Original subtitles

- [Voiceover] They are capturing photons

racing through space,

measuring their energies,

and pinpointing their sources.

An army of high tech instruments

including the Hubble Space Telescope,

is peering into ever more distant corners of the universe.

They are reeling in enormous volumes of data

that scientists use within models

to explain how galaxies took shape.

How stars live and die.

And how the universe set the stage for life.

What are we learning about the origins

of our world and ourselves

in this age of Hubble?

There is a clarity, a brilliance to space

that simply doesn't exist on Earth,

wrote the astronaut Gus Grissom.

Nowhere else can you realize so fully

the majesty of our Earth and be so awed

at the thought that it's only one

of untold thousands of planets.

For astronauts and stargazers,

the universe beckons us to explore it

and to wonder,

how did it all come about

and how do we fit in?

Are there other worlds like our own, rich with life?

Today, these questions are being raised anew

by bold advances in the science of astronomy.

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched in the year 1990,

to capture the pristine light of distant space.

It led a fleet of space based telescopes,

sent up to probe distant galaxies,

black holes,

stars,

planets.

The vantage of space allows satellites

to capture light that is blocked or distorted

by Earth's atmosphere.

From long-wave infrared light

that passes through dust clouds, revealing hidden structures

in star forming regions or galaxies,

to high energy x-rays, from supernova explosions

or the environments of black holes.

By the time the light of these objects reaches us,

it has traveled millions or even billions of years.

It carries with it information about

how the universe came to be what it is.

Sending telescopes into space was part

of a larger technological revolution.

On mountaintops around the world, scientists began building

a new generation of giant telescopes.

Among them, The Very Large Telescope array

or VLT, in Chile.

The Keck, Subaru and Gemini telescopes

on the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

These high tech instruments are equipped

with the largest mirrors ever built.

They have to be nearly flawless

to capture the trickle of photons

from distant reaches of the universe.

The VLT mirrors, for example, are so smooth

that if you blew one up to the size of Paris,

its surface would vary by only a millimeter.

To the powerful light gathering abilities

of these precision mirrors, scientists added

computer programs and sophisticated optics,

designed to cancel out distortions in starlight

caused by turbulence in our atmosphere.

The purpose?

To gain the clarity of space here on Earth.

Scientists have now added a powerful new weapon

to their arsenal of discovery.

Supercomputer programs that use the laws of physics

to simulate important cosmic events.

They use these virtual telescopes

to literally set the universe in motion.

To test theories about how the cosmos evolved

on the largest scales,

and how objects form and interact

from immense galaxy clusters

down to solar systems and planets.

Among the most important revelations in this age of Hubble

is a deepening sense of the scales and the forces

that define the universe.

Based on their view of the night sky,

the ancient Greeks saw Earth at the center of creation.

The philosopher, Aristotle, described a series

of 55 celestial spheres, with each moving

in a way that predicted the positions

of planets or stars within them.

The stars, he said, are made of a pure substance

not found on Earth, thus, the outer spheres

they inhabit are home to the Gods.

Centuries later, scientists would learn

that Earth revolves around the Sun,

in an assemblage of planets, a solar system.

A century ago, they deduced that our Sun

is one of billions of other stars

moving around a disc-like structure, the galaxy.

What laid beyond this island universe?

How far did space extend?

Working with the new 100 inch telescope

on California's Mount Wilson, astronomer Edward Hubble

and an assistant named Milt Humason,

analyzed the life of blurry patches of sky,

known as nebulae.

They found that these patches were actually

galaxies unto themselves, located far beyond our Milky Way.

Many of them in fact, are moving away from us.

The farther away they are, the faster they are receiving.

These findings sparked the rise

of a whole new model of the universe.

It's much larger than we imagined,

filled with countless galaxies

and growing larger all the time.

Over six decades later, scientists launched

Hubble's namesake,

the telescope in space,

to nail down the parameters he helped define,

the cosmic expansion rate,

as well as a scale for calculating distances.

Knowing these two numbers would allow astronomers

to establish a timeline for cosmic evolution,

going all the way back to the earliest moments of time.

The starting point comes to us courtesy of the so-called

cosmic microwave background radiation,

light emitted not long after the universe was born.

Reading this light, the COBE, WMAP and Planck satellites

showed that the universe began

with widespread variations in its density.

From this blotchy pattern, gravity has sculpted

the arrangement of galaxies we now see in our telescopes.

Our galaxy and its neighbors,

are tied to a larger grouping, the Virgo Cluster,

some 50 million light years away.

It's at the center of a supercluster,

10,000 galaxies strong.

From this intergalactic hub, filaments of galaxies

extend outward in all directions

forming a vast luminous web.

How far out does this cosmic web extend?

How did it come to be

and how will it evolve in the future?

Astronomers sought answers and even

more precise measurements of cosmic expansion.

Using a combination of Hubble and ground based telescopes,

they'd look for a type of sun-like star

that had burned itself out called a white dwarf.

If one of these tiny dense remnants

happens to orbit another star or another white dwarf,

it may begin to draw mass from its companion.

At a critical threshold, it begins to undergo

a thermonuclear reaction.

Scientists at the University of Chicago

and Argonne National Lab have been simulating

the chain of events that follows.

Hot ash begins rising to the surface.

As it breaks out, it wraps around the star.

A collision on the other side triggers the explosion.

These Type Ia supernovae are thought

to all explode in the same way

with the same luminosity wherever they are in space.

And because they are so bright,

they are ideal for measuring extreme distances.

It's like looking at cars with identical headlights,

approaching on a highway.

The dimmer they appear, the farther away they are.

But when astronomers began looking at these cosmic beacons,

they noticed something unexpected.

They combined their brightness with another measure,

how far their light had shifted to the red.

The larger the shift, the more the universe

had expanded since the star had exploded.

Some explosions look dimmer than expected

based on their red shift.

That meant their light had traveled

an even greater distance to reach us.

That led astronomers to conclude

that the cosmic expansion rate

was slower in the deep vast.

It must have accelerated for the universe

to reach its current size.

The force causing space to speed up is still unknown.

Scientists refer to it as dark energy

and it may be all around us.

Far from being empty, the vacuum of space

is filled with energy, that constantly wells up

in the form of particles of opposite charge,

matter and antimatter.

According to a theory that has gained wide acceptance,

the universe began when this vacuum

was somehow tipped into a higher energy state,

causing space and time to suddenly inflate.

Tiny fluctuations in the primordial energy

generated pressure waves or ripples.

They gave rise to density variations

which gravity amplified over time

into the web-like structures seen in telescopes.

Taking cosmic expansion into account,

galaxies out at the edge of the visible universe

are 46 billion light years away from us,

in each direction.

There may be much more to it.

The fury of cosmic inflation would have caused

the universe to go from atomic size

to cosmological size within an infinite

(indistinct) short time.

The universe as a whole, would have grown

to some 10 billion, trillion times

the size of the observable universe.

Put another way, the new theory says

the whole universe is to the observable universe,

as the observable universe

is to an atom.

So where does that leave us in the grand scheme of things?

Since the discoveries of the solar system and the galaxy,

we find ourselves confined

to an ever smaller corner of creation.

And yet, in this age of Hubble,

we have learned just how much

we are a product to the universe

and of a great cosmic continuum

that reaches back to the beginning of time.

In a sense, our own story looms large.

It began with the earliest generation of stars and galaxies,

at a time where the universe was awash in hydrogen gas.

When the first stars formed, they began generating

oxygen and carbon in their cores.

Some exploded, generating heavier elements

like iron or gold or magnesium,

while spreading these elements far and wide

in the form of dust.

This animation depicts a supernova

spotted by Chinese astronomers in the year 1054 AD.

The star was utterly destroyed

except for a spinning ultra dense core

the size of a city, a neutron star

and an expanding cloud of gas and dust.

Still growing at a rate of 1,000 kilometers a second.

Astronomers have been poring over the Crab Nebula.

What they found is that the filaments

of matter that roared out of the blast

contain large volumes of dust,

an array of mostly carbon or silicate compounds

that absorb visible light.

These solid particles are crucial

for the formation of solar systems.

Within the Crab Nebula, there is enough dust

to make some 30 to 40 thousand Earths.

Over time, and after countless stellar explosions,

dust has collected in dense pockets throughout our galaxy.

But dust grains can be found throughout

intergalactic space as well.

Some might have come from the earliest supernovas.

There is another source as well.

Since the 1960s, astronomers have been studying

bright beacons of light that shine

from the centers of distant galaxies.

A quasar's power source they found,

is a black hole that has grown to millions,

even billions of times the mass of our own Sun.

The thinking is, that magnetic fields

beam off a disc of matter, then spiraling

into the black hole, drawn by its extreme gravity.

These fields channel a portion of the inflowing matter

out into powerful particle beams.

The jet is part of a larger rush of matter

away from the black hole.

You can see it in a large spiral galaxy called NGC 3783,

30 million light years from Earth.

Astronomers use the Very Large Telescope array in Chile's

Atacama Desert to peer into the core of this galaxy

to study the environment of a super massive black hole.

From a disc of matter flowing into the black hole,

intense radiation had created a dusty wind

that is moving up and away from the black hole.

The source of the dust is likely generations of giant stars

that lived and died in the galaxy's central region.

Black hole winds are now thought to have had

a major impact on the universe at large.

You can see it in a simulation of early cosmic evolution.

From a starting point 12 million years after time zero,

this computer simulation shows the evolution

of a cosmic patch, some 350 million light years across.

Not every thing is known about what happened

including the nature of a dominant substance

known as dark matter.

Within the volume of this simulation,

tens of thousands of galaxies take shape

all along the strands of the cosmic web.

Where the filaments intersect, something happens

that will affect the character of every galaxy,

star and planet.

Gigantic bubbles of hot gas begin to expand outward.

They form when matter flows into large central galaxies

and gets blasted out by super massive black holes,

lurking in their cores.

In time, these hot bubbles push out

well beyond the central galaxies.

This has the effect of limiting the amount of gas

that can fall into central regions,

allowing smaller galaxies like ours

to form on the periphery.

The bubbles spread huge volumes of gas and dust

created in earlier generations of stars.

Galaxies all around the universe

bear witness to this dusty legacy.

The bright central region of the famous Pinwheel Galaxy

is surrounded by dark, dusty lanes.

In spiral galaxies, the most common type,

hot winds from exploding stars help push

these clouds towards the periphery,

as well as above and below their flat discs.

You can see evidence of this in our view

into the disc of the Milky Way galaxy.

Dark dust lanes and ominous clouds

dominate our view into the disc,

while tendrils of dust reach far above it.

Here, above the plane of the galaxy,

just 400 light years from Earth

is a dense irregular cloud of dust called Lupus 4.

Our Sun, our solar system likely formed

in a cloud like this.

Lupus 4 may one day give rise

to a star cluster like NGC 3590,

a region of dust and glowing gas

near the plane of the galaxy.

These young stars were probably all born at the same time,

within the same cloud.

The manufacture and spread of dust

is an ongoing process in our galaxy.

Consider the Carina Nebula,

located 7,500 light years away,

it spans some 250 light years across.

At its center is the giant star, Eta Carinae,

one of the largest and most unstable stars

known in our galaxy.

It is surrounded by an expanding

bipolar cloud of dust and gas,

known as the Homunculus, or Little Man in Latin.

Astronomers believe it was expelled

during what they called the Great Eruption

in the years 1838 to 1845.

With a mass over 100 times that of our Sun,

this star could explode at anytime.

And yet, in the larger cloud of dust and gas,

stars are being born at a fever pitch.

Here, a pillar of dust is being eroded

by a torrent of ultra violet light

from hot, massive stars nearby.

A dense region at the top resists these scouring winds,

giving a young star time to incubate.

Gas and dust flowing into the star

are being blasted out in jets coming from its poles.

Of all the constellations, few attract

more admirers than Orion.

Within it is a stargazer's dream,

the Great Orion Nebula, a luminous castle of gas and dust,

1,300 light years away.

It's roughly the size of a full moon on the sky.

At its heart is a star cluster called the Trapezium,

a brilliant formation first discovered by Galileo.

It pumps out a wind of ultra violet radiation

that causes the surrounding region to glow.

These large stars emit streams of charged particles

that collide with dust clouds forming a frothy landscape

of arcs and bubbles.

These winds are also disrupting the growth

of hundreds of solar systems in the making.

Despite these winds, some solar systems

still manage to come to life.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope,

scientists have been drawing them out

of their bright and hazy surroundings.

Thousands of solar systems are being born

in and around the Orion Nebula,

in a rich chemical soup provided by large exploding stars.

Amid all the dust, scientist have detected

huge volumes of water.

Where does it come from

and how does it form?

In some cases, water is the by-product of a star's death.

When a medium sized star like our Sun

uses up the hydrogen in its core,

it becomes unstable, shedding its outer layers.

The Helix Nebula is a star that has puffed out

into a colorful ring of glowing gas and dust.

A tiny remnant of the original star,

called a white dwarf, scours the ring

with harsh ultraviolet light that destroys

particular compounds, including carbon monoxide.

The oxygen that's set free combines with hydrogen

in a molecule that forms water.

Dying stars are not the only source of water.

750 light years from Earth,

a protostar called L1448MM

is shooting matter out in high speed jets

containing oxygen and hydrogen.

When these molecules reach a cooler environment,

they form water, at a rate 100 million times

the flow of the Amazon River.

Water then becomes part of the dynamic

of a solar system's birth.

Scientists have sought to better understand the formation

of planets by simulating it in a supercomputer.

Gravity causes a central region to collapse

and dust and gas to flow in.

It forms a disc that swirls around the newborn star.

Along the way, water acts like a glue,

allowing dust grains to form larger bodies,

from rocks to comets, asteroids and fiery planets.

Up on the high deserts of Chile,

astronomers have been using the Atacama

Large Millimeter/submillimeter Telescope Array

to peer into the turbulent environments of newly born stars.

One of them, 450 light years away,

is known as HL Tauri.

The star is no more than a million years old

but there are signs that planet formation

is already underway.

Its hot core is cocooned in a cloud of gas and dust,

the solar nebula.

As matter flowed into the star,

it has settled into a protoplanetary disc.

This disc has a series of telltale grooves

where the gravity of planets has begun to sweep up the dust.

Dust within the solar nebula carries all the material needed

to build a planet like ours, including organic compounds.

So, how did Earth get its water?

The answer may begin with our star.

As the Sun vents heat from nuclear burning in its core,

it generates a steady wind of protons

that reach to the edges of the solar system.

This wind encounters dust particles

that are wafting through the solar system,

attracted by the gravity of planets.

Some 40 thousand tonnes of dust and rocks

rain down onto the Earth each year,

leftovers from the birth of the solar system

four to five billion years ago.

Interplanetary dust has long been known to carry

organic or carbon compounds,

able to survive the journey through Earth's atmosphere.

Scientists recently found something else

on the dust particles themselves.

Hydrogen ions or protons from the solar wind

strike these particles.

When these protons interact with oxygen

and silicate mineral grains, they form H2O molecules

which then cling to the particles.

This process was documented in lunar dust grains

picked up by Apollo astronauts.

It may be the source of water ice

that has collected in the bottom of some lunar craters

and just strewn about lunar landscapes.

In addition to watery dust raining down onto the Earth,

this may explain how comets and asteroids

were able to generate stores of water

and to bring them down to Earth.

Given that water is created and spread so readily,

it's not surprising that it pervades our own solar system.

At its edges, Pluto, and its moon Charon,

are lined with a thick layer of frozen methane

and water ice.

The blue planets, Neptune and Uranus,

get their color from the methane clouds

that make up their frigid atmospheres.

Within, charged particles circulate in a sea of liquid water

producing electrical currents and magnetic fields.

Within the folds of Saturn's rings

are countless particles of ice.

Hovering just above them is the moon, Enceladus,

with an icy surface that makes it one of the brightest

objects in the entire solar system.

The Cassini Spacecraft detected jets of water ice

shooting out of its south pole.

Scientists believe they are coming from an interior ocean,

launched by the squeezing action of Saturn's gravity.

The largest planet, Jupiter, harbors

its own storehouse of water.

The storms that drift along its surface

are the result of water vapor rising and falling

like thunderstorms.

Beyond Jupiter's roiling atmosphere lies a water world,

Jupiter's second moon, Europa.

Its bright, smooth surface is criss-crossed

by channels and grooves, carved out by shifts

in an ocean of liquid water or slushy ice that lies below.

The faint emissions of water jets illustrated here

were recently picked up by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Then there's Earth, a water planet.

Vast, interconnected bodies of water,

the oceans cover 71% of its surface.

And now, scientists have detected whole oceans

hidden in rocks deep inside the planet.

The story of dust and water is central

to our understanding of how life can arise.

These two components can be found throughout the galaxy.

But does life inevitably follow?

For now, Earth remains our only data point

among the thousands, even billions of habitable worlds

that may be out there.

The age of Hubble has brought a new appreciation

of how we emerged in a universe

that is immense beyond imagining.

We have only begun to discern its limits.

New data supports theories of how the universe began

in a furious expansion.

Because science is fundamentally concerned

with events that repeat in nature,

some inflationary theories place our universe

in an even broader cosmic landscape.

The idea is that universes, like frothy bubbles,

extend out into the voids of infinity.

The age of Hubble has brought incredible advances

in our understanding of the universe.

It is surely only the beginning of a long quest

to know how it all fits together,

where we came from

and what the stars may tell us

of our place in the spread of time and space.

For astronauts and other stargazers,

there is both a sense of wonder and connection

as we lock our gaze on the heavens,

searching for the secrets of creation

emblazoned on the night sky.