“Solar System” New BBC Series With Professor Brian Cox

“Solar System” New BBC Series With Professor Brian Cox

Professor Brian Cox continues his exploration of the amazing events taking place in the Solar System’s planets and moons every day after The Planets and Universe.

Over 30 space probes and 29 state-of-the-art space telescopes are uncovering the secrets of our solar system in breathtaking new detail, making this a golden age for interstellar exploration. Every day, we are learning, the skies above us witness countless extraordinary events, such as the eruption of volcanoes larger than Earth’s largest super volcanoes, the raining of diamonds through winds of one thousand kilometres per hour, and the explosion of oceans of water into space. And now we have the tools to actually see it unfold before our eyes.

What is Solar System

With this five-part, sixty-minute series for BBC Two and iPlayer, Professor Cox will introduce viewers to the incredible events unfolding in our solar system right this second, as revealed by our most advanced spacecraft. While it has long been a mystery whether or not any of Venus’s million volcanoes are active, we have recently witnessed the eruption of a volcano larger than Mount Everest. We’ll be flying with NASA’s Juno probe past eruptions on Jupiter’s tiny moon Io that shoot hundreds of kilometres into space. Red frost will cover Pluto’s peaks, and ice crystals will fall from the sky on Mars.

Professor Cox will take us to the locations on Earth that explain the physics and planetary geology behind these strange natural phenomena. To learn how a similar landscape of peaks, valleys, and glaciers can exist right at the remote frozen edge of the solar system on Pluto, he visits the frozen Denali mountains in Alaska as part of his ‘comparative planetology’ research. The New Horizons spacecraft made a startling discovery: an object with an average temperature of -240 degrees Celsius. The first attempt to bring back a pristine sample from an ancient asteroid, which could tell us much about the origin of the solar system, is one of the active missions he will join.

What does Professor Brian Cox say

Professor Brian Cox says: “We are living through a golden age of exploration. As we speak, there are spacecraft in orbit around or on the surface of five of the eight planets in our solar system, and there are a host of new missions close to launch or en-route to their targets. The latest, the European Space Agency’s “Juice” spacecraft, was launched towards Jupiter last week. As new data cascades in, we are building an ever more accurate picture of our solar system. Rovers on Mars are exploring ancient lake beds, two new missions to Jupiter’s ice moons aim to probe their oceans for life, and the New Horizons spacecraft has forced us to contemplate biology beneath the frigid nitrogen glaciers of Pluto.

“Are we alone in the Universe? Maybe the answer will be found in our cosmic backyard. The exploration of the solar system is therefore about much more than the exploration of space – out there – beyond Earth. It is allowing us to paint a picture of our place in the Universe, and that picture is getting more detailed and more accurate with every bit of data returned in real time from our fleet of explorers scattered from the Sun to the edge of interstellar space.”

Who is making Solar System

Solar System (w/t), a 5×60’ series for BBC Two and iPlayer, is made by BBC Studios Science Unit. It was commissioned by Jack Bootle, Head of Commissioning, Specialist Factual and the Executive Producers are Gideon Bradshaw and Andrew Cohen. The Commissioning Editor is Tom Coveney and the Series Producers are Suzy Boyles and Alice Jones. It will air next year.