Naked Science: Snowball Earth (1 of 24)

Naked Science: Snowball Earth

Imagine a world frozen solid. Imagine that vast sheets of ice, hundreds of metres thick, encased the entire planet - a giant snowball floating through space. This is not some exotic new world deep in space - it may have been our world, the Earth. In this episode, Naked Science explores what may have been the most extreme period of Earth's climatic history. Some top-ranking scientists believe that in the past the Earth completely froze over for millions of years... then warmed up rapidly approximately 600 million years ago. Struggling against skepticism and disbelief for years, these experts have gathered a growing body of evidence supporting the claim, and others in the scientific community are slowly coming around to the incredible idea - not just of the dramatic freeze, but of an equally extraordinary thaw.

[narrator]: imagine a world Frozen solid.
Encased in ice From pole to pole.
No life roams These frozen plains...
Onl Glaciers move across them.
This is not some distant planet Starved of sunlight.
According To a radical theory, this was Earth, 650 million years ago.
No one knows what triggered This calamitous freeze.
But If it happened once, could If it happened once, could it happen again?
Imagine the most profound Ice age you can think of.
Temperatures plummet to below Zero even at the equator.
Before Long, ice encloses our entire Planet.
Research suggests that This may have happened not once, But three times in our planet's Past.
Welcome to snowball earth.
a snowball earth is certainly The most extreme climate change We can conceive the earth Has ever experienced!