Worlds Beyond Earth: Now Open

[SPACE WIND]

[The light from a star slowly illuminates a rotating planet.]

CARTER EMMART (Director, Worlds Beyond Earth): It’s important today that we remind ourselves that we live on a planet.

[MUSIC]

[The planet continues to rotate and become illuminated until it is clear that it is Earth. Earth starts to shrink away and get smaller in space.]

EMMART: We tend to forget where we are in space.

NATALIE STARKEY (Writer, Worlds Beyond Earth): When many of us were in school, we learned that the planets and moons around us were dead and dormant. But actually, what this show tells us, is that it couldn’t be farther from the truth.

[DRUMS]

[The logo for the American Museum of Natural History unfurls on screen. It disappears and the camera flies through space towards a red planet, Mars, surrounded by several tracking satellites and spacecraft.]

DENTON EBEL (Curator, Worlds Beyond Earth): This space show, Worlds Beyond Earth, focuses on the worlds in our solar system.

[EBEL appears on screen. Lower third reads: “Denton Ebel, Curator, Worlds Beyond Earth”]

EBEL: And what we’ve learned by going to them is that they’re more active than we thought they were.

[A planet has blue lines radiating from its two poles.]

EBEL: Some have magnetic fields, others have oceans,

[A spacecraft, Voyager, flies by a hazy yellow moon.]

EBEL: others have atmospheres. Processes we recognize from our Earth­–

[A gray orb flies through a dense field of other small orbs, with a huge planet looming illuminated in the background.]

EBEL: –but that are different on these other worlds. 

STARKEY: We could define the term “world” in different ways, but for me I think it’s about–

[STARKEY appears on screen. Lower third reads: “Natalie Starkey, Writer, Worlds Beyond Earth”]

STARKEY: –any object that can tell us the history of where our solar system came from. These objects could be small, just a few kilometers in diameter,

[A rocky object flies away from the camera in a haze of white light.]

STARKEY: or something the size of Jupiter,

[A spacecraft flies past the rings of Saturn.]

STARKEY: but they all have an important part of that story to tell us.

[The camera flies through the red canyons of Mars.]

EMMART: We know about these worlds­–

[EMMART appears on screen. Lower third reads: “Carter Emmart, Director, Worlds Beyond Earth”]

EMMART: because we’ve gone there. If we hadn’t gone there with our instrumentation or our astronauts, we’d be still back in the era of looking at these things–

[A golden space telescope/spacecraft flies overhead, pointed at the stars.]

EMMART: –from the ground with telescopes.

EBEL: We’ve been exploring our solar system for 60 years.

[EBEL reappears on screen.]

EBEL: And in that time we’ve learned amazing things. We’ve learned by going to those places–

[A spacecraft orbits around a comet, scanning as it goes.]

EBEL: –and exploring them with orbiters, with flybys, with landers.

[The outline of Mars fades into the distance of the starscape.]

EBEL: And we learn about these planets but then we learn from them­–

[A rotating model of Earth is peeled away to show the inner core and mantle layers deep within.]

EBEL: –about our own planet. This show will create a sense of wonder about–

[A distant view of our solar system shows comets and asteroids barreling in and out of the center.]

EBEL: –the solar system, but most especially about our own Earth and how unique and wonderful it is–

[The path of a spacecraft orbits Earth and jets off into space.]

EBEL: –that this planet, where complex life and humans have evolved,

[The camera pulls away from the dead and gray surface of the Earth’s moon.]

EBEL: is so different from these other places.

[The camera flies towards Jupiter and its moon Io.]

STARKEY: What we’re learning is that when we go out there,

[A spacecraft flies off into space with the illuminated silhouette of a planet behind it.]

STARKEY: nothing is as we expected.

[The planet Venus is bombarded by solar radiation, which looks like wind across its surface.]

STARKEY: There’s activity everywhere, and our solar system is still evolving and changing.

[An orange simulation of a solar system forming, with a bright star at its center.]

STARKEY: Our solar system is not finished.

LUPITA NYONG’O (Narrator, Worlds Beyond Earth): I’m Lupita Nyong’o.

[A planet with billowing radiation and magnetic field paths is backlit by a star.]

NYONG’O: We’re on a mission to explore worlds beyond Earth.

[The American Museum of Natural History logo appears, with text beneath: “Worlds Beyond Earth. Narrated by Academy Award Winner Lupita Nyong’o.”]

[MUSIC ENDS]

[Credits roll.

Worlds Beyond Earth is dedicated to the memory of Charles Hayden in celebration of the 150th anniversary of his birth and made possible by the generous support of the Charles Hayden Foundation.

Worlds Beyond Earth is also generously sponsored by a grant made in loving memory of Wallace Gilroy.

Video
AMNH / L. Stevens and E. Chapman

Music
Robert Miller

©American Museum of Natural History]