- Morning.
A butterfly lands softly on the petal of a star flower.
9,000 miles away, a small Fijian hurricane sends a gust
of residual wind, causing the butterfly to flap
its gossamer wings.
The wispy down draft from the butterfly's wing flap
rouses some unseen pollen particles, sending them to
drift to the ground.
This tiny molecular overload triggers an awaiting landslide
which moments later, inspires a breathtaking cascade
of rock slides, and tumbling boulders generate a breeze
which fans a nearby campfire, causing it to flourish,
sharing its warmth with a surrounding kindle scape.
Nearby trees respond in turn by bursting
into brilliant orange flames.
The butterfly is now embraced by a warm cloud of smoke.
The flying caterpillar coughs quietly
and we are left to wonder, what will happen
to the butterfly, to the trees, to the tumbling rocks,
to the other trees in the hurricane?
The answer is fascinating.
(epic orchestral music)
The earth is our home, but it is also so much more.
It provides materials for us to build smaller homes
on top of it.
It gives us a cornucopia of water and food.
It also tells us what outfits to wear by changing
its temperature almost daily.
In turn, we do a lot for our soil-filled matriarch.
We prune it to make it more presentable to other planets.
We adorn it with our architecture and lawn furniture.
And occasionally, we even embarrass it
with our poor neighborhoods.
But perhaps the most important aspect of our relationship
with our homosphere is how we communicate with it.
We speak to the earth, and in exchange,
the earth speaks back to us.
Question is, are we listening?
- [Whispering Voiceover] Feed me.
Take my (mumbles), be nice to rabbits.
Get off of, why are you, oh don't swim there.
Don't swim on that side of the ocean.
Slow down, take care, be gentle.
That's not yours, that's not yours.
I like that building.
- The earth started off as nothing more than
a small, fiery star.
Then four billion years and two months ago,
this tiny but powerful force of energy began attracting
passing asteroids and space rocks onto it
like a gravitational magnet.
They piled up around the star center, building a
geological crust, which encased the star,
first turning it into a moon and then amassing enough soil
to make it a bonafide planet.
The largest of these asteroids that crashed into earth
landed and broke apart, their pieces piling up
to form what we call today, mountains.
As a young planet, earth was mostly peaceful and smooth,
like a baby, but eventually became agitated and bumpy
like a teenager reaching its puberty.
Volcanoes erupted, hairs sprouted in the form of
tall grasses and weeds, which caught fire.
The ground split apart, gushing poisons and gases,
which exploded, creating the oceans.
This was a period that one could equate to a veritable
hell on earth, one whose legacy can still be felt today
in places such as Afghanistan and New Jersey.
This period of tumultuous upheaval caused the earth's
only land mass called Continentia to break apart
into several pieces which today we call continents.
And these continents broke into smaller pieces
called islands, and these islands broke into smaller pieces
called rocks, which broke into still smaller pieces
called sand, and then that was it as far as the
breaking up process was concerned.
The oceans, no longer boiling, began to cool and settle,
and finally an equilibrium was reached.
Tranquility spread like a virus across the now mature earth
which looked much like the planet we know today,
but without any people or billboards or buses
or other vehicles and other things.
And now, centuries later, the peaceful nature of
our planet today belies the tumult hiding
just beneath its surface.
The earth is in a constant struggle with its star center,
continually working to keep itself from exploding.
How does it do it?
How does this planet keep itself balanced and not burst
into fire everywhere?
The answer is found in the earth's cycles.
This narrow, deliberate mountain stream is a perfect example
of one of our planet's natural self-sustaining cycles.
The water starts at the top of the mountain
and makes its way into this narrow channel,
heading toward the bottom, rushing, gushing, gaining speed,
more and more momentum, the rocks, their sides slick,
accelerate the water as it passes, making its way
to the very bottom or it turns and then choo,
shoots back up the other side of the mountain,
until it reaches the very top, makes another turn,
and begins its journey once again back down to the
bottom of the mountain.
A fascinating feat of natural engineering.
The stream is just a small example of one of the earth's
many wondrous cycles.
One of the sturdiest of earth's cycles is the rock cycle.
Rocks in the ground are broken down by weather
and pushed underground where they start to burrow.
Rocks will meet up with other rocks along the way
and stick together, thanks to gravity and their
natural magnetic properties.
These fused rocks then head to the center of the earth,
where they reproduce and create new layers,
layers which then re-emerge on the earth's surface
in the form of lava, which in turn creates more rocks.
The direct opposite cycle is something we call
the water cycle.
Most of the water on earth is located in the ocean.
The sun shines down on these oceans and the light
from the sun's rays enters the top layer of the water,
vaporizing it like a laser.
As the light burns the water, smoke emerges,
and this smoke we call clouds.
These clouds rise up and fly away like balloons
until they relieve themselves on us in the form of rain.
And these are just two of the thousands of fascinating
cycles that intertwine and work together to keep
the earth working together.
Once these cycles synced up, the stage was set
for the most wondrous and living of earth's wonders,
to flourish.
Life.
We now know that life first arrived on earth
a billion years ago on the backs of asteroids.
The asteroids collided with the surface of the planet,
shaking off bits of life that fell to the ground
and planted themselves in the molt and soil.
And then (grunts),
it was...
It was only millions of months later when the earth's
cycles had finally stabilized, much like a mature
young woman's that the conditions were finally perfect
for life to thrive.
First plants, then dinosaurs.
Then fruits and dogs and just as birds and mushrooms
were starting to appear,
something fascinating happened.
(tense music)
And it would aim itself directly at the--
- Dinosaurs.
They weren't intentionally bad.
Now, their fatal flaw was that the earth was sending them
confident, clear signals, but they were so self-involved,
focused only on food and dinosaur sex
that they didn't listen.
Instead what did they do?
They started a gigantic dinosaur orgy located in the
South Pacific, I'm talking the freakiest thing
you ever seen, I'm talking two stegosauruses on triceratops,
we're talking about just raptors just getting together.
The dinosaurs were so large that when they all flocked
and (bleep) in the same place, it created too much
of a gravitational pull that it ended up
just tilting the earth.
- And it would not only tilt the earth,
it would also create a gravitational magnet
that would attract a gravitational disaster.
Almost without warning, the earth attracted
one final asteroid.
A giant space rock, the size of Australia,
crashed into the Asian Ocean, becoming what
we now call Australia.
(explosion bursts)
The earth had spoken, and the remaining creatures listened.
They hid in caves, in each other.
Reproducing and evolving for centuries.
Fish became mice.
Moss became whales, and jungle cats became regular cats.
These humble adaptations in response to the earth's
fickle and often violent proclamations
helped these creatures avoid the fate of their
furry dinosaur ancestors.
And no creature would better avoid that fate
than the one that eventually would come up
with the very word fate itself.
The arrival of one species, man, would change everything.
The human being was the dominant animal among
all species on the planet, but the earth was no
garden variety submissive.
Mother nature, despite the veritable gag ball
man would attempt to shove into her mouth,
would speak again, and loudly, she would speak.
(epic orchestral music)
(indistinct crosstalk)
These were the first prisons.