Extraterrestrial on National Geographic

[toymaker]

Following after "Alien Planet":<br />http://www.nationalgeographic.com/channel/extraterrestrial/index.html<br /><br />Nice to see programs about the coming discoveries of Earthlike worlds, seemed more scientific then Alien Planet although less flashy.<br />Too bad that NASA decided to delay TPF <img src="/images/icons/frown.gif" />

 

[thalion]

I think the discovery of an earthlike planet would be almost as paradigm-shattering as contacting alien life; I sincerely hope I live to see it. Science and space would simply never the be the same. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /><br /><br />Looking forward to the program, as you can imagine.

 

[strandedonearth]

Actually, I read an article (think it was in Nat'l Geographic) which says the tops of the really tall redwoods in California get most of their moisture from the fog or low clouds rolling in off the coast.

 

[spacefire]

seems one planet has mainly flying life forms. is gravity lower on Blue Moon? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>http://asteroid-invasion.blogspot.com</p><p>http://www.solvengineer.com/asteroid-invasion.html </p><p> </p> </div>

 

[princessem]

I thought I'd post - I was the researcher for Extraterrestrial. If you've got any questions on how we came up with anything or who was involved etc then just ask! Glad you are interested in the giant trees. They were conceptualised with the max redwood height (paper in Nature by Prof. Koch of NAU) in mind.

 

[princessem]

Re: The red dwarf planet <br />It was conceptualised following work by Manoj Joshi on climatic modelling on synchronously rotating planets. Basically it was previously thought that there would be atmospheric collapse, with water boiling off on the light side, and freezing on the dark side, but as he ran models he found this would not always be the case. There would in fact be circulation, especially with the introduction of continents, that would prevent this.

 

[princessem]

Again the weather patterns were calculated by Manoj Joshi, dependent on the continental patterns.

 

[princessem]

I think the Pagoda trees are the most interesting species on the planets. The water collection device is really clever, and kinda obvious. The only problem I could think of was the colllection of nutrients, nitrates etc.

 

[Aetius]

I recorded this on DVR a few days ago, and just finished watching it last night. It was so neat to see CGI bring the alien ecologies to life. I hope this show does something to change the TV science fiction paradigm of 'Earth-like' worlds being the only interesting places with regard to life.<br /><br />You guys should pat yourselves on the back for a job well done.