For the privileged few who have looked down at Earth from space, the thin blue line of our planet’s atmosphere sets it apart from every other planet we’ve seen — it sustains life. The story of how Earth creates and regulates that oxygen-rich atmosphere is mind-blowing and includes a flying river, a global dust storm, a collapsing glacier and the most important creature you’ve never heard of. All connected together to allow the planet to breathe.
Ever wonder how our planet got here? It was born in a cosmic storm and shaped by violence. We’re only here because of random collisions in a dangerous cosmos. They could have destroyed us, but instead constructed a planet from the rubble of the early solar system, gave us oceans in a bombardment from the heavens and brought order to our world when two planets collided.
Earth protects itself from the sun: the David and Goliath story of Earth’s relationship with its greatest threat, our seemingly benign sun. The sun is the big, violent boss of the solar system, throwing out devastating particles and deadly radiation. Without several shields, one generated by our unique planetary core, another by our atmosphere and a third by our interconnected weather systems, life on Earth would never have survived.
Our rock is special — it’s alive. Though the building blocks of life are common across the universe, life is rare. So what is it about planet Earth that sets it apart? This is the story of dynamic forces and crazy coincidences that took a bunch of dead ingredients and transformed them into something as wondrously intricate as life. And if it happened here, could it happen elsewhere?
It’s not enough for Earth to be habitable, it also has to be lethal for life to thrive. Death is hardwired into everything from our cells to the planet itself. Global mass extinctions create the opportunities that evolution seizes, boosting biodiversity. At the heart of this story is a biological superpower – sex, life’s trade-off with death to survive in a restless world.
Astronaut Chris Hadfield has left the planet three times already. Now he wants to do more. After seeing the bullet holes left by asteroids on our planet’s surface, he believes our only chance of survival is to escape Earth and build a colony off-world. But it will be the toughest journey humanity has ever faced: space radiation, microgravity and the bacteria inside us will conspire against us. Could we earthlings ever survive off our one strange rock?
Will Smith
Host
Darren Aronofsky
Producer
Jane Root
Ari Handel
Peter Lovering