Chaos theory has a bad name, conjuring up images of unpredictable weather, economic crashes and science gone wrong. But there is a fascinating and hidden side to Chaos, one that scientists are only now beginning to understand. It turns out that chaos theory answers a question that mankind has asked for millennia - how did we get here?
Jim Al-KhaliliHimself - Presenter
A documentary about the study of plant sentience with original music by Stevie Wonder. Utilizing time-lapse photography, the film proposes that plants are able to experience emotions and communicate with the world around them.
When the U.S. trade embargo left Cuba isolated from medical resources, Cuban scientists were forced to get creative. Now they've developed lung cancer vaccines that show so much promise, some Americans are defying the embargo and traveling to Cuba for treatment. In an unprecedented move, Cuban researchers are working with U.S. partners to make the medicines more widely available.
Richard Feynman is one of the most iconic, influential and inspiring scientists of the 20th century. He helped design the atomic bomb, solved the mystery of the Challenger Shuttle catastrophe and won a Nobel Prize. Now, 25 years after his death - in his own words and those of his friends and family - this is the story of the most captivating communicator in the history of science.
Consisting of a single shot, Spiders on a Web is one of the earliest British examples of close-up natural history photography. Made by one of the pioneers of the British film industry, G.A. Smith, this short film details spiders trapped in an enclosure, and despite the title, does not actually feature a web.
Anatomist Alice Roberts embarks on a quest to rebuild her own body from scratch, taking inspiration from the very best designs the natural world has to offer.
Kate Humble and Helen Czerski reveal the inner workings of the sun and investigate why scientists think changes in the sun's behaviour may have powerful effects on our climate.
Dr Helen Czerski delves into the Horizon archive to chart the transformation of a little-known theory into one of the greatest scientific undertakings in history.
Follow leading scientists around the world and to the edge of the universe on their quest to solve one of the greatest mysteries of the universe, the mysterious invisible “dark matter.”
The biggest tech revolution of the 21st century isn’t digital, it’s biological. A breakthrough called CRISPR gives us unprecedented control over the basic building blocks of life. It opens the door to curing disease, reshaping the biosphere, and designing our own children. This documentary is a provocative exploration of CRISPR’s far-reaching implications, through the eyes of the scientists who discovered it, the families it’s affecting, and the genetic engineers who are testing its limits.
The fascinating landscape formations of Iceland in the North Atlantic bear witness to the beauty and primal power of nature. They were created through the interaction of powerful volcanic, geological and biological processes that have been changing the face of the earth for billions of years. This is what the Earth might have looked like four billion years ago. Iceland is the realm of ice and fire. Nowhere else is there such a high density of volcanoes. The landscapes, which are continually reshaped by eruptions, make the island a natural laboratory full of clues about the formation and development of the earth. The documentary follows a group of scientists through the most active areas of Iceland, along a mountain range that has emerged from the ocean. On the slopes of the volcanoes, in the fog of the fumaroles and on streams and rivers, the three researchers explore how the first forms of life populated the earth's surface and in what evolutionary steps they took over the earth.
Follow astronaut Scott Kelly's 12-month mission on the International Space Station, from launch to landing, as NASA charts the effects of long-duration spaceflight by comparing him to his identical twin on Earth, astronaut Mark Kelly.
Earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and extreme weather. Has Earth always been this way? Featuring footage of top geologic hot spots on every continent, the film traces the scientifically-based story of the 4.5 billion-year-old Earth, from the core to the crust and up into the atmosphere.
Professor Alice Roberts joins entomologist Tim Cockerill in a house filled with hundreds of spiders in a one-off documentary revealing the secret life of the spider in the home.
The film interweaves the personal accounts of polio survivors with the story of an ardent crusader who tirelessly fought on their behalf while scientists raced to eradicate this dreaded disease. Based in part on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Polio: An American Story by David Oshinsky, Features interviews with historians, scientists, polio survivors, and the only surviving scientist from the core research team that developed the Salk vaccine, Julius Youngner.
Over three very personal films, Sir David Attenborough looks back at the unparalleled changes in natural history that he has witnessed during his 60-year career.
An entertaining documentary look at dinosaurs with Emmy Award-winning special effects, feature film clips and stills, commentary by leading paleontologists of the time, and an on camera as well as voice-over narrative by Christopher Reeve. Shot on location in Los Angeles and New York at the American Museum of Natural History
Dr George McGavin and Dr Zoe Laughlin set up base camp at one of the UK's biggest sewage works to investigate the revolutionary science finding vital renewable resources and undiscovered life in human waste. Teaming up with world-class scientists, they search for biological entities in sewage with potentially lifesaving medical properties, find out how pee can generate electricity, how gas from poo can fuel a car and how nutrients in waste can help solve the soil crisis. They follow each stage of the sewage treatment process, revealing what the stuff we flush can tell us about how we live today, and the mindboggling biotechnology being harnessed to clean it, making the wastewater safe enough to return to the environment.
For two and a half years we followed the scientific team of the NASA Lucy Mission a mission that will unveil the origins of the Solar System and shared with them the many challenges they had to overcome such as a countdown to launch on time the building of the huge solar arrays or a pandemic.
Bears and the hitherto unexplained mechanisms of their organism (such as hibernation) are the focus of medical research. As humans and bears are genetically very similar, scientists hope that more detailed research will lead to a breakthrough in the fight against widespread ailments. Can human medicine really learn from bears?
Let There Be Light follows the story of dedicated scientists working to build a small sun on Earth, which would unleash perpetual, cheap, clean energy for mankind. After decades of failed attempts, a massive push is now underway to crack the holy grail of energy.