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Wonders Of The Solar System –
Empire Of The Sun Ep 1/5

Sunday 7 March

9.00-10.00pm ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ TWO

• Feature
• Press pack

Professor Brian Cox explains how the laws of nature have carved spectacular landscapes throughout the Solar System

We live on a world of wonders, a planet of astonishing beauty and complexity – but it doesn't exist in magnificent isolation. This is the greatest age of exploration ever known, and a fleet of probes, orbiters and landers have brought new worlds of wonder into view. In this spellbinding new series, physicist Professor Brian Cox visits some of the most extreme locations on Earth to explain how the laws of nature have carved spectacular landscapes throughout the Solar System.

At the heart of it all is the powerhouse, our star – the Sun. Brian explores the Sun's magisterial rule over every world in the Solar System. He travels to India to catch a remarkable quirk of nature, a total solar eclipse. He explains how the Earth, of all the planets in the Solar System, is the only one to have a moon that completely obscures the face of the Sun. For a few precious minutes, Brian stands in awe as our link to the light and heat that sustains us is cut off.

The scale of our star's power is hard to imagine. In the Brazilian rainforest, Brian describes how every molecule of every drop of water is moved around our blue planet by the Sun's energy, creating some of the most wondrous sights on Earth.

Yet heat and light are not the only powers of the Sun reigning over the Solar System. In the Arctic Circle, in Norway, Brian witnesses the battle between the Sun's wind and our planet, as the night sky dances with a magical display of the Northern Lights.

Beyond Earth, the solar wind creates auroral displays on other planets as it journeys on into the depths of space. In California, Brian makes contact with Voyager, a space probe that has been travelling since its launch 30 years ago. Now, 14 billion kilometres on, Voyager has just detected that the solar wind is beginning to run out of puff.

But even out here – the farthest Man has ever sent a space probe – isn't the end of the Sun's dominion. Brian explains how the Sun's greatest power, its gravity, reaches out for hundreds of billions of kilometres, where the lightest gravitational touch encircles our Solar System in a mysterious cloud of comets.

VAA