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OASIS IN SPACE Copyright 2003, Spitz, Inc. TIME NARRATIVE 01:00:00:00 01:00:19:00 SCENE 1 Beyond the moon, beyond the sun and stars, far beyond the Milky Way, we enter a realm of perpetual darkness… the cold, black emptiness of space. 01:00:34:00 Yet, even here, small amounts of matter can be found – a variety of different atoms and molecules spread thinly throughout the void. 01:00:51:00 Together, these microscopic particles form the raw material of the evolving cosmos, the basic building blocks of the universe itself. SCENE 2 01:01:05:00 From our present position, the architecture of the universe can be seen on a much grander scale. 01:01:12:00 Here we see the galaxies…glowing pinwheels of gas, dust and stars. 01:01:27:00 The universe is organized into galaxies of many shapes and sizes. 01:01:34:00 Before us now is an enormous “spiral” galaxy. 01:01:38:00 A typical galaxy, it glows with the light of billions of suns. 01:01:48:00 Along the expanse of its arms, swarms of gas and dust are swept into vast clouds called “nebulae.” 01:01:57:00 In some regions, a nebula may glow with an eerie light produced by the energy of nearby stars, while elsewhere, the clouds are so thick that nearly all star light is blocked out. Page 1 OASIS IN SPACE Copyright 2003, Spitz, Inc. 01:02:13:00 Thousands of these gaseous clouds are scattered throughout the galaxy. 01:02:19:00 Within their frozen interiors, atoms combine into more complex molecules – ammonia, methane, carbon monoxide, and surprisingly – water. SCENE 3 01:02:37:00 These interstellar clouds hold other secrets too – they are the birthplace of stars SCENE 4 01:03:28:00 About five billion years ago, a new, rather average yellow star condensed from a great cloud of gas and dust. 01:03:38:00 Also born was a family of planets, moons, asteroids and comets – all built with chemicals from the original cloud. 01:04:07:00 The inner planets orbit swiftly; the outer planets can take decades to complete a single revolution of their far-off parent star. 01:04:24:00 We now direct our approach toward the heart of this young solar system. SCENE 5 01:04:58:00 Relatively close to the star, a place of blue skies and liquid, watery oceans looms into view. 01:05:08:00 Here, water molecules inherited from the ancient nebula collect and flow on the surface of a small, fragile, rocky world. 01:05:19:00 Here we find our Oasis In Space. Page 2 OASIS IN SPACE Copyright 2003, Spitz, Inc. 01:05:38:00 The Earth is dominated by water in all its forms. 01:05:43:00 Some floats in the atmosphere in clouds of water vapor. 01:05:48:00 Some is tied up in ice caps at the poles, growing and shrinking with the seasons. 01:05:55:00 But most of the water ebbs and flows in the oceans, lakes and rivers that cover three-quarters of our planet. SCENE 6 01:06:05:00 The young, evolving Earth was very different than it is today. 01:06:10:00 The Earth was a barren wasteland, bombarded by comets and meteors. 01:06:32:00 Volcanoes dominated the landscape, venting enormous amounts of gases. 01:06:40:00 Gravity held the gases, creating an atmosphere. 01:07:03:00 Eventually, the rains came, filling the ocean basins. 01:07:09:00 And it was in the oceans that life began. SCENE 7 01:07:22:00 Over the millennia, we have learned how to explore our water world. 01:07:28:00 But the tools of exploration have changed, and today, our eyes look outward to space, to the other planets of our solar system. 01:07:42:00 Are there other water worlds, like our own? Page 3 OASIS IN SPACE Copyright 2003, Spitz, Inc. 01:07:46:00 Could life, human or otherwise, survive on any of them? SCENE 8 01:08:00:00 As we move away from Earth, the Moon, our closest celestial neighbor, is our first stop. 01:08:07:00 Far from the ocean-covered world early observers imagined it to be, the Moon suffers from a simple lack of size. 01:08:16:00 Too small to retain an atmosphere, any gases it once had have long since escaped into space. 01:08:28:00 With no air, there can be no clouds, no rain, no oceans, no weather to erase the impact craters that scar this dead landscape. 01:08:41:00 Vast, ancient lava flows cover the regions that were once, hopefully named, seas. 01:08:51:00 Yet, we have found small amounts of frozen water on the Moon, mostly inside craters at the Moon’s poles. SCENE 9 01:09:11:00 Spacecraft revealed another angry, barren desert when they flew past Mercury, the planet closest to the Sun. 01:09:22:00 Only slightly larger than the Moon, Mercury too is an airless, waterless, heavily-cratered world. 01:09:31:00 Scorched by its proximity to the Sun, the daytime side of Mercury roasts at hundreds of degrees, then plunges to well below zero as it slowly rotates into night. Page 4 OASIS IN SPACE Copyright 2003, Spitz, Inc. 01:09:46:00 Still, water actually exists on this world of extremes – in the form of tiny patches of ice, clinging to the inside of craters at the north and south poles of the planet, forever sheltered from the sun. SCENE 10 01:10:05:00 One of the biggest triumphs of the space age has been the exploration of Venus. 01:10:19:00 Of all the worlds, Venus is most like the Earth in size, mass, composition and distance from the Sun. 01:10:28:00 Yet what a different world it is! 01:10:35:00 Pierced by a handful of small probes, explored by radar, the thick clouds of Venus, so different from the water-bearing clouds of Earth, permanently shroud an awful reality. 01:10:58:00 Clouds rain drops of sulfuric acid, not water, on to the landscape. 01:11:05:00 The clouds pass some sunlight, warming the ground, but the thick carbon dioxide atmosphere prevents most of the heat from escaping back into space. 01:11:17:00 This "greenhouse effect" traps the energy, making Venus the hottest planet in the solar system. 01:11:26:00 Still mockingly known by the name of the goddess of beauty, Venus offers us a nightmare vision of planetary evolution gone astray. Page 5 OASIS IN SPACE Copyright 2003, Spitz, Inc. SCENE 11 01:11:43:00 Larger than Mercury, but only half the diameter of Venus or Earth, Mars has enough gravity to retain a thin atmosphere of unbreathable carbon dioxide. 01:12:14:00 Iron oxide, commonly known as “rust,” covers the surface of the “red planet.” 01:12:24:00 In Martian summer, huge dust storms scour the surface with hurricane force winds, while in winter, frozen carbon dioxide frosts the landscape. 01:12:49:00 On Mars, we see signs of giant volcanoes, canyons and riverbeds, but the volcanoes are dormant and the riverbeds dry. 01:13:17:00 Water once flowed here, carving the land. 01:13:22:00 New evidence suggests that there might still be liquid water – and possibly life -- under the Martian surface. SCENE 12 01:13:51:00 On the border between the inner and outer planets lies the Asteroid Belt. 01:14:07:00 The asteroids are little more than jagged cinders, small chunks of rock and iron, with very small amounts of frozen water. SCENE 13 01:14:20:00 Beyond the Asteroid Belt we enter the realm of the giant planets. 01:14:26:00 As a group, they contain most of the total mass of the planets in our solar system, and most have large numbers of moons. Page 6 OASIS IN SPACE Copyright 2003, Spitz, Inc. 01:14:42:00 Jupiter, the largest planet, is a typical gas giant – a huge sphere of hydrogen, helium, methane and ammonia. 01:14:52:00 At some depth, the pressure probably compresses the gases into a liquid, forming a bizarre ocean of toxic chemicals. 01:15:04:00 Floating in the turbulent atmosphere is Jupiter’s most distinctive feature -the Great Red Spot, a huge, rapidly spinning storm system. 01:15:16:00 More than three times larger than our entire planet, it has been observed ever since the invention of the telescope. 01:15:26:00 Inside the Spot, spacecraft revealed winds that reach and surpass the most violent typhoon known on Earth. 01:15:46:00 But this storm rages without pounding surf and torrential rains, for water is not the raw material of Jupiter’s weather. SCENE 14 01:15:58:00 Like many of the gas giant outer planets, Jupiter is circled by a diverse family of moons, and the four largest are worlds in their own right. 01:16:09:00 Europa has a white, smooth surface criss-crossed by dark stripes, with few craters. 01:16:16:00 The lack of craters could mean that the surface is fluid and self-repairing, most likely a cracked, icy crust over an ocean of liquid water or slushy ice. Page 7 OASIS IN SPACE Copyright 2003, Spitz, Inc. 01:16:51:00 Life can be found in some very inhospitable places on Earth… could there be life in the Europan ocean? 01:17:07:00 Some scientists think it’s possible…new space probes launched over the next few decades may provide the answer SCENE 15 01:17:21:00 Our search for water takes us on to Saturn, the jewel of the outer solar system. 01:17:52:00 Almost twice as far from the Sun as Jupiter, Saturn is encircled by a complex system of satellites and rings. 01:18:03:00 The rings are probably remnants of a shattered moon, or perhaps, the raw material of a moon that never came to be. 01:18:11:00 Saturn’s rings, too, are mostly ice. 01:18:16:00 Though they look uniform and solid from a distance, close up, the rings resolve into a vast swarm of icy particles, each particle an individual satellite. SCENE 16 01:18:37:00 Across ever-widening gulfs of distance, we next encounter Uranus and Neptune, only discovered in the last two hundred years. 01:18:53:00 Both Uranus and Neptune have a bluish color that suggests oceans, and Neptune was even named for the ancient god of the sea. 01:19:03:00 But appearances are deceiving, for their color is caused by methane clouds in their frigid atmospheres. Page 8 OASIS IN SPACE Copyright 2003, Spitz, Inc. 01:19:19:00 Within the clouds, charged particles circulate in a sea of liquid water, producing electric currents and magnetic fields which surround these planets. 01:19:34:00 So, there may be oceans of a sort on Uranus and Neptune. 01:19:39:00 But under these conditions, they probably resemble battery acid more than water! SCENE 17 01:19:50:00 Finally we come to Pluto, dimly lit by the distant Sun. 01:19:55:00 Pluto, its moon Charon, and Neptune’s moon Triton may be large examples of a newly-discovered class of objects orbiting at the far reaches of the solar system. 01:20:08:00 They appear to be left-overs from the creation of the planets, frozen water and gases similar to the nuclei of comets. 01:20:17:00 Some of the comets we see from Earth probably originated here. 01:20:21:00 But most will remain, like Pluto, a reservoir of water frozen by the cold of space into ice as hard as the hardest rock. SCENE 18 01:20:36:00 Our star dwindles in the distance, circled by a family of planets and moons. 01:20:43:00 Water exists on many of these worlds, but only on Earth did it become the major component of evolving life. Page 9 OASIS IN SPACE Copyright 2003, Spitz, Inc. 01:20:52:00 With its moderate conditions, its vast oceans and oxygen-rich atmosphere, Earth is unique in the solar system. 01:21:01:00 But the Sun is just an average star; small, stable, like billions of other stars in the Milky Way galaxy. 01:21:10:00 And our galaxy itself is typical of billions of galaxies in the known universe, each in turn, home to untold billions of stars. 01:21:23:00 Stars and planets form from clouds of gas and dust, clouds which contain water. 01:21:32:00 Several other solar systems have already been discovered. 01:21:37:00 How many more are out there? 01:21:40:00 How many other “water planets” orbit just the right distance from their own “average” stars? 01:21:51:00 Across the reaches of space and time, our quest continues, the search for life goes on. 01:22:01:00 We listen for a faint echo from some far-off civilization, for a signal from an alien world… 01:22:09:00 For signs of another…Oasis In Space. Page 10