Bill Nye has been a part of every kids' childhood due to his show Bill Nye the Science Guy. He would do experiments and helped to make learning about science fun for kids. Well, now Bill is back and better than ever by taking on all the real world problems we are dealing with today. He tackles the most controversial issues of genetically modified foods, marijuana, and sex. He also, however takes on fun issues like space travel, time travel, and even the possibility of life on other planets. Throughout the episodes he does little things to keep your attention. At the beginning he will usually do a science experiment to explain what subject he is looking into. Then throughout the show he will do interviews, panel discussion, and give a visual of what he is explaining.
In the episode, "The Original Martian Invasion" Bill explores the potential of life on other planets and how life on Earth began. We get an inside look into the Mars 2020 mission that NASA is currently working on. They are creating new rovers with the goal of drilling into the surface to try to discover if Mars has current life or had ancient life. They are doing what they have never done before, they are going to take samples and return them to Earth, which has never been done before. We get to look at these new rovers and a NASA scientist explains the goals and what they hope to accomplish. The scientist says that he believes that Mars could have had past life and that these next missions will hopefully confirm that.
Bill then sits down with a panel of Will Wheaton, of Star Trek, Hakeem Oluseyi, of Outrageous Acts of Science, and Moogrega Stricker, who is a Planetary Protection Lead for the Mars 2020 mission. They discuss whether they believe life exists on other planets and it gets pretty interesting. They all believe in the possibility of life existing but whether or not we will discover it in our lifetime. One of the cool things they talk about is the "blip" in time, Bill relates it with flashing Christmas lights. When one light blinks on another might be off, and so on. This relates to all the planets we have discovered. While Earth has life right now, blinks on, another planet might not have life yet, blinks off. This is where Moogregas job comes into play, her main focus is not disrupting life formation on other planets. She, and her team, set guidelines for what can/cannot happen on other planets so that life is not altered on other planets.
This is the perfect show for science lovers of all ages. If you grew up enjoying science, or science fiction, then this is the show for you. It gives a quick look into a scientific subject, but explains it easy enough for anyone to understand. It also gives a good base to start learning about the subject, because once you understand a little bit of the information, you can dive into your own research on it.
This show sounds so awesome! I bet if I told my buddies in AV club about this they would be so stoked! I absolutely love anything about space or extraterrestrial life, and I'm glad there is a show about science that not only does experiments, but also discusses and visualizes different controversial topics. I also love that they interview people who can provide important incite to these topics because it is always important to listen to others point of view. My friend Eleven would enjoy this show and it's good that they make what they're talking about easy to understand because she doesn't always understand every word. I'll definitely be watching this when I'm not hunting for the Demogorgon.
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