(dramatic orchestral music)
Science served as a virtual time machine,
peering into the past to deliver remarkable revelations,
while also advancing amazing projections about the future,
changes which will impact human lives
and all life on the planet.
Now, as this year on Earth comes to a close,
a new inquiry, which could yield clues
to the origins of our solar system,
is just getting underway.
(dramatic orchestral music)
November 26, 2018.
The NASA probe InSight barrels into the atmosphere of Mars
at more than 14,000 miles an hour.
Controllers back at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
have been monitoring the spacecraft for six long months.
Now, they can only sit, watch,
and hope that their creation survives
as it endures six minutes of hell
on its perilous descent to the Martian surface.
InSight should now be experiencing the peak heating rates.
Portions of the heat shield may reach
nearly 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit
as it protects the lander from the heating environment.
(dramatic music)
InSight has passed through peak deceleration.
Standing by for parachute deploy.
Telemetry shows parachute deployment.
Radar powered on.
(applause)
Heat shield separation commanded.
(dramatic music)
Lander separation commanded.
Altitude 600 meters.
200 meters.
50 meters.
Constant velocity.
17 meters.
Standing by for touch down.
Touch down confirmed!
(cheering)
Fabulous, fabulous.
A big hand to the Marco team there.
The next step: waiting for InSight's
solar arrays to open and provide power to the probe.
Finally, the proof arrives from across space:
a dust-speckled image of the landing sight,
as well as an image of the craft,
safely on the Martian surface.
In this first couple of pictures
of a place no human has ever seen before,
also remind us that, in order to do science,
we have to be bold, and we have to be explorers.
For over 50 years, we've visited Mars
with an increasingly powerful array
of orbiters, landers, and rovers.
But these missions largely just scratch the surface.
To really understand the Red Planet,
we need to somehow look inside it.
The basic idea of InSight is to map out
the deep structure of Mars for the very first time.
We're gonna map out the thickness of the crust,
the size of the core, sort of get
the first map of the inside of Mars.
InSight will peer deep into the Martian crust
to uncover tectonic activity, and reveal the process
that helped shape the rocky planets of our solar system.
The first major science experiment to deploy
will be a seismometer that can measure faint vibrations
throughout the crust caused by Mars quakes.
We'll be able to use the signals they produce
that travel throughout the entire body of the planet
to probe the interior of Mars,
to look at the size of the core,
to understand that molten versus solid structure.
Mars is a record of an earlier geologic era.
Mars cooled faster, so that it never had
plate tectonics as far as we can see,
and it no longer has a magnetic field.
It preserved what it looked like early on when it formed,
and therefore have a record of what
the solar system and the rocky bodies might have looked like
about four billion years ago,
when they actually were created.
A second instrument aboard InSight, HP3,
will go even further, burrowing deep
into the planet's surface to take its temperature.
So inside this part of HP3 is a mole.
It's like a self-hammering nail.
So it will hammer down into the surface of Mars
to a depth of five meters.
The probe will periodically measure
the properties of the soil as it burrows into the planet.
Embedded on a trailing tower are 14 sensors
that will monitor the temperature
at various depths beneath the surface.
The results could provide scientists with stunning
new insight about the earliest days of our universe.
It's amazing.
We're gonna be the first mission
to actually look at the inside of Mars
and probe the unseen interior,
which we can not only apply to Earth
but also formation of rocky planet formation
across the universe.
As one Mars mission begins,
another comes to a close.
One of Mars' pioneering explorers
may have just completed its record-setting expedition.
Initially slated for a 90-day mission,
the Opportunity rover shocked engineers back on Earth
as it soldiered on for nearly 15 more years.
Opportunity has spent more operational days
on the surface of the Red Planet than any other craft,
beaming back images of the Martian landscape
and increasing our understanding of our neighbor,
until June 10th of this year.
We haven't head from Opportunity since.
10 days earlier, the MRO satellite saw a dust storm brewing.
It would engulf the planet, making it
one of the most extensive Martian storms on record
and concealing Opportunity's solar panels in dust,
cutting off its power.
The JPL team at NASA has been sending frequent commands
to the rover ever since, sometimes multiple commands daily.
They hope that the heavy winds
that normally sweep across Mars from November to January
will help dust off the rover's energy source,
breathing life into it once more.
NASA will continue to signal Opportunity
until January 1st of 2019.
If Opportunity remains silent,
the team will decide then what to do next.
But elsewhere in our solar system,
other planetary missions remain well underway
and continue to unlock mysteries,
like NASA's Juno mission to Jupiter,
which was recently extended until July, 2021,
already revealing Earth-sized storms, a magnetosphere
much more powerful than originally predicted,
and a first look at Jupiter's poles.
Instead of having just one polar vortex,
like we have here on Earth, the Juno spacecraft
has spotted as many as eight swirls
here on Jupiter's north pole,
and five on its southern pole.
The craft will continue to peer deep into the planet,
including the red spot, to better understand the gas giant.
While space exploration demands advanced technical wizardry,
living on our liquid planet can demand
advanced engineering as well.
On October 28th, 2018, pictures of the high tide
in Venice go viral around the world.
This is nothing new for the Venetians, who are used to it.
But the intensity caught everyone off guard.
It had been 10 years since a hight a tide
had exceeded the threshold of 1.5 meters above sea level.
On October 28th at 2:00 pm, 75% of the city was under water.
The usual solutions, such as walkways, pumps,
and barriers were not enough this time.
Inevitably, restaurant goers were forced to eat their pizza
with their feet in the standing water.
Only a system of floodgates at the four lagoon entrances
can protect the city from flooding.
This solution, called MOSE, is based on an idea
that is as simple as it is innovative.
It consists of 78 flap gates like these.
They each weight nearly 330 tons
and will lie at the bottom of the lagoon.
When needed, the flap gates will be pumped with air
until the rise in a straight line,
blocking the flow of the tide coming in.
Despite its simplicity, MOSE is the most ambitious
and complex hydraulic engineering project
ever attempted in the world.
It took years to assemble the concrete platform
on the seafloor.
The individual components that make up the platform
have been built here, in this site on the mainland.
The engineers call them caissons.
They may look like simple, four-story buildings
under construction, but each and every detail is special.
From the concrete to the steel,
all elements must endure the salt water.
Each caisson weights 24,000 tons
and requires a special trolley
fitted with pistons capable of raising them gently,
moving them to the launch pontoon.
Then, once it's semi-submerged like an iceberg,
the caisson is dragged by the tugboats
until it reaches its final home.
This is the most delicate phase.
The caisson needs to be lowered slowly,
until it rests on the ballast
that's been prepared for it on the seafloor.
It needs to be aligned with the previous one
in such a way that the trimming between one caisson
to the next is completely watertight.
The platform has been designed
to contain an underwater tunnel
that crosses the entire stretch of sea.
Here, the technicians can go down
and fix the hinges of the flap gates.
(anxious music)
Back on the surface, the flap gate
is now ready to be installed.
It's time for the last flap gate of this inlet
to be mounted, but the operation on number 19
gets off to a bad start.
(foreign language)
The divers swim underwater to prepare the slots
that will host the hinges.
(foreign language)
Now for the most sensitive phase of the descent:
the hooking of the hinges.
(foreign language)
The cables gradually lower the flap gate.
That allows the hinges to perfectly slide
into the fitted slots.
(foreign language)
Video cameras film the decisive moment.
The technicians have to constantly make small adjustments
to compensate for all external interference.
The technicians know the hinges are the heart of the system.
All electronic connections with the flap gate
pass through them.
(foreign language)
It's touch down.
So far so good, but it's not over yet.
The technicians in the sea tunnel
must now complete the hooking by rotating it 90 degrees
and securing it to the platform.
A message arrives from underwater:
it's perfectly watertight.
Operation over.
(foreign language)
(applause)
All 19 flap gates are in place.
By the end of the year, all mobile barriers
are scheduled to be in place.
The first tests on those already installed have started.
But it'll take months of tuning and testing
before MOSE is operative.
Only then will the world discover
if this colossal mega-structure
can save Venice and its ancient beauty.
Elsewhere, though, we now know all that falls
below history's waterline may not be lost forever.
Near the Marshall Islands, in an isolated area
of the South Pacific, a team of underwater archeologists
and divers is hoping to preserve an important relic
of the 20th century's last great conflict.
The plane is a Douglas TBD-1 Devastator.
It was the U.S. Navy's frontline torpedo bomber
in the opening days of World War II.
This one was lost in a raid on Jaluit Atoll
in February of 1942.
The weather was extremely poor on the day of the mission.
They ultimately had to jettison their bombs in the ocean
and tried to return to the ship but got lost
and had to turn around and ditch in the lagoon at Jaluit.
Miraculously, the entire crew
survived the ordeal, leaving behind a reminder
of their mission, 120 feet under the sea.
As of today, there are no examples
of this type of aircraft preserved
in any collection or museum anywhere in the world.
It's really something of a miracle
that the airplane has survived to this day
in the shape that it's in, but that won't last forever.
The forces of nature are already taking hold.
It will go away.
The team is in a race against time
to preserve the plane in its entirety for the world to see.
But first, they'll use the latest in photogrammetry,
virtual reality, and LIDAR laser scanning technology
to create a model with sub-millimeter accuracy.
As far as we're aware, this particular technology
hasn't been employed to any great extent
in underwater archeological sites.
By employing this technology in this way,
we're able to create a hyper-accurate version of this site
in the space of a few hours of dive time.
The 3-D photogrammetry involves a diver
with a still camera rig swimming around
and around the wreck, taking thousands
of photographs in a single dive.
The LIDAR scanning is a bit more involved.
You have to place the scanning head
at several positions around the wreck.
The LIDAR point cloud itself is comprised
of 92 million individual points
that were collected in a space of a few hours.
In less than a week, we accomplished more,
and with greater accuracy, than we have managed
in five previous expeditions to this airplane.
The results?
One of the most accurate models
of a World War II airplane ever to be created.
By employing this technology in this way,
we've taken a step forward, or a step into the 21st century.
And it gave us the ability to create a site map
with sub-millimeter accuracy,
something that we'll be able to consult time and again.
The ultimate goal is to see this airplane recovered,
conserved, and placed on public exhibition.
This is really our last, best chance to see
one of these airplanes saved for future generations.
2018 saw innovations illuminate discoveries
from the depths of the sea, and across the tide of time.
Seven decades after the initial discovery
of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a cigar box
of dark and damaged fragments was located
in a storage drawer by researcher Oren Ableman.
These missing puzzle pieces, unexamined since the 1950s,
included text which fit neatly into the scripts
of the Temple Scroll and the Great Psalm Scroll.
2,000-year-old treasures conserved, curated, and cataloged
but the Israeli Antiquities Authority.
Infrared imaging and careful analysis
revealed previously undetected writing.
They used a system that we developed for them and ...
took some stuff again that no one thought had anything on it
or believed that it was anything useful.
American Greg Bearman,
a retired physicist from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
collaborated with a team from MegaVision,
a digital imaging company, to create the platform
used by the Israeli Antiquities Authority,
not only to preserve the scrolls for posterity
but to see the unseen.
So the technology in general is what's called
imaging spectroscopy, and it combines digital imaging,
which gives you an image, with spectroscopy,
which is what, it's the standard physicist tool
to understand what things are made out of.
Pnina Shor leads the Dead Sea Scrolls project
for the IAA.
Beginning in 2011, she and her team set out
to use multi-spectral technology to image
every single piece in their possession,
digitizing the results, and positing online for all to see.
It's a massive undertaking,
which will still take years to complete.
We're talking about a world heritage,
and it's part of our mission to bring this heritage
and to share it with the world.
And these conservation efforts can, from time to time,
reveal hidden texts, like the characters
on those recently discovered fragments,
literally hiding in plain sight.
Bearman compares his multi-spectral technology
to the difference between a black and white photo
and a color image.
More light information offers more detail.
The reason that we don't see this faded text
is what happened is, in that part of the spectrum,
what's visible, is the parchment has gotten dark,
and the ink is naturally dark,
so there's very little contrast between the two,
so you don't see it.
And it turns out, for reasons that actually no one knows,
that as you go further in the infrared
the parchment gets brighter.
So as the parchment gets brighter
and the ink stays relatively the same,
you begin to get contrast, so that's what's going on.
The visible spectrum seen by the human eye
ranges between about 400 to 700 nanometers.
Bearman first experimented with this method 25 years ago
by dialing a filter to allow his camera
to register longer wavelengths, and struck gold.
And as we, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing,
we got to like 800, a little bit of text,
850, a little, got to 900, 950, it was just
nice, dark text on a white background.
And Bearman has gone one step further,
recording images at 12 different bands of light.
It's a monochrome camera, which is to say
it doesn't have the color filters on it.
So what we're doing with the multi-spectral imager
is that we provide the illumination in each wavelength.
Most of the text that's illegible is made legible
when you go out to 940 nanometer.
We have a 940 nanometer LED, and we take a single image,
and that's the one that the text scholars are interested in.
So while archeologists continue to scour
desert caves on the hunt for additional cultural treasures,
and new technologies emerge to study what's already in hand,
sometimes uncovering pieces of the past is accomplished
simply by revealing what's been hiding in plain sight.
Understanding these complexities required mental clarity.
But unfortunately, for a growing number of people,
illness affecting brain function
steals their most basic cognitive ability.
In the United States alone, more than five million people
live with Alzheimer's disease, a number that's expected
to more than triple by the year 2050.
But some Alzheimer's researchers,
including professor Christian Holscher,
at England's Lancaster University,
believe the foundation for treatment,
and perhaps even a cure,
may lie in our existing inventory of drugs.
So we thought maybe the drugs
that are already on the market to treat diabetes,
perhaps they could be helpful to avoid
this development happening the in the first place.
Recent studies had already shown
positive results of some diabetes drugs to combat ailments
of the brain, like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.
So Holscher too the next step: developing
a next-generation drug that targets multiple mechanisms.
So this new drug that we are testing actually activates
three different types of receptors and signaling pathways.
And it looks like this means that the protective effect
is better, is larger.
In Holscher's experiment,
conclusions were reached thanks to three groups of test mice
and their varying abilities to learn and remember.
The wild type, ordinary mice are very quick,
but the transgenic mouse, which expresses human genes
that produce these amyloid plaques, they're not great.
They're slow.
But if you then treat this Alzheimer mouse with the drug,
you can see that the speed at which they learn
is just as fast as that of a normal mouse.
So this demonstrates that this drug
can protect learning and memory formation.
Additional analysis shows increased
synaptic activity in the brains of the treated mice,
a reduced rate of amyloid tangles and plaques,
and diminished tau buildup as well: all encouraging signs.
The fact that we can improve all these
important parameters in the brain
which drive the disease gives us the hope that this drug
can actually stop the disease in the human brain,
and it can even repair some of the neurons,
bring them back to a functional state
and hopefully can bring back some of the impairments
that we see in the patients.
To prove successful, this new
and still unnamed drug must move
from mouse models to human clinical trials.
Will Holscher's triple receptor treatment
work on people the same way?
The answer requires more testing and time.
Of course, protecting and restoring sound minds
also requires maintaining healthy bodies,
and at times that can be a difficult habit to stick to.
Food, glorious food.
No doubt many consider eating
to be one of life's greatest joys.
But big appetites, coupled with poor nutrition,
can lead to devastating consequences.
Nearly 40% of adults in America, that's 93 million people,
are obese, and therefore at greater risk
for Type 2 Diabetes, heart disease, and stroke.
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention,
obesity costs the county $147 billion
in medical bills annually.
But researchers at the University of Texas medical branch
think they have a scientific solution
to this weighty problem.
Physiologically speaking, obesity is caused
by more than overeating.
Proteins in fat cells act as a metabolic break
and slow the burning of excess fat.
This, in essence, makes it harder
for obese people to lose weight
when they undertake diet and exercise.
The body is effectively fighting
their attempts to lose weight.
However, the researchers in Texas
developed a molecular key to deactivate these proteins
and maintain a normal metabolism.
Their first test subjects?
Diet-induced obese mice, or, simply put, fat mice.
When we added our compound to the diet,
the treated animals didn't change their eating habits;
they ate the same as the control animals.
But they lost about 30% of their fat mass.
And over the course of 10 days,
their total body mass went down by about 8%,
but most of that loss was concentrated in the fat tissues.
That's right, the mice lost weight
without changing their eating habits.
Researchers are waiting on approval
from the Federal Drug Administration
to begin testing with humans in about two years.
Success, however, won't mean an end
to exercise and healthy diets.
Weight loss will still require some work.
While some advances in medical technology
help us improve our quality of life,
others uncover deadly disease and extend our lives.
Tests today can detect specific cancers.
Each year, millions undergo mammograms,
colonoscopies, and lung scans.
Most of these procedures involve dedicated office visits
and big, expensive equipment.
But in early 2018, researchers at Johns Hopkins
Kimmel Cancer Center unveiled
how they hope to simplify the diagnostic process,
making cancer tests cheaper, less invasive,
and more efficient and effective.
Dr. Nickolas Papadopoulos and his colleagues
have developed a single blood test they call CancerSEEK.
It is a pan-cancer test.
You don't have to have a test only for pancreatic cancer
or only for colorectal cancer, but you have a test
for cancer, and that is what is really needed
for a screening test for asymptomatic individuals.
By identifying and measuring certain proteins
and gene mutations released into the bloodstream
by malignant tumors, tests show CancerSEEK
can screen for eight different types of cancer
and help narrow down their location in the body.
It's hunting for cancer;
that's why we called it CancerSEEK.
We look for circulating tumor DNA.
So those are pieces of our genetic material
that have specifically come from the cancer cells.
And in addition to that, we look at different biomarker,
proteins that are expressed at high levels
from cancer cells, and again, they find
their way into our bloodstream.
The blood sample serves as a liquid biopsy,
providing biomarkers used to highlight cancers
of the colon, lung, and breast,
and five others for which no screening currently exists,
such as ovarian cancer, cancer of the liver,
stomach, pancreas, and esophagus.
All totaled, these diseases account
for 60% of all the cancer deaths in America.
If you look, the statistics here in the United States
and around the world, the number of cancers
that they've been identified are usually
stage four, most of them.
That means that we missed stage three.
That means that we missed it when it was stage two.
That means that probably we could have saved somebody's life
if we had detected it earlier.
Administered during general exams
and costing only $500, Dr. Papadopoulos and his colleagues
expect CancerSEEK to be transformative,
changing both cancer diagnosis and treatments.
You have to tell some person who has no symptoms
and is healthy that, "Hey, you know,
"there is some cancer growing inside you.
"However, that's good news, because we caught it early."
It sounds simplistic, but really
that's what it kind of boils down to.
And while improving cancer survival rates
will lead to changes in how people die,
scientists in Asia seek to usher in
dramatic new shifts in how life begins.
Earlier this year, professor Mitinori Saitou
and his team at Kyoto University in Japan
demonstrated that they could deprogram
specialized and full differentiated human blood cells,
then coax them into becoming the kinds of cells
that could eventually produce eggs and sperm.
And it's that last step that could be the breakthrough.
For over a decade, it's been known that mature cells
could be deprogrammed back into becoming stem cells.
And they can be reprogrammed to become
almost any one of over 200 cell types in the body,
from brain cells to heart cells to bone cells.
In principal, these induced pluripotent cells
also ought to be capable of becoming germ cells,
or gametes: eggs and sperm.
And creating them in the laboratory
has been fraught with difficulties and setbacks.
This year, however, professor Saitou's team
demonstrated that induced human pluripotent stem cells
could become capable of being triggered
into producing primordial germ cells.
From these they were able to create
a type of cell known as an oogonium.
These oogonia are the cells that lie dormant
in a woman's ovaries for decades, until monthly
hormonal signals direct them to produce functional eggs.
The next step will be to create human sperm.
Today, no one denies that in vitro male and female
human germ cell production using reprogrammed cells
taken from almost any part of a man or a woman's body
will be achievable in the not-too-distant future.
The question of course is how such a capability
could be handled.
The clinical, therapeutic, and medical benefits
of induced pluripotent stem cells
are already proving to be almost unlimited,
ranging from rejection-free tissue growth
and even whole organ transplantation,
to personalized drug regime testing
and genetic disease diagnosis.
But making babies is a different matter.
And beyond the science, there are profound ethical
and legal issues that also need to be addressed.
Changing the basic requirements for human reproduction
could dramatically alter who can be
a mother or father, and when.
Grief-stricken widows and widowers
could have children with their deceased spouse,
made possible by a strand of hair, perhaps.
Older people, especially women,
no longer bound by their biological clock,
could remain career-focused longer
and delay starting a family.
Same-sex couple could create embryos with blended genetics,
true biological offspring of both partners.
The social consequences of this new capability
could be enormous.
And within days of conception, each of those embryos
could be vetted by a process known as pre-implantation
genetic diagnosis, to enable a choice to be made
about what characteristics the resulting child should have.
Some commentators believe that in another 40 years from now,
traditional baby making may have become the exception
rather than the norm, and that many,
if not most of our descendants,
will begin life in a dish under a microscope.
While some fear a homogenized world of designer babies,
where parents choose their child's traits
as if shopping in a catalog,
others are convinced it's a future
which will be better for everyone.
Inherited diseases could be averted,
vulnerabilities in later life identified and treated early,
and positive health traits could be reinforced.
Others worry that such a capability
will further discriminate between those
that have access to such a technology and can afford it,
and those that don't or can't.
It's a call that society will have to make
in the not-so-distant future.
No doubt, our world will witness major transformations
of all sorts as time moves on.
And some undoubtedly are already underway.
On April 30th, the ongoing eruption of Kilauea volcano
ramps up dramatically on the Big Island, Hawaii,
triggering hundreds of earthquakes.
But the new eruption takes an unexpected turn
when Kilauea's two craters begin to collapse,
and a string of new fissures open along her eastern flank.
Lava flows from the fissures ravages
the residential community of Leilani Estates,
destroying hundreds of homes and burying roughly
14 square miles of the Big Island beneath 80 feet of lava.
The eruption continues for more than three months,
allowing scientists to peer into the inner workings
of our planet like never before.
One of the fabulous opportunities we have right now,
because of the ongoing simultaneous eruption
along Kilauea's east rift zone and the summit,
is to look at this connection between the summit
and east rift zone, the magmatic plumbing connection.
Scientists have already revealed
several important insights about Kilauea.
Around the clock monitoring of lava lakes
in her summit crater and the smaller east rift crater
confirm both systems are being fueled
by the same massive magma chamber below.
Part of the uniqueness of the network
we have monitoring that leak
is that it's so close in proximity to the observatory.
That allows us to have really high bandwidth radio links.
That means that we can afford to do things like
stream HD video from the vent back here to HVO.
One of the greatest mysteries
geologists faced was identifying the source
of several explosions that rocked Kilauea,
ejecting plumes of ash up to 30,000 feet.
For decades, many volcanologists
thought these massive explosions were caused
by the sudden interaction of ground water
with hot rock or magma.
There was a debate.
There were actually several theories proposed.
What we were able to determine,
based on geologic observations and also installing
high-res cameras around the vent to look in the vent,
we were able to determine that these explosions
from the lake were actually triggered by large collapses
of rock from the crater walls that were impacting the lake.
And the lake is very gas-rich, so it's very frothy.
And when the rocks impacted the lake,
then they triggered these explosions.
The lava flows from Kilauea
eventually reached the sea,
creating nearly a thousand acres of new land.
In August, the eruption slowed dramatically.
But scientists will continue to analyze
the enormous amounts of data they gathered
for decades to come.
(waves crashing)
A far more devastating geological event unfolded
just a month later, in Sulawesi, Indonesia.
On September 28th, a 7.5 magnitude earthquake
struck the island, triggering a tsunami
that inundated the provincial capital of Palu.
The combined tragedies killed at least 2,00 people
and wounded 10,000 more.
Increasing threats from natural disasters
became a major focus throughout 2018.
A growing body of evidence indicates
human-induced climate change isn't just contributing
to more frequent disasters; it's also making them worse.
In the U.S., an unprecedented report
released by 13 federal agencies
warned that if major steps aren't taken
to reign in global warming soon,
the damage could knock at least 10%
off the American economy in this century alone,
more than double the losses form the Great Recession.
Understanding the global impact of climate change
on society and the environment often means
a more daunting and perhaps frightening forecast.
In October, 2018, climate change experts met in South Korea
to answer a question that may seem like bureaucratic
hair-splitting, but which is far, far from it.
It's literally a matter of life and death.
The question was simple: what would be the consequences
for life on Earth if global warming
reached two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels,
rather than 1.5 degrees Celsius?
The answer is complicated, says the IPCC,
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
who were asked to study this question
after the Paris Agreement was signed in 2016.
Globally, we've already exceeded those
pre-industrial temperatures by about one degree.
90% of that extra heat energy
has been absorbed by our oceans.
And one of the most obvious effects is sea level rise,
produced by melting ice from glaciers.
It's early May now, and the snow is starting to melt.
It's an amazing theory out there
that the water gets to the base of the ice sheet
and kind of pressurizes and hydraulically
lifts the ice sheet up.
But the largest factor is thermal expansion.
As the water warms, so too does sea level.
The IPCC report predicted that even if the global
average temperature only increases by 1.5 degrees Celsius,
sea levels are expected to rise
by at least half a meter, about two feet.
60 million people will suffer flooding every year by 2100.
But if the temperature increases by two degrees Celsius,
that rise is projected to be
almost a meter, about three feet.
At two degrees Celsius, that figure
climbs to 72 millions people per year.
And that's not counting the people living
on the small island states around the world.
Five of the Solomon Islands have already disappeared.
Changes in ocean temperatures also affect
the creatures that live in it.
Many of the tiny, single-celled organisms
that form the basis of the marine food chain,
and are therefore crucial to maintaining fish stocks,
don't like warm, deoxygenated water.
So phytoplankton and fish are already migrating
toward the cooler waters further north and south.
Inevitably, the world's fishing industries are suffering,
and the maximum catch potentials are projected to decrease
by up to 25% in some of the hottest regions,
such as the Tropics.
Marine organisms that can't migrate, such as coral,
are now disappearing at an alarming rate
due to warm water stress.
By the end of the century, at two degrees Celsius,
99%, effectively all of the world's coral, will have died.
As the corals disappear, so too
do the already precarious livelihoods
of the thousands of coastal communities
which rely on the oceans for food, export, and tourism.
One of the most important greenhouse gases is methane,
21 times more portent than carbon dioxide.
And vast quantities of it have been locked
into the permanently frozen landscape for millennia.
So that permafrost is changing now.
And the changes that are taking place there,
and the methane that's being released,
that will impact the people in the cities.
And yet they don't always realize
just how interconnected and what those feedbacks are.
The IPCC findings conclude
that the arctic temperatures increase,
this permafrost will fall, releasing that methane
and amplifying both local and global warming.
Over 30% of the 15 million square kilometers of permafrost
are expected to thaw in the 1.5 degree
global temperature rise scenario.
At two degrees, that figure climbs to 44%.
Mountainous regions will see less snow,
causing water shortages.
And up to 271 million people
will be exposed to water scarcity.
For humans, this change in the biosphere
will impact food supplies, as wheat, maize,
and other cereal crops decline
and livestock grazing habitats
become drought-stricken or unsustainable.
Human health will also suffer,
as disease-bearing species such as mosquitoes,
ticks, worms, and bacteria adapt to new opportunities.
And the economic bottom line
of all these impacts of global warming?
Current estimates suggest that a 1.5 degree increase
in global temperature above pre-industrial levels
will cause an 8% reduction in global GDP.
A two degree increase would mean
a 13% reduction in global GDP.
Wild weather is becoming a regular feature
of our nightly news, and it's a symptom
of the global heat engine at work.
The changes in the severity and the frequency
with which we have major storms, typhoons, and hurricanes,
all of these things ar what the models tell us,
at least qualitatively, will happen
as the Earth's climate system goes
from the relatively stable conditions
that it has been occupying for the last several centuries
and begins to transform into a new state.
Even as the IPCC report
was making its findings public in early October, 2018,
hurricane Michael and its 155 mile per hour winds
were slamming into Mexico Beach, Florida,
with storm surges of up to 19 feet.
80% of all homes were demolished or seriously damaged.
And when the hurricane finally ran out of energy
in mid-October, at least 45 people
across four U.S. states had been killed.
Just two months after Hurricane Michael, terrifying images
of another consequence of global warming
were capturing the headlines.
The deadliest wildfires in American history,
strengthened in their intensity by the warmer, drier air
generated by local clime change, brought hell on earth
to a sleepy town of Paradise, California
and elsewhere across the state.
Over 400 square miles of woodland were scorched,
and at least 86 people lost their lives.
Coming to terms with climate change of any measure
will likely demand adapting to new realities.
As it seems some of Earth's creatures
have already begun to do.
Coral reefs are often compared to cities.
When you look at them from above, you can see roads, alleys,
buildings with fish streaming between them.
But if you move closer, you begin to see
individual coral polyps, and then, moving even closer,
you find the algae that live inside of corals,
known as algal symbionts.
Zoom in more, and you'll find microorganisms
and bacteria thriving within the corals.
This is called the microbiome,
and some scientists believe the key
to truly understanding corals and their survival
lies at this microbial level.
One team of scientists from Oregon State University
is reaching to create a global genetic map
of the microbiology of coral reefs
before many of them disappear.
There doesn't seem to be an evolutionary reason
for why some groups of corals are doing poorly
while others are doing really well.
And so we think that we would learn a lot
about why some corals fair better during climate change
by understanding the sum of all of its parts;
that is, the bacteria and the animal.
The planet has changed before,
and coral reefs evolved to survive those changes.
But the difference now is the pace of that change.
There isn't enough time for corals to adapt,
and so they might need a little help.
One scientist has undertaken the bold project
to jump start the evolutionary process,
with hopes of helping some corals keep up
with unprecedented change.
I am incredibly stimulated by where we are.
The context is really depressing,
but you can either lay down and die
or say this is a challenge that needs to be solved.
Corals have this incredibly complex reproductive biology,
making it a very difficult test subject
to selectively breed.
People are astonishingly creative,
and when they see a change has to happen, they change.
In corals, we've just focused on the attributes
that make them strong, and asked the question
of whether or not we can take that knowledge
and start to harness it to develop solutions
that we can use to mitigate the declines
of coral reefs globally in the face of climate change.
The thing about it is we've never really tried
to do this before in coral reef system,
to take the strongest members and breed them together.
If we do have stronger offspring, can we use those corals
to stabilize coral reefs that have been hit
by, say, a very sever bleaching event,
while we mitigate the larger, driving forces:
fossil fuel burn and climate change?
While analysis of the genetic makeup
of coral samples uses the latest technology,
collecting these samples is manual work.
The Oregon State University researchers on the project
can only do this work by traveling to each location
and getting in the water.
One of the most impactful parts of this process
has been interacting with the people
who are directly impacted by the changes
that are going on on these reefs: local fisherman,
people who are managing scuba diving companies,
people who are involved in trying to save the reefs
directly, the boots on the ground, if you will.
This isn't just about conversation of ecosystems.
This is about the conservation of livelihoods.
I see a world in 10 years where there are hundreds
if not thousands of people selectively breeding corals
in different locations across the world,
working on species that are relevant place.
Is that lofty?
Yes.
Should you have a big dream?
Abso-bloody-lutely!
(upbeat music)
Perhaps changes in human behavior
will be enough to offset the most dire consequences
of climate change, and maybe even lead
to an environmental recovery.
After all, it's happened before.
While most news on the health of our planet
is doom and gloom, a recent report on ozone recovery
highlights the positive impact that's possible
when humanity pulls together.
The ozone layer acts as Earth's protective shield,
safeguarding all living beings
from the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation.
In the mid-1980s, scientists pinpointed
the use of chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs,
usually found in aerosol and other pollutants,
as the perpetrators responsible
for a large hole in the ozone layer.
The chemicals were so harmful that they were banned
worldwide during the 1987 Montreal protocol.
Those substances have to get up into the stratosphere
before they can destroy ozone.
And they have to break down, high up in the stratosphere.
And the chlorine that gets released
from the chlorofluorocarbons,
that's what actually destroys ozone.
For the first time, evidence linking the ban
of CFCs to recovery of the ozone layer has been made public.
We were able to look at ozone changes
during a period of time in the winter.
So what we've seen is that ozone depletion has declined.
It does very a lot still, but it declines,
and it's declining in-step with the chlorine changes.
And so that's what we're excited about,
is that we see for the very first time
chlorine levels are definitely going down
and ozone levels are responding to it.
If countries continue to follow the guidelines
established by the Montreal Protocol,
a UN report predicts the complete recovery of the ozone
within the next four decades.
Knowing, with a a little push,
nature is capable of healing itself
can motivate scientists to innovate new solutions,
even when battling the longest odds.
Known as Africa's rooftop, the Ethiopian highlands
is a place of uncompromised beauty,
a remote refuge where wildlife lives
largely undisturbed by the outside world.
But lately, cattle herders on search
for available grazing land are breaking
the area's isolation, ushering in a deadly danger
for the region's rarest inhabitant, the Ethiopian wolf.
Rabies and distemper, diseases brought here
by the ranchers' domestic dogs, are decimating the wolves.
Fewer than 500 survive today.
Ethiopian wolves are on the brink of extinction.
Filmmaker Yann Sochaczewski
followed the movements of the wolves
for his project, Africa's Lost Wolves.
During the two years of the production of our film,
we witnessed a disease outbreak
which killed around half of the world population.
Another such event could easily wipe out the whole species.
Sochaczewski captured idyllic scenes
of playful pups and pack dynamics.
But sadly, his primary focus,
an individual wolf named Mageti
contracted distemper, likely the result
of her contact with dogs.
Mageti's slow demise and ultimate death
tragically played out before Sochaczewski's cameras.
Spending time with Ethiopian wolves
was a great privilege, and seeing them suffer
was heartbreaking.
But at the same time, it was very important
to tell Mageti's story, as her fate
could easily be the fate of her whole species.
But now there's a reason for new hope,
thanks to the scientists Sochaczewski worked with
to track his canine subjects.
In addition to administering rabies shots for local dogs,
the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Program
successfully launched an oral vaccination campaign
in 2018 for the wolves, delivering doses of the vaccine
in chunks of goat meat left in the area.
If the oral vaccine is working,
we will save more Ethiopian wolves in their habitat.
Motion-triggered photos and video
prove the wolves are eating the baited samples.
And follow-up tests show that almost 90%
of the wolves eating the bait developed immunity.
The implications of success are immense
and could lead to expanded efforts to use oral vaccinations
to protect other isolated and endangered animals as well.
But the story of a species plays out
in the lives of individuals like Mageti.
And on the other side of the African continent,
deep in the rainforest, biologists are struggling
to crack the mystery surrounding one lonely lion.
Dr. Philipp Henschel's lifelong obsession
has led him deep into the rainforests of Gabon,
to what just might be the big cat story of the decade.
Three years ago, a camera trap in the realm
of chimps, gorillas, and forest elephants
revealed an animal no one had seen here before.
One image challenged everything
Philipp thought he knew about lions.
Well, the nearest known lion population from here is ...
Yeah, either 2,000 kilometers away
in that direction, to the north,
which would be sort of northern Cameroon,
or abuot 2,00 kilometers in that direction,
off to the south, which would be southeast Angola.
These are the two nearest lion populations
that we know about.
This is proper rain forest.
There's chimps in there, forest elephant,
great river hogs, and one lion.
It's an interesting mix.
A few days later, I was here with 20 camera traps.
So the first area the lion was recorded
was up in this forest gallery.
And since then we cast a somewhat wider net
of camera traps covering now about 500 square kilometers.
So this one didn't get him.
This one actually got him,
so it's sort of on the way between, you know,
sort of completing that triangle.
So the detective game basically is still ongoing.
We know that he uses other parts of the park,
but we don't know where.
To find out more about this lion,
Philipp needed a piece of him,
so to encourage some very targeted rubbing,
he sprayed some bottled lioness urine on a tree in his turf.
I don't know, do you smell this?
It's really strong, sort of pungent odor.
Because sometimes where they walk along regularly,
there are also cheek mark trees,
so they have scent glands here.
And so, often for males in particular,
their long mane hair then gets trapped
in little crevasses in the bark,
and so we did actually find lion hair here
on a tree on that very trail.
We found some genetic material now from mane hair,
and we were able to then run the genetics
and found that he's closely related
to the ancestral lion population that we had in Bateke.
Philipp's research has revealed
that the lone male of Gabon appear to be
to sole survivor of a now extinct population of lions.
His DNA could carry unique adaptations
to the rainforest environment
that we're not currently aware of.
But his closest living relatives
are in the Kalahari desert, half a continent away.
Well the sad thing about this lion is, I mean,
we hear him call at night sometimes,
and he calls a lot, like any lion who wants to make contact
with pride mates, with just any sort of like mate.
But he's calling in vain.
I mean, there's just nobody else around.
So if we wanted to assist him in his romantic endeavors,
it just means we have to bring in females.
An audacious plan to fly two lionesses
2,000 miles from Botswana to the Bateke Plateau of Gabon
might just be the beginning of a new Eden
for Africa's lions, where a new pride of big cats
might grow, safely sheltered by the forest
and largely out of view.
Another discovery dug from the dirt
is putting the finishing touches
on the evolutionary map of human history.
Four little foot bones found by accident in 1994
have led South African scientists to discover
the most complete paleo-anthropological find of its kind.
Since revealed, fossil by fossil, over 20 years,
the new discover replaces much guesswork
with real ancestors about our early ancestors.
She was an older woman, not much over four feet.
And perhaps in her foraging
she'd been disturbed by something,
some predator, a saber tooth or a lion,
and had hastily tried to get away.
She fell into a cave, now known as the Sterkfontein,
and four little foot bones of hers were discovered here,
quite by accident, 3.7 million years later.
Usually, scientists only discover
small fragments of a skeleton in the deep bedrock of time.
These give them clues but not many answers
about our ancestors.
That has all changed with Little Foot.
From these first little foot fragments,
the team of Ron Clarke, Stephen Motsumi and Nkwane Molefe
set out to find and piece together the rest.
It was to be a labor of love over decades.
Their biggest challenge was to remove
soft fossil bone from breccia, a type of natural concrete,
while keeping every single fossil fragment undamaged.
By the time they'd finished,
this is what they could show the world.
These are the actual fossils, all assembled
from one individual who fell into a cave
3.7 million years ago and left us
a legacy of knowledge beyond measure.
The fossils which Little Foot has offered up
quite literally fill the missing gaps
in our understanding of our early ancestors.
This is the only complete skeleton
of an Australopithecus from anywhere in the world.
It is the only complete skull,
and it has a full adult dentition.
So this alone is a remarkable find.
We have, for the first time ever,
a complete arm and a complete leg in one individual.
The find has changed the study
of early man forever.
Little Foot, or Australopithecus Prometheus, stood upright,
and has not only revealed secrets about her own species,
but has shown that other species
lived alongside her at the same time.
In learning how the planet and its inhabitants
have changed over time, we wonder about
the endless possibilities throughout the universe.
But sadly, we had to say goodbye
to the prolific planet hunter that opened
an unprecedented window into the cosmos.
Kepler, our eyes in the sky, officially ended its mission
on October 30th of this year,
six years later than initially planned.
Kepler observed over a half a million stars
during its search for a second Earth,
confirming 2,662 alien worlds in our galaxy alone.
We found so many fantastic and exciting planet systems
out there, none of which look
quite like what we have at home.
And for me, the most exciting part of all of this
is not just the sheer number of planets,
but the fact that we've found so many varied planets.
We've found massive, puffy, hot Jupiters
that have orbits shorter than Mercury.
And we've found mini Neptunes
where we don't know if they are solid and rocky
or are they puffy and gassy.
We've found brand-new forming planets and old planets too.
Many of these worlds orbit
their star's habitable zone, the area of their solar system
where liquid water could remain on the surface,
providing a potential home for extraterrestrial life.
It has really catalyzed a third pathway
for the search for life in the universe.
Before Kepler, we had SETI searches
to listen for techno-signatures in the galaxy.
We had solar system exploration that was searching for life.
But the third pathway was opened up,
I think, by this sudden realization
that the nearest potentially habitable planet
could just be a stone's throw away,
that there are ten of billions
of these planets in our galaxy alone.
The Trappist-1 system,
some 39 million light years from Earth,
became the first confirmed planetary neighborhood
where multiple planets orbit in the habitable zone.
Kepler has helped further our understanding
of what could now become a major candidate
in the elusive hunt for life in space.
A study released this year, using data from Kepler
and the Spitzer Space Telescope,
show that all seven planets in the Trappist-1 system
are rocky worlds with a core and an atmosphere,
and some could even hold up to 5%
of their total mass in water,
about 250 times more than the oceans here on Earth.
While the study doesn't comment
on the habitability of the planets,
the Trappist-1 system is just one example
of the promising new frontiers being explored
as humanity continues its search for a second Earth
and extraterrestrial life.
This is the golden age of exoplanets.
Kepler has given us this tremendous data set, this gift,
that we can continue studying for decades.
And all in the meantime, there are new missions,
new telescopes and new technologies that are coming along
which are gonna help us learn even more in different ways
and go beyond what even Kepler could do.
Learning about our universe
isn't just about seeing new things;
it's also about listening.
Deep in the Alleghany Mountains of West Virginia,
a team of astronomers has detected
a series of devastating, high-energy bursts
erupting from an unknown source far off in space.
We've been absolutely confident
that these are extra-galactic sources.
All because of this: the Green Bank Telescope,
one of the largest movable objects on dry earth.
The structure here stands almost
485 feet above ground level.
It's actually taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza.
We can see more of the celestial sphere here in Green Bank
than can be seen from any single telescope
anywhere else in the world.
We can see 85% of the celestial sphere
from this point right here.
Astronomers are now searching
these same skies for clues to help solve a new mystery:
the source of a string of unidentified signals
they call fast radio bursts.
They will do so by scanning the cosmos for radio waves.
(dramatic music)
When fast radio bursts erupt,
they can unleash as much energy as our sun does
in an entire year, in a a fraction of a second.
But by the time that energy reaches Earth,
it's a mere whisper.
And while astronomers have now detected
dozens of different fast radio bursts,
one of them is different from the rest,
and they're determined to find out why.
They call it FRB 121102.
We don't know when it's going to actually emit a burst.
And the bursts only last for a fraction of a second,
only a few milliseconds.
So we have spent many tens, probably hundreds of hours
on the GBT over the course of the last few years,
observing this object, and hundreds of hours
on other telescopes.
And we've only detected a few hundred bursts.
And if you were to add all of those bursts up,
they would only add up to a few seconds worth of time
when the source is actually active.
We knew it was special almost right away,
because no other FRB event has been seen to repeat.
As the signal kept reaching Earth,
they could now track the location
to the constellation of Auriga.
Once we were able to localize 121102,
we realized that this galaxy has never been seen before.
They now knew where FRB 121102 was coming from,
but they still didn't know what was generating the signal.
But each subsequent flash of energy
helped them narrow down their list of suspects.
When fast radio bursts were first discovered,
they were all one-off events.
And so a lot of the early theories
focused on catastrophic events that would destroy
whatever was actually causing the fast radio bursts.
That could be things like an exploding star or supernova.
It was a huge explosion,
maybe two neutron stars colliding,
so when we started to see it repeat,
that changes our whole paradigm of what it could be.
And it is still the only known
fast radio burst that repeats,
and that makes it an especially bigg mystery.
And you might think to yourself that,
with all of those bursts, we would be able
to find some sort of a pattern
or a regularity in when they're going off.
But we've worked really hard,
and we haven't been able to find anything like that yet.
Because astronomers haven't been able
to uncover a pattern to 1221102's seemingly random
burst cycle, they've turned their attention
to one of the most exotic and violent phenomena
in the universe: magnetars.
Magnetars have the strongest
magnetic fields in the universe.
If you were to take a magnetar
and place it at the distance of the moon,
which would not be a good idea,
'cause it would destroy the Earth,
but in the process it would also erase
all of the computer hard drives
and credit cards on the Earth
because of the strength of the magnetic field.
When a crack forms on a magnetar's
rigid surface, it can set off a star quake,
ejecting so much energy that it can be felt
billions of light years across the universe.
We saw that they were really twisted up,
kind of like a corkscrew.
And the degree of twist is higher
than in any other source of radio waves
that we've ever detected.
So we think that this could be a sign that FRB 121102
is itself living somewhere near a black hole.
Decoding FRB 121102 has revealed to us
a part of the universe we never knew before.
And it could also help us understand
the threats that magnetars in our own galaxy
could pose to our planet.
The marvels of space appear limitless,
even now, as human ingenuity tests
the outer reaches of the solar system.
Three and a half years after revolutionizing
our understanding of Pluto, the New Horizon spacecraft
continues its journey into deep space.
It's traveled one billion miles
since cruising past the dwarf planet,
and the craft will once again provide
a historic first look at an unknown alien object.
The piano-sized ship, traveling at speeds
of almost 10 miles per second, will be a pioneer
of Kuiper Belt exploration.
It's target: the asteroid Ultima Thule.
If you think about it by analogy, New Horizons is going
to the farthest part of our solar system,
and it is very cold and dark and barren out there.
So, unlike an asteroid, which is actually
just a piece of rock that has melted and changed over
with some alteration by some internal water,
Ultima Thule never melted, never differentiated,
never made a core, like even our planet Earth has a core.
All that stuff is just as it came from the galaxy, we think,
and is just a random, loose snowball of created material.
So we'll see if that's really true.
And on January 1st, 2019,
New Horizons will ring in the new year
by traveling back in time and studying
the earliest days of our solar system.
The Kuiper belt is the edge of our very solar system.
It's the part of the original disc
that the sun and the planets formed out of
that's at the very edge before you get to skid
into the galaxy and the region between the stars.
And at that very edge of the disc,
there wasn't enough stuff to make giant planets
and make big stars like our sun.
There was just enough stuff to make
small dwarf planets and snowballs.
New Horizons will fly past
the 20-mile-wide asteroid in a split second.
But the images and data beamed back to Earth
will provide scientists with a lifetime of information.
Ultima Thule we know very little about right now.
But we think it's the most primitive object
ever visited by a spacecraft,
because it's been out there four billion miles form the sun,
kept in the coldest portion of the solar system
for 4.6 billion years.
That's preserved what the material was
at the time of the formation of the solar system.
It preserves a record of the physics
and chemistry of what was going on.
But we don't need to go
to the frontiers of our solar system
to undertake groundbreaking space exploration.
Two recent audacious missions,
NASA's Osiris-Rex and JAXA's Hayabusa 2,
are about to descend on two asteroids
in our inner solar system to mine for souvenirs
to bring back to Earth.
After a two-year journey, Hayabusa 2
arrived at its target, Ryugu, a half-mile-wide asteroid
that could one day unravel the clues
of our early solar system.
Equipped with three rovers and a lander,
the vehicle became the first ever
to successfully land on an asteroid.
Ryugu's low gravity makes driving on the surface impossible.
So instead, they must hop from location to location,
floating for up to 15 minutes per bounce.
The rover's images will help Hiyabusa 2
scout the best mining sites for its scientific souvenirs.
Next year, the craft will take two surface samples,
followed by a subsurface sample
after a blast reveals Ryugu's inner structure.
It will then fire up its ion propulsion thrusters
and begin its journey back to Earth.
At close proximity, Hiyabusa 2
will jettison the samples through the atmosphere,
towards the Australian outback, arriving safely by 2023.
Likewise, NASA's Osiris-Rex has reached its target, Bennu,
after its own two-year journey.
We're interested in the origin of water on the Earth,
organic molecules that may have led to the origin of life.
So we want to go to a carbonaceous asteroid
that's recorded over four and a half billion years
of solar system history.
Currently in orbit around the asteroid,
the science survey will begin next year.
Throughout 2019, we'll be doing
global characterization of the asteroid,
basically making maps of the entire surface.
We're gonna be looking, most importantly,
for areas where we can collect a sample.
If all goes according to plan,
the collection capsule will zoom towards Utah
and into the hands of eager scientists in late 2023.
Scientific investigations like this, in all fields of study,
build on knowledge gathered in years past.
If this last year is any indication,
what lies ahead this next year is bound to astound.
(intense music)