1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,336 3, 2, 1 – 2 00:00:04,337 --> 00:00:07,340 This is the Endurance rocket ship and she's about to discover 3 00:00:07,340 --> 00:00:10,143 something incredible and fundamental about the Earth. 4 00:00:11,311 --> 00:00:12,078 So, why here? 5 00:00:12,078 --> 00:00:15,081 What makes Earth this special place that we all call home? 6 00:00:15,448 --> 00:00:17,951 One of the reasons may be 7 00:00:17,951 --> 00:00:21,121 due to the energy fields that our planet creates. 8 00:00:21,121 --> 00:00:22,322 So, the first one is gravity. 9 00:00:22,322 --> 00:00:23,857 You're very familiar with gravity. 10 00:00:24,324 --> 00:00:27,961 It's important for life because it's holding our atmosphere on. 11 00:00:27,961 --> 00:00:29,996 If you don't have enough gravity, 12 00:00:29,996 --> 00:00:32,999 your atmosphere tends to escape to space, like at Mars. 13 00:00:33,400 --> 00:00:35,702 The second field is the magnetic field. 14 00:00:35,702 --> 00:00:38,505 It's this shield that’s protecting our planet 15 00:00:38,505 --> 00:00:41,508 from this stream of particles that comes from the Sun. 16 00:00:41,941 --> 00:00:45,311 So, our rocket has discovered and finally measured number three: 17 00:00:45,311 --> 00:00:47,047 it's called the ambipolar field 18 00:00:47,047 --> 00:00:48,948 and it's an agent of chaos. 19 00:00:48,948 --> 00:00:53,019 It counters gravity, and it strips particles off into space. 20 00:00:53,453 --> 00:00:57,257 Whenever spacecraft have flown over the poles of the Earth, they’ve felt 21 00:00:57,257 --> 00:01:02,495 this supersonic wind of particles – called the polar wind – flowing out into space. 22 00:01:02,862 --> 00:01:06,966 There must be some invisible force lurking there responsible for this outflow. 23 00:01:07,100 --> 00:01:09,135 But we've never been able to measure this before 24 00:01:09,135 --> 00:01:10,804 because we haven't had the technology. 25 00:01:10,804 --> 00:01:16,142 So, we built the Endurance rocket ship to go looking for this great invisible force, right? 26 00:01:16,142 --> 00:01:19,145 This ambipolar electrical field for the first time. 27 00:01:19,279 --> 00:01:22,449 So, we were expecting to hopefully find the source of this polar wind. 28 00:01:22,449 --> 00:01:25,452 But what we weren't expecting was this other thing that it does 29 00:01:25,452 --> 00:01:29,222 to our skies and to the atmosphere, which is just so profound. 30 00:01:31,758 --> 00:01:33,626 There's only one launch site in the word, 31 00:01:33,626 --> 00:01:36,863 far enough north to actually try and launch into this thing, 32 00:01:36,863 --> 00:01:40,733 and it's in the very north of this tiny island called Svalbard, 33 00:01:40,733 --> 00:01:42,969 just off the coast of the north of Norway. 34 00:01:42,969 --> 00:01:47,107 Which meant a little bit of a trek to get it to the launch site. 35 00:01:54,914 --> 00:01:58,284 About to sail today from Longyearbyen to Ny-Ålesund, 36 00:01:58,284 --> 00:02:01,254 up the coast for about 14 hours. 37 00:02:06,493 --> 00:02:08,962 We’ve had a couple of days of being completely whited out, 38 00:02:08,962 --> 00:02:12,298 and now it's calm in this beautiful country. 39 00:02:12,298 --> 00:02:15,602 I have a feeling this might be the day. 40 00:02:18,805 --> 00:02:20,573 Solar? Solar go! 41 00:02:20,573 --> 00:02:22,308 Radar? Go! 42 00:02:22,308 --> 00:02:24,511 Mission control, this is Endurance. 43 00:02:24,511 --> 00:02:26,980 Go flight. We are go for launch. 44 00:02:27,380 --> 00:02:29,816 I think we're about to launch a rocket. 45 00:02:30,650 --> 00:02:33,686 3, 2, 1 – 46 00:02:33,686 --> 00:02:35,955 Ignition! 47 00:02:35,955 --> 00:02:37,624 There she goes! 48 00:02:43,696 --> 00:02:46,065 During the 15-minute suborbital flight, 49 00:02:46,065 --> 00:02:49,702 we successfully measured this ambipolar field for the first time. 50 00:02:49,903 --> 00:02:52,906 When you add up all of the strength of it over the whole flight, 51 00:02:53,106 --> 00:02:55,575 the whole potential drop was only about half a volt. 52 00:02:55,575 --> 00:02:56,309 And that's nothing, right? 53 00:02:56,309 --> 00:02:59,312 That's about as strong as one of those tiny little watch batteries. 54 00:02:59,312 --> 00:03:03,516 But that's exactly the amount that you need to explain this, ya know, 55 00:03:03,516 --> 00:03:06,519 polar wind escape, this outflow. 56 00:03:07,020 --> 00:03:09,122 Because we’ve measured it for the first time, 57 00:03:09,122 --> 00:03:13,693 we can actually understand the role it plays in the atmosphere. 58 00:03:13,960 --> 00:03:17,163 And despite being weak, it's incredibly important. 59 00:03:17,163 --> 00:03:20,867 It counters gravity and it basically lifts the skies up. 60 00:03:21,234 --> 00:03:25,805 It's like this conveyor belt that's lifting this atmosphere up into space. 61 00:03:26,873 --> 00:03:29,642 So, like us, you’re probably left a lot of questions, right? 62 00:03:29,642 --> 00:03:30,843 What does this field do? 63 00:03:30,843 --> 00:03:32,212 What's it for, right? 64 00:03:32,212 --> 00:03:34,080 How has it shaped the planet? 65 00:03:34,080 --> 00:03:36,082 And I can't tell you yet. 66 00:03:36,516 --> 00:03:41,120 This field is so fundamental to understanding the way the planet works. 67 00:03:41,120 --> 00:03:45,091 It's been here since the beginning, alongside gravity and magnetism. 68 00:03:45,225 --> 00:03:47,994 It's been lofting particles to space and, 69 00:03:47,994 --> 00:03:50,997 you know, stretching up the skies since the beginning. 70 00:03:51,464 --> 00:03:54,334 It's probably had an impact on the evolution of the atmosphere, 71 00:03:54,334 --> 00:03:56,035 but I can't tell you how much yet. 72 00:03:56,035 --> 00:03:58,071 It may even have left a mark on the oceans. 73 00:03:58,304 --> 00:03:59,839 How much I don't know. 74 00:03:59,839 --> 00:04:03,843 This field is a fundamental part of the way Earth works. 75 00:04:04,110 --> 00:04:05,678 And now we’ve finally measured it, 76 00:04:05,678 --> 00:04:08,848 we can actually start to ask some of these bigger and exciting questions.