All language subtitles for Journey to the Edge of the Universe (Alec Baldwin)

This is our world

a warm, comfortable, familiar place.

But walk away from the fire
and look up

our thoughts soon leave home

Are we just insignificant specks?

Is the universe welcoming or hostile?

We could stand here forever wondering

or we could turn our back
on this beach, leave home

to see the universe,
from here to its edge

to discover its wonders

confront its horrors

beautiful new worlds

malevolent dark forces

the beginning of time

the end of the world

Would we have the courage
to see it through

or would we run for home?

There is only one way to find out

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The edge of space

only 100km up,
just an hour's drive from home

Down there, life continues

The traffic keeps moving

stocks go on trading
and Star Trek is still showing

But we have to leave all this behind

To dip our toe
into the vast dark ocean beyond

Into the shallows

not too far from home

onto.. the moon

Dozens of astronauts
have come this way before us

12 of them have walked
on the moon itself

Just over 400,000km from home

3 days in a spacecraft

So close, it's as if
we've barely left home

Familiar, safe

within the sight of earth

It looks like a deserted battlefield

bombarded by millions of
meteorites and asteroids

But it's quieter now

It's obvious there have been no major
collisions for millions of years

This brings back memories

the Apollo 11, lunar module

Neil Armstrong's first footprints

looks like they were made yesterday

there is no air to change them

They should survive for millions of years

may be longer than us

Our time is limited

We need to take our own giant leap

further than any human as ever travels

Out of the darkness, a friendly face

the goddess of love

Venus

The morning star, the evening star

Sometimes she welcomes
the new day in the east

others she says good night in the west

The planet's spectacular yellow
clouds reflect the sunlight

That's why this is the solar system's
brightest planet

a sister to our planet

She is about the same size
and gravity as earth

We should be safe here

But the Venus Express space probe
is telling us these dazzling clouds

are made of deadly sulfuric acid

that the planet's atmosphere
is choked with carbon dioxide

It's ringing alarm bells

Venus is one angry goddess

The air is noxious,

the pressure unbearable

and it's hot,

approaching 500 degree Celsius

Stay too long

and we'd be corroded,
suffocated, crushed and baked

Noting can survive here

Like this,

it's a Soviet
Venera robotic probe

its heavy armor has been wrecked
by the extreme atmosphere

So lovely from earth,

up close, this goddess is hideous

She is the sister from hell

pockmarked by thousands of volcanos

All that carbon dioxide in its atmosphere
is trapping the sun's heat

This is global warming gone wild

Before it was cold,
maybe Venus was calm

more like her sister planet earth

If that's true,
this could be our planet's future

Beginning to think
we shouldn't be out here

that we should turn back

But there's something
hypnotic about the sun

Like Medusa, too terrible to look at,
too powerful to resist

luring us onwards,

on, like a moth to a flame

Dwarfed by, scorched by the sun,

it's Mercury

Get too close to the sun,
this is what happens

Temperature swing wildly here

At night, it's -170 degrees

come midday, it's 400+

burnt, frozen

and look at those scars

a sign that Mercury
had a violent past

The Messenger space probe,
it's telling us something strange

For its size, this little planet
has a powerful gravitational pull

It must be heavier than it looks

It's like a huge ball of iron
covered with a thin veneer of rock

The core of what was
once much larger planet

Maybe a stray planet
slammed into Mercury

blasting away its out layers
in a deadly game of cosmic pinball

Whole planets on the loose

destroying anything in their path,
even entire planets

and we are in the middle of it:

vulnerable, exposed, small

everything is telling us to turn back

but who could defy this

the sun, in all its mesmerizing splendor

Our light, our lives

Everything we do
is controlled by the sun

depends on it

and more than that

it's the Greek god Helios
driving his chariot across the sky

The Egyptian god Ra, reborn everyday

the summer solstice sun rising
at Stonehenge

For millions of years

this was as close as it got to
staring into the face of god

150 million kilometers from home

a 20-year journey by plane

switch it off

and it's so far away

we wouldn't know about it
for a whole 8 minutes

It's so big, you could fit
a million earths inside it

So heavy, its gravity controls
the entire solar system

But who needs numbers

we've got the real thing

We see it everyday

a familiar face in our sky

up close, it's unrecognizable

a turbulent sea of incandescent gas

The thermometer rises
to over 5,000 degrees

Down in the core,

it's got to be
tens of millions of degrees

Hot enough to trigger a nuclear reaction

turning millions of tons of
matter into energy, every second

More than all the energy
ever made by mankind

Back home,
we see this energy as light

feel it as heat

But up close, there is nothing
comforting about the sun

It's so full of electrical
and magnetic activity

It's bursting out in this huge
incandescent gas loops called prominences

Each one releasing more energy
than ten million volcanos

You could get the earth
through one of these loops

and still have tens of thousands
of kilometers to spare

And when they burst through

it's exposing a cooler layers below

making sunspots

They're a fraction cooler
than their surroundings

it's why they look black

but they are still hotter
than anything on earth

and they are massive too

Some of these are
at least 50,000km across

a solar flare

a superheated stream of electrified gas

blasting deadly radiation out into space

But one day,
all this will stop

the sun's fuel will be spent

When it dies, that will be it
for the earth as well

This god creates life and destroys it

demands we keep our distance

This comet has strayed too close

It's been boiled away
by the sun's heat

creating a tail stretches
for millions of kilometers

It's freezing in here

There's no doubt
where these comets come from

the icy wastes of deep space

But look at all these steam,
the geysers and dust

it's the sun again,
melting the comet's frozen heart

A kind of vast dirty snowball
covered in grimy tar

Tiny grains of what looks like
organic material preserved on ice

since... by who knows when

may be even the beginning
of the solar system

Say a comet like this crushed into
the young earth billions of years ago

May be it delivered
organic material and water

the raw ingredients of life

It may have even sown
the seeds of life on earth

that have evolved into you and me

But say a crash into the earth now

think of the dinosaurs,

wiped out by comets or asteroids strike

It's only a question of time

Eventually, one day,

unless we can find a way
to protect ourselves

we'll go the way of the dinosaurs

The earth is safe, for now

But if life on earth was obliterated

we'd be stuck out here,

homeless, adrift in a hostile universe

We'd need to find another home

Among the millions, billions of planets

there must be one
that's not too hot, not too cold

with air, sunlight, water

where like goldilocks
we could comfortably live

The red planet,

unmistakably, Mars

For centuries,
we've looked to Mars for company

for signs of life

Somewhere down there,
could be extraterrestrial life

But are we ready to find it

ready to rewrite the history books,
to tear up the science books

to turn our world upside down?

What happens next
could change everything

More than any other planet,
Mars captures our imagination

Think of Sci-Fi films, comics,
what follows - Martians

It's all just fiction, right?

But what if there really
is something here?

If there is,
it's living on a dead planet

The processes that make earth habitable

shut down hundreds of millions
of years ago here

Red and dead,

Mars is a giant fossil

Something is alive

a dust devil, a big one

Bigger than the biggest tornados
back on earth

There is wind here

And where there is wind,
there is air

Air that could sustain
extraterrestrial life

But it's too thin for us to breath

full of choking carbon dioxide

There's nothing to protect Mars
from the sun's ultraviolet rays

And it's cold,
as low as -80 degrees

freezing water in the ground,
at the poles

and even in the atmosphere,
a snow

It's hard to believe
anything could live here

But on earth,

there are creatures that
survive in extreme cold, heat

and even in the deepest ocean trenches

It's as though life is a virus

it adapts, spreads

Maybe we are carrying the virus of life
across the universe right now

Even in the most extreme conditions,
life usually finds a way

But on the dead planet

with no geological activity to replenish
the minerals and nutrients in its soil

no heat to melt its frozen water

and all this dust,
it's hard to see where we are going

But we can't miss this:

Olympus Mons,
a vast ancient volcano

Three times higher than Everest

so wide, it would stretch
almost all the way across Spain

Since its discovery in the 1970s

it's been declared extinct

It looks like there is something
happening on its slopes

It's as though lava has been flowing

But any lava flow should be long dead,
obliterated by meteorite impacts

Unless this monster
isn't dead after all

If it's not, there could be molten
magma beneath the crust right now

This changes everything

Volcanic activity could be melting
frozen water in the soil

recycling minerals and nutrients
creating conditions for life to exist

This makes the Grand Canyon
look like a crack in the pavement

It goes on and on

So far, it would stretch
all the way across north America

But look,
signs of activity: erosion

and what looks like dried up
riverbeds on the canyon floor

Maybe volcanic activity
melted ice in the soil

sending water flowing
through this vast canyon

Activity that we now know
could still be melting ice

creating water

and where there is water,
there could be life

If we can find running water

there is a chance
we could find living creatures

trundling across this desolate landscape,
the NASA Rover Opportunity

It's finding evidence that these barren
plains were once ancient lakes or oceans

that could have harbored life

Look at these gullies

When probes orbiting Mars
pass over them

they keep spotting new ones

More proof that
Mars is alive and kicking

that there may be water flowing beneath
the surface creating these gullies

water which could be sustaining
Martian life

Now all we have to do is find it

unless we've already found it,
not on Mars but on earth

There is one theory that has life
start in here before moving to earth

The idea is that an asteroid impact
blasted fragments of Mars

complete with tiny microbes

out into space
and onto the young earth

where they sowed the seeds
of life itself

No wonder we find Mars fascinating

it could be our ancestral home

If it's true,
it means we are all Martians

The Mars we thought we knew is gone

replaced by this new active
changing planet

And if we don't know Mars

possibly the solar system's
most studied planet

what else then we know?

There must be other secrets out there
waiting to be discovered

This is getting scary

It's like being inside
a giant computer game

But these are all too real

asteroids, some of them
hundreds of kilometers wide

This one must be about 30km long

and look,
perched on it, a space probe

Can't be easy parking on an asteroid
travelling at 80,000km an hour

It's a lot of effort
to investigate the rubble

Rubble, that regularly collides

breaking up and raining down
on earth as meteorites

magical tokens,

supernatural omens

and more than that

turns out it was rubble like these
that came together to make the planets

including our own

So by dating the meteorites
we find on earth

we know the planets were born
4.5 billion years ago

These the birth certificates of
our solar system, of our planet

but for some reason these rocks
didn't form into a planet

Something must have stopped them

something powerful

Jupiter,

what a monster

At least 1000 times bigger than earth

so vast, you could fit
all the other planets inside it

Something this big is going to have
a major effect on its neighbors

Its gravity is stopping asteroids
from forming a planet

And just look at it

it's stunning

But up close, maybe things
aren't quite what they seem

This huge planet is almost all gas

Land here and we'd sink through its
layers may be never hitting a solid surface

And Jupiter's good looks,
the product of extreme violence

It's spinning at a huge rate

whipping up winds to
hundreds of kilometers an hour

contorting the clouds
into stripes, eddies, whirlpools

and this:
the legendary great red spot

The biggest most violent storm
in the solar system

at least three times the size of earth

it's been raging for over 300 years

All those churning clouds
have sparked an electrical storm

Just one bolt is 10,000 times
more intense than any at home

It seems the best place,
the safest place to see Jupiter

is from a distance

That's just beautiful

dancing around the poles
like the aurora back home

But the Geiger counter is going wild

It seems even these are deadly

generated by lethal radiation pulled from
space by Jupiter's powerful magnetic field

We are beginning to realize out here

nothing is what it seems

The universe is full of contradictions

deceptions

traps

Right now, we need a safe haven

somewhere to find our feet,
catch our breath

Maybe this,
the multi-colored moon lo is it

Those pretty colors are molten rock,
sulphur, volcanos

spewing burning hot ash and sulphur
hundreds of kilometers into the air

This is no safe haven

this is the most volatile place
we've seen since the sun

Our magical journey
to the edge of the universe

is turning into a desperate flight

we've got to keep believing

hoping that amidst the dangers

there are wonders waiting
to be discovered

650 million kilometers from home

What a weird-looking place!

And yet it looks strangely familiar

A bit like the Arctic
with all the ice

all those ridges and cracks

This is Europa

and maybe like the Arctic

this ice is floating on water

liquid water

It's an intriguing thought

but we are 800 million kilometers
from the sun

surely Europa is frozen solid

Unless Jupiter's gravity
is creating friction deep inside

stopping Europa from freezing solid

allowing life to develop in the waters
beneath its frozen crust

We might be meters away from aliens

From a whole ecosystem of microbes,
crustaceans, maybe even squid

The only thing between us and
the possibility of alien life:

this layer of ice

But until we send a spacecraft
to drill through the ice

Europa will remain one of the solar
system's greatest mysteries

It's captivated our imaginations,

haunted our dreams

And here it is,

spinning before our eyes

Saturn, the jewel
in the solar system's crown

Seeing it makes everything
we've experienced worthwhile

There is something
magical about Saturn

a giant ball of gas,

so light, it would float on water

Its spectacular rings would stretch
almost from earth to the moon

but they are just
a few hundred meters deep

That's the Cassini orbiter

it's picking up
ghostly radio emissions

probably generated by auroras
around Saturn's poles

This is the real music of the spheres

And Cassini is telling us these rings
are probably all that's left of a moon

shattered by Saturn's
gravitational pull

Incomparable beauty
from total destruction

Billions of shards of ice

some are small as ice cubes,
others, the size of houses

They collide, break apart, reassemble

It's like a snapshot
of our early solar system

As dust and gas orbited
the newly born sun

and gravity worked its magic

pulling the lumps together
until from debris like these

our home emerged

We could stay here forever

gazing at Saturn's seductive allure

But we have to drag ourselves away

we've got so much further to go,
so much more to learn

which isn't easy when the largest
object in sight is this moon

wrapped in thick clouds

Titan

It seems like
there's an atmosphere down here

there is wind, rain, even seasons

And look at these rivers,
lakes and oceans

It's the most similar place to earth
we've seen so far

Maybe it was worth tearing ourselves
away from Saturn after all

Except that's not water,
that's liquid natural gas

There must be hundreds of times
more natural gas here

than all the earth's oil
and gas reserves

If we could get it home

it could power our cities,
fuel our cars for thousands of years

or may be one day,

we could use it here,
to fuel a colony

assuming there isn't life
on Titan already

The Huygens space probe

dropped onto Titan's surface
from Cassini is here to find out

It's telling us there are
organic materials in the soil

but it is so cold, -180 degrees

There is no way
these will come together to form life

Unless, Titan warms up

The sun is predicted to get hotter

when it does, maybe life
will spring up here

just like it did on earth billions
of years ago

As the earth gets too hot for us,
maybe we'll move to Titan

One day we might call
this distant place home

Home, we are at least
a billion kilometers away now

Beyond this point, we lose
visual contact with the earth

We are standing on a cliff

looking out into the solar system's
mysterious outer reaches

If we want to understand the universe,
to reach its edge

we have to jump

Unseen from earth,
unknown for most of history

we are in the solar system's
outer reaches

It's like diving down
into the deep ocean

Those rings, it looks like Uranus
has been tilted off its axis

toppled over by a stray planet

It's eerie out here

Already beginning to
feel small, lonely

Maybe this is how we'll feel

what we'll find at the edge
of the universe

But we've barely left the shore

Shrink the earth
down to the size of a pea

we've travelled less than 2km

But to reach the edge
of the solar system

we've got to travel another 20,000km

Out of the deep,
another strange beast

the god of the sea - Neptune

This giant is swathed in methane gas

And look, a storm the size of earth

whipped up by savage 1500km/h winds

Back home, it's the sun
that drives the wind

but Neptune is too far away

something else must be creating
these ferocious winds

but nobody knows what

Our solar system is huge

it's alarming how little
we really know about it

Plunging deeper, something to cling to

After all those balls of gas,
a solid moon

Triton

solid, but not stable

Just look at these geysers

cosmic chimneys pumping out
strange soot

And this moon is going around Neptune in
the opposite direction to the planet's spin

a cosmic battle of wills

that this angry moon
is always going to lose

Neptune's massive gravity
is pulling on Triton

slowing it down, reeling it in

One day, it will be ripped apart
by Neptune

and that's it

No more moons, no more planets
to see in our solar system

It's getting colder

we're getting further from the sun

slipping from the grip of
its gravitational tentacles

But look at all this,
it's not a void

it's teeming with frozen rocks,
icy spheres

Like Pluto

Until recently,
it seemed Pluto was alone

beyond it, nothing,

we were wrong

more frozen worlds

Discovery so new, nobody can agree
what to call them

Plutinos, ice dwarfs, cubewanos

whatever the name,
the implications are the same

our solar system isn't a neat model
we thought it was

Over 13 billion kilometers from home

the most distant thing ever seen
to orbit the sun

another small icy world

called Sedna, discovered in 2003

Its orbit takes 10,000 years

and sends it 130 billion kilometers
from the sun

Hang on,

there is something else out here

16 billion kilometers from home

the space probe Voyager 1

If it wasn't for this bundle
of aluminium and antennae

we'd have no images of the giant planets

no clue about their strange moons

It's travelling 20 times faster
than a bullet

sending messages home

And look,
on its side, that gold panel

a kind of intergalactic message
in a bottle

There's a greeting recorded
in different languages

Hello from the children of planet earth

And a map, showing how to find
our solar system

But if you are in the jungle,
it is wise to call out

anyone, anything could hear our call

find out where we live and
come knocking, friendly or not

A cloud of cosmic iceberg stretching
for what seems like forever

They look like the comet
we saw earlier

Maybe it started life out here

until something dislodged it

sending it towards the sun

just like the comets that may have
planted life on earth billions of years ago

And seeing these ice,
maybe they carried water to earth too

It's an astonishing thought

the water in the oceans,
in your coffee, even in your body

all from this distant
celestial ice machine

We are 8 million million,
that's 8 trillion km from home

but in reality,
this is only a baby step

ahead trillions of kilometers,
billions of stars

This is it, time to stop looking in,
and start looking out

to step out into the big wide universe

into interstellar space

Interstellar space,

far beyond our solar system

What a view!

billions of stars like our own sun

many with planets,

many of those with moons

It's hard to know which way to go

There are infinite possibilities
in every direction

whichever way,

we are going to need
a series burst of acceleration

40 trillion kilometers from home

150,000-year ride in a space shuttle

and we've only just reached
the first solar system after our own

Alpha Centauri,

not one, but three stars

They are spinning around each other,
locked in a celestial standoff

Each star's gravity attracting the other

their insane orbital speed
keeping them apart

Get between them

and we could be flung into
the face of one of these stars

vaporized, trillions
of kilometers from home

so far, the kilometers
become meaningless

We are going to
have to talk in light-years

A beam of light takes one year
to travel ten trillion kilometers

so 40 trillion kilometers
is 4 light-years from home

It's crazy, distances so vast
they're almost beyond comprehension

And exciting, who knows
what strange worlds lie ahead

what we'll discover when,
if we reach the edge of the universe

Ten light-years from earth,
the star Epsilon Eridani

What spectacular rings of dust and ice

and somewhere in there

planets forming out of the debris

being born before our eyes

Asteroids and comets everywhere

We could almost be looking at our own
solar system billions of years ago

With comets delivering organic molecules,
water to these young planets

kick starting life just as
they may have done on earth

At the centre of all this action,
a star smaller than our sun

and still in its infancy

any life in this solar system
would be primitive at best

There must be more mature,
developed solar systems out here

but finding them is like looking for
a needle in a cosmic haystack

20 light-years from earth

star Gliese 581

It's about the same age as our sun

and orbiting it, this planet

It's just the right distance from its sun

any closer and water would boil away,
any further and it would freeze

Ideal conditions for life
to have evolved

And if comets have struck,
delivering water and organic materials

then life, complex beings like us

even civilizations like our own
could be down there, right now

And if there are,
even at this distance

they could be tuning to our TV signals

watching shows from 20 years ago

But until future generations can find a way
of communicating over these vast distances

all we can do is speculate

us and them living parallel lives,
unaware of each other's existence

unless life has been and gone

That's the problem with comets

They are creators and destroyers

As the dinosaurs find out
the hard way 65 million years ago

This is the needle in the cosmic haystack

the closest we've come to
a habitable solar system like our own

but it's a chance encounter

There could be hundreds millions
more solar systems like this out here

or none at all

This is vast and look

it's the planet Bellerophon

So close to its own sun,
it's a miracle it was discovered at all

Problem is from earth
we can't see planets this far out

they're obscured by the brilliance
of their neighboring stars

But the planets have a minute
gravitational pull on their stars

Measure this tiny movements
trillions of kilometers away

and we can prove they exist

That's how we tracked down
Bellerophon in the 1990s

Opening the floodgates to the discovery
of hundreds of other distant planets

65 light-years from earth

Tune in on this bright star

and you'd pick up TV signals
from Hitler's Berlin Olympics

Twin stars,
it's Algol, the Demon star

feared since ancient times
on account of its sinister behavior

From earth, it appears to blink as
one star passes in front the other

Up close, it's even stranger

One star has expanded into
the gravitational pull of the other

it's been sucked towards it

Almost 100 light-years
from home, listen

One of the first-ever radio broadcasts
just a faint whisper

And then silence

From here and out,
it's as if earth never existed

Any aliens living beyond here
will have no idea we are there

It feels like a lifetime ago, we stood
on that beach, looking up at the sky

wondering where and how we fitted in

It's time to appreciate
the wonders we are seeing

not just for what they tell us
about our own world

It's what they can tell us
about the whole universe

its past and its future

Deep inside our galaxy, the milky way

a vast celestial library,

each star,
a book with a story to tell

It's all here, waiting for us
to lift the cover

The seven sisters, daughters of
the ancient Greek god Atlas

transformed into stars
to comfort their father

as he held the heavens
on his shoulders

And this giant Betelgeuse

The brightest, biggest star
we've seen so far

It's got to be at least
600 times wider than our own sun

But this, it's not a star

not a planet, not like anything
we've ever seen

A ghostly specter, more than
1300 light-years from earth

Orion's dark cloud

Dust and gas, so dense,
it's shrouding us

shutting us off
from the universe outside

There, deep inside

a ball of light, pulling the dust
and gas towards it

heating up, merging into
a ball of burning hot gas

Like a star, like our sun,
in miniature

It's millions of degrees inside it

so hot, it's beginning to
trigger nuclear reactions

the kind that keep our sun shining

making energy, radiation, light

a star is being born

Or rather, stars

Orion's dark cloud
is a vast star factory

We are witnessing the birth
of the future universe

We've come to expect hostile horrors

but we're discovering one of the
universe's greatest creative wonders

star birth

Perhaps we spoke too soon

Jets of gas, exploding outwards
at 200,000 kilometers an hour

Blasting dust and gas
out for millions of kilometers

It's unbelievably violent

but look at the results

it's beyond words

Nebula, vast glowing clouds of gas,
hanging in space

With no wind out here

they'll take thousands
of years to disperse

They seem to be forming
a vast stellar sculpture

and makes you realize nature is
more than a scientist and engineer

It's an artist on the grandest of scales

We've seen some strange sights,

but this is a masterpiece

A giant horse's head rearing up in space

Stars are born, grow up
and then..

then what?

Did they die?

Did they slip quietly into the night
or go out with a bang?

Somewhere between here and
the edge of the universe

lies the answer

Nearly 4000 light-years further

luminous clouds suspended in space

encircling what was once a star
like our own sun

All that's left of it
are these brightly colored gases

elements formed by nuclear fusion
deep inside the star

released into space on its death

green and violet,
hydrogen and helium

the raw materials of the universe

red and blue,
nitrogen and oxygen

the building blocks of life on earth

For us to live,
stars like these had to die

the oxygen in our lungs,
the nitrogen in our DNA

It was all produced by nuclear fusion

and the stars that died long
before the earth was even born

We are made of stellar nuclear waste

our family tree begins here

At its heart, the ghost of a star

It's a white dwarf

white, hot, small

but unbelievably dense

In this star's dying moments

its atoms fuse and squeeze together

making it so dense that just a teaspoon
of this white dwarf would weigh one ton

It's a chilling premonition
of our sun's fate

Six billions years from now,
it'll become a white dwarf

Its death will herald
the end of life on earth

It makes you wonder how many
other worlds have been and gone

stories left untold,

celestial books lost forever

But the greatest story of them all
is still to be told

We must go back through time
to the very first chapter

to tell the story of
how the universe began

The scattered remains of a dead star

a nebula, the crab nebula

With 6,000 light-years from home

deep inside a stellar graveyard

We've learned so much

seen things we'd never
have believed possible

Now sights like this

wonders once beyond imagination

we take in our stride

We are ready

ready to face whatever lies ahead

determined to reach the edge
of the universe

It looks dead

but maybe this is just the calm
after the storm

after a massive explosion

powerful enough to turn a huge star
into a cloud of dust and gas

a supernova

The eye of the storm

a spinning pulsating star, a pulsar

Gravity must have squeezed
the giant star's core down to this

It's just 20km across,
unimaginably dense

One pinhead of this would weigh
hundreds, maybe millions of tons

As it shrank

like a figure skater spinning on the spot

arms outstretched then pulling them in

It began to spin faster

Two beams of light, energy, radiation

spinning 30 times a second,
powering the huge cloud of dust and gas

There are so much radiation here,
more even than on the sun

That was easily the deadliest thing
we've encountered so far

Once it would have terrified us

but now we realize that without
the dangers, there'd be no wonders

Without the nightmares,
there'd be no dreams

Getting a strange sensation

a feeling, as though
there's something bad out here

a malevolent presence

The one thing
we didn't want to encounter

impossibly black

blotting out the stars behind it

We are staring into the face
of extinction

The remains of a giant star

a black hole

Instead of contracting to
a white dwarf, or a pulsar

it just kept on going

shrinking,

until it got so small

it's just a few kilometers across

Far denser than a pulsar,
and impossible to resist

Stray too close,
and there's no turning back

Now we know why it's a black hole

Its gravity is so intense,
not even light can escape

This asteroid, it's a lump of solid rock

but it's actually stretching

being dragged towards the gaping hole

Inside, there is no matter
as we know it

no time, no space

all rules of physics collapse

The asteroid is gone

truth is nobody really knows where

We are looking at the limit
of human understanding

There could be millions of black holes
creeping around our galaxy

More perhaps than
all the stars in the sky

but we wouldn't see them
until it was too late

Like this star

spiraling, disappearing down
in an invisible black hole

Who's to say we don't live
inside a vast black hole

that the whole universe
isn't inside one right now

inside another universe?

Think about it for too long,
and your mind reels

Sometimes it feels like
the more we see, the less we know

But we do know our galaxy
is more complex, more dangerous

than we ever imagined

And we are still in our own galaxy,
the milky way

The vastness of the universe beyond
still lies ahead

The wonders, the dangers,
the secrets, they are out there

But first, we've got to find
a way out of the milky way

7,000 light-years from home,

still deep inside our own galaxy

It's as though we are in a forest,
thick with trees

each so beautiful, so fascinating

it's impossible to look beyond

to see a bigger picture

We have to find a way through

reach the clearing at the galaxy's edge

Only then can we begin to understand
where it and we all began

But faced with sights like this,
it's hard to leave

a colossal glowing cloud topped
by these great towers of dust

the pillars of creation

Like a gateway into the far galaxy

both pillars studded
with tiny protrusions

embryonic star systems

Each one the size of our solar system

another monument to nature's
astonishing creativity

We have to ignore its captivating beauty,

it's siren song, tear ourselves away

in order to carry onwards
towards the edge of the galaxy

Dazzled by the milky way's beauty

we've been blind to its terrors
and strayed into a cosmic minefield

Like an explosion in slow motion

giant clouds of gas
are bursting out of the star

a massive star, millions of
times brighter than our sun

It's going into melt down

The fuel that sustains it
is running out

The nuclear reactions
that power it winding down

We are watching its death throes

Eventually, the core will implode

the result: a new black hole

An even bigger dangerously unstable star

but this one is about to explode

And when a star this big dies

it's 100 times more violent
than a supernova

Somehow we've stumbled into the most
violent star death imaginable

a hypernova

The core's collapsed

It's becoming a black hole

And that's the shockwave

surging through the star,
ripping its outer layers into space

There's lethal radiation everywhere

enough to have a catastrophic effect on
any planet unlucky enough to be nearby

When virtually every species on earth
was wiped out 450 million years ago

the culprit may have been one of these

Deadly hypernovas, frozen comets

scorched planets, white dwarfs,
red giants, earth

Tiny drops in a vast pool of white light

our home galaxy, the milky way

We wanted to know where we fit in

Here's an answer

Civilization's past and present

everyone that's ever lived

The smallest bug, the highest mountain

all of it, invisible,
not even a tiny speck

Our home is a minor planet
of an insignificant star

If it disappeared right now,
who or what would even notice

And yet, so far we've found
nowhere else we would rather live

nowhere we could live

It's only now far from home

that we are beginning
to truly appreciate it

Look at all these stars

hundreds of thousands of them

Surely one of these, more than one,
must be capable of supporting life

Maybe here in this swarm of stars,
the great cluster

Back in the 1970s, astronomers
sent a message in this direction

detailing the structure of our DNA,
and our solar system's location

But it's so far from home

the message won't arrive
for at least another 25,000 years

We haven't found alien life yet

but neither have we found any reason
to believe it isn't out here, somewhere

There is an equation

devised to estimate the number
of other advanced civilizations

Crunch the numbers
and the result is shocking

There could be millions of civilizations

just in our own galaxy

Everything we have seen so far
is inside the milky way

Now here is our chance

to see other galaxies,
to glimpse the even bigger picture

and perhaps to answer
the ultimate question:

where does all this come from?

We are now ready to leave
our solar system, our galaxy

and enter intergalactic space

Beyond the milky way, through
the vast expanse between galaxies

against all the odds, we've made it
to intergalactic space

Out here, there is no horizon in sight

Even the closest galaxies are
millions of light-years away

The remains of galaxies ripped apart by
the milky way's huge gravitational pull

Scattered through, nothing

This is as close as the universe
gets to a perfect vacuum

but even this isn't totally empty

There are thin wisps of gas,
fine traces of dust

and something else, dark matter

So mysterious,
we can't see it, feel it

taste it, touch it or even measure it

Yet so common, it could make up over
90% of all the matter in the universe

If dark matter does exist

it means there's no such thing
as empty space

Even out here,
we are surrounded by matter

We only know it exists

because of the strange hold it
exerts on galaxies

like this one,
the Large Magellanic Cloud

More than 6 billion years
in today's fastest spacecraft

160,000 light-years from the milky way

at the edge of its gravitational reach

This galaxy should spin off into space

but something is holding it here

something invisible, powerful

dark matter

stars

clusters of stars

nebulae

it's a vast astronomical treasure house

But look at this, it's like
a string of gleaming pearls

It's a fireball

expanding out from what must
have been a massive explosion,

a supernova

So bright, that when light from
the explosion reached the earth in 1987

it was visible with naked eye

and so violent, it triggered
a string of nuclear reactions

forcing atoms together
creating new elements:

gold, silver, platinum

blasting them out into space

The gold in the ring on your finger

was forged in a massive
supernova like this

trillions of kilometers away,
billions of years ago

Before we left home,
the universe seems separate

something out there, up in the sky

We were wrong

the story of the universe
is the story of every one of us

It's comforting to remember
as we venture through this abyss

Further and further

Faster and faster

The Andromeda Galaxy

2.5 million light-years away

It's moving through space at
nearly a million kilometers an hour

Everything in space is moving apart,
like shrapnel from an explosion

We've seen this galaxy as it was

when our ape like ancestors first
walked across the African plains

We go further through space

and further back in time

This doesn't look right

A whole galaxy exploding

The only thing large enough to
cause an explosion on this scale

has to be another galaxy

It looks like the end of the world

but we've seen enough to know things
are never that simply

This galaxy won't die

It'll be reborn, a new shape,
perhaps even new stars

as dust and gas collide,
creating friction, shockwaves

triggering the birth of stars

There is order in this chaos

a pattern behind the infinite variety

an endless cycle of birth and death

creation and destruction

It's a pattern woven through
the vast fabric of space

that binds each of these galaxies

There are billions of galaxies
in the universe

each with billions,
even trillions of stars

possibly more stars than there're grains
of sand on all the beaches on earth

And all of these are just
the stars that exist now

What about the stars
that have been and gone

all the stars being born,
yet to be born

We're finally beginning
to see the big picture

and it's grander
than we ever imagined

This galaxy, the huge pinwheel
galaxy is so far from earth

that if we send a message home now

it'll take 27 million years to get there

Who knows whether our species, our planet
will still be around to receive it

most likely, not

We travel along, back through time

Pass the point where the dinosaurs
were wiped out

pass the moment where the first
creatures clambered onto land

Two billion light-years from home

closing in at the edge of the universe

going back to the beginning of time

This isn't a galaxy

It's brighter than hundreds
of galaxies put together

a blinding beam of energy bursting
out for trillions of kilometers

Something this big, this bright
must be incredibly powerful

Experience tells us,
out here, power equals danger

It looks like a quasar,
the deadliest thing in the universe

If it is,
then our journey could be over

just as the end is almost in sight

The deadliest, most powerful thing
in the universe - a quasar

a swirling caldron of superhot gas

brighter than hundreds of galaxies

The source of this awesome power lies
deep inside the heart of the beast

a heart of darkness

a super massive black hole,
as heavy as a billion suns

It's ripping apart whole stars

sucking their gases
into the quasar, devouring them

Until they're nothing, lost forever
from the visible universe

We've seen the worst
the universe can throw at us

the most powerful and destructive
forces the universe produces

Now it's onto the very edge
of the universe

it's almost within reach

We'll need to go further

go faster if we were to cross
the final reaches of the known universe

Eight billion light-years from home

more galaxies

but these look different,

ragged, small, close together

We are so far back in time

we are seeing these galaxies as they
were before the earth was even born

They are still young, still growing

We are getting closer to
where and how it all began

12 billion years ago

Look at the galaxies now

they are more like primitive plankton
floating in the vast, dark ocean

It's magical, clouds of dust and gas

dancing, forming shape,
merging to make embryonic galaxies

This is how our own galaxy was born

They are disappearing

We've gone back
before the stars were born

into a cosmic dark age

and before that

light, the afterglow
from a massive explosion

the explosion which created
the known universe

We are almost there

This is it

We've made it

the edge of the universe

130 billion trillion kilometers
from home

13.5 billion years ago

The very instant of the big bang

the most violent,
most creative moment in history

Everything that's ever happened
follows from this moment

Every religion,
every culture has pondered it

But we still don't know
what sparked this active creation

or why

This is where our journey ends

and the universe begins

An infinitely hot, small,
dense point erupts

Creating space, time, matter,
our universe itself

First, it's the size
of a subatomic particle

the tiniest fraction of a second later

it's big enough to hold
in the palm of your hand

Moments later,
it's the size of the earth

Today, the light from the big bang
is still spreading out

as a hiss of radial static

Your TV aerial picks it up

you can see it as static
on an untuned TV

We go on, forwards through time,

riding the blast wave

All the things we've seen on our journey

are sparks flying out from the big bang

galaxies, stars, planets, all just debris

Back through our galaxy

our solar system

until we reach another cooling cinder

swirling in the afterglow of the big bang

the earth

We had to go back to the past
to see our future

Three billion years from now

the vast Andromeda Galaxy
smashes into our own

a new galaxy is born

the sun and planets survive

but they've been thrown into a huge
looping orbit around the new galaxy

The sun is becoming a red giant

swallowing up Mercury and Venus

scorching our planet's surface,
destroying all life on earth

the sun dies,

shrinking to a white dwarf

neighboring stars are dying too

being replaced by white dwarfs,
pulsars, black holes

the lights are going down on the galaxy

Since the big bang,
the universe has been fading, dying

not with a bang,
but with a long drawn-out whimper

But there could be a way out

an escape route from our dying universe

It might be possible
for our distant descendants

to find a shortcut through space and time

a wormhole

If there are other universes

it could take our descendants from
our doomed universe into a parallel one

where they could find another earth,
still in the prime of life

If they are lucky enough

they will live on in a new universe

a new home.

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