Are We Alone for 08/10/09 - Skeptic Check: Doomsday at the Movies

Are We Alone - Skeptic Check: Doomsday at the Movies

Hollywood has a few ideas of how the world will end: killer asteroids … lethal pandemics … deadly ice-ages. These themes have all played out on the big screen. But, hey, they’re only movies, right?

We’ll separate the science from the fiction in doomsday movies. From the 2012 prophesy of the Mayans … to colliding worlds … to abrupt climate change, find out which among this crowd of cinematic scares are for real, and which aren’t worth the price of popcorn.

Guests:

• Dave Morrison – Astrobiologist, NASA Ames Research Center
• Phil Plait – Astronomer, keeper of badastronomy.com, and author of Death from the Skies!: These Are the Ways the World Will End . . .
• Lynn Rothschild – Astrobiologist, NASA Ames Research Center
• Ken Caldeira – Scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Department of Global Ecology

You can listen to this and other episodes at http://radio.seti.org/, and be sure to check out Are We A Blog?, the companion blog to the radio show.