All language subtitles for Alien Deep with Bob Ballard 3of5 Its Alive NG 720p_ENG_Subtitles01

ROBERT BALLARD: I've dedicated
my life to exploring the unknown.

I've been places no one else
has ever gone.

I've seen life no human eye
has ever seen.

It's my passion.

I found the Titanic.

God damn!

I've survived crushing depths

and a rogue wave.

But even after 50 years at sea,

I'm as fascinated with the deep

as I was on my very first expedition.

You want to know
my most important discovery?

Well, it's the one
I'm about to make.

I'm Dr. Robert Ballard.

Come with me
into the alien deep.

MAN: Starboard engine
is ahead, 20 RPS.

MAN: This is pilot?

MAN: Yes, you ready to go?

MAN: Roger that.

MAN: Alright, here we go, guys!

NARRATOR: Dr. Robert Ballard
is convinced that

life arose at the bottom
of the ocean,

in one of the most extreme places
on our planet.

And he's setting out
to prove it.

BALLARD: We have ships
all over the world.

In fact, I'm in constant satellite contact

with NOAA's ship of exploration,
the Okeanos Explorer.

This is the Inner Space Center,
calling the Okeanos Explorer,

you hear me, over?

MAN ON RADIO: Inner Space Center,
this is the Okeanos Explorer.

NARRATOR: The Okeanos Explorer
is heading to the Pacific,

looking for
the emergence of life

on deep, undersea volcanoes.

BALLARD: On the other side
of the world

we have an Irish team
on a research vessel,

the Celtic Explorer.

MAN: We've got a target in front of us.

BALLARD: They're investigating
a part of the Atlantic

no one has ever seen before.

NARRATOR: Ballard thinks
this site in the Atlantic

could be a huge
geological factory

that keeps life going
on our planet.

MAN: You get to do this sort of thing
once in a lifetime.

BALLARD: We have another team
in the wildest ocean in the world-

the Antarctic.

MAN: We know there is
a big vent site here

that's chucking out
lots of black smoke.

BALLARD: And I'm headed
to one of the most dangerous

undersea volcanoes
on our planet.

So what are we doing?

We're trying to find out why
this amazing planet of ours

is just right for life.

And I'm convinced the answer lies
in the dark, deep ocean.

NARRATOR: Over 30 years ago,

oceanographer and geologist
Dr. Robert Ballard

stumbled upon a form
of alien life,

where he had been told
it could not exist.

Until that point,

all life was thought to rely
on energy from the sun.

BALLARD: That was the food chain,
and we were led to believe, that's it.

NARRATOR: But Ballard
was part of a team

that discovered
a different kind of food chain,

deep, where sunlight
could not penetrate.

BALLARD: We find a system
that's completely operative

in the total darkness
of the deep sea,

and that the life-giving energy
is not the sun,

but the energy
of the earth itself.

We threw out
all our biology books

and started all over from there.

NARRATOR: The life-forms
Ballard discovered

were thriving at sites known
as hydrothermal vents.

These vents arise

when water that has seeped
into the seafloor is superheated

to many hundreds of degrees
by hot magma.

Working its way to the surface,

it forms roaring chimneys
of hot, black water.

Ballard's find turned
biology on its head.

Now he's out to prove that
these extreme conditions

were ground zero for life
on our planet.

BALLARD: So this is maybe
a laboratory,

to better understand how it
all began in the first place.

NARRATOR: The NOAA ship
Okeanos Explorer

is transiting the Panama Canal.

It's heading out
into the Pacific,

to the very same
hydrothermal vent area

where Ballard discovered life
in the deep, back in 1977.

MAN: Permission
to start the winch.

MAN: Roger, starting the winch.

We got the bottom on sonar.

MAN: Ah, yes, we do.

MAN: Bottom on both sonars.

MAN: That's great, thank you.

NARRATOR: Science expedition leader
Tim Shank

has also been here before,

and he knows the area
is rich with life.

TIM SHANK: It wasn't just
a few animals here,

it was massive animals,

I mean, clams the size
of dinner plates,

I mean, huge fields of mussels,

groves of tube worms
that were 10 feet tall,

I mean, no one
could have imagined that.

Hammerhead shark.

MAN: Wow.

SHANK: It was a hammerhead shark.

NARRATOR: Six years ago,

a massive volcanic eruption
covered the vents in fresh lava.

SHANK: Right now,
what we're doing is

looking between
the rock margins.

NARRATOR: So this is now
a fantastic opportunity

for Shank to find out
if life rebounds,

and how quickly it adapts
to new conditions.

SHANK: It's very dynamic.

There's magma moving
underneath it all the time,

and there's crustal cracking
and deformations happening.

They're changing on the order
of seconds to minutes,

hours to months.

Current depth is 595 meters.

NARRATOR: Shank's been up
for two days straight,

and he's found very few
signs of life.

Ocean research is
painstaking work.

SHANK: I'm exhausted,
physically drained, actually,

because I've been trying to
locate sites on the seafloor.

Maybe there's been
a volcanic eruption

in this location as well,

and now it's covered up
the site we were looking for.

Really don't know.

I'm gonna probably collapse

because I've been on the edge
of my seat all day,

trying to find the site,
doing the best we can.

There's a lot more
hard bottom here

than I thought
there was going to be.

NARRATOR: So far, the team has failed
to locate any new vents,

or life-forms living
in the lava fields.

But for Ballard,
this is only one site among many,

and he's convinced that
where there are volcanoes,

there must be life.

To him, the place to prove it
is one he became obsessed with

as a geology student-

the North Atlantic seafloor.

BALLARD: When I saw this,
it brought order to chaos,

because you could see
the beautiful thing

about the North Atlantic

is it's symmetrical about
the Mid-Ocean Ridge.

You've got a continent here.
You've got a continent here.

You've got the continental shelves,
continental shelves,

continental slope,
continental slope,

continental rise,
continental rise,

abyssal hills, abyssal hills-

a beautiful symmetry.

NARRATOR: And right in
the center of that symmetry

is what's known as
the Mid-Ocean Ridge.

It's a giant crack
in the seafloor

caused by the constant separation

of the planet's great
crustal plates.

It runs around the entire earth
like the seam on a baseball.

And it oozes the earth's blood-

red-hot volcanic lava.

The plates move
incredibly slowly,

but there is a place on Earth

where their separation
can be seen...

Iceland, where Ballard has come
for a unique swim

in freezing,
crystal clear waters.

BALLARD:
Boy, that's truly amazing.

I'm literally at the boundary
of creation in Iceland.

On my left is
the North American plate,

right here, I can put my hand
on North America.

I can reach over here and put
my hand on the Eurasian plate.

And this is the very spot where
the earth is spreading open,

about an inch a year, about
your height in your lifetime.

Iceland's incredible.

It's part of the Mid-Ocean Ridge
that has been pushed up

from the ocean bottom
by a giant volcanic hotspot.

İt's one place on the earth
where you can go

and see what it's like to be
on the bottom of the ocean,

but you're still on the surface.

NARRATOR: Iceland
graphically reveals

what the Mid-Ocean Ridge
is like-

highly volcanic.

BALLARD:
What people don't realize

is that our planet is
riddled with volcanoes,

but they're almost all
hidden beneath the sea.

Literally thousands of them
down there!

NARRATOR: Because the Mid-Ocean Ridge
is so volcanically active,

it's covered in countless
hydrothermal vents...

...the very places Ballard thinks
life on our planet arose.

BALLARD: You know, hydrothermal vents aren't just
somewhere

where there's weird tube worms
and giant clams living.

Without deep ocean vents,

I very much doubt
we'd be here today.

NARRATOR:
If Ballard's other team,

out in the middle
of the Atlantic,

is lucky, they might just
help prove that claim.

But right now,

before they can begin searching
for new hydrothermal vents,

they're struggling
to even reach the site.

1,000 miles south of Iceland,

the Irish vessel Celtic Explorer is arriving

over the Mid-Ocean Ridge
at 45 degrees north.

The team has had a grueling,
1,000-mile journey.

ANDY WHEELER: When we headed out,
the weather that we'd hoped to miss,

we went straight into it.

So we got quite a battering.

We were rolling around a lot.

Some of the stuff on deck
started to shift a bit.

People suffered a little bit
from seasickness.

Wasn't very pleasant.

But it's much better now.

We're much nearer the site.

NARRATOR:
The spot Andy Wheeler is seeking

was first identified
a few years ago,

when his colleague, Bram Murton,

was passing over it
on another vessel.

The ship's water sensors
sniffed a powerful scent,

and as a geologist,
Murton immediately suspected

they were picking up
the chemical signature

of hydrothermal vents.

BRAMLEY MURTON:
What you don't realize is right below us,

and it's only two and a half
kilometers down,

is this entirely
different landscape.

Plate tectonics is generating
this mountain range,

big cliffs, fissures.

You could go across a fissure,

and you look down
at this gaping crack,

you cannot see the bottom.

İt's 50, 100, 200 meters deep.

BALLARD: So 10 kilometers...

NARRATOR: This part
of the Mid-Ocean Ridge

is mountainous.

But scientists have long thought
it was fairly inactive.

BALLARD: Well, the data the team has suggests
otherwise.

There could be some very powerful
vents down here,

and if there are,

it's a vital part in understanding
how our planet works.

MURTON: High volume,
but very infrequent

we get these big sheet flows
out here...

WHEELER: It's taken
another three years

to get another ship out here.

And that's us.

And we're gonna pick up
where they left off,

and we're gonna have
a look at these vents.

And it's very exciting.

We're getting close now,
which is great.

NARRATOR: First,
the team has to relocate

the chemical signature
in the water.

They drop a water sampler
down to 10,000 feet.

The initial results
are exciting.

Directly beneath the ship,
rising from the bottom,

are huge smoke-like plumes,
thousands of feet tall-

a sure sign that
the team is above

a field of hydrothermal vents.

But before they send a robot sub
down to investigate,

there's work to be done.

BALLARD:
Just sending a robot, an ROV,

to the bottom of the ocean
could be an expensive mistake.

You need to have some idea
of what's down there.

It could be
a flat, abyssal plain,

a deep canyon,
an erupting volcano.

In short, you need a map.

NARRATOR: The sonar scans
of the ocean floor

from previous expeditions
were blurry and indistinct.

So the team re-scans the area
in high definition.

The scans prove that
they've ventured into a landscape

as alien as the moon.

MURTON: it was just as I would imagine
Neil Armstrong

when he stepped out of
that lunar lander,

and he just looked across
this gray landscape.

I just got this great sense of

no one has ever
seen this before.

No one's ever been here before.

NARRATOR: Far from being
a dead, lifeless ridge,

this could be nothing less
than one of the primary pistons

in the planet's machinery for life.

BALLARD:
And that's why we're here.

We're here to learn about

how the earth
is not only creating itself,

but how this process of creation

led to the creation of life
on our planet,

and why it sets it apart from
other planets in our solar system.

NARRATOR:
But as the team deploys the ROV,

they're in for a nasty surprise.

After paying out
10,000 feet of cable,

Wheeler, Murton
and the rest of the crew

quite literally reach
the end of their rope.

MURTON: We've come down
10 the bottom of a cliff,

and we've just entered a domain
of thick, black smoke so thick,

on occasions, we can't even see
a foot in front of us.

We're right on top of
a very powerful chimney

pumping out extremely
black, smoky water.

And we're right on the very end,
edge of our wire.

We've got as much wire out
as we can put out.

NARRATOR: The team decides
to take a risk.

Usually, they leave 200 feet
of cable on the winch

as a safety measure.

But today, they cautiously
pay out 100 feet of it.

MURTON:
It's incredibly frustrating right now,

because we just can't-

3,000 meters down,
another 20 meters to go.

How close can we get?

WHEELER: We're just like that

from making
a big, big, big discovery.

MURTON: We're straining
on the leash here.

BALLARD: I've been
in this situation

more times than
I want to remember.

Deep ocean exploration
is not for amateurs.

Unbelievable pressures,
freezing temperatures,

a world of eternal darkness.

You are limited by what
your equipment can do,

limited by your budget.

WHEELER: I've got, I've got
an electronic drum kit

set up here.

And that's kind of a little personal
pressure valve for me.

So if I'm feeling stressed

and I'm feeling angry
and frustrated,

I come in here and bang
on the drum kit

and then come back and say, yes,

calmly wait for the dive
to go on.

But in the back of your mind
is always this kind of worry,

is this it?

Have we come all this way
and they're just a little bit,

just a little bit
too far, far down

and we're not going
to deliver the goods.

NARRATOR;
Within feet of their targets,

Ballard's teams in both
the Atlantic and the Pacific

seem to be lost in the darkness.

For three days
out in the Atlantic,

Andy Wheeler and
the Irish oceanographic team

have been struggling to reach
deep-ocean chimneys

they're convinced lie just below
the maximum operating depth of their ROV.

Finally, as the camera
tilts down...

WHEELER: Oh, my God!

MAN: Well done.

MURTON: You're in it, man.

WHEELER: You're in it.
There she goes.

There it is, there's the smoker!

Woo-hoo.

MURTON: Just incredible.

WHEELER: It's three years,

and there it is,
we're eyeballing it.

MURTON: That's amazing.

This is just fantastic.

You get to do this sort of thing
once in a lifetime...

once in a lifetime.

WHEELER:
That is just brilliant, brilliant!

NARRATOR: This was previously
assumed to be

a fairly dull part of
the North Atlantic seafloor.

Wheeler, Murton and the team have made
a momentous discovery

that revolutionizes
our understanding

of this part of our planet.

MAN: Yeah, this is a forest.

[woman gasps]

Beautiful.

MAN: Wow.

MAN: Oh, man.

Absolutely stunning.

MURTON: Fantastic.

NARRATOR:
Over the next two days,

the team maps a two-mile section
of the ridge.

What they reveal is
a steep-sided valley,

and on it, a dense forest
of active chimneys.

Some are up to 60 feet high.

BALLARD: The seawater that's
roaring out of the vents,

it's superheated
by red-hot magma

to over 400 degrees centigrade.

Now what looks like
clouds of smoke,

well, they're actually
plumes of water,

and it's packed with chemicals,
minerals and dissolved gases.

WHEELER: Without black smokers,

without mid-ocean ridges,

without that whole chemical factory,

the oceans would become

devoid of elements,

would become sterile.

BALLARD: That's why the ocean
is so beautiful.

It's over three billion years old

and still looking great,
at least for the moment.

That's because
it's always being rejuvenated

by this amazing
internal circulation system

that we only recently discovered.

NARRATOR: The team takes
rock samples to better understand

the chemistry of the vent fluids.

MURTON: Like a trophy.

Like a giant salmon.

Oh, [bleep].

Oh, not such a giant salmon now.

That's okay, we're going to
cut it up anyway, guys.

Fantastic, absolutely stunning.

What a beauty.

MAN: Oh, look at all the pipes
in the bottom here.

One, two, three,
four, five, six,

maybe seven little tubes.

MAN: So, Bram, how many people
have seen these things?

MURTON: One, two, three,
about eight of us.

[laughter]

That's pretty rare.

MAN: That is gorgeous.

BALLARD: Okay, so we have
these chimneys here.

They're pumping out heat,

chemicals,
and valuable minerals.

Alright, we know that.

But why are there so many exotic creatures living around
them?

Where did they come from
and how do they survive

in what is a really
hostile environment?

NARRATOR: Across the world,
near the Galapagos Islands,

Tim Shank and the NOAA team
are trying to find out.

They've spent three days

searching a vast,
fresh lava flow

for hydrothermal vents and life.

MAN: Parallel to this wall,
never seen...

SHANK: Great, that's great.

Okay, the flow does appear
to be thicker here

than what we saw yesterday.

Two hours ago we were thinking
the dive was nearly over,

and we were running out of hope
of finding a vent area.

You can tell
I'm a little excited,

because we're now sitting here
filming this new site.

We're seeing crabs and shrimp

actively scraping off microbes
from the rocks.

These are snails.

Oh, did you see that?

That big puff right there?

That coming out,
that's spawning.

That Riftia right there just spawned.

We're seeing polychaetes,
these are worms, little, red worms

that are moving along the rocks,
also eating what's on the rocks,

SO microbes are here,
it's extensive.

NARRATOR: Shank is finding
old colonies and new,

meaning these hardy creatures
can survive volcanic eruptions

and establish new colonies
very quickly.

In fact, this may be
the natural cycle here.

BALLARD: This is
the Inner Space Center

calling the Okeanos Explorer.

You hear me, over?

Hi, Tim, I see you
on the big screen.

So can you tell us
what you've been up to

over the last several days?

SHANK: I think we're seeing
just the creation events.

Life coming in to these areas

following some sort of
recent activity,

some seafloor type of diking
or eruption down there.

But I could just go on.

It's been really, really
amazing out here.

And this exploration
has been fantastic.

BALLARD: Any sense of the length
of these cycles,

if they're decades in your mind?

SHANK: You know,
that's the great question,

and to see these clams,

I think that they've got to be
more than 20 years old.

I mean, they are really
breaking apart.

And yet, just less than
a meter away

we're seeing vents
that look very rigorous

and vigorously venting

and small animals
are colonizing.

It's like the new
on top of the old.

I would say we're seeing
sort of decadal type cycles,

maybe even a little bit longer.

BALLARD: Well, I'm sure you're gonna
hate to have to cut it off,

but you'll be heading back tomorrow,
is that your plan?

NARRATOR:
As Shank's team finishes up

in the Galapagos area,

their work points to what seems
like an inevitable conclusion-

that life thrives on
the highly volcanic rock.

BALLARD: So what we're seeing is that
this planet is just perfect for life.

It's incredible.

No matter how extreme
or hostile,

life seems to be able to get
started almost anywhere.

NARRATOR: Even in the Antarctic,

thousands of feet down
on a volcanic ridge,

one team is discovering
an eerie colony of creatures

straight out of a nightmare.

Around all the hot hydrothermal vents scientists have
explored,

life has been abundant.

Even in the freezing cold waters
at the bottom of the world.

Biologist Jon Copley and
a team from the United Kingdom

are the first scientists
to visit hydrothermal vents

in the Antarctic Ocean.

JON COPLEY: We know there is
a big vent site here

that's chucking out
lots of black smoke

that's going up into the water

which we can detect with
our chemical sensors

that sniff these things out.

We found the chimneys,

and we found just a lush
garden of life at the bottom

covered in tiny, little
squat lobsters,

barnacles, snails.

We're now climbing up
to the top of the chimneys

to see if they're active,

see if there's black smoke
coming out of the tops.

And there is!

There it is!

Yeah, there's a shrimp.

NARRATOR: Sonar scans of
the ocean floor 8,000 feet below

reveal a very strange world.

A vast rift valley supporting
small islands of chimneys,

each with discrete
colonies of life.

At a site dubbed Ivory Towers,

the team sees
a brand new species-

squat, blind, hairy-looking crustaceans
called Hoff crabs-

affectionately named for
the hairy-chested actor,

David Hasselhoff.

How the crabs can exist here
is a testament

to the amazing diversity
that life can toss up.

They survive by growing
and eating microbes

on fronds that hang
from their bellies and claws.

To feed the microbes,

they fight to be as close to
the nutrient-rich, superheated water

as possible.

Water so hot,
it would cook them if they fell in.

NICOLAI ROTERMAN: They're fighting
for space,

for access to prime real estate,

they're jostling for position over the best,

the warmest water
with the most hydrogen sulfide.

And it's quite a scene,
I mean, they're writhing over each other.

It's almost terrifying.

You can imagine it
in a horror movie or something.

NARRATOR;:
At the top of the vent,

nearest the hottest,
richest water,

are the large breeding males.

Beneath them,
the juvenile males.

And at the bottom,
the smaller females.

BALLARD: What seems to be critical
about all these vent sites

is the existence of microbes

that can actually thrive
in this hostile world.

They grow on the barren
rock surfaces,

and they're eaten by
other life-forms.

They are actually the basis
of this food chain.

But how do they get here
in the first place?

And that's what we are going
to find out next.

And I actually think we've located
a spot on Earth

where we are really
seeing ground zero,

and it's a very, very
primitive landscape.

NARRATOR:
Halfway around the world,

in much more pleasant waters,

Ballard is on board
his own research vessel

near the Greek Island
of Santorini,

in the heart of
the Mediterranean Sea.

While it looks idyllic,
this is actually the crater

of a still-active giant volcano

that erupted cataclysmically
3,600 years ago.

BALLARD: All humans
are interested

in the violent behavior
of our planet.

You don't want to be
at a spot on our planet

where it decides to itch itself.

And this is a place where
you didn't want to be in 1650 BC.

Just as you didn't want to be
on the slopes of Mount St. Helens

when it went.

The problem is trying to predict
when it's gonna do it.

NARRATOR: Santorini will
likely erupt again,

but Ballard believes there is
an even greater threat nearby.

BALLARD: You know,
everyone that comes here,

they focus on Santorini,

but the volcano to really
keep your eye on is Kolumbo,

just a few miles away.

It's much more active,
it's much more likely to erupt,

and in terms of life,
it's a lot more primitive.

NARRATOR: Kolumbo is a submerged,
highly active volcano

that lies five miles
off the coast of Santorini.

The deep interior is isolated
from the wider ocean around it.

Nearly 2,000 feet down
in almost undisturbed water

is a vast field of unusual
hydrothermal vents.

These are what Ballard
has come to see.

MAN: Can we have a ship stop
right here, over?

MAN: Yeah, we can camp out here.

NARRATOR: The team is measuring
the temperature of the water

streaming from the vents.

MAN: Look at that!

MAN: It's a gusher.

WOMAN: Can we break 2007

MAN: 183, 188, 192...

WOMAN: Yes!

MAN: 196, 197...

WOMAN: Excellent.

MAN: 200, yes!

NARRATOR: The research
could help predict

when Kolumbo will erupt.

But what really
interests Ballard

are the large mats of
orange and white microbes.

Little else seems
to thrive here.

And that is strange.

BALLARD: This is almost
a bacterial-driven life system.

You're not getting
the mega fauna.

And I think this is what
you want to study,

because it's sort of
ground zero,

this is, this is
the fundamental system

on which the other things
are dependent upon and flourish.

NARRATOR: Ballard's finds reveal
that the waters of Kolumbo

are highly saturated
with carbon dioxide.

Similar, he believes,
to Earth's very early oceans.

BALLARD:
You have to wonder, I mean,

could this be the kind of place
where life on Earth began?

Did it get its initial
foothold here

in a world of total darkness
bathed by hot water

saturated with poisonous gas?

NARRATOR: The answer
to that question may lie

in one of the least primeval
places on our planet-

Los Angeles!

Like Robert Ballard,
NASA scientist Michael Russell,

based at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
in California,

is out to show that life
could have originated

in the deep ocean.

But he's doing it in a lab.

MICHAEL RUSSELL:
All the ingredients of life, remarkably,

are focused at this one place
on the deep ocean floor.

Everything you need.

Just like, to my mind,

everything you need here
is in LA.

NARRATOR: Russell and his team
have built tiny vents

in simulated
ancient ocean water.

They're attempting to recreate
the first stages of life.

WOMAN: So you can pretend
like this red cap here

is the ocean floor.

We have the syringe full
of our hydrothermal fluid

that's rich with hydrogen,
and it bubbles up

and it comes through
this ocean floor.

NARRATOR: Russell believes
the building blocks of life

must have assembled
in ocean water like this,

when the early earth was
covered with ocean.

RUSSELL: There was no land
to speak of.

It was almost 100% water.

It was a very rough place,

the day lasted
about eight hours,

the moon was
extraordinarily close,

the waves were huge,

there was nothing to
stop the hurricanes.

We had to be out of the way,

right down in the bottom
of the womb of the world,

so to speak, right down
at the bottom of the ocean.

NARRATOR: Though Russell's lab
has yet to hit the headlines

by actually creating life,

his experiments may help
narrow down

the likely locations
and conditions of its origin.

BALLARD: So we've found these
mineral-rich black smokers

in the Pacific, the Arctic,
Antarctic, Atlantic,

as well as other places
around the world.

But is this really where life
actually began on our planet,

or are black smokers
just too hot and hostile?

Well, these lab experiments are
beginning to tell us the answer.

NARRATOR: Back in Iceland,
in a fjord on the Arctic Circle,

Ballard is approaching
one likely spot.

It's a hydrothermal vent
shallow enough to dive to.

BALLARD: Wow, look at that.
My goodness.

We're going to hit it.

NARRATOR: Less than 60 feet below
Ballard's chartered fishing boat,

a towering chimney rises
from the depths.

Local dive master
Erlendur Bogason

discovered it only
a few years ago.

BALLARD: Wow, look at that!
Now, is this just side echoes, right?

ERLENDUR BOGASON:
No, this is the heat coming off.

BALLARD:
Oh, this is the actual...

BOGASON: Yeah,
the water coming out.

Yes, from the bottom, everywhere.

BALLARD: Wow, look at that.

Just pouring out.

BOGASON: So it's beautiful.

NARRATOR: You don't need
an ROV or a submarine

to get to this vent,

but you do need to dress
for the occasion.

Today Bogason is
escorting scientists

from the University of Iceland
to the site.

They've been sampling the rocks,
vent fluid, and life here,

in the hope of isolating
novel chemicals.

A tethered camera gives Bob
and researcher Sesselja Omarsdottir

a front row seat.

BALLARD: I think this is cool

because I'm not
freezing to death!

Normally, I'd be down there
freezing to death.

Instead of an ROV,
I have an ROP.

A Remotely Operated Person.

The only thing
I'm missing right now

is a nice bottle of Chardonnay.

Oh, look at that guy.

Look at those dentures!

Did you see how he came in?

Like, "I am going to bite you.”

NARRATOR: It takes not hours,
but just a few frigid minutes

to reach the vent.

BALLARD: Yeah, there you can see
the shimmering water.

SESSELJA OMARSDOTTIR:
It's amazing.

BALLARD: Yeah.

NARRATOR: The vent water here
is clear, not black,

because of the mix of chemicals
and minerals it contains.

BALLARD: This is the spire,

and you can see
the shimmering water.

And because it's shimmering,

you know it's warmer
than the ambient water.

NARRATOR: The plume is a toasty
170 degrees Fahrenheit,

but cooler than
a 750-degree black smoker.

That's because this chimney
is further away

from the hot magma of
the Mid-Ocean Ridge.

The lower temperatures make
for a different chemistry.

BALLARD: The water coming
out of these vents,

it's actually alkaline,

it's not acidic
like the black smokers.

And the chimneys like this
release chemicals into the water

that are the building blocks
of organic molecules.

And inside the vents

are these tiny, little,
interconnected chambers,

just the sort of place
cells can develop and grow.

NARRATOR: This is a good spot
for life's emergence,

though it's only one
of many possibilities.

BALLARD: You know,
whether we'll ever nail down

exactly where we came from,
who knows?

But certainly we're getting closer
to understanding

and narrowing the possibilities

and coming up
with good candidates

of finally finding
the smoking gun.

Literally, a smoking gun.

NARRATOR: But whether life originated
in hot vents or cool,

Ballard the geologist
is convinced of one thing-

life definitely arose
from the magical union

of hot rock and ocean water.

BALLARD: Don't think of
the earth as, you know,

as sort of this random rock
in space.

It is a living,
breathing creature.

NARRATOR:
In his search to understand

why planet Earth is
so suited to life,

even in the most
extreme environments,

Dr. Robert Ballard is returning
to a truly unique place.

BALLARD: 27 years ago,

I was privileged to witness
a truly primitive event-

the birth of new land
from a wild ocean.

But what I want to know now

is how is life doing
on this virgin piece of planet Earth?

NARRATOR: The volcanic island
of Surtsey, south of Iceland,

burst from the ocean floor
in 1963.

What began as
an undersea volcano

is now a mile-wide island
brimming with life.

BALLARD: Amazing!
Look at the-this is so different.

My goodness.

It's like I'm on another island.

When I was here,
this was all barren lava.

Coming out of that crater
up there.

It looked like that crater.

It had no greenery.

There was nothing.

It was new Earth.

This is younger than me.

This island is
younger than I am.

Wow.

I would think maybe
in 100 years or 1,000 years

you could be at this,

but this, a Garden of Eden
so quickly.

It's unbelievable.

İt's an amazing process.

It's a whole,
once you get it going,

it just goes and goes and goes.

It was primordial landscape.

The Earth came out of the sea

and created new tissue
to its surface

in a different environment
from beneath the sea.

And then look what's happened.

MAN: Over here
I am quite anxious.

This is a new species
for the island.

BALLARD:
Life is full of surprises.

Wow.

See the chicks running around
over there?

I know it's really hard for people
to grasp the concept

that the earth is alive.

But we're on a creature
that's been around

for billions of years,

constantly changing
through its life.

And we just can't grasp
that time warp.

But in fact, the earth
is constantly changing

and will continue to change
through its entire life.

NARRATOR:
Life loves planet Earth.

It seems to arise everywhere,

even in conditions that
would destroy humans,

like a highly acidic hot spring.

BALLARD: So, maximum temperature
where we are right now.

MAN: Well, it's up to 100 degrees,
it's boiling.

BALLARD: Almost acid.

MAN: Like boiling sulfuric acid.

BALLARD: Exactly.

Boiling sulfuric acid,

I mean, you couldn't get
a worse kind of world,

yet life has said,
"Okay, I can make this work,"

which I find so amazing.

MAN: It's really amazing

under what conditions
you can find life.

NARRATOR: Even here,
life has found a way

to extract the heat, water
and chemicals it needs to exist.

A small spring like this

can host over 500 species
of bacteria.

BALLARD: I'm smelling
sulfuric acid. Okay?

If I step over there,
I'm going to go to the hospital,

'cause I'm going to be
severely burned.

So, yeah, it's always amazing

that life could actually function,
thrive, experiment,

and move forward
in an environment like this.

NARRATOR: Ballard and others
are convinced

that this potent mix of
active volcanoes and ocean

means life on Earth is
virtually guaranteed.

RUSSELL: Life is inevitable
on this kind of world,

absolutely inevitable.

MURTON: Now we realize
that any kind of energy,

even energy from the interior
of the planet, can support life.

And it's that realization
of the abundance of life

and its ability to scavenger energy
for its own purposes,

which is really revolutionizing
the way we view life

and its ability to exist.

RUSSELL: It's not a struggle
to make it.

As soon as the energy was there,

as soon as the right conditions
were there,

it would have onset,
or emerged, if you like,

to bring the universe,

or at least this local part
of the universe,

closer to equilibrium.

So you could say that the rock
is our ultimate ancestor.

BALLARD: What's really amazing
about planet Earth

is because
it's a living organism,

it has the ability to create
all sorts of conditions.

They can be hot,
they can be cold,

they can be acidic,
they can be alkaline,

they can be up,
they can be down,

they can be all the different
myriad of possibilities

that the earth is
operating under

as it obeys the laws of physics.

And then it says
to the spark of life,

"Well, here are all these opportunities.
Good luck."