All language subtitles for Human_Universe-S01E05-What_Is_Our_Future.en

BRIAN COX: It's been 200,000 years
since humans first emerged

in the Rift Valley of East Africa.

Since then, we've learned to think,

to dream, to work together.

And today our human civilization
spans the globe and beyond.

But our planet
is a tiny fragile speck of life

in a vast, uncaring universe.

So what next for the apes
who went to Space?

- (LIGHTS BUZZING)
- (INDISTINCT DIALOGUE)

This cave mouth in northern Spain

has been inhabited for 150,000 years.

There's basic shelter here and safety.

But from time to time
they left the light behind

and headed into the dark.

In these caves you see the transition
from just surviving

to living, to observing the world,
to enjoying it.

There were gatherings here,

people coming together to make art

and not just any old art
but specific representations

of particular animals
and particular symbols.

So in these caves
we see the beginnings of superstition,

the beginnings of an appreciation
that there's not just a present

but there's a past
and there's a future.

These early artists

were leaving messages
to future generations

and the one that speaks loudest

lies far deeper into the darkness.

This handprint was made by a child

at least 35,000 years ago

and it's thought it was made
by a little girl.

She'd have done the painting
by taking paint

and blowing it through her hand

onto the wall of the cave.

Now, she would have had a basic
understanding of her future,

she'd have known that the seasons pass

and maybe she even looked forward
to coming back to this cave one day.

Leaving her mark upon the wall suggests

she had started down the road
of understanding time

and how it stretched out
into the future.

In 40,000 years we've learned
to see further ahead

than she could possibly have imagined.

We've walked out into a wider world

and made it our own.

And right now we are at a crossroads.

Our civilization holds the power

to shape the future
of the whole planet.

I think we pay far too little
attention to the future

and the ability to illuminate it,

to predict it is unique to us

and our prosperity
and our very survival depend very much

on what we glimpse out there
in the dark.

Science and reason are the flames

and in this film I want to convince
you that we must use them

to make the darkness visible.

(WIND HOWLING)

(INDISTINCT DIALOGUE)

COX". In late June
Earth's most northerly community

are preparing to celebrate

an important turning point
of their year.

(VIOLIN PLAYING)

(SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE)

It's mid-summer in the Arctic

and the people of Svaldbard
are approaching the moment

when the sun rides highest in the sky,

the summer solstice.

If I were in Manchester
I'd say this was the longest day,

but that kind of language
doesn't make sense here,

78 degrees north

and midway between northern Norway
and the Arctic Circle.

Cos this day, this summer's day,
began on April the 20th

and it will end on August the 23rd.

We can predict exactly the moment
that the solstice arrives.

So, as strange as this long day feels

there is no mystery
as to why it takes place.

(SINGING)

The reason for that long polar night

and the months of midnight sun

is the geometry of the solar system.

Svaldbard is quite literally
on top of the world

and you feel it when you're here,
it's obvious.

The sun doesn't set,
it's somewhere over there at the moment,

and throughout
the course of the day it just moves

along the horizon right round,

360 degrees as the earth rotates

with the North Pole
pointing directly towards the sun.

And when this place was discovered
back in the 1590s

people didn't know that,
or at least it wasn't agreed upon,

it was still possible
and indeed argued back down

there towards the equator in Italy

that the Earth
was at the center of the universe.

It's obvious that it isn't
when you come up here.

I wonder what would have happened
if Galileo

and Copernicus and Bruno
and others had visited Svaldbard,

I think that everything would
have got worked out much earlier.

After thousands of years of observation

our inquisitive minds began to develop
models of the universe.

The full explanation for the clockwork
of the solar system

came in the 1680s with Isaac Newton

and his universal law of gravitation

which is the first modern law of nature.

What Newton's laws allow you to do

is to predict the future
given a knowledge of the present.

Newton's laws
describe a clockwork universe,

planets orbiting stars,

stars orbiting galaxies

and galaxies falling through
a possibly infinite space.

One day in our own sky

we'll see the galaxy Andromeda
heading our way.

In four billion years' time,
it will collide with the Milky Way.

For a billion years

our sky will be filled
with cosmic choreography.

And we know that because
we can predict the future.

So the laws of physics in that sense

are little time machines.

They allow you to predict with precision

what will happen in the distant future

given a knowledge of the present.

We even see the sun ends its days

as it swells into a red giant,

some five billion years from now.

So we can be sure

that we along with
all other life on earth

will not survive into the far future.

Extinction is a necessary part
of the evolution of life on earth.

99.9% of species that have ever existed
have become extinct

and that's a good thing

because when a species goes
there's a niche available

in the Eco system
for other species to colonize.

That's how evolution works.

You know,
if the dinosaurs hadn't become extinct

it's very likely that we wouldn't exist.

So when considering
the ultimate destiny of our species

the answer seems obvious,

extinction.

But I'd argue
this doesn't have to be the case.

We are different
to the other species on this planet

because we're intelligent.

Intelligence matters.

And it's extremely rare.

In fact, you can argue

that intelligence may be
extremely rare in the universe.

It is possible
that we're the only intelligent species

in the Milky Way galaxy

amongst 400 billion suns
and countless billions of worlds.

And that makes us extremely valuable
and worth protecting.

I think the way to keep this light alive

is for humans
to continue to venture out.

And explore.

To this end we've built a ship

large enough for six astronauts
to train in.

This is Aquarius

which is used by NASA as Nemo,
the Nemo missions.

The reason this place is extreme,
if you look here

is because...

Below the ocean.

The pressure in here is

two-and-a-half to three times
atmospheric pressure

which is why I sound like a Munchkin.

Fifty meters below the surface,

Aquarius offers a unique
training facility

for deep space exploration.

This is, er...

(CHUCKLES) This is brilliant.

Cos you can play
at being an astronaut,

I mean,
you'd have six astronauts in here.

The reason that they use this
as an ast... As a mission simulator

is because the environment is as close
as you can get to space on Earth,

you have to live here for weeks.

And if you stay here
for more than one hour,

so we've got one hour,

then you have to stay here
for a further 17 hours to decompress

so you can't just run away.

If you, you know, psychologically

feel a bit claustrophobic
and you think I don't like it

you can't just leave,

it's one of the few places on Earth
where that would be the case.

MAN: (OVER RADIO)
Okay, I'll get into posit/on

- to receive it.
- WOMAN: That's a good idea.

WOMAN". I think it'll work, yeah...

COX". In recent months,
Nemo has been tasked

with a very specific type
of deep space exploration.

They're developing methods
to space walk onto asteroids

where gravity will be a fraction
of that experienced on the Moon.

Whilst at times dreaming of an asteroid
encounter is a lot of fun,

the motive behind the mission
is deadly serious.

In 2015, on a wintery morning in Russia,

a massive fireball cut the sky.

Seconds later it exploded
with twenty to thirty times more energy

than the atomic bomb detonated
at Hiroshima.

(GLASS SHATTERING)

(PEOPLE SCREAMING)

Earth had been hit

by the largest asteroid
in more than a century.

And no-one had seen it coming.

It seems our powers of prediction
failed us

and that's because in reality
nature can be chaotic.

I can demonstrate
that with this simple experiment.

These are magnets,

so let's say that this is an asteroid.

Then, watch what happens
when I set the pendulum off,

let's say from this point here.

So I'm gonna release it,
I've got a laser there,

at exactly that point
I'm just gonna let it go.

We see the laser tracing out the path
on this photo paper.

This is asteroid orbiting around
through the solar system,

gravitationally interacting
with the Earth, the Sun of course,

let's say a massive planet like Jupiter.

There you go, it's collided
with the yellow one, the Sun.

And I can do it again

and what I'm gonna try and do
is line it up

in exactly the same way and let it go.

In this case it's radically different,

that's because this is
what is known as a chaotic system,

there you go and it's hitting the earth

so that will be the end of civilization
as we know it.

The point is that the orbit
is critically dependent

on what we call, what physicists call,
the initial conditions,

that's how precisely do I line this up,

how precisely do I release it,

what precisely happens as it sets off

on its path through the solar system?

In here you have the little air currents
that deflect it a little bit,

all those infinitesimally small changes

can be amplified in a complicated
system such as this.

And that's why it's not good enough
to just discover

the asteroids
that come near to the earth,

it's not good enough
because one of those tiny nudges

could take something
that you might think was safe

just using Newton's laws very naively

and in fact nudging it onto
a collision course with the Earth.

This fundamental feature of nature

means that we may get little warning

when the next one comes our way.

So we must continue to track
threatening asteroids

and develop technologies

that will get us out to them
at short notice.

In January 2014,

The European Space Agency's
Rosetta spacecraft

awoke from a 31-month period
of hibernation.

It had traveled four billion miles
to intercept a comet.

Throughout August and September

the tiny spaceship
made a careful approach,

scanning the comet for a place to land.

In November, it will deploy a probe
to attach itself to the surface.

Rosetta will greatly increase
our understanding of comets

and the early solar system.

It also tests our ability to mount
a manned mission

to an asteroid if the need arises.

The problem is that even with
a sophisticated rocket system

it took Rosetta
ten years to reach its target.

To send astronauts that deep into space

will require a great leap

in our technical ability
and our ambition.

DAVID MACKAY:
I had an ambition to be an astronaut

from, you know,
as early as I can remember.

I can't remember thinking anything else.

The excitement of, you know,
just going way away from Earth.

(HEAVY METAL MUSIC PLAYING)

COX". For the first time
in a generation,

new designs of manned spacecraft
are being tested.

Commercial companies
are now developing craft

to get us into space...

And then safely back home.

And some have already left the ground.

MACKAY: It's not an easy thing to do,
to escape the Earth's gravity

even for a few minutes,
takes a lot of energy.

MAN: Three, two, one.

Release, release, release.
Quick release.

Attention, Martha Tango.

COX: In the face
of enormous challenges

the future of manned space exploration
is looking exciting.

But it's not quite
the future I'd imagined.

When I was growing up in the 1970s

this was one of my favorite books.

I got it, I think it was 1979.

It was about the same time
as my first Abba album

and I just read it
for years and years and years.

It's a sort of fictional history

of spacecraft 2000 to 2100 AD.

It's got things like,
"2005 Work Starts on the Lunar Station".

Then this is one of my
favorite spacecraft,

I used to try
and build these out of Lego.

It's called the "Martian Queen"
and it says,

"Early in 2015, fare-paying passengers"

"stepped aboard the first purpose-built
interplanetary space liner."

So they imagined that by 2015,
by next year,

we'd have Space liners
taking people to the Martian colonies.

And what's interesting
is my little boy loves the book as well.

He's got it now
and some of this stuff is in his past.

This is a list of things
that didn't happen

whereas for me back in the seventies

it was a list of things
that I thought would happen.

Breaking free
from Earth's bonds is so difficult

that there are only eight people alive

that know what it's like
to walk on another world.

Hi, Charlie.

- What's your name?
- Charlie.

Believe it or not,
I'm the other half of Judy.

Hello, Charlie.

- Nice to meet you, good to see you.
- Wonderful to meet you,

- it's a pleasure to be here.
- Good to be here with you.

Have a seat.

(MAN SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY
OVER RADIO)

COX: Charlie Duke
was Lunar Module pilot for Apollo 16

and the youngest person
ever to walk on the Moon.

DUKE: Tony, how about an extension,
you guys?

We're feeling good.

COX". Mission objective,

to bring back samples
from the Lunar highlands

and test drive new technologies.

DUKE: And here we go.

Man, we're really going up a hill,
I'll tell you.

COX". When I was just
becoming aware of Apollo

I thought that I would be
able to go into,

at least into Earth orbit myself.

Yeah, really, my dad was born in 1907

and so he was just right after
the Wright brothers and, uh,

and he could barely believe, uh,
that his son went to the Moon.

And yet at the time
my five year old, Tom,

he didn't really see
it any big deal, you know,

that everybody in the neighborhood
was going to the Moon.

(BOTH LAUGHING)

Neil Armstrong
was a next door neighbor,

Tom Stafford was in the neighborhood,

Frank Borman was in the neighborhood,

the whole neighborhood was either
NASA engineers or astronauts

so, so everybody's...
It's natural.

"Let's go to the Moon, Dad,
when you gonna do it?"

(BOTH CHUCKLING)

DUKE: Hey, john, this is perfect,
with the LM and the Rover and you

and Stone Mountain.
And the old Flag.

Come on out here and give me a salute.
Big Navy salute.

Off the ground. One more.

There we go.

I mean, you're most famous
probably for the most famous photograph

involving you and it's not you,

it's the photograph of your family
that you left on the Moon.

Yeah, I asked the boys, er,
they were 5 and 7,

I said, "Would you guys like to be
with your dad on the Moon?"

They said, "Oh, yeah,
that'd be great, Dad."

So on the back of that picture
we had written,

uh, this is the family
of astronaut, Charlie Duke,

er, from planet Earth who landed
on the Moon in April 1972,

uh, and we all signed it

and, er, then I dropped the picture
on the Moon.

It sort of shows
the human side of space flight

and, you know, we were family men,
we were dads, husbands,

and so wanted my family
to be a part of it.

COX". And they'll sit there for
millions of years those, won't they?

They won't go anywhere.

And if you look back to those days,

so less than a year
from the first test flight,

first manned test flight
to landing on the Moon.

- Yeah.
- Would that be possible now?

- No.
- Why?

We don't have the, er,
the schedule, the money

to build spacecraft that quickly.

We don't have the,
the manpower to do it,

I mean 400,000 people
and unlimited budget

- you can do a lot, you know...
- Yeah.

- You know, and so that's.
- Yeah.

Yeah, that was, er, that's what we had.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

COX". After Charlie left,
only two men have ever gone back.

And there's good reason for that.

The energy required to break free

from Earth's gravitational embrace
is staggering.

This is the spacecraft that took
john Young, Ken Mattingly

and Charlie Duke to the Moon.

There's the Service Module
and the Command Module.

That's the engine that fired to bring
them back from the Moon to the Earth.

The Lunar Lander sat inside there

and this piece is essentially
a single rocket motor

that fired to take them
from Earth orbit to the Moon.

So, this is the 120-ton
Moon spacecraft if you like.

But from a physics perspective

the difficulty
is getting that into orbit

and on Saturn V
that was done in two bits

and this is stage two

and that is the stage two fuel tank.

Inside there are 450 tons of rocket fuel

and this burnt through those 450 tons
in about six minutes,

taking the spacecraft
from an altitude of 200,000 feet,

about 38 miles,
up to 114-and-a-half miles,

that's virtually in orbit.

And it did that by burning the fuel
in five engines.

Now at the time,

that was one of the most powerful
rockets ever built,

but not the most powerful.

That was this,

stage one of the Saturn V.

There are 2,200 tons

of fuel in here

and stage one burnt through that

in about two-and-a-half minutes.

To do that, it had fuel pumps

that were more powerful than a 747

at lift off,

to pump 15 tons of fuel a second

into these:

The F1 engines.

Every statistic about
these engines is ridiculous.

In those two and a half minutes
when this spacecraft was lifting off,

the power generated
was more than the peak electrical

power generation capacity

of the United Kingdom.

COX". Building a vehicle
powerful enough to accelerate three men

to escape velocity

was a triumph of human ingenuity.

But the technology at the heart
of any rocket

is essentially ancient technology.

The release of energy by combustion.

We used fire to release energy
from the Sun

stored in the wood from trees.

Then, we discovered
better things to burn.

Energy-packed ancient sunlight

buried underground.

Burning that has set us free.

(ENGINE STARTING)

But fire has surely taken us
as far as it can.

The reason we aren't flying to
other planets

is the same reason

we're endangering this one.

Every day we burn the equivalent
of all the plants

growing on this planet over a year
to meet our energy needs.

But that's not to say that
energy use is

of itself necessarily a bad thing.

Indeed, by many measures,

it's an extremely good thing indeed.

In every country
where the per capita energy use

is greater than about
half the European average

then adult life expectancy

is greater than 70 years.

Literacy rates are greater than 90%.

Infant mortality rates are low

and more than one in five
of the population

are in higher education.

So, the story of energy use

is a complicated one.

On the one hand, obviously,

energy use is important
and to be valued,

it's the foundation
of our modern civilization.

But on the other hand,
if we generate our energy

mainly by burning fossil fuels

then it can be a bad thing.

Now in the short-term, of course,

we can increase the efficiency

of our energy usage.

(MOTOR WHIRRING)

But, in the long-term,

if we aspire to continue
to advance as a civilization,

if we want to give every citizen
of the world a quality of life

that is as good as
or even better than mine,

and if ultimately, we want to build
a space-faring civilization

and journey to the stars,

then, we have to find a better way.

In the short-term we can move
to cleaner electric motors.

But because we burn fossil fuels
in power stations

that simply moves
the problem upstream.

So what we face is not an energy crisis

but an energy conversion crisis.

Renewable energy might be
part of the solution

but I believe there's
a far more promising

long-term alternative.

(ENGINE POWERING DOWN)

MAN: If you could do one thing,

you wave a magic wand and do one thing,
what would you do?

If you could produce
abundant clean energy

it would solve many problems.

It's a grand challenge of our time and

I truly am committed and proud
to be part of it.

Can we for the first time

bring a star to Earth?

COX". Here at
the National Ignition Facility

in California

they're trying to create manmade stars.

MAN: It's a big laser.
It's the biggest in the world

by probably a factor of
50 or maybe even 100.

- So in size and in energy. So...
- COX: How much power's in there?

If you look at all the electricity
that's produced

in the United States, this is about
a thousand times more power than that.

But of course only for
a fraction of a second.

- A few billionths of a second.
- COX: Yeah.

COX". In a star, fusion begins

when the gas cloud
that forms the star

collapses under its own gravity,

heating the core
to many millions of degrees.

Here at NIF

it's coaxed into life
in the laser's target chamber.

Encased in two-meter thick walls

and 47 of the biggest
blast doors I've ever seen.

Uh, yeah.

MAN: So this is the, er, the sharp end
of the whole system if you like.

This is where the lasers come down

and get... Start to get focused
into the chamber.

And each one of them
has to be synchronized

to a few trillionths of a second

to arrive at exactly the same time

and of course,
in exactly the right spot.

COX: It's worth sort of stepping back

and realizing
what's happening here, isn't it?

- Cos you said 192 of these laser beams.
- MAN: Right.

- Which are not small.
- Indeed. (CHUCKLES)

In the middle of that,
which is definitely not small.

- Absolutely.
- Towards a target that's about

- that big.
- Exactly, about a millimeter wide.

But it's the level of precision

- and power that you're able to achieve.
- Absolutely. Indeed.

And if you can do it uniformly,

then you can create a little star.

COX: It reminds me
a little bit of Apollo

- in a sense, cos you just think...
- Uh-huh.

You know, look,
look what we can do if we try.

So you see there,
there's a gold cylinder

and in the middle, a little red ball.

That's the fusion fuel.

One of those pellets

when all of the fusion
happens just right

could power my house for a day.

So you imagine having a
little bag of those pellets.

Let's say you had, what,
three or four hundred of them,

you could fit them in your pocket.

Then that would power your life
for a year.

Thousands of these little pellets could

power a spacecraft to the Moon.

Hundreds of thousands could power

a spacecraft out to the edge
of the solar system

or perhaps outward to the stars.

And one of the interesting things
about fusion technology

is that there's no waste, right?

What happens when
you've released all the energy

in that pellet of fuel

is you produce Helium.

So, you get your electricity

and you get your party balloons
and that's pretty much it.

So it's an inherently clean, safe,

and extremely efficient technology.

(ALARM CHIMING)

MAN ON P.A.: May! Have your attention.

Preparations for shot operations

in laser bay two are underway.

Leave laser bay two now.

I repeat, leave laser bay two now.

This is the NIF control room.
This is the,

the heart of all operations

and the reason I have
to be quiet is because

they're getting ready for the shot.

MAN: Main laser operation will
begin in approximately one minute.

It's a bit like charging a flash gun.

Banks of capacitors

all store electric charge

getting ready to discharge

all of this energy into the lasers.

Amplify, amplify, amplify, bang.

WOMAN". Jeff, it looks like
it just turned green.

(INDISTINCT DIALOGUE)

MAN: I don't see a problem.
WOMAN: Ok, so we're ready

to proceed if you're okay with it.
Can I?

WOMAN". Proceeding to
system shot countdown stage.

There's the countdown.

WOMAN". Start sequence, on my mark.

3, 2, 1, Mark.

Countdown started at
T-minus 255 seconds.

255 seconds.

In 255 seconds time,

a thousand times
the power generating capacity

of the United States of America

is gonna be fired down into something

a few millimeters across.

(CHUCKLES) It's cool.

Brilliant that we can do this, isn't it?

By "we" I mean them.

Yeah, we, it's our civilization.

(SIRENS WAILING)

WOMAN: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Shot.

(LOUD BANG)

That's it. Bang.

And that's the future.

Commercial fusion power stations
are still a long way off.

But NIF has proved
that it can be done in principle.

If fusion can be made
economically viable,

it would end the days of fire.

And it would do much more
than power our cars and cities,

it would provide a new foundation
for our civilization,

it would even open up
the road to the stars.

I think we expect...

In fact, we demand

that the future is gonna be better
than the past.

But it seems to me that
we're not prepared to pay for it.

So how might things change?

Well, we're fortunate enough
to live in democracies.

And in democracies, things change

when people have access to knowledge,

when they understand facts

and when they can make
informed decisions.

Did you know, for example,

that Americans spend ten times

more money each year
on pet grooming

than they do on nuclear fusion?

Now, I think,

that if you said to someone.

"Well, actually, why don't you
brush your own cat

"and take the money you were gonna spend
having somebody else brush it

"and give it to those people

"who are trying to find a way
of generating unlimited access

"to clean energy", then people would say.

"Well, yeah. That's a good deal."

See in democracies,

things change when people
like you and me

want them to change.

(SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE)

WOMAN: I'm optimistic about the future.

No matter how deep
we keep digging our hole right now,

I feel like there is hope.

(SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE)

(SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE)

WOMAN". You know,
I look at my life and I think

it's almost over, when in fact

with the advances in healthcare
and such, it may not be.

(SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE)

COX". Fundamentally I think we all
want the same thing.

We want our children and their children

to have a future.

And that requires us
to plan for that future.

(SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE)

- COX: Hello.
- WOMAN: Hello.

COX: Nice to meet you.

This place addresses a

fundamental human need

that we're gonna face in the future.
Which is

how are we gonna feed ourselves?

The tunnel runs about
130 meters downwards

on this gentle gradient

and by the time we get to the vaults
at the end

it's gonna be 160 meters

of solid rock up to the surface.

COX". Buried down here
is a priceless treasure

and everything about this building
is designed to keep it safe.

This arc that you see,
this curve here

is deliberate.

It's in case there's a blast,

some kind of explosion up at
the surface

and this is designed
to reflect the blast back.

An extremely precious place.

Covered in ice.

Then we have to go through this airlock.

And into the vault.

COX". The treasure in here
is not currency.

Not gold. Not rare jewels

but something important.

It's the future of our food.

Here are the seeds of the food crops

of virtually every country in the world.

These are from Mexico.

Here, India.

Here are Nigerian seeds.

Next to Germany. Australia.

There are over 800,000

different populations of seeds

collected here from virtually

every country in the world.

These here are from Syria.

These were taken out
just before the... The recent troubles.

So they're out there.
They're protected there,

in case the Syrian seed vaults are...

Are lost.

And then there are some
strangest of all countries

you wouldn't believe would cooperate
in such an international endeavor.

Look at this here. Box number five.

DPR of Korea.

These are North Korean seeds.

And just over there

are the South Korean seeds.

Next to them.

Canada.

Philippines.

This represents...

Represents a library of life.

Just the whole of civilization

rests with the genetic codes

contained in these boxes.

COX". Our future might just rest
on these seeds

squirreled away
in the Global Seed Vault.

Drilled into the top of the world.

The driving force
behind its construction

was agriculturist, Dr Cary Fowler.

So why did you decide to take
this project on?

Well, I've spent all of my life

working on trying to conserve
crop diversity and

those of us in my field, we...

We live in a world of wounds.

We, we see the, the injuries.

We see the loss of diversity.
The extinction.

And at a certain point, you know,
enough is enough.

And you try to figure out, well what
can we do that's not just stopgap.

Cos we know we're gonna need
this crop diversity in the future.

It's the biological
foundation of agriculture.

We're gonna need it
as long as we need agriculture.

COX: Which is as long as
civilization exists I suppose?

FOWLER: Exactly. After that
we're not worried about it, are we?

COX". Some of the seeds
in this vault

will still be viable in 20,000 years.

COX: When you look
at this achievement, how do you see it?

When I walk in here
I see a history of agriculture

all the way back to Neolithic days.

So our ancestors, yours and mine,

have been saving these seeds

in a successful,
unbroken line until today.

They're every option that we're
gonna have for the future,

so anything and everything
we want and need,

rice and wheat to be in the future,

is represented, is made possible
by this diversity.

Some people call this
the "Doomsday Vault."

- Yeah.
- Seems to me to be a rather, er...

- I don't know... Grim term.
- Apocalyptic.

Yeah. Yes.

Is that a reasonable description?

For me when I walk down here,
I get this immense

feeling of happiness, and frankly, hope

that, ok, here are

800,000 crop varieties

that are not going to become extinct.

So to me this represents
a problem that didn't happen.

Also seems to me it's an example of
genuine long-term thinking.

This transcends political cycles.
It transcends lifetimes.

You know, when I look at this place,

I see about the only structure
in the world, that I know of,

that's built essentially for eternity,
for as long as we can imagine.

Involving all the countries of the world

in something that's
long-term and positive.

That's hopeful to me.

COX". 1 came here to tell a story
of an uncertain future.

But I found something else under the
permafrost of Svaldbard.

Optimism.

We have the privilege to live
in a very special and unique time.

Because for the first time

in the history of life on Earth

there's a species that,
at least in part,

is masters of its own destiny,
has its survival in its own hands.

Now it's true to say that
because there's an unbroken

line of life stretching back
from me

to the origin of life on earth
3.8 billion years ago

that at any point in that long history

something could have happened
to wipe us out.

And something could happen tomorrow
to wipe us out.

But increasingly we can see
those threats coming.

So we have a chance.

The possibility of prolonging our
existence into the indefinite future,

if we can just find a way of
taking that responsibility seriously.

COX". Today we are writing
our chapter in the human story.

But as we do so,

we must keep in mind the future

and learn lessons from the past.

Back in the darkness
of the El Castillo caves,

there may be a stark reminder
of life's perilous existence.

More accurate dating of the paintings

suggests that the story
of our young artist

might have a sting in its tail.

If this art is not

just around 40,000 years old

but over 43,000 years old,

not much of a difference,

then this is not human

because there were no humans
in this area of Europe 43,000 years ago.

If that's the case,
this art was created

by Neanderthals,

a completely different species.

Just think about that.

Neanderthals were

pretty much as capable, mentally,

as we are.

So if they'd been given enough time,

given the pressures

that we humans felt

then there's no reason
why they couldn't have developed

a civilization.

But they didn't have time.

Instead, they disappeared.

They became extinct

leaving perhaps

these signs of the beginnings
of their culture

on the roof of the cave.

But our species didn't die out.

We worked together.

Held on, and then flourished.

(INDISTINCT DIALOGUE)

In the face of adversity
we adapted.

And used our brains
to develop technologies.

In time, we built mighty civilizations

with science as their foundation.

And then, within the blink
of a cosmic eye,

we journeyed to other worlds

and we glimpsed the very nature
of reality itself.

All right, let's send these to granddad.

Gonna put them in the envelope.

We even have an outpost
of our civilization

living beyond Earth.

Science is unreasonably effective.

It's generated knowledge
beyond all expectation.

It's also delivered perspective.

Yes, we are an insignificant speck

in an infinite universe.

But we're also rare.

And because we're rare, we're valuable.

So what are we to do to secure
our future?

Well, we must learn to value
the acquisition of knowledge

for its own sake,
and not just because

it grows our economy
or allows us to build better bombs.

We must also learn
to value the human race

and take responsibility
for our own survival.

Why? Because there's
nobody else out there to value us

or to look after us.

And finally,

most important of all,

we must educate the next generation

in the great discoveries of science

and we must teach them
to use the light of reason

to banish the darkness of superstition.

Cos if we do that then at least
there's a chance that this universe

will remain a human one.

ASTRONAUT: There's a card in here.

Card?

ASTRONAUT: Its got granddad
written on it.

- Are you a granddad?
- I'm not a granddad.

Hey, Alex, you a granddad?

- ALEX: No, not that I know of.
- Well, I guess that's me.