The BEST Episodes of Wonders of the Solar System

Every episode ever - ranked by fan votes!

Last Updated: Aug 19, 2019

Experience the extraordinary…in our planet’s own backyard. Wonders explores some of the most amazing features of our very own solar system – how the forces of nature carved out beauty and order from the chaos of space; how our home planet doesn’t sit in magnificent isolation but is intimately connected with the rest of the solar system; and how these connections have created the haven we call Earth. Using the latest scientific knowledge and breathtaking images beamed back from the fleet of probes, rovers and telescopes currently in space, this gorgeous imagery, paired with some of the most spectacular and extreme locations on Earth, help to reveal wonders never thought possible.

Order Out of Chaos

#1 - Order Out of Chaos

Season 1 - Episode 2

Brian reveals how the beauty and order of the solar system was formed from a chaotic cloud of gas.

star 8.51
111 votes
Empire of the Sun

#2 - Empire of the Sun

Season 1 - Episode 1

Physicist Brian Cox examines the sun's rule over our planet, heading for India to witness a total solar eclipse, and viewing the Northern Lights in the Arctic Circle.

star 8.51
124 votes

#3 - Aliens

Season 1 - Episode 5

Professor Brian Cox visits some of the most stunning locations on earth to describe how the laws of nature have carved natural wonders across the solar system. Brian descends to the bottom of the Pacific in a submarine to witness the extraordinary life forms that survive in the cold, black waters. All life on Earth needs water so the search for aliens in the solar system has followed the search for water. Soaring above the dramatic Scablands of the United States, Brian discovers how the same landscape has been found on Mars. And it was all carved out in a geological heartbeat by a monumental flood. Armed with a gas mask, Brian enters a cave in Mexico where bacteria breathe toxic gas and leak concentrated acid. Yet relatives of these creatures could be surviving in newly-discovered caves on Mars. But Brian's sixth wonder isn't a planet at all. Jupiter's moon Europa is a dazzling ball of ice etched with strange cracks. The patterns in the ice reveal that, far below, there is an ocean with more potentially life-giving water than all the oceans on Earth. Of all the wonders of the solar system forged by the laws of nature, there is one that stands out. In the final episode of this series, Brian reveals the greatest wonder of them all.

star 8.51
78 votes
Dead or Alive

#4 - Dead or Alive

Season 1 - Episode 4

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.

star 8.47
88 votes
Directors: Paul Olding
The Thin Blue Line

#5 - The Thin Blue Line

Season 1 - Episode 3

Brian reveals how something as flimsy as an atmosphere can create some of the most wondrous sights in the solar system. He takes a ride to the top of earth's atmosphere, and in the Namib desert, he tells how Mercury lost its atmosphere.

star 8.26
94 votes
Directors: Chris Holt