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7 Wonders of the Solar System – yes, I would’ve expected there to be scores more wonders around the planet we inhabit, but for the purposes of this documentary, there are just seven of them.
These begin with Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, which looks dead given its icy surface but has water bursting out like geysers at 1400mph; thus leading us on to The Rings of Saturn. There are 7 main rings with thousands of ringlets and many millions of tons of ice and dust, with millions more times the amount of water on earth… which makes you wonder why David Bowie didn’t stop off there instead of our planet in The Man Who Fell To Earth. Would you believe there are 62 moons embedded in the rings?
Next up comes Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, which I’ve always known as ‘The Eye of Jupiter’. It contains a supersized vortex with 400mph winds, faster than anything measured in our own tornadoes. Whereas those on Earth can last from tens of minutes to two hours, Jupiter beats that hands down with a running time of 400 years and a storm that’s three times the size of Earth. What follows is The asteroid belt, a cosmic junkyard of debris, left over from the formation of the solar system. There are millions of pieces which, if put together, would still be smaller than our moon, and if you were to fly through it, all the pieces are, on average, a million miles apart, so it’s really overplayed for the movies (quelle surprise 😉 )
To summarise the top three, coming in at No.3 is Olympus Mons (below). Based on Mars, this is the largest volcano in the solar system, hundreds of miles across and 13 miles high. No.2 is The surface of the sun, made up of 10,000 degree plasma. It features large coronal mass ejections (CMEs) which blast towards Earth and can cause good things like the Northern Lights, or bad things like killing off satellites, frying our electrical grids or getting in the way of astronauts in space. However, without it, we’d be stuffed.
Top of the list is our dear friend, the Earth. Well, it had to be. However, like all the other wonders, I have only given a flavour of why each of these make the grade. CGI, pictures and expert commentary will fill in all the details about why they go to make up the seven wonders.
That said, the other wonder of the Universe is Ami Mainzer from NASA (bottom picture), the cosmos’ answer to UK weathergirl Laura Tobin.
Presented in 16:9 and in 1080p high definition, the picture looks fantastic with all the CGI presented without any flaws whatsoever. The colours are bold, strong and represent everything the scientists are getting across. I don’t have a 3D-equipped Blu-ray player or TV, sadly, so I could only watch it in 2D, so there will be extra benefits for those with such a set-up.
The sound is in 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, for which I got the regular DTS 5.1 version. There’s not much in the way of split surround FX, but they do the job. Don’t go into this expecting to hear audio of demo quality.
When it comes to the extras and subtitles, this is where this release falls down. There’s none of either. That is a disappointment. There’s also just 8 chapters. Okay, it’s a short film anyway, with you get one chapter for the opening segment and then one apiece for the seven wonders, so before purchasing you’ll need to consider whether it’s worth the price, although note that on Amazon it’s discounted to around a tenner.
7 Wonders of the Solar System is out now on 3D Blu-ray.
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FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS |
7 10 7 0 |
| OVERALL | 6 |
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 44 minutes
Year: 2011
Cat no: GOHCBD5635
Released: March 21st 2011
Chapters: 8
Picture: 1080p High Definition
Sound: 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1
Languages: English
Subtitles: None
Widescreen: 1.78:1
Disc Format: BD25
Director: Laura Verklan
Producer: Sven Berkemeier
Written by: Laura Verklan
Narration: Erik Thompson
Music: Eric Amdahl
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.