Two, one.
Say goodbye to 2020.
365 days marked by stark warnings about the planet's future.
And technological triumphs
eliminating new potential paths forward.
During this journey around the sun,
science continued to reveal stories of our past
and also provide promise
that we can overcome the obstacles in way
some far ahead and others more immediate.
(siren wailing)
Like the novel coronavirus, which made 2020,
a year like no other in recent memory.
The virus now known as SARS-CoV-2.
And the disease that causes COVID-19
first appeared in China in late 2019
but its impact quickly weighed heavily on the entire world.
Shortly after the turn of the year,
the Chinese government limited travel
during the traditional new year holiday
hoping to stem the tide of the disease.
Locking down 60 million people in Hubei province
including 11 million in the city of Wuhan,
the first epicenter of the public health crisis.
The bustling mega city quickly turned into a ghost town.
The virus most likely originated in bats
and migrated into the human population
in what is known as a spillover event.
Yet, despite our technological prowess and medical knowhow,
the newness of this coronavirus
presented health professionals and scientists
with a steep learning curve.
How do you treat something
for which we don't have pharmaceutical interventions?
On March 11th,
the World Health Organization officially declared a pandemic
after repeatedly stressing the serious nature
of the situation.
This is not a drill.
This is not the time to give up.
This is not a time for excuses.
This is a time for pulling out all the stops.
As the virus spread, governments around the world
will enact their own restrictions, school closings,
business suspensions, and local curfews.
And with economic activity in dramatic decline
livelihoods were lost as well.
The staggering statistics continued to climb.
By December 1st, 2020,
confirmed cases exceeded 63 million globally
causing more than 1.4 million deaths,
nearly a fifth of which, over 268,000
occurred in the United States.
Those most at risk, older people
or patients with underlying ailments.
But no one really is safe from the infection.
Some corona viruses like those that cause the common cold
attack the upper airways of the respiratory system
wildly replicating as viruses do.
But just like the MERS and SARS epidemics
earlier this century,
a more penetrating point of attack
makes the COVID-19 virus much more dangerous.
It's in a more vulnerable part of a body
in the lower airways, deep in the lungs in the alveoli.
They go in, take over the cell machinery,
start making new virus.
They prompt the immune response.
So when that immune response kicks in,
now we're down into the lungs themselves.
Early symptoms include,
headache, body aches, fever, and cough.
Those are the big four.
And most people that get sick have several of those.
It's, once they start feeling like they're short of breath
and if they go into the emergency room
at the doctor's office,
and their oxygen level is low,
then that's where we need to keep a close eye on.
And what we found is that a small number of the folks
just all of a sudden, they can get sick very quickly.
The virus primarily spreads person to person
through the air in respiratory droplets
like those contained in a cough or sneeze.
Studies also suggest singing and even talking
can also disperse large amounts of virus laden droplets
into the air.
Many researchers also believe the virus
can become aerosolized
and more easily float through the air
and ventilation systems.
Close contact with infected individuals
continues to be the main driver of transmission.
The COVID-19 virus moves quickly and quietly
and it's believed, infected individuals are most contagious
one or two days before symptoms appear.
We do know that those individuals
who might not be actually experiencing
any symptoms of illness
have the capacity to spread it.
Which means that public health responses
need to figure out ways to even monitor the health
and potential transmission rates amongst people
who appear by all understandings to be healthy.
And so, official soon advised social distancing guidelines
of at least six feet.
Restrictions on large indoor activities
and public gatherings, frequent and vigorous hand washing,
and most importantly, the use of facial masks
not only to protect the wearer
but more importantly, those around them.
When it comes to COVID-19,
it's not just your health you need to worry about,
it's the health of those around you and who you might affect
even if you're not necessarily feeling so bad yourself.
Because once the virus establishes itself in a population
passing person to person, it's much harder to contain.
So early on, back in March,
American health officials recognize the crisis would grow.
I can say we will see more cases
and things will get worse than they are right now.
And they did.
Despite mitigation efforts
to lower the epidemiological curve,
although some countries fared better than others,
differences attributed largely to testing
and contact tracing of those infected with the virus.
In the United States, New York was hardest hit at first.
Hospital emergency rooms, intensive care units, and morgues
filled beyond capacity.
The bodies of the deceased
sometimes kept in cold storage trucks.
A big part of what I think is killing people
is the sort of what we call multiorgan failure
as a result of the lungs going first
and then other organ start to fail.
But what exactly causes this damage?
The answer, ARDS or acute respiratory distress syndrome.
Inflammation in COVID-19 cases
brought about by our own immune systems, stuck in overdrive.
So it's our own immune system creating some of the damage
in particular target organs in response to that virus.
And so it's like turning on the heat, but if it's too much
then you start hurting the tissues around it.
It starts to create a barrier
between where the alveoli are, where oxygen is coming in
and the capillaries right next to it
pick it up that oxygen to take it to the body.
And there's a little thin membrane and interstitium there
which has very little space in it,
but certain kinds of interstitial pneumonias
can start to put fluid and inflammation in that
and thicken it
so that the oxygen exchange is then compromised.
However, so much remains unknown
about SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19.
Despite the extraordinary efforts
to develop potential treatments,
drug therapies, and vaccines.
And even while more than 40 million have recovered,
doctors worry about potential long-term effects
of the illness
and so the pandemic continues to grow.
As new waves hit Europe and North America, especially hard
leaving behind a path of death and disruption in its wake
and diverting much of the world's scientific resources
in the search for a solution.
A critical mission indeed,
but just one of many medical research endeavors
hoping to break new ground
including one trial focused on restoring eyesight
and apt the ambition for the year 2020.
Thanks to CRISPR, a tool that allows easy
and precise editing of our DNA.
The genetic blueprint held inside every one of ourselves.
It's been called game changing,
a breakthrough co-invented by Jennifer Doudna
at the University of California, Berkeley.
I think the CRISPR technology
is just, it's very exciting
because it's going to enable a lot of science to be done
that was impossible to do in the past.
Originally discovered in bacteria,
CRISPR or short bits of DNA
that make up part of its natural defense system.
And along with the DNA cutting protein, Cas9
enable the genetic equivalent
of cut and paste in Word Processing.
Editing out a genetic mutation
that can cause cancer for example,
replacing it with healthy DNA.
It affords incredible opportunities
not just to do basic research,
but great potential for new cures
in new ways that were not possible before.
Scientists around the world
are also looking at ways of using CRISPR
to eliminate malaria and Zika,
to produce drought resistant crops
and to exterminate invasive species
like the Asian carp in North America's lakes and rivers.
The technology is so versatile
it's estimated that most genetic engineering labs
in the world, are now using CRISPR
including the Cambridge Massachusetts based, Editas Medicine
the lead company in the brilliance clinical trial.
Their goal to develop a medicine now known as EDIT-101
to treat leber congenital amaurosis 10
an early onset form of inherited blindness.
In early 2020, the first patient in the trial
was administered EDIT-101 via subretinal injection.
A procedure designed to deliver the gene editing machine
directly to the photoreceptor cells.
This marked the first time
when CRISPR medicine was used to in fever
or inside the human body instead of on extract themselves.
After a three month followup evaluation,
Editas reported the patient and their vision remained stable
and noted no safety issues.
If the BRILLIANCE trial completes all its trial phases
and proved successful,
it could transform not only patients lives
but perhaps also the way medicine is practiced.
From our most basic biological building blocks
to outer space far beyond the Earth's atmosphere,
science breaks down boundaries and grows knowledge,
achievements build on one another
and provide stepping stones to the future.
Redistribution and lift up.
Since the space shuttle was retired,
nearly a decade ago, several aerospace companies
sought to be NASA choice to carry humans and cargo to space.
And on May 30th, 2020, Elon Musk's SpaceX made history
with its revolutionary Crew Dragon spaceship
and Falcon 9 rocket.
For the first time, NASA astronauts launched from America
in a commercial spacecraft
to the International Space Station.
I'm really quite overcome with emotion this day.
It's been 18 years working towards this goal.
So, it's just hard way that's happened.
Without the space shuttle,
the United States depended on Russia
to keep an American presence on the ISS.
For the last nine years,
we have been purchasing rides on Russian Soyuz rockets
and those costs have gone up significantly.
Costs of nearly $4 billion.
But SpaceX has been hauling cargo
on Dragon to ISS since 2012.
Floating Dragon to and from the space station successfully
20 times for cargo missions.
They successfully completed the first test run
of the all new Crew Dragon to the ISS in 2019.
Last year, we had our demonstration one mission.
which was the Crew Dragon
without any crew on board, went to the space station
they opened up the hatch and then came back home.
Demo-1 mark, the first time in history
a spacecraft docked automatically
without help from the mothership.
Who was in the driver's seat? A test dummy.
This new mission known as NASA SpaceX Demo-2
is the final major test
to certify SpaceX's revolutionary crew transportation system
for long duration missions to ISS.
Most importantly,
that Dragon can safely transport passengers.
Crew Dragon is a free flying spacecraft.
It gets its lift into space
a top of rocket like the Apollo missions.
The 23 story tall SpaceX original, Falcon 9 rocket
delivers nearly 2 million pounds of thrust.
And while this mission marks a new era
in human space flight, the two astronauts are veterans.
Both Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley
flew on NASA space's shuttle.
Hurley was on the very last shuttle flight in 2011.
Now, they've made history once more.
Both Dragon and the Falcon 9 rocket it travels on
are designed to be reused.
SpaceX believes a reusable space flight system
is the pivotal breakthrough needed
to reduce the cost of space access.
Falcon stage operation confirmed.
After launch, the rocket's first stage
made an extraordinary return to earth dive
and a pinpoint landing on this ocean platform.
Falcon 9 has landed.
The rocket second stage, delivered Crew Dragon to orbit
after a 12 minute ride.
Today we accomplished the first flight
off the Florida coast, and quite some time.
And Doug and I were really proud
to have an opportunity to be a part of that.
The crew spent a day in earth's orbit,
flying Crew Dragon manually to test their control capability
before their historic docking with the ISS.
We have docking at 7:16 am Pacific Time.
Bob and Doug, welcome to the International Space Station.
You've completed a historic ride to the ISS.
Behnken and Hurley spent two months aboard ISS
assisting the international crew with science experiments
performing maintenance on the station
and monitoring the health of their Dragon spacecraft.
But eventually it was time to go.
Please confirm your visors are down
and that you are ready for undock and departure.
Soon, they braced for a dramatic re-entry to Earth.
Probably the riskiest part of the mission
traveling at nearly 17,500 miles per hour.
During the re-entry phase,
the spacecraft is engulfed in a plasma bubble of hot gases
with temperatures that can reach 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit.
(participants applauding)
(indistinct)
(participants applauding)
Two sets of drone parachutes deployed
to slow Crew Dragon down for the splashdown.
The SpaceX and NASA teams, welcome back to planet Earth
and thanks for flying SpaceX.
Mission accomplished.
This is something that the whole world
can take some pleasure in
and can really look at this as an achievement of humanity.
These are, these difficult times
when there's not that much good news.
And I think this is one of those things
that it's universally good
no matter where you are on planet Earth,
this is a good thing.
And I hope it brightens your day.
With testing in the rear view mirror,
SpaceX successfully completed
its first operational manned mission in mid-November
delivering foUr astronauts to the ISS.
Of course, orbital space flight is just the beginning.
Both NASA and SpaceX have their sights set next
on a return to the moon.
And then our next door neighbor, the Red Planet, Mars
where one day humans will hopefully follow
in the tracks of a series of advanced scouts,
a long line of robotic probes, including Perseverance
which began its journey on July 30, 2020.
Go Earthless, go Mars 2020
Perseverance is the fifth rover
to join NASA's family of rovers on Mars.
And its mission is not possible
without the work of its earlier predecessors.
Like spirit and opportunity which discovered minerals
suggesting Mars was once a very different place
than it is today,
as planetary geologist, Bethany Ehlman explains.
If we look back in the past,
Mars was once warmer, wetter, and even had lakes and rivers
like we would recognize on the surface of earth today.
The revelation about Mars and water
gives new credibility to age old questions.
Is there life on Mars or has there ever been life on Mars?
And Perseverance may just help answer that question.
But first, where to land.
Mission planners want the best place to find signs of life.
This means water must've been there a long ago.
We have picked the landing site to be right here
a place called Jezero crater,
which once, when Mars was warmer and wetter, hosted a lake
an environment very different
from what we're gonna see when we land today.
On Earth, lakes are filled with living creatures.
Evidence of that life is preserved in the mud and sand
deposited on the bottom of the lake.
Could the same be true for Mars?
The rover's instruments will closely examine
the ancient rocks of the bank on lake.
But first, after its seven month passage to the Red Planet,
Perseverance will need to successfully navigate
it's descend through the thin Martian atmosphere
using parachutes and a device called a sky crane.
When contact is sensed with the ground,
the tether is cut, that descent stage flies away
and the rover falls which should be no more than a meter
to hit the surface but gently.
Perseverance is now ready for its mission.
As the expression goes, to seek out life
and boldly go where no one has gone before.
The rover will identify chemical elements
on the Martian soil,
as well as organics and minerals
that may be signs of past microbial life.
The latest in camera technology
can resolve features as small as a grain of salt.
If something ever lived here,
Perseverance can find evidence of it.
The drill bores holes and extracts core samples
of a half inch wide and 2.4 inches long.
(spacecraft squishes)
This is a system that allows us to take core samples
of rocky material on the surface of Mars
carefully seal them in very sterile, clean vessels
for eventual return to Earth.
That's right. Return to Earth.
Up to 47 hermetically sealed tubes
will be stored and eventually left for pickup
by an as of yet unplanned future mission.
Perseverance also features many other advanced
and innovative technologies,
including the stereoscopic eyes of Mastcam-Z.
We're to come up and do ask him.
And the Mars Oxygen
In Situ Resource Utilization Experiment.
Also known as MOXIE.
MOXIE will synthesize oxygen out of the Martian atmosphere
to create a gas that would be breathable by future humans
on the surface.
And MOXIE is a demonstration of this technology.
And that's not all.
Within 30 days of landing,
the rover will deploy an experimental new craft,
a helicopter.
The helicopter has a camera, has two rotors
and we're hoping to prove out this new technology
that we can fly other spacecraft on Mars.
That we can do drone-based exploration aerially on Mars
collecting pictures from above.
It's name is Ingenuity.
And if it works, Mars would be the second world
to see a first flight.
Specially engineered for the Martian environment,
Ingenuity has rotors about four feet long
which spin between two and 3000 times a minute.
Most of our flights
will be at the three to five meter height.
We will be going horizontally again
at a few meters per second.
So our priority will be to get back engineering delementary
and not so much images, but I'm sure we'll return a few
because the rotors look cool.
If all goes according to plan,
Perseverance will greatly expand our knowledge of Mars
but maybe, just maybe
the search for extraterrestrial life
has largely overlooked another nearby site.
What about Earth's neighbor on the other side?
The second planet in our solar system, Venus?
The surface of the planet
may be a dusty hellish, volcanic cauldron
with temperatures reaching 880 degrees Fahrenheit
inhospitable to life.
Most scientists imagine feasible,
which is why Jane Greaves from Cardiff University
set up sites high above the rocky terrain
in the thick cloudy atmosphere.
It's been suggested that there are possible habitats
in the cloud decks of Venus.
So somewhere where little low forms could live
and in those high clouds, although it is very acidic
it's also reasonably warm,
maybe about 20 degrees centigrade
and they also has pressure
that's about like the one bar pressure
at the surface of the earth.
So that's why we think that isn't possible habitat.
Greaves and an international team of collaborators
use large and powerful radio telescopes
to zero in on their target.
First, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii
and then the Atacama Large Millimeter Array.
What's amazing about these instruments
in the submillimeter,
they worked kind of like the radio in your car.
And we tune them to a very very precise frequency.
When we're tuned to that frequency,
we know exactly what molecule that must be emitted from.
Just like when you change your favorite radio station
we know you've got the radio station that you like.
The data contained a surprising shock
one they can't fully account for.
The molecule, phosphene.
When you're looking at a wavelength
for about one millimeter,
Venus essentially acts like a giant light bulb in the sky.
But if you look at a very specific wavelength,
a little bit of that light is missing
because the phosphene molecules have absorbed it.
A potential biomarker,
phosphene is produced by bacteria microbes on earth
in oxygen free environments.
It's also a toxic gas
industrially manufactured for agricultural fumigation
and an otherwise rare natural compound,
says Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Prof. Sarah Seager,
one of six MIT co-authors of the team study.
Phosphene is an extremely difficult molecule to make.
It is only spontaneously made an extreme environment
such as what do you find in the hellish depths
of Jupiter and Saturn.
Seager and her MIT colleagues,
including researcher, Janice Petkoskey
examined the evidence of phosphene
in the Venusian atmosphere
looking for an explanation.
And we concluded that there is no known chemical
and physical process
that could conceivably produce phosphene
so this adds to the mystery of Venus
and then this opens a very, rather bold possibility
that there might be something living in the clouds of Venus.
It's believed that once long ago,
Venus was more Earth-like with vast oceans
but conditions on the planet changed
perhaps as recently as 700 million years ago,
the oceans disappeared
and that thick carbon dioxide atmosphere
engulfed the planet.
But good life somehow have evolved
and migrated to the upper decks of the clouds,
an environment overloaded with severe gases.
The idea has been around for a while actually.
The late Carl Sagan wrote of the possibilities in 1967
and MIT's, Seager recently theorized potential life cycles
for Venusian cloud dwelling microbial life.
Could phosphene be a bio-signature
confirming extraterrestrial life?
We don't have that answer yet.
If we haven't been like outside the earth,
it puts our own existence into perspective.
But it also tells us that life may be much more common
than we first imagined.
And there's a huge array of possibilities out there
in the galaxy
of life with different biochemistries and desires.
And of course, if we have fun life,
right next door and planetary neighbor,
that would be so cool.
No doubt.
This phosphene discovery has renewed interest in Venus.
Greaves and her team
plan to continue their observations and research
but she realizes it may take a new visit
to find an answer
something NASA and others already on their drawing boards.
So is it really life on Venus?
I really hope so,
but we can't absolutely tell
what the results we've got so far.
So it may be that the only thing to do
is to send a spacecraft that can really sample
and see if there're are life forms there.
People have gazed upon the planets and stars for millennia
eyes only at first.
And then Galileo pointed his telescope, Skyward in 1609
observing the phases of Venus a year later
driving astronomy's technological march forward.
Progress which continues today,
eliminating new images and ideas about our universe.
A quest for knowledge,
that's all NASA's OSIRIS-REx Space probe settle into orbit
around a 4.5 billion year old asteroid Bennu
70 million miles away from earth in December of 2018.
The goal of the mission, to study and explore the rocky body
about the size of the empire state building
hit its high point on October 20th, 2020.
When the spacecraft's robotic arm tagged the surface
of Bennu during a stunning six second
touch and go and maneuver,
stirring up and collecting debris
to be stored and returned to Earth for further analysis.
(participants applauding)
In December, 2020,
the Japanese space agency's, Hayabusa2 mission
returned samples collected about a year earlier
from another asteroid, 162173 Rigo.
Scientists hope learning
about the makeup of these ancient asteroids
will offer clues about the origins of the solar system
and maybe even life itself.
NASA's Bennu sample is scheduled for Earth arrival in 2023.
While these missions ventured millions of miles
to seek their quarry,
asteroids often come much closer to Earth.
NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office
scans the sky closer to home to locate, identify,
and track near earth objects like asteroids
and provide a warning
in advance of any potentially catastrophic collisions.
Still some miss detection until after they pass
like the asteroid 2020 VT4
about the size of a small house,
it passed by a mere 238 miles above the earth surface
on Friday, November 13th, 2020
becoming the closest recorded fly by without impact.
While there may be few day options to protect the planet
from any future catastrophic collision,
many have long argued,
the most pressing dangers to Earth and its environment,
including human induced climate change
are already taking their toll.
Shifting precipitation patterns
and increased heat continue to leave forests
of the American west dangerously dry.
Tinder boxes which are getting ignited into wildfires
during the summer of 2020,
leveling communities and killing more than 40 people.
They're saying it's coming all the way from Oregon
which is hundreds of miles away.
And it looks like the apocalypse right now.
11:15 in the morning
and it's like the middle of the night almost.
Parts of California looked like a Mars escape
due to the smooth orange glow from the flames.
And in Australia, the black summer bushfires
blazed as the new year began
eventually burning an estimated 18.6 million hectares
or about 72,000 square miles.
The extent of the damage
can be seen in these stunning satellite photos.
The fires killed at least 34 people directly
but the hundreds more deaths
have been linked to smoke inhalation and poor air quality.
The residents are doing all they can to stop this.
There are helicopters coming in
and planes dropping water every few minutes
but things are looking pretty crazy here
and in so many other places we've been today.
Perhaps even more stunning,
a study commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund
estimates nearly 3 billion animals were killed
or displaced by the fires,
which burned in places until March, 2020.
The figure breaks down
to include nearly two and a half billion reptiles,
180 million birds, 143 million mammals and 51 million frogs.
Once you lose that number of animals,
yeah, all of the ecological functions that they perform
are likely to disappear as well.
And these are important functions too.
They include species that move pollen
from flower to flower to allow seed set.
They include species that move fungal spores around
and fungi are really important from the point of view
of allowing green plants to grow vigorously
and to reestablish those (murmurs).
Many of Australia's most iconic animals
succumbed to the flames, including kangaroos, wombats
and thousands of already vulnerable cooperates.
Of course, climate change manifests itself
in other ominous ways as well.
NASA's ice, Cloud and land satellite 2, AKA ICESat-2
uses lasers to record elevation measurements
around the world,
comparing its most recent data
with figures from its predecessor ICESat-1.
Scientists documented 16 years of massive ice sheet loss.
200 gigatons a year in Greenland
plus 118 gigatons in Antarctica.
A gigaton of ice equals about 400,000
Olympic size swimming pools.
All totaled, this ice loss resulted in about 14 millimeters
of sea level rise over 16 years.
What we expect by the end of the century is,
on the order of two, three,
maybe four feet of sea level rise.
But what exactly lies beneath Antarctica's ice?
New analysis of core samples
pulled from deep beneath the sea floor,
near West Antarctica on earth, part of the answer,
the remnants of prehistoric rainforest
about 600 miles from the South Pole,
the x-ray CT scans of the samples
revealed plant pollen and spores
as well as a network of fossilized roots
from 90 million years ago.
A much warmer time period for the planet.
When the average mean temperature of Antarctica
was similar to Northern Italy today, researchers say.
Comfortable by most standards,
of course, there's warm
and then there's just plain hot.
On August 16th, 2020,
the temperature spiked to 130 degrees Fahrenheit
at Furnace Creek,
a remote location in California's Death Valley.
If verified by the World Meteorological Organization,
it would go down as the third hottest temperature
in recorded history and the hottest since 1931.
Unfortunately, Earth's Southern Hemisphere
wasn't immune to extreme heat either.
And it took a devastating toll
on one of the seven natural wonders of the world.
Australia's coral network
known as the Great Barrier of Reef.
In the summer of 2020 in Australia
was literally the summer from hell.
Terry Hughes is a professor of marine biology
at James Cook University
and the director of the ARC Center of Excellence
for Coral Reef Studies.
So we knew it was record breaking temperatures
in February, we were getting more and more reports
from divers, from scientists, from the tourism industry
that the corals were starting to turn pale
and increasingly more and more of them were white.
Changes in environmental conditions
like excessive heat can stress corals
causing them to expel the algae that lives in their tissues
leaving the corals ghostly white or bleached.
And the whiteness is actually fixed skeleton,
the carbonate skeleton underlying the coral tissue
that you can then see when the algae die back.
2020 witness the Great Barrier Reef's
fifth major bleaching in 22 years.
And they're happening with increasing frequency,
three in the last five years.
Due to Australia's corona virus shutdown,
this time, Hughes and his team
had to quickly coordinate their aerial surveys.
11 flights in nine days.
Over more than 1000 individual reefs
about a third of the entire Great Barrier Reef.
What they witnessed was unnerving.
The heat was relatively uniform.
So this time around, the most extensive bleaching we saw
was with relatively naive corals in the south
which hadn't been exposed to severe heat stress
in the two earlier events.
We're very worried about the gap
between one bleaching event and the next
because it's shrinking.
The gap is really important
because that is the window of opportunity
for the bleached corals to recover
for them to rebuild their homes.
Sometimes corals can survive and recover their color
in a few weeks or a months
but when severe and widespread,
bleaching often leads to dead coral and altered seascapes.
I think the Great Barrier thin to 20 years time
is going to look very very different
from what it looks like now.
The mix of species will continue to change.
However, if we don't control greenhouse gas emissions
if the world warms by three or four degrees centigrade,
then I don't think we will have a recognizable
coral reef ecosystem.
And that would be a devastating loss for Australia
and the world.
Healthy reefs, not only support a vast array
of colorful sea life,
they also provide critical services for people
serving as spawning grounds for fish that feed billions
boosting incomes and economic development through tourism
and even hold the key to new medical drugs and treatments.
But new findings from Global FinPrint, a five-year study
funded by the Paul G. Allen Foundation,
again suggests all is not well.
In too many places, sharks, the oceans apex predator
and phyto reef denison have gone missing.
After working in 58 nations
what we can say is that sharks are functionally extinct
on probably 20% of the reefs out there.
That means they're not filling the ecological roles they do
when we have healthy ecosystems.
Dr. Mike Heithaus and his team
from Florida International University
arrived at their conclusion
after analyzing 15,000 hours of recordings
from their baited cameras.
During 800 hours of footage
in waters around six nations and territories
including the Dominican Republic, Kenya, and Vietnam
only three sharks were spotted.
Perhaps not surprising when considering every year,
about 100 million sharks are killed by humans
victims of illegal fishing practices
and the insatiable appetite for shark fin soup.
But the other takeaway,
is that there reservoirs of hope.
There're places where sharks are doing well
and if we protect these areas that are in trouble
they can repopulate them.
And we now know which levers we can pull
to help make that happen.
And so, FinPrint uses its numbers
to advocate for changes
to improve the conditions for shark and people alike.
Says study colleague, Dr. Demian Chapman
In Balice for example, we took that data to the gumball.
We showed that sharks were quite depleted
in many areas in Balice and the government took action
to actually reverse that.
They put in some new policies.
And even more than that,
we were able to go into the fishing communities
that they identified
and hire the guys that fish for sharks
to actually work with us to do surveys.
And that actually provided an alternative livelihood
other than fishing that was good for the people
and the sharks.
And that's really what we need more of.
After all, stories of recovery can float the idea,
all is not lost.
Off the coast of California, urchins have taken over.
Humans have over hunted their predators
and in areas there are 35 times more urchins
than there should be.
With nothing to fear, they eat all the calories,
essentially clear cutting this underwater forest.
In Los Angeles, however, an answer has been found.
The solution to this problem
is putting more people back into the system
to get the balance back.
So, the Bay Foundation enlisted former urchin divers
to help turn back time.
Leaving these urchin barns
maybe just leave the ocean dead.
So when we encountered this, we knew we had to do something.
Then when the predators are in place,
things stay in balance.
So we did what the predators would do.
Get rid of the urchins
Contrary to its name, giant kelp starts out small
using tiny hold fast to attach itself to the rocks.
Once rooted however, the kelp begins to grow quickly.
And as the kelp forest comes back,
so does the life it supports
including giant sea bass,
the apex predators of this ecosystem.
Their return really does signify the full rebirth
of this kelp forest.
The magic in this is we can take this kelp forest
turn it back into something that looked like historically.
The world is right here in our feet.
Los Angeles has extreme pressures from a large population
and a highly developed coastline.
For us to find space for nature here
means that we can find space for nature
anywhere on this planet.
True, underwater and above ground as well.
Welcome to Isle Royale,
a US national park, 20 miles off the northwest coastline
of Lake Superior, opposite Thunder Bay, Ontario.
45 miles long, nine miles wide,
it's difficult to find a Wilder, more isolated place.
It's also the site of the oldest predator prey study
in the world.
There was a healthy population of wolves here
for almost 60 years.
But now, only two wolves remain on the island.
As a result, the moose population has ballooned to 2000.
Beaver lodge numbers are over 540.
Both species are changing the landscape and the ecosystem.
The park service decided to act,
introducing wolves for the good of the entire ecosystem
on Isle Royale.
The reason we're bringing wolves out
is to be that apex predator.
And the reason we want an apex predator in the ecosystem
is that we want to have all the pieces.
We wanna make sure the forest can continue on as a chip.
Winter ice bridges are important
to the genetic refreshment of the wolf population.
But as winters warm, the ice bridges become less reliable.
So today, the new bridge to Isle Royale is by air and boat.
And these mainland wolves are the founders
of a whole new population on Isle Royale.
(calm music)
(indistinct murmurs)
Over the next few years, the US National Park Service
and its collaborators, intend to capture wolves,
males and females, and move them out to Isle Royale
to grow the population and refresh the gene pool.
(indistinct)
So far, 19 of 30 wolves have been relocated to the island.
Lynette Potvin is an ecologist at Isle Royale National Park.
Her specialty, the connection between the plant community
on the island and the moose.
What we're expecting to see
is a cascading effect of wolves
regulating the population of moose
and in turn, the moose will be more limited
in their browse across the island.
So we'll see more balsam fir on the west end.
And in the east end, we'll see more recruitment of aspen,
one of the important species on the other side of the island
and sugar maples.
In short, more biodiversity.
Biodiversity gives ecosystems their strength and resilience
in the face of change.
The latest colors, let researchers track where the wolves go
and an array of more than 150 remote cameras
captured some of their behaviors.
And something else pops.
First, these two, born to a female
which was pregnant when she was translocated.
And then this mystery pup
on the northeastern side of the island.
And on the opposite end of the island
small pup-sized scats indicating a litter
may have been born in this den.
It'll take more field research
to confirm exactly how many pups have been born
and how many have survived.
But these initial discoveries
are a major step in the right direction.
In having reproduction
at two different ends of the islands
suggesting there are at least two packs,
we're well on our way to meeting the goals of the project,
which is three to four packs
having reproduction on an annual basis.
Killing moose, killing beavers,
doing everything that wolves do.
I mean, that's what we want.
The future of any pups
will depend on whether they can find a mate
and a social structure that allows them to flourish
in this isolated ecosystem.
(wolf howling)
Well, groundbreaking studies and innovations
may help return balance to struggling ecosystems.
Can new technologies actually bring back
long lost creatures?
Some gone from the planet for millions of years?
Until now, the oldest known genetic material
from a vertebrate
came from the tooth of a rhinoceros
that lived 1.7 million years ago.
But a new discovery announced in January of 2020
may show chromosomes that are 75 million years
older than that
preserved in the cells of a baby duck-billed dinosaur.
Dr. Alida Bailleul of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
pioneered the investigation.
When Alida first viewed slices from the baby dinosaur skull
under the microscope
she found what appeared to be cells
that hadn't yet turned to bone,
but she noticed something else
something that made her heart race.
Time completely froze.
And I just, I couldn't really believe it.
Some of the cells seem to be caught
in the process of division.
So you could see inside the cells
some of them still had a dark material
that looked like fossilized dinosaur nuclei.
And there was another cell
where you could see little threads
near dark threads of a dark material inside the cell
which shows all the characteristics of chromosomes.
And so, chromosomes are made of chromatin
and chromatin is made of DNA and proteins.
Alida then asked Mary Schweitzer,
a molecular paleontologist and professor
at North Carolina State University
to help confirm her remarkable findings.
So we did all kinds of chemistry on those cells
and had many different lines of evidence
that they were really truly cells
that came from the dinosaur
and weren't some kind of a weird artifact.
They needed to compare the fossilized cells
to those in a living creature.
And so, because birds descended from dinosaurs
they chose an emu.
The primitive birds, ostrich, emu, kiwi,
those are very very primitive birds, basal birds.
And so, they have more things in common with dinosaurs.
Using chemical stains that bind two nuclear materials,
the scientists discovered evidence
of similar DNA type proteins on the cellular level
in both samples.
Then once we did that,
we applied some DNA stains to those cells.
And we did two stains that are used in all biological labs
around the world.
They bind to DNA, to double double-stranded DNA,
and you need at least between five to base bears to bind.
And when you put the cells under a fluorescent lights
propidium iodide becomes red and (indistinct) becomes blue.
And the two tests were positive in the dinosaur cell.
I mean, it was very cool
because I could not think of anything
naturally occurring in the rock record
that would look like chromosomes
lined up along a metaphase plate and inactive division.
It was pretty spectacular.
If 75 million year old DNA is still around today,
it will be astonishing.
But rest assured,
the team's goal isn't to bring a dinosaur back to life
like in "Jurassic Park."
Right now, the scientific community really accepts
that DNA cannot preserve longer than 1 million years.
And this fossil is 75 million years old.
So, this study is really changing some ideas about,
some possibilities about fossilization
of DNA and biomolecules.
A full dinosaur genome,
I don't think that's possible
but if we can get just access
to a little bit of the DNA sequences
of these really old organisms,
it's really gonna open a whole new world.
Okay, using ancient DNA to rebuild and resurrect dinosaurs
might not be entirely feasible at the moment.
But what about working backwards?
(chicken crowing)
At Yale University,
Prof. Bhart-Anjan Bhullar and his team
wanted to see if they could reverse evolution
and turn the bird back into a dinosaurian ancestor.
(dinosaurs roaring)
Even though the depictions of "Tyrannosaurus"
and "Jurassic Park" are of a more lizard like animal
that's kind of been a long floppy body,
now we're seeing more and more.
That when these animals are preserved in situ,
in their natural orientation with their natural body form,
the bodies of dinosaurs were remarkably bird-like.
The torsos were short and very very deep,
heavily muscled, and extremely stiff.
(dinosaurs roaring)
You want a relative of T-Rex that in body and in act,
you need look no further than your local farm
because chickens are actually very primitive birds.
And they are predatory dinosaurs.
They are theropod dinosaurs, just like Tyrannosaurus Rex.
With the lab's powerful 3D equipment,
CT scanners and microscopy tools,
the researchers documented and virtually dissected
every aspect of the chicken embryo's development,
muscles, nerves, and skeleton.
We're seeing into the secret earliest lives of birds.
It's incredibly close to hatching
that birds gain many of their avian features
and overprint the dinosaurian form that they have.
Chickens take about 20 days to hatch.
We see a lot of this avian specific over printing
go on at around 18 of 20, 19 of 20.
But they found
even though beaks form shortly before hatching
their development results from a whole series
of chemical signals and gene activations
which begin at an earlier developmental stage.
And so, his team of scientists removed the gene-driven bird
specific protein from chickens faces
to replicate the molecular activity of their early ancestry
and let those embryos grow.
And the results produced a chicken-raptor hybrid skull.
When the skeletons did develop,
they ended up looking extraordinarily
like those of floss rapper-like dinosaurs
and not like birds.
They probably would have been viable.
We didn't have them.
There was no reason to,
we were doing an evolutionary experiment
we weren't trying to create a dinosaur.
(dinosaur roaring)
While the large genetic research
may have been purely academic,
the coronavirus pandemic highlighted critically needed
real-world applications for genetic studies.
On January 10th, 2020,
Chinese authorities released the genetic sequencing
of this new Corona virus, SARS CoV-2.
The world's scientific community quickly mobilized
including Prof. Paul Young and his team
at Australia's University of Queensland.
And as soon as that was done,
we began work on developing our vaccine approach to it.
For the past six years,
they focus their work on broad-based vaccine modeling
using mRNA coding and adaptable methodology
able to quickly respond to new viruses as they emerge
a moment just like today's pandemic.
We made more than 200 different versions
before we settled on one particular vaccine candidate.
COVID 19's spike-like structures
exhibit a specific protein to gain entry into its host cells
in order to replicate.
One of the prime immune responses in antibody response
that targets that particular protein on the surface
of the virus,
and that can generate a neutralizing activity
or a killing activity that destroys the virus.
Young's line of attack aims to unleash the body's defenses
by introducing this protein,
stabilized or clamped in position,
as it would appear on the virus' surface.
So that when we vaccinate individuals,
their immune response
sees this protein as though as it was the virus itself.
And that will mount the immune response
that can then become their memory response
subsequently encountered the live virus.
So we're trying to mimic the outer exterior of the virus
by generating this particular protein
as the vaccine immunology.
Disease pandemics litter human history.
But vaccination technology is a relatively recent tool
in our medical arsenal.
Vaccines are very important
for producing what we call herd immunity.
And herd immunity is really the ways in which we can offset
the risk of large spreaders disease
by immunizing a large portion of the community from it
which means it's much harder for it to spread.
And that makes a vaccine a desperately needed tool
in the fight against the virus which causes COVID-19.
Of course, a global pandemic demands
a collaborative global response.
There are multiple vaccine approaches going forward
including our own,
and we're all of the belief
that we're not racing each other.
This is a race against the virus
and whoever gets there first in terms of a viable vaccine
we can all cheer for that.
And in fact, November saw multiple programs
report very promising results
from their Phase 3 human trials.
We have (indistinct).
Still, Australian virologist, Paul Young
realizes finding a safe vaccine that works
is just the start.
Perhaps the bigger challenge
will be executing on production and deployment.
If we're dealing with a viral pathogen
that is affecting essentially, the global community,
manufacturing that at scale at single sites
is probably not going to be viable.
So the real issues of the effectiveness of the vaccine
become almost secondary to our ability to deliver it
to a broad global population.
Young's answer, to essentially proceed on a dual track.
If we can ramp up that manufacturer
at the same time, we're determining efficacy,
then hopefully we will be able to deploy a lot earlier
than what a traditional pathway
of vaccine production would mean.
And that's just what they've done.
Young's team at the University of Queensland
inked an agreement to prepare and manufacture doses
before clinical trials finish up.
So manufacturing is beginning now.
The processes are being worked up now.
So the idea is that there will be vaccine at scale
when that regulatory approval is provided.
Should all go smoothly,
they expect 50 million doses available by late 2021
or early 2022.
The American public-private partnership,
Operation Warp Speed, hopes to move even faster
with the first doses from drug makers, Pfizer and Medina
are ready to be deployed immediately
after final FDA approval
perhaps as early as December, 2020,
following shortly after the United kingdom's,
December 2nd approval of Pfizer's vaccine.
The situation may still get worse before it gets better.
While its impact won't be immediate,
a safe and effective vaccine
will hopefully liberate the world
from the viruses vice-like grip
and will turn everyday life
to something resembling the recent past.
Thanks to science, always pushing forward.
(upbeat music)