One Strange Rock

For the privileged few who have looked down at Earth from space, the thin blue line of our planet’s atmosphere sets it apart from every other planet we’ve seen — it sustains life. The story of how Earth creates and regulates that oxygen-rich atmosphere is mind-blowing and includes a flying river, a global dust storm, a collapsing glacier and the most important creature you’ve never heard of. All connected together to allow the planet to breathe.

Ever wonder how our planet got here? It was born in a cosmic storm and shaped by violence. We’re only here because of random collisions in a dangerous cosmos. They could have destroyed us, but instead constructed a planet from the rubble of the early solar system, gave us oceans in a bombardment from the heavens and brought order to our world when two planets collided.

Earth protects itself from the sun: the David and Goliath story of Earth’s relationship with its greatest threat, our seemingly benign sun. The sun is the big, violent boss of the solar system, throwing out devastating particles and deadly radiation. Without several shields, one generated by our unique planetary core, another by our atmosphere and a third by our interconnected weather systems, life on Earth would never have survived.

Our rock is special — it’s alive. Though the building blocks of life are common across the universe, life is rare. So what is it about planet Earth that sets it apart? This is the story of dynamic forces and crazy coincidences that took a bunch of dead ingredients and transformed them into something as wondrously intricate as life. And if it happened here, could it happen elsewhere?

It’s not enough for Earth to be habitable, it also has to be lethal for life to thrive. Death is hardwired into everything from our cells to the planet itself. Global mass extinctions create the opportunities that evolution seizes, boosting biodiversity. At the heart of this story is a biological superpower – sex, life’s trade-off with death to survive in a restless world.

Astronaut Chris Hadfield has left the planet three times already. Now he wants to do more. After seeing the bullet holes left by asteroids on our planet’s surface, he believes our only chance of survival is to escape Earth and build a colony off-world. But it will be the toughest journey humanity has ever faced: space radiation, microgravity and the bacteria inside us will conspire against us. Could we earthlings ever survive off our one strange rock?

Ever since life emerged, microbes, plants and animals have all sculpted the planet’s surface and atmosphere in the strangest ways: fish poop creates islands; dead animals create mountains; plants help create continents. From rocks to rivers, life has crafted everything that makes our planet so special. But this power of change brings with it profound dangers. Life doesn’t just create. It can also destroy.

Will we find life like ours on another planet? All life on Earth started as single-cell bacteria and stayed like that for 2 billion years. So how did that bacteria become the complex, colorful and diverse life that’s all around us? And could this happen anywhere else in the universe? Hosted by astronaut Dr. Mae Jemison.

Of all life on Earth, why are we the only ones with the smarts to leave our planet? For nearly 3 billion years nothing had a brain. Even today it is estimated over 90 percent of life doesn’t need a brain to survive. So, what happened? What did our planet do to set in motion a chain of impossible and unlikely events that ultimately made us so much more intelligent than anything else?

After three missions and 665 weightless days in space, NASA’s most experienced astronaut, Peggy Whitson, smashes through the atmosphere on her final journey home — to planet Earth. With her first steps back on land, she encounters fresh air, blue skies, warm sun and, of course, gravity. There’s no place like home. Or is there? Just how strange is our rock and is it really unique in the universe?

It's the most incredible place - and you're on it. Our planet is literally bursting with life. So destructive, so fragile. The strangest place in the universe might just be...right here. A 10-part global event from National Geographic, hosted by Will Smith.