The Universe

Male narrator: In the beginning, there was darkness,

and then, bang,

giving birth to an endless expanding existence

of time, space, and matter.

Every day, new discoveries are unlocking the mysterious,

the mind-blowing, the deadly secrets

of a place we call The Universe.

Did a comet slamming into the ocean

cause the biblical flood?

- The tsunami wave itself was at least 50 meters high.

Narrator: Did a fiery messenger from space

reverse the fate of Ohristianity?

- Suddenly, at 70,000 miles per hour,

this meteor comes crashing to Earth.

Narrator: Did a fireball in the sky

wipe out the first North Americans?

- Space literally has changed history time and time again.

Narrator: A maverick group of scientists is on a quest...

Very large comet impacts

could have changed the course of human civilization.

Narrator: A quest to defy mainstream science

and prove that human history

was rocked with catastrophic moments,

when space changed history.

The.Universe.S07E07.DVDRip.XviD-FFNDVD English SRT Subtitles - UF (v1.00)

40 days and 40 nights of torrential rains.

The Bible's great flood and the Epic of Gilgamesh

are widespread myths that depict an event

that wiped humanity off the face of the Earth.

But was it simply a myth,

or did it really happen?

And if so, how can science explain such a catastrophe?

- There's no reason that very large comet impacts

could not have occurred during the last 15,000 years.

And there could have been, even, a globally catastrophic event

that could have changed

the course of human civilization.

Narrator: Archeologist Bruce Masse

is a member of a small group of maverick scientists

called the Holocene lmpact Working Group.

It's named for the Holocene Epoch,

which began 10,000 years ago.

His group has roiled the world of astronomy

by claiming that catastrophic impacts

have occurred much more often than supposed

and have actually changed the course of human history.

Oase in point: The great flood.

The biblical story of Noah's ark

is simply one version of an ancient story

that's found in dozens of myths and legends

across the globe.

- What I decided to do is to take a look

at this worldwide distribution of flood myths,

take a sample of those myths,

and the sample I selected was 175 locations

from across the world.

Narrator: Most of these flood myths

contain striking similarities,

including the common legend

that just before the flood began,

a celestial creature with impressive tails,

raced across the sky.

- Since they didn't have a science

to understand what comets were all about,

they would try to come up with a natural solution.

So therefore, a comet might be a snake.

Narrator: Oomets are known to have tails.

The visible effect of two byproducts:

Dust reflecting sunlight

and glowing ionized gases

roaring off the back like jet contrails.

Interestingly enough,

you can actually have what's called an anti-tail,

where, from our point of view,

it looks like the tail of the comets

are actually pointing

in two totally different directions.

So as solar radiation streams off of our sun,

it tends to make the material

that's evaporating off of the comet

appear to recede away from the Sun.

Narrator: As seen from certain spots on the Earth,

the dust tail can sometimes curve around

so that it appears to point in the opposite direction.

So observers on Earth

would see an object in which it looked like

there was a head with a headdress

or a horn coming out of its head.

In North American mythology, South American mythology,

it's a serpent with a horn on it's head.

In Hindu, it's a fish with a giant horn on it's head.

Narrator: In most myths, the creature's arrival

was followed by a watery disaster

that almost destroyed the world.

- If you look at other aspects of this mythology,

it's talking about, then, darkness, hurricane-force winds.

It's talking about torrential rainfall.

Talking about tsunamis.

Now, if you add all of that information together...

These are the properties that you would get

from a deep water ocean impact of a comet.

- If a comet were to strike in the open ocean,

you would really get a massive amount of energy

delivered into that part of the ocean that it hit.

Narrator: The amount of water

injected into the atmosphere would be colossal.

- We're here visiting a forge in a blacksmith shop

to show what would happen when a comet comes in

at high speeds and impacts the ocean,

delivering all that kinetic energy

into the water.

Narrator: A typical forge can heat carbon steel

to approximately 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit.

But a hypervelocity comet strike

will produce shock temperatures well over 10,000 degrees,

hotter than the surface of the Sun.

- A comet coming in from outer space

would be carrying with it

an immense amount of kinetic energy

because it's moving at such an extreme velocity.

When that impacts the ocean,

that energy is capable of vaporizing

up to hundreds of square kilometers of water,

sending plumes of steam up into the outer atmosphere.

- Normally, in the upper atmosphere,

there's only about a half a percent of water vapor.

So you get this injection

of this large amount of new water vapor.

Narrator: As the massive infusion of water

into the atmosphere rains down,

a global deluge could drown the Earth

for weeks or months.

Bruce Masse believed he had found

a possible source of the worldwide flood myth...

A massive comet strike.

But he lacked the physical evidence.

Oolumbia University geologist Dallas Abbott

investigates potential cosmic craters.

- Bruce Masse had compiled a set of oral histories

of catastrophic events

that sounded like they were some sort of cosmic impact,

and he found that the center of them

was around the Indian Ocean.

Narrator: Using bathymetry readings,

or satellite measurements

of depth variations in the ocean floor,

Abbott was able to pinpoint a potential impact zone.

She named it Burkle crater,

in honor of a colleague at Oolumbia University.

Burkle is a massive depression

located nearly 1,000 miles off the coast of Madagascar...

About 18 miles in diameter,

Burkle Orater lies at a depth of approximately 13,000 feet,

making an extensive study difficult and expensive.

But a crater this big would produce

another logical fingerprint of a massive comet impact:

A mega-tsunami.

- A comet hitting the ocean would actually be more damaging

than a comet hitting solid ground.

And that's because it would send up a gigantic tsunami

that would slam into the coast all around it.

Narrator: When massive tsunamis strike shorelines,

the evidence can persist for centuries.

Abbott turned her attention to the shoreline of Madagascar.

- At the time, I couldn't get data on Madagascar.

But the minute Google Earth came out,

I went and I looked at Madagascar.

And the tsunami deposits there were phenomenal.

I immediately found these huge chevrons,

which I think are probably

the biggest chevrons on the planet.

Narrator: Ohevrons are symmetrical sand dunes

found along coastlines around the world.

Some believe they form when massive waves

slam into the coast and then recede.

Their distinctive V shape

may even serve as a directional marker.

The back azimuth is a V.

So this is inland. V points inland.

The back azimuth of the V,

that tells you where the source is.

Narrator: Abbott claims that source is Burkle crater,

located hundreds of miles offshore.

But others doubt that tsunamis

have anything to do with chevron formation.

- The geologists that actually go to the sites

and do fieldwork and have looked at these,

they don't associate those with tsunami.

They associate those with windblown dust.

And so I'm skeptical that these things

have anything to do with tsunami waves.

Narrator: But when Dallas Abbott traveled to Madagascar,

she found surprising evidence trapped inside the dunes.

- We found tsunami deposits over 200 meters high.

And when we got to the top of this big hill,

we found marine fossils in the sediment.

And we found it in all of the locations

where we looked.

Hurricanes bring in marine microfossils.

But they only bring the kind