All language subtitles for One.Strange.Rock.S01E08.Alien.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.H.264-NTb.Eng

WILL SMITH: I am gonna tell you
about the most incredible place.

We think we know our
home, but once you've seen
it from space it hits you.

It might be the weirdest
place in the whole universe.

Eight astronauts, with
over a thousand days
in space between them,

can tell us how
being up there helped
them to truly understand

what goes on down here.

I've been a stargazer
ever since I was a kid.

My grandmother even gave me
a compass to make it easier
to find the North Star.

I love looking out
into space and imagining are
there other worlds out there?

Is anything living on them?

JERRY: You know,
every day you're finding a
new planetary system that

looks pretty similar to Earth.

JEFF: The possibilities of
life somewhere else other than
Earth I think are very high.

NICOLE: I like to
think that, that there's
other life out there.

-If there is life out
there what would it be like?

Could we talk to it?

I mean, is it
gonna wanna fight?

Or will it like
romantic movies?

Is there anything out
there like you and me?

To find out, we can't just
look into space, we also
need to look down here.

I'm gonna tell you
how clues to alien life are
hidden on our strange rock.

♪ ♪

Mae Jemison was the
first African American
woman in space.

But Earth's orbit was not
enough for her, she's now head
of a star ship initiative,

its 100 year mission
to boldly go where no
one has gone before.

-Growing up, science fiction
was my go-to storytelling.

As a little girl as
I watched Star Trek ,
I was fascinated,

because science was
one of the characters.

It was right in
the middle of it.

And so my love for science
really met an incredibly
interesting vision.

I was fortunate enough
to meet Nichelle Nichols
who played Lieutenant Uhura

at a Star Trek convention.

She was really instrumental
in the recruitment of some
of the first women astronauts

and the first
minority astronauts
in the US Space Program.

I wasn't one
of her recruits, but
I'm really happy to say

that she's one of
my best friends now.

You're an Andorian, huh?

-Yes.

-People are always
asking me, "Will we find
aliens on other worlds?"

And I know they really
mean will we find
Vulcans or Klingons?

Well, to know how likely
that is, we really have to
understand how we got diverse,

complex life on this planet.

Scientists believe
that somewhere around
four billion years ago

life emerged on Earth.

One might imagine that,
once we get life out of
this primordial soup,

the road to complex creatures
like flowers and humans
is pretty straightforward.

But hold on, it's
not quite that easy.

There was no rule that
life had to get bigger.

There was no rule that life
had to become more complex.

Life could have stayed simple
and small, but it didn't.

Today, we live in a planet
inhabited by over eight
million different species.

And for that to happen
is so unlikely that
it makes you wonder

if it could
happen anywhere else.

As you look down
at the Earth from space,
you see the ocean,

the desert,

the grasslands,

you know that life exists in
every one of those locations.

And the type of
life that's there?

Well, that depends on
what food is available.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

LOGAN: The caves
have no light source.

When you're away from
the entrance it's as
dark as dark things get.

The creatures that
choose to live in a cave,
they do it for a reason.

In a totally dark place any
light is incredibly effective.

♪ ♪

The glow worms glow
when they are hungry.

The bugs have no idea.

They think, oh light,
instinctively fly towards it.

♪ ♪

All of a sudden,
they're stuck.

The glow worm is a
deceptive creature.

The more you know, the more
you see, the more disgusting

and ferocious you
realize these creatures are.

♪ ♪

When the glow worm's
got its bug, it will bite
or puncture into the wall

of the insect and
suck out the inside.

♪ ♪

MAE: Surely it's a law of
nature that life evolves
to fit its surroundings.

If we find life on other
planets it's likely that it
was the best suited to prosper

in the conditions there, an
extra-terrestrial Darwinian
evolution, if you please.

-As human beings, we are
constantly asking questions.

Who am I?

Why are we here?

What is the meaning
of existence?

Well, it turns out the big
question for life is what
are we having for dinner?

Food is energy, everything
living needs it, and it's a
big reason creatures live,

act and look the way they do.

(horns honking)

MAE: The complexity of
life here is staggering.

Just imagine how peculiar
a camel might appear if
you'd never seen one before.

You might think it was a
creature from another planet

but its strange design
makes perfect sense

for the way it
gets and uses energy,

like its wide,

flat teeth for
chewing tough plants.

Or its hump, a mound of fat,
stored energy, that allows it
to survive months in a harsh

environment without eating.

To sustain a complex creature
like a camel requires
vast amounts of energy.

Even something like a fly with
millions of complex cells is
breathtakingly complicated and

requires a
steady flow of energy.

But even if you're a
tiny microbe, smaller
than a pinhead,

you still have energy demands.

When we think about
life we usually think
of the big stuff,

you know plants and
animals, but the majority
of life on Earth are small,

single-celled organisms.

Bacteria.

And they have evolved
to eat almost anything.

♪ ♪

-So I think, yeah, you go
down the King Mast and then
you jump into the third hole.

Okay. Well, you know,
I've done the checklist,
I've got the comms ready.

So good luck.

(bubbles)

♪ ♪

This is one
of the biggest graveyards
of ships in the world.

Around 50 Japanese
boats and over 250
aircraft were sunk here

by American forces
during the Second World War.

Some were blown
up with torpedoes,

others were bombed.

It might seem like useless
junk now, but for some kinds
of life it's a perfect home.

All that energy that
was poured in to make
the vessels of the war

is there waiting
to be released.

♪ ♪

Rusticles look
like stalactites and they are
part metal and part microbes.

Microbes extract the chemical
energy from the metal, using
it to grow and reproduce.

WILL SMITH: To us iron
is just a metal, but for
these microbes it's food.

The rusticle is crawling
with billions of happy
bacteria, all chomping on an

all-the-iron-you-can-eat
underwater buffet.

♪ ♪

IAN: The first creatures
on Earth were microbes.

And in the future when
all human life has gone,

bacteria will still be
there doing their business.

-I love my food but, I mean,
I'm a little picky, and that's
because I'm not a microbe.

They will eat
anything, metal,
rocks, oil, plastic,

even human flesh.

But having a big palate
like that comes in handy.

MAE: Bacteria can survive
up on mountain tops.

They can survive in deserts.

They're in the soil.

They're thousands of
feet up in the atmosphere.

They're everywhere.

So it doesn't matter what
a planet is made of or how
poisonous its atmosphere.

Even if there is just a tiny
bit of energy to extract,

simple microbes will
work out a way to get it.

JERRY: Out in the
universe there, there's
gotta be that stuff,

there's gotta be these single
cell organisms that are living
in environments that life

as we know it here on Earth
could probably never tolerate.

CHRIS: Given an unlimited
number of planets in an
unlimited amount of time,

it's a little bit
delusional to think that
this is the only place

life could have ever evolved.

WILL SMITH: Maybe there are
microbes on other planets, but
there's a big leap between them

and something I can talk to.

Here on Earth, that
leap couldn't have happened
without a visitor from

93 million miles away.

WILL SMITH: Over the years,
I've had many encounters
with aliens and this may come

as a shock to you,
but they weren't real.

But if Hollywood is
right and there are aliens,
they're gonna have needs

and it's gonna be
all about energy.

MAE: Up to a point in Earth's
history, energy came from
heat, from volcanic vents,

from lightning strikes.

This energy was
readily around.

But, as the Earth started
to cool and to change,
the weather changed.

A new source of
energy was needed.

Some bacteria came up with
a new mechanism, let's use
the energy from the Sun,

which is readily available.

It was a really pivotal
moment in the history
of life on Earth.

-On the space station,
we have this vast array
of solar cells that collect

and harness the
solar energy from the Sun,

and we use this to run all
the systems to sustain life.

If things don't work the
way they're supposed to, that
can get very tricky very fast.

NICOLE: When you look out the
window you see these solar
panels that extend the length

of a football field and these
eight ginormous solar rays.

They would go from blue
to gold to copper color.

Just beautiful.

JERRY: So I'm out doing
a spacewalk and one of the
things you're worried about is

the solar panel, trying to
maneuver my way around those
solar panels and looking down

at plant Earth and the
greenery down there
and I realize, hey,

planet Earth is really
one big solar panel also.

MAE: Plants have been
converting solar energy
and storing it effectively

for billions of years.

This biological
magic trick means that,
even when there is only

the faintest trickle of
sunlight, plants can grow.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

MAE: Photosynthesis, we've
all heard about it, right?

But have you ever really
considered what it means?

What plants do is eat
sunlight, streaming from our
sun 93 million miles away.

And they use it to make
carbon dioxide into starch,
granules of stored energy

which plants use
to power their growth.

When I see a live plant,
their green makes me
know life is possible.

Plants make a place feel
welcoming, like home.

Every leaf on every plant
is like a tiny battery.

Photosynthesis from plants
worldwide generate around 100
terawatts of power each year.

To put that into perspective,
it's enough to match the
energy demand of the modern

world nearly six times over.

WILL SMITH: Running a
planet packed with life
takes a lot of energy.

Kudos to the big
ball of fire in the sky.

Plants dine out on it.

Once they started, they
spread all over the world.

But those first plants
were missing something,

which meant there was one
place they couldn't go, up.

(thunder)

MAE: Bamboo can grow so
high because it contains
a molecule called lignin.

It's the bamboo's own
internal scaffolding.

Lignin evolved around
400 million years ago
and it changed the world.

It provides structural
strength for plants and
they get to grow tall.

From the outside, plants
and trees are beautiful,

but it's the inside
that reveals their dynamic,
intricate structure.

These memorizing
patterns are the
storybook of its life.

Because of lignin plants have
given our rock a solar-powered
skin that harvests energy from

the cosmos, and that
harvest supports almost
all life here on Earth.

-The truth is money
doesn't make the world
go around, energy does.

Plants store energy.

So, it didn't take long
for something to evolve
to take advantage.

♪ ♪

MAE: When an animal eats a plant
it gains the energy that a
plant captured from sunlight.

Animals could not
exist without plants.

If another planet
evolved creatures
like goats or like us,

I'm almost certain it
would have plants as well.

But plants on this other
planet may not be green.

Plants here are only green
because our Sun is green.

The majority of light
emitted from the sun is in
the blue-green wavelength.

It doesn't look green
to us because it has light
emitted in other areas too,

in red and blue.

And so when you blend
all those together
they look white.

Most plants here on Earth
have evolved to use primarily

red and blue light
for photosynthesis.

They reflect back the
green light, which is
why they look green.

WILL SMITH: On an alien planet,
if there's complex life,

there'll be
something like plants

and something like
animals that eat them.

But it probably wouldn't
stop there, because here
on Earth that's not the

last link in the food chain.

WILL SMITH: How do we
begin to imagine what
aliens might be like?

Well, if animals have
evolved on another planet
they might not have arms,

but they'll still be
looking over their shoulders,

because chances are
there's predators out there.

♪ ♪

There's two ways to load
up on the energy you need.

You can be like a fish
and spend all day nibbling and
nibbling on your ocean greens.

Or you can be
like a man o' war

and snatch up in
an instant all the energy the

fish picked up
from days of nibbling.

♪ ♪

Plants consume sunlight.

Animals eat the plants.

And other animals
eat those animals.

It's the circle of lunch.

MAE: Every creature on Earth
has evolved its own body shape

to maximize its chances
of getting a meal
without being eaten.

Take cats.

I love cats,
particularly house cats.

Cats have a very good
sense of themselves,
they're very confident.

Cats are fairly
pleased with themselves.

And cats have good reason
to be pleased with themselves.

Cats are all around the
world, from the desert

to the Arctic
to temperate climates.

For me, cats represent one
of the pinnacles of evolution.

Cheetahs, for instance,
have evolved into
perfect hunting machines.

But even they may find
it hard to catch their prey.

MARLICE: Shiloh is
the cocky one, that she's very
independent and on her own

and as a cub she was the
one that was the strongest.

Odyssey, the male, he's
just a, yeah, he doesn't
have a care in the world.

As a baby,
I lost him almost.

I had to keep him in
my bed for two weeks.

He was on a drip, 'cause he
was so dehydrated, and he was
just the weakest of the three.

I raised them and
I gave them their name,
so they're like my kids.

WILL SMOTH: They
call Marlice Van Vuuran,
the Cheetah Whisperer.

She rescues abandoned cubs
on the plains of Namibia.

(inaudible).

And helps them
learn how to eat.

When they're babies and
they're around about six,

seven months old
they need to chew then,

they need to learn what
taste of meat they like.

Who's a good girl?

WILL SMITH: Where there is
a juicy hunk of energy some
creature is going to work out

a way to try and get a taste.

The springbok is
the ultimate fast food.

MARLICE: If you look at a
Springbok, they've kind of
developed into a smaller specie;

light-boned, nothing extra.

They've got these long
legs that gives them that
acceleration and jump.

WILL SMITH: To catch a
Springbok, the cheetah needs
to be even faster.

-Come. Come babbas. Come.

WILL SMITH: So Marlice helps
the cubs keep in shape.

-Come. Come.

WILL SMITH: The lure is
a pulley system, you just
connect it to the battery,

a car battery.

We just tie a piece
of string to it and we
let them just chase it.

It's like a kid,
you have to make 'em fit.

By the time they have to
really run a 100 meters and
catch a springbok they're

gonna be dead if they
do it for the first time.

So it's getting them
ready for a proper hunt.

They can get from
zero to 100 kilometers an
hour in a blink of an eye.

Everything is just
modified and made for speed.

They have a
light bone structure.

They've got long nails; it's
like a athlete using spikes.

It's got a very long
tail in comparison to
the other carnivores,

so it can cut a corner
very quickly without
flipping or falling.

They normally spot the
springbok way before me.

♪ ♪

They need to be at least 100,
120 meters from a springbok

for the springbok
not to outrun them.

The surprise element
is crucial to them.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

(growling)

♪ ♪

Almost 90% of the
times they get away.

WILL SMITH: It's rough
being a predator.

Cheetahs are
living on a knife edge.

They use almost as many
calories catching their food
as they get from eating it.

But there's other ways to
get food besides catching it.

If you can't out run
'em, outthink 'em.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

(bell chiming)

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

(calling monkey)

WILL SMITH: These wiseguys
have worked out an angle,
trading sunglasses for food.

It brings in the maximum
amount of calories for the
minimum amount of effort.

Monkeys are smart,
but we've got a bigger racket.

We've hacked the entire
planet to feed over
seven billion of us.

MAE (over video): Hello.

I'm Mae Jemison.

Right now, I'm aboard the
space shuttle Endeavour,

over 300 kilometers
above the Earth

and travelling at over
7,000 meters per second.

My first view from space
was the city of Chicago.

No kidding. My hometown.

And it looked just
like the map I learned
when I was a child,

because the concrete
of the city seemed
to be separated from the

green of the farms
that surrounded Chicago.

Chicago prospered because of
its ability to transfer food

from the place that it was
grown to humans that were far
removed from that locale.

The Chicago stock markets,
the agriculture around
Chicago, the corn fields,

all of that is about a
manipulation of the food web.

It's something we
humans do really well.

Our eating skills are epic.

♪ ♪

Our brains are so big and
complex that we have managed
to figure out all sorts of

clever ways to get our food.

Chemicals to fertilize crops.

Genetic manipulation
to modify them.

Nourishment to make
animals grow up big and fast.

And even robotics
to process them.

WILL SMITH: Here on Earth
there are over eight
million different

types of complex life,

all feeding 24 hours a day,
every day of every year,

including over seven
billion human beings.

♪ ♪

If it's edible it's
going to get eaten.

Plants eat sunlight.

Animals eat plants.

And other
animals eat animals.

But there wouldn't be anything
larger than a microbe to eat.

No cucumbers, no fish,
no steak and fries.

None of this food chain
would exist without
a freak event we think

only happened once in the
whole of Earth's history.

WILL SMITH: Our planet
is like a huge restaurant
where everything

is eating everything else.

Humans are at the
best table, just eating,
eating and eating.

But is this
joint a franchise?

Are there other branches
out there in the universe?

The answer to that revolves
around the strangest
meal that ever happened.

-Every complex life
form on this planet,
including you and me,

has relied on the same
solution for what seemed like
an insurmountable hurdle,

getting enough energy.

Around two billion years
ago, when nothing lived
on Earth except microbes,

we think one microbe
ingested another.

Nothing particularly
remarkable, happened
all the time.

But this time the microbe
was engulfed but not digested.

It actually survived in the
host and became a part of it.

This remarkable
microbe had a superpower.

It generated
energy using oxygen,

allowing it to extract 15
times more energy from its food.

This is the moment when life
as we know it really began.

The microbe that
survived led to what we
now call mitochondria;

it lived on in its
host and together they
started a new life form,

a big complex cell that
could connect with other
cells to make big creatures,

all of them using oxygen
to break down their food.

Mitochondria inhabit every
single cell of every complex
life form on this planet.

That means they power
everything from flies

to trees to cheetahs and us.

Think about it, we all
carry the same machinery in us.

And we wouldn't
be the complex,

complicated organisms that we
are today without mitochondria.

WILL SMITH: If we didn't have
that one moment, Earth would
have no plants, no plant eaters,

no meat eaters, no us.

Life on Earth would be
just bacteria chewing
on rock and each other.

It took trillions of
bacteria swallowing trillions
of bacteria for more than

two billion years
before that one failed meal,
which suggests it kinda rare.

How rare?

Maybe Earth only rare.

JERRY: For an alien planet
out there to evolve over those
billions of years and to be

exactly like it evolved here
on Earth, well that's like
rolling those dice and hitting

a one, you know, a
billion times in a row.

JEFF: The overwhelming
probability, if you find
a planet with life on it,

it's probably gonna
be very simple life.

MAE: You know, we're
not gonna I always
say see Mr. Spock.

You know, we're not gonna
necessarily find the bipedal
character that looks very

humanoid just walk in through
the door and say, "Hey, I
evolved on a different planet

and there are a
whole bunch of us around."

But do I think simple
life exists in other places?

Absolutely.

-Looking up at all
those points of light,

we'll always wonder is
there life out there somewhere?

Maybe there is,
maybe even a lot of it.

But there's a
good chance that, as we
gaze up at those stars,

there'll be nothing
remotely like us looking back.

Next time, the greatest
mystery in the universe could
be right between our ears.

♪ ♪

Captioned by Cotter
Captioning Services.