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September review: It Fell From Space
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Meteor Crater, Arizona, USA (public domain)
Now in its fourth season, The History Channel's popular television series, The Universe, has covered many Space Industry topics with hour-long episodes. While entertaining and captivating its audience, each episode strives to educate the public about some aspect of cutting-edge (or in some cases, cutting-over-the-edge) science.
Will the latest episode, "It Fell From Space," continue the tradition and earn a thumbs-up or thumbs-down from a highly respected researcher in the space science community? Find out below, as a very special guest reviews the episode!
The History Channel's program website advertises It Fell From Space with the following teaser:
Every year, thousands of objects both natural and manmade plummet through our atmosphere and crash into the Earth. These menacing messengers from the sky provide scientists with amazing insights into the natural, and not so natural, phenomena of the cosmos. From space rocks crashing through homes to cosmic boulders triggering mass extinctions to rocket parts landing on front lawns, explore objects that fall from the heavens, such as asteroids, comets, meteor showers and space debris.
Fans of the series can watch past episodes here. (including It Fell From Space).
On to the review...
Several of the scientists featured in It Fell From Space live and work in the Denver/Boulder area. It is therefore gracious and fitting that one of the leading experts on asteroid impact science, Dr. Clark Chapman of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, granted permission for me to repost his candid and thought-provoking review of the episode:
Late this afternoon, the History Channel aired an hour-long program about stuff falling from space. It was pretty amazing what got squeezed into this program that was an up-to-date and reasonably accurate perspective of a number of issues -- accurate if you kept your eyes closed...but I'll get back to that.
Dan Durda showed how rocks (and asteroids) fragment, and Pete Schultz showed a new cratering experiment in a transparent block using the Ames Gun. Steve Chesley and Peter Jenniskens described the amazing impact of 2008 TC3 in Sudan, and the previous year's impact in Peru was also covered. Amy Mainzer gave an overview, including a brief discussion of how the Nice Model might have yielded the Late Heavy Bombardment. Mini Wadhwa discussed meteorites. Bill Ailor discussed impact of space debris on our planet. Laura Danly even dispensed with a brief suggestion that we could get an epidemic from outer space. So far, so good.
But that is not all. Visually, the program was as extravagantly over-the-top as most of the script was rational. Throughout the show, asteroids crowded the screen. It might be narrowly and technically true that the asteroid belt is one of the most crowded parts of the 'galaxy', but not the hundreds of cheek-by-jowl rocks that crowded the screen. And multiple fiery projectiles were continually penetrating the Earth's atmosphere, and racing past most of the famous tourist sites on Earth -- before Big Ben actually came to pieces.
More seriously worriesome was the inclusion of the absurd hypothesis that a 4 km wide comet somehow exploded (without leaving a trace crater) and wiped out the mammoths/mastodons and giant sloths (and Clovis man) 13,000 years ago...radically against all odds, given the known frequency with which objects of various sizes strike the Earth. The words "might" and even "controversial" were said about this segment (though no "other side" was presented), but since similar qualifiers accompanied discussion of Chicxulub and the K/T boundary impact, it seemed as though the Firestone et al. "hypothesis" is just as credible. As the cover story of this month's Sky & Telescope describes, I and virtually every non-fringe-scientist in this field regards this hypothesis as being wholly lacking in credibility...but it is no different from all the other good science, as portrayed in this program.
Spots for future programs on the History Channel were interspersed. Nostradamus starts on Tuesday or Wednesday. Last week, I turned down an invitation by the History Channel to participate in a future program on 2012. Science is like most everything else covered by the media these days in our society: if it is spectacular and controversial, every "side" is equally valid. At least I'm glad that they got a lot of credible people to discuss what is interesting and current, even if they gave voice to some interspersed crack-pot science.
The final grade: thumbs sideways?
The science content in the episode gets a thumbs-up from Dr. Chapman, while the more speculative content and over-the-top special effects get a thumbs-down.
After you've watched the program, feel free to post your thoughts below... especially regarding the use of cheesy special effects to somehow promote science. This has become "standard practice" on many networks now, and for better or worse, we can expect much more of the same in the future (my opinion).
The History Channel: On-line episodes of The Universe.
NASA's Near-Earth Object Program.
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