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capri0mniThanks to my searching out clips and trailers for that PBS Nova episode I wrote about the other day, this hour-and-a-half long film showed up in my YouTube recommendations: Alien Planet. It's basically a sci-fi tale thinly disguised as a documentary -- peppered with interview clips of astrophysicists and paleobiologists, to lend credence to the events of the story. But the disguise is so thin, it might as well have been bought at dollar store, the afternoon of Halloween.
I get the feeling that the film's creators started with ideas about the sorts of alien creatures they wanted to render in CGI, and then scrambled to figure out what sort of planetary environment would give rise to such creatures (a few of the experts said something to the effect of: "[Creature X] is one I find rather surprising, but I suppose it's possible, if Y and Z..."). Which seems the wrong way 'round, to me. But it's still more creative and in-depth, in terms of imagining widely populated and diverse ecosystems, than any imagined alien planet I can remember from our current pop culture. And it was a fun way tolose misplace ninety-four minutes, if you have the time to spare. So I thought I'd rec it.
BTW, the film was made in 2012, and it's mentioned in one of those clips that 2014 will be the big year for discovering new exoplanets. IIRC, two new (separate) programs dedicated to searching for Earthlike exoplanets will start up later this summer.
So: Yay!
I get the feeling that the film's creators started with ideas about the sorts of alien creatures they wanted to render in CGI, and then scrambled to figure out what sort of planetary environment would give rise to such creatures (a few of the experts said something to the effect of: "[Creature X] is one I find rather surprising, but I suppose it's possible, if Y and Z..."). Which seems the wrong way 'round, to me. But it's still more creative and in-depth, in terms of imagining widely populated and diverse ecosystems, than any imagined alien planet I can remember from our current pop culture. And it was a fun way to
BTW, the film was made in 2012, and it's mentioned in one of those clips that 2014 will be the big year for discovering new exoplanets. IIRC, two new (separate) programs dedicated to searching for Earthlike exoplanets will start up later this summer.
So: Yay!
