The Universe: Season 6

Product Description Product Description SEASON 6 of the pioneering series THE UNIVERSE takes viewers further than ever, to the extreme edges of our solar system where chaos and catastrophe bring epic drama to the planets - including some of the most horrifying days on Earth. Through stunning CGI, witness the birth pangs of the solar system, shocked into existence by a nearby supernova, and enduring over 700 million years of brutal bombardment by deadly asteroids; colossal cataclysms that shaped the planets and transformed their climates forever; and startling new scientific discoveries revealing a hellish history of continuous devastation on Earth. And travel to the system's very fringes to explore the possibility that the Sun has an evil twin, a monstrous star known as Nemesis suspected of causing every mass extinction in Earth's history. In signature cutting-edge style, THE UNIVERSE features astounding NASA footage and the opinions of leading astrophysicists to probe even more deeply into the billion-years-old story of the world beyond Earth. DISC 1: Catastrophes that Changed the Planets / Nemesis: The Sun's Evil Twin / How the Solar System Was Made / Crash Landing on Mars DISC 2: Worst Days on Planet Earth / God and the Universe / UFO The Real Deal / How Big, How Far, How Fast DISC 3: Our Place in the Milky Way / Alien Sounds / Deep Freeze DISC 4: Microscopic Universe / Ride the Comet / When Space Changed History Amazon.com This cosmically entertaining History Channel series recalls the classic Monty Python sketch in which a door-to-door documentarian cannot interest his audience in mollusks until he steers the subject to the creature's sex life. The Universe isn't peddling sex, but catastrophe and apocalypse, all excitingly rendered in state-of-the-art CGI. Season six continues to explore the "mysterious, mind-blowing secrets of the universe" with thrilling countdown episodes such as "Catastrophes That Changed the Planets" (insert your own Kardashian joke here) and "Worst Days on Planet Earth." Other action-packed episodes explore the birth of the solar system, the sun's "evil twin," UFOs, and surviving a crash landing on Mars. But this season also boldly goes where the series has not gone before. One episode takes a fantastic voyage into "The Microscopic Universe." Perhaps the most provocative is "God and the Universe," which asks if science is finding "elusive evidence of God." Beyond most of the episodes' preoccupation with "carnage on a colossal scale" (an episode about comets cautions viewers to "brace yourself for these frozen intruders from the great beyond"), The Universe makes advanced concepts accessible for a general audience and boasts an admirably diverse roster of male and female scientists, who present some impractical (but fun) experiments to clarify their theories. But more, between all the collisions, eruptions, extinctions, and "orbital maelstrom," season six may spark profound and thoughtful discussions about why we are here and our place in the universe. --Donald Liebenson