The Beauty of Diagrams. Series in which mathematician Marcus du Sautoy explores the stories behind some of the most familiar scientific diagrams. Vitruvian Man - He looks at Leonardo da Vinci's world-famous diagram of the perfect human body, which has many layers from anatomy to architecture, and defines our species like no other drawing before or since.
The Vitruvian Man, drawn in the 1480s when he was living and working in Milan, has become one of the most famous images in the world. Leonardo's drawings form a vast body of work, covering every imaginable subject in spectacular detail: from feet, skulls and hands to muscles and sinews; from hearts and lungs to buildings, bridges and flying machines. Copernicus - When Polish priest and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus developed his extraordinary theory of a sun-centered universe 500 years ago, he was flying in the face of both science and religion. To explain what he had done, Newton created a diagram. Florence Nightingale - Can a diagram save lives? The Betrayal by Technology: A Portrait of Jacques Ellul. Into The Universe With Stephen Hawking. Stephen Hawking hosts an epic brand new kind of cosmology series, a Planet Earth of the heavens.
It takes the world's most famous scientific mind and sets it free, powered by the limitless possibilities of computer animation. Hawking gives us the ultimate guide to the universe, a ripping yarn based on real science, spanning the whole of space and time - from the nature of the universe itself, to the chances of alien life, and the real possibility of time travel. Aliens. Hawking joins science and imagination to explore one of the most important mysteries facing humankind - the possibility of alien, intelligent life and the likelihood of future "contact. " Traveling from the moons of Jupiter to a galaxy maybe not so far, far away, he'll introduce us to possible alien life forms - in stunning CGI - that face the same universal trials of adaptation and survival as the residents of Earth.
Time Travel. The Story of Everything. Miracle Cure? A Decade of the Human Genome. Richard Feynman: Fun to Imagine. Time. In this four-programme series, string theory pioneer Michio Kaku goes on an extraordinary exploration of the world in search of time. He discovers our sense of time passing and the clocks that drive our bodies. He reveals the forces of time that make and destroy us in a lifetime. He journeys to some of the Earth's most spectacular geological sites to look for clues to the extraordinary depths of time at a planetary level. Finally, he takes us on a cosmic journey in search of the beginning (and the end) of time itself. Daytime. Time seems to drive every moment. Lifetime. Earthtime. Cosmictime. Watch the full documentary now (playlist - 4 hours)
What Darwin Never Knew. Earth teems with a staggering variety of animals, including 9,000 kinds of birds, 28,000 types of fish, and more than 350,000 species of beetles alone. What explains this explosion of living creatures-1.4 million different species discovered so far, with perhaps another 50 million more to go? The source of life's endless forms was a profound mystery until Charles Darwin's revolutionary idea of natural selection, which he showed could help explain the gradual development of life on earth. But Darwin's radical insights raised as many questions as they answered. What actually drives evolution and turns one species into another? And how did we evolve? On Charles Darwin's 2009 bicentennial, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, NOVA reveals answers to the riddles that Darwin couldn't explain.
Here scientists are finally beginning to crack nature's biggest secrets at the genetic level. Watch the full documentary now - DNA. Deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms (with the exception of RNA viruses). The main role of DNA molecules is the long-term storage of information. DNA is often compared to a set of blueprints, like a recipe or a code, since it contains the instructions needed to construct other components of cells, such as proteins and RNA molecules. The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in regulating the use of this genetic information. 1.
The Secret of Life - The discovery of the double helix structure of DNA is to science what the Mona Lisa is to painting. It's been called the single biggest discovery of all time. But it wasn't just stumbled upon - it was a race. 2. 3. 4. 5. Watch the full documentary now (playlist - 4 hours, 25 minutes) The Brain: Our Universe Within. Forty years ago, American anthropologist Doctor Ralph Selecki explored the caves at Shanidar where he unearthed an image of ancient man that profoundly changed the way we saw our ancestors. The professor discovered a skull - a Neanderthal skull.
Strangely, it was covered with microscopic pollen from the flowers of thistle, groundsel, spiraea and hollyhock, among others. The same pollen dust covered the rest of the weathered skeleton, suggesting that his family and friends had deliberately gathered the flowers and laid them in bunches on the dead body. These mourners left behind the earliest known signs of man's awareness of death. Based on Doctor Selecki's findings, Neanderthals seemed to possess what we have come to call a mind. Complex and deeply mysterious, the human brain is an odyssey unto itself. This series explores the way the brain evolves from birth to adulthood; how memory works; how humans recover from brain injury; and the origins of creativity and identity.
BBC Horizon: From Here to Infinity (1999) // Watch Online. The Hawking Paradox. Stephen Hawking is the most famous scientist on the planet. His popular science book A Brief History of Time was a publishing sensation, staying at the top of the bestseller lists longer than any other book in recent history. But behind the public face lies an argument that has been raging for almost 30 years. Hawking shot to fame in the world of physics when he provided a mathematical proof for the Big Bang theory. This theory showed that the entire universe exploded from a singularity, an infinitely small point with infinite density and infinite gravity. Hawking was able to come to his proof using mathematical techniques that had been developed by Roger Penrose. These techniques were however developed to deal not with the beginning of the Universe but with black holes. Instead of matter being crushed into a singularity, the Universe began when a singularity expanded to form everything we see around us today, from stars to planets to people.
Watch the full documentary now. What Happened Before the Big Bang? They are the biggest questions that science can possibly ask: where did everything in our universe come from? How did it all begin? For nearly a hundred years, we thought we had the answer: a big bang some 14 billion years ago. But now some scientists believe that was not really the beginning. Our universe may have had a life before this violent moment of creation. Horizon takes the ultimate trip into the unknown, to explore a dizzying world of cosmic bounces, rips and multiple universes, and finds out what happened before the big bang. Neil Turok, Director of Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada, working with Paul Steinhardt at Princeton, has proposed a radical new answer to cosmology’s deepest question: What banged? One bang is followed by another, in a potentially endless series of cosmic cycles, each one spelling the end of a universe and the beginning of a new one. Sir Roger Penrose has changed his mind about the Big Bang.
This is just a preview. What Is Reality? Don’t Grow Old. To Infinity and Beyond. Are We Still Evolving? Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey. The Elephant: Life after Death. Elephants can live for 70 years. But what happens when one of these magnificent beasts dies in the wild? This stunning film turns normal wildlife documentaries on their head to find out what happens after death, as a five-tonne adult elephant is transformed into six million calories worth of fat, meat and guts, feeding a whole new cycle of life.
The documentary gives scientists the chance to watch close up, day and night, as animals from leopards, hyenas and vultures to flies and beetles take just days to reduce the largest land animal on earth to bare bones. Biologist Simon Watt leads a team of experts watching the events unfold in Tsavo West National Park in Kenya. They follow the action as never before, using remote cameras and night vision equipment under the supervision of animal behavior expert Warren Samuels.
Raptor expert Simon Thomsett is keen to study the behavior of local vultures, whose increasing timidity could mark a shift in the food chain. Are We Still Evolving? Human Ape. Humans are apes. Great apes. Apes all belong to the super-family Hominoidea. The great apes are the family Hominidae which we share with the Chimpanzees, Gorillas and the Orangutan.
Our DNA is less than 2 percent different from that of chimpanzees, so from a biological viewpoint, what is it that makes humans so different from the other great apes? Find out what our ape cousins can do - and what they can't. Some facts: Each individual chimpanzee has his or her own distinctive pant-hoot, or call, so that the caller can be identified with precision. Orangutans have been observed making simple tools to scratch themselves. Chimpanzees are approximately eight times stronger than the average human. Bonobos substitute sex for aggression, and sexual interactions occur more often among bonobos than among other primates. Orangutans' arms stretch out longer than their bodes - over 7 feet from fingertip to fingertip. Watch the full documentary now (playlist - )
Adventures In Human Evolution. This landmark series about the evolution of man answers fundamental questions. Who were our ancestors? When did they first walk the earth? Why did man survive when other species became extinct? These questions have inspired scientists throughout the ages to piece together the fragmentary clues the early humans left behind. This direct and involving story of their detective work in search of the truth about our evolution takes us through the breakthroughs and setbacks in the epic journey towards the truth about our shared past, and we discover that our early ancestors were, in many ways, people like us. Contact - For 200,000 years the Neanderthals lived unchallenged in Europe with no need to change their lifestyle. First Born - The discovery of a child's skeleton on the edge of the Kalahari desert gave rise to the theory of a species that straddled the boundary between human and ape.
Watch the full documentary now (playlist - 5 hours) Facts of Evolution. If you want to know what the scientists know about evolution, then here it is. An enormous breadth of information, assimilated, compressed, and congealed into an easily understood, visually irresistible presentation. Facts Of Evolution (made by the Cassiopeia Project) has layer upon layer of evidence that makes common descent and macro-evolution inescapable.
Universal common descent is the concept that every living thing on earth is related to every other living thing on earth… genealogically, genetically related. All modern organisms are descended from one original species. And while in its simplest form, there is a genetic, linear progression that branches and forms a tree-like pattern, Common Descent is NOT restricted to this linear pattern. That is different species might recombine and generate hybrids; or genetic material may cross from symbiont to host; or perhaps by man’s own hand, genetic material may be implanted wholesale in another species. Watch the full documentary now. What Happened Before the Big Bang?
Beautiful Minds. Who are the modern men and women who will be remembered for the brilliance of their minds? What are their legacies and what can their extraordinary discoveries tell us about the nature of science and the nature of truth? In the first of a three-part series, Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell describes how she discovered pulsars, the by-products of supernova explosions which make all life in the universe possible. She describes the moments of despair and jubilation as the discovery unfolded and her excitement as pulsars took the scientific world by storm.
Profoundly reflective about the nature of scientific discovery, she shares her thoughts on the connections between religion and science and describes how she see science as a search for understanding rather than a quest for truth. Watch the full documentary now (playlist - ) The End of God?: A Horizon Guide to Science and Religion. As the Pope ends his visit to Britain, historian Dr Thomas Dixon delves into the BBC's archive to explore the troubled relationship between religion and science.
From the creationists of America to the physicists of the Large Hadron Collider, he traces the expansion of scientific knowledge and asks whether there is still room for God in the modern world. The relationship between science and religion has been long and troubled: from the condemnation of Galileo by the Catholic Church in 17th century Italy, through the clashes between creationism and evolution in 20th century America, right up to recent claims that the universe does not need God.
Delving through the rich archive of programmes from Horizon and BBC Science, Thomas Dixon looks at what lies behind this difficult relationship. Using original footage from 1925, he tells the story of John Scopes, a Tennessee teacher who was tried for teaching evolution. Watch the full documentary now (non-English version) Fractals: Hunting the Hidden Dimension. Mysteriously beautiful fractals are shaking up the world of mathematics and deepening our understanding of nature.
You may not know it, but fractals, like the air you breathe, are all around you. Their irregular, repeating shapes are found in cloud formations and tree limbs, in stalks of broccoli and craggy mountain ranges, even in the rhythm of the human heart. In this film, we takes viewers on a fascinating quest with a group of maverick mathematicians determined to decipher the rules that govern fractal geometry.
For centuries, fractal-like irregular shapes were considered beyond the boundaries of mathematical understanding. Now, mathematicians have finally begun mapping this uncharted territory. Their remarkable findings are deepening our understanding of nature and stimulating a new wave of scientific, medical, and artistic innovation stretching from the ecology of the rain forest to fashion design. Watch the full documentary now (playlist - 52 minutes) Dimensions: A Walk Through Mathematics.
The Story of One. Obsessed and Scientific.