Where is airing: PBS
For what age: 8+
How many episodes in 33 season: 16 episodes
It was the greatest flood of the past two million years, and it posed a giant scientific riddle. A maverick geologist became convinced that thousand-foot-deep floodwaters had scoured out vast areas of the American northwest near the end of the last ice age. Mainstream scientists scorned his theory while he searched patiently for answers to what could have triggered such an inconceivably unhappy event. Finally, an ingenious solution silenced the skeptics: traces of an enormous ice dam half a mile high, which had blocked a valley in present-day Montana and created an enormous lake behind it. With the help of stunningly realistic animation, NOVA takes viewers back to the Ice Age to reveal what happened when the dam broke, unleashing a titanic flood that swept herds of woolly mammoth and everything else into oblivion.
The search for the wreck of the Yamato, the largest and mightiest battleship ever floated and the pride of the Japanese Imperial Fleet. Constructed in absolute secrecy and sunk by American planes toward the end of World War II, her rapid demise had been a mystery, rather like a military Titanic.
Exactly 100 years ago, Albert Einstein grappled with the implications of his revolutionary Special Theory of Relativity and came to a startling conclusion: mass and energy are one, related by the formula E = mc2.
A restless mountain threatens a bustling metropolis perched on its flanks.
One of the most daring clandestine operations of World War II was the 1944 sinking of the Norwegian ferry Hydro with its cargo of "heavy water" destined for the Nazis' secret atomic bomb project. Although the mission was declared a success, no one ever established if the special shipment was actually on board. In this program, NOVA descends 1,300 feet beneath a remote Norwegian lake to find the answer.
This docudrama looks at Isaac Newton's discoveries in mathematics, physics and optics, as well as his lesser known pursuit of alchemy and hidden meanings in the Bible.
The narration is melodramatic, some of the interviews feel stagy - but the footage of Hurrican Katrina and its horrendous aftermath is staggering. Hurrican Katrina - The Storm That Drowned a City, a NOVA special, begins a year earlier, when a team of scientists created a computer simulation of the destructive effect a powerful storm could have on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Though local officials took it seriously, the federal response was skeptical, and little was done to strengthen the city's protection. Using a combination of remarkable video of the developing storm and interviews with scientists, city residents (black and white), and member of the Army Corps of Engineers, Hurrican Katrina builds a compelling story of the disaster as it unfolded. Sophisticated graphics explain how hurricanes form and how the levees failed. The special touches lightly on the possibility that global warming may be exacerbating the intensity of hurricanes, but shies away from the political storm of the meager federal response to the devastation of New Orleans. The result is a vivid, detailed description of the natural disaster, but an incomplete portrait of the social one. - Bret Fetzer
This episode unravels the history of a mummy that was part of a Niagara Falls Museum display, with evidence pointing toward it being the body of a pharaoh: Rameses I. The first hint (its crossed arms) to its origins was spotted in the 1960s, but it wasn't until 1998, when Emory University purchased the display, that the mummy was a serious study topic, including CT scans.
A team of experts seeks to determine what causes the passings of mountain climbers at extreme altitudes. Filmed on Alaska's Mount McKinley. Included: the dangers of hyperthermia and hypothermia; scenes of daring rescues and emergency treatments during the climbing season.
Two cuddle cases that date to the Iron Age (more than 2000 years ago) are investigated upon the discovery of two well-preserved bodies in Irish peat bogs. The 18-month investigation uses CAT scans and hair and radiocarbon analysis in an attempt to learn how the men lived and why they died.
David Attenborough hosts this fascinating examination of the prehistoric creatures found inside amber, a fossilized tree resin that often holds perfectly preserved insects. Using an amber specimen given to him as a youth, he uncovers information about what the Baltic region of northern Europe was like 40 million years ago. He also investigates amber found in the Dominican Republic, including one piece that holds a honeypot ant from 150 million years ago.
Scientists' efforts to identify and understand neutrinos, unseen building blocks of the universe, are chronicled, beginning in 1930 with Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli's observations about a decaying radioactive atomic nucleus. Included are comments from astrophysicist John Bahcall, who calculated the sun's theoretical neutrino output during the 1960s; and Nobel Prize winner Raymond Davis Jr., who built a neutrino trap in a South Dakota gold mine.
An intriguing look back at two attempts to discover a route from Europe to the Pacific through the maze of islands in Arctic Canada, one that led to tragedy and one that was a success. In 1845 British explorer John Franklin led a 129-man expedition using two retrofitted warships. The men were never heard from again. In 1903, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen set sail using a much-lighter ship and a seven-man crew. Two years later he came out the other side, proving the voyage was possible.
Teams from around the world enter the Darpa Grand Challenge, a contest for robotic, driver-less vehicles.
A chronicle of the cooperative effort by NASA and the European Space Agency to send two probes, Cassini and Huygens, to study Saturn and its moon Titan. The project involves the orbit of Cassini around the sixth planet from the sun; and Huygens' landing on Titan, which is one of four astral bodies in the solar system that has an atmosphere.
The discovery that the sunlight reaching Earth is dimming and the implications that has for global climate change, is examined. Included: how researchers used the days after 9/11, when aircraft were grounded in the U.S., to study how plane vapor trails affect the atmosphere; and how less pollution in the atmosphere may have the unintended consequence of accelerating global warming.
