This series started out quite nice. It starts with a tour of our own solar system of which we have a learned a lot in the last years. For those people who have a passion for astronomy/cosmology, not a lot of new information is presented. However, the manner in which they present it is refreshing and also entertaining.
The problem however starts in season 2. As the 'known' subjects have been discussed in the first season, the second season struggles in finding educational scientific materials. Instead they start leaning towards fiction and speculation more and more. Subjects as 'Sex in space', 'Alien faces' that contain no educational information at all. These episodes felt to me like a poor attempt to put nowadays teenagers drama and fantasy into a scientific perspective just to get a higher audience, an audience who will never comprehend the actual real science behind studies like these.
The scientific community has made it a point on their agenda to make science, in particular astronomy, cosmology and theoretical science more accessible to the general public. An action I totally support. However, showing nice CGI's, some enthusiastic scientists that seem to care more about their own popularity then real science, in this case, gives a wrong idea about what we actually do and do not know.
The show contains a lot of solid information but also a lot of speculations and should not be presented as fact or as general accepted theories.
For those people who are interested in the science part, I would recommend watching "National Geographic's Journey to the Edge of the Universe". A stunning documentary also with mind blowing CGI's and very understandable for any person.
Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1363109/
The problem however starts in season 2. As the 'known' subjects have been discussed in the first season, the second season struggles in finding educational scientific materials. Instead they start leaning towards fiction and speculation more and more. Subjects as 'Sex in space', 'Alien faces' that contain no educational information at all. These episodes felt to me like a poor attempt to put nowadays teenagers drama and fantasy into a scientific perspective just to get a higher audience, an audience who will never comprehend the actual real science behind studies like these.
The scientific community has made it a point on their agenda to make science, in particular astronomy, cosmology and theoretical science more accessible to the general public. An action I totally support. However, showing nice CGI's, some enthusiastic scientists that seem to care more about their own popularity then real science, in this case, gives a wrong idea about what we actually do and do not know.
The show contains a lot of solid information but also a lot of speculations and should not be presented as fact or as general accepted theories.
For those people who are interested in the science part, I would recommend watching "National Geographic's Journey to the Edge of the Universe". A stunning documentary also with mind blowing CGI's and very understandable for any person.
Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1363109/