The Universe, on TV

by Clifford Johnson     Department: Physics & Chemistry

WIRED Science is not the only science show that launched on television this year. A number of channels are making new science-themed TV shows, with others under discussion. This is good news for everyone, I'd say. I thought I'd point you to the History Channel's new venture, called "The Universe". It ran through the early Summer of this year, and was rather good. Each episode focused on different aspects of the universe, and it mostly has active and enthusiastic researchers in front of the camera explaining the science.

It works. They've had programs on the Sun, for example, or Jupiter. There were also programs on the life and death of stars, on the big bang, on galaxies, and so forth. (I had a bit of fun getting involved in some of the programs, and contributed some material about neutron stars and about black holes. The image to the right is a screen shot of me creating a neutron star from a ball of gas. See the full sequence here. You see, occasionally I use my superpowers to do such things in the cause of making an important point. A blog post on the shoot for that is here.)

In fact, the series was a success, and so they greenlit (green lighted?) a season two. Well, it's already being aired! The first one of the new season was this Tuesday (and will be repeated late tonight and tomorrow, I think, so you can still see it this week), and was all about extrasolar planets - planets in solar systems other than our own. I've not seen it, but I bet it's interesting, as research advances in that area has been nothing short of astonishing. The show's website is here, for more information.

The next one, to air on Tuesday the 4th December, is called "Cosmic Holes" (yeah, I know), and the subject matter will be right on the edge of the known and the unknown, talking about black holes, white holes, and wormholes. While we know that the first are out there, the second two, while also solutions of Einstein's General Relativity, are still theoretical constructs (and not without problems). The show explores some of the ideas and the prospects for the ideas surrounding them (including things like rapid travel to other parts of the universe, which I blogged about here earlier, and even time machines -  what's the science vs the science fiction there?), and explores things we'd like to know about black holes too. I know all this because I contribute to this episode too (see image on left). In fact, you can read a post I did some time ago which was a bit of a diary of one of the shoots we did for this  episode, along with my thoughts on the making of science programs and reflections  on future prospects.

I hope that you enjoy the new season. Look out for some of the older episodes too, such as the really excellent one on the Big Bang. Next week, I'll try to remember to point to a rather funny (in my opinion) joke that's embedded in the upcoming episode.

Here's to more science on TV!

-cvj

Tags: black holes, television, the universe, wormholes

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