Earth Shocks is a British television documentary series produced by National Geographic which investigates the natural phenomena that have shaped our planet’s past, and forecasts the future to see how potential recurrences of these events would impact our world as we know it.
The series originally aired in the UK on National Geographic Channel. There are four hour-long episodes in the series.
Earth Shocks premiered in South Africa on DStv's BBC Knowledge channel on Wednesday 17 June 2009, at 21h30.
Repeats
Thursdays: 04h00, 06h00, 09h00, 14h30
Saturdays: 14h00
Sundays: 02h00
Synopsis
Earth Shocks investigates the natural phenomena that have shaped our planet’s past, and then forecasts the future to see how potential recurrences of these events would impact our world as we know it.
These documentaries fuse the latest in scientific research with vivid computer generated imagery to predict catastrophic events in the Earth’s future.
The series reveals the amazing story of how the Earth and the solar system were bombarded by a single massive asteroid storm that changed our planet forever, and explains why the recent discovery of a vast crater off the coast of Australia has thrown up an amazing and controversial new theory on how dinosaurs evolved from the biggest explosive impact of all time.
Earth Shocks also explores the enormous increase in volcanic activity over the past 1,000 years, and takes the viewer into the future to show the kind of unimaginable devastation that would be inflicted on America and Asia by the return of the Hyper-cane; a storm with winds of up to 700 miles per hour which annihilated whole ecosystems 3,000 years ago.
No one believed the claims of early scientists who said the world was round. Imagine the public's disbelief if they had been told about the existence of super floods and super volcanoes that shook the planet to its core.
Scientists branded geologist J Harlen Bretz a heretic in the 1920s for his theory that the Scablands, an area in the North West corner of the US known for its 'dry falls' and craggy landscape, had been created overnight by a giant flood.
In the episode, Mega Flood, a team of maverick geologists hunt for clues to prove Bretz's theory to be true. Scattered across the terrain, they find one-hundred tonne granite boulders, giant potholes, 40-foot ripples carved into the landscape and scratch marks gouged into the bedrock.
"In geology we are really looking for evidence of features in the rocks, on the landscape. It is very similar to what a detective does looking for clues at a crime scene. Those clues fit into a pattern and ultimately a culprit is associated with that crime scene," explains Geosciences Professor Vic Baker, from the University of Arizona.
Another episode in the Earth Shocks series, Mega Volcano, reveals how evidence found by climatologists studying changes to the atmosphere in Greenland kicked off an investigation into one of the world's largest volcanic eruptions.
"The more I looked at the results, I knew we were looking at something that was just cataclysmic," recalls Greg Zielinski, one of the team that discovered the anomaly in ice dating back 75,000 years.
Further clues located underwater, in rocks and buried under ash directed Zielinski and his fellow scientists to a startling discovery: the existence of a super volcano on the site of Lake Toba in Indonesia.
Some scientists predict that when it erupted 75,000 years ago, it caused so much devastation that the world was pushed into an ice age lasting a millennium. More alarming is the possibility it could erupt again.
"Well, a super volcanic eruption would affect all aspects of modern life and modern civilisation," says geologist Mike Rampino.
Prepare to be amazed at how the planet was struck by a series of disasters thousands of years ago.