Planet Earth (1986 TV series)

Planet Earth is a seven-episode 1986 PBS television documentary series focusing on the Earth, narrated by Richard Kiley.

Planet Earth explores geoscience and how discoveries of the early and mid-1980s were revolutionizing mankind's understanding of the Earth's past, present, and future. It also highlights scientific discoveries not yet fully understood and still under study in the mid-1980s. The series explores the Earth's origins, history, and structure; the forces that operate continually to alter its surface; its oceans; its climate; its natural resources; its biosphere and the effects of life on the physical world; its relationship to the Sun and other bodies in the Solar System; and its possible future in the face of pressures the growing human population places on the natural world.Margulies, Lee, "TV Review : PBS 'Earth' Series Off To An Earthshaking Start," Los Angeles Times, January 22, 1986.

The BBC used the same title for its 2006 series, but the two series are completely unrelated and quite different in focus and content.

Production Produced by WQED in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in association with the National Academy of Sciences as the centerpiece for a college-credit telecourse, Planet Earth was filmed over a period of four years on all seven continents and from the ocean bottom to earth orbit. The Annenberg/CPB Project and IBM funded production of the series.imdb.com Planet Earth (1886) Company Credits It enjoyed success in its original run, airing weekly on Thursday evenings on PBS from January 22 to March 5, 1986.tvguide.com Planet Earth Episode List

A companion book to the series written by Jonathan Weiner, also entitled Planet Earth, was published in 1986 by Bantam Books. Both the series and the companion book sometimes are marketed as Our Planet Earth in an attempt to avoid confusion with the 2006 BBC series Planet Earth.

Some footage shot for Planet Earth later also was used in the 1992 PBS series Earth Revealed.

Critical reception and awards In January 1986, Los Angeles Times critic Lee Margulies praised Planet Earth as "serious, but not dry" and credited it for its vivid filming of natural scenery, use of computer graphics, and achievement of depicting ongoing scientific research of the early and mid-1980s as "challenging, interesting, and worthwhile."

Planet Earth was the co-winner of the 1985-1986 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Informational Series or Special, sharing it with Laurence Olivier - A Life, a multi-part biography of Laurence Olivier that aired on the PBS series Great Performances that season.

Episode list "The Living Machine" (aired January 22, 1986) – The episode discusses plate tectonics and geologic time, highlighting the work of James Hutton, Alfred Wegener, Harry Hess, Allan V. Cox, Brent Dalrymple, Frederick Vine, and Drummond Matthews, and discussing how geologists study layers of rock to read billions of years of the Earth's history. Topics covered include radiometric dating, seafloor spreading, magnetic field reversals, earthquakes, volcanism, subduction, and hotspots, how continents grow through accretion, how geophysicists study the interior of the Earth and what they have discovered, the theory of "microplate tectonics," how computer simulations have recreated the effects of continental drift on the world's geography over time from the prehistoric supercontinent Pangaea to the world of today, and how plate tectonics may have shaped the migratory behaviors of some animals. In addition to showing scientists studying the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii and using the research submarine Alvin to explore the Atlantic Ocean's Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the episode visits the Grand Canyon; Scotland's Arthur's Seat, Salisbury Crags, and Siccar Point; California's Owens Valley and San Andreas Fault; New Madrid, Missouri; and Ascension Island. "The Blue Planet" (aired January 29, 1986) – The episode discusses major new revelations about the oceans. Topics covered include the movement of water in the ocean, such as ocean currents and eddy fields, and the effect of newly discovered ocean water dynamics on human activities such as yacht racing; the causes and effects of upwellings; the use of satellites to track plankton growth from space and the use of plankton maps created from such information to advise the crews of commercial fishing vessels on the best places to fish; the effect of the El Niño phenomenon on the world's weather; the discovery by scientists employing deep-sea research submersibles of previously unknown life forms living in the ocean's midwater zone; the use of sonar to make hydrographic surveys of the ocean bottom's topography; the study of cores of ocean bottom sediment to study the chemistry of, temperature of, and array of life present in the ocean in the past; and hydrothermal vents and the life that depends on them. The episode follows the first oceanographer in space, Paul Scully-Power, as he makes the first oceanographic reports ever made from space while aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger; visits the Gulf Stream, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, the waters of the Southern Ocean off Antarctica and the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, the National Marine Fisheries Service's Southwest Fisheries Center in San Diego, California, the Exxon Production Research Company in Houston, Texas, and Baffin Bay; and makes dives in a bathysphere into the ocean's midwater zone and with the United States Navy research submersible Sea Cliff to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. "The Climate Puzzle" (aired February 5, 1986) – The episode examines the complexities of the Earth's climate. It explains how life adapts to extremes in climate and how changes in the climate have doomed past civilizations; the use of lake sediments, stalagmites, and cores of the ocean bottom and of polar ice to detect and track ancient changes in the Earth's climate; the Little Ice Age and Louis Agassiz's work in discovering the ice ages; Milutin Milanković's ideas about how the Earth's motions can trigger changes in climate; the contrast between the climates of Venus, Earth, and Mars and the possibility of Earth's climate one day becoming like that of Venus or Mars; modern civilization's release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, carbon dioxide's role as a greenhouse gas, and the possible effects of global warming on sea levels, storm surges, droughts and desertification, famine, temperatures, and green plant growth; plate tectonics, seafloor spreading, subduction, continental drift, and the role of volcanism in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels; methane's role as a greenhouse gas and the influence of termites on atmospheric methane levels; computer modeling of the prehistoric atmosphere and the climates resulting from it as it changed over time; and the possibilities for Earth's future climate. The episode visits the dry valleys and ice rivers of Antarctica; the site of the Harappan Civilization in the Rajasthan Desert on the Indian subcontinent; northern New Zealand; Switzerland; Barbados; Columbia University in New York City; the Hudson Valley in New York; Vostok Station; the Institute of Glaciology in Grenoble, France; the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii; Venice, Italy; the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado; and Colorado's Lake Pueblo State Park. "Tales from Other Worlds" (aired February 12, 1986) – Using special effects and actual footage from space to illustrate other worlds in the Solar System, the episode discusses the connections between the Earth and the cosmos. Topics include the formation of the Solar System, the Earth, and the Moon; the formation of impact craters and how study of the Moon's surface helps us understand the early history of the Earth; the surface of Venus as it appears beneath the planet's acid rain clouds and what it tells us about the early Earth before the beginning of plate tectonics; the surface features of Mars, evidence that water once flowed there, and the possibility that life once existed there; how the planet Jupiter is actually a failed star and the features of its atmosphere; Jupiter's moons Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa, and the volcanoes of Jupiter's moon Io; Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and the Oort Cloud; the theory that a large impact on the Earth caused the extinction of the dinosaurs; and the hypothesis that a hypothetical star dubbed "Nemesis" is responsible for a 26-million-year cycle of mass extinctions on Earth. The episode visits the Allan Hills of Antarctica; Meteor Crater in Arizona; the NASA Ames Research Center in San Francisco, California; the Arecibo Observatory in Arecibo, Puerto Rico; the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona; the Scablands of eastern Washington; stromatolites in Western Australia; a quarry in Utah; and the town of Gubbio, Italy; and discusses the work of Gene Shoemaker, Peter H. Schultz, Percival Lowell, Walter Alvarez, and Jack Sepkoski. "Gifts from the Earth" (aired February 19, 1986) – The episode focuses on the Earth's natural resources, including minerals such as copper, gold, silver, and platinum; fossil fuels such as petroleum, coal, and peat; and soil. It examines how deposits of minerals and fossil fuels form; how soil forms, is eroded, and is distributed by the wind; river deltas; oil exploration and oil drilling; the development of an airborne imaging spectrometer aboard a C-130 Hercules aircraft; how scientists use studies of the Earth's mineral and energy sources to analyze the history of plate tectonic movement and continental drift, and how our understanding of plate tectonics has revolutionized the search for natural resources. The episode visits the Hillman Hall of Minerals and Gems at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; ancient copper mining sites on Cyprus; the kuroko mines of Japan; deep-sea black smokers off the coast of Mexico in a dive aboard the research submersible Alvin; the Kid Creek Mine in northern Canada; the Bushveld Complex in South Africa; the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Hawaii; western Tennessee; Benares, the River Ganges, and the Ganges Delta in India; the Mississippi Delta in Louisiana; a cedar swamp in the process of forming a peat bog in Maine; offshore oil platforms in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Newfoundland; Sudan; the NASA Ames Research Center in San Francisco, California; the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California; and the Cuprite Hills of Nevada.