underground it was a year that saw
long-held beliefs challenged by newly
found wonders a church that led to
innovations and a glimpse 130 million
years into the past
in August 2017 alarm sounded at the most
sensitive scientific devices ever
constructed in Washington State the
laser interferometer gravitational-wave
Observatory LIGO detected faint
disturbances from deep space the signal
also hit Lycos sister facility in
Louisiana gravitational waves had
reached Earth prepetition waves are
ripples in space-time space-time is
incredibly dense so to cause ripples you
have to have some sort of object that
has a enormous gravity like a black hole
or a neutron star and when these objects
are rapidly accelerating they bend
space-time and create these ripples that
then travel through the universe to our
detectors on earth like the one last
almost on high alert the LIGO team
quickly reached out to Virgo its
European counterpart in Italy who
confirmed that they too had detected
gravitational waves and then as if by
destiny the stars would align once more
to pave the way to a groundbreaking
discovery
just two seconds later with the Fermi
gamma-ray Space Telescope we detected a
short bright flash of high-energy light
and we call a gamma-ray burst this
alerted the entire astronomical
community to the fact that something
very exciting was happening using data
collected from LIGO Virgo and Fermi
seventy ground and space-based
telescopes scoured the edge of galaxy
NGC for 993 some 130 million light-years
away from Earth searching for a small
flash of light amidst a sea of stars it
would take less than 12 hours after the
alarms rang at LIGO for earth to have
visual confirmation of a
never-before-seen astronomical event
what we saw was the result of the
merging of two neutron stars when they
merged they created an explosion in
space-time those ripples went out across
the universe as gravitational waves and
were detected on earth the matter
involved gave off gamma rays and other
forms of light neutron stars are the
collapsed cores of massive stars left
behind after a supernova explosion no
larger than a mid-sized city these dense
stars have 10 to 60 percent more mass
than our Sun
this pair of stars 200 miles apart were
locked in each other's orbit for over 11
billion years but as they started
accelerating and moving inwards their
orbit quickened from 30 times a second
to an astonishing and unsustainable
2,000 orbits a second then 130 million
years ago they collided in a resounding
explosion
peering into the past telescopes are
able to see the remnants of one of the
universe's most impressive firework
shows a bright flash of blue followed
the initial explosion growing redder and
duller as the days passed until
eventually fading to black the
conditions around these merging neutron
stars have densities and temperatures
completely unlike anything we can do on
earth
the violent explosion was observed to
have produced 200 earth masses worth of
gold and 500 earth masses of platinum
revealing for the first time the origins
of heavy metals in our galaxy we think
that all the gold in the universe was
formed in explosions of this kind after
the explosion happens the gold is spread
out into the gas and dust of the
interstellar medium later on that gas
and dust collapses into brand new stars
and brand new planetary systems and
these weren't the first gravitational
waves detected by LIGO this year two
separate events have been measured
before including a pair of monstrous
black holes that collided to form a
single spinning hole 53 times more
massive than the Sun we received a
perfect signal from this last merger it
traveled three billion light years to
get here in any given galaxy one of
these events might only happen once
every million years but we're now able
to monitor about 10 million galaxies at
a time it's a new type of astronomy
but while we wait for gravitational
waves that can open a window on the
origins of our universe
volcanic activity off the coast of Japan
is presenting scientists with a picture
of Earth's early history when land first
rose from the Seas
violent eruptions spew a steady stream
of lava and rocks expanding the newly
emerged island of Nisshin Oshima three
square kilometers in just five short
months this year these most recent
blasts stopped in August but could
resume at any time situated atop the
junction of four tectonic plates the
Japanese islands offer stunning insights
about the formation of a variety of
landscapes
[Music]
analysis of nishino Shima's magma shows
it to be and acidic similar to the
composition of continental crust
monitoring the growth of nation ocean
geologists hope to learn more about the
forces that led to the birth of the
world's eight continents yes not seven
eight
in February 2017 the Geological Society
of America published a startling paper
Zealandia Earth's hidden continent
geologist Nick Mortimer was the lead
author to discover Zealandia is to
change the map of the world quite
literally before hand most people would
say yes we got seven continents they
could count them off but now the world
maps change and we've got an eighth one
on there in the beginning there was no
search for Zealandia Mortimer and his
team discovered the shallow submerged
continent while performing geological
work aboard a research vessel off of New
Zealand's coast and so what the various
geological investigations have led us to
is that we do have the the components of
a continent here when you pull the plug
on the world's oceans
you literally reveal the continent of
Zealandia Mortimer and his team
confirmed for geological markers the
qualifying criteria for a continent
height a varied geology or diversity of
rock types a thick crust and ultimately
size is it big enough corroborating data
include rock samples ocean drill cores
and satellite microgravity measurements
translated into bathymetric or elevation
maps of the seafloor situated between
the Pacific plate and the Australian
plate tectonic forces squeeze to
Zealandia raising out of the water what
we know today as New Zealand
with 94% of Zealandia underwater the
islands of New Zealand and New Caledonia
are just the tip of this continental
iceberg in measuring in at 4.9 million
square kilometres Zealandia is six times
bigger than the so called micro
continent of Madagascar and more than
twice as large as Greenland which also
happens to be attached to North America
to understand Zealandia Zorich ins we
must travel back in time to the time of
the supercontinent Gondwana comprised of
what we know today as Africa South
America Antarctica and Australia when
Gondwana split apart eighty million
years ago it was a bit like the
stretching of bread dough in a kitchen
and then you start to pull that big lump
of dough apart and if you pull slowly
some of those pieces will stretch and
get thinner just like Zealandia which
broke off and slowly sank because of its
relatively thin continental crust it's
not as thick as the main continents but
it is thicker than the ocean crust and
geophysicists know that when you have
thin crust
it floats lower in the mantle and so it
sits lower elevation wise and and that
explains in very simple terms wiser land
areas so submerged
[Music]
either we've got Zealandia in the in the
scientific arena we do hope to
consolidate it and to promote Zealandia
in New Zealand schools first of all and
we have to get in atlases on globes we
hope that the Vandy will become as
common and well-known as any of the
other major continents of course the
initial buzz about Zealandia can only
help its name recognition the notion
that something is so big and so
important could be hidden for so long I
think captured people's imagination out
of sight out of mind no more of course
not everything that's undetected is so
obviously obscured
and one remarkable discovery this year
offers clues about how some prehistoric
creatures could hide in plain sight in
northern Alberta Canada the remnants of
a hundred and ten million year old
dinosaur from the late Mesozoic era
is providing the world with an
unprecedented look at a new species the
notice or a fossil so pristine and
complete that it shows the texture
patterns and color of a prehistoric
giant the notice or is the best vestment
we have and it's the closest you'll come
until we find a better one in terms of
coming face-to-face with the dinosaur
the notice or is next to surreal
a petrified beast caught by Medusa's
gaze we knew it was good but we didn't
know how good it was I think it's the
best preserved armored dinosaur in the
world I'm calling this the rosetta stone
for armored dinosaurs the anatomy of the
new species has already given scientists
clues to how these animals evolved how
they radiated and diversified through
time and it doesn't stop there a skin is
preserved it's not just the impression
of the skin we actually have some of the
original biomolecules preserved one of
the cool things that they tell us for
this festival is that the animal had at
least a component of reddish brown
pigment to its skin the coloration
aspect is very exciting so it's cool to
know what color it was but it's it's
actually more exciting when that has
implications for how the animal lived
researchers believe the notice or was
darker on the back and lighter on its
sides and underside a method of
camouflage called countershading now
keep in mind this was a five five and a
half metre long ten and a half animal
covered in the armor but it still has
camouflage and to us that just
illustrates how intense the predation
was that in the Cretaceous you have
these very large community dinosaurs and
they would have also been very visual
predators so it actually kind of just
shows you how extreme that who system it
likely was back in the Cretaceous
the plant-eating slow-moving beast only
stood a chance because of its
impenetrable coat of armour we see three
rows of osteoderms those are splitter
called cervical rings and it's armored
that would have protected the neck of
the animal and as we move to the side we
see this giant pair of scapular spine
it's basically a big armored spine
coming off the shoulder that's about
half a meter long and the spectacular
specimen still has many secrets to
unveil contents of the notice or stomach
in addition to having skin preserved all
over most of the surface of the animal
we also have abundant gut contents so be
the last meal of the animal preserved
inside and this is what that stuff looks
like so we're currently doing all sorts
of work on this geochemical work
histological work and CT scanning trying
to figure out what these spheroid
structures are and there's been many
ideas that part of the diversification
of dinosaurs is tied to the
diversification of flowering plants and
it would be great to see exactly which
types of plants this guy was eating and
if that hypothesis makes sense we know
what dinosaurs ate how they fought and
now what they looked like
but there are still many questions to be
answered and Alberta might just be the
place to find them it's estimated that
there are thousands of fossils hidden
underneath the earth but when a
six-mile-wide asteroid struck the
Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago
dinosaurs had nowhere to hide
in the resulting global Cataclysm of
earthquakes fire storms and tsunamis
ultimately led to their extinction
some analysts however managed to survive
but how since its discovery in 1978
investigations of the asteroids impact
crater include data from seismic images
and recently collected core samples from
deep within the site at Chick shaloo the
data paints a devastating picture of
destruction and led scientists to create
a broad new survival Theory focusing on
habitat and diet adaptability when
dinosaurs perished and a vast new eco
space emerged the surviving species
expanded rapidly to fill it this is
called adaptive radiation a recent study
shows that one out of ten frog species
descend from the original three frog
species that survived the Cretaceous
tertiary extinction event frogs were
able to escape extinction for a number
of reasons they live in an aquatic
habitat that offered protection their
small size and unique metabolism allow
for better endurance of environmental
stress eventually when vegetation
returned they were able to diversify
worldwide and adapt to new lives in
trees
birds - exhibited the same adaptive
radiation around the same time a newly
found 62 million year old mouse bird
fossil in New Mexico helped
paleontologists map the diversification
of land birds which can be traced back
to nine original ancestors which
survived the event warm-blooded birds
feathers insulated them from temperature
extremes their small size and ability to
fly allowed for easier escape from
hostile and barren terrain and their
diet of seeds worms and insects who gave
them the edge after much of the Earth's
surface plant life had died in the end
the ability to adapt to changing
conditions proved two key
characteristics for the survival of many
ancient animals including our smallest
mammal ancestors just as it may be for
humans today as we confront the
challenges of climate change
the city of Miami Beach already knows
what it means to wade through sea level
rise in recent years residents have
experienced elevated high tides at
certain times of the year known as king
tides these events are clear evidence of
incremental increases right now we are
definitely witnessing a sea level rise
impacts these high tide flooding events
that are growing in severity more often
deeper more widespread that sort of a
pattern that we expect will continue
that means huge financial costs by the
year 2100
another predicts two and a half million
Miamians could become sea level refugees
and leave the area it's not only Miami
all around the world sea levels are
expected to rise the question is by how
much
in adopting a multi-pronged approach
Miami Beach has committed 400 to 500
million dollars to combat sea-level rise
building water pumps and raising their
defenses with the continued issue of
climate change and sea level rise we're
seeing a increase of water level every
year we had to make changes to adapt to
this future condition what you're seeing
here we put a boardwalk initially to
give some height but we found that that
wasn't protecting the city what we've
done here is we've increased the levels
of our new seawall the new wall you see
in the background here is our new
standards this is good for a property
another 50 years and we're going to see
water levels challenging even that new
seawall raising its elevation Miami
Beach seeks to stay dry and take control
of its future the city's philosophy our
culture is rising above we believe we
can meet the challenge the challenge is
not only in rising above meaning
elevation its rising too and and
withstanding the challenges that come
with sea level rise due to climate
change as the city engineer I have
complete faith that we can do we can
mitigate we can survive
of course the Earth's oceans have risen
and fallen many times during the
planet's history and new archaeological
evidence suggests these shifting
shorelines may conceal clues about the
earliest Americans until just recently
archaeologists generally agreed that the
earliest people to populate North
America where the Clovis people dating
back to some 12 to 13 thousand years ago
but a group of scientists in San Diego
California have a different theory we
have the bones the fossils the
distribution that rocks the date we have
evidence for humans in North America
130,000 years ago we realize that that
is a startling claim but the scientific
community is struggling with the idea
that humans arrived in North America
130,000 years ago the study of early
humans in the new world has been very
political and very controversial for
over 125 years it's an old mystery yet
to be solved
deciding who got to North America first
and win welcome and thank you for
joining us this morning at the San Diego
Natural History Museum as we share some
exciting news about our discovery made
right here in San Diego
well back in 1992 Caltrans was doing
improvements to State Route 54 which
involved adding a couple new travel
lanes and Richard Cerruti who's a field
paleontologist here at the Museum was
monitoring the excavations on the very
north side of the freeway alignment and
saw this little puff of what's a tusk
material being scraped up by an
excavator and said stop let me go look
at this the bones that Richard Cerruti
found belonged to an ancient Mastodon
that's one - its characteristic of
American ambassador were these giants
sharing North America with early man
130,000 years ago the answer may lie in
the position of the bones and tools
found at the site tooth enamel scattered
throughout the site just don't make
sense
put these stones amongst ancient bone
remnants have been an early form of
primitive tools we felt that it was
important to produce a map where we
carefully plotted or precisely plotted
the position of all the bones and the
stones or whatever else is in there so
we can understand what the general
pattern it's thought that the tools
found with the Mastodon bones were used
for butchering the animal so this is one
of the cobbles that we hypothesized was
used as a hammer stone 100 3,000 years
ago where where there was a carcass of a
mastodon these people were trying to
recover raw materials from it they had a
problem how do how do we break these
bones they look over into the active
River channel find some cobbles of the
appropriate size and weight bring them
back to the site and if you look closely
there's some striations coming off of
that that are indication indications of
what this flake has come off the cuts in
this rock led the San Diego team to
conclude that these were actually tools
used by humans an idea that de Muir says
might not be so far-fetched dr. Stephen
Hollen is co-director of the Center for
American Paleolithic research in South
Dakota he was part of the team that
evaluated the findings from the San
Diego excavation site
so what do we got in here Steve I said I
can't get my mind around this
this site has to be really really old
beat-up tears evidence of humans I said
it goes against everything I thought I
knew and everything I have ever been
taught whole and evaluated the Mastodon
bones and the stone tools recovered from
the excavation site we would take the
drawers out of the cabinets in here and
bring them in on this table and look
through them paleontologists and
archaeologists together richard Cerruti
came in so there were four of us my wife
Kathleen Tom and I and we would look
through and we've looked for these very
diagnostic pieces and one of the things
that we got all excited about first were
these cone flakes that form in a circle
around the point of impact from the
hammerstone and based on the experiment
that we've done in Africa breaking an
elephant femur with a big hammer we saw
the same kinds of fracture patterns that
we did experimentally Poland specializes
in evaluating broken bones at
archaeological sites looking for human
causes as this video shows from a test
he conducted in Africa two years prior
to working on the San Diego project as
we puzzled over this we kept coming back
to this one explanation that explains
all the data was that humans did this
the detective work by the San Diego
Natural History Museum team was capped
by the age dating that Richard Cerruti
had done to prove the age of the
mastodon bones he discovered
this is one of the specimens that he
used in his analysis he cored it and
they also sliced it and after analyzing
over a hundred micro samples from this
specimen and two other specimens of bone
from the site yielded an age of 130
thousand plus or minus nine thousand so
after the article came out there has
been no critic come out to say that the
dating is incorrect in fact other
specialists in uranium series dating
have come out and said the dates look
perfectly good so we're very comfortable
with the dates
while humans arrival in the Americas may
have occurred earlier than previously
thought
new dating of another paleontological
find found in a south african cave could
soon upend long-held theories about the
evolutionary tree of primates and early
humans when we actually got into the
chamber and could start removing it we
realized that not only was there one
individual lying there on the surface
but the floor was literally comprised of
Homo Naledi
there are thousands and thousands and
thousands of remains down in those
chambers and all of you have to do is
sweep the surface off and there they are
so the first time I sort of slid through
that hallway it into the open area where
the chamber is and sort of started
looking around you know you're only
wearing a headlamp so you just see
flashes but every flash of my headlamp
showed bone so I think right at that
point I realized that we had a lot more
than the original photographs actually
had portrayed so that was pretty
exciting oh no way isn't really similar
to any known hominid species in its
entirety of its package you've got
little bits and pieces of almost
everything we've ever found parts of the
skull if you just look at it quickly
look a little bit like Homo erectus got
a very small brain other parts of skull
look very modern like Homo sapiens it
gets stranger and stranger as you move
down the body you get the ape-like
shoulders you get these more and more
human-like arms which end with a hand
this human proportion I was actually at
the London Natural History Museum and
woman a lady was on the wall and then
there was estimated age between 1.2 and
1.8 million years but then when we
actually did the scientific dating of
those teeth this is when things got very
interesting because then we got an age
of 200 to 300 thousand years old when we
got a date it's much younger than that a
quarter of a million years give or take
we realized that we were dealing with a
primitive creature almost like a time
traveller that had come down from deep
times to a point where it is very
possible
that Tom Emilia was in direct contact
with the emergence of modern humans we
never thought that was possible in
Africa until this moment we thought that
there was effectively during that entire
time period of the Middle Pleistocene
late Middle Pleistocene one form a big
brained form of Homo sapiens now there
are two and that adds incredible
complexity to our record the world of
Homo Naledi and other early humans was
different than it is today a veritable
Garden of Eden teeming with life pure
and free from pollution few places like
this still exist and most of them we got
a date it's much younger than that a
quarter of a million years give or take
we realized that we were dealing with a
primitive creature almost like a time
traveller that had come down from deep
times to a point where it is very
possible that Tom Amelia was in direct
contact with the emergence of modern
humans we never thought that was
possible in Africa until this moment we
thought that there was effectively
during that entire time period of the
Middle Pleistocene late Middle
Pleistocene one form a big brained form
of Homo sapiens now there are two and
that adds incredible complexity to our
record the world of Homo Naledi and
other early humans was different than it
is today a veritable Garden of Eden
teeming with life pure and free from
pollution
few places like this still exist and
most of them quite remote but look just
a few feet underwater and you can find
one of the most productive and
overlooked ecosystems on earth
scientists recently learned that
seagrass Meadows helped scrub the
surrounding water clean of bacteria from
raw sewage and other pathogens a recent
study of polluted waters in Indonesia
showed levels of harmful bacteria to be
50% less in spots with robust seagrass
beds leading to healthier fish and coral
in the surrounding area you see sea
grasses oxygenate the water trap
sediment that might otherwise float
freely and host tiny microbes that kill
many harmful bacteria eliminating toxins
improves the health of any system and
the workings of a human body is no
different in athletics though they say
no pain no gain a nod to the physical
effort required to increase endurance
and enjoy the health benefits of
exercise but new pharmaceutical research
also aims to make those benefits more
easily accessible the potential benefit
of a drug that can tune you up in the
way in which you normally get tuned up
by exercise could have really dramatic
effects
playfully known as the exercise pill the
experimental drug shifts metabolism by
triggering genetic instructions for the
body to burn fat instead of sugar during
exercise something that doesn't normally
happen until after extensive training
and conditioning recent tests increase
the endurance of otherwise sedentary
mice which also proved to be resistant
to weight gain while on the drug we have
two groups of mice and one group a drug
the other group as control without the
treatment of the drug so we were quite
surprised to see the astonishing results
the mice treated with the drug they can
run almost 100 minutes longer than the
one that are not treated the increase
was around 70% researchers ultimately
hope their product can improve the
health of the disabled elderly and obese
there are many reasons why people can't
either walk or run or exercise and the
idea is if you could bring a small
molecule into the picture that can
confer the benefits of fitness without
training you could really help a lot of
people from energizing our bodies -
powering societies so we are just
waiting for the next experiment it's
going to happen in ten seconds
there you go you see the flickering of
the plasma we are creating fusion here
this is our little Sun is extremely hard
each day every 20 minutes
researchers build the Sun at the Cullum
fusion Center in Oxfordshire Britain
generating temperatures greater than 200
million degrees these nuclear fusion
trials would be impossible without jet
the joint European torus a doughnut
shaped plasma containment vessel at this
point we're the most important
experiment in the world thanks to jet
where energy is created by combining
hydrogen atoms there's heavy hydrogen
which we call deuterium and the
super-heavy hydrogen which we call
tritium and when they're running around
at these temperatures like 200 million
degrees they bang into each other with
immense speed and when they do and they
get close enough what we call the strong
force which combines the nucleus of
atoms together rips them pulls them
together and they fuse and they make
helium and they spit out a neutral
fusion really is the perfect way to make
energy and yet despite fusions
transformative potential to provide safe
and sustainable energy to the world the
program faces an uncertain future while
the British government committed to pay
for its share of the experiments up to
the year 2020 brexit its plan departure
from the European Union may also lead to
the UK's withdrawal from scientific
agencies like your atom the European
atomic energy community some say this
could jeopardize jet logistics and
operations
and perhaps also the larger
next-generation fusion experiment
currently being built in southern France
if fusion represents harnessing the
physical power of the Sun
a moment of darkness reflected its
emotional tower and all induced euphoria
experienced by millions as the first
total solar eclipse over North America
in three decades made its way across the
United States
[Music]
it's the most unnatural natural
phenomenon I ever saw this is a solar
eclipse and just what people witnessed
on August 21st along a 70 mile wide path
first along the Oregon coast at 10:15
a.m. Pacific Daylight Time and last in
South Carolina 94 minutes later
[Applause]
the uncommon coupling was the most
viewed and photographed eclipse ever
recorded
and yet even as the Sun reemerged from
the moon's shadow some earthly domains
remain as always far removed from its
rays
like the cave chambers 300 meters below
Mexico's mica mine enormous razor-sharp
crystals dwarf human explorers while
today the cave is totally submerged
previous expeditions collected bizarre
life-forms from these crystal giants
they call this place hell on earth
temperatures climb to 135 degrees
Fahrenheit with over 80 percent humidity
even with life-saving body suits no
visit can safely last longer than a half
hour yet deep within this extreme
environment are life-forms which exists
nowhere else known as extremophiles NASA
astrobiologist penny Boston and her team
found 40 strains of mineral eating
organisms trapped within the crystals
here they collected sample microbes some
dormant but alive estimated to be
between ten and fifty thousand years old
including genetically unique and
previously undiscovered life-forms any
extrema file system that we're studying
actually you know allows us to push the
envelope of life further and we add it
to this atlas of possibilities that we
can apply to different planetary
settings they expanding the definitions
of life on earth and where to find it
Boston's findings could impact the
search for life beyond our planet
on places like the protoplanet Ceres the
largest object located within the solar
system's asteroid belt and one of the
scientific targets of NASA's Dawn
spacecraft when t17 startling and
unexpected news began coming in my
colleague found a spectral signature in
her data that is consistent with our the
same signature of of aliphatic
hydrocarbons so here we're finding maybe
the building blocks of biological
material seen here in red the organic
materials are thought to have originated
in the dwarf planet itself
Don's study of Ceres also revealed
evidence of water and volcanic activity
further raising the scientific profile
of Ceres no longer considered a barren
Rock
however stone isn't the only NASA
spacecraft uncovering new surprises
about our solar system seven months
after arriving in Jupiter's planetary
system the Juno Explorer became fully
operational in February of 2017
astonishing researchers with the steady
stream of images and scientific data
it's sending back to earth
Jupiter's by far the largest planet in
our solar system leaving Juno with a
whole lot of ground to cover and
although it is the second brightest
planet in our night sky its formation
and composition have left us in the dark
previous NASA missions have given us
some understandings of its moons small
dust rings and atmosphere but we've not
been able to see past the Vango like
swirls of dense red brown yellow and
white clouds that paint the planet at
least not until now each individual
image is all inspiring especially those
captured when Juno came within 5,000
miles of Jupiter's Great Red Spot the
planets most famous storm poring over
data from Juno's microwave radiometer
scientists hope to learn more about what
powers the Tempest and how it differs
from other Jovian storms this critical
instrument measures six distinct ranges
of thermal radiation as it peers more
than 300 miles beneath Jupiter's clouds
to create a three-dimensional model of
Jupiter's atmospheric environment though
the first time we're looking inside of
Jupiter within two into the interior and
what we're seeing is that it doesn't
work at all like we had predicted almost
every model that has the interior motion
how the magnetic field the gravity field
how the D batma sphere works it's all
different
[Music]
current modeling estimates that the
cloud cover is roughly 30 miles thick
below it there lies a 13,000 mile layer
of swirling hydrogen and helium that
changes States from gas to liquid as it
nears the center leading to a 24,000
mile deep sea of metallic hydrogen if we
can probe it and work out the abundance
of elements in it hydrogen helium the
higher elements as well and work out
roughly what that makes is it'll tell us
something about not only how to do but
it was formed they have a solar system
platform if there is a bunch of rocky
material in the center of Jupiter it
means that the in the early solar system
before Jupiter formed that rocky
substances were probably coming together
and Jupiter got built around those it
could be that Jupiter was built without
any of those and then it just collapsed
sort of like the Sun and there is no
rocky material or or core of heavy
elements in the center strangely though
gravity data collected so far points to
a new possibility a somewhat larger than
previously thought
and perhaps partially dissolved core
leaving Jupiter experts with more
questions than answers we're putting the
pieces of the puzzle together and it's
exciting but we don't have the whole
picture yet Juno's primary mission is
scheduled to continue until February
2018 but this past year
NASA saw another of its extraordinary
explorers come to the end and we are in
the atmosphere as the Cassini space
probe plummeted into Saturn's atmosphere
in a fiery death spiral roughly one
minute's philosophy signaled the
culmination of the crafts revolutionary
scientific quest congratulations to you
all this has been an incredible
spacecraft and she's rewritten the text
books about Saturn the Rings the moon's
Titan so many things have changed
because of Cassini from its launch 20
years ago - its bold grand finale the
cassini-huygens mission has unveiled
some amazing discoveries Saturn is
ablaze with storms of unimaginable force
the place our record with our giant
under constraints
the Rings are even more dazzling than
imagined stretching across hundreds of
thousands of miles they're made of
particles of pure water ice some
microscopic
some the size of mountains they break
apart and they reform so there's this
beautiful cosmic dance going on inside
the Rings
[Music]
cassini also carried a little Lander
called Huygens
which became the first probe to land on
a moon other than our own its target
Titan because of its atmosphere and as
those first pictures came back we just
saw more and more haze and fog and haze
and haze until finally the probe broke
through that haze and we got to see the
surface of time for the first time
Huygens landed in the surface of what
looked like a mud flat the surface
temperature was minus 350 degrees
Fahrenheit and these pebbles were made
of methane ice the nearby lake
a lake of methane then Cassini went into
orbit around Titan and revealed with its
radar system that there indeed are lakes
of liquid natural gas and other
molecules on the surface of Titan
they've evaporate just like here on
earth great clouds of methane which
rained back on the surface creating
rivers of liquid natural gas and lakes
when there perhaps be some very
interesting life in the lakes on Titan
but there were drive formations here too
including dunes that stretched from
miles and miles reaching 100 metres high
and 3,000 meter mountains suggesting
tectonic forces at work here similar to
those on earth
next Cassini headed for a close look at
Saturn's tiny moon called Enceladus here
on the moon's South Pole
strange blue cracks dubbed tiger stripes
75 miles long and hundreds of feet deep
resemble fault lines here on earth
Cassini's thermal sensors picked up heat
coming out of the ice ball 200 degrees
warmer than the rest of the planet
Cassini then captured giant Jets of
water spewing hundreds of miles into
space from the tiger stripes shooting
out at 1,200 miles per hour vaporizing
and then freezing
back on earth Cassini's stunned
controllers quickly reprogram the probe
to fly right through the Jets collecting
particles and what they found was even
more stunning organic molecules the
basic building blocks of life Enceladus
is really special it's giving us free
samples because the guys is there
erupting and they could guide the
spacecraft very close and look to see if
there's water there and there is water
here on earth wherever there's liquid
water whether it's deep in the ocean and
very hot or rocky places or in ice
there's microbial life so it certainly
suggests microbial life could have
evolved on its ellas because it has all
the properties that the earth had when
life began here NASA controllers plotted
the probes deadly descent into Saturn's
atmosphere
[Music]
productive until the end Cassini relayed
detailed information about the planets
environment and then she burned like a
meteor and vaporized scientists will
build on Cassini's contributions as the
search for extraterrestrial life
continues within our solar system and
beyond perhaps around the star system 39
light years away known as Trappist won
the first place found NASA announced to
have multiple planets three year
circling a single star inside the
habitable zone where liquid water can
exist well with this discovery we've
made a giant accelerated leap forward in
the search for habitable worlds and life
on other worlds potentially speaking the
track miss one system has really
captured our imagination because with
this amazing system we know that there
must be many more potentially life
bearing worlds out there just waiting to
be bound earth-like in size and
temperature these three faraway worlds
suggest endless possibilities
the discovery gives us a hint that
finding a second earth it's not just a
matter of if but when these questions
about are we alone are being answered as
we speak in
[Music]
long-held beliefs challenged by newly
found wonders a church that led to
innovations and a glimpse 130 million
years into the past
in August 2017 alarm sounded at the most
sensitive scientific devices ever
constructed in Washington State the
laser interferometer gravitational-wave
Observatory LIGO detected faint
disturbances from deep space the signal
also hit Lycos sister facility in
Louisiana gravitational waves had
reached Earth prepetition waves are
ripples in space-time space-time is
incredibly dense so to cause ripples you
have to have some sort of object that
has a enormous gravity like a black hole
or a neutron star and when these objects
are rapidly accelerating they bend
space-time and create these ripples that
then travel through the universe to our
detectors on earth like the one last
almost on high alert the LIGO team
quickly reached out to Virgo its
European counterpart in Italy who
confirmed that they too had detected
gravitational waves and then as if by
destiny the stars would align once more
to pave the way to a groundbreaking
discovery
just two seconds later with the Fermi
gamma-ray Space Telescope we detected a
short bright flash of high-energy light
and we call a gamma-ray burst this
alerted the entire astronomical
community to the fact that something
very exciting was happening using data
collected from LIGO Virgo and Fermi
seventy ground and space-based
telescopes scoured the edge of galaxy
NGC for 993 some 130 million light-years
away from Earth searching for a small
flash of light amidst a sea of stars it
would take less than 12 hours after the
alarms rang at LIGO for earth to have
visual confirmation of a
never-before-seen astronomical event
what we saw was the result of the
merging of two neutron stars when they
merged they created an explosion in
space-time those ripples went out across
the universe as gravitational waves and
were detected on earth the matter
involved gave off gamma rays and other
forms of light neutron stars are the
collapsed cores of massive stars left
behind after a supernova explosion no
larger than a mid-sized city these dense
stars have 10 to 60 percent more mass
than our Sun
this pair of stars 200 miles apart were
locked in each other's orbit for over 11
billion years but as they started
accelerating and moving inwards their
orbit quickened from 30 times a second
to an astonishing and unsustainable
2,000 orbits a second then 130 million
years ago they collided in a resounding
explosion
peering into the past telescopes are
able to see the remnants of one of the
universe's most impressive firework
shows a bright flash of blue followed
the initial explosion growing redder and
duller as the days passed until
eventually fading to black the
conditions around these merging neutron
stars have densities and temperatures
completely unlike anything we can do on
earth
the violent explosion was observed to
have produced 200 earth masses worth of
gold and 500 earth masses of platinum
revealing for the first time the origins
of heavy metals in our galaxy we think
that all the gold in the universe was
formed in explosions of this kind after
the explosion happens the gold is spread
out into the gas and dust of the
interstellar medium later on that gas
and dust collapses into brand new stars
and brand new planetary systems and
these weren't the first gravitational
waves detected by LIGO this year two
separate events have been measured
before including a pair of monstrous
black holes that collided to form a
single spinning hole 53 times more
massive than the Sun we received a
perfect signal from this last merger it
traveled three billion light years to
get here in any given galaxy one of
these events might only happen once
every million years but we're now able
to monitor about 10 million galaxies at
a time it's a new type of astronomy
but while we wait for gravitational
waves that can open a window on the
origins of our universe
volcanic activity off the coast of Japan
is presenting scientists with a picture
of Earth's early history when land first
rose from the Seas
violent eruptions spew a steady stream
of lava and rocks expanding the newly
emerged island of Nisshin Oshima three
square kilometers in just five short
months this year these most recent
blasts stopped in August but could
resume at any time situated atop the
junction of four tectonic plates the
Japanese islands offer stunning insights
about the formation of a variety of
landscapes
[Music]
analysis of nishino Shima's magma shows
it to be and acidic similar to the
composition of continental crust
monitoring the growth of nation ocean
geologists hope to learn more about the
forces that led to the birth of the
world's eight continents yes not seven
eight
in February 2017 the Geological Society
of America published a startling paper
Zealandia Earth's hidden continent
geologist Nick Mortimer was the lead
author to discover Zealandia is to
change the map of the world quite
literally before hand most people would
say yes we got seven continents they
could count them off but now the world
maps change and we've got an eighth one
on there in the beginning there was no
search for Zealandia Mortimer and his
team discovered the shallow submerged
continent while performing geological
work aboard a research vessel off of New
Zealand's coast and so what the various
geological investigations have led us to
is that we do have the the components of
a continent here when you pull the plug
on the world's oceans
you literally reveal the continent of
Zealandia Mortimer and his team
confirmed for geological markers the
qualifying criteria for a continent
height a varied geology or diversity of
rock types a thick crust and ultimately
size is it big enough corroborating data
include rock samples ocean drill cores
and satellite microgravity measurements
translated into bathymetric or elevation
maps of the seafloor situated between
the Pacific plate and the Australian
plate tectonic forces squeeze to
Zealandia raising out of the water what
we know today as New Zealand
with 94% of Zealandia underwater the
islands of New Zealand and New Caledonia
are just the tip of this continental
iceberg in measuring in at 4.9 million
square kilometres Zealandia is six times
bigger than the so called micro
continent of Madagascar and more than
twice as large as Greenland which also
happens to be attached to North America
to understand Zealandia Zorich ins we
must travel back in time to the time of
the supercontinent Gondwana comprised of
what we know today as Africa South
America Antarctica and Australia when
Gondwana split apart eighty million
years ago it was a bit like the
stretching of bread dough in a kitchen
and then you start to pull that big lump
of dough apart and if you pull slowly
some of those pieces will stretch and
get thinner just like Zealandia which
broke off and slowly sank because of its
relatively thin continental crust it's
not as thick as the main continents but
it is thicker than the ocean crust and
geophysicists know that when you have
thin crust
it floats lower in the mantle and so it
sits lower elevation wise and and that
explains in very simple terms wiser land
areas so submerged
[Music]
either we've got Zealandia in the in the
scientific arena we do hope to
consolidate it and to promote Zealandia
in New Zealand schools first of all and
we have to get in atlases on globes we
hope that the Vandy will become as
common and well-known as any of the
other major continents of course the
initial buzz about Zealandia can only
help its name recognition the notion
that something is so big and so
important could be hidden for so long I
think captured people's imagination out
of sight out of mind no more of course
not everything that's undetected is so
obviously obscured
and one remarkable discovery this year
offers clues about how some prehistoric
creatures could hide in plain sight in
northern Alberta Canada the remnants of
a hundred and ten million year old
dinosaur from the late Mesozoic era
is providing the world with an
unprecedented look at a new species the
notice or a fossil so pristine and
complete that it shows the texture
patterns and color of a prehistoric
giant the notice or is the best vestment
we have and it's the closest you'll come
until we find a better one in terms of
coming face-to-face with the dinosaur
the notice or is next to surreal
a petrified beast caught by Medusa's
gaze we knew it was good but we didn't
know how good it was I think it's the
best preserved armored dinosaur in the
world I'm calling this the rosetta stone
for armored dinosaurs the anatomy of the
new species has already given scientists
clues to how these animals evolved how
they radiated and diversified through
time and it doesn't stop there a skin is
preserved it's not just the impression
of the skin we actually have some of the
original biomolecules preserved one of
the cool things that they tell us for
this festival is that the animal had at
least a component of reddish brown
pigment to its skin the coloration
aspect is very exciting so it's cool to
know what color it was but it's it's
actually more exciting when that has
implications for how the animal lived
researchers believe the notice or was
darker on the back and lighter on its
sides and underside a method of
camouflage called countershading now
keep in mind this was a five five and a
half metre long ten and a half animal
covered in the armor but it still has
camouflage and to us that just
illustrates how intense the predation
was that in the Cretaceous you have
these very large community dinosaurs and
they would have also been very visual
predators so it actually kind of just
shows you how extreme that who system it
likely was back in the Cretaceous
the plant-eating slow-moving beast only
stood a chance because of its
impenetrable coat of armour we see three
rows of osteoderms those are splitter
called cervical rings and it's armored
that would have protected the neck of
the animal and as we move to the side we
see this giant pair of scapular spine
it's basically a big armored spine
coming off the shoulder that's about
half a meter long and the spectacular
specimen still has many secrets to
unveil contents of the notice or stomach
in addition to having skin preserved all
over most of the surface of the animal
we also have abundant gut contents so be
the last meal of the animal preserved
inside and this is what that stuff looks
like so we're currently doing all sorts
of work on this geochemical work
histological work and CT scanning trying
to figure out what these spheroid
structures are and there's been many
ideas that part of the diversification
of dinosaurs is tied to the
diversification of flowering plants and
it would be great to see exactly which
types of plants this guy was eating and
if that hypothesis makes sense we know
what dinosaurs ate how they fought and
now what they looked like
but there are still many questions to be
answered and Alberta might just be the
place to find them it's estimated that
there are thousands of fossils hidden
underneath the earth but when a
six-mile-wide asteroid struck the
Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago
dinosaurs had nowhere to hide
in the resulting global Cataclysm of
earthquakes fire storms and tsunamis
ultimately led to their extinction
some analysts however managed to survive
but how since its discovery in 1978
investigations of the asteroids impact
crater include data from seismic images
and recently collected core samples from
deep within the site at Chick shaloo the
data paints a devastating picture of
destruction and led scientists to create
a broad new survival Theory focusing on
habitat and diet adaptability when
dinosaurs perished and a vast new eco
space emerged the surviving species
expanded rapidly to fill it this is
called adaptive radiation a recent study
shows that one out of ten frog species
descend from the original three frog
species that survived the Cretaceous
tertiary extinction event frogs were
able to escape extinction for a number
of reasons they live in an aquatic
habitat that offered protection their
small size and unique metabolism allow
for better endurance of environmental
stress eventually when vegetation
returned they were able to diversify
worldwide and adapt to new lives in
trees
birds - exhibited the same adaptive
radiation around the same time a newly
found 62 million year old mouse bird
fossil in New Mexico helped
paleontologists map the diversification
of land birds which can be traced back
to nine original ancestors which
survived the event warm-blooded birds
feathers insulated them from temperature
extremes their small size and ability to
fly allowed for easier escape from
hostile and barren terrain and their
diet of seeds worms and insects who gave
them the edge after much of the Earth's
surface plant life had died in the end
the ability to adapt to changing
conditions proved two key
characteristics for the survival of many
ancient animals including our smallest
mammal ancestors just as it may be for
humans today as we confront the
challenges of climate change
the city of Miami Beach already knows
what it means to wade through sea level
rise in recent years residents have
experienced elevated high tides at
certain times of the year known as king
tides these events are clear evidence of
incremental increases right now we are
definitely witnessing a sea level rise
impacts these high tide flooding events
that are growing in severity more often
deeper more widespread that sort of a
pattern that we expect will continue
that means huge financial costs by the
year 2100
another predicts two and a half million
Miamians could become sea level refugees
and leave the area it's not only Miami
all around the world sea levels are
expected to rise the question is by how
much
in adopting a multi-pronged approach
Miami Beach has committed 400 to 500
million dollars to combat sea-level rise
building water pumps and raising their
defenses with the continued issue of
climate change and sea level rise we're
seeing a increase of water level every
year we had to make changes to adapt to
this future condition what you're seeing
here we put a boardwalk initially to
give some height but we found that that
wasn't protecting the city what we've
done here is we've increased the levels
of our new seawall the new wall you see
in the background here is our new
standards this is good for a property
another 50 years and we're going to see
water levels challenging even that new
seawall raising its elevation Miami
Beach seeks to stay dry and take control
of its future the city's philosophy our
culture is rising above we believe we
can meet the challenge the challenge is
not only in rising above meaning
elevation its rising too and and
withstanding the challenges that come
with sea level rise due to climate
change as the city engineer I have
complete faith that we can do we can
mitigate we can survive
of course the Earth's oceans have risen
and fallen many times during the
planet's history and new archaeological
evidence suggests these shifting
shorelines may conceal clues about the
earliest Americans until just recently
archaeologists generally agreed that the
earliest people to populate North
America where the Clovis people dating
back to some 12 to 13 thousand years ago
but a group of scientists in San Diego
California have a different theory we
have the bones the fossils the
distribution that rocks the date we have
evidence for humans in North America
130,000 years ago we realize that that
is a startling claim but the scientific
community is struggling with the idea
that humans arrived in North America
130,000 years ago the study of early
humans in the new world has been very
political and very controversial for
over 125 years it's an old mystery yet
to be solved
deciding who got to North America first
and win welcome and thank you for
joining us this morning at the San Diego
Natural History Museum as we share some
exciting news about our discovery made
right here in San Diego
well back in 1992 Caltrans was doing
improvements to State Route 54 which
involved adding a couple new travel
lanes and Richard Cerruti who's a field
paleontologist here at the Museum was
monitoring the excavations on the very
north side of the freeway alignment and
saw this little puff of what's a tusk
material being scraped up by an
excavator and said stop let me go look
at this the bones that Richard Cerruti
found belonged to an ancient Mastodon
that's one - its characteristic of
American ambassador were these giants
sharing North America with early man
130,000 years ago the answer may lie in
the position of the bones and tools
found at the site tooth enamel scattered
throughout the site just don't make
sense
put these stones amongst ancient bone
remnants have been an early form of
primitive tools we felt that it was
important to produce a map where we
carefully plotted or precisely plotted
the position of all the bones and the
stones or whatever else is in there so
we can understand what the general
pattern it's thought that the tools
found with the Mastodon bones were used
for butchering the animal so this is one
of the cobbles that we hypothesized was
used as a hammer stone 100 3,000 years
ago where where there was a carcass of a
mastodon these people were trying to
recover raw materials from it they had a
problem how do how do we break these
bones they look over into the active
River channel find some cobbles of the
appropriate size and weight bring them
back to the site and if you look closely
there's some striations coming off of
that that are indication indications of
what this flake has come off the cuts in
this rock led the San Diego team to
conclude that these were actually tools
used by humans an idea that de Muir says
might not be so far-fetched dr. Stephen
Hollen is co-director of the Center for
American Paleolithic research in South
Dakota he was part of the team that
evaluated the findings from the San
Diego excavation site
so what do we got in here Steve I said I
can't get my mind around this
this site has to be really really old
beat-up tears evidence of humans I said
it goes against everything I thought I
knew and everything I have ever been
taught whole and evaluated the Mastodon
bones and the stone tools recovered from
the excavation site we would take the
drawers out of the cabinets in here and
bring them in on this table and look
through them paleontologists and
archaeologists together richard Cerruti
came in so there were four of us my wife
Kathleen Tom and I and we would look
through and we've looked for these very
diagnostic pieces and one of the things
that we got all excited about first were
these cone flakes that form in a circle
around the point of impact from the
hammerstone and based on the experiment
that we've done in Africa breaking an
elephant femur with a big hammer we saw
the same kinds of fracture patterns that
we did experimentally Poland specializes
in evaluating broken bones at
archaeological sites looking for human
causes as this video shows from a test
he conducted in Africa two years prior
to working on the San Diego project as
we puzzled over this we kept coming back
to this one explanation that explains
all the data was that humans did this
the detective work by the San Diego
Natural History Museum team was capped
by the age dating that Richard Cerruti
had done to prove the age of the
mastodon bones he discovered
this is one of the specimens that he
used in his analysis he cored it and
they also sliced it and after analyzing
over a hundred micro samples from this
specimen and two other specimens of bone
from the site yielded an age of 130
thousand plus or minus nine thousand so
after the article came out there has
been no critic come out to say that the
dating is incorrect in fact other
specialists in uranium series dating
have come out and said the dates look
perfectly good so we're very comfortable
with the dates
while humans arrival in the Americas may
have occurred earlier than previously
thought
new dating of another paleontological
find found in a south african cave could
soon upend long-held theories about the
evolutionary tree of primates and early
humans when we actually got into the
chamber and could start removing it we
realized that not only was there one
individual lying there on the surface
but the floor was literally comprised of
Homo Naledi
there are thousands and thousands and
thousands of remains down in those
chambers and all of you have to do is
sweep the surface off and there they are
so the first time I sort of slid through
that hallway it into the open area where
the chamber is and sort of started
looking around you know you're only
wearing a headlamp so you just see
flashes but every flash of my headlamp
showed bone so I think right at that
point I realized that we had a lot more
than the original photographs actually
had portrayed so that was pretty
exciting oh no way isn't really similar
to any known hominid species in its
entirety of its package you've got
little bits and pieces of almost
everything we've ever found parts of the
skull if you just look at it quickly
look a little bit like Homo erectus got
a very small brain other parts of skull
look very modern like Homo sapiens it
gets stranger and stranger as you move
down the body you get the ape-like
shoulders you get these more and more
human-like arms which end with a hand
this human proportion I was actually at
the London Natural History Museum and
woman a lady was on the wall and then
there was estimated age between 1.2 and
1.8 million years but then when we
actually did the scientific dating of
those teeth this is when things got very
interesting because then we got an age
of 200 to 300 thousand years old when we
got a date it's much younger than that a
quarter of a million years give or take
we realized that we were dealing with a
primitive creature almost like a time
traveller that had come down from deep
times to a point where it is very
possible
that Tom Emilia was in direct contact
with the emergence of modern humans we
never thought that was possible in
Africa until this moment we thought that
there was effectively during that entire
time period of the Middle Pleistocene
late Middle Pleistocene one form a big
brained form of Homo sapiens now there
are two and that adds incredible
complexity to our record the world of
Homo Naledi and other early humans was
different than it is today a veritable
Garden of Eden teeming with life pure
and free from pollution few places like
this still exist and most of them we got
a date it's much younger than that a
quarter of a million years give or take
we realized that we were dealing with a
primitive creature almost like a time
traveller that had come down from deep
times to a point where it is very
possible that Tom Amelia was in direct
contact with the emergence of modern
humans we never thought that was
possible in Africa until this moment we
thought that there was effectively
during that entire time period of the
Middle Pleistocene late Middle
Pleistocene one form a big brained form
of Homo sapiens now there are two and
that adds incredible complexity to our
record the world of Homo Naledi and
other early humans was different than it
is today a veritable Garden of Eden
teeming with life pure and free from
pollution
few places like this still exist and
most of them quite remote but look just
a few feet underwater and you can find
one of the most productive and
overlooked ecosystems on earth
scientists recently learned that
seagrass Meadows helped scrub the
surrounding water clean of bacteria from
raw sewage and other pathogens a recent
study of polluted waters in Indonesia
showed levels of harmful bacteria to be
50% less in spots with robust seagrass
beds leading to healthier fish and coral
in the surrounding area you see sea
grasses oxygenate the water trap
sediment that might otherwise float
freely and host tiny microbes that kill
many harmful bacteria eliminating toxins
improves the health of any system and
the workings of a human body is no
different in athletics though they say
no pain no gain a nod to the physical
effort required to increase endurance
and enjoy the health benefits of
exercise but new pharmaceutical research
also aims to make those benefits more
easily accessible the potential benefit
of a drug that can tune you up in the
way in which you normally get tuned up
by exercise could have really dramatic
effects
playfully known as the exercise pill the
experimental drug shifts metabolism by
triggering genetic instructions for the
body to burn fat instead of sugar during
exercise something that doesn't normally
happen until after extensive training
and conditioning recent tests increase
the endurance of otherwise sedentary
mice which also proved to be resistant
to weight gain while on the drug we have
two groups of mice and one group a drug
the other group as control without the
treatment of the drug so we were quite
surprised to see the astonishing results
the mice treated with the drug they can
run almost 100 minutes longer than the
one that are not treated the increase
was around 70% researchers ultimately
hope their product can improve the
health of the disabled elderly and obese
there are many reasons why people can't
either walk or run or exercise and the
idea is if you could bring a small
molecule into the picture that can
confer the benefits of fitness without
training you could really help a lot of
people from energizing our bodies -
powering societies so we are just
waiting for the next experiment it's
going to happen in ten seconds
there you go you see the flickering of
the plasma we are creating fusion here
this is our little Sun is extremely hard
each day every 20 minutes
researchers build the Sun at the Cullum
fusion Center in Oxfordshire Britain
generating temperatures greater than 200
million degrees these nuclear fusion
trials would be impossible without jet
the joint European torus a doughnut
shaped plasma containment vessel at this
point we're the most important
experiment in the world thanks to jet
where energy is created by combining
hydrogen atoms there's heavy hydrogen
which we call deuterium and the
super-heavy hydrogen which we call
tritium and when they're running around
at these temperatures like 200 million
degrees they bang into each other with
immense speed and when they do and they
get close enough what we call the strong
force which combines the nucleus of
atoms together rips them pulls them
together and they fuse and they make
helium and they spit out a neutral
fusion really is the perfect way to make
energy and yet despite fusions
transformative potential to provide safe
and sustainable energy to the world the
program faces an uncertain future while
the British government committed to pay
for its share of the experiments up to
the year 2020 brexit its plan departure
from the European Union may also lead to
the UK's withdrawal from scientific
agencies like your atom the European
atomic energy community some say this
could jeopardize jet logistics and
operations
and perhaps also the larger
next-generation fusion experiment
currently being built in southern France
if fusion represents harnessing the
physical power of the Sun
a moment of darkness reflected its
emotional tower and all induced euphoria
experienced by millions as the first
total solar eclipse over North America
in three decades made its way across the
United States
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it's the most unnatural natural
phenomenon I ever saw this is a solar
eclipse and just what people witnessed
on August 21st along a 70 mile wide path
first along the Oregon coast at 10:15
a.m. Pacific Daylight Time and last in
South Carolina 94 minutes later
[Applause]
the uncommon coupling was the most
viewed and photographed eclipse ever
recorded
and yet even as the Sun reemerged from
the moon's shadow some earthly domains
remain as always far removed from its
rays
like the cave chambers 300 meters below
Mexico's mica mine enormous razor-sharp
crystals dwarf human explorers while
today the cave is totally submerged
previous expeditions collected bizarre
life-forms from these crystal giants
they call this place hell on earth
temperatures climb to 135 degrees
Fahrenheit with over 80 percent humidity
even with life-saving body suits no
visit can safely last longer than a half
hour yet deep within this extreme
environment are life-forms which exists
nowhere else known as extremophiles NASA
astrobiologist penny Boston and her team
found 40 strains of mineral eating
organisms trapped within the crystals
here they collected sample microbes some
dormant but alive estimated to be
between ten and fifty thousand years old
including genetically unique and
previously undiscovered life-forms any
extrema file system that we're studying
actually you know allows us to push the
envelope of life further and we add it
to this atlas of possibilities that we
can apply to different planetary
settings they expanding the definitions
of life on earth and where to find it
Boston's findings could impact the
search for life beyond our planet
on places like the protoplanet Ceres the
largest object located within the solar
system's asteroid belt and one of the
scientific targets of NASA's Dawn
spacecraft when t17 startling and
unexpected news began coming in my
colleague found a spectral signature in
her data that is consistent with our the
same signature of of aliphatic
hydrocarbons so here we're finding maybe
the building blocks of biological
material seen here in red the organic
materials are thought to have originated
in the dwarf planet itself
Don's study of Ceres also revealed
evidence of water and volcanic activity
further raising the scientific profile
of Ceres no longer considered a barren
Rock
however stone isn't the only NASA
spacecraft uncovering new surprises
about our solar system seven months
after arriving in Jupiter's planetary
system the Juno Explorer became fully
operational in February of 2017
astonishing researchers with the steady
stream of images and scientific data
it's sending back to earth
Jupiter's by far the largest planet in
our solar system leaving Juno with a
whole lot of ground to cover and
although it is the second brightest
planet in our night sky its formation
and composition have left us in the dark
previous NASA missions have given us
some understandings of its moons small
dust rings and atmosphere but we've not
been able to see past the Vango like
swirls of dense red brown yellow and
white clouds that paint the planet at
least not until now each individual
image is all inspiring especially those
captured when Juno came within 5,000
miles of Jupiter's Great Red Spot the
planets most famous storm poring over
data from Juno's microwave radiometer
scientists hope to learn more about what
powers the Tempest and how it differs
from other Jovian storms this critical
instrument measures six distinct ranges
of thermal radiation as it peers more
than 300 miles beneath Jupiter's clouds
to create a three-dimensional model of
Jupiter's atmospheric environment though
the first time we're looking inside of
Jupiter within two into the interior and
what we're seeing is that it doesn't
work at all like we had predicted almost
every model that has the interior motion
how the magnetic field the gravity field
how the D batma sphere works it's all
different
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current modeling estimates that the
cloud cover is roughly 30 miles thick
below it there lies a 13,000 mile layer
of swirling hydrogen and helium that
changes States from gas to liquid as it
nears the center leading to a 24,000
mile deep sea of metallic hydrogen if we
can probe it and work out the abundance
of elements in it hydrogen helium the
higher elements as well and work out
roughly what that makes is it'll tell us
something about not only how to do but
it was formed they have a solar system
platform if there is a bunch of rocky
material in the center of Jupiter it
means that the in the early solar system
before Jupiter formed that rocky
substances were probably coming together
and Jupiter got built around those it
could be that Jupiter was built without
any of those and then it just collapsed
sort of like the Sun and there is no
rocky material or or core of heavy
elements in the center strangely though
gravity data collected so far points to
a new possibility a somewhat larger than
previously thought
and perhaps partially dissolved core
leaving Jupiter experts with more
questions than answers we're putting the
pieces of the puzzle together and it's
exciting but we don't have the whole
picture yet Juno's primary mission is
scheduled to continue until February
2018 but this past year
NASA saw another of its extraordinary
explorers come to the end and we are in
the atmosphere as the Cassini space
probe plummeted into Saturn's atmosphere
in a fiery death spiral roughly one
minute's philosophy signaled the
culmination of the crafts revolutionary
scientific quest congratulations to you
all this has been an incredible
spacecraft and she's rewritten the text
books about Saturn the Rings the moon's
Titan so many things have changed
because of Cassini from its launch 20
years ago - its bold grand finale the
cassini-huygens mission has unveiled
some amazing discoveries Saturn is
ablaze with storms of unimaginable force
the place our record with our giant
under constraints
the Rings are even more dazzling than
imagined stretching across hundreds of
thousands of miles they're made of
particles of pure water ice some
microscopic
some the size of mountains they break
apart and they reform so there's this
beautiful cosmic dance going on inside
the Rings
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cassini also carried a little Lander
called Huygens
which became the first probe to land on
a moon other than our own its target
Titan because of its atmosphere and as
those first pictures came back we just
saw more and more haze and fog and haze
and haze until finally the probe broke
through that haze and we got to see the
surface of time for the first time
Huygens landed in the surface of what
looked like a mud flat the surface
temperature was minus 350 degrees
Fahrenheit and these pebbles were made
of methane ice the nearby lake
a lake of methane then Cassini went into
orbit around Titan and revealed with its
radar system that there indeed are lakes
of liquid natural gas and other
molecules on the surface of Titan
they've evaporate just like here on
earth great clouds of methane which
rained back on the surface creating
rivers of liquid natural gas and lakes
when there perhaps be some very
interesting life in the lakes on Titan
but there were drive formations here too
including dunes that stretched from
miles and miles reaching 100 metres high
and 3,000 meter mountains suggesting
tectonic forces at work here similar to
those on earth
next Cassini headed for a close look at
Saturn's tiny moon called Enceladus here
on the moon's South Pole
strange blue cracks dubbed tiger stripes
75 miles long and hundreds of feet deep
resemble fault lines here on earth
Cassini's thermal sensors picked up heat
coming out of the ice ball 200 degrees
warmer than the rest of the planet
Cassini then captured giant Jets of
water spewing hundreds of miles into
space from the tiger stripes shooting
out at 1,200 miles per hour vaporizing
and then freezing
back on earth Cassini's stunned
controllers quickly reprogram the probe
to fly right through the Jets collecting
particles and what they found was even
more stunning organic molecules the
basic building blocks of life Enceladus
is really special it's giving us free
samples because the guys is there
erupting and they could guide the
spacecraft very close and look to see if
there's water there and there is water
here on earth wherever there's liquid
water whether it's deep in the ocean and
very hot or rocky places or in ice
there's microbial life so it certainly
suggests microbial life could have
evolved on its ellas because it has all
the properties that the earth had when
life began here NASA controllers plotted
the probes deadly descent into Saturn's
atmosphere
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productive until the end Cassini relayed
detailed information about the planets
environment and then she burned like a
meteor and vaporized scientists will
build on Cassini's contributions as the
search for extraterrestrial life
continues within our solar system and
beyond perhaps around the star system 39
light years away known as Trappist won
the first place found NASA announced to
have multiple planets three year
circling a single star inside the
habitable zone where liquid water can
exist well with this discovery we've
made a giant accelerated leap forward in
the search for habitable worlds and life
on other worlds potentially speaking the
track miss one system has really
captured our imagination because with
this amazing system we know that there
must be many more potentially life
bearing worlds out there just waiting to
be bound earth-like in size and
temperature these three faraway worlds
suggest endless possibilities
the discovery gives us a hint that
finding a second earth it's not just a
matter of if but when these questions
about are we alone are being answered as
we speak in
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