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Can you guess what this is?

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What if I told you there's a place[br]where the creatures are made of glass?

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Or that there are lifeforms[br]that are invisible to us

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but astronauts see them all the time?

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These invisible glass creatures[br]aren't aliens on a faraway exoplanet.

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They're diatoms:

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photosynthetic, single-celled algae[br]responsible for producing oxygen

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and helping seed clouds[br]on a planetary scale ...

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and with intricately sculpted,[br]geometric exoskeletons made of --

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yeah, glass.

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You can see them in swirls[br]of ocean-surface colors from space.

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And when they die,

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their glass houses sink[br]to the depths of the oceans,

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taking carbon out of the air

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and with them to the grave,

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accounting for a significant amount[br]of carbon sequestration in the oceans.

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We live on an alien planet.

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There is so much weird life[br]here on Earth to study,

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and so much of it lives[br]at the edges of our world,

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of our sight,

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and of our understanding.

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One of those edges is Antarctica.

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Typically, when we think of Antarctica,

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we think of a place[br]that's barren and lifeless ...

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except for a few penguins.

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But Antarctica should instead[br]be known as a polar oasis of life,

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host to countless creatures[br]that are utterly fascinating.

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So why haven't we seen them[br]on the latest nature documentary?

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Well, they lurk beneath the snow and ice,

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virtually invisible to us.

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They're microbes:

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tiny plants and animals living[br]embedded inside of glaciers,

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underneath the sea ice

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and swimming in subglacial ponds.

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And they're no less charismatic[br]than any of the megafauna

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that you're used to seeing[br]in a nature documentary.

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But how do you compel people[br]to explore what they can't see?

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I recently led a five-week[br]expedition to Antarctica

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to essentially become a wildlife[br]filmmaker at the microbial scale.

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With 185 pounds of gear,

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I boarded a military aircraft

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and brought microscopes into the field

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to film and investigate[br]these microscopic extremophiles

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so that we can become more familiar[br]with a poorly understood ecosystem

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that we live with here on Earth.

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To film these invisible[br]creatures in action,

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I needed to see where they call home --

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I needed to venture under the ice.

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Every year, the sea ice nearly doubles[br]the entire size of Antarctica.

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To get a glimpse below[br]the nine-feet-thick ice,

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I climbed down a long, metal tube[br]inserted into the sea ice

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to witness a hidden[br]ecosystem full of life,

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while being suspended between the seafloor[br]and the illuminated ceiling of ice.

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Here's what that looked like[br]from the outside.

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It was just absolutely magical.

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Some of the critters I found[br]were delightful things like seed shrimp,

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and many more beautiful,[br]geometric diatoms.

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I then went farther afield[br]to camp out in the Dry Valleys

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for a couple of weeks.

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98 percent of Antarctica[br]is covered with ice

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and the Dry Valleys are the largest area[br]of Antarctica where you can actually see

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what the continent itself[br]looks like underneath all of it.

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I sampled bacteria at Blood Falls,

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a natural phenomenon of a subglacial pond[br]spurting out iron oxide

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that was thought to be utterly lifeless[br]until a little more than a decade ago.

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And I hiked up a glacier[br]to drill down into it,

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revealing countless, hardcore critters[br]living their best lives

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while embedded inside layers of ice.

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Known as cryoconite holes,

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they form when tiny pieces[br]of darkly colored dirt

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get blown onto the glacier

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and begin to melt down into soupy holes[br]that then freeze over,

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preserving hundreds of dirt pucks[br]inside the glacier,

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like little island universes

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each with its own unique ecosystem.

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Some of the critters I found[br]you may recognize,

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like this adorable tardigrade --

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I absolutely love them,

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they're like little[br]gummy bears with claws.

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Also known as a water bear,

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they're famous for possessing superpowers

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that allow them to survive[br]in extreme conditions,

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including the vacuum of space.

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But you don't need to travel to space[br]or even Antarctica to find them.

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They live in moss all over this planet,

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from sidewalk cracks to parks.

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You likely walk right by tons[br]of these invisible animals every day.

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Others may look familiar,

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but be stranger still, like nematodes.

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Not a snake nor an earthworm,

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nematodes are a creature all their own.

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They can't regenerate like an earthworm[br]or crawl like a snake,

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but they have tiny, dagger-like[br]needles inside their mouths

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that some of them use to spearfish[br]their prey and suck out the insides.

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For every single human on this planet,

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there exist 57 billion nematodes.

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And some of the critters[br]you may not recognize at all

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but live out equally fascinating lives,

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such as rotifers with amazing crowns[br]that turn into Roomba-like mouths,

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ciliates with digestive systems [br]so transparent that it's almost TMI,

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and cyanobacteria that look like party[br]confetti exploded all over a petri dish.

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A lot of times what we see[br]in popular media

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are scanning electron microscope[br]images of microorganisms

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looking like scary monsters.

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Without seeing them move[br]their lives remain elusive to us

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despite them living nearly[br]everywhere we step outside.

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What's their daily life like?

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How do they interact[br]with their environment?

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If you only ever saw a photo[br]of a penguin at a zoo,

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but you never saw one waddle around[br]and then glide over ice,

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you wouldn't fully understand penguins.

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By seeing microcreatures in motion,

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we gain better insights into the lives[br]of the otherwise invisible.

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Without documenting the invisible life[br]in Antarctica and our own backyards,

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we don't understand just how many[br]creatures we share our world with.

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And that means we don't yet[br]have the full picture

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of our weird and whimsical home planet.

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Thank you.