All language subtitles for Big.History.S01E11.Decoded.720p.BluRay.DD5.1.x264-NTb.EN HOH

[ Man Narrating ]
Two alien warships...

battle it out in a flooded meteor crater.

This isn't science fiction.

Fire!

[ Narrator] It's the beginning of
a new kind of warfare here on Earth...

with a secret weapon
hidden in big history.

[ Explosion ]

We think of history as a timeline...

a series of events stretching
a few thousand years into the past.

It's time to think bigger.

Instead of a line,
imagine a web of infinite connections...

interacting over billions of years...

linked together to create
everything we've ever known-

our universe, our planet and us.

History as we know it
is about to get big.

[ Narrator]
The American Civil War.

For the first time
in the history of mankind...

- two ships-
- Fire!

Made not of wood but of iron-

- Fire!
- Meet in battle.

The Monitor...

and the Merrimack.

While traditional history tells us
that the first clash of ironclads...

ushers in a new era of naval warfare...

Big history reveals
an even a bigger story.

How this pivotal moment
in human history...

connects to the chaos
of the early solar system...

and the violent impacts from meteors,
asteroids and comets...

that shape the Earth as we know it...

and give us the tools to survive.

Big history links back 35 million years.

This giant meteor,
more than three miles wide...

is on a collision course with Earth.

When it crashes,
it will help to shape America.

The meteor slams
into the Atlantic Ocean...

with enough force to blast an underwater
crater more than 50 miles wide...

and as deep as the Grand Canyon.

Over millions of years,
the coastline shifts...

waters recede...

leaving behind a bay deep enough
to harbor large ships-

the Chesapeake.

The Chesapeake Bay itself
is a gigantic impact crater.

[ Narrator]
An impact in just the right location...

to make the Chesapeake
a critical hub of American history.

The Chesapeake Bay sits midway
down the eastern coastline...

at the intersection of five major rivers.

A safe harbor that's ideal
for building colonies and commerce.

The first English settlers to put down
permanent roots in America...

do so here in Jamestown, Virginia.

And because the bay
is a gateway to America...

the power to control it
is a prize worth fighting for.

During the American Revolution...

both sides see the Chesapeake
as the key to victory.

In 1781...

the Americans surround the British
at Yorktown...

forcing a surrender
and Winning the War.

Thirty years later,
in the War of 1812...

the British invade up
the Chesapeake Bay...

and march on to burn Washington, D.C.

And as North battles South
in the American Civil War-

[ Man ] Fire!

The Monitor and the Merrimack
fight to a draw...

on the waters of the Chesapeake
impact crater.

It's a prehistoric scar
ripped into the surface of the Earth.

But the Chesapeake Bay...

is just one of almost 200 known
large impact sites around the planet.

At 186 miles wide,
the Vredefort crater in South Africa...

is evidence of the largest asteroid
ever to strike the Earth.

Many more impact zones
have been erased over million of years...

by weather and erosion.

One of the frightening things, once you zoom
out and look at a big history point of view...

is just how often the Earth
has been pounded by rocks.

[ Narrator] These impacts don't just
create the contours of our map...

meteors create the entire planet.

This is the birth of our solar system.

The sun sits at the center
of a debris field.

Over millions of years,
the debris clusters together...

into space rocks
that we call meteors...

and ice chunks called comets.

In the chaos of space,
they crash into each other...

merging and growing
into larger clusters.

[ Man ]
As one object hits another...

the larger object will have sufficient
gravity to attract the smaller object to it.

Like a snowball, all this material
is brought together, right...

into these larger and larger objects.

[ Narrator]
Large objects like planet Earth.

Once the planet forms...

more rocks crash in...

with alien elements
that lake hold...

And threaten to take over.

[ Narrator] Big history
is a new way to see the world.

It connects the chaos
of the early solar system...

to the birth of our planet...

and reveals how the scars
on the surface of the Earth...

that shape our story. -.

Are the results of violent impacts.

Impacts with the power to transform
the ground beneath our feet...

into the elements we crave most.

As a meteor hurtles to Earth...

each ton of rock carries the energy
of 100 tons of T.N. T.

Meteor collisions are very serious
events indeed...

because of the size and power...

um, and explosive sort of potential
of these collisions.

[ Narrator] Large impacts have enough
power to change the Earth's chemistry.

In Siberia...

where shock pressure
from an ancient meteor...

creates the largest deposit of diamonds
in the world.

And in Oklahoma...

where Ames Crater now sits atop
25 million barrels of oil...

because of conditions
created by a meteor explosion.

But meteors don't just create
valuable resources.

They also deliver them.

Big history connects back...

to the Chesapeake meteor crater...

and the battle of the Murmur
and the Merrimack.

It's the clash of the ironclads...

and it changes the way we fight.

[ Markley] it was the end
of the wooden ships of the line.

It was the beginning of what the world
now recognizes as a warship.

It was a significant turning point
in military history.

[ Narrator] The battle kick-starts
the worldwide race...

to build the biggest,
most powerful fleet of iron ships.

But there's a secret weapon
that makes modern warfare possible.

Big history connects the ironclads...

to a four-billion-year-old rain of iron
from the sky.

This molten mass
is the newly formed planet Earth.

It's filled with metals
like iron and nickel.

Metals so heavy, they sink down
into the core, far out of reach.

But as the Earth cools...

a solid crust forms a thick skin
around the planet...

that absorbs the impact
of even more meteors.

Meteors filled with metals.

And when they started bombarding
the early Earth...

they brought those metals with them,
deposited them.

And the reason we have those metals
even around us today...

is thanks to meteors and asteroids.

[ Narrator]
Without these metals from space...

humanity would be stuck
in the Stone Age.

Instead, we figure out
how to extract and master them...

to build our civilization...

bigger and stronger.

To make tools and machines...

like the first modern warships.

80 if metals that hitch a ride on meteors can
survive the journey through deep space...

and our atmosphere...

then a mystery remains.

What else do meteors bring us?

The same barrage from space
that delivered our metals...

may also have delivered the most
important one-two punch in history-

water.

Trillions of comets and asteroids
carry enough to fill the oceans...

creating an environment that
can support what meteors bring next-

life.

D.N.A. or even our earliest
single-celled ancestors...

may have arrived on Earth
with a bang.

The idea is that life on Earth
actually originated with microbes...

that hitched a ride on a meteor...

traveled through our solar system...

landed on Earth and gave rise
to everything we have today.

So they may have played a crucial role
in the early history of life on Earth.

[ Narrator] But while meteors
and comets may have brought life...

they may also bring
our ultimate destruction.

[ Narrator]
Big history has shown...

that meteors and comets
are Earth's secret supplier of metal...

water...

and perhaps even life.

They carry so much energy that even
a small impact leaves a big mark.

The meteor that explodes
over Russia in 2013...

is only 55 feet wide.

[ Explosion ]

But it unleashes 30 times the energy...

of the Hiroshima atomic bomb
into the atmosphere.

80 when a meteor that's 600 times bigger
makes contact...

it's catastrophic.

Big History links back 65 million years.

[Growling 1

This is Earth in the last days
of the dinosaurs.

An asteroid six miles wide...

is about to overturn
the balance of power on the planet.

It smashes into the Gulf of Mexico
somewhere near the Yucatén Peninsula.

[ Man ]
The results were just catastrophic.

First, there's this massive impact...

which is like all the world's nuclear
weapons going off simultaneously.

Enormous earthquakes.

Enormous tsunamis.

Huge fires.

Then enormous amount of stuff going
into the atmosphere which blocks sunlight.

[ Narrator]
The Earth descends into darkness.

It's the equivalent of a nuclear winter
that dooms the dinosaurs...

and 75% of all animal species.

An impact of this magnitude only happens
about every hundred million years.

And one species's catastrophe-

- [ Birds Chirping ]
- Is another's opportunity.

A good way to put it is that every
extinction does reshuffle the deck.

You just take all of the playing cards,
put them back, mix it up...

and deal yourself a new hand.

[ Narrator]
In the aftermath of the dinosaur die-off...

our earliest ancestors
emerge from the shadows.

If there had been no asteroid collision
65 million years ago...

would the human species even exist?
Probably not.

[ Man ] So it's interesting to consider
that a gigantic impact...

led to the demise of the dinosaurs...

that ultimately allowed us
to come into existence.

But, in the same way...

another such impact could lead
to our eventual destruction.

[ Narrator] Many large comets
and asteroids are out there.

And some are heading toward Earth.

So far, we've identified
more than 800 nearby...

that measure more than
a half a mile wide.

But even more dangerous
are the objects we can't see.

[ Filippenko ]
The orbits of asteroids can be tracked.

We can watch them circling the sun...

and we can tell where they're going
and where they will end up.

Comets are much more difficult
to deal with.

We can't see these comets until
they approach the sun for the first time.

So comets are actually
more dangerous than asteroids.

[ Narrator]
The meteors and comets that create...

sculpt...

and supply our planet...

may ultimately destroy us
in one final, colossal impact.

But what brings down mankind...

could pave the way for something else.

[ Benjamin ]
Ironically, it could be a meteor...

that eventually extinguishes
human life on this planet.

That's a sort of perspective, I think, that
big history brings to human knowledge.

[ Narrator] But the story of meteors
and comets is only the beginning.

There's a much bigger puzzle
hidden in big history.

Each episode unlocks a clue.

Everyday things like the sun...

water...

and beef hold the key.

Watch them all and you'll see
this grand mystery revealed.

The big history of time, of space.

The big history of us.