Space

All life on Earth, including humans, comes from outer space - every single molecule of our bodies originated from an unimaginably large hydrogen cloud created by the Big Bang - and there are even serious claims that life was carried to earth by meteors.

Sam Neill takes us on a rollercoaster ride through the galaxy to discover how disasters in space regularly threaten our entire world. We go back to the very earliest days of our planet to see why we are lucky life ever got started, and we learn just what will happen if a massive asteroid ends up on a collision course with Earth.

Black Holes are the Universe's ultimate monsters, sucking everything into their super-dense centres. There are an estimated ten million of these cosmic killers in our galaxy and once created they never die. What are the chances of Earth having a fatal encounter?

Are We Alone? looks at the possibility of extraterrestrial life and visits SETI, a scientific project that for the past 40 years has been searching for information beamed from intelligent life in other solar systems.

Even if we avoid destruction by asteroids, we face eventual melt-down, as our Sun is getting progressively hotter. New Worlds looks at where we could go to escape this fate and talks to scientists who are already exploring how we could turn a planet like Mars into a Noah's ark for the earth's animal and plant life. It may even be that humans have to change themselves genetically to survive.

If humans are ever to reach deep space, there will need to be some revolutionary changes in transport. Boldly Go demonstrates how ion propulsion and solar sails may become effective means to galaxy-hop and considers 'wormholes' as ways to cheat time and space.