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?

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.