Customer Reviews

Mysterious Life of Caves - NOVA

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

An absolutely excellent production. I would give it more than 5 stars if I could. The photography and lighting were flawless. The information will bring the viewer back again and again.

Excellent work. Teases out some of the scientific discoveries in a nice fashion with dramatic touches. Excellent photography. Very suitable for college and high school science classes. Some hypotheses presented and tested.

When this documentary talks about caves, it is talking about those deep underground with candle wax drips-looking tops. They are not speaking about what bears or cave men lived in. They are talking about places deep down in the Earth where it's too poisonous for humans to inhabit.

The point of this work is that these caves are the results of biology and not just geology. So the majority of the work focuses on microbes that can withstand acid, boiling wster, and a lack of sunlight. They do show fish, spiders, and insects in passing, but this is mostly about things you'd only see under a microscope. That may be boring to some. I didn't find myself as interested in this as I do when they show creatures deep down in the ocean that can make their own light, for example.

Chald, they show the scientists putting their urine in bags so as not to disturb the ecosystem. They say they had to carry their fecal matter out of there. Borat would be flattered! I'm glad these scientists were conscentious, but this was a bit of TMI. I mean, can a bit of human poo-poo destroy a place like the meteor did to dinosaurs!?

This work had a lot of female scientists in it. Hopefully, it can encourage more women to enter that field. Then again, maybe it's chemistry and physics that are mostly male fields; maybe biology and geology are more gender-mixed. One interviewee has a motherly, empathetic voice that makes all this boring science blabber more interesting.

The work concludes by saying, "Perhaps moons and other planets have these same microbes and thus can't be seen as lifeless." I think Star Trek fans and others interested in life on other planets will be very drawn in by that pondering.