ALIEN EARTHS
Sunday, August 23 at 9PM ET/PT
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/alien-earths-3637/Overview
Join leading astronomers on a visual journey beyond our solar system in search of planets like Earth. Using CGI animation, we’ll explore bizarre worlds that stretch our imagination: planets with iron rain and hot ice, with diamonds everywhere, and endless oceans of gas. Planets with abnormal orbital patterns and planets with no pattern at all that drift alone in the Milky Way. Planets so strange we never could have predicted them before. Could life exist there?
CGI: The runaway Planemo in a star forming region. (Image Credit: © SkyWorks Digital, Inc.)
Video #1 – Extreme conditions abound on planemos. But spring and fall are just right. Can life survive beyond the Goldilocks Zone?
Link: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/alien-earths-3637/Videos/07058_00
Video #2 – Adrift in space with no star to keep them warm, some planemos still manage to support life.
Link: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/alien-earths-3637/Videos/07059_00
Video #3 – “Planetary zombies” can orbit a pulsar, but radiation makes it impossible for life of any kind to survive on them.
Link: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/alien-earths-3637/Videos/07080_00
On our ALIEN EARTHS program Website, you can also:
- Navigate the Planetary Investigation Lab and explore 3D life form rotations, videos, photos and high resolution concept art.
- Learn about current and future NASA missions, including the Keck Interferometer Telescopes, Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Kepler Mission.
- Check out a photo gallery of the planets, and more.
NAKED SCIENCE: HAWKING’S UNIVERSE
Sunday, August 23 at 10PM ET/PT
Stephen Hawking at CERN 2006. Hawking is one of the world’s most famous scientists. He is on a quest to answer how the Universe came to exist. (photo credit © CERN/Maximilien Brice/Claudia Marcelloni)
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/naked-science/3898/Overview
Stephen Hawking is one of the world’s most famous scientists. But ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, has left him almost totally paralyzed and it is progressing. Unable to walk, talk, or write, his only way of communicating is through a computer program that turns a small movement of a finger or the blink of an eye, into words from a vocal synthesizer. But Hawking remains determined to discover a theory of everything, a complete set of rules for the Universe. Where did the Universe come from and where is it going? What is the nature of time? Will it ever come to an end? This program will explore Hawking’s major contributions to the understanding of our Universe – from his revolutionary proof that our Universe originated in a Big Bang; to his ground breaking discovery that Black Holes are not completely black, but rather emit radiation and eventually evaporate and disappear, to his insights on string theory. Will he unlock the secret of creation before his time runs out?
Video #1 – No one’s found the Theory of Everything yet, but when Hawking discovers that black holes emit radiation, he gets very close.
Link: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/naked-science/3898/Videos/07078_00
Video #2 – When Hawking loses his voice to a tracheotomy, new speech software technology keeps his research on track.
Link: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/naked-science/3898/Videos/07079_00
