How is the universe put together? How is it built? And how does it actually work? How the Universe Works Series 8 shows the inner workings of our planet, the solar system, the galaxies and the universe itself.
In the first episode, if a massive asteroid collides with earth, it could end life on our planet as we know it. New discoveries and cutting-edge tech reveal just how close we are to apocalypse and what it would take for the world's leading space agencies to stop it.

Does life exist on other planets? Astrobiology is a visionary new science that searches for life in space by combining the disciplines of astronomy, biology and geology. How did life evolve on Earth? What will life look like on other planets? These and other pertinent questions will be answered by a diverse group of scientists. Viewers will visit the Pilbara region of West Australia where the oldest evidence of life on Earth has been discovered. Travel to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn to test a theory that life could exist in the clouds of Venus. Finally, watch as experiments are done to see if life exists on exoplanets, earth-like planets beyond our solar system.

Imagine a tornado so powerful, it can form a planet, or winds sweeping across a planet but blowing at 6,000 miles per hour! How about rain....made of iron? Sounds like science fiction, but this type of weather is occurring daily in our solar system. Scientists are just beginning to unlock the secrets of these planets and their atmospheres. Can this research help scientists solve long unanswered questions that we have about Earth? As our own planet churns with the effects of global warming, it's natural to look into the heavens and wonder about the rest of the real estate.

The journeys of the Voyager probes is put in the context of the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, with a centuries-long tradition of sailing ship explorers, and its contemporary thinkers (such as Constantijn Huygens and his son Christian). Their discoveries are compared to the Voyager probes' discoveries among the Jovian and Saturn systems. In Cosmos Update, image processing reconstructs Voyager’s worlds and Voyager’s last portrait of the Solar System as it leaves is shown.

The incredible story of how Pluto has been propelled from an unremarkable ball of ice on the edge of the solar system to a world of unimaginable complexity - where some form of alien life might exist.
New discoveries from the edge of the solar system are transforming what is known about Pluto, thanks to the New Horizons space probe that took the first-ever close up images of the planet. Pluto was once thought to be geologically dead, but the pictures revealed it to be an active world of stunning complexity, with mountains carved from ice, a nitrogen glacier that appeared to be moving and a recently active volcano, with data sent back lead some scientists to speculate that there may even be life on Pluto today.

There is an extraordinary range of temperatures in the universe. This program examines the extreme lower temperature range, the temperature we live in and below, explaining how cold is essential for the formation of habitats suitable for life. Explore icy planets and moons, discover the role of cold in the Universe, and learn about the importance of ice to the development of habitable worlds.