Home / Series / Wonders of the Solar System / Aired Order / Season 1 / Episode 4

Dead or Alive

The worlds that surround our planet are all made of rock, but there the similarity ends. Some have a beating geological heart, others are frozen in time. Brian travels to the tallest mountain on earth, the volcano Mauna Kea on Hawaii, to show how something as basic as a planet's size can make the difference between life and death. Even on the summit of this volcano, Brian would stand in the shade of the tallest mountain in the solar system, an extinct volcano on Mars called Olympus Mons, which rises up 27 km. Yet the fifth wonder in the series isn't on a planet at all. It's on a tiny moon of Jupiter. The discoveries made on Io have been astonishing. This fragment of rock should be cold and dead, yet, with the volcanic landscape of eastern Ethiopia as a backdrop, Brian reveals why Io is home to extraordinary lakes of lava and giant volcanic plumes that erupt 500 km into the sky.

čeština English français Magyar Português - Portugal русский язык español Deutsch 한국어
  • Originally Aired March 28, 2010
  • Runtime 60 minutes
  • Content Rating United States of America TV-G
  • Network BBC Two
  • On Other Sites IMDB
  • Created January 26, 2016 by
    Administrator admin
  • Modified August 6, 2023 by
    kyuhyung78
Name Type Role
Paul Olding Director