Mass Extinction, 1918 Flu, Papyrus

Neil deGrasse Tyson - Mass Extinction, 1918 Flu, Papyrus November 9, 2016
Nova Science Now

The World's Strongest Material

For the past century materials engineers have been developing materials that are ever stronger. While a focus on metals led the charge, in recent decades nano-materials are proving themselves to be among the strongest materials on Earth.



The World's Strongest Material - NOVA Documentary

The Bible's Buried Secrets

If you read the Bible from cover-to-cover there are certain items which simply reach out and grab your attention. These are not necessarily earth shattering items, but they can be used to reveal whether or not someone who claims to have read the Bible, actually has.



A Nova documentary

UNCOVER Secrets Of Parthenon | How was Parthenon Built Precisely

UNCOVER Secrets Of Parthenon | How was Parthenon Built Precisely?



Documentary English Subtitles

Mars: Dead or Alive - PBS Nova

On January 3, 2004, a strange sight unfolded on the planet Mars. Above a vast, dry lake bed south of the martian equator, a conical vehicle parachuted toward the surface. Then, just before touch down, it was enveloped by a gigantic protective airbag allowing the craft to bounce safely to a stop. Inside was Spirit, the most sophisticated rover ever launched from Earth. "MARS Dead or Alive," which originally aired just hours after Spirit landed on the red planet, covers this mission in depth.

The program's behind-the-scenes look at the construction of Spirit and its twin, Opportunity, includes a special up-to-the-minute segment with the latest news from Mars as of January 3, 2004—to learn if Spirit is ready to undertake the most comprehensive search for evidence of liquid water ever attempted on Mars.



NOVA spent months documenting the tension-filled process of building, testing, final checkout, and launch of a pair of spacecraft that are designed not only to be remote-controlled field geologists but to perform in a demanding environment millions of miles from Earth. As the program shows, unexpected problems with designs for the parachute and airbags almost scuttled the mission, and a potentially catastrophic electronic problem on Spirit didn't turn up until the vehicle was completely inaccessible and awaiting launch.

Riding on the mission are not just the hopes of scientists seeking to answer baffling questions about the history of Mars, but the future of NASA's Mars exploration program itself. Twice in 1999 NASA probes arriving at Mars were lost without a trace. One of the few recent bright spots for Mars research was the surprising success of the experimental lander-rover Pathfinder in 1997, which was designed to test the airbag-landing technique.

Pathfinder was spawned by a freewheeling group of young scientists and engineers who are now back with the far more ambitious Spirit and Opportunity vehicles, which make up what is officially called the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) project. The MER science team is headed by planetary scientist Stephen Squyres of Cornell University, who conceived the project with the goal of probing the most burning questions in Mars science: Was there ever liquid water on the Red Planet? Were conditions ever suitable for life?

Spirit and Opportunity are mobile laboratories outfitted with visible-light and infrared cameras to scan the landscape and locate promising rocks for investigation; a power tool to grind off the weathered surface; a microscope to examine the interior; and two other instruments to sniff out the rock's chemistry. (For a closer look at a MER, see Anatomy of a Rover.) In this way, the MER team held out hope of finding evidence of the liquid water that many scientists theorize was once abundant on Mars's surface but has since vanished.

The landing sites were chosen for their strong signs of a wet past. Spirit is now on site in Gusev Crater, a possible former lake, while Opportunity has been exploring Meridiani Planum, where minerals have been detected that normally form in the presence of water. And where there's water, there may have been life. The ultimate goal of Spirit and Opportunity is to shed light on this intriguing possibility and perhaps pave the way for the most versatile explorers of all—humans.

Original PBS Broadcast Date: January 4, 2004. Season 31 - Episode 09

Darwin's Darkest Hour (NOVA Documentary)

This two-hour scripted drama tells the remarkable story behind the unveiling of the most influential scientific theory of all time, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. The program is a special presentation from NOVA and National Geographic Television, written by acclaimed British screenwriter John Goldsmith and directed by John Bradshaw.



Darwin, portrayed by Henry Ian Cusick (Lost), spent years refining his ideas and penning what he called his "big book." Yet, daunted by looming conflict with the orthodox religious values of his day, he resisted publishing--until a letter from naturalist Alfred Wallace forced his hand. In 1858, Darwin learned that Wallace was ready to publish ideas very similar to his own. In a sickened panic, Darwin grasped his dilemma: To delay publishing any longer would be to condemn his greatest work to obscurity--the brilliant argument he had pieced together with clues from his voyage on the Beagle, his adventures in the Andes, the bizarre fossils of Patagonia, the finches and giant tortoises of the Galapagos, as well as the British countryside. But to come forward with his ideas risked the fury of the Church and perhaps a rift with his own devoted wife, Emma, portrayed by Frances O'Connor (Mansfield Park, The Importance of Being Earnest), who was a devout Christian.

"Darwin's Darkest Hour" is a moving drama about the genesis of a groundbreaking theory seen through the inspiration and personal sufferings of its originator. BBC Broadcast (2009)

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. What explains this explosion of living creatures, 1.4 million different species discovered so far, with perhaps another 50 million to go? The source of life's endless forms was a 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 the 150th anniversary of Darwin's "On the Origin of Species," NOVA reveals answers to the riddles that Darwin couldn't explain. Breakthroughs in a brand new science nicknamed "evo devo" are linking the enigma of origins to another of nature's great mysteries, the development of an embryo. NOVA takes viewers on a journey from the Galapagos Islands to the Arctic and from the Cambrian explosion of animal forms half a billion years ago to the research labs of today. Here scientists are finally beginning to crack nature's biggest secrets at the genetic level. And, as "NOVA" shows, the results are confirming the brilliance of Darwin's insights while exposing clues to life's breathtaking diversity.

NOVA 2010

Last Extinction

Approximately 13,000 years after the mighty mammoth and 35 other groups of mammals vanished from North America, some scientists pose the controversial theory that a massive impact from space may have heralded their demise. For the past four decades, experts have been at odds over what causes this mass extinction. While mainstream scholars pose that the changing climate or ancient hunters were likely to blame for driving the beasts into oblivion, others believe that a comet from deep space may have broken up over North America.



This would have caused a devastating series of explosions that decimated the landscape, and wiped out animal populations. The proof, they claim, lies in the discovery of a mysterious black mat layer at over fifty sites across the continent. The materials found in the "black mats" include rare, microscopic "nanodiamonds," which are thought to be the product of extraterrestrial impact. In this documentary, filmmakers pose that perhaps all three theories share an common element of truth.

NOVA 2009