Watch the full video, with images: https://youtu.be/QaLjWNFTwOo
Tonight, a slow and gentle journey with a glass of water by the bed. We follow its story back to the stars, where hydrogen and oxygen first met, and to the cold, dark clouds where water forms as frost on tiny grains of dust. We drift through the disk around the young Sun, the glowing young Earth and its old puzzle, and the quiet fingerprints in the water that help scientists trace where it came from: comets, asteroids, or the Earth's own rocks. Then the first oceans, the water hidden deep inside the Earth, why our world kept its water, and the long journey of a single drop, before we come back to the glass by the bed. There is nothing to remember and nothing to do. Just listen, and drift off.
0:00 Good Evening, a Glass of Water
10:50 Born in the Stars
21:55 The Cloud That Became the Sun
32:41 The Young Earth and Its Puzzle
43:13 Fingerprints in the Water
54:16 Messengers of Ice, the Comets
1:05:23 Gifts from the Asteroid Belt
1:16:29 Water from the Beginning
1:27:51 Water Hidden Deep Inside
1:38:35 Why Earth Kept Its Water
1:49:35 The Long Journey of a Drop
2:00:38 Every Glass of Water, and Good Night
Sources
NASA Science, NASA Astrobiology, NASA Goddard and NASA JPL (OSIRIS-REx, Webb, Herschel, MAVEN): science.nasa.gov, astrobiology.nasa.gov, jpl.nasa.gov
U.S. Geological Survey Water Science School and Volcano Hazards Program: usgs.gov; NOAA and UCAR (snow, clouds, the water cycle): noaa.gov, scied.ucar.edu
European Space Agency (Giotto, Rosetta, Herschel) and JAXA (Hayabusa2), for facts only: esa.int, isas.jaxa.jp; ESO; NIST and the IAEA (the ocean water standard)
Natural History Museum London; University of Alberta, Northwestern University, Washington University in St. Louis, Caltech, Stockholm University and CNRS (press pages)
Peer-reviewed papers in Science, Nature, Science Advances, PNAS and others (Cleeves 2014, Hartogh 2011, Altwegg 2015, Piani 2020, Wilde 2001, Pearson 2014), read through the publishers, arXiv and Europe PMC
Images
NASA: astronaut and Earth photography (NASA, NASA/Matthew Dominick, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Reto Stöckli, NASA/GSFC/Jeff Schmaltz/MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA/Jim Yungel), NASA/Keegan Barber and NASA/Erika Blumenfeld and Joseph Aebersold (the Bennu sample), NASA Ames Research Center (Pioneer Venus), NASA/W. Liller (Halley's comet, 1986), Eric Bordelon (NASA Michoud).
Hubble and Webb: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, the Hubble Heritage Team and Project, J. Bell, M. Wolff, K. Pontoppidan, the IceAge ERS Team, F. Sun, Z. Smith, D. Milisavljevic, I. De Looze, T. Temim; image processing J. DePasquale, A. Pagan, A. Koekemoer. NASA/JPL-Caltech, NASA/JPL-Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian CfA, NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD, NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Zurich.
U.S. National Park Service: Yellowstone (NPS/Jacob W. Frank, NPS/Neal Herbert, NPS/Diane Renkin), Glacier (NPS/Jacob W. Frank, NPS/Tim Rains), Arches (NPS/Neal Herbert), Denali (NPS/Emily Mesner), Great Sand Dunes (NPS/Patrick Myers), Olympic (NPS/D. Archuleta), Shenandoah (NPS/M. O'Neill), Acadia, Kenai Fjords, Pictured Rocks and Santa Monica Mountains (NPS). USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.
Smithsonian Open Access (CC0): National Museum of Natural History, Department of Mineral Sciences, and Smithsonian Institution Archives (snowflakes photographed by Wilson A. Bentley, about 1890).
Public-domain prints: E. Weiss, Bilder-Atlas der Sternenwelt (1888); E. L. Trouvelot, The Great Comet of 1881.
NASA images are in the public domain or used under NASA's media guidelines with the credits above; National Park Service and USGS photographs are works of the U.S. Government; Smithsonian Open Access images are CC0; the old prints are in the public domain. Their use does not imply endorsement by any agency or museum.
About this video
The narration, the music and some of the images were created with AI tools (Google Gemini). The AI images are artistic impressions. The photographs come from NASA, the U.S. National Park Service, the USGS and the Smithsonian, and the old prints from public-domain collections. The diagrams were drawn with code. Every fact was checked twice against the sources listed above before publishing.
#sleep #water #science