The Discovery Channel’s Curiosity series of DVD programs can be controversial, entertaining, and enlightening.

The DVD I watched had five programs (total length 198 minutes):

Did God Create the Universe?

This program presents Stephen Hawking’s view of the universe. It follows the history of our understanding of natural phenomena, such as eclipses, from religious superstition to a physical explanation. Hawking believes our universe started with a big bang, it sprang from nothing. Before the big bang there was nothing, including no time and no cause and effect. For Hawking, there is no God, no heaven, no afterlife.

In a separate program on the DVD, a panel of scientists and theologians discuss Hawking’s view. They discuss the concept of multiple universes, and conclude that science can neither prove nor disprove the existence of a creator.

Alien Invasion: Are We Ready?

This program, narrated by actress Michelle Rodriguez, features scientists and military strategists, first discussing the probabilities that some intelligent alien species exist, then speculating on how the invaders would go about getting rid of humans. If these people were the aliens, they would first disable our communications and other electronics with an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP), then kill many people in coastal areas by causing very large tsunamis. They would finish us off with biological warfare. It’s the stuff of good science fiction stories.

What’s Beneath America?

This program, narrated by Martin Sheen, is about the geology and natural resources of North America. It discusses plate tectonics, mountain building and how some of our large deposits of gold, oil, coal,and iron formed. And they got the geology right.

How the World Will End

The title of this program, narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, is a bit of hype, they destroy just North America, not the world. The program speculates on five types of natural disasters.

1) California is destroyed by an ARkStorm (spelled correctly, and yes, I never heard that term before.) Basically a mega-storm with very strong hurricane-force winds, lasts about a month and dumps 10 feet of water on California, causing flooding and land slides. This kind of storm is purely speculative. See an explanation from the U.S. Geologic Survey here.

2) Asteroid impact. This scenario features Meteor Crater (aka Barringer Crater) in Arizona as an example of a “small” impact. The program explains the consequences of a really big strike. The program claims that children today have a 1 in 20 chance of witnessing a really big strike. They fail to mention how they came up with that number.

3) Mega-earthquake in mid-west along the New Madrid fault on the Mississippi River. This program recounts the earthquakes that occurred between December 1811 and February, 1812, all with strengths estimated to be between 7.8 to 8.1. These earthquakes are the strongest to hit the eastern U.S. The program goes on to speculate what could happen if an even bigger one hits. The program puts the odds of this happening within 50 years at 1 in 10. Again they don’t explain how the number was derived.

4) The eastern seaboard of the U.S. is destroyed by a giant tsunami precipitated by a major volcanic eruption in La Palma, Canary Islands. Odds of happening 1 in 1,000, same caveat.

5) Yellowstone super volcano explodes. I wrote about this one last year (see The Yellowstone Super Volcano). This volcano tends to have a major eruption every 600,000 years on average. It has been 640,000 years since the last major eruption. That one covered about half of the U.S. with volcanic ash.

These programs are interesting and well-made. They show very good animations, but tend to overuse stock footage of disaster scenes. The programs are well-worth watching.

The DVD is available from the Discovery Channel here.

For more on the nature of the universe and religion versus science, see my reviews of two other works:

The Unobservable Universe by Scott Tyson

Religion versus Science by Ron Frost

See all my book and DVD reviews here.

No, I’m not kidding. Penn State researchers have published a paper speculating what might happen upon first encounter with intelligent extraterrestrials.

Citation: Seth D. Baum, Jacob D. Haqq-Misra, & Shawn D. Domagal-Goldman, Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity? A Scenario Analysis, Acta Astronautica, 2011, 68(11-12): 2114-2129.

The scenarios will be familiar to science fiction fans, but it is strange to see such speculative fiction presented as research in a scientific journal.

The Penn State scientists say that greenhouse gas emissions indicate that our civilization is rapidly advancing and extraterrestrials might notice, become alarmed, and attempt to destroy us.

Apparently the extraterrestrials have not yet noticed or are not alarmed by all the radio and television signals we have been broadcasting into space.

Some excerpts from the paper:

Page 21:

ETI [extraterrestrial intelligence] that place intrinsic value on civilizations may ideally wish that our civilization changes its ways, so we can survive along with all the other civilizations. But if ETI doubt that our course can be changed, then they may seek to preemptively destroy our civilization in order to protect other civilizations from us. A preemptive strike would be particularly likely in the early phases of our expansion because a civilization may become increasingly difficult to destroy as it continues to expand. Humanity may just now be entering the period in which its rapid civilizational expansion could be detected by an ETI because our expansion is changing the composition of Earth’s atmosphere (e.g. via greenhouse gas emissions), which therefore changes the spectral signature of Earth.

Page 26:

Another recommendation is that humanity should avoid giving off the appearance of being a rapidly expansive civilization. If an ETI perceives humanity as such, then it may be inclined to attempt a preemptive strike against us so as to prevent us from growing into a threat to the ETI or others in the galaxy. Similarly, ecosystem-valuing universalist ETI may observe humanity’s ecological destructive tendencies and wipe humanity out in order to preserve the Earth system as a whole. These scenarios give us reason to limit our growth and reduce our impact on global ecosystems. It would be particularly important for us to limit our emissions of greenhouse gases, since atmospheric composition can be observed from other planets. We acknowledge that the pursuit of emissions reductions and other ecological projects may have much stronger justifications than those that derive from ETI encounter, but that does not render ETI encounter scenarios insignificant or irrelevant.

You can read the whole paper here.

So, it will be greenhouse gases rather than the nightly news that will alarm the aliens. Doesn’t Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann work at Penn State? It seems there is no limit to the contrived, scary scenarios global warming alarmists will proffer. Earlier this week I wrote an article titled “Girthic Warming” in which I said the subject research took the prize for stupid associations. That was before I saw the Penn State paper.