VEDERE LA SCIENZA 2005

Milano   7/3/2005 - 13/3/2005

Spazio Oberdan - viale Vittorio Veneto 2 - Milano

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Alien Underworld



  1. Original Title: Alien Underworld
  2. Director: Sonya Pembertod
  3. Scientific Advisor: Peter H. Janssen, University of Melbourne
  4. Editor: Tony Stevens
  5. Photography: Philip Bull
  6. Animation: Simon Von Wolkenstein
  7. Music: Janine De Lorenzo, Al Mullins
  8. Sound: Peter Walker, Tristan Meredith, Juliet Hill
  9. Producer: Karena Slaninka
  10. Production: Tattooed Media Production in coll. con AFFC e ABC
  11. Australia
  12. 53 min.
  13. 2002

August 1996, NASA announced that odd structures, possibly similar to fossils of ancient living beings, had been discovered in a Martian meteorite dated 4 billion years ago, found in Antarctica. Was this perhaps evidence that there had been - and still was - some sort of life on Mars? The international community’s enthusiastic response to the announcement was soon placated by the widespread opinion that those remains were too small to be fossils. Nonetheless, the debate is still open and the discovery made by a young Australian geologist once again puts the issue in the limelight. While carrying out standard tests on rock samples with a powerful electron microscope, Philippa Uwins found a series of unusual structures, some of which resembled a swollen drop supported by a stem, that grew in extremely small spaces. At first Uwins believed these structures to be mineral structures, but she soon realized that they had to be some sort of incredibly tiny organic material less than 200 nanometers across, ten times smaller than the minimum diameter now considered capable of hosting life's basic components. Nanobacteria (or nanobes), which can withstand extreme temperatures and pressure, have caused a split in the scientific community. Can life be so tiny as to challenge our ability to comprehend it? Can nanobes support the radical theory according to which life descended upon the Earth from outer space? Characterized by a wealth of excellent animation, the documentary reports on research studies aimed at making sense of the nature of nanobes, enabling viewers to become more familiar with one of the most fascinating issues of modern research: the origin of life on planet Earth.

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