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This is the story of pioneering missions to neighboring planets and our first glimpses of their awe-inspiring terrains. From the giant lava plains of Venus to the volcanoes on Mars that dwarf Mount Everest, we journey around the rocky planets and then to the icy moons of Jupiter, Saturn and beyond.
2/8 • The Planets • 2004 • Astronomy
Right now researchers are hunting for extra-terrestrial life on several fronts. To find out just how close we might be to a breakthrough, astrophysicist Dr Graham Phillips visits telescopes, swims among the stromatolites on the remote West Australian coastline, and chats with scientists from around the world
3/6 • Catalyst: Series 18 • 2017 • Astronomy
To coincide with the switch-on of the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest particle accelerator complex, Professor Jim Al Khalili from the University of Surrey delves into over 50 years of the BBC science archive to tell the story behind the emergence of one of the greatest theories of modern science, the Big Bang. The remarkable idea that our universe simply began from nothing has not always been accepted with the conviction it is today and, from fiercely disputed leftfield beginnings, took the best part of the 20th century to emerge as the triumphant explanation of how the universe began. Using curious horn-shaped antennas, U-2 spy planes, satellites and particle accelerators, scientists have slowly pieced together the cosmological jigsaw, and this documentary charts the overwhelming evidence for a universe created by a Big Bang. Professor Al-Khalili comments: "This one-off documentary was made by the BBC Horizon team and was great fun to be involved with. The archive footage is fantastic too."
Carl Sagan talks about our future and the exploration of space
7/10 • The Sagan Series • 1989 • Astronomy
Forget the big bang. The real moment of creation was the Cosmic Dawn - the moment of first light. This is the scientific version of the story of Genesis. The big bang gets all the credit for creating our universe. But in fact, the universe it gave was dark and boring. There were no stars, no galaxies, just a vast, black fog of gas - the cosmic dark ages. But, after a hundred million years of nothing, came a dramatic moment of transformation - the Cosmic Dawn. It's the moment the first stars were born, the moment that lit up the Universe, and made the first structure and the first ingredients of life. This was the real moment of creation. Astronomers are now trying to witness the cosmic dawn. For the first time they have the tools to explore the very first stars of the universe and to tell the scientific story of our creation.
A spectacular journey into the depths of space: In August 1977, NASA launches one of its most daring missions in space flights. The Deep Space orbiters Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are shot into space. The task of the two orbiters: exploring the outer gas planets in our solar system. More than 30 years later, the two orbiters have traveled a distance of 15 billion miles and still send unique data to Earth. Countless recordings of these orbiters still serve as the only footage of the two planets Uranus and Neptune, and their moons. After more than 30 years of flight Voyager 1 is the farthest from Earth object that mankind has ever created. THE VOYAGER SHOW: ACROSS THE UNIVERSE demonstrates all the technical, historical and astronomical details of the fascinating Voyager missions that continue to this day.
2010 • Astronomy