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All Episodes of Cosmic Journeys

Browse all episodes of Cosmic Journeys

Cutting-edge stories about the origins of the universe, black holes, exploding stars, the search for ET life, and the nature of the planets. How did the...
Genre:Documentary
Network:YouTube
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Season 1

  • Birth of the Moon
    7.4/107 votes
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    Birth of the Moon

    Season 1 Episode 1 - Aired 7/20/2009

    Scientists have been reconstructing the history of the Moon by scouring its surface, mapping its mountains and craters, and probing its interior. Find out what the origins of the Moon can tell us about our own planet's beginnings.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: Thomas Lucas

  • Attack of the Sun
    7.4/105 votes
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    Attack of the Sun

    Season 1 Episode 2 - Aired 7/27/2009

    Massive solar eruptions take aim at our high-tech society. 93 million miles away... an angry sun vents its rage. Dark regions, called sunspots, appeared unexpectedly on its surface... a sign of rising tension within. It had been three and a half years since the sun last erupted in fury...at the peak of an 11-year cycle of solar flare-ups.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: Thomas Lucas

  • Super Hurricanes
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    Super Hurricanes

    Season 1 Episode 3 - Aired 8/12/2009

    Why some tropical storms erupt into monster hurricanes capable of wrecking coastlines. Can they be predicted? Hurricanes are tropical storms that feed on solar heat captured by the oceans. When conditions are right, a hurricane can release this energy in a fury of wind and rain.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: Thomas Lucas

  • Saturn's Mysterious Moons
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    Saturn's Mysterious Moons

    Season 1 Episode 4 - Aired 8/20/2009

    From the Cassini spacecraft comes one of the greatest photographic collections. Scientists are using it to uncover a trail of clues pointing to the energy sources and complex chemistry needed to spawn life.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: Thomas Lucas

  • The Largest Black Holes in the Universe
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    The Largest Black Holes in the Universe

    Season 1 Episode 5 - Aired 9/27/2009

    Our Milky Way Galaxy is thought to harbor millions of black holes, the ultra dense remnants of dead stars. But now, in the universe far beyond our galaxy, there's evidence of something far more ominous. A breed of black holes that has reached incomprehensible size and destructive power. Just how large, and violent, and strange can they get?

    Director: N/A

    Writer: Thomas Lucas

  • How Large Is the Universe?
    7.8/106 votes
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    How Large Is the Universe?

    Season 1 Episode 6 - Aired 10/20/2009

    The mind-blowing answer comes from a theory describing the first micro-moments of our universe. Just as scientists began to make precise measurements of the observable universe, new ideas suggest that our visible patch is an impossibly small portion of the whole.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: Thomas Lucas

  • When Will Time End
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    When Will Time End

    Season 1 Episode 7 - Aired 11/10/2009

    How long will the Universe as we know it survive? The answer depends on whether Stephen Hawking's theory about how black holes decay is right. These strange dense objects are like a clock that tick down to a distant moment when all matter and energy will dissipate into the void.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: Thomas Lucas

  • The Incredible Journey of Apollo 12
    6.7/1011 votes
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    The Incredible Journey of Apollo 12

    Season 1 Episode 8 - Aired 11/18/2009

    It's the ultimate buddy movie. Pete Conrad and Alan Bean were the second pair of Apollo astronauts to land on the moon. They combined precision with a sense of humor. But it was the rocks they picked up that would define the mission's legacy.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: Thomas Lucas

  • Supermassive Black Hole in the Milky Way Galaxy
    7.2/106 votes
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    Supermassive Black Hole in the Milky Way Galaxy

    Season 1 Episode 9 - Aired 12/9/2009

    Thick dust and blinding starlight have long obscured our vision into the mysterious inner regions of our Milky Way galaxy. And yet, the clues have been piling up that something important, something strange is going on in there. Astronomers tracking stars in the center of the galaxy have found the best proof to date that black holes exist. Now, they are preparing to capture the first direct image of a supermassive black hole.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: Thomas Lucas, David Sky Brody

  • Mars: Earth That Never Was
    7.5/1010 votes
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    Mars: Earth That Never Was

    Season 1 Episode 10 - Aired 12/21/2009

    Did Mars long ago develop far enough for life to arise? If so, does anything still live somewhere underground? The search for answers has revealed the forces that long ago doomed the Red Planet.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: Thomas Lucas

  • The Search for Earth-like Planets
    7.4/105 votes
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    The Search for Earth-like Planets

    Season 1 Episode 11 - Aired 1/8/2010

    What is the search for Earth-like planets telling us about our place in the cosmos? Is our Earth one of countless life-bearing worlds strewn about the galaxy, or is it a rare Garden of Eden in a barren universe?

    Director: N/A

    Writer: Thomas Lucas

  • Voyage to Pandora: First Interstellar Space Flight
    6.4/107 votes
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    Voyage to Pandora: First Interstellar Space Flight

    Season 1 Episode 12 - Aired 2/8/2010

    Pandora is the idyllic blue world featured in the movie Avatar. Its location is a real place: Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to our Sun and the most likely destination for our first journey beyond the solar system.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: Thomas Lucas, David Sky Brody

  • Venus: Death of a Planet
    7.7/1013 votes
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    Venus: Death of a Planet

    Season 1 Episode 13 - Aired 6/9/2010

    Long ago, from the fires of our Sun's birth, twin planets emerged: Venus and Earth. Nature draped one world in the greens and blues of life, while enveloping the other in acid clouds, high heat, and volcanic flows. Why did Venus take such a disastrous turn and Earth developed a vibrant biosphere?

    Director: N/A

    Writer: Thomas Lucas

  • Cosmic Energy: Cold Sparks to Black Holes
    6.7/106 votes
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    Cosmic Energy: Cold Sparks to Black Holes

    Season 1 Episode 14 - Aired 9/10/2010

    What's the hottest place in the universe? What's it like inside a Black Hole? This video climbs the power scales of the universe, from the coldest and bleakest reaches of our galaxy on out to the hottest and most violent places known.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: Thomas Lucas

  • Is the Universe Infinite?
    7.0/106 votes
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    Is the Universe Infinite?

    Season 1 Episode 15 - Aired 11/23/2010

    Explore the biggest question of all. How far do the stars stretch out into space? And what's beyond them? In modern times, we built giant telescopes that have allowed us to cast our gaze deep into the universe. Astronomers have been able to look back to near the time of its birth. They've reconstructed the course of cosmic history in astonishing detail.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: Thomas Lucas

  • Alien Planets & Eyeball Earths: The Search for Habitable Planets
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    Alien Planets & Eyeball Earths: The Search for Habitable Planets

    Season 1 Episode 16 - Aired 2/21/2011

    The hunt for planets beyond our solar system has reached a fever pitch. Scientists are beginning to envision what these worlds are like, and in the process, redefining what a planet might need to spawn life.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: Thomas Lucas

  • The Riddle of AntiMatter
    6.6/105 votes
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    The Riddle of AntiMatter

    Season 1 Episode 17 - Aired 8/19/2011

    One of the deepest mysteries about how our universe came to be may finally be yielding to human investigation. Scientists are mounting new efforts to figure out how matter survived, and what happened to its birth twin, a mysterious substance known as antimatter?

    Director: N/A

    Writer: Thomas Lucas

  • Mysteries of a Dark Universe
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    Mysteries of a Dark Universe

    Season 1 Episode 18 - Aired 10/14/2011

    Cosmology has been turned on its head by a stunning discovery that the universe is flying apart in all directions at an ever-increasing rate. The scientists who made this discovery were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: Thomas Lucas

  • Crashing Into the Moon
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    Crashing Into the Moon

    Season 1 Episode 19 - Aired 5/11/2012

    Over the next decade, the United States, Japan, India, China, Russia, and even private companies, are planning to send spacecraft to explore the moon. These missions are looking for resources that may one day allow humans to settle permanently in space.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: Thomas Lucas

  • The Most Powerful Objects in the Universe
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    The Most Powerful Objects in the Universe

    Season 1 Episode 20 - Aired 9/23/2012

    What are the energy extremes that define our universe? And how much power can the cosmos wield? Climb a ladder of increasingly powerful events, from frigid gas clouds to nuclear explosions, and travel out to the seething environments of black holes. Find out where Earth fits in the vast power scales of the cosmos.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Birth of a Black Hole
    8.4/1012 votes
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    Birth of a Black Hole

    Season 1 Episode 21 - Aired 11/29/2012

    Spy satellites first saw these brief but extremely bright flashes of light in the 1960s. For three decades, gamma ray bursts for deep space were one of the persistent mysteries in all of science. It took a revolution in high-energy astronomy to prove that they are the distant birth cries of newborn black holes.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: Thomas Lucas

  • Plasma Rockets & Solar Storms
    7.7/106 votes
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    Plasma Rockets & Solar Storms

    Season 1 Episode 22 - Aired 2/15/2013

    Join a small team of rocket designers as they open a window into the future of space travel.

    Director: Thomas Lucas

    Writer: Thomas Lucas

  • Voyager: Journey to the Stars
    6.4/1033 votes
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    Voyager: Journey to the Stars

    Season 1 Episode 23 - Aired 4/6/2013

    The two Voyager spacecraft are part of an ancient quest to push beyond our boundaries... to see what lies beyond the horizon. Now tens of billions of kilometers from Earth, two spacecraft are streaking out into the void. What will we learn about the Galaxy, the Universe, and ourselves from Voyager's epic Journey to the stars?

    Director: N/A

    Writer: Thomas Lucas

  • Earth in 1000 Years
    7.7/106 votes
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    Earth in 1000 Years

    Season 1 Episode 24 - Aired 10/4/2013

    There are signs that Earth’s great stores of ice are beginning to melt. With sea levels beginning to rise, scientists are looking back at climates past to see where our planet may be headed 1000 into the future and beyond.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: Thomas Lucas

  • Reinventing Space Flight
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    Reinventing Space Flight

    Season 1 Episode 25 - Aired 2/3/2014

    Follow Dr. Ben Longmier and his team into the rugged Alaskan wilderness on a quest to build a whole new type of rocket engine. Their goal is to test sensitive components by launching them into radiation-filled environments of space aboard helium balloons. Their goal is to revolutionize space travel and exploration by harnessing the energy contained in the dynamic fourth state of matter: plasma.

    Director: Andy Casagrande, Thomas Lucas

    Writer: N/A

  • Supervolcanoes
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    Supervolcanoes

    Season 1 Episode 26 - Aired 5/23/2014

    They are eruptions so vast, so Earth-shattering, they have changed the history of our planet. Climate collapse. Toxic turmoil. Mass extinction. Worse than a killer asteroid, or nuclear war, they are Earth's most destructive Supervolcanoes.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: Thomas Lucas

  • Fate of Antarctica
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    Fate of Antarctica

    Season 1 Episode 27 - Aired 7/21/2014

    The episode of Cosmic Journeys explores the intersection of paleoclimate and current climate science. Through its turbulent history, Antarctica has played an important role in the evolution of planet Earth. This role will likely continue as a warming global climate begins to eat away at the ice sheets that cover the continent. The fate of the world as we know it is linked to the fate of Antarctica.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: Thomas Lucas

  • Life: Destiny or Chance?
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    Life: Destiny or Chance?

    Season 1 Episode 28 - Aired 9/19/2014

    Are the universe and its physical laws so fine-tuned that the rise of life is inevitable? Or is life a fluke, a lucky roll of cosmic dice? We look for the answer in the rise of two important components of life, dust and water.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: Thomas Lucas

  • Interstellar Flight
    6.8/1061 votes
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    Interstellar Flight

    Season 1 Episode 29 - Aired 10/29/2014

    Explore the challenges of interstellar flight and the technological possibilities that may one day send us on a long voyage out into the galaxy. What imperatives will define the mission when it launches and finally arrives: exploration and science, or a struggle for survival?

    Director: N/A

    Writer: Thomas Lucas

  • The Age of Hubble
    6.5/1043 votes
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    The Age of Hubble

    Season 1 Episode 30 - Aired 12/13/2014

    This staggeringly visual feast of a documentary Brings cutting-edge findings of modern astronomy to life with state-of-the-art animation, informed by supercomputer simulations of cosmic events. Marvel at the formation of a super-massive black hole 350 million lightyears away; admire the stunning beauty of the Orion nebula; and discover what the stars tell us about our place in the stretch of time and space.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: Thomas Lucas

  • Glimpsing the Solar System's Birth
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    Glimpsing the Solar System's Birth

    Season 1 Episode 31 - Aired 7/10/2015

    Where do you look to glimpse the birth of a solar system like ours? Our sun is thought to have formed along with a range of stellar siblings. This star cluster likely moved out on its own, bound by gravity, in what astronomers call a "Moving Group."

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Hubble: Universe in Motion
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    Hubble: Universe in Motion

    Season 1 Episode 32 - Aired 7/31/2015

    Since its launch 25 Years ago, the Hubble Telescope has returned images of unprecedented beauty of a dynamic and changing universe.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • SuperTornado: Anatomy of a MegaDisaster
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    SuperTornado: Anatomy of a MegaDisaster

    Season 1 Episode 33 - Aired 12/18/2015

    May 22nd, 2011. A powerful tornado cut a mile-wide swath through Joplin, Missouri, the costliest and one of the deadliest tornado disasters ever. What did scientists learn when they peered into the realm of this SuperTornado?

    Director: N/A

    Writer: Thomas Lucas

  • Day of the Asteroid
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    Day of the Asteroid

    Season 1 Episode 34 - Aired 5/20/2016

    Asteroids racing through the solar system have smashed into Earth before. What are the chances we'll get hit again? Armed with new defensive technologies, scientists are getting ready for the day, a decade, century from now: the Day of the Asteroid.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Black Holes and the High Energy Universe
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    Black Holes and the High Energy Universe

    Season 1 Episode 35 - Aired 6/17/2016

    Astronomers are probing the high-energy cosmic frontier with a series of key missions: Fermi, Swift, Chandra, NuSTAR, and Hubble.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • The Improbable Rise of Planet Earth
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    The Improbable Rise of Planet Earth

    Season 1 Episode 36 - Aired 6/23/2016

    Planet hunters have detected nearly 5000 confirmed and candidate planets beyond our solar system. Most sun-like stars, it seems, are ringed with giant planets that crowd their parent stars and leave no room for planets like ours. The old theories about planetary formation are giving way to a new one defined by fierce gravitational battles and titanic collisions. How did Earth manage to survive?

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Star Crash: The Explosion that Transformed Astronomy
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    Star Crash: The Explosion that Transformed Astronomy

    Season 1 Episode 37 - Aired 11/13/2017

    A startling collision in an ancient galaxy slews Earth's largest telescopes to a spot in the Hydra constellation. Two rapidly spinning neutron stars have violently merged to form a possible black hole. And, for the first time, astronomers see its electromagnetic flash and hear its gravitational thunder as they watch new elements being born.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A