[X] My Assistant

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

Tuesday 01 May 2007 - BBC 2

The Six Million Dollar Experiment: On 26th November 2007, a team of scientists will start-up of a scientific experiment at Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. This experiment will reconstruct the effect of the Big Bang!

[ngunn]

Don't cry if you missed it. Eye-torturing, out-of-focus visual gimmickry and distracting synth-muzak throughout. Actual information only fleetingly mentioned and in apparently random order, leaving the viewer even after nearly an hour with no clear overview of the subject of extrasolar planets. Most of the script spoken by actors. It was all I could do not to turn it off half way through. By the end I wished I had.

[Stu]

I know what you mean. I thought it was impossible to make such an incredibly exciting and important subject as SETI boring, but that HORIZON managed it. They've just gone nuts, really: trendy shaky camera-work, ridiculous out of focus "prismatic" visual effects, fish-eye lenses used every 5 mins... they made SETI scientists seem like mad scientists or scientific fundamentalists or worse, and I actually left the TV halfway thru to browse UMSF, I just lost interest in the program. Great shame. HORIZON used to be THE science program on TV, before it was sacrificed to the false TV gods of film school gimmickry and soundbites...

The BBC had better not mess up the dramatisation of Eddington's life, due for briadcast later this year (actually I think that'll be ok, it's the same team that made the excellent Stephen Hawking doc a few years ago. Speaking of whom, the C4 Stephen Hawking prog on Monday evening was really good, I thought...

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

Indeed, some years HORIZON was more serious. However I'm happy they still create astronomy-cosmology related programs

[djellison]

Yeah - the Hawking program was great - the Horizon was meh, I couldn't maintain interest.

Doug

[jasedm]

Sorry chaps - having flagged it up here, I actually missed it myself.
It seems to have been fairly poor by all accounts - a great shame because as I said, Horizon used to be very well-respected, and covered a wide range of subjects.

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

Interesting new 3-parts documentary " Earth - the Climate Wars " presented by Dr Ian Stewart:
BBC 2: Sunday evening 14th Sep 2008: part 2
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/proginfo/...ml#startcontent

[jamescanvin]

I didn't bother watching the first episode last night.

I was totally put off by the programme description

In the 1970s the world seemed to be falling apart. From acid rain to overpopulation, ecological concerns were at the fore. And it was at this time that climate change first became a hot political issue. But it wasn't global warming that frightened scientists, it was the complete opposite; a new ice age.

Dr Iain Stewart traces the history of climate change from its very beginning and examines just how the scientific community managed to get it so very wrong back in the Seventies.

Perpetuating the old myth about global cooling in the 70's

Totally incorrect:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=94
http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?reques...2370.1&ct=1

Maybe this was addressed in the program, but the overview is inaccurate, either accidentally or intentionally to sensationalise the program.

[Sigh] Very disappointing from the BBC.

James

[djellison]

Oh boy - here's a subject that I really don't think UMSF needs. As of now, it's on the UMSF topic black list.

[imipak]

As someone very interested in the subject -- I couldn't agree more.

Seems to me that tendentious subjects for discussion have in common a "religious war" nature; perhaps that's a useful meta-guide to topics best left unraised.

[stevesliva]

Anything Carl Sagan wrote about when he wasn't writing about Planetary Science.

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

I enjoyed the latest episode " Who's afraid of Black Holes? "

[NickF]

A heads-up for those of us in the UK - 'Mars: A Horizon Guide' is broadcast on BBC Four at 2100 tonight.

From the BBC website - 'The intriguing possibility of life on Mars has fuelled man's quest to visit the Red Planet. Drawing on 45 years of Horizon archive, space expert Dr Kevin Fong presents a documentary on Earth's near neighbour.'

(followed by a Sky at Night 'Mars special' with Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott at 2300)

[ngunn]

And Doctor Who 'The Waters of Mars' is about to start in 3 minutes . .

[imipak]

Definitely NOT a Dr Who fan, but I'll take a look at the Horizon programme. And Sky and Night goes without saying. Thanks for the heads-up, NickF.

[sgendreau]

And Doctor Who 'The Waters of Mars' is about to start in 3 minutes . .

And it's set at Gusev -- the TARDIS lands on Husband Hill. Looks like they used Spirit's Pancams for the view. Nice hat tip to the Spirit team -- hope it cheers them up a bit.