Gaia’s Mission: Solving the Celestial Puzzle

The Gaia spacecraft has now been launched and an amazing project has begun.  Ambitious is hardly the word – altogether over a billion celestial objects will be mapped by Gaia – and in 3D in to the bargain.  What is even, perhaps, more astonishing is that these billion objects constitute only one hundredth of those over 20 G magnitudes brightness in the Milky Way.  Our galaxy is vast.

Professor Gerry Gilmore from Cambridge University’s Institute of Astronomy and the Principal Investigator for UK involvement in the mission says that Gaia "will revolutionize our understanding of the cosmos as never before."   The university has created this twenty minute film exploring the mission and its challenging.  I found it compulsive viewing.

Oh and it is narrated by Sean Pertwee, a wonderful British actor who we have seen recently in Camelot and Elementary among other things.  As the son of the third actor to play Doctor Who, Jon Pertwee, this is more than an appropriate choice for narrator of this wonderful short documentary.

Seed

The year is 2071 and technology has allowed humanity to spread out in to the universe. Planets can be colonized and one of them is named Gaia. Before settlers can arrive the planet must be fully surveyed and its safety proven. An astronaut is sent on this solo mission but what he discovers could bring human life to an end on Gaia.

Directed by Tyson Wade Johnston and starring Justin Zachary (the writing honors going to both) Seed is a tense short film which looks amazing. It was inspired by a number of 60s and 70s movies, including Planet of the Apes, 2001 A Space Odyssey and Close Encounters and it certainly does have the look and feel of those decades. Yet it stands very well in its own right too.

Like much of the best science fiction, Seed allows the viewer to use their imagination to interpret the events as they unfold (and unfold and unfold in this case).

Shedding

Planet Earth – as you may never have seen it before. Vancouver Film School student Stefano Marrone (with sound by the fabulously named Aroon M Zick) has come up with a very different way of viewing the history of communication on our pale blue dot – through the direct experiences of the planet itself, tooned up very cutely indeed. It’s all there – from the creation of the alphabet and the printing press, to newspapers and books. Finally we hit the digital age. How will our planetary protagonist respond to that?

You will have to watch this marvelous animation to find out but it is another example of how the medium of animation can raise important issues and provoke thought and discussion.  Of course, any piece of work which name checks J Baudrillard, French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer will get my vote straight away. This is an exceptional debut by Mr Marrone (who also has a very cool website showcasing a lot of his work) and bodes very well for what we might see from him in the future.