The Universe - The Complete Season Two (History) (Steelbook)

Studio: A&e Home Video Release Date: 10/14/2008

With the DVD release (on five discs) of this, the complete second season of The Universe, the History Channel has now devoted a combined total of more than 25 hours, not including bonus material, to its documentary study of that combination of time, space, and matter that we call our universe. That's a lot. But then you consider the mind-boggling age and size of the universe itself: 13.7 billion years old, and big beyond our comprehension; infinite, in fact, and expanding rapidly. By those measures, it's apparent that this fascinating series could probably air for longer than The Simpsons and Gunsmoke (the two longest running shows in TV history) put together and still not run out of things to talk about.

The 18 episodes from Season Two cover an appropriately wide range of topics, from "Cosmic Holes" to "Cosmic Collisions," from supernovas to gravity. There are episodes about the weather in space, the largest objects in space (hint: they're really, really big, like the so-called "cosmic web" of galaxies, which is a hundred million billion times bigger than Earth), and traveling to and colonizing space. The amount of information and data provided is enormous. Jargon abounds, including terms like "lunar transient phenomena," "pulsar planets," "hot Jupiters," "dark matter" and "dark energy," "collisional families," the "heavy bombardment period," and many, many more. And the numbers are mind-boggling: for instance, it's estimated that the impact of the asteroid that landed on the Yucatan Peninsula some 65 million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs, was equal to that of dropping a Hiroshima-sized atomic bomb every second for 140 years! Still, some may find the episodes that involve informed speculation more interesting than those that deal in facts. We know that the Moon affects ocean tides, but does it also have an effect on human behavior? If the Big Bang was the beginning of the universe, what came before it? Instead of using rockets to go to space, can scientists actually build a "space elevator" that will reach from an orbiting satellite some 60 thousand miles down to Earth? All of this is delivered by way of very convincing computer-generated imagery and other effects, along with dozens of interviews with astronomers and other experts, photos, film footage, and so on. Best of all, while it can get a bit dense, technically speaking, by and large The Universe will be readily accessible to most viewers. --Sam Graham

This is the second season of one of the best science programs from the History channel.

It presents the science accurately and in detail and gives you an excellent overview of astronomy and cosmology.

More importantly, it captures the excitement of scientific discovery better than most science video. You get an inside look at the process of discovery.

Get a copy of this series. You will want to watch it again and again.

I bought this for my Dad ... he loved it!!
I watched it with him ... very well done, and interesting !!!

If you liked the first season, you will enjoy this one also. It breaks the various chapters down quite well without too much repetition which you would expect in a lecture mode. This documentary draws enough analogies to relate to the layman. sometimes the Jazzed up music detracts somewhat from the seriousness of the material. For that any BBC production wins hands down. I would also like the History Channel production to be more broadminded and global in their coverage. Too much coverage on discoveries and talks from inside the USA. Is there no groundbreaking astronomy conducted anywhere else on the globe?

The season two of the History Channel serie completes perfectly the season one. The only regret, for me as a non English speaking viewer, is that there is no subtitles, even closed captioned as written by mistake on the Amazon.com website. But the whole pictures and special effects are wonderful, and the scientists speeches are perfectly understandable by foreigners. For all those interested by astronomy, it's a must to buy, like the season one.

Just when you think they can't top season one... My partner and I can't stop watching this show. Once it's done we just put disc one back in and re-watch it!