Everywhere we look in the most hospitable of environments and in the most extreme we find life. On Earth, life exists everywhere we look. Yet we have only ever found life on our planet. How did the stuff of stars come together to create life as we know it? What do we really mean by 'life'? And will unlocking this mystery help us find life elsewhere?
Join scientists as they grab light from across the universe to prove quantum entanglement is real. Einstein called it 'spooky action at a distance,' but today quantum entanglement is poised to revolutionize technology from computers to cryptography. Physicists have gradually become convinced that the phenomenon—two subatomic particles that mirror changes in each other instantaneously over any distance is real. But a few doubts remain. The film follows a ground-breaking experiment in the Canary Islands to use quasars at opposite ends of the universe to once and for all settle remaining questions.
Scorched by their proximity to the sun, Mercury and Venus are hostile worlds; one gouged with craters from cosmic collisions and the other a vortex of sulphur, carbon dioxide and acid rain. Prime examples of planets gone awry, do they serve as a warning for ominous scenarios that might someday threaten Earth?
Professor Brian Cox concludes his exploration of our place in the universe by asking what next for the ape that went to space. Our future is far from certain. In Florida, Brian joins the latest efforts to protect Earth from potential catastrophic events. He joins a team of Nasa astronauts who are training for a future mission to an asteroid - should we ever discover one coming our way - under 30 feet of water in a submerged laboratory that simulates space. It is just one example of how, for our long-term survival, space exploration may well be vital. It is a view shared by Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke, who tells Brian what it was like to escape the confines of the planet. It is a dream that both Nasa and now commercial companies share as they race to get humans back into deep space. But space travel, like every leap our civilisation has ever made, requires energy. Here too, scientists are hard at work attempting to safeguard our future. At the National Ignition Facility in California, Brian witnesses the world's most successful fusion experiment in action. He believes that if their mission succeeds, our civilisation will have unlocked a way to the stars that will not destroy the planet in the process. Brian concludes by returning to the top of the world in Svalbard, where he gains access to our civilisation's greatest treasure, locked away in a vault buried deep in the permafrost.
Of all the objects in the cosmos, planets, stars, galaxies, none are as strange, mysterious, or powerful as black holes. Black holes are the most mind-blowing things in the universe. They can swallow a star completely intact. Black holes have these powerful jets that just spew matter out. First discovered on paper, on the back of an envelope, some squiggles of the pen. The bizarre solution to a seemingly unsolvable equation, a mathematical enigma. Einstein himself could not accept black holes as real. People didn't even believe for many years that they existed. Nature doesn't work that way. Yet slowly, as scientists investigate black holes by observing the effect they have on their surroundings, evidence begins to mount.
