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Synopsis

Comets, distant travellers from the outer reaches of our solar system, have captured the imagination of man and have long been shrouded in mystery. Now, through Earth based observations and an increasing number of space probes, their origins and nature are becoming unveiled. This film explores behind the legend to reveal what a comet actually is, what secrets they hold for our understanding of how the solar system was formed; shed light on the theory that they brought the building blocks of life to earth and their potential for wiping out life as we know it.

Part 1

Throughout history, comets have been regarded as evil omens. Their ghostly appearance and irregular motion across the otherwise unchanging night sky made them seem like malevolent intruders. Thanks to astronomers like Edmund Halley, we now know that they are a part of the solar system, orbiting the sun like the planets and our own Earth. Coming from the deep freezer that is the far reaches of our solar system, they act like time capsules and hide clues to how the solar system formed. Carey Lisse of the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory helps us understand what they are made of and how they helped form Earth.

Part 2

One of the biggest mysteries for scientists has been how planet Earth, which started out as a scalding cauldron of molten rock and fire, came to be the watery oasis that sustains the huge variety of life that we see today. We go to meet planetary scientist Hal Weaver who was one of the first to suggest that comets could be the source for Earth’s oceans.

Part 3

Cosmic dust floats down through earth’s atmosphere on a daily basis, much of it thought to be from comets as earth passes through their long, beautiful tails. But to know for certain, we need to go to a comet and bring back comet dust to unravel the secrets they hold about their role in seeding earth with life. That is exactly what NASA did with their hugely successful recent mission, Stardust. Mike Zolensky at NASA’s Johnson Space Centre looks after the comet dust returned from Comet Wild 2. Here he shows us the first sample return since the Apollo Lunar missions and underlines that even with bits of comets in our hands, there is still so much more to learn.

Part 4

A comet or an asteroid is widely claimed to be responsible for wiping out the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago, paving the way for mammalian life to flourish. But could comets have seeded life in the first place? Mike Mumma of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center believes they did, delivering the water and organics that are necessary for the emergence of life. There is even the theory that life itself, in bacterial form, hitched a ride on the back of a comet. Mike A’Hearn, Principal Investigator of NASA’s Deep Impact mission, which spectacularly hit a comet to investigate what lies in it nucleus, believes there is no proof for this.

Part 5

When comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 hit Jupiter in 1994, we saw first hand the destructive force that a comet impact has. Looking at the impact scares on the moon and even on our own earth, cosmic collisions are fact and it is just a matter of time until another comet has our name on it. Luckily for us, Don Yeoman, manager of NASA’s Near Earth Object Programme, has a beady eye to spot any celestial objects that are heading our way. In Arizona, Dr. Jay Melosh shows us how we can harvest the energy of the sun to protect us by pushing the comet off its trajectory with earth and help us avoid the fate of the dinosaurs.

ASPECT RATIO 4.3
MAIN SOUNDTRACK English Stereo
DISC FORMAT DVD 5
REGION 1 NTSC
CLASSIFICATION Exempt
NOTE Not available for shipment outside the USA

Runtime: 54 minutes