We cannot compare anything on earth to the largest things known in space. The Lymann Alpha blob is a bubble-like structure containing countless galaxies, perhaps the biggest object in the entire universe.In this documentary we discover which is the largest planet, star, star cluster, constellation, black hole, void, volcano, galaxy, explosion, moon, storm and impact crater in space.
With its famous rings, Saturn is the most distant planet clearly visible to the naked eye. But how did the rings get there and when were they formed? To study the planet in detail, scientists needed to get closer. So on 15 October 1997, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft was launched.The Cassini-Huygens is one of the most ambitious spacecraft ever launched, taking seven years to reach Saturn. The mi
This documentary takes a fascinating new look at a very old universe. Fifty years after man first ventured into outer space, we examine the greatest secrets of the heavens. Each episode outlines how humans have explored the universe, and scrutinises the discoveries they have made.As the earth churns ominously with the effects of global warming, this is a revealing and prescient journey into the
New discoveries regarding the Outer Planets are creating a fundamental rethinking of our solar system. Uranus is a toxic combination of hydrogen, helium and methane. Scientists speculate that the planet was knocked on its side after colliding with another body.Neptune's largest moon, Triton, is cold and barren, but some scientists speculate that liquid water might exist under Triton's icy surfac
In ‘Jupiter’, we journey half a billion miles from the earth’s surface to a mini solar system of over 60 moons rotating around a powerful planet of gas. Its flowing colours and spots hold strange beauty, but contain violent storms and jet streams.Could this big, bright ball of turbulent weather have been the star of Bethlehem? Could one of its moons harbour life beneath its icy crust? Jupiter, t
The problems encountered in the America's cold war rocketry program is dramatically illustrated with a film montage of U.S. missiles spectacularly blowing up on their launch pads. After the Soviets launched Sputnik, America's resolve to be able to wage war in space stiffened, and test detonations of atomic weapons in space began. The effects of these little-known tests were bizarre and included el
This is the profile of an extraterrestrial mass murderer: one whose existence was denied by scientific orthodoxy for nearly two decades, but has now been tracked down. 65 million years ago a 15km wide asteroid hit the Earth. In 1978 Walter Alvarez, a Nobel-prize-winning physicist, and his son Luis, first proposed the outrageous idea that a meteorite strike blasted the dinosaurs into extinction, ta
250 million years ago, long before dinosaurs roamed the Earth, the land and oceans teemed with life. This was the Permian, a golden era of biodiversity that was about to come to a crashing end. Within just a few thousand years, 95% of the lifeforms on the planet would be wiped out, in the biggest mass extinction Earth has ever known. What natural disaster could kill on such a massive scale? It is
