There are many unknowns in “the place we call the universe,” as the basso profundo narrator puts it in the History Channel series “The Universe.” And just as many scientists have come to believe that the cosmos is expanding, so does our knowledge, and with the widening scope of information comes a deepening sense of mystery. “The Universe” is happy to keep going to infinity and beyond, presenting new episodes unlocking “the secrets of the place we call…” The Complete Season Five is out on Blu-ray.
The show’s one problem is an over caffeinated narrative sometimes verging on comical. The stentorian voice describes the Great Red Spot of Jupiter as a thing “too monstrous to believe.” But “The Universe” allows a cast of academic experts to carry much of the load and their comments are usually interesting as well as intelligent. The Great Red Spot, explain the calmer voices of reason, is a giant storm that has raged in the Jovian atmosphere for centuriesever since human eyes first beheld it through a telescope. The Spot seems to be shrinking, yet within the last few years three new white spots converged to form a smaller red spot. But why and what’s it all mean? The mystery remains despite the scrutiny of the Hubble telescope and the Cassini deep space probe.
Many episodes of “The Universe” return to the theme of extra-terrestrial life. The discovery of cold-water geysers on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, was greeted with great excitement as fluid waternot just iceis one of the essential elements for forming life as we know it. Mars is a more fruitful field of exploration for life if only for its greater accessibility. Satellites orbit the red planet with cameras and rovers have begun scratching at the oxidized surface. And every time someone at NASA thinks they’ve found something new, the media and bloggers run wild with speculationusually rocketing light years ahead of the facts. The academics interviewed for the Martian episode are all hopeful that evidence of life can be foundeven if it’s only traces of microbes long extinct. What’s hopeful is the geological evidence that water once covered some of the planet and that liquid water might still exist beneath the surface.
The place we call the universe (can we actually define it as a “place”?) is vast and in theory affords many places for life to grow. But in our own solar system, science might be lucky to find only the fossilized remnants of pond scum.
