How do you assign a star rating to a show about the stars?
Arrogance helps. So does a bit of humility — which is what you’ll need when you hear the smartest people in the known universe talk about the unknown — and the chances that we may not be alone.
Tonight, Science runs both part one and the brand-new second part of its extraordinary extraterrestrial “Alien Encounters” documentary: “Are We Alone?”
If you haven’t seen “Part I: The Message,” yet, please tune in an hour earlier at 9 p.m. to watch it first.
Tonight’s “The Arrival” talks about what kind of life can easily exist out there, how it could travel the millions of light years to get here and, finally, how humans would react.
Astrophysicists and authors — like The Bronx’s own Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium; Jill Tarter, director of the SETI Institute; and author Nick Sagan — discuss stars like we gossip about (movie) stars.
And it’s all done with a lot of science and a huge amount of common sense which, on science programs, can be about as rare as an asteroid in your kitchen.
For example, how would extraterrestrials travel millions of light years without dying, and what kind of fuel could sustain such a journey?
Just because we, as humans, are incapable of hibernation — and are even unable to induce it in humans — there are many animals on this planet who have evolved to survive harsh environments by hibernating.
As for fuel? Have you ever heard of solar sails? Or better yet, Kapton, a polyimide film developed by DuPont?
It is literally atoms-thick and looks exactly like the fabric (that, oddly, no one mentions on this show) that was allegedly strewn around Roswell at the crash site that the government says never existed.
Yes, that stuff that you’ve seen and heard about in every Roswell documentary ever aired. Hmm.
At any rate, NASA has already sent a ship into one orbit around the Earth powered by a gigantic sail made of the stuff.
No, the sail isn’t wind-driven, but powered by light.
Interesting, too, is that every TV and radio program we’ve ever transmitted is now traveling through space.
Says the always brilliantly amusing DeGrasse, “ ‘I Love Lucy’ has gone to 10,000 stars by now,” and he wants us to think about the fact that “Ralph Kramden [of “The Honeymooners”] is our diplomat [in space]! Who knows what extraterrestrials would think of us?”
So, do aliens exist? Another astrophysicist talks of how life forms are born on Earth in volcanos and in the polar ice that never thaws and that most beings walking on earth have at least six legs.
Maybe we’ll know if they exist someday — especially if “they” answer the record sent up on Voyager in 1977 with greetings from Earth.
Hope the aliens have an old-time record player.