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In Part 3 of Episode 4 of What on Earth, we travel beyond the rocky worlds and venture into the outer Solar System - home of the giants: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

We begin with Jupiter, the largest planet in our Solar System. A world of swirling cloud bands, intense magnetic fields, and the iconic Great Red Spot, a storm that has been raging for centuries. We also explore its Galilean moons, from volcanic Io to ocean-bearing Europa, revealing that Jupiter is not just a planet, but an entire system of moons.

From there, we move to Saturn, the ringed giant. Famous for its breathtaking ring system, Saturn also hosts some of the most fascinating moons in the Solar System, including Enceladus, with its water plumes, and the strikingly two-toned Iapetus.

Then we tilt our perspective toward Uranus, the planet that rotates on its side. With its pale blue colour, faint rings, and dramatic seasonal extremes, Uranus challenges our understanding of planetary formation. We also take a closer look at Miranda and its enormous cliffs.

Finally, we reach Neptune, deep blue, distant, and dynamic. With the fastest winds in the Solar System and the mysterious Great Dark Spot, Neptune proves that even the outermost giant worlds are anything but quiet.

By the end of this series, you’ll be able to look up at the night sky and recognise our planetary neighbours with confidence, no longer distant mysteries, but familiar worlds you understand.

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In Part 2 of Episode 4 of What on Earth, we leave the Sun behind and begin our journey through the Solar System. Starting with the rocky planets of the inner Solar System: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.

Our first stop is Mercury, a small planet with a disproportionately large metal core, an ancient, heavily cratered surface, and chemistry that still challenges planetary formation models. From there, we move outward to Venus, Earth’s so-called sister planet, where vast volcanic landscapes and a runaway greenhouse effect reveal how dramatically planetary evolution can diverge even between similar-sized worlds.

Back home, we briefly touch on Earth and its unusually large Moon, active plate tectonics, magnetic field, and the unique presence of liquid water and life, features that make our planet stand out among the rocky worlds.

Finally, we arrive at Mars: a planet of extremes. From the massive canyon system of Valles Marineris and the towering Olympus Mons to its tiny moons Phobos and Deimos, Mars tells a story of a thinning atmosphere, and ancient river systems. We also discuss recent discoveries that hint at possible biosignatures, not proof of life, but some of the most intriguing clues yet.

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In our fourth episode of What on Earth, we zoom way out - from rocks beneath our feet to the vast, dynamic system we call home: the Solar System.

We start with a deceptively simple question: what on Earth is the Solar System? From there, we unpack what actually defines it - not just planets orbiting the Sun, but a complex, evolving system shaped by gravity, heat, collisions, and time.

We talk about where our knowledge of the Solar System comes from: meteorites as time capsules of early planetary material, the Moon as a natural laboratory, telescopes on Earth and in space, and numerical models that let us replay cosmic chaos. It turns out we don’t need to travel everywhere to understand space -sometimes the clues fall right into our hands.

From there, we dive into how the Sun was born inside a stellar nursery, how protoplanetary disks form, and why the Solar System ended up so clearly divided into rocky inner planets and distant gas and ice giants. Temperature gradients, collisions, and violent early conditions play a much bigger role than peaceful orbits might suggest.

We also explore our Sun itself: what kind of star it is, how it produces energy, why it has layers like an onion (or an ogre), and how solar activity - from sunspots to solar wind - shapes the space far beyond the planets. Along the way, we follow the solar wind all the way to the edge of the Sun’s influence, where spacecraft like Voyager have shown us just how big our cosmic neighbourhood really is.