Physicist explores spectacular solar system for BBC

A University of Manchester physicist will visit some of the most extreme locations on Earth for a spellbinding new TV series, as part of the BBC's 2010 celebration of science. In the new five part-series called Wonders of the Solar System, Prof Brian Cox from the School of Physics and Astronomy visits locations across the globe to explain how the laws of nature have carved spectacular landscapes throughout the Solar System. Prof Cox visits the tallest mountain, the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and the world's driest desert, to paint a dazzling picture of a Solar System we are only now beginning to understand. In the first episode, Empire of the Sun (BBC TWO, 9pm, Sunday 7 March), Prof Cox explores the Sun's magisterial rule over every world in the Solar System. He travels to India to catch a remarkable quirk of nature - a total solar eclipse - and explains how the Earth, of all the planets in the Solar System, is the only one to have a moon that completely obscures the face of the Sun. In the Brazilian rainforest, Prof Cox describes how every molecule of every drop of water is moved around our blue planet by the Sun's energy, creating some of the most wondrous sights on Earth. In Norway he witnesses the battle between the Sun's wind and our planet, as the night sky dances with a magical display of the Northern Lights.