One Strange Rock ep 1 — Gasp

A synopsis of the first episode of Will Smith’s nature series

Will Smith narrates.
A nature series focusing on planetary ecology through the eyes of, in this episode at least, astronauts as well as climatologists sociologists and the like. This episode discusses oxygen, how it cycles through a complex sequence of natural events and organic processes. Oxygen it is underlined, supports the scope of life present on our planet; in places like (toxic environment in Ethiopia) the only surviving organisms in the acidic (Hydrogen Sulfide rich environment) are bacteria that life of heavy metals. However these bacteria are tiny and nothing much survives otherwise. Oxygen then provides the explosive energy for the scale of life on the rest of the planet as this contrast displays.
We begin with salt pans in a region of East Africa where dust storms carry nutrients across the Atlantic all the way to the amazon basin, fertilizing new plant life, that supports the local ecosystem. While the amazon rain forest creates a tremendous amount of oxygen, surprisingly it consumes as much and so the role of forests on a global scale is beyond the scope of mere oxygen factories. The plant life draws water from the ground and releases it into the atmosphere creating virtual rivers of flying water, or clouds that flow until they meet the Andes, the mountains block the passage of the clouds in an inevitable collision leading to condensation and erosion of rock from the passage of water that ultimately carries rich minerals to the sea.
And now we come to the diatoms, responsible for around half the oxygen on planet earth, these tiny algae feed on the silica provided by rivers for their shells and produce oxygen via photosynthesis.
One of the other sources for silica for diatoms are glaciers which crush rock in their path and drag them into the oceans. When the glaciers are moving they carrying nutrients to the diatoms allowing them to feed and causing great blooms that can be seen all the way from space. However these glaciers can halt for decades, starving diatoms, killing them so that they settle to the bottom of the oceans. These areas dry up, revealing salt pans and unearthing the silica which is once again ready for its trek across the globe.
The series also discusses how truly small this bubble of oxygen around us is. Gold miners living in a mountain town in Peru for example suffer from an inordinate rate lung diseases and other problems since living in an oxygen deficient environment can lead to organ death. At the same time too much oxygen can make the world a combustible place, a fact witnessed in the earlier eras of the planet when oxygen levels were much higher and the world burned longer.
In conclusion the natural balance is both critical and astoundingly stable with oxygen staying at a constant 20% for most of history helping to support life without itself becoming a danger. At the same time oxygen both sustains life and is generated by natural events and by organisms which makes it clear that the Earth truly is one entity.