Here are National Geographic Alien Earths video and photos. The program will air on August 23, 2009 at 9pm ET on NGC. As the title implies, it will chronicle the search for planets beyond the solar system which are like our planet Earth.

The program follows leading astronomers embarking on an exciting visual journey using CGI animation, to explore strange worlds that seem like figments of imagination. Planets with iron rain and hot ice? Planets with diamonds everywhere? Planets with endless oceans of gas?

As the National Geographic Alien Earths video and photos reveal it gets even stranger still. Imagine planets with abnormal orbital patterns and planets with no pattern at all that drift alone in the Milky Way. There are even planets, called planemos, that have, in essence, been kicked out of their solar system. Some are so bizarre scientists could never have predicted their existence nor their characteristics. Naturally it begs the question: could life exist on these planets?

More photos and video below.

Top photo: CGI: Live action composite showing the planet around the star 16 Cygnus B looms over the horizon in this shoreside landscape on a hypothetical earthlike moon. (Image Credit: SkyWorks Digital, Inc.)

Photo: CGI: Landscape view of the ice world, Europa, with Jupiter in the background. (Image Credit: SkyWorks Digital, Inc.)

Photo: CGI: Earthlike world. (Image Credit: SkyWorks Digital, Inc.)

Video #1 – Extreme conditions abound on planemos. But spring and fall are just right. Can life survive beyond the Goldilocks Zone? Link: National Geographic Alien Earths Video

Video #2 – Adrift in space with no star to keep them warm, some planemos still manage to support life. Video Link



Video #3 – “Planetary zombies” can orbit a pulsar, but radiation makes it impossible for life of any kind to survive on them. Video Link

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National Geographic Alien Earths (Video, Photos) 8-23-09