All language subtitles for rocky start nova lifes MİNERALLER 720p HDTV EN Sub_Subtitles01.ENG

NARRATOR:
They're dazzling.

Priceless.

At times, even glowing.

ROBERT HAZEN:
How can one not fall in love
with rocks and minerals?

I mean, the colors,
the shapes...

NARRATOR:
And they're the building blocks
of modern civilization.

HAZEN:
We wouldn't have televisions,
we wouldn't have automobiles,

we wouldn't have buildings

without the mineral riches
that we have.

NARRATOR:
But could rocks and minerals

also solve the greatest mystery
of all time--

the origin of life?

HAZEN:
The rocks we pick up
tell a story:

that life couldn't have occurred
without rocks.

NARRATOR:
Could cold, lifeless stone

hold the key to every
living thing on Earth?

From Australia to Morocco,

NOVA goes around the world
and back in time

to investigate the origin
and evolution of life.

You look at a rock and you
think, "Ah well, nothing,"

but this holds
the signature of life.

NARRATOR:
From its first spark...

JEFF BADA:
People were saying they made
Frankenstein in a test tube.

NARRATOR:
...to the survival
of the fittest.

These were immense creatures--

sharks that may have been
50 or 60 feet.

NARRATOR:
Was it the secret link
between rocks and life

that made the difference?

"Life's Rocky Start,"
right now on NOVA.

Major fuNARRATOR: NOVA is
The ancient market of Marrakech,

a chaotic, colorful
gathering place

teeming with life
for thousands of years.

The perfect place to ask,
how did this exotic, beautiful,

and sometimes bizarre thing
called life begin?

How did Earth go
from a lifeless, molten rock

to a living planet

full of diverse
and spectacular creatures?

It's a question that has
long perplexed scientists.

Now Robert Hazen, a geologist,
is trying to show

we are missing
an essential ingredient

in the recipe for life...

HAZEN:
Look at that vein of calcite.

NARRATOR:
Rocks.

HAZEN:
Nothing seems more lifeless
than a rock.

It's inanimate, it's the
antithesis of a living thing.

But we are beginning
to realize that rocks played

an absolutely fundamental role
in the origin of life.

Aw, yeah.

NARRATOR:
Hazen is out to expose
a secret relationship

between rocks and life
that helped drive

both the origin of life

and its evolution
into complex creatures.

HAZEN:
This is a very new
set of understandings

and the more we look,
the more we see

that life depends on rocks,
rocks depend on life

and this has been going on
for four billion years.

NARRATOR:
As a geologist, it's no surprise
that Hazen is searching

for answers written in stone.

But is he right?

Are rocks the missing
spark of life?

The history of Earth
is unimaginably long.

If it were sped up to the
equivalent of a single day,

all of humankind
from the earliest skeletons...

(phone ringing)

...to the invention
of the iPhone

would have occurred
in only the last four seconds.

Dinosaurs were still
roaming Earth

about 20 minutes before that.

But the creation of our planet

occurred more than
23 hours earlier--

two cycles on this clock--
or 4.5 billion years ago.

Comprehending Earth's vast
history is a formidable task.

HAZEN:
There's four and a half
billion years of change.

But you can divide it
into half a dozen ways

of describing Earth
through time.

NARRATOR:
Bob Hazen has come up
with another way to visualize

Earth's long history
that reveals

this special relationship
between rocks and life.

He has divided it
into six stages,

each represented
by a different color.

To understand how we ended up
with green Earth--

the planet we now know--

requires us to turn
the clock back,

to before there was any life
at all.

Stage one was the creation
of black Earth.

(indistinct chatter)

Back in Morocco,

Hazen and Adam Aronson,
a meteorite expert,

seek out a small rock from
the beginning of our cosmos.

Wow, look at
this pile here.

NARRATOR:
These are meteorites, rocks
that have fallen from space.

This is Tamdackht.

This is the one that
fell 20 kilometers

up the road from here.

People saw it fall.

NARRATOR:
A recent meteorite fall in
Siberia was captured in videos

that have shown up on YouTube.

Other space rocks have ended up
for sale here in Morocco.

So you'd buy this
without doing tests?

I would drop
the cash right now

if he would give me
a good price.

(speaking Arabic)

NARRATOR:
Meteorites here can sell for
tens of thousands of dollars.

That may seem a steep price
for a lump of rock,

but these are some
of the very oldest objects

in our solar system.

HAZEN:
This is the oldest object you
could ever hold in your hand.

It's 4.6 billion years old

and it was formed
before earth formed.

This is the very first
solid material,

the very first rock
in our solar system

and these came together
to build all the planets.

NARRATOR:
Our Earth was created
out of the rocks and dust

present at the start
of our solar system.

Over time, small fragments
of orbiting rock collided,

coming together into the planets
circling the sun.

At first, Earth was molten

with temperatures
in the thousands of degrees.

But in the cold vacuum of space

this hot rock
began to cool and change.

Nothing, not a speck of dust,
is believed to have survived

from the period of black Earth.

It was a hellishly
unpleasant time.

Volcanoes spewed hot lava
from deep inside the planet.

When it cooled,

it covered Earth with its first
rock, called basalt.

And it was black.

It seems
like a desolate landscape.

But some ingredients
that life will need

are already here
in these rocks.

Look inside and you begin
to understand how intriguing

even an ordinary rock is.

HAZEN:
Every rock, you slice it open,
you look inside,

there's something special.

NARRATOR:
Rocks are made up mostly of
minerals, which are crystals

like quartz or diamonds.

Looking through a microscope
at super-thin slices of a rock

lets you see
its mineral composition.

This is the rock peridotite,
made up of small crystals

including olivine and pyroxene.

Even a simple black basalt rock
spewed from a volcano

becomes a patchwork
of colorful minerals.

It's sort of like a fruitcake.

You know, you slice it open,
there's nuts,

and there is dried fruit,
and maybe some lemon peel.

It's made of lots
of little things.

And it's not until you slice
into that fruitcake

that you see all the stuff
inside that makes it special.

NARRATOR:
What makes them special
is not only their beauty.

Minerals have remarkable
chemical and physical properties

and are a source
of many of the elements--

nature's building blocks.

That is why they're essential
in our modern world

to make everything
from skyscrapers taller

to mobile phones smaller.

Extract the element molybdenum
from the mineral molybdenite

to make steel harder,

or add a pinch of cobalt

and your iPhone battery
will last longer.

HAZEN:
Minerals are the fundamental
building block of societies.

We wouldn't have televisions,
we wouldn't have automobiles,

we wouldn't have buildings

without the mineral riches
that we have.

NARRATOR:
So were the remarkable
chemical properties of minerals

also key in creating life?

If so, Earth would need more
than it started with.

It's estimated that the
meteorites that formed Earth

had only about 250 minerals,

sort of a chemical starter kit
containing many of the elements.

Then in the intense heat
and pressures

in the creation of our planet,
new minerals began to form.

This changed the appearance
of our Earth from black to gray.

Yosemite National Park is a
relatively new piece of Earth.

But the kind of rock that makes
up these dramatic cliffs

goes back much further.

These huge walls are granite,

containing minerals
like quartz and feldspar.

Granite became the foundation
of our continents,

leading Earth
into the gray period.

At this point,
Earth is still a long way

from the glorious diversity
of plants and animals

that makes Yosemite
so picturesque.

But the stage is set

for the next character
in our planet's story:

water,
which will turn Earth blue.

Water plays a central role
in every model

for the origin of life.

That's because water
is such a great solvent.

All these different kinds
of molecules

can be floating around the water

and then they have the potential
to interact together.

The starting point is the water.

NARRATOR:
So when did Earth cool enough
to have liquid water,

this element key to life?

HAZEN:
One of the biggest unknowns
in this whole idea

of going from black to gray
to a blue water-covered Earth

is how quickly it happened.

The timing was a big mystery.

NARRATOR:
The Pilbara in Western Australia

is one of the oldest places
on Earth,

and so one of the best places
to solve the mystery

of the planet's first oceans.

Hazen joins an all-star team
of geologists

including Martin Van Kranendonk,

from the University
of New South Wales

and John Valley
of the University of Wisconsin.

Valley is collecting rocks
that could hold clues

to when water first appeared.

We can get zircons
and other minerals

that date all the way back
to 4.4 billion years old.

Hopefully.

NARRATOR:
Some rocks here contain
sand-sized grains

that weathered from
even older rocks.

One in a million-- literally--
is a crystal called zircon,

one of the longest-lasting
materials in nature.

Zircon is a popular gemstone,

but the microscopic zircon
found here

is even more precious.

HAZEN:
Zircon crystals
are especially amazing.

Gemstone zircons of course
are valued,

but these tiny ones
that geologists value

are microscopic.

They make a lousy ring, but
they tell an incredible story.

NARRATOR:
To tell that story,

John Valley must first find
the tiny crystals--

the ultimate
needle in a haystack.

VALLEY:
If you want to find
a needle in a haystack,

the first thing you do
is you burn down the haystack.

Then you'd sift through the ash
to look for the needle.

NARRATOR:
Rocks are pulverized
into sand-sized grains

and sorted by weight
in a machine

developed to pan for gold.

The gold that Valley is looking
for are heavy zircon crystals,

which get channeled
into different tracks.

Then, grain by grain,
with a very steady hand,

thousands of small crystals
are sorted and analyzed.

The chemical structure
of a zircon crystal

holds evidence of both
the environment

and the age when it formed.

Some of these tiny crystals
go very far back,

just over 100 million years
after Earth formed.

They are the oldest pieces
of Earth ever discovered,

so they could shed light on what
our young planet looked like.

VALLEY (laughing):
It's totally amazing to me.

To hold this grain of sand
in the palm of your hand

is literally to see
back through time.

It is a time machine.

NARRATOR:
Valley expected these
crystal time machines

would confirm the long-held view
that the young Earth

was covered in molten lava,

still cooling after
its violent formation.

I think the zircon on the left
looks very promising.

NARRATOR:
So what he discovered
was shocking

because this type of zircon,
created 4.3 billion years ago,

could only have formed
in the presence of liquid water.

But how could there be water

if Earth was still hot
and hell-like?

VALLEY:
The implications were that
the early Earth had water.

It was cooler and it was wet.

It's starting to look very much
more familiar.

NARRATOR:
And if water is a key
starting point for life,

could there be life
that early, too?

VALLEY:
The science of the zircon
is telling us that the Earth

for a very, very long time
was a habitable environment.

Not necessarily
that there was life then.

We don't know that yet.

But there's no reason why
there couldn't have been life

as early as 4.3 billion
years ago.

NARRATOR:
So if life were possible that
early, it begs the question,

how did life begin?

In 1871, Charles Darwin

speculated in a letter
to a friend

th warm little pond
might be life's birthplace.

A warm soup of chemicals
bathed by energy from the sun

would have been, well,
comfortable for molecules

to come together in new ways
and create life.

Darwin was way, way
ahead of his time.

A nice little warm soup
is going to get you a long way.

NARRATOR:
Jeff Bada of the Scripps
Institution of Oceanography

in San Diego,
has spent his career

working to understand the early
Earth's soup of chemicals.

He began under the direction
of perhaps

the most famous scientist
in origin of life research--

Stanley Miller.

HAZEN:
There are in the history
of science turning points

where we suddenly see
the history of Earth

and life differently.

In the early 1950s,
Stanley Miller,

the eager graduate student,
and Harold Urey,

the Nobel Prize winning mentor
at the University of Chicago,

conducted this
astonishing experiment

where they made
an early Earth environment.

BADA:
It looks like this sort of a
Frankenstein-type apparatus.

But actually, it's a very
carefully thought out design.

NARRATOR:
Bada sets up a modern-day test
of the 1950s experiment

on Miller's original
lab equipment.

BADA:
One flask contains water.

That's to simulate the ocean.

The other flask
has just got the gases in it.

So this is the atmosphere.

(gas hissing)

NARRATOR:
Just as it does in nature,

water from the ocean evaporates
and rises into the atmosphere,

where it condenses
and returns to the ocean.

Miller simulated what he
believed to be the atmosphere

of early Earth with different
gases like ammonia and methane.

Then,
he added a spark of genius.

(electricity humming)

BADA:
Miller and Urey decided to use
a spark to simulate lightning

because that's such
a ubiquitous process

in the atmosphere of the earth.

HAZEN:
That was the real inspiration,

these little electric sparks

they acted like simulated
lightning.

NARRATOR:
The energy from the spark
of lightning

breaks down
the gas and water molecules

so they can undergo
further chemical reactions.

HAZEN:
To their astonishment, when they
turned this apparatus on

after only a couple of days
you started seeing

this pink color developing.

And then a few more days,
black, oily goo

is forming around
the electrodes.

NARRATOR:
The electrodes get covered
with new substances,

organic compounds
usually associated with life.

And it wasn't just
any organic compound,

it was amino acids
that make proteins.

The ingredients for life.

NARRATOR:
Amino acids are the
building blocks of life.

They form proteins,

which are the key component
of muscles and other tissues.

People thought, "Aha!

This is a key step
in the origin of life."

And you really believe that
you can bring life to the dead?

That body is not dead.

It has never lived.

I created it.

NARRATOR:
The experiment raised the fear
that a Frankenstein creation,

like in this classic film,
was just around the corner.

It's moving.

BADA:
People were saying they made
Frankenstein in a test tube.

It's alive!

Now I know what it feels
like to be God!

NARRATOR:
Had Miller and Urey cooked up
life in a test tube?

BADA:
Many of the news headlines
were saying,

"Life created
in the laboratory!"

"Life created in a test tube!"

Well, of course that was wrong.

The real news
was he'd made these compounds

that are part of life.

NARRATOR:
By creating amino acids,
the Miller-Urey experiment

seemed to confirm
that Darwin was right--

life must have begun
in a shallow pond.

But then, 24 years later,
a shocking discovery

radically challenged that idea.

On the dark ocean floor,

more than a mile
below the surface,

explorers found hot,
mineral-rich hydrothermal vents,

like underwater volcanoes.

Temperatures reached
more than 600 degrees,

and yet here life was thriving,
not off the sun's energy,

but through chemical energy
from the vents.

No one realized that life
could thrive without sunlight.

Here you have
this extreme temperature

and this extreme pressure,

and so you have to shift
your perceptions

and realize that just because
it's extreme to us

doesn't mean it's extreme
to those microbes.

NARRATOR:
Instead of the warm
shallow pond,

could this dark and unlikely
environment be where life began?

To answer that,
Hazen decided to try creating

life's building blocks in the
conditions of a deep sea vent.

HAZEN:
My first thought was gee,

why don't we do
a Miller-Urey experiment,

but do it at high temperature,
high pressures?

NARRATOR:
Hazen's laboratory

is at the Carnegie Institution
for Science,

which is famous for experiments
that simulate

the intense pressures
deep inside Earth

with powerful tools
called pressure bombs.

They're called bombs
for a reason--

because things can explode.

(loud explosion)

NARRATOR:
Hazen and his colleagues
adapted these pressure bombs

to model the environment
of the deep sea vents

in a small gold tube.

What they discovered
came as a surprise.

Nothing happened.

HAZEN:
You can take basic gases--

nitrogen, CO2,
maybe some sulfur compounds.

You can mix those,
you can put them in a gold tube,

you can heat them up.

You don't get much
that's very interesting.

NARRATOR:
Simply squeezing and heating the
ingredients had little effect.

Hazen was missing the spark,

like in the Miller-Urey
experiment,

the thing that kickstarts
the chemistry.

HAZEN:
So we said, "What's going on,
what's different?"

Well, look at the natural
environment,

there's all these rocks
and minerals.

Let's try putting
some rocks and minerals in.

NARRATOR:
They recreate
the early Earth cocktail,

but this time grind in powder
from rocks and minerals.

But will Hazen's beloved rocks
do the trick?

(air hissing)

They run the experiment again.

And this time the atoms reform
into new organic molecules--

including amino acids.

HAZEN:
As soon as you put
powdered rocks and minerals

into the gold capsules,

then all sorts of really amazing
things started happening.

You made organic molecules,

they became more stable,
they lasted longer,

and it really pointed us
in the direction of saying,

"Aha, this has got to be
part of the story."

NARRATOR:
While scientists still argue

if life began in shallow ponds
or deep sea vents,

both sides wonder,

what part of the story did rocks
and minerals play?

One possible answer
may be found in London,

in the powerful properties
of mud.

Most people will be familiar
with the material.

It's very gungy.

That's perhaps a British word

that refers to something
which is soft

and unpleasant, generally.

NARRATOR:
Peter Coveney
of University College London

is busy playing in mud--
at a very sophisticated level.

He has created
powerful computer simulations

that can track
the precise movement

of up to ten million atoms.

Mud can contain clay,

which is made up of some
of Earth's most common minerals.

What makes it so gungy

and perhaps essential
in the origin of life

can be seen deep
in its atomic makeup.

COVENEY:
You can see here the basic
structure of any clay.

It's comprised of a large number
of stacked sheets

like a deck of cards.

NARRATOR:
Sheets of clay
have spaces between them

that fill up with water
and other molecules.

These extensive surface areas
can help create

more complex molecules,
potentially even RNA,

an essential part
of life's genetic code.

COVENEY:
One of the most
challenging questions

in the origin of life

is how we get
from the simple building blocks

to the complicated structures

we know are fundamental
to living systems.

Clays provide a clear mechanism
for achieving that.

NARRATOR:
These simulations show that
the secret to clay

lies in its surfaces.

The surfaces of these minerals
are incredible.

They do all sorts
of chemical tricks.

NARRATOR:
Hazen says minerals, like clays,

illustrate a fascinating aspect
of chemistry,

because the surface
where reactions take place

can be as important
as the ingredients themselves.

The most exquisite chemistry
occurs at surfaces.

Your body, your cells
are almost entirely surfaces

on which chemistry takes place.

So when we think
about the origin of life,

the minerals sort of replace
surfaces you have in your body

that do that chemical work.

NARRATOR:
We are finally beginning
to understand the secret role

minerals could have played
in life's origin.

They provided some
of the ingredients and surfaces

where important chemical
reactions take place.

So when in Hazen's color phases
did all this happen?

One of the best places

to figure that out
is back in Australia,

where Hazen and team
are now searching for signs

of Earth's earliest life.

HAZEN:
I can't believe these rocks

are three and a half billion
years old.

They look like they formed
last week.

NARRATOR:
Martin Van Kranendonk
leads the team

to a very unusual
rock formation.

You get your eye casting up,
you see them,

all wrinkly,
laminated, black.

Yeah!

VAN KRANENDONK:
And then if you look
a bit further back,

you see a very large
domical structure.

HAZEN:
There's no obvious way

that a chemical or physical
process would form that.

VAN KRANENDONK:
Exactly.

NARRATOR:
These strange shapes

are fossilized remnants of life
called stromatolites,

beautifully preserved
in these ancient rocks.

VAN KRANENDONK:
This is an amazing spot.

We're actually looking down
on the surface

of the ancient Earth here.

This was the seafloor

3.4 billion years ago,
and I can see it in action.

It's like a snap frozen
instant of time.

NARRATOR:
But billions of years
have taken their toll.

To really understand
stromatolites,

we have to go
nearly 800 miles away.

David Flannery, a geologist,
has come to Shark Bay

in search of their
very distant descendants.

Just below the surface, he finds
a series of round, black mounds:

living stromatolites.

FLANNERY:
Modern environments like these,

they're very rare,
but they are really the key

to interpreting what we see
in the very early fossil record.

Without environments like these,
we wouldn't know

how stromatolites were built.

NARRATOR:
Stromatolites
are something like coral,

a hard mineral structure that
has been built layer by layer.

A closer look
reveals the builders.

Microbes-- single-celled life.

FLANNERY:
The living part
of a stromatolite

is only the surface
where the living microbial mat

is building up the structure
layer by layer

at less than a millimeter
per year.

NARRATOR:
The top layer of these
stromatolites is alive,

with microbes that perform
a remarkable trick.

They capture minerals and sand
in the water

and biologically cement them
layer by layer

into the solid mounds.

The results can be seen
in Shark Bay today

and in the ancient fossils.

Yeah, let me introduce you
to this outcrop.

It's just spectacular
to be able to see this.

NARRATOR:
And this outcrop is unique.

Van Kranendonk has dated
this stromatolite

to 3.5 billion years ago.

This is the very oldest fossil
of life on Earth.

HAZEN:
We all want to know
where we come from,

where life originated,
how long ago, in what form,

and this is the oldest
direct evidence we have

for life on Earth.

NARRATOR:
But while stromatolites

are the earliest fossil of life
we've found,

that does not make them
the very first living thing.

In fact, Van Kranendonk thinks

that by the time
stromatolites appeared,

life's party was already
in full swing.

There are whole communities
and colonies

that are building fantastically
complex structures,

so we've actually come in
pretty late to the game.

There is a lot that's gone on
before us to get to this stage,

and it's this complexity
that tells us that life

probably originated on Earth
very early.

NARRATOR:
So if these very early fossils

are too complex
to be the oldest form of life,

is it possible
to find something earlier?

That is what Ruth Blake,
a geologist at Yale University,

is trying to figure out

by turning
to the geological equivalent

of a crime scene investigation.

BLAKE:
The crime has been committed.

The criminal is gone,

but they've left behind
some indicator

because they've changed
their environment.

NARRATOR:
Blake is analyzing some
of the oldest rocks on Earth,

like this ground-up one
from Greenland

that formed
at the bottom of an ocean.

She is looking
for a chemical signature of life

left by microbes,
including bacteria.

What we start with is our ocean
trapped in a rock,

and our bio-signature
is somewhere in here.

We have to get it out.

NARRATOR:
In the lab, Blake and her team

dissolve these rocks
and extract molecules

that are the chemical signature
left behind by ancient microbes.

All life, like these microbes,

consumes nutrients
to produce energy.

The leftovers carry
the chemical footprint of life.

Even today, we humans leave
behind chemical footprints.

BLAKE:
When we breathe, for example,
we're taking in oxygen

and we're exhaling CO2
and water vapor.

That water vapor interacts
with your environment.

NARRATOR:
Amazingly, rocks
from 3.5 billion years ago,

at the time of the stromatolites
in Australia,

also carry a strong
chemical footprint of life.

But when Blake analyzes
the Greenland rocks

from 300 million years earlier,

she makes a tantalizing
discovery.

BLAKE:
As far back
as 3.5 billion years,

we see a strong biological
signature.

And the older rocks
are approaching that,

but not quite there,

but we do believe that
we see something there.

NARRATOR:
Blake believes she has detected
the faint signal of life

at 3.8 billion years ago,
only 700 million years

after Earth was created,
early in the blue phase.

There is still much
that we don't know

about our early planet, but some
things are becoming clearer.

If you could transport yourself
back in time

about four billion years,
parts of our Earth

might not look too different

than this Southern
California beach,

minus the surfers and poodle.

You could stand on cliffs,
probably of granite,

overlooking oceans
that were increasingly rich

with minerals
and early microbial life.

But you would quickly die
in a great deal of pain,

suffocating
in the heavy atmosphere

rich in nitrogen
and carbon dioxide,

but lacking in life-giving
free oxygen.

Then something truly astonishing
happened.

Those harmless-looking microbes

floating in the water
or on stromatolites

started to change everything,
turning Earth red.

HAZEN:
Wow.

Oh, my God, this is amazing!

There aren't many places
on earth

you can see something like this.

NARRATOR:
A remnant of red Earth
can be seen in Australia

at the Hamersley Basin
in Karijini National Park.

In these rocks, Hazen finds

a startling consequence
of early life

as it began to thrive
and evolve.

What we're seeing here
is one of the greatest tricks

that life ever figured out.

And that was
how to take sunlight

and convert it to energy.

NARRATOR:
Microbes, like those in the
stromatolites at Shark Bay,

eventually began to live
off the sun's energy

through photosynthesis.

That led to a dramatic rise

in a gas that Earth
was not accustomed to:

oxygen.

While to us, oxygen
is a life-giving benign gas,

to a world not accustomed to it,

oxygen created a dangerously
corrosive cocktail.

The early oceans were filled
with dissolved iron.

The new oxygen reacted
with that iron,

and it began to rust

and sank to the bottom
of the sea.

HAZEN:
These little microbes,
they're microscopic things,

and you wouldn't think
they could do all that much.

But when they produce
that oxygen

and the oxygen reacts
with the iron in the oceans,

you get the world's
largest deposits of iron--

thousands of feet covering
hundreds of square miles.

NARRATOR:
These formations
cover a vast area

with trillions of tons
of iron ore.

That is an unimaginable
consequence

of trillions upon trillions
of microbes breathing.

HAZEN:
It's a fundamental change
in the chemistry of Earth.

It's a consequence
of the rise of oxygen.

NARRATOR:
The rise in oxygen
that rusted iron

and sent Earth
into the red phase

also created many new minerals.

HAZEN:
As a mineralogist,
when I look at Earth history,

I see big transitions.

I see the moon forming impact,

I see the formation of oceans
and so forth.

But nothing, nothing matches

what life and oxygen did
to create new minerals.

NARRATOR:
Some estimate that the
meteorites that formed Earth

began with only
about 250 minerals.

Today, there are more
than 5,000.

Hazen believes that two-thirds
of all the minerals

that now make up our planet

were created by the introduction
of oxygen.

And most of that was, in turn,
created by life.

BOY:
Amethyst.

HAZEN:
It's mindboggling.

Rocks create life,
life creates rocks.

They're intertwined in ways that
are just now coming into focus.

NARRATOR:
But the road ahead
for life and for rocks

would not be easy.

As we head into the next phase
of Earth,

new continents formed
and broke apart,

which may have created dramatic
extremes in the climate.

Earth plunged into an icy
freeze, turning it white.

In these frozen conditions,
life was nearly wiped out.

Fortunately, active volcanoes

still poked through
the icy veneer,

billowing out carbon dioxide,
or CO2.

Like a thermal blanket
around our Earth,

this kept heat in
and rescued life.

HAZEN:
Life all but shut down.

And then the CO2
rises and rises

and the greenhouse effect
gets hotter and hotter,

and suddenly the planet melts.

NARRATOR:
Cycles of these snowball
hothouse conditions

had profound consequences
for life.

One result was more oxygen,

which eventually allowed
for bigger animals.

The dramatic changes
during white Earth

would bring us
to the present phase

starting about
540 million years ago--

a living planet

filled with diverse plants
and spectacular creatures.

But those life-forms
are pitted against each other

in a survival of the fittest,

and rocks can make
the difference

between life and death.

That struggle can be seen
back in Morocco,

at the edge
of the Anti-Atlas Mountains.

Here, Bob Hazen
and Adam Aronson

are looking for evidence
of an evolutionary trick

that shows once again
how life and rocks

took a big leap forward
together.

520 million years ago,

this valley was a shallow ocean
filled with new forms of life.

This is when the diversity
of life on Earth exploded,

all thriving in a living sea.

HAZEN:
So if you were a scuba diver
and you dove down to this reef,

you'd see all kinds of life
swimming around,

really amazing,
probably very colorful, too.

NARRATOR:
There is one creature that
dominates this ancient reef

that Hazen wants to find.

HAZEN:
Nothing there.

Nothing there.

And nothing there.

NARRATOR:
Fossil hunting is a game of luck
and persistence,

but it doesn't take long for
Hazen to strike geologic gold.

Whoa!

Jeez, look at that.

That is amazing.

NARRATOR:
The trilobite.

HAZEN:
Hey, look, there's
another head there,

and the head there, two more.

Boy, this is rich rock.

The trilobites here are amazing

because these are the oldest
animals that you can find

that are preserved as
what you think of as a fossil

that you can hold in your hand.

NARRATOR:
Some trilobites were like
horseshoe crabs

scurrying about the ocean floor.

The reason they are found
as fossils today

is because they developed

an astonishing
evolutionary trick...

shells.

Trilobite shells were made
of calcium carbonate,

the same mineral
found in limestone,

the rock that built
the pyramids.

In effect, life itself
began to make rocks

for its own advantage.

And the idea went viral.

HAZEN:
If you had a shell, you're going
to survive a lot longer

than that soft-bodied animal
that doesn't have a shell.

The trilobite had an advantage.

It's survival of the fittest.

NARRATOR:
The trilobite's mineral shell

heralded a new phase
in the evolution of animals,

catapulting our planet
into the present stage,

green earth, one that is rich
in diverse life.

From humans back to trilobites,
we owe our evolution

and survival
to the world of minerals--

with shells, then eventually
with bones and teeth

that paved the way for life
to grow taller and stronger.

All are evidence of life
co-opting minerals

for its own evolutionary
advantage.

HAZEN:
We've thought for centuries,

"Animals, minerals, they're
separate kingdoms, right?"

But it turns out they overlap,

they're intertwined,
they co-evolved.

That life makes minerals,

and minerals have led
to new life-forms.

You can't separate the two.

Life and rocks
are totally intertwined

through billions of years
of Earth history.

NARRATOR:
One of Hazen's favorite places

to see this intertwined history
of life and minerals

is at the Calvert Cliffs
along the Chesapeake Bay.

He and his wife Margee

pick up shells and shark teeth
from a time

18 million years ago when
massive sea creatures swam here.

That's nice,
isn't that pretty?

HAZEN:
You find teeth

along the beach that are five,
six, sometimes seven inches long

with serrated edges--
razor-sharp teeth.

These were immense creatures,

sharks that may have been
50 or 60 feet long.

NARRATOR:
These giants of the sea

would have dwarfed today's
great whites.

And it was the bones and teeth
created with minerals

that enabled them to grow
so large and powerful.

HAZEN:
They were feeding on whales.

Dolphins would have been
a snack.

NARRATOR:
They are just one small part
of a story of co-evolution

stretching back
to Earth's beginning.

HAZEN:
The life, the rocks,
it's all part of the same story.

NARRATOR:
Step by step,
throughout Earth's evolution,

minerals and life
have sparked chemical reactions

that sculpted the planet
into what we see today

and helped create
the life we know.

HAZEN:
At this place, you get a sense
of the immensity of time

and the constancy of change.

Life is creating
and sculpting our surroundings

in ways that are
quite wonderful.

And just to recognize the power
of life to transform a planet.

(engine revving)

Of course, humans transform
the planet too.

We build cities, we build roads,

we change the composition
of the atmosphere

and change the composition
of the oceans.

There are going to be
global changes.

NARRATOR:
These changes whose consequences
are now beginning to unfold

are the latest chapter
in Earth's epic story--

a story that began

four and a half billion
years ago with a rock.

The exploration continues
online,

This NOVA program
is available on DVD.

To order, visit shopPBS.org,
or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.

NOVA is also available
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