This episode is a Re-Narrated version of the 2019 Brian Cox series 'Planets' episode titled "A Moment in the Sun"
There's considerable alteration to the script used, with a more sensationalist emphasis in the narration - beautifully read in dramatic voice by Zachary Quinto - no doubt to match the US audience target demographics, rather then the wide-eyed-wonder pitch used in the BBC program for the rest of the world.
Some elements also seem to be dumbed down a little from the script used by Dr Cox, and all of his appearances as presenter are removed.
Overall, this is a good target-specific program, no doubt appropriate for use in US schools, but is a somewhat paler shadow of the standout original.
This one is highly enjoyable, but if you can find the BBC version in your feeds, watch that instead.
2 Reviews
Our aging mom, the Sun
evening110 July 2023
Warning: Spoilers
For millions of years after our Sun came into being, "there was no world to see it rise," and it took tens of millions more years for gravity to sculpt the orbs that became Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.
So we learn in this dazzling episode of the documentary series, which asks why our planet is the only one that could maintain the liquid water necessary to sustain life.
We learn here about the US Messenger missions to pockmarked Mercury, just a tad bigger than our moon, a ball of metal encased in a thin veneer of rock, possibly because a collision obliterated the rest of its crust. Forget about life on Mercury. Only 36 million miles from the Sun, its temperatures reach 800 degrees Fahrenheit in daytime, and its lack of any atmosphere plunges temperatures to minus-290 at night.
It seems the Russians took the lead in investigating Venus, which looks so bright in the sky because of its cloud covering. Some held out hope that oceans sloshed below, and "we were so sure of Venus's habitability that the first missions were designed for a splash landing," we're told. However, later probing of Venus in the Eighties revealed it to be "a vision of hell." As a much younger planet, it may have had rain, but the Sun, as it aged and got hotter, likely caused the water to evaporate, forming the impenetrable cloud shield and a "runaway greenhouse effect."
Nor did Mars have any hope for life, we see here. Smaller than Venus and with less gravity, its water simply evaporated into space, we're told.
On our own planet, liquid water not only appeared -- it's not explained how -- but remained, enabling complex life to evolve, "and that's the magic of Earth." However, we must never forget that "the Sun dictates our fate."
As the Sun gets older and even hotter, temperatures on Earth will go up, and our planet could meet much the same fate as Venus. In 500 million years, Earth could experience massive storms and droughts, plants could die out, and oxygen levels could decline. In a billion years, life itself could disappear. The Sun will have used up its hydrogen and become a "red giant," expanding to absorb Mercury, Venus, and our Earth, which would lose its atmosphere.
But don't abandon hope -- 5.5 billion years into the future, life may become possible on certain moons of Saturn or Jupiter. The international Cassini mission orbited Saturn, finding enormous methane lakes near its poles, and on 1/14/2005 dropped the Huygens probe by parachute onto Titan. Photographs revealed "bright highlands with drainage channels -- an Earth-like world" replete with rock-solid ice pebbles.
Temperatures of minus-300 prove there's no liquid water on Titan -- yet. But in 5.5 billion years, the Sun's disintegratory expansion could cause Titan to warm, and its ice mountains to melt and form oceans, and "one of the last water worlds in our solar system will be born, creating zones of habitability."
Yet it's probably not necessary to wait that long. With hundreds of billions of galaxies out there, "our universe is full of habitable worlds," we're told.
So what about global warming? This 2019 episode says nothing about Man's possible effects on Earth's prospects, and a few words on that topic would have been welcome.
So we learn in this dazzling episode of the documentary series, which asks why our planet is the only one that could maintain the liquid water necessary to sustain life.
We learn here about the US Messenger missions to pockmarked Mercury, just a tad bigger than our moon, a ball of metal encased in a thin veneer of rock, possibly because a collision obliterated the rest of its crust. Forget about life on Mercury. Only 36 million miles from the Sun, its temperatures reach 800 degrees Fahrenheit in daytime, and its lack of any atmosphere plunges temperatures to minus-290 at night.
It seems the Russians took the lead in investigating Venus, which looks so bright in the sky because of its cloud covering. Some held out hope that oceans sloshed below, and "we were so sure of Venus's habitability that the first missions were designed for a splash landing," we're told. However, later probing of Venus in the Eighties revealed it to be "a vision of hell." As a much younger planet, it may have had rain, but the Sun, as it aged and got hotter, likely caused the water to evaporate, forming the impenetrable cloud shield and a "runaway greenhouse effect."
Nor did Mars have any hope for life, we see here. Smaller than Venus and with less gravity, its water simply evaporated into space, we're told.
On our own planet, liquid water not only appeared -- it's not explained how -- but remained, enabling complex life to evolve, "and that's the magic of Earth." However, we must never forget that "the Sun dictates our fate."
As the Sun gets older and even hotter, temperatures on Earth will go up, and our planet could meet much the same fate as Venus. In 500 million years, Earth could experience massive storms and droughts, plants could die out, and oxygen levels could decline. In a billion years, life itself could disappear. The Sun will have used up its hydrogen and become a "red giant," expanding to absorb Mercury, Venus, and our Earth, which would lose its atmosphere.
But don't abandon hope -- 5.5 billion years into the future, life may become possible on certain moons of Saturn or Jupiter. The international Cassini mission orbited Saturn, finding enormous methane lakes near its poles, and on 1/14/2005 dropped the Huygens probe by parachute onto Titan. Photographs revealed "bright highlands with drainage channels -- an Earth-like world" replete with rock-solid ice pebbles.
Temperatures of minus-300 prove there's no liquid water on Titan -- yet. But in 5.5 billion years, the Sun's disintegratory expansion could cause Titan to warm, and its ice mountains to melt and form oceans, and "one of the last water worlds in our solar system will be born, creating zones of habitability."
Yet it's probably not necessary to wait that long. With hundreds of billions of galaxies out there, "our universe is full of habitable worlds," we're told.
So what about global warming? This 2019 episode says nothing about Man's possible effects on Earth's prospects, and a few words on that topic would have been welcome.
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