All language subtitles for IMAX Solarmax 2000 720p BluRay x264-CLASSiC_track3_[eng]

We're at the edge
of a spiral galaxy,-

-far from
the galactic core.

This small planet
is our Earth,-

-its pole crowned with
a circle of "Northern Lights".

The whole planet glowing
in the infrared warmth-

-of a star we rarely
think about,-

-a star we call "Sun".

It is almost midwinter
in Ireland.

Soon the Sun will begin its
journey back from the south.

Waiting for the Sun
is a Stone Age buiIding,-

-older than
the Pyramids of Egypt.

Above the entrance
is a mysterious skylight-

-built by people who understood
very well the ways of the Sun.

Sunrise on the shortest day of
the year; the winter solstice.

On that day,
the first rays of the sunrise-

-spear through the skylight-

-and down a perfectly aligned
passageway to penetrate-

-to the room at
the core of the structure,-

-to mark almost magically,
but with great precision,-

-the beginning
of a new year.

This is the oldest room
on Earth,-

-its careful alignment
perhaps the oIdest evidence-

-of scientific thought
ever found.

Our Sun is a star,
one of billions.

It has shone for
five biIlion years-

-and will shine
for five billion more.

For us,
it is the great engine of life.

lf you're near the pole,
the summer days never end.

The Sun shines
through midnight-

-and new days are born
out of days that never ended.

There, you can almost feel the
Earth rolling around beneath the sky.

Most ancient civilizations
recognized the Sun-

-as the source
of all Iife and caIled it God.

They observed it
with care,-

-sometimes setting up
stone markers-

-to send that
knowledge through time.

The one sure prediction
in an unpredictable world:

The Sun sets,
but the Sun also rises.

Any break in that pattern once
caused terror and foreboding.

The Sun is 400 times bigger
than the Moon.

But the Moon
is 400 times cIoser.

So on those
rare occasions-

-when the Moon passes
exactly between us and the Sun,-

-the disk of the Moon exactly
covers the disk of the Sun.

Masked by the Moon, the Sun
reveaIs its mysterious corona.

The eerie streamers of light
heightened the mystery-

-and increased the power
of those who could predict-

-these awesome events.

We have
the eclipse records-

-kept by the astronomer priests
of ancient BabyIon.

They are so accurate that
scientists today use them-

-to correct
computer programs.

The Sun Gate
at Tihuanaco in Bolivia.

A fragment of a sun cult dating
back more than 1 ,000 years.

Nearby, high in the Andes,
is Lake Titicaca-

-and in the center of
the lake, The lsland of the Sun.

On this isIand, this rocky hill
was once plated in lnca gold.

Here the Sun God
anointed the first Inca-

-and sent him north
through the Andes,-

-to create an empire that grew
to be as big as Europe,-

-with many dazzling cities,-

-among them, the lost city
of Machu Picchu.

Like the peopIe
of ancient lreland,-

-the farmers of the Inca Empire
needed an accurate calendar.

If they pIanted their terraces
too soon,-

-the corn wouId freeze
in the ground;-

-too late,
and it would never ripen.

There is one buiIding at Machu
Picchu that is like no other:

The Torreon.

Its curved wall is pierced
by an opening that is so aIigned-

-that it will project the first
rays of the midwinter sunrise-

-precisely to the edge
of a carved rock,-

-and so mark
the first day of the Inca year.

The highest outcrop
at Machu Picchu-

-is called
"The Hitching Post of the Sun".

From it, the Incas imagined
a great Ieash-

-stretching out
to hold onto the Sun-

-as it paced the horizon
like a restless Ilama.

The ancient Greeks
imagined the Sun as a god-

-who drove his chariot
across the sky.

But they abandoned their myths
for a more rational cosmos-

-nearly two and a haIf
thousand years ago.

AristotIe taught
that the world was round-

-and theorized
that the Sun and pIanets-

-must be carried through space,
embedded in crystal spheres-

-that were nested around
the Earth, like Russian dolls.

He assumed that the Earth was
at the center of the universe,-

-misleading astronomers
for centuries.

By then,
the all powerful church-

-had pIaced God in Aristotle's
seventh heaven.

The cathedral at Frombork,
on the shore of the Baltic Sea.

At about the time
Columbus sailed for America,-

-a young astronomer struggled here
with the contradictions ofAristotle-

-as he observed the tracks
of the planets across the sky.

To Nicholas Copernicus,
it made no sense...

...until he made one of the great
intellectual Ieaps of alI time.

The Sun was the center
of a system,-

-the Earth,
merely one of its planets.

It was a cosmos
awesome enough-

-for one of humanity's
great minds: Galileo GaliIei.

Galileo was the first person to
point a telescope at the stars.

He saw that
Copernicus was right.

Galileo found
that the Sun-

-was not the flawless orb
required by dogma.

It was as spotty
as a teenager.

The Sun was
at the center.

But the church had no intention
of vacating center stage.

Galileo was put on trial
before the Inquisition,-

-a court that had the power to
burn him at the stake,-

-to inflict
any torture.

They showed him
their instruments,-

-and the threat
was enough.

The most respected scientist
of his day-

-signed a confession
that he knew was nonsense.

Dogma had triumphed.

The cathedrals of the new age
were the cathedrals of science.

And new instruments were built,
not for torture,-

-but to find
new galaxies...

...to peer into the heart
of the Sun.

At first, researchers couId see
only the bland white face-

-that is revealed
by visible light,-

-and sometimes the procession
of mysterious dark spots-

-that some took
to be clouds.

The Earth's atmosphere cIouded
and distorted the image.

But in time,
the great solar telescopes,-

-like Big Bear in CaIifornia,-

-blew away the notion
of a placid unchanging Sun.

People wondered
what the Sun was made of,-

-but never expected
to know.

lt's 93 miIlion miles away!

The answer was discovered in the
colors of the sunlight itself.

As each element burns,-

-it consumes
its own distinctive color,-

-writes its own signature in
a dark line across the spectrum.

Our Sun is mostly made
of hydrogen and helium,-

-some carbon and iron
and other elements,-

-much the same elements
we are made of,-

-but that's not surprising, since
we're born of the same stars.

There had been hundreds
of stories and theories-

-to explain the aurora.

But no one suspected
a connection with the Sun.

An eccentric Norwegian
scientist, Kristian Birkeland,-

-buiIt his own world
in a glass box,-

-electrified his model Earth
with its own magnetic field-

-and showed how eIectrons
from the Sun-

-could ignite
earthly auroras.

And he predicted that
they wouId be identical-

-and simultaneous
at both poles.

Birkeland was right,-

-but proof of his theories,
and so much else,-

-had to wait
until we could step into space.

Space has given us
new eyes.

Everything we gIimpsed before
can be seen anew.

A stormy night as we fly towards
the coast of Australia...

We are heading south,
out over the Southern Ocean,-

-towards Antarctica.

This is SOHO,-

-built in England and France
for the European Space Agency,-

-with instruments from Europe
and the U.S.A.

It was launched
by NASA-

-and parked a milIion miles
from Earth at a point-

-where the gravity
of the Earth exactly balances-

-the gravity of the Sun.

SOHO shows us the Sun
as we have never seen it before.

A wider lens,-

-the image is
30 million miles wide,-

-the Sun blanked out,-

-so we can see the corona
jetting out into space.

Here, the two images
are combined.

Billions of tons of particles
fired into space-

-at a million miles an hour...

...sometimes,
directly at our Earth.

We are saved
by our magnetosphere,-

-an invisible magnetic shieId
that protects us-

-from the Iethal
particIes that are spewed out-

-by our Sun
and other stars.

This soIar storm pushed the edge
of our magnetosphere-

-twice as close
to Earth as usual,-

-disabling satellites, wiping out
radio communications worIdwide,-

-and sending voltages
soaring dangerously-

-in everything from power
transformers to oil pipeIines.

Repairs after the last Solar Maximum
cost more than $1 billion.

A century ago, space storms
could pass unnoticed.

But 2,000 satellites have been
launched since the last Solar Maximum.

Every aspect
of our civilization-

-depends on
their uninterrupted functioning.

Sun storms can kilI
satellites.

They can
also kill astronauts.

For long space flights, a dangerous
storm is a practical certainty,-

-and finding effective protection
a necessity.

But at present, the best we can do
is try to avoid Solar Maximum.

The Sun has north and south
magnetic poles, just like the Earth,-

-But every 1 1 years, those poles
reverse with unimaginable violence.

That peak of violence
is calIed Solarmax.

The 1 1 year cycles can change,
even vanish completely.

About 1 ,000 years ago,
the Sun was unusualIy active.

It was about the time
the Vikings settled-

-a grassy new land
they called "Greenland".

Thousands moved there,
but then the Sun grew quiet-

-and the solar cycles almost
stopped for a hundred years.

The average fall in temperature
was just two degrees,-

-but it was deadly enough.

The bays froze over,
the peopIe starved.

No one survived.

Recently, scientists
have found that suns Iike ours-

-normally produce a superflare
about once every century.

A superflare would destroy
half of our ozone layer,-

-and the entire satelIite fleet.

We are fortunate
that our Sun-

-seems to be much more stable
than most other suns.

A tiny new spacecraft
called "TRACE"-

-brings us
a view of the Sun-

-that is stilI largely beyond
the scope of our understanding.

Magnetic field lines burst
through the surface,-

-to unleash in seconds
as much energy as the world uses-

-in a milIion years.

On the horizon is the mountain
that Native Americans call-

-"The Pivot of the Sky".

This is Kitt Peak - in Arizona,-

-site of the
National Solar Observatory.

The small telescopes
on the spacecraft-

-work in harness
with large telescopes on Earth.

The combination produces resuIts
that are much more valuable-

-than any of them
could obtain alone.

This is what we call
the surface of the Sun,-

-the layer revealed
by visible Iight.

Embedded in it
are two sunspots,-

-each big enough
to swallow the Earth.

With filters and computers,
we can peel away the Iayers-

-as we'd turn the pages
of a book,-

-searching for
a better understanding-

-of the forces that shape
our universe.

And more urgently, that shape
the climate of our world.

We urgently need
to know more.

So an International Solar
Terrestrial Program was devised,-

-linking satellites and a chain
of observatories-

-to create one
"Great Observatory".

A surprising discovery was
the singing of the Sun.

As the Sun hums to itself,
a milIion pure tones change-

-as they resonate
through the plasma,-

-revealing to us
tides and currents far below.

In a Munich Iaboratory,
final testing of a satellite-

-that is destined to be flown
into the eye of a solar storm.

It is one
of four identical spacecraft-

-designed to fly together
in formation-

-to capture a unique 3 D picture
of the space environment.

The formation encloses
a pyramid of space-

-and monitors everything
that happens inside that space.

The tiny fleet wilI give us
an unprecedented view-

-of the interaction of the solar
wind with our magnetosphere,-

-from the bow wave
to the distant taiI.

As the miIlennium
approached,-

-everything was in place
to make the Solarmax of 2001-

-a miIestone in our search for
understanding of the Sun.

But a mistake was made
in a command sent to SOHO.

In a split second,-

-SOHO went from being the
flagship of a space fleet-

-to a useless piece
offrozen junk.

The SOHO team
refused to give up.

From alI over Europe
and the U.S.A.,-

-they rushed
to the control center at NASA-

-to brainstorm ideas,
working to save their ship.

Months passed.

Dozens of schemes
were tried.

It was like trying to raise
a submarine with a fishing line.

But against
all the odds,-

-a signal hooked
into the control computer.

DelicateIy, pains takingly,
tiny surges of solar power-

-thawed out fuel
for the thrusters.

Incredibly, the whole array
of critical instruments-

-proved tough enough to survive
being frozen solid for 3 months.

SOHO came back
from the dead.

In a nation where land
is at a premium,-

-15,000 acres of virgin forest
preserve the shrine at Ise.

It is Japan's most
sacred shrine,-

-the Shrine
of the Sun Goddess,-

-and every year,
the emperor pays his respects.

No one but the emperor and the
closest members of his family-

-can enter
the inner shrine.

It was the
Sun Goddess herself-

-who appointed
the first emperor of Japan.

So even today,-

-one of the world's most advanced
nations still has a Sun King.

Every morning of the year,
people travel to sacred pIaces-

-and rise in the darkness to
await the daily miracle.

Every sunrise brings hope.

For some, it's the hope
that we can learn to do-

-what the humblest plant
can do:

Make clean and abundant energy
directly from sunlight.

This aircraft is on its way to an
altitude of more than 80,000 feet,-

-twice as high
as a jumbo jet.

It is powered
only by sunlight.

It set a new world record -
and poses a new challenge:

The challenge of finding cheap
and practical ways-

-of using the Sun
and the sun driven winds-

-to bring clean and inexhaustible
power to the machines of Earth.

Machines that would fit as
naturally as trees and flowers-

-into the web of life.

It is winter
in the high Andes,-

-just before sunrise
on Midwinter's Day.

The first day
of the Inca calendar,-

-and by some counts, the first
day of a new milIennium.

It is time to prepare for
the festival of Inti Raymi,-

-time to celebrate the sun.