The Universe Lives!

(Seems a highly appropriate title to use when up at 4:00am listening to the excellent violent wind and rain storm that’s going on outside.) This is mostly a note for fans of the show The Universe, on the History channel, or H2, and channels by other names internationally. I just wanted to say that the show is going to carry on, with a new season coming out early next year!

I mention this because it looked for a while (at least a few times) like there wouldn’t be another season (after a solid 7 or 8 seasons over as many years), and then at the last minute they greenlit that short season that aired earlier this year with the subtitle “Ancient Mysteries Explained” or something worrying like that (because it sounds a lot like the “Ancient Aliens” show which, well, I’d rather it did not sound anything like…) Then it was not clear again whether that was just a last hurrah or not…

Well, it was not, since we’ve been shooting for several episodes this last month or so! Looks like there will be at least a short season coming, with the same subtitle. I’ve done some work on a few segments that will appear in two or three episodes. They wanted me to do more but I had a rather busy period coming up and so declined to do any more shooting days after November, so I’ll be somewhat fleeting in my appearances, but hope that the physics I did get to talk about is clear and interesting – assuming they use those bits at all (you can never tell).

My favourite day was when we were out at Zuma Beach, which I think I mentioned in a short post a while back. The episode focuses on contrasts between Astronomy and Astrology, which is certainly a good topic! I came up with a fun analogy with which to explain a certain idea and we enlisted a group of Pepperdine students to help us with it. It involved listening to the sounds they made as they receded into the distance. I hope we get to use it. As backup (for the same concept illustration), we instead had the PA put on a wetsuit and run into the ocean while yelling my name and waving! He’d then swim out and yell some more… And then swim even further out and yell my name more…

Needless to say this was an odd thing to shoot, not the least because there were other people on the beach! The original idea (from some people not present) was to have him yelling “help”, but I pointed out that this could get very confusing, with people maybe trying to save the guy, even though we had a lifeguard on duty for the shoot. So instead we decided to do it as though he was trying to get my attention. The idea was settled on that he would be calling out my name. But then I realized while the scene played out, in a number of takes, how odd it was to have my name yelled again and again, with the occasional splutter as he swam as well. It got even weirder at the end, since once I was done with all my parts of the shoot, and so could leave, they decided (as backup) to record some more sound of him yelling my name at different distances on the beach. So I drove away from the beach hearing my name being yelled again and again, with various onlookers passing by wondering what was going on…

-cvj