These two men are IDENTICAL

Time is so unfathomably big. To be able to physically touch something that existed when humanity was not even at its infancy is sublime.

I've been trying to come to terms with big time, the changing of things on geological scales. Its helped me to frame my life, to put myself and my wants and desires, my ideas of legacy and impermanence on a new scale of importance... and ultimately we are all unimportant. This great civilization is a blink, and we are like falling leaves, one shell on the beach. So love when you can, laugh when you can, do what you can... or sit quietly and watch the clouds roll by. All we have is this humble moment.

These two men could be brothers

That's the wrong James Hutton at 0:41 - that's another James Hutton who was a minister/bookseller who died in 1795. The National Portrait Gallery you licensed the image from literally has the details in the description.

Fascinating how Hutton was able to calculate such a huge difference in the age of the Earth from what was commonly accepted.

Scotland is such an amazing place geologically, with some parts once attached to the rocks east of Manhattan Island, New York!

I'm a huge James Hutton fan and geology buff so this is very enjoyable. I love his 'no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end'. What a beautiful description of the immensity of time. It's mind-blowing if you think about it for a bit.

Loved the photography. Scotland is such a unique country, not just the shoreline but the highlands as well. So much history written in its various layers of rock and sediments over billions of years, it is truly an environment worth exploring.

I fell in love with geology in the first intro course I took to fulfill the general physical science requirement. I immediately switched my academic course to geology and went on to become an environmental geologist. What a wonderful career I had, I am now retired. This career offers the two things all workers most want: autonomy and variety I was never bored once in my career. The salary and benefits are very good, and there is lots of opportunity for travel, too. There is math through calculus, chemistry and physics to get through, but if I can do it, anyone can. I encourage any person who loves the environment and working outdoors to consider it as a career, geologists consistently report the highest job satisfaction over workers of every other career.

wow he managed to clone himself and talk a lot about rocks all in the same video

Hutton is my favourite scientific figure from history. Thrawn, often unkempt and (some say) quite uncouth, his leap of imagination is simply one of the most staggering insights ever made by a human. And that thrawnness was essential too; essential to stand up to received wisdom in the more learned scientific community and defy the political power of dogmatic religious belief. What a man!

Siccar point is the most sacred place in the world for geologists. The Bethlehem and Mecca of Geology

It's been ages since I took college geology courses, so thanks for reminding me about Hutton. Science aside, these two men sure look alike and could pass for siblings. 😊

One can only imagine how Leonardo da Vinci must have felt when he found seashells high up in the Alps . .

Wow, magnificent! Thank you. You kept me scratching my head when mentioning "a sudden surge of sediments about 65 million years ago when the 2 formation rocks met". 65M years ago - everything is relative in this time scale - coincides with the Chicxulub asteroid which hit the Earth during the Cretaceous-Paleogene era causing the large fauna to disappear and a mega tsunami to reach far away lands. May such an impact have caused the gap (edited, thanks Hugh) in Sicca Point? I live in the Mayan Riviera, several miles away from the underwater crater in a region surrounded by sinkholes or cenotes. That makes me often question about the Icaiche formation (today's Yucatan Peninsula), prior and after the impact and how it impacted farther lands.

What a beautiful piece. Congratulations to the authors/ creators for a wonderfully assembled vignette.

Imagine how much Hutton's mind was blown when he realised what he was looking at.🤯

There is a beautiful structure to this 13 minutes of truth ... from observation and hypothesis to science and music/culture, to eventually present/future threats. The BBC is truly a world treasure that needs a modern funding model that doesn't include an antiquated TV tax. Excellent reporting. $0.02

She has a great voice

This was PHENOMENAL! A treat for the eye, and the heart. ❤ Thank you for a lovely production BBC!

It’s really hard to break out of your own self importance and realize how big time is, how vast space is, then get walloped by the realization that time and space are kind of the same thing. Most people get uncomfortable for a moment before scurrying back to their little burrows of the the all important, everlasting familiar daily routine. I try to keep my mind swimming in the thought of endlessness before the real world comes to drag me back to its trifle.

It’s so humbling to behold long time. I went to Luray Caverns today and walked through a cave huge that formed over millions of years! Helpful perspective to human day to day life

Today it seems quite easy, but it's extremely difficult if everybody except you believes in a certain way & you say something opposite to them.

You should have defined the 3 types of Hutton's unconformities and then show this as the 'angular type unconformity'... also you should state clearly the tectonic uplift and compression (orogen) caused the deformation and erosion of Hutton's unconformity, and loss of 60Ma of Geological record: (1) 435Ma Silurian deep marine deposits laid down in the Iapetus Ocean --> (2) these sediments were then folded, uplifted, and rotated as the ancient Iapetus Ocean was destroyed during the Caledonian Orogeny (mountain building collision) where North America + Scotland (aka Laurentia) collided with Western Europe/England (Avalonia/Baltica) --> (3) Later during an extension phase following this Iapetus Suture, the Hutton's angular unconformity was capped by 375Ma Upper Devonian age desert deposits of the Old Red Sandstone rift basins. Lastly, (4) the entire section was tilted again and re-eroded, forming what we see today...

Beautiful and engaging, perfect editing and story telling. Thank you

An amazing part of History - thank you for the wonderful news of the 'abyss of time'.

Kudos to the cinematographer!

This moved me in a way that I was not expecting. Beautifully done, all.

Thank you for this wonderful story about the man who was the first to teach us to recognize the mutability of geological formations that we perceive as so permanent. And who was the first to read them and envision those amazing periods of time over which these formations were shaped. I have always been a great admirer of Friedrich Rückert's poem Chidher, which he wrote in the early eighteen hundreds. It has always been a mystery to me from what source Rückert draws the very modern idea of the world changing in geological periods of time, and in his poem he so masterfully places the archetypal figure of the eternally young wanderer Chidher into this steadily reshaping world. I am afraid I haven't been able to find an english translation of the poem. So here at least is the German original: Chidher Chidher, der ewig junge, sprach: Ich fuhr an einer Stadt vorbei, Ein Mann im Garten Früchte brach; Ich fragte, seit wann die Stadt hier sei? Er sprach, und pflückte die Früchte fort: Die Stadt steht ewig an diesem Ort, Und wird so stehen ewig fort. Und aber nach fünfhundert Jahren Kam ich desselbigen Wegs gefahren. Da fand ich keine Spur der Stadt; Ein einsamer Schäfer blies die Schalmei, Die Herde weidete Laub und Blatt; Ich fragte: wie lang ist die Stadt vorbei? Er sprach, und blies auf dem Rohre fort: Das eine wächst, wenn das andre dorrt; Das ist mein ewiger Weideort. Und aber nach fünfhundert Jahren Kam ich desselbigen Wegs gefahren. Da fand ich ein Meer, das Wellen schlug, Ein Schiffer warf die Netze frei, Und als er ruhte vom schweren Zug, Fragt ich, seit wann das Meer hier sei? Er sprach, und lachte meinem Wort: Solang als schäumen die Wellen dort, Fischt man und fischt man in diesem Port. Und aber nach fünfhundert Jahren Kam ich desselbigen Wegs gefahren. Da fand ich einen waldigen Raum, Und einen Mann in der Siedelei, Er fällte mit der Axt den Baum; Ich fragte, wie alt der Wald hier sei? Er sprach: der Wald ist ein ewiger Hort; Schon ewig wohn ich an diesem Ort, Und ewig wachsen die Bäum hier fort. Und aber nach fünfhundert Jahren Kam ich desselbigen Wegs gefahren. Da fand ich eine Stadt, und laut Erschallte der Markt vom Volksgeschrei. Ich fragte: seit wann ist die Stadt erbaut? Wohin ist Wald und Meer und Schalmei? Sie schrien, und hörten nicht mein Wort: So ging es ewig an diesem Ort, Und wird so gehen ewig fort. Und aber nach fünfhundert Jahren Will ich desselbigen Weges fahren.

This highlander is a genius.

It's cool that the proclaimers are now doing science. Jokes aside it was genuinely fascinating.

exceptional report. genius in its ability to give it philosophical depth, rooted in science, culturally inspiring and sadly humancentric.

this is beautiful it made me cry 🤍

I really appreciate the reflective nature of this video and her poetry. Science and art are meant to intertwine like this. Gorgeous video

I am not sure why, but I get tickled when I hear "firth of forth". I would love to visit Scotland one day, it looks so beautiful.

It just puts into perspective how short life actually is.

What a beautiful video! It randomly came up as a suggestion, and I'm glad I watched it. Fascinating snd strangely moving.

That place looks like a piece of primeval asteroid-landscape that somehow managed to stick around well beyond its supposed timeframe and just happened to poke through our world's fabric.

What a lovely voice she has.

Two planets meet: “You’re looking bad earth, what’s up?” “I have Homo sapiens!” “Had it once, will be over soon!”

A beautiful piece. Well done to all involved.

I was completely immersed in this entire video. The way it's presented is soothing.

i stood on the unconformitty on the isle of arran where he first validated his presumptions. was crazy to be standing at the starting point of modern geology

a wonderful story, and very well told

Bless your thoughtful souls

such a lovely report, well put together

Not to take away how interesting how these chaps are but they are definitely related

These two guys look so much alike they could be brothers.

Even rocks melt in the sun. I keep replaying her singing that part of Robert Burns - Love Is Like A Red Rose!! So beautiful. Science + Art belong together.

Loved this. Humbling... earth's sophistication is beyond human comprehension. Fills me with curiosity and wonderment.

Fascinating location. I think it's on the West side of Scotland, maybe farther to the North, where there's a similarly angled formation of rock layers dating back to the Carboniferous period. They're one side of what was once a large bowl-shaped valley, which split down the middle when the continents broke apart. The other side of it, as luck would have it, is in Nova Scotia, Canada. A couple notes I want to make though: One is that this notion the video is trying to give that a nuclear power plant and a cement factory are as equivalent to the 'deep future' as sedimentary rocks are to the deep past is ridiculous. Sure, nuclear waste is radioactive for a long time, what, 60'000 years? A: That's a pittance compared to the time scale you're looking at in those layers. There was literally a gap of 100 times that long between layers. B: In the course of human development, it is almost inevitable that we'll discover some way to more efficiently deal with radioactivity and mitigate that problem. So much of this lamenting for human activity is incredibly short-sighted and ignorant. C: If the Human race is the result of natural evolution, then Human activity is completely natural. It's natural for termites to build a city by gluing dirt together, it's natural for elephants to push trees over, and everything humans do is a part of nature. Starting fires, smelting steel, refining Plutonium, detonating atomic bombs, paving cities with cement... By definition, unless the reason we're able to do those things is something supernatural, all of that is completely natural. The other thing is that the video made a point about how the discovery challenged the Biblical concepts, but it.. really doesn't. Maybe it challenges the understanding of the Biblical account, but that too is kinda short sighted and ignorant. If you're familiar with the Bible's account of creation, and you think that means the Earth is 6000 years old, you're missing a step in the logic. First off, it's probably closer to 8 or 9000 years, because the 6000 year figure is based on tracing the lineage, but there are almost definitely steps missing from that, but that's beside the point. Let me ask this: When God created Adam, was Adam a newborn? Of course not; he'd have died without a mother. He wasn't a child, he wasn't a fertilized egg, he was a man. When God created the whales, the chickens, the bees, the dogs... Were they babies/hatchlings/larvae/puppies? No, again, they wouldn't have been able to survive. They were created in the state of life. When the Andromeda galaxy was created 2.5 million light years away, did the light from it begin travelling to Earth starting then? You can look up in the sky and see it today, so no, its light was also created in action. And so the rocks were created with millions of years of history written in them, in geological layers and Cambrian fossils and dinosaur bones, with eons of erosion and tectonic movement already in their history. If God creates a man, you don't look at him and say "That is a baby." If God creates a bird, you don't look at it and say "That is a hatchling." When God creates a fully formed planet covered in life and history, why would you look at it and say it's young?

Most lyrical, evocative short film . . . works in multiple dimensions very effectively. As inspiration of geology, and meditation of epistemology, and admonition of moral philosophy, all wrapped into an omen of tragedy, like Siccar's Point compressed a story of mystery, and we're drafting our page for the future of history.

BRAVO!!! Brilliant production insightful and delightful THANK YOU Cheers

This short film is such a lovely convergence of wonder, awe, history, art, science, philosophy and spirt. Well done!!

I found this not only interesting but quite calming.

Quite a fascinating and interesting history and geology lesson. Plus exquisite the exquisite landscape too. And the piece de resistance of course was the music and the voice of that young woman .

I did not know of Hutton prior to this video. Am going to learn much more about him, his work, adding to my understanding of the evolution of our (mis)perceptions of evolution. Thank you for this enlightening look-see.

Fascinating science history lesson. We have several unconformities where I live here in Colorado. Even took my students to study them, mentioning Hutton in the process. Thanks for a great lesson in geology! ❤🎉

There’s a hymn, “God Folds the Mountains Out of Rock” by Thomas Troeger, based on Job 28

I would have much preferred it if the narrator didn't keep referring to the "Biblical account of time", as the Bible does not actually state how old the earth is, and the traditional calculations of the earth's age are based on interpretations of the text rather than explicit statements. It would have been more accurate to have called it "the traditional account".

That was an awesome storytelling...great work

So beautifully told, the story of impermanence amidst reminders of the depth of time. Thank you

Fascinating and what a gorgeous place!

What a fascinating and charming piece!

Striking portrait. Thank you for creating and sharing.

some pretty pictures, some soundbites, a song. Nothing to actually explain how he knew how long it took the rocks to be laid down, nor how long the disconformity took to form. I don't suppose he counted 35 million layers?

James Hutton father of geology

these two guys look so alike!

Such a fantastic video. I’ve been to the place. It’s incredible ⭐️

Lovely video combining science with art and philosophy. I lived in North Berwick until I was 18 and I had never heard of this, I must go and explore next time I'm over.

What stunning scenery 😍 It really is a beautiful place.

What an absolutely beautiful voice on the bonnie lass. Both talking and then when she started singing 🤯🔥🥰

Karine, what a beautiful song performed in an ethereal way, the poetry you added to the content was perfectly in tune with the vastness portrayed

As a 61 year old Christian, who was born into a Baptist family grew up in that religion, went to a Pentecostal church when visiting my great- grandmother in the summers, and was baptized a second time while attending a charismatic non-denominational church for 13 years. Finally, came home to the religion I will be when I die Catholicism. Never, have I ever in ANY of those religion's churches did anyone ever say the earth is two thousand years old. The Catholic Church today embraces science and as a college student I never heard anyone say the earth is 2000 years old. Jesus was on earth and died approx 2023 years ago. The earth was ancient at that point! We have no inkling of God's time other than a scripture in Genesis I believe that talks about what a day (in God's time) would be like for us. This video is the coolest thing alive learned in a while---can't wait to find out more.

This was remarkable

“My love is like a red, red rose”…her unexpected singing just transformed my day 🌞❤️

And also thank you for the music. And lyrics.

Excellent integration of Karine Polwart into the news piece, thank you!

Fascinating how this one observation transformed our understanding of time and upended the prevailing wisdom of a six-thousand year-old Earth, replacing it in the blink of an eye to one that must be millions (and later found to be billions) of years old. Great video and a superb book, The Long View, from Richard Fisher.

Wonderful stuff and location.

Loved the illustration around 5:00 in. Very instructive.

Cool, beautiful scenery 😊

A very Old Story, no pun intended. Nevertheless it’s an amazing history.

Love this. Thanks!

Loved to see Dan Heard and Jason in this episode 💛

I learned unconformity theory in Geology 101 in 1971-72, and that insignificant time ago (50 + years) it's still being discussed.... Anthropocene eras aside, geologic time requires an entirely different view of things than our everyday consciousnes...

This is so interesting but all I can think is these two blokes look like twins!

Beautifully done

Fascinating-thank you!

Calm down BBC, I don't need to tear up watching a geology video 🤣

There's still people today who think the earth is 6000 years old. Lol

This was really well done.

Your delivery is exquisite. I could listen to you all day long.💝. Why does it sadden me to see a nuclear plant in that beautiful historic place?

This stuff can a person feel small sometimes.

The BBC shouldn't have such low quality microphones.

The only thing we are threatening with our economic activities is ourselves - our slice of deep time

Great work. ❤

It all returns back to the earth... ✨ Nice👍

Another well done video by the good people at the BBC. Thank you.