the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

(person speaking in foreign language)

Even though casualties were limited,

the blast served as a stark reminder

of the threat posed by volcanoes.

Cutting edge technologies in eruption forecasting

aim to buy time and save lives.

There's about 50 or so volcanoes erupting around

the world at any given time.

And so, the kind of activity we've seen

in the last year or so is not really that unusual,

although some of the eruptions really have been spectacular.

One volcano in Iceland woke

from a 6,000 year slumber and spewed lava,

the first scene on the Reykjanes Peninsula in centuries.

And Cumbre Vieja's three-month eruption on La Palma

in the Canary Islands, was its first in 50 years.

Both of those volcanic systems gave us years

of warning in terms of increasing seismicity,

ground deformation, and so it was very clear

in those cases that the volcanoes were becoming active.

Researchers work to pinpoint more than just

the timing of an eruption.

The real goal of volcano monitoring is to be able

to forecast the timing of the eruption,

the place, where's the eruption going to occur,

and the style of the eruption.

Is it going to be a lava flow?

Is it gonna be an explosive eruption?

To help answer those questions,

volcanologist examine seismicity, ground deformation,

gas emissions, and more.

In much the same way meteorologists read through data

to report the likelihood for precipitation

and the potential paths of storm systems.

What we do in operational vulcanology is make forecasts,

we don't make predictions.

There's no magic bullet that we can see in our data

that says, you know, something is about to happen very soon.

It's partly a process of pattern recognition,

and it's partly probabilistic.

A growing array of cutting edge technologies

help collect research information.

Drones are now being used to map lava flows.

Drones are really changing the way in which we're able

to monitor volcanoes, by opening things up,

making things a lot more accessible

than they otherwise would've been.

Higher still, an international fleet

of radar satellites record ground movements over time.

That's almost like having

a deformation camera in space.

(determined music)

Satellites can also provide

near 24/7 monitoring, even in the most remote locations.

The sea volcanoes around

the planet see eruptions that might even otherwise

be missed, and could present a hazard to to air traffic.

Interpreting information remains

a critical component of volcanology today.

So, AI is increasingly used to help identify anomalies

in all the data streams.

Artificial intelligence really has a key role

to play here, in making it possible to use

this vast amount of data in the best possible way

for forecasting eruptions.

Another potential tool

for volcano researchers originates in space, in a way.

The subatomic particle called a muon.

A muon is a particle very similar to the electron,

it's produced by the interaction of the galactic cosmic ray

with our atmosphere, producing cascade of these particles.

Researchers deploy detectors to measure

the constant stream of muons, how they change course

when passing through denser materials,

and provide groundbreaking pictures

of the inner structures of a volcano.

If the the conduit is empty, you have less deviation.

When we see that the magma is rising in the conduit,

all the rays that get through,

of course, encounter higher density.

In that case, we know that there is magma body inside.

Muography, as it's known,

has been used to discover secret chambers inside

the pyramids and monitor the stability of bridges.

Muography is one of those tools

that might allow us another way

of seeing beneath the surface,

seeing what's happened inside these active volcanoes.

It can effectively help authorities

to issue warnings with more accuracy.

With other methods, it's almost impossible

to predict with such a precision.

And that's the point of all of this great, new technology,

to better image what's going on beneath volcanoes,

even when they're quiet, and better detect

the tiny little signs that might precede

any reawakening of a volcano.

Other scientists are also working

to predict eruptions of a solar kind.

(intense celestial music)

The burning ball of fire in the sky.

The sun provides life-sustaining heat and light,

but also generates hazardous space weather

that could threaten our modern world.

To predict these solar events before they happen,

scientists need to better understand

the mysteries of the sun's atmosphere.

To help overcome this hurdle,

NASA created the Parker Solar Probe mission.

Parker solar probe has been dreamed about since 1958,

so 60 years in the making is what we like to say,

and some people were working on it for that period of time.

The probe was named after Eugene Parker,

the first person to realize that the solar wind moves faster

than the speed of sound.

Now, in a major milestone,

the Parker Solar Probe officially touched the sun,

when it entered its upper atmosphere known as the Corona.

From the very first pass,

we're already getting science data

that's never been seen before.

It is really exciting to see that we're rewriting

the textbooks about our sun.

One of the mission's goals

is to understand severe space weather

and what solar events cause it.

Besides a geomagnetic storm,

Earth could be hit by a coronal mass ejection.

These are big magnetic field explosions.

They accelerate a certain population of particles

to almost the speed of light.

They can cause damage to space equipment

like GPS and communication satellites.

They are extremely dangerous for humans in space.

We don't know when a flare or a CME is about

to occur on the solar atmosphere,

and that is a big, big hurdle

into our space weather research.

In addition to coronal mass ejects,

the sun releases other eruptions, known as solar flares.

Flares are sudden bursts of radiation.

Something bright that happens really fast,

takes only eight minutes for that light

to go from the sun to the earth.

And coronal mass ejections are actual particles

that are moving outward.

It will take a coronal massa ejection,

directed toward Earth, if it's really fast one,

a little bit less than a day.

If it's slow one, maybe three, four days.

(intense music)

In March, 1989,

a violent corona mass ejection rushed toward Earth,

where it knocked out Quebec's entire power grid,

causing a nine-hour blackout.

(tense music)

Since its launch in 2018, the Parker probe has been making

a series of orbits between Venus and the sun.

Each orbit allows for sweeping fly-bys around the sun,

drawing nearer and nearer.

At its closest approach, Parker Solar Probe hurdles around

the sun at around 430,000 miles per hour.

That's fast enough to get from Philadelphia

to Washington, D.C. in one second.

This is the closest thing

that's ever been in the sun.

We haven't even really gotten up to its maximum temperature.

(tense music)

Observing this incredible solar activity

up close has been game-changing.

We can see how the magnetic field inside

this eruptions is changing with time or with position.

We've never been able to do that before.

If we know when these events occurred on the sun,

and when they would reach Earth,

we can mitigate their damaging effects.

New data from the probe

will help improve our prediction and warning

of these solar events.

To have those predictions,

we need to follow those active regions with time.

It's not only three, four days, that's not sufficient,

we need to follow them through all their lifetimes.

Parker will continue its fly-bys around the sun

until at least 2024, providing even more discoveries.

The whole mission has been game-changing,

and different, and new.

I'm certain that 30, 40 years down the road scientists

will be still making discoveries

from the Parker Solar Probe data.

Parker Solar Probe is a mission for the ages.

When you have a space mission into an unknown place,

you find remarkable things that you did not anticipate.

(rocket engine roaring) (inspired music)

While solar science attempts

to better predict space weather,

oceanographers are working to turn the tides

on a threat much closer to home.

(wave crashing) (gentle music)

Coral reefs occupy barely 1% of Earth's surface,

yet they host more than 1/4 of marine life,

and support almost 1 billion people.

But a changing climate is putting pressure

on reef ecosystems,

as rising ocean temperatures trigger catastrophic responses

from coral reefs.

2015 sparked an unprecedented three year long,

global ocean heatwave that caused bleaching

of more than 75% of Earth's tropical reefs,

and killed nearly 30% of reef systems.

The United States reef system, called Jarvis Island,

used to be the most productive,

highest fish biomass coral reef in the Pacific.

In the 2015 heat wave, we lost 98%

of the corals on Jarvis Island.

It's completely decimated.

We were funded by the National Science Foundation

to go out to various reef systems across the Pacific

to record the devastation.

Their investigation brought about

a surprising discovery near the island nation of Kiribati.

Just a thousand kilometers to the west of Jarvis,

in the Phoenix Islands, we saw that the live coral cover

had actually increased before and after the heat wave.

(soft music)

We didn't record one single coral death

in Canton Lagoon during the 2015 heat wave,

despite the excessive heat.

This super reef community not only survived

the global heat wave, it was thriving.

But what's protecting these reefs

and giving them their superpowers?

Could they hold the key to surviving warming oceans?

Scientists discovered that the corals found better suited

to survive extreme heat had commonalities.

This includes corals from reefs typically hotter

than their neighbors, places where the corals

are experiencing large fluctuations

in temperature over 24 hours,

and where oceanographic processes, such as waves

or upwelling can shield the coral community

from the heat like an air conditioner.

Once we realized that there were coral reefs

that are actually surviving climate change,

that became a priority for conservation.

What we would do is protect the heat resilient communities

and allow the heat resilient communities

to produce billions of larvae

that then migrate on the ocean currents,

settle in the neighboring devastated areas,

reseed it, and regrow.

The question is how do you find them?

This year, a team of scientists

at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

have been testing methods for tracking reef conditions.

They've created cutting-edge hydrodynamic models

of coral reef ecosystems called digital reefs.

Digital reefs harnesses the power of digital twin technology

to transform the way scientists access,

interact with, and use data.

Digital reefs allows you to choose your fish

or your coral, and over time track

where those millions of larvae go.

You can see it for yourself, in the simulation.

And then, using that data to come up with designs

of marine protected area networks

that will function both to preserve the biodiversity

of the animals on the reef, but also in terms

of management, because some of those fish have

to go to areas where they can be caught

by local stakeholders.

Stakeholders can test the impacts

of new infrastructure, management techniques,

or potential heat events on coral ecosystems,

while providing critical data on live reefs.

And we wanna make sure that you can access this data

from your cell phone.

If you're a research scientist,

you obviously have access to computers,

we wanna make sure that you can get access

from those as well.

So, I think universally accessible

is a big mantra that we have.

Ultimately what we wanna do is construct a global network

of digital reefs that are interconnected

and universally accessible.

That's how we save them,

by empowering people to use that information

to improve their lives.

(determined music)

From mapping our ocean's reefs

to mapping the human genome, a major milestone is reached.

(air whooshing) (soft tense music)

In 2022, a group of scientists known

as the Telomere-to-Telomere Consortium publish

the first truly completed sequence of a human genome.

Sequencing a person's genome is valuable

for their future care.

It provides information on genetic variance

that can lead to disease, even in asymptomatic people.

More than 3000 known inherited disorders afflict humanity.

Mapping the genes related to hereditary diseases

has paved the way for development of new methods

of diagnosis and treatments.

Scientists knew for years that our genes

are spread across 23 pairs of chromosomes,

but millions of these worm-like structures

could not be deciphered.

Two decades ago, a network of international geneticists

set out to sequence all the DNA in our chromosomes,

this gave birth to the Human Genome Project.

Over time, pieces of the genome puzzle were added,

but there were a lot of blank spaces.

Over the last few years,

a team of 99 scientists worked remotely

to finally complete the project.

The team coded more than 3 billion base pairs,

including five chromosomes

that had not previously been sequenced.

They were aided by new machines

that can quickly read long strands of DNA.

The end result is called the reference genome,

the new standard for comparing variations in DNA in people.

And now, scientists can sequence an entire genome overnight.

This new major tool can be used to facilitate

the identification of specific disease genes

and mutations, guide healthcare advice

in a more personalized way, or sequence the genome

of our prehistoric ancestors.

Cracking the human genome code has revolutionized science,

enlightening our past, while helping to secure our future,

but work continues.

Because of this monumental achievement,

more breakthroughs are just around the corner.

(determined music)

Genetic breakthroughs are not just for humans.

(drums beating) (insects chirping)

Not long ago, a fierce predator roam

the wilderness of Tasmania.

The Thylacine, looking like a cross between

a wolf and a big cat.

They sported stripes on their backs,

which gave rise to the nickname of Tasmanian tiger.

Hunted to extinction on mainland Australia 3000 years ago.

A few survived on the island of Tasmania,

until the last one died in the Hobart Zoo in 1936.

But now, a team from the University of Melbourne,

in partnership with US company Colossal Biosciences,

wants to bring them back from the dead.

These are just really amazing, unique,

fantastic looking animals, behaving animals,

unlike anything we currently have on Earth,

so who wouldn't want to see that?

The world is still obsessed

with this enigmatic predator.

Dr. Andrew Pask is an expert

in developmental genetics in Australia.

The developmental genetics is really looking at how all

the genes in our genome give you a particular animal,

a particular body shape, a particular form,

and a particular physiology.

His team made a huge breakthrough by sequencing

the entire thylacine genome in 2018,

the first step necessary for the de-extinction

of the species.

But where did they get the thylacine DNA?

Because people were going out and killing them

on such a large scale, museums were really trying

to collect specimens, they knew they were disappearing

from the wild, and in some rare circumstances,

there were females that were shot

that still had babies in their pouch.

And then, those babies made it into museum collections.

And that's what really enabled us to start looking into

the biology of the thylacine.

The team conducted CT scans

on all 11 verified joeys worldwide,

to create 3D digital models.

They wanted to determine when,

during the creatures development,

it began to change from a typical marsupial

into something more like a wolf.

The data was used to construct three-dimensional images.

When they reconstructed the thylacine growth,

up to 12 weeks after birth,

they discovered that the joeys started off

with typical marsupial features,

but by the time a thylacine was about 12 weeks old,

it left the pouch to be partially independent,

and it looked more like a dog or wolf

with longer hindlimbs than forelimbs.

The team wanted to identify the exact stage

when the developing Tasmanian tiger

began to take on the appearance of a dog,

the 3D models enabled them to see just that.

It was quite late in development

before they started really taking on

that dog-like appearance, and having their limbs changed

to have that really sort of paw shape

and very unmarsupial-like, and much more like a wolf.

The scientists now needed to investigate

how DNA played a role in the process.

DNA from the Melbourne specimen had sequences long enough

to recreate the entire 3 billion letter genome

of the thylacine, but Pask and his team needed

to isolate specific genes from the DNA strings

for the next phase of their research.

De-extinction and trying to bring an animal back

to life is very different from animal cloning.

The key thing for any of these sorts of technologies

of bringing an animal back is you have

to start with a living cell.

So, although we have the complete genetic blueprint

of a thylacine, this is letters on a computer screen,

this is not a living cell,

so you've gotta start with that living cell template.

Desired genes within the DNA

are cut out using enzymes.

You get then a living cell

from a very closely related species,

so quite a recent common ancestor.

And then, what you do is you sequence the DNA

of that common ancestor and you compare it

to the animal that's gone extinct.

And then, what you're gonna do is you're gonna take all

of the differences from your extinct animal blueprint

and edit them into the living cell that you've got

from your existing, live animal.

The next step in Andrew Pask's journey

will be to create a living thylacine genome

by modifying the genome of a close living relative.

Pask and the Colossal Biosciences team think

that Western Australia's numbat might provide

the best starting DNA blueprint.

It's one of the thylacine's closest living relatives,

last sharing a common ancestor 30 million years ago.

Still, 95% of the DNA sequences that make a species unique

are shared between the thylacine and the numbat.

So, although there's 5% difference,

or thereabouts, between our numbat DNA

and the thylacine DNA,

we know that not all of those changes are really important

for making a thylacine.

The resulting altered nucleus can then be used

to create an embryo that is either grown

in an artificial womb or transplanted

to a surrogate numbat mother.

The end goal of this de-extinction effort

will be to reintroduce the thylacine's

to the wild reserves that cover

about half of Tasmania today.

With the thylacine, it's really a great example

of a species that you could just pop back into

the ecosystem in Tasmania, and it certainly has everything

it needs there in order to not just survive,

but also thrive in that environment.

A timeline for the thylacine

has not been revealed, but researchers expect answers within

the next few years.

Bringing the past to present reveals a dramatic year

for prehistoric discovery.

(air whooshing)

In August, 2022, scientists discovered a new impact crater

caused by a meteorite that they believe hit the earth

at the same time as the asteroid

that wiped out prehistoric life 66 million years ago.

(tense music) (dinosaur roaring)

The hidden impact site was found more

than 984 feet below the ocean floor,

about 250 miles off the coast of Guinea in West Africa.

(tense music continues)

Discovery of the Nadir crater suggests

the Chicxulub crater in Mexico may have had some help

in wiping out the dinosaurs.

Weeks later, a newly published study cast doubt

on the theory that the dinosaurs

were wiped out solely by asteroids.

(dinosaur roaring)

Instead, pointing the finger at volcanoes.

Researchers believe that huge continent-spanning,

flood-basalt eruptions may be what caused

the mass extinction.

These eruptions flooded vast areas,

even an entire continent, with lava in a mere million years,

the blink of a geological eye.

(air whooshing) (determined music)

And today, researchers in Canada believe they found one

of the best preserved dinosaurs,

parts of what they believe to be a full dinosaur mummy

were discovered lodged in a hillside in Canada.

The two exposed fossils, a foot and part of a tail,

clad in fossilized skin, are believed to belong

to a juvenile duck-billed hadrosaur

that died somewhere between 77 million

to 75 million years ago.

(dinosaurs roaring)

From dinosaurs to early civilizations.

(mysterious music)

A recent discovery in Egypt is shedding light

on how heavy blocks for the pyramids

may have been transported.

Somehow, 2.3 million limestone and granite blocks,

each weighing an average of more than two tons,

made their way across miles of desert

to the pyramid site on the Giza Plateau.

Today, the Nile is miles away from the pyramids,

but a team of researchers this year,

reported evidence that a lost arm of the Nile

once cut through this stretch of desert.

Using clues preserved in the desert soil,

scientists reconstructed the rise and fall

of the Khufu branch, a now defunct Nile tributary,

over the past 8,000 years.

Their findings proposed that this branch,

which dried up completely around 600 BC,

played a critical role in the construction of the pyramids.

While archeologists dig into our past,

scientists are studying one of the earth's oldest creatures

for promising medical cures.

(determined music)

The average alligator can sprint at 35 miles per hour,

and they're very agile.

This is a creature that's surprisingly smart.

These prehistoric reptiles haven't changed

in 8 million years, but scientists are just now discovering

why they're such super beasts.

It's the stuff that flows through alligator's veins

that's proving to be one of their most extraordinary assets.

Alligators fight infections much better

than we do, without antibiotics.

(blood trickling)

At George Mason University in Virginia,

Dr. Monique van Hoek and Dr. Barney Bishop

are investigating the unique properties found

in alligator's blood, especially those

that are resistant to antibiotics.

Alligator blood is fascinating to look at

in the microscope, because unlike human blood cells,

alligators have nucleated red blood cells,

so this means that they have a large membrane

and a large nucleus inside.

When we look at human red blood cells,

they are small, and round, and they have no nuclei.

Alligators live in some of the dirtiest,

most germ-laden habitats in the world,

but they rarely get infections.

There are a lot of microbes, bacteria

in those environments.

You don't often see alligators in the wild with wounds

that are badly infected.

And so, we thought, well, maybe they're very capable

of clearing these infections that they get

from their surrounding environment.

(aligator growling)

Doctors Bishop and van Hoek

have discovered tiny proteins called peptides,

that are found in alligator blood.

What a peptide is, is a very small string of amino acids,

it's shorter than a protein, it's still made of amino acids,

it's made like proteins are made,

but they tend to have different activities.

They believe these proteins may be the key

to the beasts' Superb survival record.

Antimicrobial peptides really represented

ancient defense mechanism that is pervasive in nature.

But even more importantly,

that they might change

the way doctors treat critical health challenges in humans.

Some of these peptides are very important in our biology,

and there are some that are antimicrobial.

So that means that these peptides have the ability

to kill bacteria or viruses through the way

that they interact with the membrane of that bacteria

or a membrane encapsulated virus.

(tense music)

It's that frontline defense,

it handles a large part of that initial response

to detection of pathogen.

(determined music)

Barney has developed nanoparticles

that target and capture these peptides

out of the very complex mixture

of proteins extracted from alligator plasma.

The most promising peptides we have so far

are not the actual peptides identified with the gator,

but they're modifications of the peptides that we've made.

We've made some modifications to the sequence

of the peptides that have enhanced their ability

to act in various capacities.

Peptides have been linked to the ability

to prevent muscle loss and slow down the aging process.

Replicating the helical peptide properties found

in alligator blood

could create life-sustaining medicines for humans.

This could be a new treatment for infected wounds

in diabetics who have chronic infected wounds on their feet,

for example, or in surgical wound infections,

or burn infections.

We're really looking for interesting molecules

from the alligator that we can then develop into medicines

for infections in humans.

When it comes to fighting MRSA, the superbug

that causes antibiotic resistant staph infections,

doctors found that peptides in human blood only managed

to kill eight of the 23 bacteria strains,

but alligator blood proteins killed all 23.

Incredibly, in a different study,

concentrated alligator blood significantly reduced

the overall level of HIV in a sample

of infected human blood.

There are antimicrobial peptides that are known

to kill the HIV virus.

When people have been looking for antibiotics

all throughout the history of science,

we have often looked to the natural world

for the beginning starting point of developing new drugs.

It's clear that inside alligators

there's a treasure trove of information

that will enable future generations of humans

to live healthier, longer lives.

The dogs nose may also have unique qualities

to save human lives.

(determined music)

Dogs can help humans sniff out all kinds of things

that improve our lives; explosives,

missing persons, illegal drugs.

And now, the latest research is revealing

that dogs can detect diseases, even COVID-19.

Two studies published in 2022 show

that dogs may be able to sniff out long COVID.

This offers potential insight into what may cause it,

and prove important for patients

who need help getting a diagnosis.

A dog's sense of smell is up to a million times sharper

than humans, and recent science is revealing

that it's up to 100 million times more sensitive.

When a dog sniffs, it's sampling molecules

from the air in the environment,

those bind to receptors in the dog's nose,

and that sends signals to the dog's brain

to interpret those odors.

Well, a medical detection is a dog

that can smell disease.

When dog is living alongside us,

they notice biochemical changes

that occur when we come unwell,

and that they, if trained correctly,

can tell us about these changes.

We do know that there are, for many diseases,

a unique odor profile that the dogs are able

to discriminate from a non-disease state.

Most recently, new research has yielded

to even more surprises in the fight against viruses.

Dogs cannot not only detect COVID, they can distinguish it.

One of the things we did recently in the last,

you know, three or four years, was demonstrate that dogs

could detect that presence of a virus

and discriminate it from very similar viruses

that have very similar effect on an organism.

Scientists have trained dogs

to detect COVID on surfaces and in people

since early in the pandemic.

While trained dogs seem able to detect acute COVID-19

about as well as a PCR test, when it comes to long COVID,

their accuracy has been harder to measure.

Because there's no equivalent to a PCR test for long COVID,

researchers can only compare the dog's results

to what patients say they're experiencing.

The causes of long COVID are still largely a mystery,

but one theory is that the SARS-CoV-2 virus stays put

in some people's bodies, continuing to replicate

and create health issues.

(determined music)

As dogs begin to validate those suffering from long COVID,

new breakthroughs in vaccines

and treatments provide crucial tools

in the ongoing pandemic.

In late 2021, the new strain, Omicron BA.1,

was first detected in South Africa,

and by December was causing daily case numbers

in the US to skyrocket.

As cases quickly multiplied, Omicron and its sub variants

were proving efficient at evading protection provided

by vaccines and previous infections.

By August, 2022, the FDA authorized

a game-changing bivalent booster shot.

These new boosters are designed to protect against both

the original strain of the virus,

as well as the Omicron variant.

Using the same technology as the mRNA vaccines

from last year, this new booster is working

to keep pace with the virus as it changes.

Many futuristic technologies took giant leaps in 2022,

but one of the most anticipated

may be right around the corner.

Virtually everyone who's ever sat in traffic

has fantasized about lifting off

and having their car transform into a helicopter,

and something that can solve pollution

and congestion at the same time, even better.

New breakthroughs are emerging in the fields

of lightweight materials, batteries, and flight software,

making sure that electric vertical takeoff and landing,

or eVTOL technology will be the next big thing this decade.

Volocopter, a German company, is placing its bets

that the public will travel on air taxis first.

(determined music)

The Volocopter's latest generation is the VoloCity,

it is destined to be

the world's first commercially certified air taxi

for the transportation of persons in city centers.

Getting the public to accept

such a monumental shift will take time.

The vehicle will be able to pick you up autonomously,

will be able to ensure that the landing on the pickup site

is secure, and that will then truly usher

in the whole new epoch of mobility in cities,

perfectly integrated into other mode of transportation.

With Volocopter's multiple redundancies

in both batteries and rotors, safety is front and center.

So we have multiple battery departments, for example.

We have nine individual battery departments,

if we lose one, we can fully compensate for it.

So really, any critical critical component can fail

and we can still safely complete our mission.

And after safety, comes price.

Over time, we will be easily able

to beat Black Cat Limousine, or Black Limousine,

prices, for example.

And at the same time, I think we are offering

a fantastic experience.

And once the public feels comfortable enough

to take a ride, will cities be engulfed

with the constant buzz of rotors?

The Volocopter has only one source of noise,

which is the identical rotors of which we have 18,

because our motors and battery,

our propulsion system is extremely quiet,

we're all-electric.

With all-electric air travel

comes longer distances, and eVTOLs are arriving

that will not only take people within a city,

but from city to city.

Companies like Regent Craft have begun

to create breakthrough maritime technology

for coastal routes.

This sea glider aims to replace the ferry

and puddle-jumping Cessna, to connect not only coastal ports

like Nantucket, but major hubs like New York

to Boston or Los Angeles to San Francisco.

We're fundamentally trying to disrupt regional mobility.

We wanted to lower the cost and lower the time

it takes to go door-to-door.

We wanted to lower the emissions

so that these vehicles could proliferate in the future.

(upbeat music)

Regent Craft's design opens up a new market

for the electric flying vehicle, because it's not trying

to achieve the V in eVTOL.

eVTOLs is really focused on urban air mobility,

because the range constraint.

Sea gliders can go further, we have more efficient takeoff,

because we use our wing, instead of having to go vertical.

We fly in ground effect, which is aerodynamically favorable.

We don't need reserve fuel, because we have the pullover

on the side of the road option,

we can just land on the water.

Expect to see this cutting edge take

on a classic vehicle in port cities near you.

We really think that the commercial transportation

is the entry point to market,

but there's so many other opportunities we can dive into,

such as servicing offshore energy,

or cargo missions, or in the defense world.

And while Volocopter and Regent seek

to move people and goods,

Jetson, out of Sweden, is all about the thrill seeker.

We're not trying to solve any gigantic world problems,

you know, we just want the pilot to have fun.

It's all about that, just have fun.

But like any world-changing advancement,

sometimes it takes a while for technology

to catch up with inspiration.

(upbeat music)

An event in 1981, in the summer,

that ultimately gave me the inspiration for the Jetson

was the release of the "Return of the Jedi" Star Wars movie,

and those scenes in that movie when they're going through

the forest, that was just awesome.

(upbeat music)

And while fun may be where it begins,

Jetson's ease of use and compact size open up a wealth

of other uses and industries.

Transportation of valuable goods, border patrol,

surveillance, and first response,

these are all areas where Jetson One

will be very invaluable too.

(determined music) (air whooshing)

Which make and model arrives first

is yet to be seen.

One thing is certain, the age of eVTOL is upon us all.

(upbeat music)

It's been a busy year for flying objects,

especially those that pose a threat to Earth.

There are over 1 million asteroids in our solar system,

and of those, tens of thousands

are deemed near-Earth objects.

With multiple missions and discoveries occurring,

it's been a busy year for these rocky invaders.

And one of NASA's latest missions,

the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, also known as DART,

has made a smash discovery, literally,

by impacting an asteroid in space

as a first ever planetary defense test.

NASA detects and monitors all asteroids

with their Near-Earth Object Observation Program, or NEO.

The primary goal of NEO is to classify those

that are more than roughly 460 feet wide,

and thereby pose a significant risk to human life.

We have detected close to 26,000 asteroids,

near-Earth objects, of them, a small fraction

is actually potentially hazardous

and has a chance of its orbit to cross Earth.

We're tracking all the ones that are kilometer or larger,

these are the ones that would

cause potentially extinction level events.

(explosion thunders) (anxious music)

After a 10 month journey,

the DART spacecraft intentionally crashed

into asteroid Dimorphos, 7 million miles from Earth,

successfully completing its mission.

We have impact.

(indistinct) for humanity-

Not only did DART complete its primary mission,

but after examining critical data, it's been determined

that the spacecraft's explosive impact successfully altered

the asteroids orbit, proving that it is possible

to seek out and redirect an asteroid.

DART took nearly a year to reach its target, Didymos,

located in a small cluster of asteroids

between Mars and Jupiter.

Didymos is not a threat to Earth,

but it's the perfect test body

to determine if this kind of planetary defense is feasible.

You're just changing its path ever so slightly,

but if you do that slightly and give it decades of time

to add up, then the earth and that asteroid wouldn't

be on a future collision course.

The impact was documented by onboard cameras

and a secondary probe, LICIACube,

that hitched a ride with DART

and captured the whole spectacular event,

as well as DART's onboard imaging system.

We wanna see what Dimorphos looks like,

but that camera actually

has a really key engineering purpose.

Without that, we wouldn't be able to hit Dimorphos.

So, you have to imagine, we're coming in so fast,

14,000 miles per hour, to an asteroid

that's only 160 meters across.

What a moment.

Very few words can really capture this.

This is beautiful to watch.

It's the first mission to ever demonstrate

a planetary defense technology to deflect an asteroid.

New breakthroughs in deep space communications

and rocket propulsion have made this mission

and future missions to further study asteroids

in space possible.

And this mission's really about

the present and the future.

The present, understanding these asteroids,

being able to do something if we needed to,

and developing technologies for the future.

Next on the asteroid watch list,

the Psyche mission is sending a spacecraft

to orbit the metal-rich asteroid of the same name,

that orbits the sun between Mars and Jupiter.

Scientists believe Psyche is made up of nickel and iron,

building blocks of early planets like Earth.

The main purpose of the mission Psyche

is to go find out whether this asteroid

is in fact part of the metal core

of one of these early forming,

little, tiny planets called planetesimals.

We think that they heated and melted,

and that the metal sank to the middle

and made a metal core like the earth's.

The theory is that asteroid Psyche

was once a Mars-sized planet, and was blasted apart

to its core by millions of years of celestial bombardment.

And we think that Psyche is gonna give us

some really important missing pieces to that puzzle

that fit into planetary formation in the early part

of our solar system.

The Psyche mission might also open up

a new solution to Earth's dwindling resources.

Deep space mining is likely decades away,

and as of now, far too expensive.

Yet, as rare earth metals become more scarce,

asteroids like Psyche will tell us if they're rare

in the universe or just on Earth.

I very much hope that in the future humans

do mine materials in space,

because there's never gonna be another place

that's more habitable than our Earth.

We need to protect the earth.

With all these ongoing missions,

NASA and their partners are paving the way

for future exploration as they push the limits

of what's possible in technology

and how humanity can benefit.

We live in a world where we've launched a spacecraft

that is going to demonstrate technologies

to potentially prevent asteroids from hitting

the earth in the future.

(upbeat music)

It's been an amazing year for space science,

but our window into the universe took new meaning

with the debut of the James Webb Telescope.

The James Webb Telescope has traveled 1 million miles

from Earth, to solve the greatest mysteries

of our solar system.

It's gonna allow us to understand every phase

of cosmic history for the last 13.5 billion years.

As soon as the world's

premier space observatory began operations,

it was delivering breakthroughs and breathtaking images.

We can't take blank sky, everywhere we look,

there's galaxies everywhere.

And it's only the beginning.

(suspenseful music)

The James Webb Space Telescope has three main missions:

To see the earliest light from the big bang.

To study the formation of galaxies and stars.

And to look for signs of life around distant planets.

(dramatic music)

It has already delivered the deepest and sharpest image

of the distant universe ever taken.

So we have everything from the deepest infrared image

of the universe, so far, a stellar nursery,

a star dying, and the spectrum of an atmosphere

of an exoplanet, or a planet orbiting another star.

I think the greatest promise

of the James Webb Space Telescope

is it will answer questions that none of us have imagined

or thought to ask.

And the discovery potential is huge,

and I think it's gonna have an amazing effect on humanity.

(dramatic music)

The first light that ever appeared

was produced by the first stars

and galaxies 13.5 billion years ago.

Then, as the universe grew,

this light became invisible to our eyes.

Webb is designed to overcome our limitations,

to allow us to see what has never been seen before.

I'm looking at light that is very faint,

comes from very far back in time,

so I have to catch more photons, I need a bigger mirror,

I need something seven times bigger than Hubble.

The mirror is built of 18 separate elements

to replicate a single large mirror

that can reveal the tiniest of details.

The mirrors are fantastic,

they are made out of a material called beryllium,

which is six times stronger than steel,

but only about the third of the density of aluminum.

For the Webb Telescope to be able

to operate in deep space,

the telescope must also be kept very, very cold.

How cold?

We're gonna run this optic at minus 400 degrees Fahrenheit,

which means I'm designing materials,

even glue that holds the structure together

has to now work at cryogenic temperatures.

Webb is out in deep space, a million miles from Earth,

at a gravitationally stable place in space

that it circles as it orbits the sun with the earth.

Webb is protected from the heat of the sun

with an incredible innovation;

A giant sun shield, the size of a tennis court,

made of five layers of reflective fabric,

each as thin as a human hair.

Standby.

Decades of work by a global team

of scientists and engineers pay off.

What we are seeing in this deep field image,

Webb's first deep field, is a massive posture of galaxies,

and this field allows us to look

for some of the very first luminous structures

in the universe, the first stars and galaxies,

and this was one of the reasons

that Webb was originally built.

The telescope recently captured

the first clear evidence for carbon dioxide

in the atmosphere of a gas planet outside our solar system,

700 light years away.

This discovery provides important insights

into the composition and formation of the planet.

Webb's new image of Stephan's Quintet reveals

never before seen details of a galaxy group

that shows how interacting galaxies trigger star formation

in each other, as well as a black hole

in a level of detail never seen before.

And this image taken by Webb's Near-InfraRed Camera,

or NIRCam, showcases new stunning details of Jupiter.

Researchers will continue to use Webb to reveal more

and more of our vast universe,

promising mind-blowing discoveries

that we can't even imagine.

We've done it, we've made an astonishing machine.

If you put your mind to it and you stick the course,

you can achieve astonishing things.

And that's a lesson which has applicability

well beyond what you do in space with telescopes,

it's a lesson for life.

Every image is a new discovery,

and each will give humanity a view

of the universe that we've never seen before.

Looking back in time, and towards the future,

the year in science has revealed amazing breakthroughs.

From space, to Earth, to animal sciences,

the innovation has inspired us all.

(inspirational music)