Airdate: Richard Hammond Builds A Planet

This Sunday night ABC1 screens the first of a two-part documentary Richard Hammond Builds A Planet looking at how a planet is put together.

It’s the ultimate engineering project, but just how do you build a planet, a solar system and a galaxy from scratch, and what happens if you get any part of it wrong?

Presented by Richard Hammond, this exciting new two-part series draws on specially filmed interviews with the world’s top scientists and engineers as well as stunning interactive CGI to show step by step how a planet is put together.

A cosmic construction foreman supervises each stage in the building of the earth, the solar system and the galaxy, but like any construction project there will be mistakes – a moon in the wrong place or a little too much iron in the mix. Even minor slip-ups will have surprising consequences and out of these mistakes will come real insights into what makes our planet and our solar system exactly right for us.

With his trademark wit, Richard Hammond takes on the ultimate engineering project: to build a planet piece by piece, from the top of a two-mile high tower in the Californian desert. After gathering the basic ingredients, Richard sets out to discover how these ingredients come together to make a planet.

7:30pm Sunday, 9 March ABC1.