(woman) At the centre of our existence is a powerful dynamo.
The sun.
It gives us heat and light, and drives the great engine of life.
It's the food chain, and we're all a part of it.
No matter who you are, even if you're a hardcore meat-eater,
your dinner started with plants somewhere turning sunlight into food.
So we are, all of us,
solar powered.
Maybe the ancient Egyptians were right to worship the sun.
For four billion years, the sun has given life to everything,
on land, and in the sea.
Rover One, this is Rover Two,
We are at the edge of the wall and are beginning our descent, Over,
My name's Dijanna Figueroa, and I'm a PhD student at UC Santa Barbara.
- This is cool, - (man) Copy that. Starting descent. Over.
(Dijanna) I think I have one of the coolest jobs in the world.
(Dijanna) Check out those corkscrew coral down there,
I'm a marine biologist. I get to go to the bottom of the ocean
and study the amazing organisms that live there.
There's nothing I'd rather be doing.
(man on radio) Rover One, Rover One, do you copy?
(man) This wall's pretty amazing,
We're barely on the edge of photosynthesis right here,
Ambient light's really going now,
(Dijanna) You're totally reliant on the technology that's in your little bubble
to dive to that depth where it's just a mystery down there.
You never know what you're gonna see.
- (man) Look at all that krill, - Oh, my gosh!
(Dijanna) Looks like we're in krill heaven over here, Rover One,
(man on radio) Yeah, roger that. Pretty incredible.
Not seeing much of anything alive here, Dijanna, What about you?
(Dijanna) Not much life at all, I think we're pretty much out of the photic zone,
(man on radio) It's like being on the moon, huh?
Copy that,
(man) Hey, look, we got a crinoid right down here,
(man) Hey, Dijanna, we got a crinoid here. We finally found a citizen.
(Dijanna) Copy that,
Yeah, it looks like we're getting deeper, and most of the animals down here
look like they're suspension feeders, or particle feeders,
(Dijanna) With no light from the surface, not much can survive down here.
But there are places in the ocean where sunlight has never reached,
not since the world began, and yet amazing life forms thrive there.
So when I was invited to join the new expedition to explore these places,
I had to say yes.
(man on radio) "Keldysh," "Keldysh," "Ares" bridge.
(man #2) Yeah, Dave, we're about to begin dive reef right now,
We got MIR One going into the water at,,,
Like this, so that we've got a central area to work, Rover One is gonna stay,,,
I'm Jim Cameron, and here's the deal.
I love this stuff.
Exploration. Real honest-to-God deep ocean exploration.
This is way more exciting than any made-up Hollywood special effects.
These deep ocean expeditions always seem like space missions to me.
So, why not combine outer space and inner space?
Sure, we'll take marine biologists.
But why not take astrobiologists and space researchers?
So that's how a bunch of space scientists wound up out here,
a thousand miles from the nearest land,
where, right under our feet, down in the darkness,
are the most insane alien life forms that have ever been discovered.
Two ships,
four manned submersibles,
forty dives at ten sites in both the Atlantic and Pacific.
I like big operations, but this one was off the hook.
So we'll come down together, like this, and we'll try to stay a couple of meters apart,
because we don't want to drift off,
If the communications are compromised with the multiple subs in the water,
all working on the same frequency, some in Russian, some in English,
I want to make sure we stay on visual,,,
(Jim) The plan was to coordinate a four-sub dive,
using both ships, so two MIRs and two Rovers could rendezvous at the bottom.
This would be a world first.
- Hi, - Dr, Sagalevitch,
(Jim) Anatoly Sagalevitch heads the Manned Submersibles Laboratory
for the Russian Academy of Sciences.
We've been working together for almost a decade.
There we are,
The adventurers,
It's all his fault that we're doing this, because we did Titanic twice,
in '95 and '01, and we did Bismarck.
Sometime around the middle of Bismarck, Anatoly says:
"You know, these wrecks are good, they're interesting,
but you have to do something real,"
"We have to do some science, Something real,"
(Jim) Genya Chernaiev is one of the Russian MIR pilots.
He's been flying submersibles for over 20 years now.
The most important thing about this boat, of course, is the view,
320 degrees unobstructed,
(Jim) This view makes the Rovers unique,
but because of the acrylic sphere, they can't go as deep as the MIRs.
So they'd only be joining us for the Atlantic leg of the journey.
We also had Jake, the little remotely operated 'bot
we'd used to explore the Titanic and Bismarck wrecks.
Jake had been modified to test a variety of sampling tools.
My brother Mike is Jake's inventor and our pilot on this expedition.
His challenge was to steer Jake safely around the volcanically active vent sites,
and not fry our little 'bot.
This would hopefully allow us to get up close and personal
with the creatures we'd come to see.
We've checked the decks twice, all the rigging looks squared away,
My other brother was with us too.
JD was the safety and communications officer on board the "Ares."
Or, as he called it, "crap job number 27."
Our launch procedure is as per the book, Everything's straightforward,
She's first, she's second, Recovery is determined by Jim from the bottom,
Now, recovery can go either way,
(Jim) We chose the "Ares" for the giant A-frame at her stern.
(Jim) Its massive hydraulic cylinders can lift the sub off the deck
and out over the water with ease.
It's one of the safest ways to launch a large payload off of any ship,
and we constantly tested our procedures until we had everything dialed in
for the upcoming four-sub dive.
(JD) All right, let's do this, All stations, let's do this,
(Jim) I'm gonna need everybody to keep their ears open, be observant,
Keep your eyes open for the lights of the other submersibles,
And, you know, it's gonna be challenging, But I think we can pull it off,
All right, here we go, Jacks up!
(Jim) Finally, everything was in motion.
And in the middle of the North Atlantic,
a thousand miles from the nearest land,
our little expedition was about to make history.
We're in motion, We're in motion,
(man speaks Russian)
Nice and slow, blue winch, Nice and slow,
- Now we're gunnin' runnin', huh? - (man) Yeah,
(Jim) At least, that was the plan.
(JD) All stop, all stop, All stop,
(man on radio) I copy you, Lima Charlie. The only problem we have right now
is the A-frame. Over.
I'll let you know as soon as the crew gets it sorted.
(JD) About an hour and 15 minutes ago, we had a safety stop,
Uh, what we know is the A-frame went south,
It's a complete breakdown of the cylinder, It ultimately amounts to a cold stop,
These bolts all shot,
And all this paint that's been here forever busts loose because of that situation,
And it happened on that one as well,
(Jim) Yeah, right, I mean, we're in the middle of the ocean with a broken A-frame,
That's what it sounds like to me,
How you gonna get that fixed up?
Call A-frames"R"Us? You know, have their little service ship come by?
Thousand miles from shore?
We don't have to move on it immediately,
but it's at least something we need to start processing,
Well, I mean, if they can't fix this,
and we don't have an alternate way of launching the sub, it's over,
the expedition's over,
(Jim) If you are going to explore, you have to accept the fact
that on the one hand there's risk. You have to stay up all night long
thinking about every single factor that's involved in what you're doing,
and making sure that you've thought of everything.
'Cause if you can eliminate all the things you can think of,
you've eliminated nine-tenths of what can go wrong,
That way, when that last one-tenth pops up, and you're in the middle of it,
you don't have to worry about all the other stuff 'cause you've dealt with that,
Look, to be completely serious, your idea about cutting that bulwark away at the side
is the best idea I've heard for an alternate plan yet,
Just cut the side right out of the ship,
I say we go clear that with the captain right now,
OK, Well, plan B,
All right, we can talk it through tonight,
but I don't think we should try for an all-up drill tonight,
I mean, people have been up since 4:30 in the morning,
(JD) It became apparent that the only way to get the subs off the "Ares"
was to use the main crane and by sliding the submersibles off the side of the vessel.
With a crane that is 30, 40, 50 feet above the actual pick point of the submersible,
once an object starts to swing, you can't stop it.
It's called the wrecking-ball effect.
Once it gets away from you, you can't get it back.
I'm guessing we've got six to eight feet of travel here, I'm thinking we should use,,,
(JD) It ultimately resulted in Jim writing a 40-page manual
on what he thought the best way to launch the vessel was.
This eye feeds into that,,,
(man) So we spent a long time devising four separate pick points,
as well as eight different points of connection to the submersible
to stop it from swaying.
We would practice all night long.
At dawn the following day, we were ready to attempt it for the first time.
We spent the past 24 hours rebuilding the entire launch and recovery system,
which required us to cut this wall out, rerig every capstan, rerig every block and tackle,
We've got about 20 different points of rigging,
Every single point has to be checked by me, by hand,
Any single point fails, anything,
from the blue winch to the cable itself, snaps, breaks,
not only do we lose the sub, but we risk the chance of losing somebody on the deck,
I'm looking at every pulley under tension, and it's looking at me,
Keldysh, be advised, we are go for launch ops,
Deck crew, be advised we have 15 minutes before we start launch operation,
- Paul? - Yeah, roger that, DP control,
MIR One's going into the water right now,
Let's see the crane, guys,
- Oh, yes, - Stow that, get on the line,
Bye-bye,
Tim, Straps off,
(man) Keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going,
(man on radio) DP control to "Keldysh." MIRs are beginning their descent. Over.
(Jim) Say goodbye to the surface world,
I love this part,
(Jim) Everything is a go, We're ready to vent,
SO, SO, Rover One,
(man) Go ahead, Rover One.
(Jim) We are about to start our tandem descent,
(diver Camera looks clear,
OK, here we go, And three, two, one,,,
- (Jim on radio) Venting. Go, go, go. - OK, we're venting now,
Venting now,
(Jim) All right, Rock and roll, Here we go,
(woman) The descent to Lost City takes about 30 minutes,
which is plenty of time to think about what you're about to do.
My name is Loretta Hidalgo, and I'm an explorer.
Copy that, Rover One, This is Rover Two, hearing you loud and clear,
(Loretta) My goal is to one day explore the reaches of space.
- (Loretta) That is the bomb, Yeah! - (man) We're at 840 meters,
Surface, this is Rover Two, We are at 840 meters, We are on the bottom,
God, these structures are gorgeous,
OK, there's the rendezvous point, and they are right there,
(Loretta on radio) MIR Two, MIR Two, this is Rover Two. Do you copy? Over.
MIR Two, MIR Two, this is Rover Two, Do you copy?
(Mike) That's affirmative, Rover Two. We have a very good visual on you.
(Loretta) We were doing something that no humans had ever done.
This was the first time that four deep submersibles had ever dived together.
The water pressure that you get down at 3,000 feet is mind-boggling.
If you've ever carried a bucket of water, you know that's about a foot of water.
Now imagine being under 3,000 feet of water.
And all that weight of all those buckets lined up on your head
are all pressing down on you and on the submarine.
Definitely not something that humans were evolved to do.
OK, Loretta, can you relay to Mike that we are in position for 'bot ops? Over,
Copy,
MIR Two, MIR Two, are you go for 'bot deploy?
Uh, roger that, We'll get set for 'bot ops, Over,
- OK, There it is, - Yeah, there he is,
There's Jake,
Can you see his tether spinning out?
It's like a spider spinning its web,
I'm just gonna pull a little tether out here, to the left, into the current,
and then I'll yaw back to the right,
(Loretta) We were really pushing the boundary
of being out in an extreme environment.
I had this incredible experience of feeling like I'd been transported into the future.
Hi, 'bot!
That I was on a space mission, and we were watching another spacecraft
coming up to work with us.
Hi, Mike, Get me out of here,
- Affirmative, - Affirmative,
Push in a tiny bit in here, and I get just right in as close as I can go,
(Dijanna) Oh, wow, Are you seeing the structure?
(Mike) Yeah, Beautiful,
OK, Mike, If you come right about 30 degrees, and come forward,
you'll come to a big fan right on the corner of that rock, Over,
(Loretta) Copy that.
(Dijanna) Oh, this is gorgeous, I feel like I'm out there,
- (Mike) Are you liking this? - I'm loving this,
OK, I'm gonna have to come up a little bit, Well, we're doing pretty good here,
I've encountered a little more current than I expected right here,
(Dijanna) Oh, my gosh!
(Mike) Hello, Mr, Big,
(Dijanna) He's like, "Don't even mess with me,"
Oh! Oh, my God,
Wow,
(Dijanna) Kevin Hand is one of our astrobiologists.
And he's a brilliant guy.
Really.
That's one of the interesting things I think about the Europan ocean,
is that you can ask two questions about life on Europa,
Could life have originated on Europa?
(Dijanna) Astrobiology is the study of life on other worlds.
But since Kevin doesn't have any real extraterrestrial specimens to analyze yet,
he's out here doing the next best thing:
Looking at life in the extreme conditions of the deep ocean.
He's a theory guy and he's never been to sea before,
let alone inside a submersible headed to the bottom of the ocean.
Here we go, Into the unknown,
(man) Rover Two, MIR Two copies you loud and clear now. Loud and clear now.
(radio chatter
(Kevin) Yeah, it looks like it goes down for a long ways,
MIR Two is right above us,
Very few people get to see MIR Two from this angle,
That is fantastic,
The scale of these things is so much larger than I had imagined,
It's just amazing,
We've got this huge, huge carbonate structure,
Unbelievable,
(Jim on radio) Copy that. Right rotator going up, rotator going up.
It's just the hot water just flowing up and slowly forming stalactites,
Upside-down stalactites are slowly deposited, millennium after millennium,
(Kevin) So what's interesting about these
is that you don't necessarily need plate tectonics,
You need some means for the water to react with the deep mantle rock,
And then you get the serpentinization reaction
which produces the heat that drives the formation of such systems,
It's absolutely phenomenal,
(Jim on radio) Do you want to go ahead and proceed to the summit? Over.
(Kevin) Roger that,
- (Mike) There's warm water up here, - (Kevin) Yeah,
The vent fluid is just coming right up out of here,
Wow, This is just amazing,
Our technology is just at the level now
where we can safely explore the depths of our own ocean,
- (Mike) Kinda friable, - Yeah,
OK,
Yeah! Look at that,
- We got a rock, - Hey, we got a sample,
(Mike) Rover One, Rover One, this is Rover Two, Do you,,,
- Oh, my goodness, look at that! - (Mike) Oh, Christ!
Holy cow,
- (Mike) OK, stop it, stop it, stop it, - (Jim) Kevin. You seeing this?
(Kevin) Look at that thing, That is absolutely unreal,
(Jim) See if you can get your lights right on it.
(Mike) Roger that,
(Kevin) Oh, my goodness, Look at that, it's just amazing,
Oh, man, look at this thing,
Look at this thing, This is incredible,
(Kevin) How can something like that be alive?
How does a creature like this work? That is absolutely phenomenal,
Beautiful,
Absolutely beautiful,
See the reticulation inside this thing? Look at that,
That is amazing,
(Jim) I have no idea what that is,
- No, - That's what I love about this stuff,
Every single dive, you're gonna see something you've never seen before,
And you might even see something that nobody's ever seen before,
(Jim) Are you seeing this thing? Look at this,
This is, like, the ugliest fish in the world,
Oh, he's got feet! Look, he's got feet, He's got, like, little toe-socks,
(Jim) The thing about deep diving is you always need to expect the unexpected.
(Kevin) Oh, my God, look at that squid,
Oh, it's massive,
Look, look, look, Quick, look,
See it?
Absolutely fantastic,
Look at that fish, You see that guy?
All right, we got us a Dumbo, Been hoping for this for a while,
What a beautiful animal, What a beautiful animal, Look at that,
Like a dancer,
What an amazing creature,
God, you could watch this guy all day,
Almost looks like he's glowing from within,
(Jim) MIR One, MIR One, This is Rover Two, Do you copy?
(distorted MIR One, MIR One, do you copy? This is Rover Two.
MIR One, MIR One, This is Rover Two, Do you copy?
(Mike) It's intermittent, Jim, Sometimes yes and sometimes no,
(Jim) Uh, roger, Mike,
We're seriously low on power and will have to leave the bottom,
I cannot get ahold of Vince,
We must go up,
Genya, We must go up,
Oh, he's trying to say something, about,,,
He's trying to say,,, Look out the porthole,
I can't see him,
Can you call surface?
He's saying, "Up and over"? Might be,
We need you to contact the surface that we are ascending,
(Mike) Can't read it, Zoom in, Let's see if you can read the sign,
(Mike) "Contact surface, must surface," Understood, We'll contact them right now,
(Mike) Ares surface comm, Rover Two leaving the bottom
at X minus 244, Y minus 25,
depth 741 meters,
- (man) So, how was it, Jim? - We got the goods, We definitely got it,
Ah, that thing is phenomenal, How you doing?
- What did you see down there? - Oh, it was just incredible, Just incredible,
There was a huge, um,,, Was it a jellyfish?
Some type of gelatinous,,,
Massive, Like, a meter,
We think that it was feeding off of the, uh,
off the amphipods and the plankton and the copepods that were next to,,,
- Hanging out at the lights? - Hanging out at the light, yeah,
- How's it work? - Man, we don't know,
- But it's there, So it's working somehow, - Exactly,
- Life's pretty cool, - Yeah, absolutely fantastic,
- Welcome back, Kevin, - Thanks,
- Team Rover, - Go team Rover!
(cheering)
My name is Maya Tolstoy, and I'm a marine seismologist
at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
I study underwater volcanoes,
and particularly I study the earthquakes that these volcanoes make.
And I'm trying to understand how the Earth is made,
how the surface of the planet is formed.
I'm going to be deploying ocean-bottom seismometers.
Those are instruments that listen to earthquakes
and other noises on the ocean floor.
In the ocean, the light only goes so far.
And so sound allows you to basically see the bottom of the ocean,
and to see into the ocean crust, the way that light lets you see on the surface.
We put the instruments over the side of the ship. They drop, they gather the data.
Normally, I don't have to dive in order to do my job.
So it was very exciting to finally see the environment
that I've been working on for over a decade.
(Maya) MIR two, copy,
(man on radio) We have a visual on you. We are inbound.
Roger that,
- (Kevin) Can you see them? - (Maya) Yeah, It's out my window,
It looks like a spaceship,
Wow,
That's incredible, That's like another planet,
(Maya) It's such an incredible world down there,
and it's so important to the formation of our planet.
It's where two thirds of the surface of our world was created,
and we still know so little about it.
Do you see how they're all shiny and glassy?
- (Kevin) Oh, yeah, Look at that, - That shows that it cooled superquickly,
That's just, like, it really turns to glass, basically, To obsidian, it's called,
(Kevin) Look at that,
(Maya) And you see how there's hardly any sediment on it?
That's when it's really fresh, This is brand-new crust we're looking at,
(Kevin) Wow,
Now, can you just imagine being down here when this stuff erupts?
Molten rock oozing out and hitting the freezing cold water,
I just can't imagine it, It must have been insane,
(Kevin) Must look pretty cool,
For the few seconds before you die,
(Maya) I miss my son.
He's five months old.
It was such a hard decision to make to come out here.
But I think it's important to study one of the most remarkable phenomenon
we've ever discovered in the oceans.
MIR Two, just keep going upslope on this heading,
The chimneys should be at the top of this sulfide mound, Over,
Roger that,
(Maya) Wow,
There it is,
(Maya) All around our world,
running down the middle of the oceans like seams on a baseball,
are these cracks, these spreading centers,
where the crust of the planet is literally ripping apart.
Up above, the sea looks normal.
But two miles down, it's a violent landscape
where fresh lava flows out of the crack and freezes into rock.
When the sea water seeps down to the molten rock just beneath the new crust,
it gets superheated, far hotter than boiling.
But it can't boil, because of the intense pressure at the bottom of the ocean.
So it comes roaring up out of the sea floor.
When the superheated water hits the freezing ocean, minerals condense out,
forming the chimneys, and creating the black smoke.
When you see black smoke, what you're really seeing
is a blowtorch of superheated water.
Uh, we're getting in position to get a water sample
from the top of one of these structures, Over,
(Jim on radio) Yeah, roger that. That's good.
OK, let's get in as close as we can on this chimney, Genya,
(Maya) These chimneys reach 750 degrees Fahrenheit,
and that's hot enough to melt the windows of your submersible.
That's a bad thing.
Mental note: Don't melt the windows of the submersible.
(Maya) Guys, we're getting really close to this black smoker here,
- Close enough? - I think this is maybe a little too close,
Uh, well, we're starting to get into the plume,
(Maya) Right underneath the sub,
(Jim) Genya, move back. You better move back.
(Genya) OK, I start to move back,
(Mike on radio) That's normal. We usually drive right in 'em like that.
We were right on top of it, That was a little freaky,
That's pretty cool, Kevin,
(Dijanna) The geology's fascinating. But it's not why I came out here.
(Dijanna) Keldysh, Keldysh, MIR Two, We are on the bottom,
Depth 3526 meters,
And we are at the top of the Moose structure, Over,
(Dijanna) These sites were first visited 25 years ago by geologists.
And they weren't looking for life.
But it wasn't until they got into a submersible
and went down to the bottom to see with their own eyes...
It was like, "Oh, my God. There's life down here, and it's beautiful. "
It's an entire ecosystem.
Wow, That's awesome,
(Dijanna on radio) Copy that. That's what we're imaging right now. Over.
- (Dijanna) Look at all that hot water, - (Jim) They're right in the flow,
Oh, man, Check this out,
It's like liquid fire, and these guys are dancing right next to it,
They are really tickling the dragon's tail,
(Dijanna) The science community was stunned.
How could these animals be living in these toxic chemicals,
at these pressures, around extremes of temperature
from freezing to beyond boiling in just a few inches?
How could there be a whole ecosystem living without sunlight?
And not just living, but thriving!
(Jim) Unbelievable,
This is the most insane amount of biomass I ever saw in my life,
(Dijanna) Wow,
- Holy pancakes, Batman, - (Jim laughs)
And they're right there in the flow, just enjoying the hydrothermal fluid,
(Jim) Oh, look at 'em swarming, They love it in the smoke,
(Dijanna) Oh, yeah,
(Dijanna) The vents were providing the energy for life.
It was coming from chemicals dissolved in the water,
coming from inside the Earth itself.
Not photosynthesis, but chemosynthesis.
It was a whole new basis for life, one that didn't need the sun,
only water and heat.
(Jim) That party's been going on down there in the dark for the last billion years,
and it's gonna be going on for the next billion years,
They're just doing their thing, it's got nothing to do with us,
the sun could go out tomorrow and they wouldn't know and they wouldn't care,
(Kevin) Exploring and discovering ecosystems like this,
which may not depend on energy from the sun,
opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities
when we think about the search for life elsewhere.
Wherever we've found liquid water on planet Earth, we've found life.
That's pretty profound.
If we find liquid water elsewhere in the solar system, are we gonna find life?
We won't know unless we start searching.
In fact, NASA is planning a mission called the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter.
AKA JIMO.
At 120 feet long it's gonna be several times longer
than any planetary probe ever launched,
and its nuclear reactor will power ion engines and a big science radar.
The main goal of JIMO will be to use that radar
to look down through the ice of Jupiter's three largest moons.
First, it will study Callisto, and then it'll move to Ganymede.
And these are bizarre moons, the largest of Jupiter's 61 known moons.
Callisto and Ganymede both have crusts of ancient ice and rock
that may hide oceans miles below the surface.
Further in is Io, which is a moon of fire, not ice.
Io's eccentric orbit causes it to deform as it circles Jupiter.
This intense tidal pumping pulls at the moon like taffy,
generating friction at the core which then becomes heat,
and this heat drives the solar system's largest active volcanoes.
There are constant eruptions, rivers of lava,
and volcanic plumes shooting hundreds of miles into space.
But the gem of the Jovian system, at least as far as the search for life is concerned,
is Europa.
It's here where fire and ice come together in perfect harmony.
The scientific community is relatively certain
that beneath the icy, chaotic shell of Europa, there exists a liquid water ocean,
with twice the volume of all the Earth's oceans combined.
So tidal heating is working here too, keeping that water from freezing.
And possibly providing energy for life.
The same kind of life that we're finding at the deep vents here on Earth.
(Jim) You see all that out there, all that yellow and white and orange?
That's just a huge colony of microbes,
This is just acres and acres of this bacterial mass,
Look at that, This could be like a little glimpse back in time,
(Jim) Yeah, couple of billion years ago,
(Kevin) Hydrothermal vents have been on planet Earth
since the oceans were formed.
It may have been sites like these around which life itself began.
(Kevin) If we can just sort of scoop up the top area of that,
maybe a little bit of the sediment below,
Excellent,
Nice sample,
You can see all the stringy little filaments that make up the mat,
(Kevin) Extremophiles are simply life forms that thrive in the extremes
of temperature and pressure and radiation,
environments that to us are deadly.