Brian Cox is an English particle physicist, a Royal Society University Research Fellow and a professor at the University of Manchester. He was the keyboard player for the pop band D:Ream and currently works on the ATLAS experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider. He is best known for presenting science programs for the BBC. One such program is the 'Wonders of the Solar System'. The series comprises of five episodes, each focusing on an aspect of the Solar System.
Professor Brian Cox's opening narration for each episode goes as follows, "We live on a world of wonders. A place of astonishing beauty and complexity. We have vast oceans and incredible weather. Giant mountains and breathtaking landscapes. If you think that this is all there is, that our planet exists in magnificent isolation, then you're wrong. We're part of a much wider ecosystem that extends way beyond the top of our atmosphere. As a physicist I'm fascinated by how the laws of nature that shaped all this, also shaped the worlds beyond our home planet. I think we're living through the greatest age of discovery our civilization has known. We've voyaged to the farthest reaches of the Solar System. We've photographed strange new worlds, stood in unfamiliar landscapes, tasted alien air."
Episode one, named 'Empire of the Sun' begins with Professor Brian Cox travelling to India, to witness the total Solar eclipse on the 22nd of July, 2009. The episode illustrates the formation and behavior of the Sun and how it affects each planet in the Solar System. He goes about explaining the power of our Sun and how the energy could be harvested. We get to see the Aurora Borealis in Norway as the solar storms and their effects on our planet's magnetosphere are shown; a site truly magnificent on high-definition.
'Order Out of Chaos'; the second episode, Brian Cox tells about entropy, the arrow of time and discusses about the second law of thermodynamics. The seasons caused by the Earth's tilt and the retrograde motion of the planet Mars are discussed, the episode ends with images from the Cassini Huygens probe and a briefing about the rings of Saturn and the geysers of a Jovian moon, Enceladus.
Cox takes a journey in an English Electric to an altitude of about sixty thousand feet where the thin and fragile atmosphere of the Earth transits from light blue to dark blue to black. The third episode, 'The Thin Blue Line' is about the atmospheres of Mars and an other Jovian moon, Titan. With footage of the Huygens descend to Titan's surface, Brian Cox talks about the moons atmosphere in detail.
Comparing the Valles Marineris of Mars with the Grand Canyon of Arizona, the fourth episode, 'Dead or Alive' talks about the geological activities. Professor Brian Cox travels to Hawaii and again, a comparison is made between Olympus Mons and the planet Earth. Gravity and its effects are also discussed in this episode. He goes about explaining the enormous gravity Jupiter has and how it could potentially change the trajectory of an asteroid that has strayed into the inner Solar system and sent it on a collision course with the Earth. The episode ends with him explaining about the geological activities on Io.
The final episode, 'Aliens' covers life surviving in extreme environments. To draw comparisons between space travel, Brian Cox takes a submarine to the deep oceans. Focusing on Mars, and on a Jupiter's moon Europa, he explains how search for life by searching for water.
To those of us who care about the weather systems and canyons of Mars, or the volcanic activity of the moons around Jupiter, this show has been a treat. If you like documentaries or science programs in general, you can subscribe for Dish TV Packages that offer these programs. The advantage with these packages is that you can subscribe only channels that interest you, potentially saving money.
Roy Fernandez is a freelancer and a blogger who enjoys writing about science documentaries and science channels that are offered through packages like Dish TV Packages.
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