All language subtitles for Weird or What S01E04 1080p AMZN WEB-DL DD+2 0 x264-Absinth_track3_[eng]

- You know, I've been around for a while,

met some interesting people,

done some crazy things.

See, you just might think that there's

not much that can take me by surprise.

You'd be wrong.

The world is full of
stories, science and things

that amaze and confound
me every single day.

Incredible mysteries that
keep me awake at night.

Some I can answer.

Others just defy logic.

- [Voiceover] Is the end
of the world upon us?

In Wyoming, a deadly force is sleeping

underneath Yellowstone National Park.

Could it awake and destroy the planet?

- It could happen today.

It could happen tomorrow.

It's a race against time.

- [Voiceover] In Alabama, a NASA scientist

makes a remarkable discovery.

Is a killer solar storm coming our way?

- If it were hit today,
would knock us out,

would knock civilization to its knees.

- [Voiceover] And across the world

comes the threat of an invasion by robots.

Could the Terminator be real?

- Yep, it's a weird world and I love it.

Do you believe in prophecies?

Some of the biggest events in history

have been forseen by some
of the greatest minds.

Nostradamus predicted World War I,

Hitler, Napoleon, the election

of U.S. President Barack Obama

and the atomic destruction
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

How did he do that and
why can't I do that?

Were they simply lucky guesses?

Can we somehow see with
incredible accuracy

what will happen hundreds or perhaps

thousands of years into the future?

And if we can, do we really
want to know what's coming?

Patrick Geryl is an astronomer.

In 1996 he didn't something extraordinary.

He devoted his life to
studying the complex

and mysterious texts
of the ancient Mayans.

What he found is now
the stuff of Hollywood.

The world is coming to an end and soon.

- What captivated me
the most after reading

the Mayan prophecies
was that they calculated

this huge cataclysm at the end of 2012

and this was very disturbing
information for me.

I said, wow, gee, my whole future

and the whole future of everybody

will be destroyed in a few years.

What am I going to do?

And that changed my whole life.

Before 1996 I planned to become

the oldest person in the world

by following a long living diet.

In the morning, one and a
half liters of orange juice.

In the midday, seven steamed bananas

and in the evening, rice
with one kilo vegetables

and two egg yolks.

- [Voiceover] But knowing when

the world would end wasn't enough.

Patrick had to know how it would happen.

For the next two years, using
complex mathematical formulas,

he set out to decode the
Mayans hidden messages.

- I was immediately grasped by the fact

that they had very high accuracy

and that they were able
to calculate something

very spectacular into the future

and it took me several years to decode it,

but I found what will happen in 2012.

- [Voiceover] What did Patrick find?

Is it an asteroid?

Nuclear war?

How will the world end?

Geryl believes on December 12, 2012

a sleeping giant will awake.

- The supervolcano will erupt

and that will destroy
completely our civilization.

- [Voiceover] There are at least seven

known super volcanos on Earth.

They contain massive
amounts of molten rock,

which is trapped inside them
below the Earth's crust.

The pressure builds
until finally it bursts.

Exploding in a catastrophic eruption

thousands of times more
powerful than a regular volcano.

The last eruption occurred
over 70,000 years ago.

Could one of these giants
be a threat to us now?

Remarkably, the answer could be yes

and it's underneath
Yellowstone National Park.

Over two million tourists
visit Yellowstone every year.

Little do they know that under the surface

lies one of the deadliest
forces on the planet.

Incredibly, this sleeping super volcano

may be coming to life.

In 2004, scientists detected the ground

starting to bulge around Yellowstone.

Soon after, over 1,000 mini earthquakes

occurred there in just a few months.

Some dismiss it,

but others say it can only mean one thing.

- The scientists that
are saying that, well,

the rumbling at Yellowstone Park,

that is normal, well, they don't know

what the Maya knew.

The rotation from the Earth will change.

Once the inner core of the
Earth starts moving on its head,

then the lava that is
around the inner core

will be pushed also, very
sharply, to the crust

and we will have an
eruption of the Yellowstone

at the end of 2012.

- [Voiceover] Did Patrick
Geryl unlock the Mayan secret?

Is the Yellowstone super
volcano about to erupt?

And could it mean the end of the world?

Robert Vicino is an
entrepreneur and survivalist.

He's not waiting to find out.

- So you thought Mount St.
Helens was something to see,

wait til you see Yellowstone go.

- [Voiceover] In 2003, Robert
decided that there was only

one way to survive the
blast of a supervolcano,

by building volcano-proof
bunkers all over America.

- It's a race against time
to get our shelters built.

You could say it isn't so
and ignore the possibilities,

but it's not going to make it go away.

- [Voiceover] Made of concrete and steel,

these self-contained bunkers
are buried underground.

They can house up to 1,000 people

and store enough food for a year.

But who is going to use them?

- We have about 10,000 members

currently signed up
from all over the world.

After the Japan quake, we had a spike.

I think we received
6-700 people in one day.

So, the awareness is going up, you know,

as my prediction is, if we're
still here a year from now,

in early 2012, we're going to have a line.

People are going to be waiting in line

begging to get in and it'll be too late.

When I first mentioned it to people,

they thought it was crazy.

I found that the reactions
have changed in the last year

and even more specifically
this year, 2011.

Now they're really wanting to know,

where is it and how big are they

and how do we get in and
how much does it cost?

Because I think people are
starting to realize it's coming

and it may be coming sooner than we think.

You know, something interesting,

and I just heard this today,

somebody advised me that, you know,

the Mayan calander talks about the,

or we believe it ends
on December 21, 2012,

and a lot of people say,
well so what it ends,

it's going to restart and
there's no proof of anything

and that's not what they meant,

That the world was going to end.

What I heard this morning was,

15 years ago, the common
interpretation of the calendar was

that the, it would end
on December 24, 2011.

So, it's closer than we think.

- [Voiceover] Could Vicino and his friends

someday be the only surviving
members of the human race?

- If Yellowstone blows, you're looking

at a life extinction event.

The only parties that are going to survive

are those that are underground.

It could happen today.

It could happen tomorrow.

I think the Mayans knew something.

How they knew, I don't know.

Were they informed by some other culture?

Did they know?

Were they able to see into the future?

Were they able to calculate the patterns

of the solar system and the heavens

to know when the alignments
are going to happen

and when this happens that'll happen?

Did they exist in the last
go around, 3,600 years ago,

Or did somebody tell them?

- [Voiceover] Does this survivalist

know something we don't?

Whatever the truth is,
he's taking no chances.

- I don't know what inspired Noah,

but I would imagine he was as passionate

about what he was doing as I am.

- [Voiceover] Are Robert
Vicino and Patrick Geryl

simply prophets of doom
or could they be right?

Will a supervolcano cause
the end of the world?

Crazy isn't it?

I mean, if you listen to
every doomsday prediction,

prophecy or conspiracy theory

you'd never leave the house, right?

I mean, what is it with these people?

Do they think that just because

they say a giant volcano is gonna

rip through this planet and wipe us out

that we're gonna believe them?

I don't believe a word they say.

I'm just being careful.

- [Voiceover] A man decoding
the text of the ancient Mayans

uncovers an astonishing prophecy.

Will a super volcano at
Yellowstone destroy our planet?

Stanley Ambrose is an anthropologist.

He thinks we have reason
to believe it might.

- I suppose if you really
wanted to stay around

in a place that was
struck by an apocalypse

that would be a good idea.

I'd rather move.

- [Voiceover] A lifetime
spent studying supervolcanos

has convinced Ambrose they
are a force to be feared.

- If Yellowstone blows, it would
eject a huge amount of dust

and gases up to 50 kilometers
into the stratosphere.

We have to fear global famine.

We can imagine complete
loss of crop production

for decades to centuries.

- [Voiceover] In 1980,
Mount St. Helens erupted

in Washington State sending volcanic ash

over 10 kilometers into the air.

Ambrose thinks this massive eruption

would be dwarfed by Yellowstone.

Could humans survive this kind
of catastrophic explosion?

We may know the answer
because it's already happened.

- The volcanic eruption of Toba

stands among the most explosive

and largest in Earth history.

- [Voiceover] Around 70,000 years ago

a supervolcano exploded
at Toba in Indonesia.

It was so powerful it left a
crater 100 kilometers long,

still visible today.

- Volcanic ash rained down over an area

larger than the size of the United States.

That's big.

The Earth was surrounded
by this thick blanket

of sulfuric acid haze.

The sun weakened.

Much solar energy was reflected
back into outer space.

The landscape around the world
was basically devegetated.

If you lived anywhere from Southeast Asia

across to India and Pakistan,

the land would have been covered

with a very, very fine white dust.

That's the volcanic ash
and it is really fine

and it is really white and, like snow,

it reflects sunlight off
of the land's surface.

Unlike snow, it didn't melt.

It had to be washed away by the rains,

whenever the rains occurred
and that doesn't seem

to have been very often.

It's a global shock to the world's system,

what I call a instant ice age.

- [Voiceover] Before the eruption at Toba,

the Earth was home to a
healthy population of humans.

Ambrose believes we can judge our fate

by looking at what happened to them.

- The volcanic eruption
caused a population crash

unlike any that had been seen
previously in human history

and during the next 10,000 years,

there were very few
archaeological traces of humans.

- [Voiceover] Did a supervolcano

take us to the brink of extinction?

Could Yellowstone do the same now?

- Everything within the
blast zone would be buried.

There would probably be
general infrastructure failure.

Agricultural production
would, of course, be hammered.

The United States would
lose its entire green belt

and if the whole world got cold,

the way it did with Toba,

then there would be few choices

of where to go to get food.

- [Voiceover] It's an alarming scenario.

Should we heed the warning?

Is the Yellowstone
supervolcano ready to blow?

- Sometimes it's bulging up
like it's going to explode.

Then these bulges go back down.

One of these bulges coming up
is not going to go back down.

The pressure just might
continue increasing.

That's when it's time
to head for the hills.

- [Voiceover] Could
Stanley Ambrose be right?

Are billions of people in imminent danger

of death by supervolcano?

Jake Lowenstern is the chief scientist

at the Yellowstone volcano observatory.

- It's my job to worry about whether

Yellowstone's going to erupt.

- [Voiceover] Jake studied
the supervolcano's behavior.

He believes it's not a
monster, but a pussycat.

- People talk about the impending doom

because they know there have been

eruptions in Yellowstone's past.

There have been very, very
large eruptions at Yellowstone.

The size of eruptions that
people will call super eruptions.

One of the things that you'll hear about

when people talk about Yellowstone

is somehow that it's overdue
and they throw out this number

of 600,000 years for an interval

between these large eruptions.

Well that number is pretty
much taken out of nowhere.

If you did the math on those two,

those three big eruptions at Yellowstone

that the number for the interval

would be about 730,000 years.

Of course, the last
eruption was 640,000 years.

So, the number 600,000 is more appealing

if you're trying to build the case

that somehow it's overdue,

but second of all, here
you're doing statistics

based on a sample population of two.

The interval between the first and second

and the second and third
large eruption at Yellowstone.

Sample population of two, not very big,

not really statistically
meaningful to talk about

how often big eruptions
occur at Yellowstone.

And, finally, in terms of this,

there's no guarantee that Yellowstone

will have another one of
these super eruptions.

Volcanoes have life cycles.

They, they are born, they
live their lives, they die.

There are very few places
that we can point to

around the world that
have had more than three

very large eruptions.

There is a remote possibility
of those eruptions

in the future.

It's just a question of
whether the kind of activity

we're seeing now actually forecast

that anything is in the offing,

but there's no reason
to expect a big eruption

at Yellowstone within our lifetime

which doesn't seem very worrying to me.

- [Voiceover] Why is Jake so sure?

He thinks there is something
the prophets of doom

have overlooked.

- Well, the way that
Yellowstone has erupted

most of the time is through
these smaller lava flows,

which are similar to those
that happen in Hawaii,

which, as you can imagine would
be locally very interesting,

but not an international problem.

- [Voiceover] In the
last two million years,

the Yellowstone supervolcano
has had three giant eruptions.

Jake believes a crucial fact
is preventing another one.

Yellowstone erupts all the
time, but on such a tiny scale.

It produces nothing but
harmless flows of lava.

- Lava flows can block roads.

Forest fires might start, but
they sort of roll very slowly

across the ground.

You could generally out
run them very easily.

So they're not very damaging events.

- [Voiceover] Far from causing a disaster,

Jake thinks these lava
flows are keeping a lid

on the sleeping giant.

- Any time that you're
having a volcanic eruption,

you're removing pressure
on the magma chamber.

It seems to be relatively common place

for Yellowstone to have
this kind of activity.

- [Voiceover] Are mini
eruptions at Yellowstone

keeping us safe from the supervolcano?

Do they explain its recent rumblings?

- Around 2009-2010 we had
a couple earthquake swarms.

In a swarm you have a number
of medium sized earthquakes

and they happen all in
one particular location.

They were among the larger
ones that we've had.

- [Voiceover] But what caused the quakes?

Scientists believe magma is flowing

into the volcanic chamber
pushing up the crust.

Is this a sign of an
impending giant eruption?

- There was about 25
centimeters or 10 inches,

something like this, of
uplift at Yellowstone.

Between 1925 and 1975 it rose
about three times that amount.

So that, that uplift doesn't in particular

seem very worrying to me.

The kinds of activity we're seeing

are the kind of activity that clearly

has been going on for hundreds

and even thousands of years.

- [Voiceover] Even if Jake is right,

there's another burning question.

Why are some people certain
the Yellowstone supervolcano

will erupt in 2012?

- I think there's a
subset of the population

out there that just likes
to be scared in a way.

They like to, to come up with things

that, that kind of stir the pot,

but there's no clock beneath volcanoes

that tells them when to erupt.

Based on the information
that we're seeing,

there's no guarantee that Yellowstone

will ever have another one
of these super eruptions.

- [Voiceover] Were the
ancient Mayans right?

WIll a supervolcano
wipe out the human race

in the greatest mass
extinction since the big bang?

Or is Yellowstone sleeping
giant nothing more

than a harmless firecracker?

Weird or what?

- Everywhere you look our
planet is teeming with life.

Whether a single celled amoeba, a snail,

or incredibly complex
organisms and species like us,

but all life forms on earth
have one thing in common.

Our very existence depends upon,

in fact, is at the
mercy of just one thing.

If it's in trouble, then
there's trouble for all of us.

- [Voiceover] They say you
shouldn't stare directly

into the sun, but for over three decades

NASA scientist, David Hathaway,

has done exactly that.

In 2005 he noticed something very strange.

- It was a little
unexpected by many of us,

myself included.

- [Voiceover] Hathaway
was tracking sunspots

in giant regions of
intense magnetic activity

that occur on the surface of the sun.

But the greatest danger to our planet

is what explodes out of them.

Solar flares.

- Solar flares can blast
material off of the sun,

million miles an hour.

- [Voiceover] WIth a force
of 10 billion atomic bombs,

solar flares catapult billions of tons

of red hot plasma into space and sometimes

directly at Earth.

- When it strikes the Earth, can shake

the Earth's magnetic field.

Does some spectacular things like

produce Aurora Borealis.

It can also do things to our
technology in particular.

Solar flares can cause
a satellite to de-orbit

and ultimately re-enter the
Earth's atmosphere and burn up.

So, you literally lose the satellite.

- [Voiceover] Solar
flares and sunspots occur

in regular cycles, but in 2008

Hathaway discovered something remarkable.

Suddenly, they appeared
to mysteriously stop.

- We're seeing a sunspot cycle,

the smallest we've seen
in at least 100 years

or perhaps 200 years.

We didn't see sunspots for
literally months at a time.

That had us a little surprised.

- [Voiceover] Some scientists believe

the change in the sunspot
cycles is the calm

before an unprecedented solar storm.

A wave of solar flares so destructive

scientists call it Space Katrina.

But now other ominous
signs suggest the sun

could be waking from its deep slumber.

- We've gone from no sunspots to

20 or 30 sunspots on the
sun on a given day now.

We've also seen the
number of flares increase.

- [Voiceover] Is there
something wrong with the star

that gives life to all things on Earth?

- We've had some fairly wild predictions.

You've gotta go way back.

You've gotta go back to the 1600s

to find the sun misbehaving or acting

as weirdly as it is now.

- [Voiceover] Is our
sun preparing to launch

the biggest solar storm in history?

A NASA scientist discovers
strange activity in solar flares

on the surface of the sun.

Could a giant solar
storm be coming our way?

Or is there another explanation

for the sun's weird behavior?

Nassim Haramein is a scientist.

He believes he has the answer.

In 2009 he made a remarkable discovery

when viewing images taken
by a NASA satellite.

- What I noticed is when
I was looking at this,

first of all, we see two objects appear.

Those two objects seem
to have moved together

and have moved across the frame.

What's strange about
this particular sequence

is that when you follow this object,

they made almost a 90 degree angle turn

and then entering the sun.

- [Voiceover] NASA claimed
the objects were simply comets

or glitches, but when Nassim
studied them more closely,

he came to an amazing conclusion.

- And when I started to see these objects,

I couldn't believe my eyes.

They were immense.

I mean, they only look like
little dots on the data,

but that little dot beside the sun

mean that object is almost
the size of the Earth.

- [Voiceover] Planet sized
objects entering the sun.

Had Nassim found something extraordinary

that even NASA had missed?

He thinks there's only one explanation.

- I believe these objects
may be intergalactic ships

from advanced civilization.

They appear to be under
intelligent control.

They don't appear to act in a natural way

that you would expect
from cosmological objects

like comets and meteorites and so on.

It may sound completely outrageous,

but imagine a civilization
that's like thousands

if not millions of years ahead of us.

Look at what we did in 150
years of advanced technology.

We went from like
literally horse and buggy

to having rockets that
are going to the moon

and a space shuttle and space stations

and all this in 150 years.

Imagine if we had a thousand years

of advancements in technology or

a million years in advancement.

What would our ships look like?

Well, they might be the size of planets.

- [Voiceover] Could this
explain the sun's odd behavior?

Are changes in its sunspot
and solar flare activity

being caused by alien ships?

- The solar flare appears
to emanate right after

the objects impact the sun.

To me, clear that the two
are absolutely related

and the sun flare is
most likely the shockwave

resulting from the
penetration of the objects

through the surface of the sun.

- [Voiceover] Alien spacecraft

deliberately crashing into the sun.

It's an incredible theory,
but why would they do it?

According to Nassim, the answer lies

in the astronomical records
of the ancient Egyptians.

- When I looked at all
the data around the world

from all these civilization they

all talked about the sun gods.

When you looked at these texts

and the way they described them.

They talked about the sun gods
using the sun as a gateway.

If you were an advanced civilization

and here I'm talking about a
very advanced civilization,

you could maybe enter and then come out

at any other point in the universe.

To me, after all these
years, it has really become,

you know, a fact of
life and I'm, you know,

not surprised anymore
when people come up to me

and say, you know, when I
was 10 I saw this object

in the sky or, you know, a few months ago

I saw this amazing, you know, object

that could not be a
plane and all this stuff.

You know, it's becoming, it's so common.

So many people have seen it

and now there is governments

that are releasing files
from the military facilities

from extremely credible,
you know, sources.

You're talking, generals
and all sorts of high level

military personnel coming forward

talking about this
activity around the world.

There is true phenomenon occurring

that has to do with UFO activity

and extraterrestrial activity.

Supporting this idea
that maybe the sun gods

are on their way back.

- [Voiceover] Is our sun part
of an intergalactic highway

being used by alien traffic?

Are they responsible for
disrupting its natural cycles

and threatening the Earth?

- Now we did some pretty strange
things on the Enterprise,

but this is weird or what, I,

let me see if I got this straight.

NASA scientists say our
sun's sunspot cycles

are behaving weirdly and this could cause

a giant killer solar flare
to head towards Earth, right?

While another guy, Nassim, thinks that

there's something else
causing these solar flares.

He thinks aliens and spaceships
the size of the Earth

are crashing in and out
of the sun wreaking havoc.

Nassim's theory seems crazy, right?

Or is it?

- [Voiceover] Our sun is
acting like an odd ball.

Are it's natural cycles being
disrupted by giant UFOs?

Is a fatal solar storm
on its way to Earth?

NASA researcher, David Hathaway,

has an explanation that's
far more down to earth.

He thinks we have nothing to worry about.

- This recent sunspot cycle
has started later than expected

and I think I understand it.

The sunspot cycle is
caused by magnetic fields,

those magnetic fields
that make the sunspots

and we've known for
decades that it's the flows

within the sun that take
those magnetic fields,

amplify them and produce
sunspots every 11 years,

but the devil is in the details.

Exactly what flows are there
inside the sun that do this?

What are the structure of those flows?

And we're getting a better handle on that,

but we're still not quite there yet

that we still really haven't got a model

for how the sun does this
where we can take the equations

and march them forward in time

the way meteorologists might do with

the equations for flows
in the Earth's atmosphere.

- [Voiceover] The sun's magnetic fields

violently swirl around the surface

like powerful ocean currents.

They produce sunspots and solar flares

until finally something bizarre happens.

- The sun's magnetic field flips.

- [Voiceover] Every 11 years the sun's

magnetic poles do a back flip.

Scientists believe this
causes a dramatic decrease

in sunspot and solar flare activity,

but does it threaten us now?

- We had weak magnetic fields produced

on the surface of the sun
during the last sunspot cycle.

Because they were weak, we'll survive this

without any major inconvenience.

The end of the worlders almost
certainly have it wrong.

The timing's just way off.

- [Voiceover] We may
be safe for the moment,

but could a mega solar
storm hit us in the future?

And what would happen if it did?

Lawrence Joseph is a science journalist.

- If a solar storm hit
today, it would knock us out,

would knock civilization to its knees

without any exaggeration.

- [Voiceover] How?

An historical event
could provide the answer.

On September 1, 1859, British astronomer,

Richard Carrington, was
looking through his telescope

when a giant solar flare
exploded onto the Earth.

- It caused the northern lights to dance

down to the Equator.

You could read a book at midnight outside

because of the incredible radiation.

The Carrington event caused some fires

in telegraph offices and
caused some disruption.

Basically it didn't inflict great damage.

- [Voiceover] Why didn't this
massive flare destroy us?

- There was no power grid
holding society together.

There was no telecom.

There was none of the
things that we've come

to rely upon existed back then.

- [Voiceover] Joseph believes that

if a similar solar flare hit us today,

our massive reliance on
electricity would be our downfall.

- We're talking a blackout that
could last months or years,

could cover half to
two-thirds of the continent.

After a month, I can't really see anything

but anarchy or the beginning of it.

It's the paradox of progress, I call it.

We have become more
vulnerable to these storms

and the storms are headed our way.

The shields are down, Scotty.

- [Voiceover] In 1989, a small solar flare

knocked out the Quebec power grid

and left six million people without power

in the dead of winter.

Joseph believes a giant
flare would destroy

every power grid on the planet.

No electricity means no food.

- I'm damn concerned.

People would really begin
to die off in large numbers.

So, what are you gonna do?

We don't know, I mean, people
are gonna head for the hills.

What are you gonna do in the hills?

I don't know what to do in the hills.

Most people don't.

- [Voiceover] Have our
advances in technology

made us vulnerable to a super solar storm?

Is the sun's mysterious behavior, natural

or are aliens to blame?

Weird or what?

A world renowned inventor makes
an astonishing prediction.

- 20 years from now computers will

be operating fully at human levels.

- [Voiceover] Are we facing an
uprising of killer machines?

Could the terminator be real?

- It's incredible isn't it?

If we were to believe
the ancient prophecies

or our modern day doomsday theorists,

or even some of our best scientists,

that not only is the end of
the world going to happen,

but there's lots of ways
that nature could destroy us

and none of them are nice,

but what if they're all wrong.

What if the thing that will wipe us out

has nothing to do with
volcanoes or solar storms

or what if there's something
aside from nuclear weapons,

of course, that we've created
that's an even bigger threat?

Weird or what?

- [Voiceover] In 1984
Hollywood gave the world

a futuristic science fiction blockbuster.

The story of a cyborg assassin
sent back in time from 2029.

The Termniator posed
a remarkable question.

Could robots take over and destroy us?

Nearly three decades later,
we may have the answer.

Ray Kurzweil is a world
renowned inventor and futurist.

He believes science
fiction will become reality

sooner than we think.

- In the last 15 years,
we've seen millions-fold

improvement in the power of computers

and this is not just an idle
speculation about the future,

that's what we've seen.

20 years from now
computers will be operating

fully at human levels.

- [Voiceover] It's an extraordinary theory

based on an extraordinary fact.

Today's computers are 100
billion times more powerful

than they were a century ago
and their power is growing.

Kurzweil believes they
are rapidly catching us.

- Computers already exceed
humans at logical thinking,

like playing games.

There are robotic cars with
artificial intelligence

that are driving without human drivers.

A computer today can look
at an electrocardiogram

and diagnose it with
the accuracy of doctors

and that's something that wasn't feasible

even a couple of years ago.

So, things are moving
more and more quickly.

- [Voiceover] Are we experiencing
the rise of the machines?

Are our PCs more than
simply harmless pieces

of plastic and metal?

- They'll continue to grow exponentially

in the basic hardware power,

more than doubling in power every year.

We'll get to human levels of intelligence

in a machine by my estimates around 2029.

- [Voiceover] Wait a minute.

What did he say?

- We'll get to human
levels of intelligence

in a machine by my estimates around 2029.

- [Voiceover] 2029 is the year

from which the Terminator made its return.

Will machines equal, then
surpass our brain power

in just 20 years?

Incredibly, Kurzweil
believes it won't end there.

- By my calculations, when
we get to around 2045,

we will have multiplied the intelligence

of our human-machine
civilization a billion-fold

by merging with this intelligent
technology we're creating.

That will be such a profound,
singular transformation

when we can actually vastly
multiply our own intelligence.

- [Voiceover] Will man and machine merge

before the middle of this century

and if so, what does it mean for us?

- It's not an invasion, you
know, from another planet.

And people say, oh
we'll lose our humanity.

In my mind, that is our humanity.

That's part of who we are.

Our computers, our technology is part of

the human civilization.

So, we will transcend our
biology not our humanity.

I believe we will embody our
human values in these machines.

They are part of human
civilization already.

I don't like the term transhumanism

because it implies that we're
gonna transcend our humanity.

I think the goal, anyway,
is to keep our humanity

and transcend the
limitations of our biology

and that's not a new story.

If we hadn't done that,
human life expectancy

would still be 23, which is
what it was 1,000 years ago.

- [Voiceover] Could our world end

not by natural disaster,
but with humankind

simply becoming obsolete?

John Leslie is a professor of philosophy

at the University of Guelph in Canada.

- It could be in the next 20-30 years

we have computers which are
more intelligent than humans

and which take over,
control over our lives

and there's an obvious possibility there

that things could go badly wrong.

- [Voiceover] John believes that

far from advancing humanity,

creating uber intelligent
robots and computers

could backfire on all of us.

- If robots became super intelligent,

they could well have very little
interest in the human race.

They could think of
themselves as superior humans

and look on us in the same
way as we look on ants.

And a machine could come to the answer,

let's get rid of biological humans

and put machines in place of them.

- [Voiceover] Are the machines
we created gonna turn on us

and take over our planet?

Is Hollywood right?

- You have to remember that
the science fiction of today

quite often turns out to be
the science fact of tomorrow.

- [Voiceover] According to John,

it's not only Terminators that pose

a very real threat to our survival.

- In fact, one of the dangers here

is that it may be that computers

are in charge of the system
which controls the good ones.

We simply don't know to what extent

they are in charge of
the destructive forces.

- [Voiceover] Could a machine

deliberately trigger a nuclear Holocaust?

It's a terrifying scenario,

but Leslie has an even
more frightening theory.

The ultimate threat to the human race

is already in our homes.

- You could argue that the Internet is,

at present, a gigantic computer

and that it's intelligence so far exceeds

the intelligence of any individual human.

Suddenly, the amount of knowledge

you can get very, very
rapidly on the Internet

is much bigger than you could get by

consulting the greatest memory experts.

I believe that the future of the Internet

is pretty certainly going to push it

in the direction of more
and more intelligence.

- [Voiceover] Every day
over two billion people

log on to the Internet.

It connects most of the world's
computers and databases,

moving information around the planet.

John believes the Internet could evolve

into a central brain that
leads a cybernetic revolt

against mankind.

- It could become immensely intelligent

and become their form what
takes over world governments

and possibly then decides that humans

are irrelevant and gets rid of them.

That's just one way in which we could

be annihilated almost immediately.

- [Voiceover] Will robots blow us up

with our own nuclear weapons?

Is the Internet going to destroy us?

Will man be enslaved by machines?

- You know, I never thought
machines were that smart.

I mean, most of the gadgets I have

are incapable of doing
anything useful at all,

let alone reciting Shakespear,

but if we believe what some of the world's

greatest minds are telling
us these things we've created

are going to take us over,
blow us up with our own weapons

and enslave us for the rest of time.

Could that, could that be possible?

Not today, my friends!

- [Voiceover] Leading
scientists believe machines

are becoming so intelligent

that they'll overtake humans by 2050.

Will they become Terminators
and annihilate us?

Noel Sharkey is a professor
of artificial intelligence

and robotics at the University
of Sheffield, England.

He says we have nothing to worry about.

- We're really a long
way off, at the moment,

of creating the kind of technology

you see in the likes of the Terminator.

With big humanoid robots
armed with machine guns

plotting across the battlefield.

- [Voiceover] Some of the
world's greatest minds disagree,

but Sharkey believes they haven't
asked one simple question.

Why?

- And as a scientist I need evidence

and there's no evidence of any kind of

really smart intelligence
or any kind of desire

or robots would have a
desire to take over the world

anymore than a washing machine would want

to take over the world.

- [Voiceover] Not only does Sharkey think

that machines aren't a threat,

but they're not nearly as smart
as we make them out to be.

- A lot of people talk about
artificial intelligence

at the moment, being
at the level of the rat

or the slug and it's going
to get so much smarter

and be like the human later,

but for me, I've studied animals

all my life, really and I would say

that current robots
weren't at the intelligence

of a bacteria because
bacteria can feed themselves

and they know how to
survive, robots don't.

They're dependent on me and essentially,

they're not bright enough
to be called stupid.

- [Voiceover] But even
if robots and computers

are nothing more than digital dummies,

couldn't someone use them
for evil rather than good?

- Well the problem is that
robots are very limited

in what they can do.

You just program a robot, but it's all up

to what the programmer puts in there.

There's no reason why
the robots, themselves,

would do anything that we
haven't told them to do

and I certainly wouldn't
be programming a robot

to tell it to take over the world

and I don't think anybody else would.

- [Voiceover] Instead of creatures
with a super intelligence

that surpasses humans,
Sharkey thinks machines

are our moronic slaves that lack

the one essential ingredient
for a robot-led Armageddon.

Human emotion.

- We have consciousness and we use that

in our everyday lives, in
our thought, in our desires.

Whereas robots have a really
rigid silicone intelligence,

no desires, no wants.

- [Voiceover] But if robots have

neither the brains nor the
drive for world domination,

why do so many others
believe it will happen?

- The whole idea of a
robot takeover is quite odd

and it's really the
subject of science fiction

right back since the world
was invented in 1921.

All science fiction movies have been

about robots killing humans
and taking over the world,

but it is as it says, fiction.

One of my big concerns at the minute

is that there are 43 countries world-wide

that are developing military robots

and one of the problems
is that military seem

to have this idea, science
fiction idea, of robots

that they could be that kind,
have that kind of intelligence

but in actual fact, they
can't tell the difference

between a soldier and a civilian

and so a lot of people will die,

but it won't be through
the intentions of robots.

It'll be the misuse by
humans of a dangerous weapon.

- [Voiceover] Are robots
just mindless heaps of metal

or will man and machine merge
and destroy the human race?

We'll just have to wait and find out.

Weird or what?

So there we have it.

Doomsday stories from
the Earth and beyond.

In Wyoming, a deadly
supervolcano lies dormant.

Will it explode in 2012

and fulfill a Mayan prophecy?

In Alabama, a NASA scientist
discovers the unthinkable.

A giant solar storm could be

on its way to destroy the Earth

and one of the world's greatest minds

makes a startling prediction.

Man and machine will merge by 2050.

Will robots take over?

Are we facing a Terminator Armageddon?

Are these stories evidence

that the end of the world is nigh?

Can we dismiss those who
claim these things are true?

You decide.

- Join me again next time for more stories

that will undoubtedly be weird or what.