Original subtitles

BRIAN COX: It's been 200,000 years since humans first emerged

in the Rift Valley of East Africa.

Since then, we've learned to think,

to dream, to work together.

And today our human civilization spans the globe and beyond.

But our planet is a tiny fragile speck of life

in a vast, uncaring universe.

So what next for the apes who went to Space?

- (LIGHTS BUZZING) - (INDISTINCT DIALOGUE)

This cave mouth in northern Spain

has been inhabited for 150,000 years.

There's basic shelter here and safety.

But from time to time they left the light behind

and headed into the dark.

In these caves you see the transition from just surviving

to living, to observing the world, to enjoying it.

There were gatherings here,

people coming together to make art

and not just any old art but specific representations

of particular animals and particular symbols.

So in these caves we see the beginnings of superstition,

the beginnings of an appreciation that there's not just a present

but there's a past and there's a future.

These early artists

were leaving messages to future generations

and the one that speaks loudest

lies far deeper into the darkness.

This handprint was made by a child

at least 35,000 years ago

and it's thought it was made by a little girl.

She'd have done the painting by taking paint

and blowing it through her hand

onto the wall of the cave.

Now, she would have had a basic understanding of her future,

she'd have known that the seasons pass

and maybe she even looked forward to coming back to this cave one day.

Leaving her mark upon the wall suggests

she had started down the road of understanding time

and how it stretched out into the future.

In 40,000 years we've learned to see further ahead

than she could possibly have imagined.

We've walked out into a wider world

and made it our own.

And right now we are at a crossroads.

Our civilization holds the power

to shape the future of the whole planet.

I think we pay far too little attention to the future

and the ability to illuminate it,

to predict it is unique to us

and our prosperity and our very survival depend very much

on what we glimpse out there in the dark.

Science and reason are the flames

and in this film I want to convince you that we must use them

to make the darkness visible.

(WIND HOWLING)

(INDISTINCT DIALOGUE)

COX". In late June Earth's most northerly community

are preparing to celebrate

an important turning point of their year.

(VIOLIN PLAYING)

(SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE)

It's mid-summer in the Arctic

and the people of Svaldbard are approaching the moment

when the sun rides highest in the sky,

the summer solstice.

If I were in Manchester I'd say this was the longest day,

but that kind of language doesn't make sense here,

78 degrees north

and midway between northern Norway and the Arctic Circle.

Cos this day, this summer's day, began on April the 20th

and it will end on August the 23rd.

We can predict exactly the moment that the solstice arrives.

So, as strange as this long day feels

there is no mystery as to why it takes place.

(SINGING)

The reason for that long polar night

and the months of midnight sun

is the geometry of the solar system.

Svaldbard is quite literally on top of the world

and you feel it when you're here, it's obvious.

The sun doesn't set, it's somewhere over there at the moment,

and throughout the course of the day it just moves

along the horizon right round,

360 degrees as the earth rotates

with the North Pole pointing directly towards the sun.

And when this place was discovered back in the 1590s

people didn't know that, or at least it wasn't agreed upon,

it was still possible and indeed argued back down

there towards the equator in Italy

that the Earth was at the center of the universe.

It's obvious that it isn't when you come up here.

I wonder what would have happened if Galileo

and Copernicus and Bruno and others had visited Svaldbard,

I think that everything would have got worked out much earlier.

After thousands of years of observation

our inquisitive minds began to develop models of the universe.

The full explanation for the clockwork of the solar system

came in the 1680s with Isaac Newton

and his universal law of gravitation

which is the first modern law of nature.

What Newton's laws allow you to do

is to predict the future given a knowledge of the present.

Newton's laws describe a clockwork universe,

planets orbiting stars,

stars orbiting galaxies

and galaxies falling through a possibly infinite space.

One day in our own sky

we'll see the galaxy Andromeda heading our way.

In four billion years' time, it will collide with the Milky Way.

For a billion years

our sky will be filled with cosmic choreography.

And we know that because we can predict the future.

So the laws of physics in that sense

are little time machines.

They allow you to predict with precision

what will happen in the distant future

given a knowledge of the present.

We even see the sun ends its days

as it swells into a red giant,

some five billion years from now.

So we can be sure

that we along with all other life on earth

will not survive into the far future.

Extinction is a necessary part of the evolution of life on earth.

99.9% of species that have ever existed have become extinct

and that's a good thing

because when a species goes there's a niche available

in the Eco system for other species to colonize.

That's how evolution works.

You know, if the dinosaurs hadn't become extinct

it's very likely that we wouldn't exist.

So when considering the ultimate destiny of our species

the answer seems obvious,

extinction.

But I'd argue this doesn't have to be the case.

We are different to the other species on this planet

because we're intelligent.

Intelligence matters.

And it's extremely rare.

In fact, you can argue

that intelligence may be extremely rare in the universe.

It is possible that we're the only intelligent species

in the Milky Way galaxy

amongst 400 billion suns and countless billions of worlds.

And that makes us extremely valuable and worth protecting.

I think the way to keep this light alive

is for humans to continue to venture out.

And explore.

To this end we've built a ship

large enough for six astronauts to train in.

This is Aquarius

which is used by NASA as Nemo, the Nemo missions.

The reason this place is extreme, if you look here

is because...

Below the ocean.

The pressure in here is

two-and-a-half to three times atmospheric pressure

which is why I sound like a Munchkin.

Fifty meters below the surface,

Aquarius offers a unique training facility

for deep space exploration.

This is, er...

(CHUCKLES) This is brilliant.

Cos you can play at being an astronaut,

I mean, you'd have six astronauts in here.

The reason that they use this as an ast... As a mission simulator

is because the environment is as close as you can get to space on Earth,

you have to live here for weeks.

And if you stay here for more than one hour,

so we've got one hour,

then you have to stay here for a further 17 hours to decompress

so you can't just run away.

If you, you know, psychologically

feel a bit claustrophobic and you think I don't like it

you can't just leave,

it's one of the few places on Earth where that would be the case.

MAN: (OVER RADIO) Okay, I'll get into posit/on

- to receive it. - WOMAN: That's a good idea.

WOMAN". I think it'll work, yeah...

COX". In recent months, Nemo has been tasked

with a very specific type of deep space exploration.

They're developing methods to space walk onto asteroids

where gravity will be a fraction of that experienced on the Moon.

Whilst at times dreaming of an asteroid encounter is a lot of fun,

the motive behind the mission is deadly serious.

In 2015, on a wintery morning in Russia,

a massive fireball cut the sky.

Seconds later it exploded with twenty to thirty times more energy

than the atomic bomb detonated at Hiroshima.

(GLASS SHATTERING)

(PEOPLE SCREAMING)

Earth had been hit

by the largest asteroid in more than a century.

And no-one had seen it coming.

It seems our powers of prediction failed us

and that's because in reality nature can be chaotic.

I can demonstrate that with this simple experiment.

These are magnets,

so let's say that this is an asteroid.

Then, watch what happens when I set the pendulum off,

let's say from this point here.

So I'm gonna release it, I've got a laser there,

at exactly that point I'm just gonna let it go.

We see the laser tracing out the path on this photo paper.

This is asteroid orbiting around through the solar system,

gravitationally interacting with the Earth, the Sun of course,

let's say a massive planet like Jupiter.

There you go, it's collided with the yellow one, the Sun.

And I can do it again

and what I'm gonna try and do is line it up

in exactly the same way and let it go.

In this case it's radically different,

that's because this is what is known as a chaotic system,

there you go and it's hitting the earth

so that will be the end of civilization as we know it.

The point is that the orbit is critically dependent

on what we call, what physicists call, the initial conditions,

that's how precisely do I line this up,

how precisely do I release it,

what precisely happens as it sets off

on its path through the solar system?

In here you have the little air currents that deflect it a little bit,

all those infinitesimally small changes

can be amplified in a complicated system such as this.

And that's why it's not good enough to just discover

the asteroids that come near to the earth,

it's not good enough because one of those tiny nudges

could take something that you might think was safe

just using Newton's laws very naively

and in fact nudging it onto a collision course with the Earth.

This fundamental feature of nature

means that we may get little warning

when the next one comes our way.

So we must continue to track threatening asteroids

and develop technologies

that will get us out to them at short notice.

In January 2014,

The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft

awoke from a 31-month period of hibernation.

It had traveled four billion miles to intercept a comet.

Throughout August and September

the tiny spaceship made a careful approach,

scanning the comet for a place to land.

In November, it will deploy a probe to attach itself to the surface.

Rosetta will greatly increase our understanding of comets

and the early solar system.

It also tests our ability to mount a manned mission

to an asteroid if the need arises.

The problem is that even with a sophisticated rocket system

it took Rosetta ten years to reach its target.

To send astronauts that deep into space

will require a great leap

in our technical ability and our ambition.

DAVID MACKAY: I had an ambition to be an astronaut

from, you know, as early as I can remember.

I can't remember thinking anything else.

The excitement of, you know, just going way away from Earth.

(HEAVY METAL MUSIC PLAYING)

COX". For the first time in a generation,

new designs of manned spacecraft are being tested.

Commercial companies are now developing craft

to get us into space...

And then safely back home.

And some have already left the ground.

MACKAY: It's not an easy thing to do, to escape the Earth's gravity

even for a few minutes, takes a lot of energy.

MAN: Three, two, one.

Release, release, release. Quick release.

Attention, Martha Tango.

COX: In the face of enormous challenges

the future of manned space exploration is looking exciting.

But it's not quite the future I'd imagined.

When I was growing up in the 1970s

this was one of my favorite books.

I got it, I think it was 1979.

It was about the same time as my first Abba album

and I just read it for years and years and years.

It's a sort of fictional history

of spacecraft 2000 to 2100 AD.

It's got things like, "2005 Work Starts on the Lunar Station".

Then this is one of my favorite spacecraft,

I used to try and build these out of Lego.

It's called the "Martian Queen" and it says,

"Early in 2015, fare-paying passengers"

"stepped aboard the first purpose-built interplanetary space liner."

So they imagined that by 2015, by next year,

we'd have Space liners taking people to the Martian colonies.

And what's interesting is my little boy loves the book as well.

He's got it now and some of this stuff is in his past.

This is a list of things that didn't happen

whereas for me back in the seventies

it was a list of things that I thought would happen.

Breaking free from Earth's bonds is so difficult

that there are only eight people alive

that know what it's like to walk on another world.

Hi, Charlie.

- What's your name? - Charlie.

Believe it or not, I'm the other half of Judy.

Hello, Charlie.

- Nice to meet you, good to see you. - Wonderful to meet you,

- it's a pleasure to be here. - Good to be here with you.

Have a seat.

(MAN SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY OVER RADIO)

COX: Charlie Duke was Lunar Module pilot for Apollo 16

and the youngest person ever to walk on the Moon.

DUKE: Tony, how about an extension, you guys?

We're feeling good.

COX". Mission objective,

to bring back samples from the Lunar highlands

and test drive new technologies.

DUKE: And here we go.

Man, we're really going up a hill, I'll tell you.

COX". When I was just becoming aware of Apollo

I thought that I would be able to go into,

at least into Earth orbit myself.

Yeah, really, my dad was born in 1907

and so he was just right after the Wright brothers and, uh,

and he could barely believe, uh, that his son went to the Moon.

And yet at the time my five year old, Tom,

he didn't really see it any big deal, you know,

that everybody in the neighborhood was going to the Moon.

(BOTH LAUGHING)

Neil Armstrong was a next door neighbor,

Tom Stafford was in the neighborhood,

Frank Borman was in the neighborhood,

the whole neighborhood was either NASA engineers or astronauts

so, so everybody's... It's natural.

"Let's go to the Moon, Dad, when you gonna do it?"

(BOTH CHUCKLING)

DUKE: Hey, john, this is perfect, with the LM and the Rover and you

and Stone Mountain. And the old Flag.

Come on out here and give me a salute. Big Navy salute.

Off the ground. One more.

There we go.

I mean, you're most famous probably for the most famous photograph

involving you and it's not you,

it's the photograph of your family that you left on the Moon.

Yeah, I asked the boys, er, they were 5 and 7,

I said, "Would you guys like to be with your dad on the Moon?"

They said, "Oh, yeah, that'd be great, Dad."

So on the back of that picture we had written,

uh, this is the family of astronaut, Charlie Duke,

er, from planet Earth who landed on the Moon in April 1972,

uh, and we all signed it

and, er, then I dropped the picture on the Moon.

It sort of shows the human side of space flight

and, you know, we were family men, we were dads, husbands,

and so wanted my family to be a part of it.

COX". And they'll sit there for millions of years those, won't they?

They won't go anywhere.

And if you look back to those days,

so less than a year from the first test flight,

first manned test flight to landing on the Moon.

- Yeah. - Would that be possible now?

- No. - Why?

We don't have the, er, the schedule, the money

to build spacecraft that quickly.

We don't have the, the manpower to do it,

I mean 400,000 people and unlimited budget

- you can do a lot, you know... - Yeah.

- You know, and so that's. - Yeah.

Yeah, that was, er, that's what we had.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

COX". After Charlie left, only two men have ever gone back.

And there's good reason for that.

The energy required to break free

from Earth's gravitational embrace is staggering.

This is the spacecraft that took john Young, Ken Mattingly

and Charlie Duke to the Moon.

There's the Service Module and the Command Module.

That's the engine that fired to bring them back from the Moon to the Earth.

The Lunar Lander sat inside there

and this piece is essentially a single rocket motor

that fired to take them from Earth orbit to the Moon.

So, this is the 120-ton Moon spacecraft if you like.

But from a physics perspective

the difficulty is getting that into orbit

and on Saturn V that was done in two bits

and this is stage two

and that is the stage two fuel tank.

Inside there are 450 tons of rocket fuel

and this burnt through those 450 tons in about six minutes,

taking the spacecraft from an altitude of 200,000 feet,

about 38 miles, up to 114-and-a-half miles,

that's virtually in orbit.

And it did that by burning the fuel in five engines.

Now at the time,

that was one of the most powerful rockets ever built,

but not the most powerful.

That was this,

stage one of the Saturn V.

There are 2,200 tons

of fuel in here

and stage one burnt through that

in about two-and-a-half minutes.

To do that, it had fuel pumps

that were more powerful than a 747

at lift off,

to pump 15 tons of fuel a second

into these:

The F1 engines.

Every statistic about these engines is ridiculous.

In those two and a half minutes when this spacecraft was lifting off,

the power generated was more than the peak electrical

power generation capacity

of the United Kingdom.

COX". Building a vehicle powerful enough to accelerate three men

to escape velocity

was a triumph of human ingenuity.

But the technology at the heart of any rocket

is essentially ancient technology.

The release of energy by combustion.

We used fire to release energy from the Sun

stored in the wood from trees.

Then, we discovered better things to burn.

Energy-packed ancient sunlight

buried underground.

Burning that has set us free.

(ENGINE STARTING)

But fire has surely taken us as far as it can.

The reason we aren't flying to other planets

is the same reason

we're endangering this one.

Every day we burn the equivalent of all the plants

growing on this planet over a year to meet our energy needs.

But that's not to say that energy use is

of itself necessarily a bad thing.

Indeed, by many measures,

it's an extremely good thing indeed.

In every country where the per capita energy use

is greater than about half the European average

then adult life expectancy

is greater than 70 years.

Literacy rates are greater than 90%.

Infant mortality rates are low

and more than one in five of the population

are in higher education.

So, the story of energy use

is a complicated one.

On the one hand, obviously,

energy use is important and to be valued,

it's the foundation of our modern civilization.

But on the other hand, if we generate our energy

mainly by burning fossil fuels

then it can be a bad thing.

Now in the short-term, of course,

we can increase the efficiency

of our energy usage.

(MOTOR WHIRRING)

But, in the long-term,

if we aspire to continue to advance as a civilization,

if we want to give every citizen of the world a quality of life

that is as good as or even better than mine,

and if ultimately, we want to build a space-faring civilization

and journey to the stars,

then, we have to find a better way.

In the short-term we can move to cleaner electric motors.

But because we burn fossil fuels in power stations

that simply moves the problem upstream.

So what we face is not an energy crisis

but an energy conversion crisis.

Renewable energy might be part of the solution

but I believe there's a far more promising

long-term alternative.

(ENGINE POWERING DOWN)

MAN: If you could do one thing,

you wave a magic wand and do one thing, what would you do?

If you could produce abundant clean energy

it would solve many problems.

It's a grand challenge of our time and

I truly am committed and proud to be part of it.

Can we for the first time

bring a star to Earth?

COX". Here at the National Ignition Facility

in California

they're trying to create manmade stars.

MAN: It's a big laser. It's the biggest in the world

by probably a factor of 50 or maybe even 100.

- So in size and in energy. So... - COX: How much power's in there?

If you look at all the electricity that's produced

in the United States, this is about a thousand times more power than that.

But of course only for a fraction of a second.

- A few billionths of a second. - COX: Yeah.

COX". In a star, fusion begins

when the gas cloud that forms the star

collapses under its own gravity,

heating the core to many millions of degrees.

Here at NIF

it's coaxed into life in the laser's target chamber.

Encased in two-meter thick walls

and 47 of the biggest blast doors I've ever seen.

Uh, yeah.

MAN: So this is the, er, the sharp end of the whole system if you like.

This is where the lasers come down

and get... Start to get focused into the chamber.

And each one of them has to be synchronized

to a few trillionths of a second

to arrive at exactly the same time

and of course, in exactly the right spot.

COX: It's worth sort of stepping back

and realizing what's happening here, isn't it?

- Cos you said 192 of these laser beams. - MAN: Right.

- Which are not small. - Indeed. (CHUCKLES)

In the middle of that, which is definitely not small.

- Absolutely. - Towards a target that's about

- that big. - Exactly, about a millimeter wide.

But it's the level of precision

- and power that you're able to achieve. - Absolutely. Indeed.

And if you can do it uniformly,

then you can create a little star.

COX: It reminds me a little bit of Apollo

- in a sense, cos you just think... - Uh-huh.

You know, look, look what we can do if we try.

So you see there, there's a gold cylinder

and in the middle, a little red ball.

That's the fusion fuel.

One of those pellets

when all of the fusion happens just right

could power my house for a day.

So you imagine having a little bag of those pellets.

Let's say you had, what, three or four hundred of them,

you could fit them in your pocket.

Then that would power your life for a year.

Thousands of these little pellets could

power a spacecraft to the Moon.

Hundreds of thousands could power

a spacecraft out to the edge of the solar system

or perhaps outward to the stars.

And one of the interesting things about fusion technology

is that there's no waste, right?

What happens when you've released all the energy

in that pellet of fuel

is you produce Helium.

So, you get your electricity

and you get your party balloons and that's pretty much it.

So it's an inherently clean, safe,

and extremely efficient technology.

(ALARM CHIMING)

MAN ON P.A.: May! Have your attention.

Preparations for shot operations

in laser bay two are underway.

Leave laser bay two now.

I repeat, leave laser bay two now.

This is the NIF control room. This is the,

the heart of all operations

and the reason I have to be quiet is because

they're getting ready for the shot.

MAN: Main laser operation will begin in approximately one minute.

It's a bit like charging a flash gun.

Banks of capacitors

all store electric charge

getting ready to discharge

all of this energy into the lasers.

Amplify, amplify, amplify, bang.

WOMAN". Jeff, it looks like it just turned green.

(INDISTINCT DIALOGUE)

MAN: I don't see a problem. WOMAN: Ok, so we're ready

to proceed if you're okay with it. Can I?

WOMAN". Proceeding to system shot countdown stage.

There's the countdown.

WOMAN". Start sequence, on my mark.

3, 2, 1, Mark.

Countdown started at T-minus 255 seconds.

255 seconds.

In 255 seconds time,

a thousand times the power generating capacity

of the United States of America

is gonna be fired down into something

a few millimeters across.

(CHUCKLES) It's cool.

Brilliant that we can do this, isn't it?

By "we" I mean them.

Yeah, we, it's our civilization.

(SIRENS WAILING)

WOMAN: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Shot.

(LOUD BANG)

That's it. Bang.

And that's the future.

Commercial fusion power stations are still a long way off.

But NIF has proved that it can be done in principle.

If fusion can be made economically viable,

it would end the days of fire.

And it would do much more than power our cars and cities,

it would provide a new foundation for our civilization,

it would even open up the road to the stars.

I think we expect...

In fact, we demand

that the future is gonna be better than the past.

But it seems to me that we're not prepared to pay for it.

So how might things change?

Well, we're fortunate enough to live in democracies.

And in democracies, things change

when people have access to knowledge,

when they understand facts

and when they can make informed decisions.

Did you know, for example,

that Americans spend ten times

more money each year on pet grooming

than they do on nuclear fusion?

Now, I think,

that if you said to someone.

"Well, actually, why don't you brush your own cat

"and take the money you were gonna spend having somebody else brush it

"and give it to those people

"who are trying to find a way of generating unlimited access

"to clean energy", then people would say.

"Well, yeah. That's a good deal."

See in democracies,

things change when people like you and me

want them to change.

(SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE)

WOMAN: I'm optimistic about the future.

No matter how deep we keep digging our hole right now,

I feel like there is hope.

(SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE)

(SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE)

WOMAN". You know, I look at my life and I think

it's almost over, when in fact

with the advances in healthcare and such, it may not be.

(SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE)

COX". Fundamentally I think we all want the same thing.

We want our children and their children

to have a future.

And that requires us to plan for that future.

(SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE)

- COX: Hello. - WOMAN: Hello.

COX: Nice to meet you.

This place addresses a

fundamental human need

that we're gonna face in the future. Which is

how are we gonna feed ourselves?

The tunnel runs about 130 meters downwards

on this gentle gradient

and by the time we get to the vaults at the end

it's gonna be 160 meters

of solid rock up to the surface.

COX". Buried down here is a priceless treasure

and everything about this building is designed to keep it safe.

This arc that you see, this curve here

is deliberate.

It's in case there's a blast,

some kind of explosion up at the surface

and this is designed to reflect the blast back.

An extremely precious place.

Covered in ice.

Then we have to go through this airlock.

And into the vault.

COX". The treasure in here is not currency.

Not gold. Not rare jewels

but something important.

It's the future of our food.

Here are the seeds of the food crops

of virtually every country in the world.

These are from Mexico.

Here, India.

Here are Nigerian seeds.

Next to Germany. Australia.

There are over 800,000

different populations of seeds

collected here from virtually

every country in the world.

These here are from Syria.

These were taken out just before the... The recent troubles.

So they're out there. They're protected there,

in case the Syrian seed vaults are...

Are lost.

And then there are some strangest of all countries

you wouldn't believe would cooperate in such an international endeavor.

Look at this here. Box number five.

DPR of Korea.

These are North Korean seeds.

And just over there

are the South Korean seeds.

Next to them.

Canada.

Philippines.

This represents...

Represents a library of life.

Just the whole of civilization

rests with the genetic codes

contained in these boxes.

COX". Our future might just rest on these seeds

squirreled away in the Global Seed Vault.

Drilled into the top of the world.

The driving force behind its construction

was agriculturist, Dr Cary Fowler.

So why did you decide to take this project on?

Well, I've spent all of my life

working on trying to conserve crop diversity and

those of us in my field, we...

We live in a world of wounds.

We, we see the, the injuries.

We see the loss of diversity. The extinction.

And at a certain point, you know, enough is enough.

And you try to figure out, well what can we do that's not just stopgap.

Cos we know we're gonna need this crop diversity in the future.

It's the biological foundation of agriculture.

We're gonna need it as long as we need agriculture.

COX: Which is as long as civilization exists I suppose?

FOWLER: Exactly. After that we're not worried about it, are we?

COX". Some of the seeds in this vault

will still be viable in 20,000 years.

COX: When you look at this achievement, how do you see it?

When I walk in here I see a history of agriculture

all the way back to Neolithic days.

So our ancestors, yours and mine,

have been saving these seeds

in a successful, unbroken line until today.

They're every option that we're gonna have for the future,

so anything and everything we want and need,

rice and wheat to be in the future,

is represented, is made possible by this diversity.

Some people call this the "Doomsday Vault."

- Yeah. - Seems to me to be a rather, er...

- I don't know... Grim term. - Apocalyptic.

Yeah. Yes.

Is that a reasonable description?

For me when I walk down here, I get this immense

feeling of happiness, and frankly, hope

that, ok, here are

800,000 crop varieties

that are not going to become extinct.

So to me this represents a problem that didn't happen.

Also seems to me it's an example of genuine long-term thinking.

This transcends political cycles. It transcends lifetimes.

You know, when I look at this place,

I see about the only structure in the world, that I know of,

that's built essentially for eternity, for as long as we can imagine.

Involving all the countries of the world

in something that's long-term and positive.

That's hopeful to me.

COX". 1 came here to tell a story of an uncertain future.

But I found something else under the permafrost of Svaldbard.

Optimism.

We have the privilege to live in a very special and unique time.

Because for the first time

in the history of life on Earth

there's a species that, at least in part,

is masters of its own destiny, has its survival in its own hands.

Now it's true to say that because there's an unbroken

line of life stretching back from me

to the origin of life on earth 3.8 billion years ago

that at any point in that long history

something could have happened to wipe us out.

And something could happen tomorrow to wipe us out.

But increasingly we can see those threats coming.

So we have a chance.

The possibility of prolonging our existence into the indefinite future,

if we can just find a way of taking that responsibility seriously.

COX". Today we are writing our chapter in the human story.

But as we do so,

we must keep in mind the future

and learn lessons from the past.

Back in the darkness of the El Castillo caves,

there may be a stark reminder of life's perilous existence.

More accurate dating of the paintings

suggests that the story of our young artist

might have a sting in its tail.

If this art is not

just around 40,000 years old

but over 43,000 years old,

not much of a difference,

then this is not human

because there were no humans in this area of Europe 43,000 years ago.

If that's the case, this art was created

by Neanderthals,

a completely different species.

Just think about that.

Neanderthals were

pretty much as capable, mentally,

as we are.

So if they'd been given enough time,

given the pressures

that we humans felt

then there's no reason why they couldn't have developed

a civilization.

But they didn't have time.

Instead, they disappeared.

They became extinct

leaving perhaps

these signs of the beginnings of their culture

on the roof of the cave.

But our species didn't die out.

We worked together.

Held on, and then flourished.

(INDISTINCT DIALOGUE)

In the face of adversity we adapted.

And used our brains to develop technologies.

In time, we built mighty civilizations

with science as their foundation.

And then, within the blink of a cosmic eye,

we journeyed to other worlds

and we glimpsed the very nature of reality itself.

All right, let's send these to granddad.

Gonna put them in the envelope.

We even have an outpost of our civilization

living beyond Earth.

Science is unreasonably effective.

It's generated knowledge beyond all expectation.

It's also delivered perspective.

Yes, we are an insignificant speck

in an infinite universe.

But we're also rare.

And because we're rare, we're valuable.

So what are we to do to secure our future?

Well, we must learn to value the acquisition of knowledge

for its own sake, and not just because

it grows our economy or allows us to build better bombs.

We must also learn to value the human race

and take responsibility for our own survival.

Why? Because there's nobody else out there to value us

or to look after us.

And finally,

most important of all,

we must educate the next generation

in the great discoveries of science

and we must teach them to use the light of reason

to banish the darkness of superstition.

Cos if we do that then at least there's a chance that this universe

will remain a human one.

ASTRONAUT: There's a card in here.

Card?

ASTRONAUT: Its got granddad written on it.

- Are you a granddad? - I'm not a granddad.

Hey, Alex, you a granddad?

- ALEX: No, not that I know of. - Well, I guess that's me.