The National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Birth of Planet Earth

Narrated by Richard Dormer.
Birth of Planet Earth tells the twisted tale of our planet’s origins.

Scientists now believe that our galaxy is filled with solar systems, including up to a billion planets roughly the size of our own. The film employs advanced, data-driven, cinematic-quality visualizations to explore some of the greatest questions in science today: How did Earth become a living planet in the wake of our solar system’s violent birth? What does its history tell us about our chances of finding other worlds that are truly Earth-like?

Produced by Spitz Creative Media, NCSA’s Advanced Visualization Lab, Thomas Lucas Productions, Inc., in association with Tellus Science Museum. This project has been made possible with support from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the Greater Philadelphia Film Office; funded in part by the National Science Foundation.

Visualization Excerpts

Supernovae

Countless supernovae explosions have seeded our galaxy with planet-building elements.

Credit: Nathan Goldbaum, National Center for Supercomputing Applications; Mark Krumholz, Australian National University; John Forbes, Harvard Institute for Theory and Computation.

Visualization by Advanced Visualization Lab, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, U. of Illinois.

Formation Of The Solar System

A dense, rotating clump within a giant cloud of gas and dust, collapsing underits own gravity, starts the formation of our Sun and its planets.

Credit: Kevin Walsh, Southwest Research Institute; CRIMSON Beowulf Cluster at Observatoire de la Cote d’Azur; Alessandro Morbidelli, Sean Raymond, David O’Brien, Avi Mandell; Aaron Boley, U. of British Columbia; Alexei Kritsuk and Michael Norman, U. of California, San Diego.

Visualization by Advanced Visualization Lab, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, U. of Illinois.

Grand Tack

The gravity of Jupiter (outermost orbit) destabilizes the orbits of early innerplanets. Many collide with each other; some are ejected from the solar system.

Credit: Kevin Walsh, Southwest Research Institute; CRIMSON Beowulf Cluster at Observatoire de la Cote d’Azur; Alessandro Morbidelli, Sean Raymond, David O’Brien, Avi Mandell.

Visualization by Advanced Visualization Lab, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, U. of Illinois.

Theia Collision

Theia slams into the Earth. Earth will soon be enveloped in vaporized rock, some of it hotter than the surface of the sun.

Credit: Robin Canup, Southwest Research Institute.

Visualization by Advanced Visualization Lab, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, U. of Illinois.

Theia Collision Continued

Theia doesn’t survive the impact – its remains become mixed with debris from Earth, and are either flung out into space or become part of the Earth-Moon system.

Credit: Robin Canup, Southwest Research Institute.

Visualization by Advanced Visualization Lab, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, U. of Illinois.

Formation Of The Moon

In the first 24 hours, some of the collision debris coalesces into what will become the Moon. Remaining material will swirl around Earth for as much as a century, gradually accumulating onto the Moon, or falling back to Earth.

Credit: Robin Canup, Southwest Research Institute.

Visualization by Advanced Visualization Lab, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, U. of Illinois.

Early Photosynthesis

Early one-celled bacteria could survive by capturing the energy of sunlight. Later, using similar chemical machinery, plants evolved; they helped re-oxygenate the planet and stem the loss of water.

Credit: Klaus Schulten, Melih Sener, John Stone, Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

Visualization by Advanced Visualization Lab, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, U. of Illinois.

ATP Molecules

Captured sunlight drives a chain of processes, transforming the energy into more stable forms at each step, eventually producing molecules of ATP – the universal currency of life on Earth – with which the bacteria can feed, locomote and reproduce.

Credit: Klaus Schulten, Melih Sener, John Stone, Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

Visualization by Advanced Visualization Lab, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, U. of Illinois.

Earth - Early Atmosphere

Before the appearance of living organisms, Earth looked very different from the Blue Marble we are used to seeing in space photos.

Credit: DEM data provided by the Polar Geospatial Center. Claire Porter, Paul Morin et al., 2018 “ArcticDEM”.

Visualization by Advanced Visualization Lab, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, U. of Illinois.

Atmosphere Satellites

Today, as we look down on our planet, we marvel at its complex life support system - the climate.

Credit: Larry DiGirolamo, Guangyu Zhao, Yizhe Zhan, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Visualization by Advanced Visualization Lab, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, U. of Illinois.

Birth of Planet Earth News

"Birth of Planet Earth" premieres March 28 at *Zeiss Großplanetarium in Germany. (*site is in German) with the first public showing on March 30 at Das Planetarium am Insulaner, Berlin.

CADENS is supported in part by the National Science Foundation through award ACI-1445176.