The Discovery Channel and Amazon.com are co-operatively promoting a new
television program, "Alien Planet," to be broadcast this Saturday evening on the
Discovery Channel. It may be worth your time to watch.

This appears to be another program designed to teach real science by dressing
it up as something it's not: a science-fiction, Stars Wars-type show. James
Cameron's "Aliens of the Deep" IMAX movie is the same kind of thing.

But even knowing that, the show may be worth watching. Astrobiology is the
very real science of extrapolating what we know of the physics of evolutionary
biology on Earth to worlds yet discovered. Extrapolation, even if done
meticulously carefully, obviously has some overlap with science fiction, but there are
things we can say, at least in an abstract way, that we can be almost be
certain will be true.

Wirt Atmar

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