Human Universe (2014–…): Season 1, Episode 5 - What Is Our Future? - full transcript

Human Universe

It's been 200,000 years
since humans first emerged

in the Rift Valley of East Africa.

Since then, we've learnt to think,

to dream, to work together.

And today our human
civilisation spans the globe...

and beyond.

But our planet is a tiny fragile speck
of life in a vast, uncaring universe.

So what next for the
apes who went to space?

Human Universe

Edited By Sirwaan N



Part 5 What is our future?

El Castillo
Cantabria, Spain

This cave mouth in northern Spain
has been inhabited for 150,000 years.

There's basic shelter here and safety.

But from time to time,

they left the light behind
and headed into the dark.

In these caves you see the
transition from just surviving

to living, to observing
the world, to enjoying it.

There were gatherings here,
people coming together to make art

and not just any old art,
but specific representations

of particular animals
and particular symbols.

So in these caves we see the
beginnings of superstition,

the beginnings of an appreciation
that there's not just a present

but there's a past and there's a future.



These early artists were leaving
messages to future generations.

And the one that speaks loudest
lies far deeper into the darkness.

This handprint was made by a
child at least 35,000 years ago

and it's thought it was
made by a little girl.

She'd have done the painting by taking paint and blowing
it through her hand... onto the wall of the cave.

Now, she would have had a basic
understanding of her future,

she'd have known that the seasons pass

and maybe she even looked forward
to coming back to this cave one day.

Leaving her mark upon the wall
suggests she had started down

the road of understanding time and
how it stretched out into the future.

In 40,000 years, we've learned
to see further ahead than

she could possibly have imagined.

We've walked out into a wider world

and made it our own.

And right now we are at a crossroads.

Our civilisation holds the power to
shape the future of the whole planet.

I think we pay far too
little attention to the future

and the ability to illuminate
it, to predict it is unique to us

and our prosperity, and our very survival depend
very much on what we glimpse out there in the dark.

Science and reason are the flames
and in this film I want to convince

you that we must use them
to make the darkness visible.

Longyearbyen
Svalbard

In late June, Earth's most
northerly community

are preparing to celebrate an
important turning point of their year.

Summer is the best time

I love the long summer's day

It's great when the dark months are over

and the sun shines all the time

It's midsummer in the Arctic,
and the people of Svalbard

are approaching the moment when
the sun rides highest in the sky,

the summer solstice.

If I were in Manchester I'd
say this was the longest day,

but that kind of language doesn't
make sense here, 78 degrees north

and midway between northern
Norway and the Arctic Circle

cos this day, summer's
day, began on April the 20th

and it will end on August the 23rd.

We can predict exactly the
moment that the solstice arrives.

21st June 10:50 GMT

So as strange as this long day feels, there
is no mystery as to why it takes place.

The reason for that long polar
night and the months of midnight sun

is the geometry of the solar system.

Svalbard is quite literally on
top of the world and you feel it

when you're here, it's obvious.

The sun doesn't set, it's
somewhere over there at the moment

and throughout the course of the day it just
moves along the horizon right round,360 degrees

as the Earth rotates with the North
Pole pointing directly towards the sun.

And when this place was
discovered back in the 1590s,

people didn't know that, or
at least it wasn't agreed upon,

it was still possible and indeed
argued, back down there towards

the equator in Italy, that the Earth
was at the centre of the universe.

It's obvious that it isn't
when you come up here.

I wonder what would have happened
if Galileo and Copernicus and Bruno

and others had visited Svalbard.

I think that everything would
have got worked out much earlier.

After thousands of years of observation,

our inquisitive minds began to
develop models of the universe.

The full explanation for the
clockwork of the solar system

came in the 1680s, with Isaac
Newton and his universal law

of gravitation, which is the
first modern law of nature.

What Newton's laws allow you to do is to predict
the future given a knowledge of the present.

Newton's laws describe
a clockwork universe.

Planets orbiting stars,

stars orbiting galaxies.

And galaxies falling through
a possibly infinite space.

One day, in our own sky,
we'll see the galaxy Andromeda

heading our way.

In four billion years' time, it
will collide with The Milky Way.

For a billion years, our sky will
be filled with cosmic choreography.

And we know that because
we can predict the future.

So the laws of physics, in that
sense, are little time machines.

They allow you to predict with precision
what will happen in the distant future

given a knowledge of the present.

We even see the sun ends its days
as it swells into a red giant,

some five billion years from now.

So we can be sure that we, along
with all other life on Earth,

will not survive into the far future.

Extinction is a necessary part
of the evolution of life on Earth.

99. 9% of species that have
ever existed have become extinct

and that's a good thing,

because when a species goes, there's
a niche available in the ecosystem

for other species to colonise
- that's how evolution works.

You know, if the dinosaurs
hadn't become extinct,

it's very likely that we wouldn't exist.

So when considering the
ultimate destiny of our species

the answer seems obvious
- extinction.

But I'd argue this doesn't
have to be the case.

We are different to the other
species on this planet because we're

intelligent. Intelligence matters
and it's extremely rare, in fact

you can argue that intelligence may
be extremely rare in the universe.

It is possible that we're the only
intelligent species in the Milky Way

galaxy amongst 400 billion suns
and countless billions of worlds.

And that makes us extremely
valuable and worth protecting.

I think the way to keep this light alive
is for humans to continue to venture out.

And explore.

To this end, we've built a ship large
enough for six astronauts to train in.

This is Aquarius, which
is used by NASA as Nemo,

the Nemo missions. And the
reason this place is extreme,

if you look here...

is because...

we're below the ocean.

The pressure in here is two and half
to three times atmospheric pressure,

which is why I sound like a Munchkin.

50 metres below the surface, Aquarius offers a
unique training facility for deep space exploration.

This is, er, this is brilliant cos
you can play at being an astronaut,

I mean, you'd have six astronauts
in here. The reason that

they use this as a mission simulator

is because the environment is as close
as you can get to space on Earth,

you have to live here for weeks.

And if you stay here
for more than one hour -

so we've got one hour
- you have to stay here for a further 17 hours

to decompress, so you
can't just run away

if you, you know, psychologically
feel a bit claustrophobic

and you think "I don't like
it, " you can't just leave,

it's one of the few places on
Earth where that would be the case.

In recent months, Nemo has been tasked with a
very specific type of deep space exploration.

They're developing methods
to space walk onto asteroids,

where gravity will be a fraction
of that experienced on the moon.

Whilst at times dreaming
of an asteroid encounter is

a lot of fun, the motive behind
the mission is deadly serious.

Chelyabinsk
February 2013

In 2013, on a wintry morning in Russia,

a massive fireball cut the sky.

Seconds later, it exploded, with 20 to 30 times more
energy than the atomic bomb detonated at Hiroshima.

Earth had been hit by the largest
asteroid in more than a century.

And no-one had seen it coming.

It seems our powers
of prediction failed us

and that's because, in
reality, nature can be chaotic.

I can demonstrate that
with a simple experiment.

These are magnets, so let's say
that this is an asteroid, then watch

what happens when I set the pendulum
off, let's say from this point here.

So I'm going to release
it, I've got a laser there.

From exactly that point,
I'm just going to let it go.

We see the laser tracing out
the path on this photo paper,

this is asteroid orbiting the solar
system, gravitationally interacting

with the Earth, the sun of course,

let's say a massive planet like Jupiter.

There you go, it's collided
with the yellow one, the sun.

I can do it again and
what I'm going to try

and do is line it up in exactly
the same way and let it go.

In this case it's radically
different, that's because

this is what is known as a
chaotic system, there you go,

and it's hit the Earth, so that will be
the end of civilisation as we know it.

The point is that the orbit
is critically dependent on what

we call, what physicists
call, the initial conditions.

That's how precisely did I line this
up, how precisely did I release it,

what precisely happens as it sets off
on its path through the solar system?

In here are the little air currents
that deflect it a little bit,

all those infinitesimally small changes

can be amplified in a
complicated system such as this.

And that's why it's not good enough to just
discover the asteroids that come near to the Earth,

it's not good enough

because one of those tiny nudges
could take something that you

might think was safe, just
using Newton's laws very naively,

and in fact nudging it onto a
collision course with the Earth.

This fundamental feature of
nature means that we may get little

warning when the next one comes our way.

So we must continue to track
threatening asteroids...

and develop technologies that will
get us out to them at short notice.

In January 2014, the European
Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft

awoke from a 31-month
period of hibernation.

It had travelled four billion
miles to intercept a comet.

Throughout August and September,

the tiny spaceship
made a careful approach,

scanning the comet for a place to land.

And next week, it will deploy a
probe to attach itself to the surface.

Rosetta will greatly increase our understanding
of comets and the early solar system.

It also tests our ability to mount a manned
mission to an asteroid if the need arises.

The problem is that even with
a sophisticated rocket system,

it took Rosetta ten
years to reach its target.

To send astronauts that
deep into space will require

a great leap in our technical
ability and our ambition.

I had an ambition to be an astronaut

from, you know, as
early as I can remember.

I can't remember thinking anything else.

The excitement of, you know,
just going way away from Earth.

David Mackay Test Pilot

For the first time in a generation,

new designs of manned
spacecraft are being tested.

Commercial companies are now
developing crafts to get us into space.

The endeavour is never without risk.

It's not an easy thing to do,
to escape the Earth's gravity

even for a few minutes
takes a lot of energy.

Three, two, one.

Release, release. Quick release.

The future of human space
exploration faces enormous challenges

and depends on the
bravery of test pilots like

David Mackay, Peter Siebold and
their colleague, Mike Alsbury,

who lost his life last week
in the pursuit of a dream.

A dream that many of us grew up
with as children and never lost.

When I was growing up in the 1970s,
this was one of my favourite books.

I got it, I think it was 1979, it was
about the same time as my first ABBA album.

And I just read it for
years and years and years.

It's a sort of fictional history
of spacecraft, 2000 to 2100 AD.

It's got things like, "2005
- work starts on the lunar station. "

Then this is one of my favourite spacecraft,
I used to try and build these out of Lego

, it's called the
Martian Queen and it says,

""Early in 2015, fare-paying
passengers stepped aboard

"the first purpose-built
interplanetary spaceliner. "

So they imagined that by 2015, by
next year, we'd have spaceliners

taking people to the Martian colonies.

And what's interesting is my
little boy loves the book as well,

he's got it now, and some
of this stuff is in his past.

This is a list of things that
didn't happen, whereas for me,

back in the '70s, it was a list of
things that I thought would happen.

Breaking free from Earth's bonds
is so difficult that there are only

eight people alive that know what
it's like to walk on another world.

Hi. Charlie.

What's your name?
Charlie.

Believe
it or not, I'm the other half of Judy.

Hello, Charlie. How you
doing? Nice to meet you.

Wonderful to meet you.
Pleasure to meet you.

Good to be here with you.
Have a seat.

Charlie Duke was Lunar
Module pilot for Apollo 16

and the youngest person
ever to walk on the moon.

How about an extension, you
guys? We're feeling good.

Mission objective
- to bring back samples from the lunar highlands

and test drive new technologies.

And here we go. We are really
going up a hill, I'll tell you.

When I was just becoming
aware of Apollo, I thought that

I would be able to go into...
at least into Earth orbit myself.

Yeah, really, my dad was born
in 1907 and so he was just

right after the Wright brothers and, er, and he
could barely believe that his son went to the moon.

And yet at the time my five-year-old,
Tom, he didn't think it was any big deal!

You know, that everybody in the
neighbourhood was going to the moon.

Neil Armstrong was a
next door neighbour,

Tom Stafford was in the
neighbourhood, Frank Borman

was in the neighbourhood, the whole
neighbourhood was either NASA engineers

or astronauts, so
everybody's... it's natural,

"Let's go to the moon, Dad,
when you going to do it?"

Hey, John, this is perfect, with
the LM, and the rover, and you,

and Stone Mountain, and the old flag.

Come on out here and give me a salute.

Big Navy salute.

Off the ground a bit more.

There we go.

You're most famous probably for the most
famous photograph involving you, it's not you,

it's the photograph of your
family that you left on the moon.

I asked the boys, they
were five and seven,

I said, "Would you guys like to
be with your dad on the moon?"

They said "Oh, yeah,
that'd be great, Dad. "

So on the back of that
picture we had written,

"This is the family of
astronaut Charlie Duke,

"from planet Earth who landed
on the moon in April 1972"

and we all signed it and then I
dropped the picture on the moon.

It sort of shows the human side
of space flight and, you know,

we were family men,
we were dads, husbands,

and so wanted my family
to be a part of it.

They'll sit there for millions of years,
won't they, they won't go anywhere.

And if you look back to those days,
so less than a year from the first test flight,

first manned test
flight to landing on the moon. Yeah.

Would that be possible now? No.

Why?

We don't have the, er, the schedule,

the money to build
spacecraft that quickly.

We don't have the, er,
the manpower to do it.

I mean, 400,000 people and unlimited
budget, you can do a lot, you know.

Yeah.

Yeah! And that's what we had.

After Charlie left, only
two men have ever gone back

and there's good reason for that.

The energy required to break free
from Earth's gravitational embrace

is staggering.

This is the spacecraft that
took John Young, Ken Mattingly

and Charlie Duke to the moon.

There's the Service Module
and the Command Module,

that's the engine that fired to bring
them back from the moon to the Earth,

the Lunar
Lander sat inside there

and this piece is essentially
a single rocket motor

that fired to take them
from Earth orbit to the moon.

So this is the 120 tonne
moon spacecraft, if you like.

But from a physics perspective, the
difficulty is getting that into orbit,

and on Saturn
V that was done in two bits

and this is stage two and that
is the stage two fuel tank.

Inside there are 450
tonnes of rocket fuel.

And this burnt through those
450 tonnes in about 6 minutes,

taking the spacecraft from
an altitude of 200,000 feet,

about 38 miles, up to 114 and a half
miles, that's virtually in orbit.

And it did that by burning
the fuel in five engines.

Now, at the time, that was one
of the most powerful rockets ever built,

but not the most powerful
- that was this,

Stage One of the Saturn V.

There are 2, 200 tons of fuel in here,

and stage one burnt through that
in about two and a half minutes.

To do that they add fuel pumps that were
more powerful than a 747 at lift off

to pump 15 tonnes
of fuel a second into these...

the F1 engines.

Every statistic about
these engines is ridiculous.

In those two and half minutes when
this spacecraft was lifting off

the power generated was more than the peak electrical
power generation capacity of the United Kingdom.

Building a vehicle powerful enough to
accelerate three men to escape velocity

was a triumph of human ingenuity.

But the technology at the heart of any
rocket is essentially ancient technology,

the release of energy by combustion.

We used fire to release energy from
the Sun stored in the wood from trees.

Then we discovered
better things to burn.

Energy-packed ancient
sunlight buried underground.

Burning that has set us free.

But fire has surely
taken us as far as it can.

The reason we aren't flying to
other planets is the same reason

we're endangering this one.

Every day we burn the equivalent of all the
plants growing on this planet over a year

to meet our energy needs.

But that's not to say that energy use
is of itself necessarily a bad thing.

Indeed by many measures it's
an extremely good thing indeed.

In every country where the per capita energy use
is greater than about half the European average

then adult life expectancy
is greater than 70 years,

literacy rates are greater than 90%,

infant mortality rates are low

and more than one in five of the
population are in higher education.

So the story of energy
use is a complicated one.

On the one hand, obviously, energy
use is important and to be valued,

it's the foundation of
our modern civilisation,

and on the other hand,

if we generate our energy
mainly by burning fossil fuels

then it can be a bad thing.

Now in the short-term of course...

we can increase the
efficiency of our energy usage.

But in the long-term,

if we aspire to continue to
advance as a civilisation,

if we want to give every citizen
of the world a quality of life

that is as good as or
even better than mine,

and if ultimately we want to
build a space-faring generation

and journey to the stars then
we have to find a better way.

In the short-term, we can move
to cleaner electric motors,

but because we burn fossil
fuels in power stations,

that simply moves the problem upstream.

So what we face is not an energy crisis

but an energy conversion crisis.

Renewable energy might
be part of the solution,

but I believe there's a far more
promising long-term alternative.

If you could do one thing,

if you could wave a magic wand and
do one thing, what would you do?

If you could produce abundant clean
energy, it would solve many problems.

It's a grand challenge of our time,

and I truly am committed
and proud to be part of it.

Can we for the first time
bring a star to Earth?

Here at the National Ignition
Facility in California

they're trying to
create man-made stars.

It's a big laser.

It's the biggest in the world
by probably a factor of 50,

or maybe even 100, so
in size and in energy.

How much power's in there?

If you look at all the electricity
that's produced in the United States,

this is about a thousand
times more power than that.

But of course only for
a fraction of a second,

a few billionths of a second.

In a star, fusion begins when the gas cloud that
forms the star collapses under its own gravity,

heating the core to
many millions of degrees.

Here at NIF, it's coaxed into
life in the laser's target chamber

encased in two metre thick walls

and 47 of the biggest
glass doors I've ever seen.

So this is the sharp end of
the whole system, if you like,

this is where the lasers come down

and start to get
focused into the chamber.

And each one of them has to be synchronised to a few
trillionths of a second to arrive at exactly the same time

and of course in exactly the right spot.

It's worth sort of stepping back
and realising what's happening here

cos you said 192 of these laser
beams, which are not small. Indeed.

In the middle of that which is
definitely not small. Absolutely.

What's the target? It's about that big.

It's about a millimetre wide.

But it's the level of precision and
power that you're able to achieve.

And if you can do it uniformly
then you can create a little star.

It reminds me a little bit of
Apollo in a sense cos you just think,

you know, look what we can do if we try.

So you see there,
there's a gold cylinder

and in the middle a little red
ball, that's the fusion fuel.

One of those pellets,

when all of the fusion
happens just right,

could power my house for a day.

So you imagine having a
little bag of those pellets,

let's say you three or
four hundred of them,

you could fit them in your pocket,

then that would power
your life for a year.

Thousands of these little pellets

could power a spacecraft to the Moon.

Hundreds of thousands could power a spacecraft
out to the edge of the solar system

or perhaps
outward to the stars.

And one of the interesting
things about fusion technology is

that there's no waste, right?

What happens when you release all
the energy in that pellet of fuel

is you produce helium, so
you get your electricity

and you get your party balloons,
and that's pretty much it.

So it's an inherently clean, safe
and extremely efficient technology.

May I have your attention.

Preparations for shot operations
in laser bay two are under way.

Leave laser bay two now.

I repeat. Leave laser bay two now.

This is the NIF control room, this
is the heart of all operations,

and the reason I have to be quiet is

because they're getting
ready for a shot.

Main laser operation will begin
in approximately one minute.

It's a bit like charging a flash gun.

Banks and the capacitors
store electric charge,

getting ready to discharge all
this energy into the lasers.

Amplify, amplify, amplify, bang.

It looks like it just turned green.

Are you comfortable
with us going forward?

I don't see a problem.

OK. We're ready to proceed
if you're OK with it.

There's the countdown.

Start sequence on my mark.

255 seconds.

In 255 seconds time,

a thousand times the power generating
capacity of the United States of America

is going to be fired down into
something a few millimetres across.

It's cool.

Brilliant that we can do this, isn't it?

By "we" I mean them.

Yeah, "we", it's our civilisation.

Five, four, three, two, one, shot.

That's a bang...

and that's the future.

Commercial fusion power stations
are still a long way off,

but NIF has proved that it
can be done in principle.

If fusion can be made
economically viable,

it would end the days of fire

and it would do much more
than power our cars and cities,

it would provide a new
foundation for our civilisation,

it would even open up
the road to the stars.

I think we expect, in
fact, we demand that

the future is going to
be better than the past,

but it seems to me that we're
not prepared to pay for it.

So how might things change?

Well, we're fortunate enough
to live in democracies,

and in democracies things change

when people have access to knowledge,

when they understand facts

and when they can make
informed decisions.

Did you know, for example,

that Americans spend ten times more money each year
on pet grooming than they do on nuclear fusion?

Now I think that if you said to someone,

"Well, actually, why don't
you brush your own cat,

"and take the money you were going
to spend having somebody else brush it

"and give it to those people
who are trying to find a way

"of generating unlimited
access to clean energy?"

Then people would say, "Well,
yeah, that's a good deal. "

See, in democracies things change when
people like you and me want them to change.

I see a future the oceans are full

and man is gone

I'm optimistic about the future.

No matter how deep we keep
digging our hole right now,

I feel like there is hope.

I'm going to space

I might be gone some time

They say that history repeats itself

I think that is not a good idea anymore

You know, I look at my life and
I think, "it's almost over, "

when in fact with the
advances in healthcare and such

it may not be.

I hope the world will open its eyes

Fundamentally, I think we
all want the same thing,

we want our children and their
children to have a future.

And that requires us
to plan for that future.

I think it is fantastic

I'd heard about the vault before

and I've looked after
the building for two years

I feel proud to be part of this

Hello. Nice to meet you.
Hello.

This place addresses a fundamental human
need that we're going to face in the future,

which is how
are we going to feed ourselves?

The tunnel itself runs about 130 metres
downwards on this gentle gradient,

and by the time
we get to the vaults at the end,

it's going to be 160 metres of
solid rock up to the surface.

Buried down here is
a priceless treasure,

and everything about this building
is designed to keep it safe.

This arc that you see, this
curve here, is deliberate,

it's in case there's a blast,

some kind of explosion
up at the surface.

And this is designed to
reflect the blast back.

An extremely precious place...

covered in ice.

Then we have to go
through this airlock...

and into the vault.

The treasure in here is not
currency, not gold, not rare jewels

but something important,
it's the future of our food.

Here are the seeds, the food crops of
virtually every country in the world.

These are from Mexico.

There are India.

There are Nigerian seeds
next to Germany, Australia.

There are over 800,000
different populations of seeds

collected here from virtually
every country in the world.

These here are from Syria.

These were taken out just
before recent troubles,

so they're out there, they're protected there
in case the Syrian seed vaults are lost.

And then there are some strangest
of all countries you wouldn't

believe would cooperate in
such an international endeavour.

Look at this here
- box number 5DPR of Korea,

these are North Korean seeds.

And just over there are the
South Korean seeds next to them.

Canada.

Philippines.

This represents, as a library of life,

just the whole of civilisation

rests with the genetic codes
contained in these boxes.

Our future might just
rest on these seeds

squirreled away in the Global Seed
Vault, drilled into the top of the world.

The driving force behind its
construction was agriculturist,

Dr Cary Fowler.

So why did you decide
to take this project on?

Well, I've spent all of my life working
on trying to conserve crop diversity,

and those of us in my field,
we live in a world of wounds.

We see the injuries, we see the
loss of diversity, the extinction.

And at a certain point,
you know, enough is enough,

and you, you try to figure out,

well, what can we do
that's not just stopgap?

Cos we know we're going to need
this crop diversity in the future,

it's the biological
foundation of agriculture.

We're going to need it as
long as we need agriculture.

Which is as long as
civilisation exists, I suppose?

Exactly, after that we're
not worried about it, are we?

Some of the seeds in this vault
will still be viable in 20,000 years.

When you look at this
achievement, how do you see it?

When I walk in here, I see
a history of agriculture,

all the way back to Neolithic days.

So our ancestors, yours and mine, have been saving
these seeds in a successful, unbroken line until today.

They're every option that we're
going to have for the future,

so any and everything we want and need
- rice and wheat to be in the future

is represented, is made
possible by this diversity.

Some people call this
The Doomsday Vault. Yeah.

Seems to me to be a rather, er
I don't know, grim... Apocalyptic?

Yeah. Yes. Is that a, a
reasonable description?

For me, when I walk down here I get
this immense feeling of happiness

and frankly, hope that,

OK, here are 800,000 crop varieties

that are not going to become extinct.

So to me, this represents a
problem that didn't happen.

Also seems to me, it's an example
of genuine long-term thinking,

this transcends political
cycles, it transcends lifetimes.

Yeah, when I look at this place,
I see about the only structure in the world

that I know of that's
built essentially for eternity,

for as long as we can imagine,
involving all the countries of the

world in something that's
long-term and positive.

That's hopeful, to me.

I came here to tell a story
of an uncertain future,

but I found something else under
the permafrost of Svalbard...

optimism.

We have the privilege to live in
a very special and unique time,

because for the first time in
the history of life on Earth,

there's a species that at least in
part is masters of its own destiny -

has its survival in its own hands.

It's true to say that
because there's an unbroken

line of life stretching back from me to the
origin of life on earth 3. 8 billion years ago,

that at
any point in that long history,

something could have
happened to wipe us out,

and something could happen
tomorrow to wipe us out,

but increasingly, we can
see those threats coming.

So, we have a chance, the possibility,

of prolonging our existence
into the indefinite future,

if we can just find a way of taking
that responsibility seriously.

Today, we are writing our
chapter in the human story.

But as we do so,

we must keep in mind the future
and learn lessons from the past.

Back in the darkness of
the El Castillo caves,

there may be a stark reminder
of life's perilous existence.

More accurate dating of the
paintings suggests that the

story of our young artist
might have a sting in its tail.

If this art is not just
around 40,000 years old,

but over 43,000 years old,
not much of a difference,

then this is not human.

Because there were no humans in
this area of Europe 43,000 years ago.

If that's the case, this art
was created by Neanderthals,

a completely different species.

Just think about that.

Neanderthals were pretty much
as capable, mentally, as we are.

So if they'd been given enough time,

given the pressures that we humans felt,

then there's no reason why they
couldn't have developed a civilisation.

But they didn't have time.

Instead they disappeared,
they became extinct,

leaving perhaps, these signs of the beginnings
of their culture on the roof of a cave.

But our species didn't die out -

we worked together, held
on and then flourished.

Should we send these up to Grandad?

Yeah, let's send them up to Grandad.

In the face of adversity,

we adapted and used our
brains to develop technologies.

In time, we built mighty civilizations

with science as their foundation.

And then, within the
blink of a cosmic eye,

we journeyed to other worlds...

and we glimpsed the very
nature of reality itself.

Right, let's send these to Grandad.

Going to put them in the envelope.

We even have an outpost of our
civilisation living beyond Earth.

Science is unreasonably effective,

it's generated knowledge
beyond all expectation.

It's also delivered perspective.

Yes, we are an insignificant
speck in an infinite universe,

but we're also rare.

And because we're rare, we're valuable.

So what are we to do
to secure our future?

Well, we must learn to value
the acquisition of knowledge

for its own sake, and not just
because it grows our economy

or allows us to build better bombs.

We must also learn to
value the human race

and take responsibility
for our own survival.

Why? Because there's
nobody else out there

to value us or to look after us.

And finally, most important of all,

we must educate the next generation
in the great discoveries of science

and we must teach them to use the light of
reason to banish the darkness of superstition,

cos if we do that, then at least there's a chance
that this universe will remain a human one.

There's a card in here.

It's got "Grandad" written on it.

Are you a grandad? I'm not a grandad.

Hey, Alex, you a grandad?

No, not that I know of.
I guess it's me.

END

In the memory of Test Pilot
Michael Alsbury 1975-2014