"Imagine if you could halt the constant march of time." "...if you could slow it down..." "and speed it up." "Imagine if you could stop time..." "or even reverse it." "The world about us would look quite different." "Imagine no longer... come with us as we go on a journey through time." "The earth is full of surprises." "What is this sea creature doing on Mount Everest?" "Why will East Africa end up under the sea?" "And how did river crocs get stranded in the Sahara desert?" "We can get answers, but ONLY if we play with time." "We will show you the hidden forces that build mountains and tear our world apart." "We will show you the planet as you have never seen it before." "When we sit down in front of the telly we aren't expecting the earth to move." "But the ground beneath us IS shifting." "You'd only notice it if you could travel through time, if the sofa could become your very own time machine." "Over millions of years the ground beneath your feet has gone through some extreme changes." "It is still going on - but on a massive time scale." "We'll travel through the past, present and future." "Get ready for a wild ride through time." "We are so wrapped up in the day to day that we don't even notice time passing." "We're taken aback when people change or when we suddenly realize how much we've aged." "So it's hardly surprising we don't clock change in the wider world." "It's so creepingly slow we don't see a thing." "Hidden in this icy landscape there lies a powerful force that's shaping our planet, but we only notice it when something extraordinary happens." "In 1950 a hiker in the mountains of New Zealand discovered some large pieces of metal under the icy foot of the Franz Josef Glacier." "The glacier is in the middle of nowhere, so how they got there was anyone's guess." "They turned out to be pieces in a very strange puzzle." "It all started six years earlier..." "On October 29th 1943 a light aircraft took off on a sightseeing trip." "It was a tour over the icescapes of New Zealand's South Island." "The tourists on-board were to get a lot more drama than they'd bargained for." "Technical problems forced the pilot to crash-land." "The passengers were rescued and even the wreckage was recovered, all except a few pieces of fuselage." "It was these missing pieces that the walker discovered six years later, melting out of the glacier." "But the REALLY strange thing was that they were found over three kilometers from where the plane crashed." "How on earth did they move so far?" "The only thing linking the two sites was the Franz Josef Glacier." "So what secrets could it hold?" "Glaciers look solid and immovable..." "But if you throw a fast forward switch they perk up." "They turn into dynamic rivers of ice." "Deep inside the ice it's way below freezing, yet there's water racing through." "Its own massive weight and pressure causes the lower layers of ice to melt." "This meltwater acts like a smear of slippery oil gravity does the rest." "These frozen juggernauts grind down mountains, crumbling rock like biscuit crumbs." "This glacier might only move two metres a day." "But over six years that adds up to three kilometres the same distance the plane parts travelled down the mountain." "Remarkably the plane has been put back together." "A long, drawn-out pause in its flight-path." "But nothing in the life of a glacier." "The rocky valley below tells an even longer story, one that affects us all." "When glaciers melt back they reveal the way they've clawed at the rocks underneath." "These marks read like a book." "They tell us how glaciers ebb and flow over many centuries." "To see the plot unfold we have to watch the Franz Josef glacier in action, thirty thousand years ago." "Over this period it grew - not just down the valley, but out of the mountains." "This was going on everywhere." "Glaciers from Norway to Chile were advancing because the world was freezing up." "This was the great Ice Age." "Just 20,000 years ago almost half of the land was covered in ice." "Today we're concerned about global warming, but this could all be over-ridden by bigger changes... which could send the glaciers on the march once again." "When we squeeze thousands of years into seconds, glaciers spring to life." "But time travel also allows us to throw new light on age-old secrets." "The Ancient Egyptians left some stunning reminders of their wealth and power." "But when the sun set on their civilization they also left a huge mystery behind." "A grumpy camel ride can take us back to the heart of it - to the Sphinx and the Pyramids at Giza." "We can only imagine what these immense monuments would have looked like at the height of the Egyptian empire." "We've always assumed the sphinx was built at the same time as the pyramids, but maybe it wasn't." "The Pyramids entombed the dead kings of Egypt." "There are good records to show how and when they went up." "What's missing is anything about the origins of the Sphinx." "No-one can even agree on how old it is." "There is now a shocking suggestion that this half-man, half-lion wasn't started by the Egyptians at all." "But if they didn't build it, who did?" "500 kilometres to the south of the sphinx the desert is full of natural monuments that might offer some clues." "On a fine day it's hard to imagine how this magical place came to be." "It becomes easier when the wind gets up." "The wind picks up loose sand and catapults it across the landscape for miles." "It's like being in a firing range." "Each grain of sand becomes a tiny, stinging missile." "A single, blowing sand grain doesn't do a thing." "But combine it with eons of time and you have a force that can carve rock itself." "Believe it or not this is how these bizarre rocks were blasted into shape." "But when the wind blows from just one direction the rock gets whittled into something even more distinctive, something remarkably sphinx-like." "Did the force that created this also have a hand in creating the great sphinx?" "In their minds, these tourists are re-visiting Egypt's heyday - over three thousand years ago." "But if they really want to get to grips with the sphinx they'd need to go back fifty thousand years." "They'd be transported in front of a single giant rock outcrop jutting over the desert at Giza." "No pyramids to be seen." "The wind was already hard at work." "Travelling now through thousands of years of fast forward, those tourists might watch the sand grains eating away at the rock - sculpting that distinctive shape." "The early Egyptians may just have happened upon this rock and been inspired to add some finishing touches." "They gave this rock a name and found it a job - guard duty for the pyramids which were built behind it." "They added detail and dazzling paintwork." "And they made it part of their culture." "For thousands of years the Sphinx DID guard the pyramids of Egypt." "But those days are over." "The wind is a sculptor that never knows when to stop." "This monumental rock is now a shadow of its former self." "It needs high maintenance to fight the ravages of time." "The modern stonemasons at Giza work year-round to shore it up, but in the end they are powerless against tiny grains of sand... and time." "Time-travel can show us the big picture." "What happens as huge natural forces change the shape of the world around us?" "Everything can and does change." "Take the Sahara desert." "It would cover the United States of America, but even something this big cannot be taken for granted." "Temperatures regularly peak at 50 degrees." "There are places where no rain has fallen for years." "And yet living things attempt to cross it." "The Paris-Dakar rally is one of the world's great endurance tests." "Swallows cross it when they fly from South Africa to breed in Europe." "Bikers do this for kicks." "But it's no fun-run for the swallows." "How did they end up with the journey from hell?" "In the middle of the Sahara is a rock - and on it are paintings which might tell us." "They were done five thousand years ago and show animals that couldn't possibly survive in a desert." "Was this the scene from the artist's back door?" "It is certainly not the Sahara we know." "To see for ourselves, let's go back five thousand years..." "Unrecognisable!" "This Sahara had vast lakes, forests and abundant wildlife, where today you'd be dying of thirst." "It was like this when swallows began their inter-continental flights - a much easier route." "But then, rather suddenly, it all went pear-shaped." "It began five thousand years ago with a small shift in the way our planet orbits the sun." "Even a small change like this results in massive climate change." "Rainfall dropped off and this triggered a dramatic chain reaction, which left plants gasping." "The swallows' migration was turning into an endurance test of its own." "In some places the change from forest to desert may have happened in the space of just one hundred years." "That's why swallows still struggle across the Sahara." "They haven't had enough time to change their route." "It's the type of journey that sorts the men from the boys." "Something this small really needs the right stuff to get to the other side." "Their prize lies beyond the Mediterranean." "Here it is - the insect-rich meadows of Europe." "Swallows have a few short months swooping over the English countryside and raising their young before they have to do the whole thing over again." "Their marathon journey back to South Africa is no less easy." "But time offers a glimmer of hope." "In the heart of the desert lies the Ennedi Gorge." "This is not just an oasis." "It's a time warp." "Deep in its shade is a tiny remnant of those vast lakes that once covered this region." "It's the only water for hundreds of kilometres." "And it shelters one of the most unlikely survivors of the Sahara's wetter past..." "Nile Crocodiles." "They are playing a waiting game." "The Earth's orbit is changing constantly, like a pendulum." "It goes through cycles every 20,000 years, like clockwork." "This means that the Sahara regularly alternates between dry and wet." "If they can just hang on here for another 14,000 years, they may get a proper lake to swim in." "And the swallows might have an easier ride." "As for the Paris-Dakar rally..." "well, it'll be a picnic!" "We've travelled through thousands of years to see the morphing of the Sphinx and Sahara." "But now we're going to shift up several gears." "It's time to fasten seatbelts." "We're accelerating into deep time - through millions of years." "Only then will we have enough time to witness the creation of the Grand Canyon." "It is one of the world's greatest natural wonders." "Visitors can be silenced by its sheer scale." "But it's almost impossible to get your head around how long it's been in the making." "It's taken 5 million years and it isn't even finished yet!" "The creator of this canyon is still at work - a force that will take your breath away." "Enter the canyon at your peril." "The Colorado River at the foot of the canyon will certainly get your heart racing." "But these rafters aren't in real danger." "The steady flow of even white-water isn't enough to carve out these walls." "This is the work of something much scarier." "A force that can really let rip through these narrow canyons." "It's these people who should stay on the alert." "The danger signs are written all over the walls." "These beautiful shapes have been sculpted by water - a huge amount of it and at phenomenal speed." "But where is the water?" "This place seems as dry as bone." "The Grand Canyon lies at the heart of the Arizona Desert." "Most of the year it doesn't rain at all." "But when it does you'd better watch out." "This is where timing comes in." "Timing is everything." "A single raindrop is nothing - it's when they join forces that things get serious." "The ground is so sun-baked that the raindrops just don't soak in." "They glance off it and stream across the surface." "The thin desert soils put up little resistance - the floods simply sweep up everything in their path." "From all over the desert the floods race towards the canyon." "And then they begin to carve downwards." "Tourist attraction becomes hellhole in a matter of minutes." "In 1997, eleven visitors were swept to their deaths." "That was one flood but imagine if we could watch the effect of thousands of similar cataclysmic floods over millions of years." "The Grand Canyon is a powerful reminder that the world can change, not gradually, but in short, sharp shocks." "This is how one of the most terrifying forces on the planet is unleashed - not in days or even hours, but in seconds." "The duration of an average earthquake is less than sixty seconds." "Seconds filled with utter terror." "They look like acts of God, but in fact they're not random strikes at all." "If we whip over to Wellington, New Zealand we'll see what's going on." "It's a city that seems on sure enough ground." "But not if we travel back to a precise point in time..." "Nine fifteen on the night of January 21st, 1855." "At this moment Wellington is just a small town." "The coastline is made of steep cliffs, which plunge straight into the Pacific Ocean." "The next few seconds were earth-shattering." "A violent quake heaved the whole of this coastline upwards." "As the cliffs rose, they pulled a whole new area of land out from under the waves." "The sun rose on a different landscape." "Where fish had swum and surf had pounded there was now dry land." "It was on this newly exposed land that today's city, its airport and roads were all built." "But the 1855 earthquake was not a one-off." "By racing through centuries we can see they've wrenched up the coast, over and over again." "There's a pattern." "And it's a pattern that's repeated in very particular places all around the world." "The earth's crust is not one solid piece of rock." "It's broken up - like crazy paving on a grand scale." "The edges of these slabs are constantly grinding, and when they suddenly jolt past each other - that's an earthquake." "To live along one of these edges is asking for trouble." "Wellington sits slap, bang on one of the boundaries." "But then so do San Francisco, Tokyo and Istanbul;" "millions of people sitting on borrowed time." "An earthquake is bound to hit them sooner or later - there is no if here, it's when." "Within seconds these immense forces can tear open the earth's crust." "Over much, much longer time frames they can change the entire map of the world." "But how can we possibly look so far back into the past?" "It's possible because some things can travel through vast amounts of time." "This fossil is the remains of a sea creature that's travelled through 150 million years of earth history." "What it has told us about the past has rocked the way we see the world." "It's turned our view of this mountain upside down." "At eight and a half thousand metres, Mount Everest is so high that a cruising jumbo jet would graze its wing tip on the summit." "One of the first attempts to climb to the very top was made in 1924 by George Mallory." "When asked why he was doing it, he quipped, "Because it's there"." "But what we now know is that it hasn't always been there." "And we know because this fossil tells us." "It was found high up in the Himalayan mountains, but it's the remains of a creature that lived only in the sea." "These peaks are hundreds of kilometers from the nearest ocean, so how on earth were these sea creatures left high and dry?" "We need to go back 150 million years... to when ammonites were the most successful creatures in the world's oceans." "The seas looked very different but then we wouldn't recognize the map of the world, either." "It started to become more familiar about 100 million years ago when a chunk of land ripped away from Africa." "That chunk was to become India." "If we watch at a million years per second," "India appears to race across the ocean." "At first nothing blocked its way." "But over the horizon lay a huge obstacle." "India was on a collision course with Asia." "In earth-time this was the equivalent of a motorway pile-up." "The force of impact thrust the seabed between them out of the water." "It's been hurled skywards ever since." "Everest, K2 and Annapurna are just part of a chain of wreckage along this crumple zone." "They haven't been up here very long - they're raw, new mountains and animals have only just moved in." "They may live on top of the world but they're walking on rocks from the ocean floor, and it's these rocks that contain the sea fossils." "The collision is far from over." "India is still ramming the mountains upwards." "The world's highest mountain is being forced northwards 2 centimetres each year." "Things have changed even since Mallory's first climb." "Everest is not there any more - it's moved a metre away - over there!" "We've whizzed through the past, but time doesn't stop here, with the present." "The earth's not finished yet!" "Let's travel on - to see what happens next." "In the tiny African country of Djibouti a maintenance crew turns up to repair a crack in the road." "This is not your average wear and tear." "This is a crack that allows us to peer into the future." "What they're about to shore up is the start of the biggest crack on the face of the planet." "This is a crack that can be seen from space." "It runs from that small road in Djibouti, widening out through Ethiopia and Kenya." "It then spreads through Tanzania and Malawi." "It ends in Mozambique, six thousand kilometres away." "It's Africa's Great Rift Valley, and it's remarkable not just for its size." "This long, cliff-bound valley provides a stage for the biggest gatherings of wildlife in the world." "It looks rosy." "But the trouble is, the future doesn't look bright at all." "We know, because that Djibouti road crew at the north end of the crack is never out of a job." "Every time they fix it, it ruptures again." "So what's pushing the tarmac apart?" "Time to step back back 30 million years..." "That's half way between now and the extinction of the dinosaurs." "The world was then home to some strange beasts." "East Africa has no mountains, no volcanoes just gently rolling hills." "But pressure was building up from below, a force destined to change Africa forever." "A huge abscess of molten rock from the centre of the earth oozed upwards." "It stretched the crust under East Africa to breaking point." "Molten rock was squeezed out to form new mountains." "And in less than a million years Mount Kilimanjaro grew from nothing to become the tallest peak in Africa." "Even today there's volcanic activity along the rift." "There's a string of lakes along the valley fed from water bubbling up through the hot rocks below." "They're so caustic that flamingos have it all to themselves." "Periodic eruptions also come with the territory." "The eruptions are proof that the valley is still rifting apart." "It's an inconvenience, but nothing compared with what's going to happen next." "In around ten million years time the crack will have become so wide that the ocean will breach in." "All the wildlife in the Rift Valley will be destroyed and a new sea will be created as East Africa separates." "No wonder these guys feel overwhelmed." "But just because this seems a long time off, we shouldn't feel too safe." "Given enough time, something huge will rear its ugly head." "Something that could destroy us all." "It could be in a thousand years, a hundred years, ten years." "Or tomorrow." "Take a look at this showstopper." "It's lying in wait here..." "in Yellowstone National Park." "Yellowstone is famous for its hot springs and geysers - where the earth's heat escapes as super-heated water." "One in particular is renowned for the precision timing of its blowouts." "Old Faithful." "It goes off every 90 minutes." "It's the ultimate visitor attraction - a spectacular natural event that goes off on schedule." "But maybe Old Faithful is not so much loyal friend as a sinister watchman." "Each time it goes off, we could be 90 minutes closer to Armageddon." "Yellowstone is sitting over a ticking clock, one whose beat is so slow that until recently no-one even knew it existed." "Yellowstone is astride one of the biggest volcanoes in the world." "It's a volcano that's over 70 kilometres across, and potentially so lethal that it makes Vesuvius look like a roman candle." "The last three times, it exploded with such force that its ash buried half of North America." "It doesn't go off very often - but so far it's followed a pattern." "The eruptions come at 600,000-year intervals." "620,000 years have passed since the last eruption." "So if it keeps to schedule, our time is up." "No-one on the planet would escape this big smoker." "It could trigger a chain reaction of volcanic winters and - for humans - potentially fatal climate change." "Will it erupt soon?" "Or is there some other unseen time bomb due to go off?" "Only time will tell." "Imagine if you could halt the constant march of time." "...if you could slow it down..." "and speed it up." "Imagine if you could stop time..." "or even reverse it." "The world about us would look quite different." "Imagine no longer... come with us as we go on a journey through time." "Life is a race against the clock." "For all of us, every second of every day the pressure is on to find food meet a mate and have a family all before our time is up." "By speeding through days, months and years we're going to see how plants and animals manipulate time to stay in the running." "Why is it that a mouse lives for two years while a whale can live for 200?" "Why do these crabs have their own little alarm clocks that must be reset every day?" "What drives these caribou to run thousands of kilometres, through some of the harshest conditions on earth?" "And what has turned this hummingbird into the Pinocchio of the bird world?" "It's all down to time." "By crushing centuries into seconds we'll see life change beyond recognition and meet some real time travellers." "But can anything truly cheat time and live forever?" "Different animals have different life spans." "Take a man and his dog." "They both look like they could run and run... but one of them is already past his prime." "The dog may look full of beans but it's six years old, and in dog-years that means well into middle age." "Dogs live to about 12, whereas we humans now expect to reach 80." "Why do we have these hugely different life spans?" "Even with these creature comforts, a house mouse will be lucky if it survives till it's two." "Could life span be all down to size?" "Of course, a mouse only has to grow a tiny body but that's not the whole story." "Its short time on earth is also about staying one step ahead of danger." "A mouse's life is so likely to come to a swift end that it pays to live life in the fast lane." "A newborn mouse grows up at break-neck speed." "Within a matter of days the first hair erupts..." "Next their body lengthens..." "The whiskers grow and the ears pop out." "A baby mouse turns into an adult in just FIVE weeks." "Right away it can start having babies of its own." "In its short lifetime, a mouse can have several litters with up to 12 babies each time." "You don't have to do the sums to see how mice can quickly take over the place." "Individuals may not live very long, but their fast and furious way of life is a winning one, if you're constantly dicing with death." "A wild owl lives up to eight years." "So what gives them the extra-Iong lease?" "It's not just that they're bigger than mice." "It takes a lot longer to bring up their brood." "What took the mice 5 weeks, takes the owls a whole year." "By zooming through the months we can see that an infant owl has to develop some pretty complicated kit to become a successful hunter." "It needs a beak that can rip into prey..." "Special wing feathers that will help it glide silently through the night talons that can pincer a rodent and discs of specialized feathers around each eye." "Like satellite dishes these focus the tiniest rustlings directly to its pin-sharp ears." "Even when it's fully fledged, our young owl still needs time to learn the tricks of its hunting trade." "Only then can it hope to find a mate and have a family of its own." "It's a more demanding way of life so they have to take things step by step." "That's why barn owls live a lot longer than mice." "But one animal has stretched its lifetime to an absolute extreme." "Primitive harpoon heads have recently been found in a few bowhead whales - this proves that these whales can live for an incredible 200 years." "Size matters, but living in the Arctic Ocean it might take decades to fatten up and reach breeding age." "But that's not the only delay." "Over these frozen wastes, it can take ages to even find a partner." "There is no speed dating here." "In these tough waters bowheads need very, very long lives to make sure there is a next generation." "So what about us?" "Going by size, we humans should only live for 30 years." "And in fact most people have found partners and had a family by their thirties." "But our lives don't stop there." "Even though we might have done our bit to prolong the human race, we then expect to live way past our child-rearing years." "Sociable animals apes, dolphins and humans, get an extension on life." "We've earned this extra time by becoming helpful in old age." "Grandparents and other members of extended families offer wisdom, wealth and, of course, baby-sitting." "Mouse, owl, whale or man " "We've all got different life spans which best suit how and where we live." "But no matter how long or short our time on earth," "We're all under the thumb of one great clock." "As dawn breaks over Hong Kong, millions of people begin their journey to work." "This mad rush hour may seem as far removed from nature as you can get." "But in fact we're not the only animal trapped in a nine to five routine." "Off a remote island in the Pacific, golden jellyfish crowd a marine lake." "By speeding up the clock we can see that they too have a rush hour." "Every day they rise at the same time and set off on the same commute across the lake." "So why have they joined the rat race?" "The clue lies in their golden glow, a colour caused by millions of tiny algae that live within the jellyfish." "The algae produce sugars which they share with their jellyfish partners." "But to keep their golden complexion the algae need a secret ingredient" "sunlight." "That's where their mobile homes come in." "The jellyfish transport the algae up towards the sun each morning." "The water glistens as the jellies break the surface, but their job isn't over." "All day they have to work the area of the lake - shifting position to follow the arc-ing sun." "It's a long day, but it's the only way that both algae and jellies get enough to eat." "The relationship is so successful that jellyfish numbers have boomed today there are over ten million of them." "Unlike our jobs, there are no breaks." "This is round the clock, day in, day out." "The setting sun triggers a return commute - back down to the depths of the lake." "Just as we need rest and recuperation the algae passengers must re-stock on vital nutrients that have sunk to the bottom." "The algae get there on the jelly-train." "Tomorrow the whole thing will start again." "The sun is boss." "We, and many other creatures, clock on while the sun floods the world with heat and light, and clock off when it sinks from view." "Its daily rhythm is our daily grind." "It may feel relentless, but the big clock in the sky sets the pace at which our bodies work best." "But it's not the only timepiece controlling life on earth..." "Even though it is nearly 400,000 kilometres away, the moon also has a profound influence on many animals." "As it spins around the earth it drags a great bulge of oceanic water in its wake" "the rising tide." "It ebbs and flows twice a day but that's not all." "Each day the timing of the new tide shifts forwards by nearly an hour." "It's a highly complicated schedule so how can anything live by it?" "It's two in the afternoon and the incoming tide is driving waves towards the beach to a surfer's paradise in Australia." "The best surf is at the turn of the tide, but predicting when this is requires some precise astronomical calculations." "Luckily, someone else has done the maths." "All surfers need to do is check out the tide timetable... and then just watch the clock." "That's it - surf's up!" "Being able to calculate these moments, means you can make the most of moon-power." "But for other creatures this complicated shift in the tide times could make life very risky indeed." "The receding tide is like a cloth being pulled back from over a hidden feast." "The tiny creatures aren't exactly on a plate, but they are there for the taking." "While the tide's out it's dinnertime, not just for this one soldier crab, but a huge army of them." "They're on a regimented march to the water's edge." "With so many crabs to choose from, predators find it hard to single out their prey." "Soldier crabs can only sieve out food along the shoreline while the sand is damp." "So they haven't got long." "Something extraordinary happens, just before the tide turns." "It's as if a sergeant major has barked out the order to retreat." "As one, the crabs scuttle back up the beach." "Just as well." "If they were to stay out a moment too long they would risk certain death." "The incoming tide brings crab-hungry fish." "Even though the tide times are constantly shifting, soldier crabs - amazingly - never get caught out." "How do they get the timing right?" "Are they sensing movement under the sand?" "Is it down to remarkable eyesight?" "Or is something else going on?" "If we isolate crabs from the outside world we can reveal the secret of their precision timing." "Just watch what happens to these crabs as the tide rises and falls." "When it's outthey run around, as if it's time to feed." "But when it re-floods, they mysteriously stop moving, as they would if they were in their burrows." "It's all down to an internal alarm clock that's tied, not to the sun, but to the moon." "What's more, it is incredibly sophisticated." "It's self-adjusting." "We wake up at more or less the same time each day." "The crabs' wake-up call shifts by almost an hour with each tide." "This is how the soldiers get their timing right." "But it's not just animals that need to keep an eye on the clock." "Many flowers open during daylight hours, but they don't all open at the same time." "Take the morning glory." "It opens soon after dawn, but the South African mesemb waits until noon." "The evening primrose, as its name suggests, saves itself for the twilight hours." "So what on earth is going on?" "Can plants really tell the time?" "When it comes to setting seed, flowers have a big problem." "They must exchange pollen with each other a bit tricky when you're rooted to the spot." "Flowers need go-betweens insects that can carry fertilizing pollen from one flower to another." "To attract the attention of passing insects flowers have to flirt." "And they do this with a dazzling array of colours and scents." "But of course insects are being courted by every hot-blossomed flower in the bed." "So some flowers have found a really cunning way of standing out in the crowd." "And it's all down to timing." "At sunrise the morning glory is already on the pull - opening its petals before any other flower." "This might seem risky as few insects are up and about during these chilly hours." "But the morning glory is counting on another early riser." "Bumblebees are so big that they can warm up independently of the sun." "They vibrate their wing muscles to generate their own internal heat - and can get airborne as early as five a.m." "Morning glories are ready and waiting." "In return for spreading pollen, the bees are rewarded with a drink of nectar." "The Mexican poppy takes a different approach." "It's less fussy about who it flirts with, so it waits 'til after breakfast before giving its all." "Its bright orange outfit is critical to its future." "If rain or wind threatens, the poppy folds its petals away." "By late morning the flowerbed is a riot of colour - a scramble of flowers trying to win the attentions of winged helpers." "But the South African Mesemb is only just opening." "How can it afford this lazy start to the day?" "Its long lie-in matches that of its chosen pollen courier an insect that needs a little more time to get going." "Monkey beetles cannot take off until their body temperature reaches 27 degrees." "So they're only out and about during the very hottest part of the day." "On cue, the eye-catching mesembs are ready." "But time is limited." "As soon as the temperature starts to drop, monkey beetles run out of steam." "So the mesembs turn off the charm too." "One flower saves itself until after sundown, when most others have gone to bed." "Only then does the evening primrose waft its seductive scent over the garden." "It lures in night-flyers, such as moths." "By waiting this late, the evening primrose has the pick of the insect night shift." "So it seems plants really can tell the time." "Right through the day they keep appointments with their insect go-betweens." "It's a highly efficient way of getting fertilized." "So, importantly, it guarantees the next generation of floral timekeepers." "Judging time over a day is one thing, but how about over months and years?" "Sometimes this is essential." "Especially when it comes to keeping the whole family line on track." "And for one North American animal it's turned into a truly desperate struggle against the clock." "It's high summer in northern Quebec and a huge herd of caribou covers the tundra." "This is the richest pasture around." "It's a perfect place to raise their young." "But these caribou can't stay here." "They are about to be driven away." "But what's giving them the push?" "They live so far north that their world flips between seasonal extremes." "It's June, and these warm summer meadows are about to become howling snowscapes." "As the autumn weather closes in, the caribou are forced to run south." "It's the start of an incredible marathon." "But there's a deadline." "They need to get back to the summer meadows by June next year to give birth to their young." "The further they go south, the more time it will take to get back." "So they've got to keep one eye on the advancing weather and one on the clock." "All the while their hormones are working to schedule." "They flood through the males which kick-starts the rut." "Antlers develop and harden in unison, allowing the males to battle for females." "The shorter day-length has got female hormones racing too." "It's no accident that males and females have their minds on the same thing." "It's all part of the master plan to ensure that all the females get pregnant at the same time." "Once that's done, they're desperate to head back north, back to their meadows." "But now the bad weather is blocking their way." "For now, they have to bide their time down here not a soft option." "So they scratch a living from lichens under the snow." "It's a relentless search for the right diet." "Lichens aren't enough for expectant mothers." "Sometimes time just runs out." "The females are now living close to the wire." "The June deadline is getting closer." "They're heavily pregnant but they're still four thousand kilometers away from the rich summer meadows where they want to give birth." "Even though the ground is still frozen, alarm bells are ringing, telling the females to head north again." "They've been on their feet for months." "They've clocked up nine thousand kilometres, all to make it back to the calving meadows in time." "They arrive back, just as these rich meadows come to their peak." "And that's the clever bit." "Thousands of calves are born within days of each other and it's all been precision-timed." "That's because there's just a short window when the grass is at its best and when the calves can grow up quickly on their mothers' fortified milk." "They've met the deadline, but time doesn't stand still." "Within an hour of birth a calf is able to keep up with its mother, and will soon be ready to join the caribou herd's annual marathon race against time." "The natural rhythms of the earth hold animals in a vice-like grip." "To survive, they've simply got to keep up." "But some remarkable creatures have managed to step off this time-treadmill." "They've set their own agenda." "It's the summer of 2003 and the town of Elkin, North Carolina, has been overwhelmed by a swarm of cicadas." "Normally bird and mammal predators would be having a field day picking off these tasty morsels." "But strangely enough, no-one's eating them." "It's as if the cicadas aren't really there." "What's going on?" "These are periodic cicadas, so called because they've come up with an ingenious strategy to outwit their enemies but to see it in action we have to go back in time half a century." "It's 1952 and the town of Elkin looks very different." "The only familiar things are the cicadas." "The residents of Elkin might have time on their hands, but the adult cicadas have no time to lose." "They only have three more weeks to complete their life cycle." "First they must find a partner, which they do with their own chirpy little number." "Once they've mated, the females lay all their eggs in the branches of trees." "After they've hatched the larvae fall to the ground and bury themselves." "This in itself isn't unusual." "But what happens next is." "If we whizz through to the same time the following year, 1953, the fashions have moved on, but the cicadas are nowhere to be seen." "In fact, we have to fast forward seventeen years to 1969 before there is any sign of them again." "While Neil Armstrong takes his first steps on the moon," "back on earth people are celebrating the summer of love." "The cicadas have also emerged for their own summer loving." "The world has moved on, but the cicadas go through the same old routine." "Once again the nymphs bury themselves and disappear from view." "But for how long will it be this time?" "In 1986, exactly 17 years later, they re-appear." "How on earth can the next generation, buried deep underground, measure the passing of time so accurately?" "It's now thought that the cicadas pick up cues from the yearly rise and fall of sap in plant roots." "Yep, these guys are actually counting." "It's only when they've counted another 17 years that these little time travellers appear again." "We're back to where we started, in 2003." "But what's the reason for taking time out for so long?" "Well, since they show up so rarely, no animal can rely on them as a source of food." "In fact most animals wouldn't even recognize them as food - they might have seen this sight only once in a lifetime." "With little to threaten them, the nymphs move into position for the last stage of their development." "Here they can time-travel and emerge into adulthood in peace." "By morning the whole town of Elkin is littered with their discarded nymphal shells." "As long as they can accurately count up to 17 and emerge altogether, they will outwit any potential predators." "It's not just mathematically brilliant, it's biologically clever." "Periodic cicadas have, quite literally, calculated how to stay out of other creature's mouths and in the race against time." "By time travelling through three generations of cicadas we've unlocked the secret of their success." "But just imagine if we could travel back through thousands of generations." "What stories would unfold in front of our eyes?" "Flying around with a beak this big is no joke." "How did this poor hummingbird become the Pinocchio of the bird world?" "It's the humbling story of what happens when a bird is driven to drink." "All hummingbirds' tipple of choice is sugar-rich nectar." "But they have to work to get it - hovering in mid-air while shooting their long tongue down a flower." "Just doing this uses up huge quantities of energy, so the more they drink, the more they need." "They're addicted to the stuff." "But it's the flowers that control the shots, because they need the birds to distribute their pollen." "As the birds are given a good drink of nectar, pollen rubs off onto the bird's forehead." "As time moved on certain flowers got increasingly picky about who came for a drink." "Their flowers changed shape so that not all hummers could get in." "It's like having a lock and key on the drinks cabinet." "Only the birds with the right-shaped bill can get access." "One bird tried to cheat the system." "Thousands of years ago, swordbills with slightly longer beaks got an extra shot of nectar from the Datura flower." "But their heads were no longer in contact with the pollen, so the flower grew longer in response." "Over generations, flower and beak tried to outsmart each other." "Both became longer and longer, increasingly dependent on each other." "No other bird can reach the nectar from this outlandish flower and the swordbills are stuck in a rut too." "And that could be their undoing." "For them, the future is now a one-way street, one that's more likely to be a dead end." "By speeding through days, months and years we've seen how life adapts to an ever-changing world, but is it possible for anything to truly cheat time and live forever?" "We humans have done our best to extend our lifetimes." "With family support, and better health we've added decades to our life span." "But there is something that's taken almost magical control of its time on earth." "To discover the secrets of its eternal life we must remain in this English churchyard, but imagine travelling back one thousand, six hundred years to a funeral in the Dark Ages." "It was a simple ceremony but these early Christians were known to mark the grave by planting the sapling of a yew tree." "Maybe our ancestors already had a hunch about the enduring nature of this tree." "If we watch this yew sapling grow at speed, will its secrets be revealed?" "In its first two hundred years it witnesses the felling of most of the wildwood around." "Perhaps because it marks a grave, our yew tree is spared." "It's when it creeps into its third century that it starts to unveil mysterious powers." "Only the flesh of its berries is safe to eat." "The leaves and bark are highly poisonous and are left well alone." "The needles are like a curse." "As they fall their toxic juices leach out into the earth." "It wipes out the competition so that the yew has all the goodness of the soil to itself." "This is how it gives itself a head start." "It might have stood out as monks were spreading the Christian faith across England, because our four hundred year old yew had become a favoured burial site." "A church is built on this sacred ground." "As the centuries pass the church increases in stature." "Meanwhile the yew-tree seems master of its own destiny." "It doesn't just grow slowly." "It appears to be able to stop itself growing altogether." "These are tricks which our tree will need, because as we roll into the Middle Ages there's trouble in store." "The weather is at its worst." "The winters are long and cold and it rains cats and dogs." "Many of its neighbours are toppled by strong gales." "But the yew stands firm." "During its slow, slow growth it's laid down hard, close-grained wood." "And that gives its trunk and branches immense strength and flexibility." "It weathers the middle ages, but at twelve hundred years old disaster is about to strike big time." "While Cavaliers and Roundheads are tearing the country apart the yew tree has its own battle to fight." "The dense wood, which served it so well, has trapped pools of water between the branches." "The very heart of the tree is beginning to rot." "Surely this is the end?" "But at what seems like its final hour, it conjures up its most remarkable trick of all." "The tree throws itself a lifeline." "A young branch from the canopy does a U-turn and grows downwards... right down into the rotting wood." "There it feeds off its own compost." "It has turned itself into a new root." "It digs down through the heartwood into the ground, replanting itself." "This is a tree that has the power to be born again, and again." "Rejuvenated, the tree marches steadily on... into the twenty-first century." "It's now sixteen hundred years old and still going strong." "These days it often stands over a wedding." "This yew has already outlived 80 generations of people... but who knows how much further through time it might travel?" "This ancient tree seems to know nothing of old age or death." "It appears to have found life's holy grail the ultimate time-busting strategy the ability to live forever." "But the yew tree is not the only winner." "Over time individuals may come and go, entire species may adapt or die." "But life itself - in all its different forms - has been steadily marching through time - so far for an incredible three and a half billion years!" "That's staying power." "And that's what matters most in life's race against time." "Imagine if you could halt the constant march of time." "...if you could slow it down..." "and speed it up." "Imagine if you could stop time..." "or even reverse it." "The world about us would look quite different." "Imagine no longer... come with us as we go on a journey through time." "Our lives are ruled by the clock." "But our obsession with time should come as no surprise." "Deep inside us we all have a clock that regulates our lives." "Can this body clock tell us when we're most likely to get drunk?" "If we all wanted to live forever could this worm hold the key to eternal life?" "In our busy lives we are always chasing time always trying to save it." "But in a crisis how can we change time to help save ourselves?" "We think of ourselves as slaves to the clock." "Racing through life at breakneck speed, has become the norm." "But could our pursuit of speed be the key to time travel, letting us visit the distant future?" "Will we ever truly become masters of time?" "Time is precious." "We never seem to have enough." "We've spent centuries building clocks, all to more and more accurately measure the passing of hours, minutes and seconds." "Yet it still doesn't buy us any more of the stuff." "Time has come to mean the straitjacketing of our day - the constant schedule that rules our lives." "Yet, if you think about it, our everyday experience of time is far from constant." "We all have long, lazy days when time seems to stand still." "But time doesn't change, only our sense of it." "This sensation might all be down to how we process what we see." "We can see the effect at the movies." "A film seems to pass by in a seamless flow." "But what we are really seeing is a series of static photographs, one following quickly after another." "When slowed down it's clear that each one is slightly different from the one before." "Flash twenty-four of them past each second, and they create a sense of fluid movement." "Your brain works in a similar way." "When you leave the cinema you're also seeing the world as a series of pictures." "Your brain does a rapid scan of each new image to register what's changed." "It's how we avoid bumping into things." "But, like a film, we just see the joined-up effect." "If we could reduce the number of images we see each second, just imagine how our sense of time would change too." "Our lives would appear to flash past like an express train." "The seasons would whiz past in minutes rather than months." "Lf, on the other hand, our brains scanned a huge number of separate images every second, we'd be swamped with detail." "It would be like living in perpetual slow motion." "And let's face it, that's just too chilled out." "But not for a fly." "A fly needs exactly this heightened level of awareness because it hurtles through the world at such high speed." "Flies see things we don't;" "the flickering of a strip-light and the individual scans on a TV-screen." "Most importantly it can see the need for a quick escape, from the fly swat, for instance." "We don't need to see the world like the fly." "Day to day that level of detail is unnecessary." "The rate at which we clock our surroundings is the one that best fits our pace of life." "It can vary." "When we're waiting, time seems to drag." "When we're busy, time flies." "But we can override all of this." "We have a remarkable, hidden power over time." "It kicks in during a crisis." "Faced with extreme danger the mind enters an altered state." "People report seeing in black and white - why bother to waste time processing colour when your brain is on overload?" "But most importantly, people say time slows down." "The brain is now on high alert, processing far more each second than normal." "It buys you extra time - to think... and act." "So we can, when necessary, and without a second thought, fundamentally control our experience of time." "Why, then, do we feel we're such slaves to the clock?" "Time is organized to a level that borders on obsession." "We can now measure it to the nearest billionth of a second." "How did this obsession start?" "Well we've come by it quite naturally." "Even though the Egyptians were the first to formally divide daylight into hours, we were well equipped to tell the time way before this." "Our earliest ancestors used the changing seasons to measure out the years." "The phases of the moon marked out the months." "But it was the daily arc of the sun that counted most." "Nature follows this rhythm." "So no surprise that the sun's movement across the sky affects us too." "Although we used the shadows it cast to mark time, the sun's influence goes much deeper than this." "It helps our bodies keep time by regulating a clock that we don't even see." "One that's ticking away deep inside us." "It's a biological clock a master clock that's set by the sun and which controls all aspects of our lives - when you are most alert, when you sleep, and even when you are most likely to visit the toilet." "The exact location of this clock?" "Right in the middle of your brain in an area called the hypothalamus." "But, like man-made timepieces, this biological clock loses time." "It has to be reset twice a day by the sun." "It's all done through a hotline of nerves that link this master clock, via the eye, to the outside world and so to the sun's cycle." "Mostly we're oblivious to how our bodies keep time." "And yet we're riddled with different clocks." "Even our liver has one." "The liver does most of our detoxing, so knowing how it ticks is crucial if you need to stay sober, or if you really want to get legless." "So what's the low-down?" "The liver is on go-slow and least able to break down alcohol around lunchtime - so drinking then will get you merrier, quicker." "But a few too many does more than make you feel woozy." "It can have some very strange effects on your other cycles." "Your body temperature follows a very strong rhythm, which is also controlled by a biological clock." "But this is knocked off track after a session at the pub." "Using a thermal camera to monitor the body's temperature scientists can track how the normal rhythm is upset." "The changing colours show the temperature see-sawing through the night." "It's the disruption to this, and other body clocks, that's thought to affect the size of your hangover." "But science isn't revealing all bad news." "Just as there's the best time to drink alcohol, there is also a prime time to take the cure." "The latest research shows any medicine will most likely work best if taken at a particular time of day." "It's already known that painkillers do the job best when taken in the morning." "So now you can deal with that hangover a bit quicker too." "There seems to be no escape from the pressure of time." "Our bodies are full of clocks regulating everything we do." "But what we really want is more time and the only way to achieve that is to stretch the lifetime we've got." "When our biological clock stops ticking, so do we." "Is there anything we can do to keep it going?" "Scientists have always been searching for life's holy grail - immortality." "But now nature is giving them some clues." "For most living things, freezing is deadly." "But insects, such as this weta, some amphibians, and even a species of reptile, survive months of extreme cold by doing just this." "They put time on hold." "Ice-crystals usually destroy living cells." "But not in these animals." "When warm weather brings a thaw, they're back in business." "How they do this might prove useful one day, but some people can't wait." "They've been frozen, in the belief that solutions to ageing and disease will be found." "The catch is:" "You have to be dead first." "After dying these optimists are suspended head first in liquid nitrogen at minus 196 degrees Centigrade." "And there they remain, frozen in time, banking on a future when death can be reversed." "Back in the real world, even our attempts to live longer are backfiring on us." "The very air we need to breathe, is also killing us." "We breathe in over 10,000 times a day and each time something in the air makes us age." "It's oxygen." "Our cells need oxygen to make energy, but leftover oxygen slips away and starts a kind of rusting from within." "Oxygen isn't the only rogue element." "Sunlight, pollution and tobacco smoke also form these so-called free radicals." "And it's these radicals that do the damage." "The good news is there's something that can stop the rot." "Even though it proves your mum right." "You have to eat your greens." "Vegetables in particular contain antioxidants, which help soak up those free radicals." "So broccoli and beans help keep those wrinkles at bay." "If you had thought that was the bad news, well, there's worse." "The human body has a design flaw." "All the billions of cells that make up our bodies contain the genetic instruction manual that makes us who we are DNA." "Our cells need constant renewal and they do this by dividing." "Each time the DNA instructions get copied and passed on." "Sadly the system's got a glitch and, surprisingly quickly, mistakes start creeping in." "As the cells divide, a bit of DNA information might get lost." "So the new cell isn't an exact copy." "It's a bit like a game of Chinese whispers." "It's why our bodies end up looking very different from how they started." "Ageing seems to be a fact of life, so how on earth can we stay forever young?" "For starters you could try hiding your age." "But even if all the surgery, creams, supplements and Botox in the world make you look younger, they won't help you live forever." "Still, we are pushing our lifetime as far as we can." "Just a century ago life expectancy in the West was around 40 years." "But thanks to better diets and medical back up, a child born now can expect to live to a ripe old age of 80." "Today in the UK there are more centenarians than ever before." "In 1952 the Queen sent 225 telegrams to people on their 100th birthday." "In 2003 she sent almost 5000." "But what's our limit?" "Well we believe the oldest human ever lived to 122." "So can we buy ourselves more time?" "Some scientists think we can." "They've increased the life of one animal to the human equivalent of 500 years." "Admittedly it's only a worm." "But it has genes that control ageing." "By fiddling with these genes scientists have turned the worm, on the right, into a very ancient specimen indeed." "Maybe, with a similar genetic nip and tuck, we could one day cheat time and live much, much longer." "But for now, perhaps the best way to buy more time is not with science, but by having fun." "You can grow even older - by staying young at heart." "A happy, optimistic person could dramatically extend their life by over twenty years." "Instead of reaching just 85, you could laugh your way to 106." "So, keep on smiling." "Oh, and remember to eat those greens!" "Although our time eventually runs out, we're finding ways of pushing life spans to the limit." "Look after your body and it will look after you." "Our brains can change how we experience time and avoid disaster." "And with a little help from the sun, our body clocks keep ticking over nicely." "So without even realising, our bodies already master time." "But we're not content with this." "We expect more and more from the time we've got." "Which means everything else has to speed up." "How has this race against time changed the world around us?" "One of the biggest repercussions from doing things more quickly may have been triggered over 50,000 years ago." "This was when man first set foot in Australia." "The first people brought something that helped them to survive here, but it was something that may have changed the landscape forever." "Fire." "With fire they may have set off a chain of events that they knew nothing about." "It's just one example of how we humans cannot see the results of what we do." "Not because the events aren't dramatic, but because they happen on a timescale way, way beyond our own." "To see what happened in Australia, we first have to appreciate how fire transformed these people's lives." "Fire is destructive, so why torch the very land they lived on?" "It was all done to save time." "With fire they could clear the land faster than ever before." "And despite appearances the devastation was short lived." "The bare ground was quickly filled with fresh new growth." "These tender shoots attracted grazing animals." "It made hunting quicker and easier." "Saving time is all part of the human drive to survive." "But now there's a suggestion that these small-scale fires did more than just scorch a few plants." "Only now, with the benefit of hindsight, can we see how the dramatic changes, here in Australia, might have begun." "Fire was such a great time-saver that the early people relied on it more and more." "As the blazes became more frequent, the plants had less and less time to grow back." "Thousands of fires over thousands of generations may have changed the relationship between the plants and the climate." "Eventually some of Australia's annual monsoons just dried up." "The skies cleared and the rivers ran dry." "Gone was the water from in front of their eyes." "But because it disappeared little by little, drop-by-drop over thousands of years, they never saw it happening." "Some believed this continental-scale change in the weather dried up Australia's largest lake." "When the first people arrived," "Lake Eyre covered a vast area in the middle of the country." "Its disappearance coincided with man's arrival." "Tiny bits of timesaving the use of fire to clear the land and speed up the hunt for food added up, over time, to this." "Australia turned into the largely desert continent we know today." "And a once massive lake is gone." "Fire is one of the first time saving devices but it certainly wasn't the last." "We humans will do anything to cut corners." "But, even as we settled into the fast lane, we discovered something that took us up a whole new gear." "The sun once ruled our day." "Here we're turning the sun's heat into round the clock energy electricity." "And with it we are changing our whole perspective on time." "Since we discovered electricity, time itself has been given the shock treatment." "Life today would be impossible without electricity." "Everything happens with the flick of a switch." "Electricity has pushed everything into over-drive." "It's the power behind the world's fastest growing city" "Las Vegas." "One minute there's an empty plot of land, then a timber frame, turn the corner and the walls go up." "Next street, the tiles go on." "Opposite the houses are finished." "And round the corner people have already moved in ready to live the dream." "There can be a thousand new people a week, riding in on this power surge." "It's taken just decades to turn a vast area of desert into downtown." "But it's not just Vegas." "It's everywhere." "Electricity hasn't just transformed the world." "It's turned night into day." "In Vegas buildings go up, even in the dark." "When the sun goes down, the city lights up." "The effect is like a whoop of victory over our age-old slavery to daylight." "Now there's no need to wait for anything." "The slot machines, one-arm bandits, restaurants, are all open 24 hours a day." "Dinnertime is anytime." "Here you won't run out of time only money." "This round-the-clock existence is not just changing our habits." "Many of the animals that share our cities have always been nocturnal." "But 24-hour light is making some of them behave in strange ways." "Birds come into our cities for warmth from the lights, especially at Christmas." "But the light has also meant that some birds are singing their dawn chorus in the middle of the night." "The trees are confused too." "Longer nights in autumn signal the shedding of leaves." "But trees growing by street lamps are now keeping their leaves longer than those in the dark." "We can only wonder what this is doing to our own body clocks." "Electricity has encouraged us to expect more and more from our day." "We're burning the candle at both ends." "Electricity hasn't just accelerated changes to the landscape." "It's given us control over the night as well as the day." "It's changed our whole attitude to time." "Today our need for speed means we want everything now." "And with so many of us all chasing the clock, we must get our food from plant to plate as quickly as possible." "How have we done that?" "Take rice" " Across Asia it's the staple diet for two billion people." "It feeds over half the world's population." "In Indonesia the landscape is dominated by it." "Huge tracts of the jungle have been replaced by rice fields and terraces." "Devoting large areas of land to one single crop is the only way to feed so many people, quickly and easily." "But this is just the start of high-speed farming." "Rice growing still needs a large work force." "And despite many hands making light work - it still takes a lot of time to grow and harvest." "So what can be done to speed things up and save time?" "Where possible machines take over." "This is how we get our daily bread." "Huge combine harvesters clear wheat-fields quickly and efficiently." "But there's another, bigger problem." "Nature controls the speed at which food plants grow and ripen." "And of course that dictates when they hit the shops." "About 30 years ago tomatoes were only available in the summer." "Now they're in our shopping trollies year-round." "There are plum tomatoes, vine-ripened tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, vittoria, pomodorino." "We have an insatiable appetite for them:" "The British alone consume 420,000 tonnes every year." "What happened to the humble tomato?" "The tomato plant fell under our complete control." "And what helped us do this was the glasshouse." "With glasshouses, tomato growth went high-tech." "In a short space of time the greenhouse has gone from rustic garden potting place to megalithic tomato factory." "This one covers over 11 hectares of the English countryside." "But it's about as far from nature as you can get." "Is this is a window on the future?" "It's a precision-controlled world within a world, where growing time is compressed and tomatoes hurtle through their cycle at unnatural speed." "They're grown in a special mineral base and drip-fed the water and food they need." "As the temperature gets too hot the windows open automatically and once the best growing temperature is reached, they close." "This is performance growth 24 hours a day," "7 days a week." "Seasons are a thing of the past." "There's even a boiler, which kicks in to stop the tomatoes catching a chill." "Nothing is left to chance." "They ripen double-quick and then they're picked." "Even this happens round the clock." "And although it's done by hand, it's made as easy as possible so no time is wasted." "Demand is rocketing." "It might not be long before we're eating more tomatoes than any other fruit." "No wonder we're doing all we can to grow them as fast as possible." "To speed up nature we have created artificial worlds." "Is it only a matter of time before all we grow comes under our control?" "The tomato's rise, from market garden fruit to techno-plant, is just one of the many ways in which we've taken time and shrunk it." "If you drive down time, you drive down cost." "Time is now money." "So, where on earth do we go from here?" "Iron-ore, coal, copper and aluminium are the raw ingredients of our material world." "To get enough of them, you have to shift shed-Ioads of earth." "This iron-ore mine in Australia is one of the most enormous holes in the ground we've ever created." "But where are the miners?" "Who's doing all the work?" "Men have been replaced by monster machines." "One 40 tonne scoop does the work of hundreds of men in a fraction of the time." "The ultimate labour-saving device." "Backbreaking work that used to take one man one month, now takes one minute." "We have the power to move mountains." "And what's more, we can do it with breath-taking speed." "A mine that today takes 30 years to dig, might, in the future, take only 30 days." "But what's behind the rush?" "This iron ore is the essential ingredient in our drive to beat time." "It goes to make steel and beyond that, all the tools that save us precious minutes." "But one product above all, has changed our experience of time." "This train is carrying enough ore to make 15,000 of them." "The most revolutionary time saving machine ever invented." "The car, perhaps more than anything else, has accelerated the way we live." "It's possibly our first ever time machine." "It gives us the freedom to travel further, faster than ever before." "The first ones didn't exactly take your breath away." "Though at the time people thought you'd suffocate if you went much faster." "But that didn't hold us back!" "Top speeds have gone from barely more than walking pace to over 300 kilometres per hour, in less than a century." "A century ago most people never left their own village." "Today we can get to anywhere on the planet in less than 48 hours." "Because we can get about so fast, we're always on the move." "Speed is how we beat time." "And speed may be the key to our ultimate dream." "Time travel." "Imagine being able to turn back the clock, and relive your life." "Imagine turning your car into a time machine and taking a journey through time." "Well today we are much closer to turning this dream into a reality." "And that's because we now know there's no such thing as the constant march of time." "In 1905 Albert Einstein suggested the mind-bending theory that time varies with speed." "He proved that the length of one second depends on how fast you're moving." "The faster you travel the slower that second would take." "So what would this mean in practice?" "Take these twins." "One travels into space at phenomenal speed, leaving his brother behind on earth." "Neither will notice a change in time but when they meet again they'll see a big difference." "When our space traveller completes what was - for him a 4-month trip, he finds his brother on earth has aged over 40 years." "The younger twin has time travelled into his brother's future." "So how fast would he have been going?" "Something close to the speed of light." "That's around 300,000 kilometres per second." "But is this actually possible?" "Well in just 100 years we've gone from top speeds of 12 kilometres an hour to 7 times the speed of sound." "The speed of light is still a long way off, but new breakthroughs could find us hurtling towards it faster than we ever imagined." "However far-fetched time travel may seem, don't brush it off as a dream." "Lots of things once seemed impossible." "A little over a hundred years ago, the idea of talking to someone on the other side of the world, would have been laughed at." "Today a telephone call to New Zealand where words move at the speed of light is taken for granted." "So time travel might happen sooner than you think." "But what about the time travel we see in science fiction?" "Going back, as well as forward, in time?" "Scientists have discovered tunnels that connect two areas of space, which might just do this." "These tunnels, called wormholes, are a short cut between two points in time." "At the moment it's still a theory but, given time..." "So, if you could become a Time Lord, what power would you have?" "Just imagine the options." "You could head into the future to visit your great grandchildren, perhaps even see their children's children." "What kind of world would they be living in?" "You might prefer to take a trip into the past." "Visit the world of the ancient Egyptians and see how they built the pyramids." "Would you tell the early fire-makers of Australia the consequences of their actions?" "Maybe you'd go see the spectacles of the world, witness the creation of the Grand Canyon." "You could even walk with dinosaurs..." "Would you go back into the unknown, over 15 billion years, to witness the creation of the Universe and the very beginning of Time?" "If you could become a true master of time where would you go?" "What would you dare to change?"