Space isn't vast and empty space but a dynamic, cosmic storm. It's a storm that could kill us, but without it we wouldn't be here at all. This is a story about the weird connections, the near misses, the lucky breaks that created this amazing world. For 4.5 billion years our planet has been battered and bruised and punched and pummeled but we're still standing. It's actually the battle that's built us and this is the tale of the tape. Ever wonder how our planet got here? It was born in a cosmic storm. The violence could have destroyed us, but instead it made us.
The film follows legendary stuntman Eddie Braun as he prepares and attempts the most dangerous stunt in cinematic history. Contemplating retirement and having survived over three decades of hellacious car crashes, explosions, high falls and death-defying leaps, Eddie decides to complete what his childhood hero never finished – the infamous Snake River Canyon rocket jump – an audacious televised event that almost killed famed daredevil, Evel Knievel.
As NASA releases the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope, this film tells the inside story of the telescope's construction and the astronomers taking its first picture of distant stars and galaxies. Will it be the deepest image of our universe ever taken? The successor to Hubble, and 100 times more powerful, the James Webb is the most technically advanced telescope ever built. It will look further back in time than Hubble to an era around 200 million years after the Big Bang, when the first stars and galaxies appeared. Webb's primary mission is to capture the faint light from these objects on the edge of our visible universe so that scientists can learn how they formed, but its instruments are so sensitive it could also be the first telescope to detect signs of life on a distant planet. The James Webb Telescope is an £8 billion gamble on the skills of its engineering team. It’s the first telescope designed to unfold in space – a complicated two-week operation in which 178 release devices must all work - 107 of them on the telescope's sun shield alone. If just one fails, the expensive telescope could become a giant piece of space junk. From its conception in the late 1980s, the construction of Webb has posed a huge technical challenge. The team must build a mirror six times larger than Hubble’s and construct a vast sun shield the size of a tennis court, fold them up so they fit into an Ariane 5 rocket, then find a way to unfold them in space. This film tells the inside story of the James Webb Space Telescope in the words of the engineers who built it and the astronomers who will use it.
Supertramp's 'Breakfast in America' was the biggest selling album in the world in 1979. Following the album's release Supertramp embarked on a 10 month world tour which arrived in Paris at the end of November. Now, transferred and restored from the original 16mm film, this footage is available to Supertramp's legion of fans worldwide. In July 2006, the original master tapes of the album 'Supertramp: Live In Paris' were rediscovered in the Northern California barn of the band's drummer Bob Siebenberg, along with video footage. The tapes were sent to Cups 'N Strings Studios in Woodland Hills, California, for digital remastering. The tapes were initially in bad technical shape, but were successfully transferred to a digital format. The original idea was to feature heavily footage of Paris, adding a story in The Song Remains the Same. The sound was remixed by Peter Henderson and Supertramp's original sound engineer Russel Pope from the original multi-tracks.
Our strange rock itself can also be lethal. We tend to think of Earth as our life support but it's not there to support us at all. It's a place that's violent, that's beautiful, that's crazy, that's intense. Mother Nature is a serial killer. We wouldn't be here without mass suicide and events so devastating it makes the extinction of the dinosaurs looks like a tea party. There have been 5 mass extinctions on the planet and 99.9 percent of all species that have ever lived are gone. Explore the story of how life on Earth has evolved, becoming lethal for life to thrive.
the final episode deals with plants that live in hostile environments. Attenborough visits Ellesmere Island, north of the Arctic Circle, to demonstrate that even in a place that is unconducive to life, it can be found. Algae and lichens grow in or on rock, and during summer, when the ice melts, flowers are much more apparent. However, they must remain close to the ground to stay out of the chilling wind. In the Tasmanian mountains, plants conserve heat by growing into 'cushions' that act as solar panels, with as many as a million individual shoots grouped together as one. Others, such as the lobelia in Mount Kenya, have a 'fur coat' of dense hairs on their leaves. The saguaro cactus in the Sonoran Desert flourishes because of its ability to retain vast amounts of water, which can't be lost through leaves because it has none. Many desert dwellers benefit from an accelerated life cycle, blooming rapidly within weeks after rainfall. Conversely, Mount Roraima is one of the wettest places on Earth. It is a huge sandstone plateau with high waterfalls and nutrients are continuously washed away, so plants have to adapt their diet if they are to survive. A bladderwort is shown invading a bromeliad. Inhabitants of lakes have other problems to contend with: those that dominate the surface will proliferate, and the Amazon water lily provides an apt illustration. Attenborough ends the series with an entreaty for the conservation of plant species.
Ever wonder how our planet got here? It was born in a cosmic storm. The violence could have destroyed us, but instead it made us.