Plot Synopsis

THE LIFE OF EARTH is a two-part documentary series that travels through eons of fire and meteor storms -- from the arrival of oceans and freezing global ice sheets to volcanic eruptions and mass extinctions -- to discover how our world came to be and our role in its future. On Sunday, November 3, 2019 from 9-11pm ET/PT, Smithsonian Channel premiered both episodes:

"From Space" (9pm): The first hour explores the birth and early life of our planet from a truly unique vantage point in Earth's orbit, revealing remarkable new discoveries. With clues from over 300 satellites and space stations surveying Earth's landmarks, scientists can show how the Earth formed from a collapsed star and how primitive life emerged around 3.7 billion years ago. Single-celled organisms on this early planet spawned a revolution by evolving a way to harness energy from sunlight, creating oxygen, which made the first multicellular life possible.

"The Age of Humans" (10pm): The finale explores the incredible rise and global impacts of our species, which emerged 300,000 years ago. Satellite images of ancient weather patterns reveal that our exceptional brains may be an evolutionary response to an unpredictable climate. The world's first city, the rise of civilization and the staggering growth of our population and our terraforming of the Earth's surface can all be revealed by clues from space.

THE LIFE OF EARTH reveals how the lessons of deep time can offer a blueprint for survival. "Truly we live in a remarkable time when we as humans have technology, we have the ability to plan ahead, we know our geologic past," Kirk Johnson, Director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, says in the series. "We can put all that together and actually conceive of a desirable future and build a global plan to get to that future. That's the challenge for humanity in the 21st century."