All language subtitles for How The Universe Works s04e01 How the Universe Built Your Car.eng

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

I mean, really came from?

Every component has
a mind-blowing backstory,

an epic journey through
time and space

filled with the most violent
events since the big bang.

[ Engine roaring ]

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

[ Crackling, rumbling ]

Captions by vitac
www.Vitac.Com

captions paid for by
discovery communications

[ engine roaring ]

Narrator:
How old is your car?

My car is about 5 years old.

My car was assembled in 2001.

The car I drive is pretty old.
It was manufactured in 1991.

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

Narrator: To find out
how old a car really is,

we need to take a trip back
to the beginning of time.

Your car began its life
billions of years ago,

billions of miles away
in deep space.

[ Crackling ]

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

were forged well before
our Earth was born.

You think your car is a clunker?

It's actually 13.8 billion
years old.

All right.
Let's do it, sir.

Narrator: So, what's the stuff
that cars are made of?

Best way to find out...
Tear one apart.

Iron, plastics, oils and rubber
are the first to go...

In another half hour or so,

this baby's gonna be completely
stripped.

I can't wait to see it.

Then aluminum, silicon, copper.

And finally,
precious metals,

like platinum and gold.

Each of these materials is
crucial for building a car.

But in the earliest days of the
universe, none of them existed.

13.8 billion years ago,

time and space are
created in the big bang.

The early universe is filled
with nothing but energy.

After the big bang, it was
just a chaotic glob of stuff,

nothing like what you see today.

Narrator:
As the early universe cools,

the energy gives way to unstable
matter and antimatter,

then protons and neutrons
and, finally, atoms.

But none of them are iron,
silicon or carbon.

The vast, gassy clouds
are mostly hydrogen.

Something had to happen
to give us everything else.

And everything was actually made

from hydrogen building blocks.

Narrator: An atom of hydrogen
is the simplest and lightest

atom in the universe,

just a single positively
charged proton

bound to a single electron.

The universe then builds up
bigger atoms like carbon

and iron by fusing
hydrogen atoms together.

Thaller: Everything starts
from simpler origins.

An iron atom is actually
lots and lots

of simple hydrogen
atoms that were stuck together.

Narrator: At first, this
versatile proton building block

doesn't want to stick.

Protons are positively charged.

So as you push them closer
together, they're gonna resist

coming closer together.

They really don't want
to hang out.

Narrator: This repulsion makes
the early universe

a maelstrom of hydrogen atoms
swerving to avoid each other.

Lanza: But if you can get them
to a point where you can

shove them together enough,
at some point,

they're gonna lock together.

Narrator: Pushing atoms together
so strongly they stick

is called nuclear fusion.

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

into one filled with
the ingredients for planets,

people, and cars.

So, how do you get
two atoms to fuse?

This guy's been doing it in his
garage since he was 14.

Taylor Wilson is obsessed
with nuclear fusion.

Yeah, the neighbors know
about the radioactive stuff

that's in the garage.

And so does the government.

It's all relatively low level.

[ Beeping ]

That's my watch going off.

I think I'm the only person
I've ever met

with a geiger-counter watch.

Narrator: The centerpiece
of Taylor's nuclear man cave

is this precision-engineered
fusion reactor,

which he built when he was still
in high school.

Okay, I'll let in
some gas now.

The first ingredient...
Hydrogen gas.

And it will be flowed into
the chamber through this very

precise sapphire leak valve.

The next ingredient...
High-voltage electricity.

[ Current whirring ]

Hmm.

Oh, I wonder
what the problem is.

- Power su...
- You probably want to plug it in.

Power supply is not plugged in.
Okay, let's try that again.

That's embarrassing.

I'm getting power
from the laundry room now.

Taylor passes a high voltage
through a small, spherical cage

that sits inside the reactor.

The negatively charged cage

quickly draws the hydrogen ions
inside it.

So it's taking all those ions

and sucking them towards
the center.

And as they fly in
they get confined,

and hopefully they collide
with each other and fuse.

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

that hydrogen atoms are fusing
together,

creating heavier helium atoms
and a burst of energy

hotter than the surface
of the sun.

It's that little, tiny blob of
plasma inside those grid wires

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

13 billion years ago,

the universe uses gravity
to fuse atoms

instead of an electrical cage.

Across the cosmos,
vast clouds of hydrogen gas

collapse under
their own gravity.

Pressure and temperature build

as more and more gas
gets sucked in.

Eventually, fusion sparks
deep in the core

of these giant balls of gas,

and the first stars start
to manufacture

many of the heavy elements that
make up your car today.

A star is basically a machine
for turning lighter elements

into heavier elements.

Narrator: Fusion takes place
only inside the core

of these first stars,

fusing hydrogen atoms together
to create helium.

And when all the hydrogen
in the core is used up,

the star finds new fuel to burn.

After you burn hydrogen to form
helium, the core of the star

begins to collapse
and get hotter.

And there is enough energy
then to fuse three helium nuclei

into carbon.

And then that fuses
to form nitrogen, oxygen,

silicon, iron.

Narrator: But this incredible
production line of elements

can't go on forever.

Thaller: The heavier atoms
you ram together,

the less energy
you get out.

So you turn hydrogen
into helium.

Helium becomes carbon,
nitrogen, oxygen.

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

until you get to iron.

The iron that is in your car
is actually essentially

a deadly poison when it comes
to a star.

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

Thaller: So the star collapses,
dies, and explodes

at the moment you create iron
in the core.

I mean, literally
the fraction of a second.

I'm not kidding.

That's how dramatic and weird
the steel in your car is.

Narrator: The explosion,
called a supernova,

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

It releases enough energy
to dwarf what the sun puts out

over its entire lifetime.

And all of the elements that it
has created are then dispersed

out into space.

Narrator: The gassy remains
of the explosion are called

a supernova remnant,

an expanding bubble
of hydrogen gas

from the outer layers of the
star that mixes with stardust,

the carbon, oxygen, silicon
and iron from its core.

And this same
13-billion-year-old stardust

helped you drive to work
last week.

This was once in the core
of a dying star.

And who knows?

Maybe some of the iron atoms
in this brake disc

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

that illuminated the universe.

When you're pumpin' iron,
you're pumpin' a universe.

[ Laughter ]

The first generation of stars
created the materials in a car's

chassis, body, windshield
and seats.

But we're still missing key
components, like the copper

for the car's electronics.

To create this crucial metal,
a new generation of stars

must die an even stranger death.

Narrator: Picture our universe
as the very first stars

come to the end
of their lives.

The early milky way
is filled with flashes

as star after star
explodes.

These violent supernovas hurl
a rich cocktail

of heavy elements
into space,

the carbon, silicon,
aluminum and iron atoms

that will one day build our
cars here on Earth.

[ Engine roaring ]

But take a closer look
at today's cars,

and there are many
more elements heavier than iron,

like copper in the wiring

and gold in the connectors.

How did the universe create
these heavy metals?

In the case of copper,
the answer is reincarnation.

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

Turns out there's over a mile
of copper in the average car.

And the reason why is because
copper is an excellent

electrical conductor.

Narrator: Copper's also used
to conduct heat in radiators.

[ Tires screeching,
engines revving ]

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

And when you need to stop,
copper provides the friction

in your brake pads.

But the story of how that copper
came to exist

and be on Earth, that's
a truly remarkable story.

Copper begins with the death
of a first-generation star.

The expanding supernova remnant
slams into neighboring clouds

of gas, creating a shock wave
of pressure,

giving birth to a new
generation of stars.

Plait: There are cycles
to the universe.

Stars form.
They live out their lives.

They die.
They blow off winds

and they explode, ceding their
material into gas clouds

which then form new stars
with heavier elements in them,

which will
repeat the cycle again.

So if you want to think
about it that way,

the universe is
the ultimate recycler.

Narrator: The hydrogen gas
that forms these

second-generation stars is
peppered with the carbon,

aluminum and iron thrown out
by the supernova remnant.

The biggest of these dirty stars
burn brightly

for a few million years.

Then they undergo
an incredible metamorphosis.

The star grows suddenly
to 100 times its previous size.

Then it cools and turns
a ghostly red.

The second-generation star
has transformed

into a red supergiant.

And it's in these diffuse outer
layers that iron-rich stardust

is slowly converted
into copper...

But not by fusion.

Oluseyi: That iron nucleus
has 26 protons.

That's a serious
electric charge.

So it's gonna repel any protons
we try to shoot in there.

How do we get more protons in?

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

Instead of shooting in protons,
we shoot in neutrons.

Narrator: Colliding atoms
in the outer layers of a star

sometimes spit out neutrons.

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

by the positively charged
protons in the iron stardust.

So these neutrons can stick to
the other atoms around them.

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

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

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

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

Neutron by neutron
can hit an atom.

And then that neutron can
actually decay into a proton.

Narrator: The neutron spits out
an electron,

and what's left is a proton
and a new, bigger atom.

In this case, copper.

Scientists call this magical
transformation beta decay.

Thaller: So you can build up
heavy elements very slowly

over the course of thousands
or millions of years

just by capturing neutrons.

Narrator: Eventually, the core
of the red supergiant

runs out of fuel,
and the star explodes,

blasting its copper-rich
outer layer into space.

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

we can now equip our car
with copper wiring.

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

such as lead for the battery

and gold for the electrical
connectors.

To make these truly massive
atoms, the universe must create

the most spectacular explosions
since the big bang.

[ Rumbling ]

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

Take iridium, a super-tough atom
with 77 protons

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

Next on the heavyweight lineup
comes gold with 79 protons.

This shiny conductor resists
corrosion, making it ideal

for exposed
electrical connections.

These connectors here for this
airbag assembly are gold.

And so this thing can react
really quickly

if there is an accident
and save your life.

The biggest atom in a car
is lead with 82 protons.

Only lead has the durability
to deliver the short burst

of high power needed to start
an engine over and over again.

[ Tires screech ]

But until very recently,
how the universe made these

oversized atoms
was a complete mystery.

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

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

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

you need a truly cataclysmic
event.

Just a few years ago,
most scientists believed

that supernovas were cataclysmic
enough to do the job.

But astronomer Edo Berger
was not so sure.

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

that tells you where gold
came from, it will tell you

that gold came
from supernova explosions.

Narrator: But nobody had
directly observed supernovas

producing elements like gold.

And inside computer simulations,
virtual supernovas

lacked the energy to forge
these oversized atoms.

Clearly, something was wrong.

But if supernovas weren't
powerful enough,

what in the universe was?

Berger: To form heavy elements
requires a lot of neutrons.

And so another possible theory
was that the heaviest elements

were produced in the mergers
of two neutron stars

in a binary system.

Narrator: Neutron stars are some
of the weirdest objects

in the universe.

They're formed from the
collapsed cores of big stars

when they die.

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

and squeezing it down
into a ball

that's only a few miles across.

The electrons and the protons
that are flitting around

inside of that combine to form
neutrons.

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

of neutrons
about the size of a city.

Neutron stars
are extremely dense.

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

it's actually a billion tons.

Narrator: If neighboring stars
die together,

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

to form a spinning binary pair.

But the partnership is doomed.

Thaller: What you're left over
with is two incredibly

compact dramatic objects
spiraling around each other.

Over time they move in together,

until finally they can
coalesce

in the most violent explosion
since the big bang.

Narrator: The explosion is
called a neutron star merger.

The amount of energy in this
explosion is crushing.

There is almost no way
to describe it.

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

that it will ever emit
over its entire lifetime

and releasing it
in a single second.

Narrator: Berger suspects this
colossal explosion

forges iridium,
gold and lead.

But to rewrite the textbooks,
he needs hard evidence.

It was difficult to, uh,
convince the community that this

was a potential channel for the
production of heavy elements.

The proof is to actually
see this process happening

in the universe.

Narrator:
June 2013...

NASA's swift satellite spots
a short burst of gamma rays

from a nearby galaxy,

a sure sign that a neutron star
merger has just taken place.

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

Berger: As soon as we knew
that there was

a gamma-ray burst nearby,

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

to obtain the right kind
of measurements

to test the formation
of heavy elements.

Narrator: Once swift had
identified the burst,

the hubble space telescope swung
into action to capture images.

We grabbed them right away,
and we just looked.

We knew exactly where to look...

At the center
of this red circle.

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

that is the direct signature
of the production

of very heavy elements,
including gold.

Narrator:
Berger's theory was right.

But the rate of production was
way higher than he'd expected.

Berger: Well, in that one event,

the amount of gold
that was produced

was more than the mass
of the Earth.

If we can bring it all here,
it would be worth

quadrillions and quadrillions
of dollars.

Narrator: The theory
is still very new,

but it's possible that ancient
neutron star mergers

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

including the last remaining
ingredients for our car.

But all these elements are still
floating free in space.

What's needed now
is to pull them all together

into one giant
fabrication plant...

The Earth.

Narrator: This is what
your car looked like

before the Earth was born...

Just a vast, swirling cloud of
gas and stardust,

the exploded remains
of ancient stars.

Thaller: The clouds
between the stars of the galaxy

are made of
everything that the Earth,

your body, and your car
is made of.

There's everything that you need
floating in gaseous form

between the stars.

Narrator: Four and a half
billion years ago,

the gas and dust collapse
once more.

It ignites explosively
to create a new star... our Sun.

Thaller:
Close to the young Sun,

all of the lighter stuff
got blown away.

What was left behind was
the heavier, denser stuff.

There was carbon.
There was iron.

There was gold...
Everything in between.

Narrator: Over time,
these free-floating elements

begin to coalesce.

Dust becomes rock.

Rocks join to form larger
objects called planetesimals.

Finally, planetesimals joined
to form the Earth.

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

But those ingredients are about
to go their separate ways.

The Earth is a big planet.

And it's done something that
not all planets do...

It's differentiated.
It melted.

Narrator: Copper and lead
dissolve in sulfur

and float to the top of
the molten Earth,

making these metals
easy to mine today.

But precious metals
like iridium and gold

sink to the core of the Earth,

and most of the iron
sinks with it.

It's kind of a pain, actually.
All the heavy elements

that are super useful,
like iron,

they've sunk
to the middle of the Earth,

where we can't reach them.

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

3.8 billion years ago,
the oceans form,

and water dissolves
the last remaining traces

of iron
from the Earth's surface.

Plait: In fact, there was
so much iron in the sea

that the Earth
would have been green,

not blue like it is today.

Narrator: The Earth's crust
seems destined to be

practically iron-free.

Then, along comes the most
unlikely savior... green slime.

I want to show you a couple
of examples of rocks

that we recently brought back
from South Africa.

Caltech geobiologist
Woody fischer

traces the history of iron

through the Earth's
earliest rocks.

This is an example of a rock
that was deposited

on the sea floor a little over
21/2 billion years ago.

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

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

on the Earth
200 million years later,

and what you find is that things
have really changed.

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

This is from the presence
of iron oxides.

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

Why does the Earth's
geological record

change so quickly
and so profoundly?

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

coincides with the rise
of the first simple plants.

This is a micro-organism
called a cyanobacterium.

Each of the individual cells
that are present in that medium

are green, and they're
conducting photosynthesis.

This group cyanobacteria
is gathering energy from light,

using that to split water.

And in so doing, they produce
copious amounts of oxygen.

In the early oceans,
this newly formed oxygen

quickly binds
to the dissolved iron,

forming a heavy rust that
settles on the ocean floor.

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

Free oxygen in the air.
That combined with the iron.

And the iron basically sank
to the bottom of the ocean.

Narrator: These ancient,
rusty deposits

formed the iron ore we dig out
of the ground

to make cars
2 billion years later.

Thaller: So in the process
of making a car,

mining the iron ore,

life was an essential part
of that first step.

You have to wait until
after these guys evolve

in order to be able
to concentrate

the raw materials
that you need.

The life of early plants
brought us iron.

But their death is perhaps
even more helpful

because without dead plants,
your car isn't going anywhere.

So, what's the final ingredient

for getting a car
to actually go?

You need to add fuel.

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

We use oil.

Oil is actually the remnant
of dead plant life

from billions of years ago.

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

what you're actually running
the car on is ancient dead life.

Narrator: These hydrocarbons
are also processed

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

Now we have almost
all of the components needed

to complete a car.

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

But to get that spark,

the Earth must pay
a catastrophic price.

[ Rumbling ]

Narrator: 65 million years ago,

the Earth's crust
had all the materials needed

to build a car
except for one crucial group

of supertough metals.

This is a spark plug.

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

this gap here.

[ Crackles ]

And that ignites gasoline vapor
in the cylinder of your motor.

[ Crackling ]

This tip has to survive
in very harsh conditions.

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

And the material
in this spark plug

is a metal known as iridium.

Narrator: Like other heavy
metals such as gold and lead,

iridium is born inside
the exploded remains

of neutron stars.

And when the Earth forms, plenty
of iridium is in the mix.

But it quickly
sinks out of reach

while the Earth
is still molten,

falling to the core under
the influence of gravity.

So, where does the iridium
come from that we mine today?

This exposed rock face
in Colorado reveals a clue,

a mysterious layer in
the Earth's geological record

that wraps around
the entire planet.

There's something
particularly interesting

about this Clay layer here.

If you analyze the concentration
of rare metals

like iridium in this layer,

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

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

It's rather bizarre, actually,
to find so much iridium

concentrated in one place
here in crustal rocks.

And it turns out that the entire
budget of the iridium

in the Earth's crust is pretty
much contained in this layer.

Narrator: When geologists
discovered the iridium layer

in the late '70s,
it became one of the biggest

mysteries in science.

How could so much of this
rare metal end up

concentrated
in such a thin layer?

Only astronomers had measured
such high concentrations

of iridium before,
inside rocks

originating
in the asteroid belt.

Thaller: Billions of years ago,
planets were forming

all over our solar system.

But there was an area
in between Mars and Jupiter

where the gravity of Jupiter
pretty much pulled apart

anything that tried to form.

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

that we call the asteroid belt.

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

Other asteroids are richer
in metals.

Narrator: From time to time,

asteroids can get
thrown out of orbit

by another asteroid, or by the
long reach of Jupiter's gravity.

And sometimes, they smash
into the Earth.

Is it possible the iridium layer
was simply

the scattered
remains of a single, giant

metal-rich asteroid impact?

30 years ago, this sounded
like a crazy idea.

Only an asteroid
the size of a city

would have had enough power

to blast debris
around the entire planet.

Durda: If you can imagine
the magnitude, the enormity

of the violence of an event
like that,

and to have inches of dusty
debris

come booming over the horizon
and settling out of the sky

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

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

[ Shrieks ]

Although it sounded crazy,

the asteroid hypothesis
also solved

a longstanding mystery.

The dinosaurs were wiped out
around the same time

the iridium layer
was laid down.

[ Shrieking ]

Could the two events be linked?

Durda: The puzzle was solved
when an asteroid impact crater

was discovered
down in the Yucatan.

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

the same age as this deposit.

And the crater's size turned out
to be just the size

of crater you would get from
the size of an asteroid

it would take
to make this layer.

So it turns out that,
in a lot of ways, you can think

of asteroids as sort of a cosmic
iridium-delivery system

for us here on the surface
of the Earth.

Narrator:
And it's not just iridium

we have to thank asteroids for.

Thaller: There were
probably several times

in the history of our
solar system where there was

heavy bombardment, all kinds
of asteroids and comets

falling in towards the Earth.

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

So not everything sank down
into the core.

So some of the metals
we find around us

are products of this
later era of bombardment.

Plait: The Earth's history
is a violent one.

Over the course of time,
we have been hit over and over

and over again by asteroids
of all sizes.

Some of them have actually
delivered quite a bit

of heavy elements to the surface
of the Earth.

Narrator: These asteroid-borne
materials

include most of the gold,
platinum and nickel

we use in cars today.

Asteroid impacts will form
little pockets of concentrations

of some of those ore minerals
and ore metals for us

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

Plait: In many cases, when you
go to a mine to dig up

these heavy elements,
what you are doing

is tapping into
an asteroid impact.

Narrator: Metal-rich asteroids
are the final piece

of the puzzle.

[ Horns honk ]

We can now reconstruct
the journey of every atom

of our car
through time and space

from the moment of the big bang

through generations of stars
to the birth of the Earth

and, eventually,
the showroom floor.

Cooper: Over the course
of the multiple supernovae

in our universe and the birth
and death of stars,

we were able to collect all
of the materials needed

to assemble these cars.

That's pretty fantastic.

I think we don't fully
appreciate how complicated

the elements that make up
our car really are

and how special they are.
They really are star stuff.

Narrator: But not every car
is like the one

we've just pulled apart.

These days, not every car
runs on gas.

And electric vehicles require
a magical element

that's made in space
by cosmic ray guns.

Narrator: This car
doesn't have a gas tank.

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

The key to these high-tech cars

are their rechargeable
batteries,

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

This here is a battery pack
from an electric car.

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

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

Narrator:
After hydrogen and helium,

lithium is the lightest element,

with just three protons
and four neutrons.

Its lightness makes it ideal
for electric cars.

If the battery weighs more
than the car, then we are just

wasting energy on moving
the battery around.

If we can build a light battery,

for example a lithium-ion
battery,

then we can provide the power
without the penalty

of having to carry
those heavy batteries

along with the car.

Lithium is rapidly becoming

one of the most sought-after
metals on Earth.

But it's also
a cosmic curiosity.

The big bang creates a trace
of lithium.

But as the first stars form,
this lithium disappears.

Unlike hydrogen and helium,
which are fairly stable

on an atomic scale, lithium is
a little bit fragile.

It can actually be broken apart
into its components.

Narrator: As time goes by,
these first stars manufacture

a little lithium on their own,
but it doesn't last long.

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

it's destroyed once again by
the conditions

in the core of the star.

Narrator: So, how does the
universe fuse together atoms

to form lithium?

Surprisingly, it doesn't.

It blasts them apart.

Bullock: The answer for where
lithium comes from

is an amazing thing.

It's almost like
a Sci-Fi answer.

It kind of comes
from ray guns from space.

Narrator:
The ray guns are supernovas.

And their bullets are cosmic
rays, high-velocity particles

that streak through space
at close to the speed of light.

Plait: Cosmic rays
are subatomic particles.

They are atomic nuclei that
are accelerated to high speed

in a supernova explosion.

If another atomic nucleus gets
in the way, it can hit them

and shatter them.

And one of the pieces of
shrapnel from this explosion

is lithium.

The process is a bit like going
bowling, where the bowling ball

is the cosmic ray, and the pins
together are some other

atomic nucleus.

When the bowling ball
smashes into the pins,

it sends them
scattered in all directions.

And one of those pins
could be lithium.

Cosmic rays are traveling
throughout all of space,

between galaxies
and in galaxies.

So the cosmic rays that are
forming lithium

by breaking
other elements apart

are literally doing it
in the space between the stars.

Narrator: Almost all the lithium
on Earth today

was made this way, atom by
atom in the vastness of space,

and then swept up
into the clouds of gas

that formed our solar system.

Oh, yeah, baby.

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

But the production line
for the universe,

that keeps on rolling.

This is pretty awesome.

These atoms in this car here
have been traveling

across the cosmos.

They came to us from maybe
13 billion years ago,

a billion years after
the formation of the universe.

And now, guess what?
They were used,

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

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

In fact, our car will probably
be destroyed

within a single human lifetime.

Time to crush.

It'll be recycled into other
things on Earth.

But eventually, even the atoms
on Earth will be recycled

with the rest of the cosmos.

How cool was that?

You could imagine my car
gets destroyed with the Earth,

and eventually it makes its way
to another planet.

It gets built into some other
kind of transportation mode

by an alien race...
I mean, that's totally possible.

And I think that's kind of
a cool idea. [ Laughs ]

From stars being born billions
of years ago

to cosmic rays
to even the big bang itself,

it's amazing to contemplate
all of the things

that had to come together
in the universe

for us to have cars.

Thaller:
You really are driving around

in the end product
of something that started

13.7 billion years ago.

Plait:
That new-car smell?

That's actually old-universe
smell

because that smell is
traceable all the way back

to the big bang.

How you like that?

That guarantees the last word
in a... in a show.

Okay, yeah.

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