NOVA Episode Rating Graph
Mar 1974 - present
Mar 1974 - present
8.6
Browse episode ratings trends for NOVA. Simply click on the interactive rating graph to explore the best and worst of NOVA's 992 episodes.
S1 Ep3
9.4
17th Mar 1974
NOVA explores the impact of whaling and the goods it produces for the industry, verses the grace and beatury of this intelligent mammal of the sea.
S36 Ep7
9.0
25th Nov 2008
NOVA takes you inside a very special ER to witness the efforts of wildlife veterinarians as they fight to save their animal patients as well as to uncover the cause of a mysterious neurological illness plaguing marine mammals like California sea lions and harbor seal pups. Part emergency room, part rehab facility, and part research lab, the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, California means the difference between life and death for sick and injured ocean animals. Not only are the animal patients endearing, they are also sending us an urgent message about the health of our oceans.
S35 Ep2
9.0
16th Oct 2007
Experts investigate how a mysterious "second genome" helps determine our biological fates.
S1 Ep7
9.0
14th Apr 1974
In 1054 AD, the Chinese recorded the explosion of a star so bright that it lit the sky for three weeks, even during the day. It was the explosion of a dying star that was bigger than our sun. NOVA explores this mysterious explosion that led to the discovery of Crab Nebula.
S39 Ep2
8.9
28th Sep 2011
The earthquake that hit the northern coast of Japan on March 11, 2011, was recorded at magnitude 9.0 the worst ever recorded in Japan. It generated an unprecedented tsunami, obliterating coastal villages and towns in a matter of minutes. In some areas, the tsunami climbed above 100 feet in height and traveled miles inland. Amazingly, amateur and professional photographers captured it all on video, including remarkable tales of human survival, as ordinary citizens became heroes in a drama they never could have imagined. As the waves rush in, a daughter struggles to help her elderly mother ascend their rooftop to safety; a man climbs onto an overpass just as the wave overtakes his car. These never-before-seen stories are captured in video and retold after the fact by the survivors who reveal what they were thinking as they made their life-saving decisions. Their stories provide lessons for how we should all act in the face of life-threatening disasters.
S39 Ep16
8.9
4th Apr 2012
Where do nature’s building blocks, called the elements, come from? They’re the hidden ingredients of everything in our world, from the carbon in our bodies to the metals in our smartphones. To unlock their secrets, David Pogue, the lively host of NOVA’s popular "Making Stuff" series and technology correspondent of The New York Times, spins viewers through the world of weird, extreme chemistry: the strongest acids, the deadliest poisons, the universe’s most abundant elements, and the rarest of the rare—substances cooked up in atom smashers that flicker into existence for only fractions of a second.
S39 Ep1
8.8
7th Sep 2011
To commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11, NOVA presents an epic story of engineering, innovation, and the perseverance of the human spirit. With extraordinary access granted by The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, “Engineering Ground Zero” follows the five-year construction of One World Trade Center (1 WTC) and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.
S35 Ep12
8.8
19th Feb 2008
At a research site in Fongoli, Senegal, a female chimpanzee breaks off a branch, chews the end to make it sharp, and then uses this rudimentary spear to skewer a tasty bush baby hiding inside a hollow tree. It’s an astonishing breakthrough for primate researchers—the first time anyone has documented a chimpanzee wielding a carefully prepared, preplanned weapon. But it's only the latest in a slew of extraordinary new findings about ape behavior. The more researchers learn about the great apes—chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans—the more evidence they find of creative intelligence. What, then, is the essential difference between them and us? "Ape Genius," a NOVA-National Geographic special, explores that provocative question and examines research that is illuminating the ape mind. Bit by bit, investigators are finding an explanation for why the non-human great apes never made the breakthrough into a human-style culture that builds on the achievements of previous generations.
S38 Ep11
8.8
2nd Feb 2011
Can innovations in materials science help clean up our world? In "Making Stuff: Cleaner," David Pogue explores the rapidly developing science and business of clean energy and examines alternative ways to generate it, store it, and distribute it. Is hydrogen the way to go? What about lithium batteries? Does this solve an energy problem or create a new dependency? Pogue investigates the latest developments in bio-based fuels and in harnessing solar energy for our cars, homes, and industry in a program full of the stuff of a sustainable future.
S45 Ep17
8.7
26th Dec 2018
Apollo astronauts and engineers tell the inside story of Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon. The U.S. space program suffered a bitter setback when Apollo 1 ended in a deadly fire during a pre-launch run-through. In disarray, and threatened by the prospect of a Soviet Union victory in the space race, NASA decided upon a radical and risky change of plan: turn Apollo 8 from an earth-orbit mission into a daring sprint to the moon while relying on untried new technologies. Fifty years after the historic mission, the Apollo 8 astronauts and engineers recount the feats of engineering that paved the way to the moon.
S39 Ep9
8.7
4th Jan 2012
Millions of people around the world live in the shadow of active volcanoes. Under constant threat of massive volcanic eruptions, their homes and their lives are daily at risk from these sleeping giants. From Japan’s Mount Fuji to the "Sleeping Giant" submerged beneath Naples to the Yellowstone "supervolcano" in the United States, we will travel with scientists from around the world who are at work on these sites, attempting to discover how likely these volcanoes are to erupt, when it might happen, and exactly how deadly they could prove to be.
S38 Ep14
8.7
16th Feb 2011
On June 1, 2009, Flight AF447, an Air France Airbus A330 flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean with the loss of all 228 lives. How could a state-of-the-art airliner with elaborate electronic safety and navigation features and a faultless safety record simply fall out of the sky? NOVA assembles a team of seasoned pilots, engineers, and safety experts to examine the evidence that emerged in the weeks following this horrific disaster. What led Flight 447's crew to fly straight into a towering thunderstorm? With expert testimony, satellite weather images, and messages transmitted by the doomed plane's computer system, NOVA pieces together the fatal chain of events.
S34 Ep11
8.7
17th Apr 2007
In the remote mountains of China, scientist come closer to understanding the origins of flowers.
S20 Ep14
8.7
2nd Nov 1993
NOVA soars with the condor, an extraordinary bird that lives a tenuous existence in the California mountains and the Andes of South America. Footage includes never-before-photographed nesting sites in the cliffs of Patagonia.
S11 Ep2
8.7
31st Jan 1984
An astronaut once observed a great white light shining out from the bottom of our world: Antarctica, the ice-covered continent we are only just beginning to understand. NOVA visits this wilderness of ice, larger than the United States and Mexico combined, whose only warm-blooded residents are seals, skuas, penguins and scientists.
S3 Ep9
8.7
7th Mar 1976
Each Sunday edition of the New York Times consumes 153 acres of trees. The paper packs, napkins, paper cups and packing used by McDonald's gobble up 315 square miles of trees every day. NOVA asks if, at this rate, trees can remain a renewable resource.
S39 Ep14
8.6
8th Feb 2012
This is the incredible story of Trishna and Krishna, twin girls born joined at the head. Abandoned shortly after birth at an orphanage in Bangladesh, they had little chance of survival, until they were saved and taken to Australia by an aid worker. After two years battling for life, the twins are ready for a series of delicate operations that will prepare them for the ultimate challenge: a marathon separation surgery that will allow them to live truly separate lives. Since the beginning, surgeons knew there was no guarantee of survival for either of the girls—but without surgery there was no hope at all. With exclusive access to this extraordinary human and medical drama, our cameras have been with Trishna and Krishna and their caregivers at each moment of their journey.
S39 Ep11
8.6
18th Jan 2012
During World War II, Hitler’s scientists developed terrifying new weapons of mass destruction. Alarmed by rumors of advanced rockets and missiles, Allied intelligence recruited a team of brilliant minds from British universities and Hollywood studios to a country house near London. Here, they secretly pored over millions of air photos shot at great risk over German territory by specially converted, high-flying Spitfires. Peering at the photos through 3D stereoscopes, the team spotted telltale clues that revealed hidden Nazi rocket bases. The photos led to devastating Allied bombing raids that dealt crucial setbacks to the German rocket program and helped ensure the success of the D-Day landings. With 3D graphics that recreate exactly what the photo spies saw, NOVA tells the suspenseful, previously untold story of air photo intelligence that played a vital role in defeating the Nazis.
S34 Ep13
8.6
8th May 2007
The recent archeological discovery of the Native American Powhatan village of Werowocomoco, sheds new light on the Jamestown story of Pocahontas.
S29 Ep7
8.6
20th Nov 2001
A sequel to the most popular NOVA of all time, "Miracle of Life," the program once again uses the extraordinary microimagery of Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson to track human development from embryo to newborn.
S38 Ep17
8.6
20th Apr 2011
Can emerging technology defeat global warming? The United States has invested tens of billions of dollars in clean energy projects as our leaders try to save our crumbling economy and our poisoned planet in one bold, green stroke. Are we finally on the brink of a green-energy "power surge," or is it all a case of too little, too late? From solar panel factories in China to a carbon capture-and-storage facility in the Sahara desert to massive wind and solar installations in the United States, NOVA travels the globe to reveal the surprising technologies that just might turn back the clock on climate change. NOVA will focus on the latest and greatest innovations, including everything from artificial trees to green reboots of familiar technologies like coal and nuclear energy. Can our technology, which helped create this problem, now solve it?
S38 Ep2
8.5
26th Oct 2010
This one-hour film chronicles the fate of the 33 miners trapped in a collapsed Chilean gold and copper mine in August 2010 and investigates the many challenges faced by both the miners and those working around the clock to bring them safely to the surface. NOVA was on-site at the San José mine in Chile by early September. Conferred special access, NOVA's film crew interviewed engineers, NASA experts, medical personnel, and key figures from the companies that provided drills and crucial rescue equipment to give a more detailed scientific account of the unfolding events. The resulting film, using footage from the scene as well as advanced animation, showcases the extraordinary feats of engineering as well as the biological and geological factors inherent in the rescue. "Emergency Mine Rescue" also examines the psychological and physiological impact of this kind of prolonged ordeal on the miners and those involved in the rescue efforts.
S30 Ep6
8.5
19th Nov 2002
Experts struggle to save the City of Canals before it vanishes beneath the waves.
S24 Ep3
8.5
15th Oct 1996
One of the final aeronautics challenges left in the world today does not involve the use of a plane, a rocket, or even an engine. No one has yet been able to circumnavigate the earth in a balloon. Any team attempting the feat would have to fly higher than most planes ever fly and would need a passenger capsule that could both offer protection from extreme cold and carry the proper navigation and life support equipment. Depending on the powerful jet stream to propel them, crew members would have to plot their course carefully and plan their schedule to coincide with the most advantageous winds. Even landing would be a risky venture. This program follows a team of three adventurers as they attempt to make just such a journey.
S20 Ep10
8.5
5th Oct 1993
NOVA fans from around the country match wits in a fast-paced contest of general science knowledge celebrating NOVA's 20th anniversary. Famous guests pose questions for the viewers at home. Marc Summers hosts.
S16 Ep13
8.5
17th Oct 1989
Five architects compete for the approval of architecture-obsessed Chicagoans in the contest to build the city's new public library. NOVA looks at the strengths and weakness of each of the suprisingly varied entries.
S16 Ep2
8.5
24th Jan 1989
NOVA looks at the bongo-playing scientist, adventurer, safecracker and yarn-spinner Richard Feynman, most recently famous for his role as gadfly of the Presidential Commission investigating the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.
S13 Ep16
8.5
18th Nov 1986
Could there be life beyond Earth? Only recently has it become possible to scan the skies in a systematic attempt to find out. NOVA joins the search with guest host Lily Tomlin.
S13 Ep13
8.5
21st Oct 1986
The adventures of the Voyager 2 spacecraft continue as it passes the rings of Uranus. Scientists suspect that violent events in the early history of the planet may have shaped Uranus and its strange collection of moons.
S11 Ep18
8.5
11th Dec 1984
The debate over acid rain continues to grow. NOVA travels to West Germany, the mid-Atlantic states and New England to examine the controversy surrounding this phenomenon.
S11 Ep6
8.5
20th Mar 1984
Agriculture is America's biggest industry. This productivity, envied around the world, is also depleting the most essential ingredients in farming: water and soil. NOVA looks at the agricultural dilemma, the short term need for profit and long term needs of the land.
S11 Ep4
8.5
28th Feb 1984
Is there a cure for paralyzing spinal injuries? Most neurosurgeons are doubtful, pointing to the central nervous system's most apparent inability to heal itself. But others dispute the point. NOVA explores the debate, the hopes for a cure and recent breakthroughs to help paralyzed patients.
S10 Ep5
8.5
1st Mar 1983
Every 58 minutes between now and the end of the century, one American will die from asbestos exposure. NOVA turns its spotlight on the tragic consequences of asbestos use and on the current controversy over who is responsible.
S10 Ep3
8.5
8th Feb 1983
A gripping docudrama about a mysterious, highly lethal disease which struck a village in Nigeria in 1969, and the frustrating, seesaw battle against it. NOVA recounts how public health workers came perilously close to accidentally releasing a deadly virus in the US.
S9 Ep19
8.5
4th Jan 1983
To celebrate its 10th broadcast season, NOVA repeats the very first NOVA program every aired, a fascinating and delightful program about how wildlife films are made.
S7 Ep8
8.5
25th Mar 1980
NOVA explores the amazing Jari project of the Amazon basin. Eleven years ago, 3.5 million acres of virgin jungle were bought by the reclusive billionaire, Daniel K. Ludwig.
S7 Ep6
8.5
11th Mar 1980
Recent aircraft accidents have raised the question of just how safe modern commercial aviation really is. NOVA looks at some of the problems and experimental efforts underway to deal with them.
S3 Ep4
8.5
25th Jan 1976
The last fourteen years have been a revolution in our understanding of our place in the stars, the Solar System. Beginning in 1961 with a Russian spacecraft flying to Venus, quickening with the Apollo manned missions to the Moon, it came of age in the Spring of 1974, when there were six spacecrafts traveling simultaneously from the Earth to the planets. NOVA looks at the era of manned and unmanned exploration of the Solar System.
S1 Ep8
8.5
21st Apr 1974
Birds migrate in search of perpetual summer, sometimes traveling as much as 20,000 miles every year. NOVA uses radar to track and identify migrating birds that travel at night, focusing on how they coose routes tat avoid bad weather and make the best of prevailing winds—information that can aid meteorologists.
S1 Ep6
8.5
7th Apr 1974
Medicine was transformed in the 19th century by the discovery of anesthesia; surgery, until then hasty, bloody and completely unable to deal with internal disorders, subsequently took its place in the front rank of medical practice. This NOVA docudrama depicts the pioneers of medicine.
S39 Ep13
8.4
1st Feb 2012
In a race against developers in the Rocky Mountains, archeologists uncover a unique fossil site packed with astonishingly well-preserved bones of mammoths, mastodons, and other giant extinct beasts. The discovery opens a highly focused window on the vanished world of the Ice Age in North America.
S32 Ep5
8.4
12th Oct 2004
Examine the complex case of Typhoid Mary, a cook that was quaratined for life against her will in the early 1900s.
S39 Ep7
8.4
16th Nov 2011
Join Brian Greene on a wild ride into the weird realm of quantum physics, which governs the universe on the tiniest of scales. Brian brings quantum mechanics to life in a nightclub like no other, where objects pop in and out of existence, and things over here can affect others over there, instantaneously-without anything crossing the space between them.
S31 Ep11
8.4
3rd Feb 2004
NOVA goes beyond the wagging tails and floppy ears to reveal surprising insights into the origin and evolutionary strategy of our canine companions. From a wolf research facility in rural Indiana to New York’s Westminster Dog Show, you’ll discover some amazing dog facts. Did you know the Saluki can beat any other mammal on earth in a three-mile race? That dogs developed spots for a specific reason? And that their evolution is helping us learn about our own?
S45 Ep8
8.4
26th Sep 2018
NOVA takes you inside the operating room to witness organ transplant teams transferring organs from donors to recipients. Meet families navigating both sides of a transplant, and researchers working to end the organ shortage. Their efforts to understand organ rejection, discover ways to keep organs alive outside the body, and even grow artificial organs with stem cells, could save countless lives.
S41 Ep14
8.4
5th Feb 2014
Beneath the streets of Rome lies a city of the dead known as the Catacombs—a labyrinth of tunnels, hundreds of miles long, lined with the neatly laid out tombs of the citizens of ancient Rome. Here, in 2002, maintenance workers fixing a broken water main stumbled upon a previously unknown burial chamber like none other in the complex. It was a mass grave of hundreds of bodies spread across six roughly carved caverns, locked away for nearly 2000 years. Who were these people? And can we discover, after all these centuries, what killed them? Could they be Christian martyrs massacred by the Emperor? Or were they felled by a deadly plague? In “Roman Catacomb Mystery,” NOVA’s forensic investigation follows a trail of ancient clues to uncover new secrets of life, death, and disease in the heyday of a mighty empire.
S47 Ep10
8.3
16th Sep 2020
Scientists investigate the bizarre “intelligence” of slime molds, which appear to learn and make decisions—without a brain. These cunning, single-celled blobs can navigate mazes and create efficient networks. Can they also redefine cognition?
S36 Ep2
8.3
14th Oct 2008
At the end of a nearly flawless 15-day mission in early 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry into Earth's atmosphere, killing the crew of seven men and women. In this documentary, NOVA probes the accident and the decisions stretching back four decades that made the tragedy almost inevitable. It offers a penetrating look at the history of the shuttle program and the political pressures that made the shuttle a highly complex engineering compromise, which fell short of its ambitious goal to make space travel routine, cheap, and safe.
S34 Ep12
8.3
24th Apr 2007
As the Earth heats up at a dangerous rate and fossil fuels become scarcer, ordinary citizens and businesses are bypassing the federal government to lead the way in exploring a clean, renewable source of power: the sun. In this report, NOVA shines a light on how and why people across America and the world are "going solar," using radiant energy of the sun to power homes, businesses, and even entire communities. But can everyday people really make a difference by using solar power? And can solar technologies, with their high cost and logistical challenges, truly play a bigger role in powering the future of humanity? The grand hopes, latest innovations, roiling controversies, and practical realities of solar power all come to the fore in this program.
S34 Ep2
8.3
26th Sep 2006
Researchers unearth clues about the greatest Volcanic eruption of the past 100000 years.
S32 Ep7
8.3
16th Nov 2004
Archeologists excavate Stalag Luft 3, the site of the greatest WWII prisoner escape. Prisoners of the camp are also interviewed.
S31 Ep12
8.3
10th Feb 2004
A team of "glacionauts" verntures into a labyrinth of unexplored and hazardous glacier caves on France's Mt. Blanc.
S31 Ep1
8.3
30th Sep 2003
A battered manuscript turns up after 1000 years revealing the mind of the Greek genius Archimedes
S30 Ep7
8.3
26th Nov 2002
For nine months in 2000, Tom Hart Dyke was a captive of guerrillas who seized him while he was collecting wild orchids in the Colombian rain forest. Now Hart Dyke is at it again in the most orchid-rich and one of the most politically unstable parts of Irian Jaya, the western half of the island of New Guinea.
S21 Ep12
8.3
18th Oct 1994
NOVA profiles "Genie," a girl whose parents kept her imprisoned in near total isolation from infancy. When social workers discoverd her as a teenager, Genie had not learned to walk or talk. This NOVA documentary includes never-before-seen footage of Genie during her rehabilitation and probes how and when we learn the skills that make us "human."
S10 Ep2
8.3
25th Jan 1983
NOVA captivates a remarkably candid portrait of Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, a man of few pretensions and tremendous personal charm, who speaks with the same passion about a child's toy wagon and the frontiers of subatomic physics.
S9 Ep1
8.3
10th Jan 1982
NOVA captures the breathtaking power and determination of these amazing creatures and examines how business and technology are changing the fishing industry—and the salmon itself.
S7 Ep7
8.3
18th Mar 1980
Every year, millions of tourists converge on the Mediterranean's sunny coasts, lured by the prospect of bathing in clear, azure waters and basking in semi-tropical sun. But years of use and abuse have taken their toll on the once idyllic Mediterranean and the "world's biggest swimming pool" has become the world's biggest open sewer. NOVA explores the complex problems that plague the Mediterranean's future.
S7 Ep3
8.3
5th Feb 1980
NOVA explores the science of natural engineering and asks the basic questions: what makes a good design in nature and why did a particular plant or animal adopt a particular design?
S40 Ep4
8.3
14th Nov 2012
Why go back to Mars? Far from dead, Mars holds untold potential. Nearly half a century of Mars exploration has yielded tantalizing clues that Mars may once have harbored life—and may harbor it still. The extraordinary landing of a revolutionary rover named Curiosity—which successfully touched down inside the Gale Crater—means we have wheels down on the planet once again, in the form of the most sophisticated robot ever to rove the Mars surface. Will NASA's bold mission and this marvel of technology answer some of our biggest questions and usher in a new golden age of exploration? NOVA goes behind the scenes on NASA’s quest to solve the riddles of the red planet.
S43 Ep10
8.3
6th Jan 2016
During World War I, the Allies and Germans repeatedly struggled to break the hideous stalemate of trench warfare. In the winter of 1916, Allied engineers devised a massive surprise attack: over 1 million pounds of explosives hidden in secret tunnels driven under German lines. Building the tunnels was desperate work, with tunnelers at constant risk from flooding, cave-ins, and enemy digging teams. In June of 1917, the planted mines at Messines were simultaneously triggered, killing an estimated 10,000 German troops instantly. Now, archaeologists are revealing the extraordinary scale and risks of the Allied tunneling operations in one of the biggest excavations ever undertaken on the Western Front. “Secret Tunnel Warfare” opens a unique window on the frenzy of Allied mining activity that led up to the attack and its bitter aftermath.
S39 Ep3
8.3
19th Oct 2011
Take a spectacular trip to distant realms of our solar system to discover where secret forms of life may lie hidden. Combining the latest telescope images with dazzling animation, this program immerses audiences in the sights and sounds of alien worlds, while top astrobiologists explain how these places are changing how we think about the potential for life in our solar system. We used to think our neighboring planets and moons were fairly boring—mostly cold, dead rocks where life could never take hold. Today, however, the solar system looks wilder than we ever imagined.
S37 Ep12
8.3
2nd Feb 2010
NOVA joins a new generation of archeologists as they probe areas of Machu Picchu that haven’t been touched since the time of the Incas.
S42 Ep20
8.3
13th May 2015
Sharply rising carbon emissions are entering Earth's seas at a staggering rate, raising their acidity. Learn how scientists are researching the effects and looking for solutions.
S35 Ep7
8.3
18th Dec 2007
In the early 1950s, epic battles unfolded in the skies over North Korea as American and Russian fighters faced off in history's first jet war. This program explores the Korean War's aerial tactics, technology, and grim aftermath for downed pilots, many of whom disappeared without a trace. The Korean War pitted the two most advanced fighters of their day, the American F-86 Sabre and the Soviet MiG-15, in furious air battles in North Korea's notorious "MiG Alley." With the help of dramatic reconstructions, rare archival footage, and interviews with veteran American and Soviet pilots, NOVA puts viewers in the cockpit to experience the lethal split-second duels that erupted in MiG Alley.
S42 Ep4
8.3
8th Oct 2014
As the Ebola epidemic threatens to spiral out of control, NOVA reports from the hot zone, where courageous medical teams struggle to cope with a flood of victims, to labs where scientists are racing to test vaccines and find a cure. "Surviving Ebola" includes chilling first-hand interviews of what it's like to contract — and survive — this terrible affliction.
S51 Ep10
8.3
9th Oct 2024
From a dwarf planet that looks like a deflated football, to a tiny moon with cliffs taller than Mt. Everest, to the spectacular rings of Saturn, discover how the effects of gravity produce the amazing variety of weird worlds in our solar system.
S46 Ep16
8.3
14th Aug 2019
Uranus and Neptune's unexpected rings, supersonic winds and dozens of moons; an up-close view of Pluto before exploring the Kuiper belt.
S45 Ep6
8.3
18th Apr 2018
Disastrous hurricanes. Widespread droughts and wildfires. Withering heat. Extreme rainfall. It is hard not to conclude that something’s up with the weather, and many scientists agree. It’s the result of the weather machine itself—our climate—changing, becoming hotter and more erratic. In this 2-hour documentary, NOVA will cut through the confusion around climate change.
S45 Ep16
8.3
21st Nov 2018
See the world through the eyes of nature’s fastest animal: the peregrine falcon. Though once perilously endangered in the U.S., this spectacular predator is now thriving again in American cities and on every continent but Antarctica. What is the secret to its predatory prowess? Join expert falconer Lloyd Buck as he trains a captive peregrine and puts its hunting skills to the test.
S42 Ep6
8.3
29th Oct 2014
When World War I began in 1914, the air forces of the opposing nations consisted of handfuls of rickety biplanes from which pilots occasionally took pot shots at one another with rifles. By 1918, the fighter had become an efficient killing machine with a growing strategic impact on the outcome of the war. With the help of a unique collection of meticulously recreated flying replicas, NOVA traces the story of the designers, engineers, and brave pilots caught up in the race to dominate the skies over the western front.
S38 Ep16
8.3
30th Mar 2011
In its worst crisis since World War II, Japan faces disaster on an epic scale: a death toll likely in the tens of thousands, massive destruction of homes and businesses, shortages of water and power, and the specter of nuclear meltdown. With exclusive footage, NOVA captures the unfolding human drama and offers a clear-headed investigation of what triggered the earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent nuclear crisis. Can science and technology ever prevent devastation in the face of overwhelmingly powerful forces of nature?
S46 Ep1
8.2
2nd Jan 2019
Since it explored Pluto in 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft has been zooming toward NASA’s most distant target yet. Join the mission team as the probe attempts to fly by Ultima Thule, an object 4 billion miles from Earth.
S43 Ep6
8.2
4th Nov 2015
The epic 3 billion-year story of how our continent came to be. From the palm trees that once flourished in Alaska to titanic eruptions that nearly tore the Midwest in two, discover how forces of almost unimaginable power gave birth to North America.
S39 Ep5
8.2
2nd Nov 2011
Space. It separates you from me, one galaxy from the next, and atoms from each other. It is everywhere in the universe. But to most of us, space is nothing, an empty void. Well, it turns out space is not what it seems.
S38 Ep6
8.2
23rd Nov 2010
Countless treasure-seekers have set off in search of King Solomon's mines, trekking through burning deserts and scaling the forbidding mountains of Africa and the Levant, inspired by the Bible's account of splendid temples and palaces adorned in glittering gold and copper. Yet to date, the evidence that has claimed to support the existence of Solomon and other early kings in the Bible has been highly controversial. In fact, so little physical evidence of the kings who ruled Israel and Edom has been found that many contend that they are no more real than King Arthur. In the summer of 2010, NOVA and National Geographic embarked on two cutting-edge field investigations that illuminate the legend of Solomon and reveal the source of the great wealth that powered the first mighty biblical kingdoms. These groundbreaking expeditions expose important new clues buried in the pockmarked desert of Jordan, including ancient remnants of an industrial-scale copper mine and a 3,000-year-old message with the words "slave," "king," and "judge."
S46 Ep15
8.2
7th Aug 2019
Nasa's Cassini reveals the mysteries of Saturn's rings and new hope for life on one of its moons.
S38 Ep3
8.2
2nd Nov 2010
A documentary examining the ubiquitous transportation device as used in modern day and features a recounting of a real-life horror story of one individual's experiences when stuck in an elevator for an extraordinarily long period of time.
S44 Ep16
8.2
17th May 2017
For over 1000 years, chariots thundered across China's battlefields - dominating warfare longer than anywhere else on earth. Now, archaeological findings enable a team of experts to reconstruct and test China's first super-weapon.
S39 Ep8
8.2
23rd Nov 2011
Hard as it is to swallow, cutting-edge theories are suggesting that our universe may not be the only universe. Instead, it may be just one of an infinite number of worlds that make up the multiverse. In this show, Brian Greene takes us on a tour of this brave new theory at the frontier of physics, explaining why scientists believe it's true and showing what some of these alternate realities might be like.
S1 Ep12
8.2
19th May 1974
Nuclear fusion offers the promises of an unlimited, clean source of energy. But achieving fusion has proved one of the most difficult and elusive goals of the physicist. NOVA tells the story of the twists and turns and the international competition along the road toward the achievement of fusion; and details the recent breakthroughs which seem at last to have brought it within reach.
S40 Ep19
8.2
29th May 2013
NOVA follows the manhunt for the 2013 Boston Marathon bombers examining the role modern technology played in the case.
S41 Ep19
8.2
23rd Apr 2014
What makes an animal smart? What forces of evolution drive brains to become more complex? Many scientists believe the secret lies in our relationships. Throughout the animal kingdom, some of the cleverest creatures—including humans—seem to be those who live in complex social groups, like dolphins, elephants, and apes. Could the skills required to keep track of friend and foe make animals smarter? To find out, NOVA goes inside the social lives of some of the smartest animals on the planet. Off the coast of Florida, we see dolphins team up to catch fish by whipping up a wall of muddy water that drives the meal right into their companions’ waiting mouths. It seems that the dolphins are working together to plan their hunt. But are they really? Biologists go on a quest to decipher the secrets of animal societies, from the seas of the Caribbean to the plains of Africa. Do dolphins and elephants have “language?" Do chimps have a sense of fairness? And are any animals besides ourselves capable of feeling empathy?
S41 Ep20
8.2
7th May 2014
In recent years, an unusual spate of deadly shark attacks has gripped Australia, resulting in five deaths in ten months. At the same time, great white sharks have begun appearing in growing numbers off the beaches of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, not far from the waters where Steven Spielberg filmed the ultimate shark fright film, Jaws. What's behind the mysterious arrival of this apex predator in an area where they've rarely been seen for hundreds of years? Are deadly encounters with tourists inevitable? To separate fact from fear, NOVA teams up with leading shark experts in Australia and the United States to discover the science behind the great white's hunting instincts. Do sharks ever target humans, or is each attack a tragic case of mistaken identity? And can a deeper understanding of shark senses lead scientists to design effective deterrents and help prevent future attacks?
S39 Ep19
8.2
25th Apr 2012
It contains 99.9 percent of all the matter in our solar system and sheds hot plasma at nearly a million miles an hour. The temperature at its core is a staggering 27 million degrees Fahrenheit. It convulses, it blazes, it sings. You know it as the sun. Scientists know it as one of the most amazing physics laboratories in the universe. Now, with the help of new spacecraft and Earth-based telescopes, scientists are seeing the sun as they never have before and even recreating what happens at its very center in labs here on Earth. Their work will help us understand aspects of the sun that have puzzled scientists for decades. But more critically, it may help us predict and track solar storms that have the power to zap our power grid, shut down telecommunications, and ground global air travel for days, weeks, or even longer. Such storms have happened before—but never in the modern era of satellite communication. "Secrets of the Sun" reveals a bright new dawn in our understanding of our nearest star—one that might help keep our planet from going dark.
S48 Ep3
8.2
10th Feb 2021
Women make up less than a quarter of STEM professionals in the United States, and numbers are even lower for women of color. But a growing group of researchers is exposing longstanding discrimination and making science more inclusive.
S48 Ep2
8.2
3rd Feb 2021
Just about every solid, liquid, or gas in the world as we know it begins with reactions between individual atoms and molecules. Host David Pogue dives into the transformative world of chemical reactions, from the complex formula that produces cement to the single reaction that’s allowed farmers to feed a global population by the billions—a reaction that when reversed, unleashes the powerful chemistry of high explosives.
S39 Ep6
8.2
9th Nov 2011
Time. We waste it, save it, kill it, make it. The world runs on it. Yet, ask physicists what time actually is, and the answer might shock you: They have no idea. Even more surprising, the deep sense we have of time passing from present to past may be nothing more than an illusion. How can our understanding of something so familiar be so wrong?
S38 Ep4
8.2
9th Nov 2010
"Dogs Decoded" reveals the science behind the remarkable bond between humans and their dogs and investigates new discoveries in genetics that are illuminating the origin of dogs—with surprising implications for the evolution of human culture. Other research is proving what dog lovers have suspected all along: Dogs have an uncanny ability to read and respond to human emotions. Humans, in turn, respond to dogs with the same hormone responsible for bonding mothers to their babies. How did this incredible relationship between humans and dogs come to be? And how can dogs, so closely related to fearsome wild wolves, behave so differently?
S35 Ep15
8.2
22nd Apr 2008
Tom and Ray Magliozzi of NPR's Car Talk, explore new technologies and ideas for the future of automobiles.
S35 Ep5
8.2
13th Nov 2007
Using courtroom reenactments based on transcripts and interviews with those present, NOVA looks at the events of the federal case of Kitzmiller v. Dover School District.
S50 Ep12
8.2
11th Oct 2023
700 million years ago, Earth was a giant snowball cloaked in ice from pole to pole—a global deep freeze that held the planet in a stranglehold, threatening the survival of the earliest complex life. How did life manage to hold on in this forbidding world? Leading scientists investigate how this catastrophe may have become a catalyst for life to evolve in creative new ways as it bounced back from the brink—setting the stage for the astonishing complexity we see today.
S44 Ep20
8.2
13th Sep 2017
Aiming to skim less than 2000 miles above the cloud tops, no spacecraft has ever gone so close to Saturn, and hopes are high for incredible observations that could solve major mysteries about the planet’s core. Join NASA engineers for the tense and triumphant moments as they find out if their bold reprogramming has worked, and discover the wonders that Cassini has revealed over the years.
S49 Ep14
8.1
19th Oct 2022
Hallucinogenic drugs—popularly called psychedelics—have been used by human societies for thousands of years. Today, scientists are taking a second look at many of these mind-altering substances – both natural and synthetic – and discovering that they can have profoundly positive clinical impacts, helping patients struggling with a range of afflictions from addiction to depression and PTSD.
S31 Ep13
8.1
17th Feb 2004
One of the most exhaustive investigations in aviation history reveals telling clues to the cause of a dissaster off Nova Scotia.
S31 Ep5
8.1
4th Nov 2003
Part 3 of "The Elegant Universe” with host Brian Greene shows how Edward Witten of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, aided by others, revolutionized string theory by successfully uniting the five different versions into a single theory that is cryptically named "M-theory," a development that requires a total of eleven dimensions. Ten...eleven...who's counting? But the new 11th dimension implies that strings can come in shapes called membranes, or "branes" for short. These have truly science fiction-like qualities, since in principle they can be as large as the universe. A brane can even be a universe—a parallel universe—and we may be living on one right now.
S47 Ep7
8.1
13th May 2020
The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has upended life as we know it in a matter of months. But at the same time, an unprecedented global effort to understand and contain the virus—and find a treatment for the disease it causes—is underway. Join doctors on the front lines of the fight against COVID-19 as they strategize to stop the spread, and meet the researchers racing to develop treatments and vaccines.
S49 Ep10
8.1
13th Jul 2022
How did NASA engineers build and launch the most ambitious telescope of all time? Follow the dramatic story of the James Webb Space Telescope—the most complex machine ever launched into space. If it works, scientists believe that this new eye on the universe will peer deeper back in time and space than ever before to the birth of galaxies, and may even be able to “sniff” the atmospheres of exoplanets as we search for signs of life beyond Earth. But getting it to work is no easy task. The telescope is far bigger than its predecessor, the famous Hubble Space Telescope, and it needs to make its observations a million miles away from Earth—so there will be no chance to go out and fix it. That means there’s no room for error; the most ambitious telescope ever built needs to work perfectly. Meet the engineers making it happen and join them on their high stakes journey to uncover new secrets of the universe.
S39 Ep15
8.1
28th Mar 2012
What will it mean when most of us can afford to have the information in our DNA—all three billion chemical letters of it—read, stored, and available for analysis? In "Cracking Your Genetic Code," NOVA reveals that we stand on the verge of a revolution. We meet cancer patients returned to robust health and a cystic fibrosis sufferer breathing easily because scientists have been able to pinpoint and neutralize the genetic abnormalities underlying their conditions. What are the moral dilemmas raised by the new technology? Will it help or hurt us to know our genetic destiny? What if such information falls into the hands of insurance companies, employers, and prospective mates? One thing is for certain: The new era of personalized, gene-based medicine is relevant to everyone. Soon, all of us may be deciding whether to join the ranks of the DNA generation.
S47 Ep8
8.1
20th May 2020
Eagles dominate the skies. But what makes these predators so special? Researchers study one special bird—and stunning up-close footage reveals her exceptional strength, eyesight, and flying skills. With intimate access to a new bald eagle family, NOVA takes you into the nest to witness the drama of chicks struggling to survive.
S45 Ep1
8.1
10th Jan 2018
Astrophysicist and novelist Janna Levin talks about black holes and their importance to the universe.
S40 Ep17
8.1
24th Apr 2013
"Monsters" begins Down Under at the dawn of the Age of Dinosaurs. Host Richard Smith comes face-to-face with the previously unknown reptilian rulers of prehistoric Australia. NOVA resurrects the giants that stalked the Great Southern Land and discovers that some of these animals were among the largest ever to have walked the Earth. Others were some of the most dangerous. In the dry desert heart, scientists unearth an ancient inland ocean full of sea monsters. Opal fossils of some of these beasts paint a colorful picture of the exotic seascape, where long-necked plesiosaurs snacked on shelled creatures that grew as large as truck tires. The most fearsome was Kronosaurus, with a skull twice as long as T. rex. But reptiles didn't have the world all to themselves. Mammals like the enigmatic platypus lived alongside them, ready for their moment in the sun.
S46 Ep14
8.1
31st Jul 2019
Jupiter's gravitational force made it a wrecking ball as it barreled through the early solar system, but it also helped shape life on Earth as it brought comets laden with water and possibly the asteroid that put an end to the dinosaurs.
S46 Ep23
8.1
27th Nov 2019
Camera technology is revolutionizing the study of animals—without them even noticing.
S38 Ep9
8.1
19th Jan 2011
What is the strongest material in the world? Is it steel, Kevlar, carbon nanotubes, or something entirely new? NOVA kicks off the four-part series "Making Stuff" with a quest for the world's strongest substances. Host David Pogue takes a look at what defines strength, examining everything from steel cables to mollusks to a toucan's beak. Pogue travels from the deck of a U.S. naval aircraft carrier to a demolition derby to the country's top research labs to check in with experts who are re-engineering what nature has given us to create the next generation of strong stuff.
S35 Ep16
8.1
13th May 2008
In this award-winning documentary, a difficult journey that begins in hopelessness and shame for thousands of women in Ethiopia ends in a productive new life. The film tells the personal stories of rural women who make their way to Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, seeking treatment for obstetric fistula, a life-shattering complication of childbirth. Filmed in a starkly beautiful landscape, the documentary juxtaposes the isolated lives of village women who are outcasts because of their medical condition, with the faraway hospital that offers a miracle after a long and arduous trek—a "walk to beautiful."
S35 Ep10
8.1
29th Jan 2008
For 25 centuries the Parthenon has been shot at, set on fire, rocked by earthquakes, looted for its sculptures, almost destroyed by explosion, and disfigured by well-meaning renovations. It has gone from temple, to church, to mosque, to munitions dump. What could be next? How about a scientific search for the secrets of its incomparable beauty and astonishingly rapid construction? With unprecedented access, NOVA unravels the architectural and engineering mysteries of this celebrated ancient temple.
S45 Ep7
8.1
27th Jun 2018
In just one devastating month, Houston, Florida, and the Caribbean were changed forever. In summer 2017, three monster hurricanes swept in from the Atlantic one after another, shattering storm records and killing hundreds of people. As the planet warms, are these superstorms the new normal? How well can we predict them?
S48 Ep12
8.1
15th Sep 2021
Bats have been implicated in deadly epidemics such as COVID-19 and Ebola, yet scientists are discovering evidence that they may hold a key to a longer and healthier life. From caves in Thailand and Texas to labs around the globe, NOVA meets the scientists who are decoding the superpowers of the bat.
S46 Ep11
8.1
10th Jul 2019
On the 50th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 Moon landing, NOVA looks ahead to the hoped-for dawn of a new age in lunar exploration. This time, governments and private industry are working together to reach our nearest celestial neighbour. But why go back? The Moon can serve as a platform for basic astronomical research; as an abundant source of rare metals and hydrogen fuel; and ultimately as a stepping stone for human missions to Mars and beyond. Join the next generation of engineers that aim to take us to the Moon, and discover how our legacy of lunar exploration won't be confined to the history books for long.
S42 Ep3
8.1
8th Oct 2014
NOVA tells the inside story of the search for Flight MH370 and meets the key players, from all corners of the globe, who have spent months searching for the lost plane. How easy is it to make a plane disappear? Or can new technology guarantee that in the future, nothing will ever be "lost" again?
S46 Ep21
8.1
13th Nov 2019
How Leonardo da Vinci used science to create his legendary artwork. Included: why Mona Lisa's smile is so captivating—and what it took to create it.
S41 Ep16
8.1
2nd Apr 2014
Over the last few centuries we have shot, trapped, and skinned the predators that formerly thrived at the top of the food chain in the wild. Wild bears, wolves, and big cats are all in retreat, and a growing number of scientists are discovering that by eliminating predators, we have changed the environment. Removing predators from the wild has thrown ecosystems off-kilter, triggering domino effects that scientists are just beginning to understand. In "Wild Predator Invasion," NOVA follows scientists who are trying a simple but controversial solution: returning apex predators—like wolves, bears, and panthers—to their natural environments. Can these newly reintroduced predators restore the natural balance of their ecosystems without threatening the humans who live among them?
S41 Ep13
8.1
29th Jan 2014
In the rolling hills of Ireland's County Tipperary, a laborer harvesting peat from a dried-up bog spots the remnants of a corpse and stops his machine just in time, revealing a headless torso almost perfectly preserved and stained dark brown by the bog. Archeologists recognize the corpse as one of Europe's rare bog bodies: prehistoric corpses flung into marshes with forensic clues often suggesting execution or human sacrifice. The corpse will eventually be dated to the Bronze Age, over 3,000 years ago. Many of these were victims of shocking violence, showing evidence of axe blows, hanging, and stab wounds. Like a crime thriller, NOVA follows archaeologists and forensic experts in their methodical hunt for clues to the identity and the circumstances of this and other violent deaths of bog body victims. A new theory emerges that they are those of ritually murdered kings, gruesomely slain to assure the fertility of land and people. NOVA’s ancient detective story opens a tantalizing window on the strange beliefs of Europe's long vanished prehistoric peoples.
S47 Ep12
8.1
30th Sep 2020
Just as writing changed the course of human history, the evolution of paper and printing revolutionized the spread of information. The printing press kicked off the Industrial Revolution that fast-tracked us to the current digital age. But as the 4,000-year-old tradition of penmanship falls out of favor, should we consider what might be lost in this pursuit of ever more efficient communication? (Premiered September 30, 2020)
S36 Ep12
8.1
24th Feb 2009
Once every 48 years, bamboo forests in parts of northeast India go into exuberant flower. Then, like clockwork, the flowering is invariably followed by a plague of black rats that appear to spring from nowhere to spread destruction and famine in their wake. For the first time on film, NOVA and National Geographic capture this rat population explosion in vivid detail and show how scientists are unraveling the connections between bamboo flowering and rat outbreaks. Ultimately, their research should help local people better cope with the next attack—due in 2056.
S51 Ep11
8.1
16th Oct 2024
All around our solar system, volcanoes are powerful shapers of worlds. Next door on Mars is Olympus Mons, a giant volcanic mountain more than twice the size of Mt. Everest. And closer to the Sun, thousands of volcanoes produce the toxic atmosphere that keeps Venus boiling. Then there’s Jupiter’s moon Io, the most volcanically active world in the entire solar system, and Saturn’s moon Enceladus, where clues in its watery eruptions hint at the possibility of life. Discover the explosive forces that molded each of these worlds – and what makes the volcanoes right here on Earth so special.
S48 Ep8
8.1
12th May 2021
What causes infertility, and how can assisted reproductive technologies help? Follow the journeys of people navigating fertility challenges from structural inequalities and racism to falling sperm counts, egg freezing, and IVF.
S46 Ep8
8.0
8th May 2019
Scientists try to determine the cause for the increasing megafire threat by exploring the physics of fire, how firestorms move and travel and by analyzing aerial drone and satellite data to catch fires before they start.
S46 Ep12
8.0
24th Jul 2019
The rocky planets Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars all have similar origins, but only one supports life.
S46 Ep10
8.0
22nd May 2019
Forensic archaeologist Cat Jarman and her team investigate the Great Heathen army, a legendary Viking fighting force that invaded England in the 9th century.
S44 Ep28
8.0
27th Dec 2017
66 million years ago, a seven-mile-wide asteroid collided with Earth, triggering a chain of events that coincide with the end of the dinosaurs. But experts have long debated exactly what happened when the asteroid struck and how the giant beasts met their end. Now, scientists have uncovered compelling new clues about the catastrophe.
S49 Ep15
8.0
26th Oct 2022
Lionfish–long prized in home aquariums–have invaded the Atlantic, and are now one of the ocean’s most successful invasive species, wreaking havoc in waters across the globe. Join ocean explorer Danni Washington on a journey to find out how they took over, why they’re doing so much damage, and what can be done about it.
S46 Ep13
8.0
24th Jul 2019
The dry, red planet Mars was once a blue water world studded with active volcanoes and may have even had the ingredients to support life.
S45 Ep15
8.0
14th Nov 2018
In July 2018, the world held its breath as an international team of cave divers endeavored to rescue 12 boys and their soccer coach stranded deep in a flooded cave in Thailand. Follow the harrowing operation and discover the scientific ingenuity that made the rescue possible.
S45 Ep10
8.0
10th Oct 2018
Climb with volcano experts to the summit of Nyiragongo, a highly active volcano in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Twice in recent memory it has erupted, devastating Goma, a neighboring city of 1 million people. To investigate when it might erupt next, scientists climb into its crater toward a bubbling lava lake to deploy sensors and monitor the volcano’s activity.
S42 Ep10
8.0
3rd Dec 2014
When Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, he won instant fame. Yet this accomplished engineer and test pilot was so determined to stay out of the limelight that few know the personal story of how his rare combination of talent, luck and experience led to his successful command of Apollo 11. NOVA presents an intimate portrait of an unassuming American hero through interviews with Armstrong’s family and friends.
S41 Ep18
8.0
16th Apr 2014
What is it like to be a dog, a shark, or a bird? Long the subject of human daydreams, this question is now getting serious attention from scientists who study animal senses. The senses define our experience of the world—they shape our minds, and help make us what we are. Humans rely on smell, sight, taste, touch, and sound, but other animals have super-powered versions of these senses, and a few, like electrically-sensitive sharks, even have extra senses we don’t have at all. From a dog who seems to use smell to tell time, to a dolphin who can "see" with his ears, we will discover how animals use their senses in ways we humans can barely imagine. But it’s not just the senses that are remarkable—it's the brains that process them. How does a swallow’s tiny, one-gram brain take in the flood of visual information that enables the bird to whiz within inches of buildings while flying at 40 miles per hour? How does a dog’s mind turn the sight of a hand signal into the happy anticipation of a treat? How has the evolution of the dog—from its wolf ancestors–reshaped its brain? NOVA goes into the minds of animals to “see” the world in an entirely new way.
S37 Ep14
8.0
2nd Mar 2010
When the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium stopped calling Pluto a planet, director Neil deGrasse Tyson found himself at the center of a firestorm led by angry Pluto-loving elementary school students. What is it about Pluto—a cold, distant, icy rock—that captures so many hearts? Four years after the IAU (International Astronomical Union) officially reclassified the ninth planet as a plutoid, NOVA travels cross-country with Tyson to find out.
S37 Ep8
8.0
29th Dec 2009
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 in this absorbing detective story, the results are confirming the brilliance of Darwin’s insights while exposing clues to life’s breathtaking diversity in ways the great naturalist could scarcely have imagined.
S37 Ep1
8.0
6th Oct 2009
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.
S36 Ep14
8.0
31st Mar 2009
An examination over whether a comet struck the Great Lakes region 12,900 years ago, and whether it caused the extinction of such mega-creatures as the woolly mammoth and the saber-toothed cat in North America. Also included is the discovery of nano-diamonds which are created by heat and objects from space.
S36 Ep11
8.0
3rd Feb 2009
In this program, an eye-opening documentary on the National Security Agency by best-selling author James Bamford and Emmy Award-winning producer Scott Willis, NOVA exposes the ultra-secret intelligence agency's role in the failure to stop the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent eavesdropping program that listens in without warrant on millions of American citizens.
S36 Ep9
8.0
20th Jan 2009
As Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger launches a dramatic and controversial program to slash carbon dioxide emissions and promote energy efficiency. NOVA explores the pros and cons of California's bold approach, which calls for improvements in energy efficiency in homes and commercial buildings; increased reliance on renewable power sources, primarily solar and wind; and major upgrades in car mileage. Hear from Governor Schwarzenegger, skeptics and supporters of the plan, and ordinary citizens and businesspeople whose lives are impacted. Among those interviewed is Steven Chu, who went on to become the U.S. Energy Secretary in the Obama Administration.
S36 Ep8
8.0
30th Dec 2008
After four decades of fly-by probes, orbiters, landers, and rovers, the quest for life on Mars is as tantalizing as ever. NOVA goes behind the scenes of the latest NASA missions to the Red Planet to reveal new clues and challenges on the road to answering this ultimate question. With unique access to the NASA Phoenix and Mars Exploration Rover missions, NOVA shows scientists and engineers in action, directing the operations of spacecraft millions of miles away, as the robotic explorers drill into rock, claw into soil, analyze samples, and trundle across the rock-strewn landscape in search of signs that Mars once or maybe even still harbors some form of life.
S36 Ep5
8.0
11th Nov 2008
The 2004 discovery of tiny human fossil bones on the island of Flores, Indonesia, raised new—and controversial—speculation about the history of the human race. Ever since, scientists have been scrambling to find more information about these "hobbits."
S36 Ep4
8.0
28th Oct 2008
Fractals are more than just pretty pictures. These simple but sophisticated equations describe the world we live in, from forest growth patterns to the beating of a human heart, and they are inspiring new investigation in myriad fields of science and technology.
S34 Ep10
8.0
3rd Apr 2007
Join NOVA on a voyage beneath the waves, where you'll discover a bizarre, alien-like creature like no other. It's an animal with eight sucker-covered arms growing out of its head, three hearts pumping its blue-green blood, and a doughnut-shaped brain. It has the ability to change its color and shape to blend in with seaweed and rocks, and it has a knack for switching on electrifying light shows that dazzle its prey. Perhaps most surprising of all, this animal is quite intelligent, with a highly complex brain. In this program, underwater cameras capture the extraordinary powers of the cuttlefish.
S34 Ep8
8.0
6th Feb 2007
The grandson of Alabama slaves, Percy Julian met with every possible barrier in a deeply segregated America. He was a man of genius, devotion, and determination. As a black man he was also an outsider, fighting to make a place for himself in a profession and country divided by bigotry—a man who would eventually find freedom in the laboratory. By the time of his death, Julian had risen to the highest levels of scientific and personal achievement, overcoming countless obstacles to become a world-class scientist, a self-made millionaire, and a civil-rights pioneer.
S34 Ep3
8.0
17th Oct 2006
On March 27, 1977, on the island of Tenerife, two fully loaded 747 jumbo jets collided on a fog-blanketed runway, claiming the lives of 583 people in what is still the deadliest crash in aviation history. Now, almost 30 years later, near misses on the ground are the leading cause of aviation accidents, raising the question of what can be done to improve runway safety. Featuring moving interviews with the few survivors of the disaster and with top accident investigators, this program examines the fateful confluence of events that led to the Tenerife tragedy and its continuing relevance for air travel today.
S33 Ep15
8.0
4th Apr 2006
A mission to Saturn and its enigmatic sattelite, Titan, looks for clues to the origins of life.
S33 Ep11
8.0
14th Feb 2006
David Attenborough probes the mystery of ancient life-forms perfectly preserved in amber.
S33 Ep7
8.0
22nd Nov 2005
In less than 12 hours on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the Louisiana coast, leading to more than a thousand deaths and transforming a city of over one million into an uninhabitable swamp. NOVA investigates the science of Hurricane Katrina, combining a penetrating analysis of what went wrong with a dramatic, minute-by-minute unfolding of events told through eyewitness testimony. What made this storm so deadly? Will powerful hurricanes like Katrina strike more often? How accurately did scientists predict its impact, and why did the levees protecting New Orleans fail?
S33 Ep2
8.0
4th Oct 2005
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.
S32 Ep8
8.0
23rd Nov 2004
Follow an expedition to a remote cave in the Judean desert, first excavated by the famed Israeli archeologist Yigael Yadin in 1960-61. Yadin uncovered a cache of ancient documents, human skulls, and artifacts that shed light on a legendary revolt by Jews against the Roman Empire in the year 132. The uprising, led by Jewish patriot Shimon Bar-Kokhba, is said to have resulted in the Roman slaughter of 580,000 Jews. NOVA explores the last refuge of one group of Bar-Kokhba's followers with an historian whose bold theories have rocked the world of biblical archeology.
S32 Ep6
8.0
9th Nov 2004
Who were the first Ameicans and where did they come from?
S31 Ep14
8.0
2nd Mar 2004
While other reporters were embedded in fighting units during the Iraq War, NOVA was covering the emergency medical response, living night and day with the doctors, nurses, and medics in a frontline Combat Support Hospital (CSH). The program captures a period of the conflict in April and May of 2003 when CSH units faced a deluge of injured Iraqi soldiers and civilians who had little support from their country's collapsed health-care system.
S31 Ep10
8.0
20th Jan 2004
Rare lemurs and crocodiles with bizarre cave-dwelling behavior draw scientists to remote corner of Madagascar.
S29 Ep16
8.0
30th Apr 2002
Can lessons learned from the Twin Towers' collapse make new buildings safer?
S29 Ep13
8.0
5th Feb 2002
The program chronicles the lives and covert activities of the so-called "atom spies" in the 1940's, including the big one that got away, Theodore Alvin Hall.
S28 Ep9
8.0
30th Jan 2001
The program investigates the mysterious disappearance -- and, half a century later, reappearance -- of Stardust, a civilian aircraft that crashed in the Andes in 1947.
S28 Ep6
8.0
12th Dec 2000
The film examines a disturbing increase in the prevalence of debilitating and sometimes life-threatening eating disorders, particularly anorexia and bulimia.
S27 Ep17
8.0
22nd Feb 2000
At the heart of Jewish tradition lies the haunting mystery of the Lost Tribes of Israel. Ever since their defeat and banishment by the Assyrians in 722 BC., the Lost Tribes fate has inspired countless claims to Jewish ancestry by groups scattered on every continent. But now, surprisingly, new advances in genetics are dispelling myth and fantasy, and raising a curtain on the forgotten reality of the dispersal that happened so many centuries ago. This story will follow the first attempt to use the new tests to investigate a seemingly improbable African candidate for a Lost Tribe. It will dramatize a scientific quest that leads from the gene labs of London to the remote bush country of Zimbabwe and the lunar-like desert wilderness of southern Yemen.
S27 Ep13
8.0
8th Feb 2000
The film tells the fascinating story of the invention of the Black-Scholes Formula, a mathematical Holy Grail that forever altered the world of finance and earned its creators the 1997 Nobel Prize in Economics.
S26 Ep11
8.0
12th Jan 1999
Is it just a fairy tale, or could a primeval beast lurk in the deep, dark waters of a Scottish lake? Since it was first reported more than 60 years ago, hundreds claim to have witnessed the Loch Ness Monster, while one scientist after another has brought the latest technology to the loch to probe the phenomenon. Twenty-five years after their first, groundbreaking expedition to Loch Ness, NOVA joins two American scientists as they return to Scotland for one last go at Nessie. During a three-week expedition, they use state-of-the-art sonar and sensitive underwater cameras in an attempt to track down and identify the elusive beast. Biologists study the ecosystem of the loch to determine if it could support a large animal. Geologists study its history, looking for clues about what kind of creature might have colonized it, and when. NOVA examines the photographic evidence in the case. And eyewitnesses vividly recount their sightings. Could this legendary creature be real, perhaps a relic from the time of dinosaurs? Or is it a shared illusion—a product of myth, mirage and wishful thinking?
S24 Ep1
8.0
1st Oct 1996
This two-hour program chronicles Albert Einstein's life and scientific achievements from his birth in 1879 to his death in 1955. The first hour follows Einstein in his quest to understand the nature of light. Graphics depict some of Einstein's famous thought experiments, including his eventual understanding of the interplay between the speed of light and time and his development of the special theory of relativity. The program also goes into great depth about Einstein's personal life, including his romance with and marriage to fellow student Mileva Maric and the death of his father. The second hour unfolds with Einstein preoccupied with finding a theory that accounts for gravitation and determining what orders the universe. Einstein addresses gravitation in the universe with his general theory of relativity. This is confirmed experimentally in 1919 when a solar eclipse reveals stars in positions that could best be explained by his theory: that gravity causes light to bend.
S23 Ep7
8.0
28th Nov 1995
Recording sights that will astonish even experienced divers, NOVA documents an extraordinary day in the life of the largest coral reef in the world, capturing for the first time the annual spawning of coral and other unusual creatures of the reef.
S22 Ep7
8.0
20th Feb 1995
NOVA unravels baffling cases of bad air in buildings all over the world. Even hospitals are on the "sick building" list - along with offices, schools, homes and just about any enclosed space.
S16 Ep10
8.0
28th Mar 1989
Arlo, Nancy and Janice each have a 50/50 chance of developing a devastating nerve disorder. A laboratory test can tell them if in fact they will fall victim. In their shoes, would you take the test? Thousands of others face a similar choice: to know, or not know, if they will carry the genetic time bomb of Huntington's disease. NOVA looks at this incurable disease which affects 20,000 people in the US and threatens tens of thousands of others.
S14 Ep18
8.0
17th Nov 1987
Princeton professor and author Robert Mark tracks down the engineering secrets of some of the beautiful buildings in the world including Notre Dame in Paris, St. Paul in London and the Roman Pantheon.
S14 Ep17
8.0
10th Nov 1987
Millions live in the shadows of nature's ticking time-bombs—volcanos. NOVA accompanies scientists who are developing new techniques to predict when volcanos will erupt and how violently.
S14 Ep3
8.0
3rd Feb 1987
Between 60 and 80 percent of all commercial airplane accidents are attributable to pilot error. NOVA looks at some shocking instances of pilot negligence and what airlines are doing to solve the problem.
S13 Ep17
8.0
25th Nov 1986
Birds do it; bees do it, butterflies, bats and eels do it—all leave one habitat to migrate to another, often thousands of miles away. NOVA penetrates the mystery of where animals migrate, why and how they get there.
S12 Ep3
8.0
29th Jan 1985
NOVA examines the complex world of parasites, parasitic diseases and the exciting work currently being done by a new breed of medical researchers as they meet the challenge of conquering the world's number one medical problem.
S11 Ep20
8.0
8th Jan 1985
In this docudrama presentation, NOVA looks at the life, times and work of Gregor Mendel, the 19th century Augustinian friar whose revolutionary scientific Experiments in selective breeding have made him the "Father of Genetics."
S11 Ep19
8.0
18th Dec 1984
What do dinosaurs, a panda's thumb and a peacock's tail have in common? Dr. Stephen Jay Gould, the internationally renowned paleontologist and Evolutionary theorist, provides some surprising answers in this NOVA profile.
S10 Ep9
8.0
11th Oct 1983
The dream of talking with animals has been with us for centuries. NOVA explores the latest research, from language experiments with dolphins and apes to studies of animal calls in the wild.
S10 Ep8
8.0
29th Mar 1983
The accident at Three Mile Island made front page news all over the world and rocked the entire nuclear power industry. In this special 90-minute broadcast, NOVA presents a docudrama chronicling the minute-by-minute events leading up to the accident and examines the questions raised about safety confronting nuclear power industry today.
S9 Ep17
8.0
7th Dec 1982
NOVA follows the great grey whales along their annual marathon migration from the Arctic to the Mexican coast and reveals little known facts about the mating and feeding habits of the gentle giants.
S9 Ep9
8.0
14th Mar 1982
In this vivid study of mimicry and camouflage NOVA shows dramatically how snakes, butterflies, fish, turtles and many other kinds of animals, both predators and their intended victims, use remarkable forms of deception to achieve their goal: to eat, or avoid being eaten.
S7 Ep19
8.0
23rd Dec 1980
The cuddly image of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer has become an integral part of the jollity of the Christmas season. NOVA takes a timely look at how real deer live by visiting Rhum—an island off the coast of Scotland inhabited by red deer.
S7 Ep11
8.0
14th Oct 1980
One year in the intricate life of a coastal lagoon unfolds in an hour's time when NOVA documents the fragile tidal ecosystem which supports the entire ocean.
S6 Ep3
8.0
18th Jan 1979
In 1945, B.F. Skinner shocked the world by putting his 13 month-old daughter, Deborah, into a "box." The box was actually a climate-controlled crib designed for comfort and protection, and the young psychologist was merely testing his theory that environment controls behavior. NOVA portrays the life of this famous behavioral psychologist now in his 70's and living quietly in Cambridge as Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Harvard University.
S3 Ep12
8.0
11th Apr 1976
Dr. Norman Shumway of Stanford University has performed more heart transplants than any other heart surgeon. NOVA explores those extraordinary days in 1968-69 when it appeared that everyone with a scalpel was doing heart transplants, and survival of patients was measured in days.
S3 Ep11
8.0
21st Mar 1976
Today we take antibiotics for granted, and by doing so are steadily eroding their medical value. NOVA examines the problem of resistance to antibiotics in the bacteria they are designed to kill.
S3 Ep7
8.0
15th Feb 1976
There's one place on earth where no one will ever catch a cold. And the freezing waters are so bitter there that a fish has been discovered to have developed its own anti-freeze. NOVA explores Antarctica—the coldest desert in the world.
S3 Ep6
8.0
8th Feb 1976
Every year, some 5,000 babies are born in the US with spina bifida, a congenital abnormality of the central nervous system. NOVA explores the mystery of what causes spina bifida and raises the issues of whether heroic measures should be taken to preserve the life of severely malformed babies.
S2 Ep3
8.0
17th Nov 1974
Smashing matter into ever smaller pieces in an attempt to find its fundamental building blocks has produced a confused nightmare of particles. NOVA looks at this on-again, off-again story—one of sciences's most mysterious—and, one of the most expensive, involving some of the biggest machines in the world.
S1 Ep13
8.0
26th May 1974
Who were the people that built the first cities -- complete with apartment blocks -- in North America? They were the Anasazi Indians, who lived in the Southwest for some eight or nine thousand years and who then, in about 1300 AD, abruptly abandoned their cities and apparently disappeared. NOVA traces the steps of this ancient sophisticated culture.
S1 Ep9
8.0
28th Apr 1974
The advance of medicine depends inevitably on the testing of experimental procedures on human volunteers from either the healthy or the sick. Yet such procedures are often dangerous, and may not be of direct benefit to the subject. NOVA examines how individuals' interests are safeguarded, and asks, under what circumstances experiments should be conducted on children.
S41 Ep17
8.0
9th Apr 2014
When it comes to intelligence, we humans are clearly the most gifted animals around. But what make us so special? Is it our ability to make and use tools? To solve complex problems? Or plan for the future? It might seem that way, but today, researchers are discovering other creatures with impressive brains that have mastered all those skills. Surprisingly, many are bird brains. Crows bend and shape sticks to create custom-made spears for hunting grubs, and they are just one among a growing list of bird species whose impressive problem-solving abilities are shocking scientists and revolutionizing our understanding of animal intelligence. At the head of the class, we meet animals like Muppet, a cockatoo with a talent for picking locks; 007, a wild crow on a mission to solve an eight-step puzzle for the first time ever; and Bran, a tame raven who can solve a puzzle box so quickly that his performance has to be captured with high-speed photography. But are these skills really evidence of high intelligence, or just parlor tricks, the result of training and instinct? To find out, NOVA tests the limits of some of the planet’s brainiest animals, searching for the secrets of a problem-solving mind.
S43 Ep18
8.0
6th Apr 2016
Uncover the truth behind the legendary Vikings and their epic journey to the Americas.
S45 Ep12
8.0
17th Oct 2018
Hear firsthand from individuals struggling with addiction and follow the cutting-edge work of doctors and scientists as they investigate why addiction is not a moral failing, but a chronic, treatable medical condition. Easy access to drugs like heroin, fentanyl, and even prescription medications like OxyContin has fueled an epidemic of addiction—the deadliest in U.S. history.
S45 Ep13
8.0
24th Oct 2018
NOVA takes you inside the historic international race to develop the first supersonic airliner, the Concorde. Hear stories from those inside the choreographed effort to design and build Concorde in two countries at once—and the crew members who flew her. Then, follow Concorde’s legacy to a new generation of innovators reviving the dream of supersonic passenger travel today.
S43 Ep5
8.0
28th Oct 2015
NOVA joins a team of leading Egyptologists who deploy the latest medical imaging to peer beneath the wrappings of Egyptian mummified beasts without damaging the animal bodies inside. The results are enlightening, often surprising insights into the weird beliefs and practices that clung to the Egyptian quest for immortality.
S46 Ep3
8.0
23rd Jan 2019
Journey to Hawaii's Kilauea volcano, which sent rivers of lava through communities and into the sea when it erupted in 2018. A group of scientists and locals investigate the spike in volcano activity that turned paradise into an inferno.
S43 Ep9
8.0
25th Nov 2015
On November 25th, 1915, Einstein published his greatest work: general relativity. The theory transformed our understanding of nature’s laws and the entire history of the cosmos, reaching back to the origin of time itself. Now, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s achievement, NOVA tells the inside story of Einstein’s masterpiece. The story begins with the intuitive thought experiments that set Einstein off on his quest and traces the revolution in cosmology that is still playing out in today’s labs and observatories. Discover the simple but powerful ideas at the heart of relativity, illuminating the theory—and Einstein’s brilliance—as never before. From the first spark of an idea to the discovery of the expanding universe, the Big Bang, black holes, and dark energy, NOVA uncovers the inspired insights and brilliant breakthroughs of “the perfect theory.”
S45 Ep4
8.0
14th Feb 2018
How courage and ingenuity saved Allied troops during the epic Dunkirk operation in 1940.
S44 Ep13
8.0
22nd Feb 2017
From derailments to head-on collisions to drivers killed at road crossings, deadly train accidents claim dozens of lives each year. But just how unsafe are the railroads? NOVA investigates recent rail tragedies and advances in train tech that could help prevent them, taking a special look at Japan’s superefficient bullet trains, which have a perfect safety record. What would it take to usher in a new golden age of safer, faster, more modern and reliable train travel?
S47 Ep1
8.0
5th Feb 2020
Following a trail of fossils found in all the wrong places–beech trees in Antarctica, redwoods and hippo-like mammals in the Arctic–NOVA uncovers the bizarre history of the poles, from miles-thick ice sheets to warm polar forests teeming with life.
S44 Ep12
8.0
15th Feb 2017
The centuries-old tradition of folding two-dimensional paper into three-dimensional shapes is inspiring a scientific revolution. The rules of folding are at the heart of many natural phenomena, from how leaves blossom to how beetles fly. Engineers and designers are applying its principles to reshape the world around us—and even within us, designing new drugs, micro-robots, and future space missions.
S42 Ep2
7.9
24th Sep 2014
NOVA goes behind the scenes of the fast-paced world of cryptography to meet the scientists battling to keep our data safe. They are experts in extreme physics, math, and a new field called "ultra-paranoid computing," all working to forge unbreakable codes and build ultra-fast computers. From the sleuths who decoded the world's most advanced cyber weapon to scientists who believe they can store a password in your unconscious brain, NOVA investigates how a new global geek squad is harnessing cutting-edge science—all to stay one step ahead of the hackers.
S43 Ep20
7.9
20th Apr 2016
Explore how newly established wildlife corridors offer hope to endangered species.
S45 Ep5
7.9
28th Feb 2018
Discover why some predictions succeed and others fail as experts forecast the future.
S39 Ep10
7.9
11th Jan 2012
In 1943 a squadron of Lancaster bombers staged one of the most audacious raids in military history: destroying two gigantic dams in Germany’s industrial heartland and cutting the water supply to arms factories. Their secret weapon? A revolutionary bouncing bomb invented by British engineer Barnes Wallis. Wallis and the pilots of 617 Squadron—a lively mix of Britons, Australians, Americans, and Canadians—were hailed as heroes who dealt a mighty blow to the German war machine. Now, NOVA recreates the extreme engineering challenges faced by Wallis and the pilots. A crack team of experts, including dam engineers, explosives specialists, mechanics, and aircrew, steps into the shoes of the "dambusters" and attempts to overcome each of the obstacles the original team faced. They must adapt a vintage World War II DC-4 to carry a bomb the size of an oil drum, train to drop it from a dangerously low altitude in pitch darkness, and get it to bounce over obstacles and onto the target, a scale model the German dam struck by the original dambusters. Can they succeed in destroying the dam and unraveling the mysteries of the one-of-a-kind bouncing bomb?
S38 Ep5
7.9
16th Nov 2010
Dated to the late Stone Age, Stonehenge may be the best-known and most mysterious relic of prehistory. Every year, a million visitors are drawn to England to gaze upon the famous circle of stones, but the monument's meaning has continued to elude us. Now investigations inside and around Stonehenge have kicked off a dramatic new era of discovery and debate over who built Stonehenge and for what purpose. How did prehistoric people quarry, transport, sculpt, and erect these giant stones? Granted exclusive access to the dig site at Bluestonehenge, a prehistoric stone-circle monument recently discovered about a mile from Stonehenge, NOVA cameras join a new generation of researchers finding important clues to this enduring mystery.
S50 Ep9
7.9
17th May 2023
Is what you see real? Join neuroscientist Heather Berlin on a quest to understand how your brain shapes your reality, and why you can’t always trust what you perceive. In the first hour of this two-part series, learn what the latest research shows about how your brain processes and shapes the world around you, and discover the surprising tricks and shortcuts your brain takes to help you survive.
S43 Ep2
7.9
23rd Sep 2015
NOVA presents an exclusive breakthrough in the greatest unsolved mystery in Arctic exploration. In 1845, British explorer Sir John Franklin set off to chart the elusive Northwest Passage, commanding 128 men in two robust and well-stocked Royal Navy ships, the Erebus and Terror. They were never heard from again.
S37 Ep13
7.9
9th Feb 2010
"Extreme Cave Diving" follows a fearless team of scientists as they venture into blue holes—underwater caves that formed during the last ice age, when sea level was nearly 400 feet below what it is today. These caves, little-known treasures of the Bahamas, are one of Earth's least explored and perhaps most dangerous frontiers. The interdisciplinary team of biologists, climatologists, and anthropologists, led by renowned cave explorer Kenny Broad, discover intriguing evidence of the earliest human inhabitants of the islands, find animals seen nowhere else on Earth, and recover a remarkable record of the planet's climate. The stakes are high as the scientists swim hundreds of feet through narrow, dark passages that have trapped and killed divers in the past, but the scientific payoff is considerable.
S44 Ep14
7.9
19th Apr 2017
The Lithuanian city of Vilna, known also as the “Jerusalem of the North”, was one of the most important Jewish centers in the world until World War II, when the Nazis murdered about 95% of its Jewish population. Now, an international team of archaeologists is excavating the remains of its Great Synagogue and searching for a lost escape tunnel dug by Jewish prisoners inside a Nazi execution site.
S35 Ep17
7.9
20th May 2008
At age 78, E.O. Wilson is still going through his "little savage" phase of boyhood exploration of the natural world. In "Lord of the Ants," NOVA profiles this soft-spoken Southerner and Harvard professor, who is an acclaimed advocate for ants, biological diversity, and the controversial extension of Darwinian ideas to human society. Actor and environmentalist Harrison Ford narrates this engaging portrait of a ceaselessly active scientist and eloquent writer, who has accumulated two Pulitzer Prizes among his many other honors. Says fellow naturalist David Attenborough: "He will go down as the man who opened the eyes of millions 'round the world to the glories, the values, the importance of—to use his term—biodiversity."
S34 Ep4
7.9
31st Oct 2006
Astronomers are closing in on the proof they've sought for years that one of the most destructive objects in the universe—a supermassive black hole—lurks at the center of our own galaxy. Could it flare up and consume our entire galactic neighborhood? Join NOVA on a mind-bending investigation into one of the most bizarre corners of cosmological science: black hole research. From event horizon to singularity, the elusive secrets of supermassive black holes are revealed through stunning computer-generated imagery, including an extraordinary simulation of what it might look like to fall into the belly of such an all-devouring beast.
S40 Ep15
7.9
10th Apr 2013
Hidden in the red hills of western Australia are clues to the mysteries of when the Earth was born, how life first arose, and how it transformed the planet.
S46 Ep7
7.9
24th Apr 2019
Scientists, engineers and political leaders devise a plan to save the Dead Sea, whose levels have declined by more than 65 feet since 1976.
S44 Ep24
7.9
1st Nov 2017
Devastating hurricanes struck the U.S. mainland and Caribbean islands in 2017. But they weren’t the first. The Great Hurricane of 1780 took nine days to blast its way across the Caribbean, killing at least 20,000—the highest known death toll of any single weather event in history. What made this superstorm so deadly?
S44 Ep6
7.9
9th Nov 2016
Gold, bronze, iron, steel... metals are pillars of our civilization, but what makes them so special? Discover their unique properties and explore how our mastery of metals has led us from the stone age to today's hi-tech world.
S51 Ep14
7.9
6th Nov 2024
When we look at the world at the tiniest scales in the subatomic realm, things get weird – very weird. Welcome to the quantum universe, where particles can spin in two directions at once, observing something changes it, and something on one side of the galaxy can instantly affect something on the other, as if the space between them didn’t exist. Buckle up for a wild ride through the discoveries that proved all of this to be true and paved the way for the digital technologies we enjoy today – and the powerful quantum sensors and computers of tomorrow.
S44 Ep10
7.9
1st Feb 2017
Explore the hidden world of energy storage and how it holds the keys to a greener future.
S40 Ep2
7.9
17th Oct 2012
There is a startling gap between the glamorous television world of “CSI” and the gritty reality of the forensic crime lab. With few established scientific standards, no central oversight, and poor regulation of examiners, forensics in the U.S. is in a state of crisis. In "Forensics on Trial", NOVA investigates how modern forensics, including the analysis of fingerprints, bite marks, ballistics, hair, and tool marks, can send innocent men and women to prison—and sometimes even to death row. Shockingly, of more than 250 inmates exonerated by DNA testing over the last decade, more than 50 percent of the wrongful convictions stemmed from invalid or improperly handled forensic science. With the help of vivid recreations of actual trials and cases, NOVA will investigate today’s shaky state of crime science as well as cutting-edge solutions that could help investigators put the real criminals behind bars.
S44 Ep27
7.9
20th Dec 2017
Watch astonishing tests of avian aptitude: parrots that can plan for the future, jackdaws that can “read” human faces, and crows that can solve multi-step puzzles with tools like pebbles, sticks, and hooks. Could these just be clever tricks, based on instinct or triggered by subtle cues from their human handlers?
S42 Ep19
7.9
6th May 2015
Long before 9/11, a far deadlier, little-known attack from the ocean depths struck our shores, lasting three-and-a-half years and claiming 5,000 lives. Now, famed undersea explorer Bob Ballard, discoverer of the Titanic, investigates the wreck of one of the attack craft, a German submarine that lies at the bottom of the gulf just a few miles off New Orleans. U-166 was part of Operation Drumbeat, a highly successful U-boat operation that caught East Coast cities and shipping almost completely unprepared. Ballard probes the wreck and unravels a dramatic mystery in the official story of the sub's sinking.
S43 Ep15
7.9
10th Feb 2016
Memory is the glue that binds our mental lives. Without it, we’d be prisoners of the present, unable to use the lessons of the past to change our future. From our first kiss to where we put our keys, memory represents who we are and how we learn and navigate the world. But how does it work? Neuroscientists using cutting-edge techniques are exploring the precise molecular mechanisms of memory. By studying a range of individuals ranging—from an 11-year-old whiz-kid who remembers every detail of his life to a woman who had memories implanted—scientists have uncovered a provocative idea. For much of human history, memory has been seen as a tape recorder that faithfully registers information and replays intact. But now, researchers are discovering that memory is far more malleable, always being written and rewritten, not just by us but by others. We are discovering the precise mechanisms that can explain and even control our memories. The question is—are we ready?
S50 Ep4
7.9
22nd Feb 2023
Join scientists as they use NASA’s brand new James Webb Space Telescope to peer deep in time to hunt for the first stars and galaxies in our universe, and try to detect the fingerprints of life in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets.
S47 Ep11
7.9
23rd Sep 2020
Writing shaped our world and the rise of human knowledge, from the trading of goods to tales of ancient goddesses and kings. Follow the evolution of the written word, from 4,000-year-old carvings in an Egyptian turquoise mine to modern-day alphabets.
S44 Ep15
7.9
26th Apr 2017
Engineers race to build a massive dome to contain the crumbling remains of the reactor.
S51 Ep13
7.9
30th Oct 2024
The classic view of our solar system contains eight orderly planets, some with moons in neat orbits – but when we look closer, we discover a bunch of stuff missing from this simple, clockwork model. Wandering worlds that seem out of place, found in the gaps between and beyond the planets, offer clues that our cosmic neighborhood is far more dynamic than we once thought. From the meteorites that impact Earth, to a moon that orbits backwards, to an imposter lurking in the asteroid belt, these wandering worlds are rewriting what we know – and even how we think about – our solar system.
S39 Ep17
7.9
11th Apr 2012
In April 2011, the worst tornado outbreak in decades left a trail of destruction across the U.S., killing more than 360 people. Why was there such an extreme outbreak? How do such outbreaks form? With modern warning systems, why did so many die? Is our weather getting more extreme—and, if so, how bad will it get? In this NOVA special, we meet scientists striving to understand the forces at work behind last year's outbreak. Could their work improve tornado prediction in the future? We also meet people whose lives have been upended by these extreme weather events and learn how we all can protect ourselves and our communities for the future.
S44 Ep17
7.9
31st May 2017
NOVA investigates what happened in Flint, Michigan when local officials changed the city’s water source to save money, but overlooked a critical treatment process. As the water pipes corroded, lead leached into the system, exposing the community—including thousands of children—to dangerous levels of poison. NOVA uncovers the science behind this manmade disaster.
S50 Ep13
7.9
18th Oct 2023
For billions of years, life teemed in the oceans of planet Earth while the land was desolate and inhospitable. So how did life make the leap to land? Scientists explore how some of the earliest life emerged and invaded a barren, rocky landscape, eventually transforming it into a verdant, green world. Gripping visual effects reveal an alien landscape dominated by towering fungi before the arrival of plants. Witness how the first plants made landfall and partnered with fungi to create soil that would sustain them. And discover how, once life emerged on land, it fundamentally altered the very ground it grew on.
S47 Ep3
7.9
19th Feb 2020
Worshipped as a goddess, condemned as satanic, and spun into a stunning array of breeds, cats have long fascinated humans. But did we ever really domesticate them? And what can science tell us about our most mysterious companions?
S42 Ep22
7.9
29th Jul 2015
NOVA reveals the minute-by-minute story of the Fukushima nuclear crisis—the one you know about, and the one you likely don’t: the perilously close call at the other Fukushima nuclear power plant a few miles away from the meltdowns. With unprecedented access inside both Fukushima nuclear power plants, NOVA speaks with workers who were there during the harrowing days—a crisis that began as a natural a disaster but was made worse by human beings. But why did the worst happen at one plant while another that faced nearly identical challenges emerged unscathed? It may come down to the skill and knowledge of one man, who has worked there since they started construction. These are crucial questions as the company that runs both plants, TEPCO, tries to clean up an unprecedented radioactive mess and seeks to reopen the plant that was just barely saved.
S41 Ep12
7.9
22nd Jan 2014
It was the strongest cyclone to hit land in recorded history. On November 8, 2013, Typhoon Haiyan slammed into the Philippines, whipping the low-lying and densely-populated islands with 200 mph winds and sending a two-story-high storm surge flooding into homes, schools, and hospitals. It wiped villages off the map and devastated cities, including the hard-hit provincial capital Tacloban. Estimates count more than 5,000 dead and millions homeless. What made Haiyan so destructive? Meteorologists charged with tracking Pacific storms reveal why the Pacific is such fertile ground for cyclones, and NOVA’s film crew documents how conditions dramatically deteriorated in the storm’s aftermath, as impassable roads and shuttered gas stations paralyzed the critical relief effort, leaving food, water, and medicine to pile up at the airport. Disaster preparedness experts scramble to understand why the Philippines was so vulnerable. As climate change and sea level rise threaten millions of the world’s most impoverished people with stronger, and perhaps more frequent, storms, how can we prepare for the next monster typhoon?
S31 Ep3
7.9
28th Oct 2003
Part 1, "Einstein's Dream," introduces string theory and shows how modern physics—composed of two theories that are ferociously incompatible—reached its schizophrenic impasse: One theory, general relativity, successfully describes big things like stars and galaxies, while another, quantum mechanics, is equally successful at explaining small things like atoms and subatomic particles. Albert Einstein, the inventor of general relativity, dreamed of finding a single theory that would embrace all of nature's laws. But in this quest for the so-called unified theory, Einstein came up empty-handed, and the conflict between general relativity and quantum mechanics has stymied all who've followed. That is, until the discovery of string theory.
S46 Ep5
7.9
13th Feb 2019
With new technologies, NASA and private companies are promising a new renaissance in space travel.
S42 Ep5
7.9
22nd Oct 2014
NOVA re-creates key flights, including the world’s first manned voyage on November 21, 1783. A descendant of the Montgolfier brothers, whose exploits fascinated Benjamin Franklin, will join a team to build an accurate replica of the fragile paper and canvas craft using 18th-century tools and materials.
S51 Ep8
7.9
22nd May 2024
How big is the universe? Will it ever end? Why is so much of it made of mysterious dark matter and energy? See how mind-bending discoveries over the past 50 years have revolutionized our understanding of the universe.
S51 Ep5
7.8
27th Mar 2024
A.I. tools like ChatGPT seem to think, speak, and create like humans. But what are they really doing? From cancer cures to Terminator-style takeovers, leading experts explore what A.I. can – and can't – do today, and what lies ahead.
S50 Ep11
7.8
4th Oct 2023
Today, Earth is enveloped by a thin veil of gas, a narrow band of atmosphere that protects a world covered in lush green vegetation, deep blue oceans, and abundant life. But 4.5 billion years ago, Earth was a very different place: a hellscape of molten lava and barren rock, under relentless bombardment from meteors, and with no atmosphere whatsoever. So how did our familiar blue sky come to be? Breathtakingly realistic animations and a chorus of science experts reveal how the primordial inferno first gave rise to an orange-hued cauldron of toxic gasses that would be deadly to us today. Witness how the first drops of rain splashed down on the searing planet, setting the stage for the evolution of life. And discover how life itself helped create the air we all breathe today.
S38 Ep1
7.8
19th Oct 2010
Take a dazzling architectural journey inside those majestic marvels of Gothic architecture, the great cathedrals of Chartres, Beauvais and other European cities. Carved from 100 million pounds of stone, some cathedrals now teeter on the brink of catastrophic collapse. To save them, a team of engineers, architects, art historians, and computer scientists searches the naves, bays, and bell-towers for clues. NOVA investigates the architectural secrets that the cathedral builders used to erect their towering, glass-filled walls and reveals the hidden formulas drawn from the Bible that drove medieval builders ever upward.
S34 Ep1
7.8
5th Sep 2006
Can lessons learned from the Twin Towers' collapse make new buildings safer?
S33 Ep12
7.8
21st Feb 2006
A 40-year hunt for solar neutrinos leads to a new understanding of matter itself.
S1 Ep4
7.8
24th Mar 1974
Does life exist outside this planet? The Viking lander will set down on Mars in July 1976 to try to find out just that. NOVA explores how life started on Earth and examines the Viking Lander being built in its germ-free room before starting its long journey.
S44 Ep3
7.8
5th Oct 2016
Follow our ancient ancestors’ footsteps out of Africa and into every corner of our planet.
S40 Ep18
7.8
1st May 2013
In the wake of the catastrophic asteroid impact believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs, Australia was set adrift on a lonely voyage across southern seas. With host Richard Smith, NOVA travels the walkabout continent to uncover how it became the strange land it is today. In this final episode, "Strange Creatures," NOVA traces the last 65 million years, revealing the events that shaped the Australia we know today. Prehistoric jungles retreated, replaced by eucalypt forests, grasslands, and deserts. When humans first arrived, giant marsupials dominated the land and the Great Barrier Reef was yet to form. This is a tale of calamity and conquest; how a conspiracy of climate, biology, and geology shaped the Earth we now call home.
S32 Ep15
7.8
29th Mar 2005
On December 26, 2004 a devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean kills more than 250,000 people. NOVA takes an in depth look at just what happened on that fateful day.
S51 Ep6
7.8
3rd Apr 2024
Explore the spectacular cosmic phenomenon of a total solar eclipse. In April 2024, the Moon's shadow is sweeping from Texas to Maine, as the U.S. witnesses its last total eclipse until 2044, and scientists scramble to unlock the secrets of our Sun.
S40 Ep20
7.8
29th May 2013
On May 20, 2013, a ferocious EF5 tornado over a mile wide tore through Moore, Oklahoma, inflicting 24 deaths and obliterating entire neighborhoods. It was the third time an exceptionally violent tornado had struck the city in 14 years. Yet predicting when and where these killer storms will hit still poses a huge challenge. Why was 2011—the worst ever recorded tornado season that left 158 dead in Joplin, Missouri—followed by the quietest ever year of activity prior to the Moore disaster? Can improved radar and warning technology explain why so many fewer died in Moore than in Joplin? And will tornadoes get worse as Earth's climate heats up? In this NOVA special, we meet scientists in the front ranks of the battle to understand these extreme weather events. We also meet storm survivors whose lives have been upended and learn how we can protect ourselves and our communities for the uncertain future.
S42 Ep14
7.8
11th Feb 2015
One of the ancient world's most iconic buildings, the Colosseum is a monument to Roman imperial power and cruelty. Its graceful lines and harmonious proportions concealed a highly efficient design and advanced construction methods that made hundreds of arches out of 100,000 tons of stone. In its elliptical arena, tens of thousands of gladiators, slaves, prisoners, and wild animals met their deaths. Ancient texts report lions and elephants emerging from beneath the floor, as if by magic, to ravage gladiators and people condemned to death. Then, just as quickly, the Colosseum could be flooded with so much water that ships could engage in sea battles to the delight of the crowd. Now, archaeologists and engineers are teaming up to recreate a 25-foot lifting machine and trap door system capable of releasing a wolf into the Colosseum's arena for the first time in 1,500 years. Do they have what it takes to replicate the innovation and ingenuity of the Romans?
S40 Ep7
7.8
9th Jan 2013
Examining evidence about Neanderthals that sheds light on the hominids, which died off some 30,000 years ago. Included: geneticist Svante Pääbo's 2010 reconstruction of the Neanderthal genome, which posits that modern humans and Neanderthals interbred at some point in the distant past.
S47 Ep4
7.8
26th Feb 2020
From fruit flies to whales, virtually every animal sleeps. But why? Why do we need to spend nearly a third of our lives in such a defenseless state? Scientists are peering more deeply into the sleeping brain than ever before, discovering just how powerful sleep can be, playing a role in everything from memory retention and emotional regulation to removing waste from our brains.
S46 Ep6
7.8
20th Feb 2019
In the shadow of Vesuvius and Pompeii, a lesser-known volcano puts the city of Naples at risk.
S51 Ep12
7.8
23rd Oct 2024
Ice might seem familiar to us on Earth, but out in the solar system, it can get quite exotic. From Uranus’s ultra hot superionic ice, to glaciers of nitrogen ice on Pluto, to carbon dioxide snow on Mars, ice is a fundamental building block throughout our cosmic neighborhood. Visit some of the strange, frozen worlds of our solar system to discover why the ice here on Earth so special – and why we wouldn’t be here without it.
S45 Ep11
7.8
10th Oct 2018
Explore Nyamuragira, one of the world’s most active and mysterious volcanoes in Africa. Decades of civil strife have prevented scientists from investigating the volcano, but a brief pause allows an international team of experts to fly by helicopter to the summit to investigate. Discover the volcano’s hidden dangers and probe whether magma pressure is building up to threaten another eruption.
S40 Ep9
7.8
30th Jan 2013
In the aftermath of his 1927 solo transatlantic flight, Colonel Charles Augustus Lindbergh–the Lone Eagle–became the most famous human being on earth. And when he and his lovely wife Anne produced an adorable baby son, Charlie, an eager press quickly dubbed him Little Lindy or sometimes just the Eaglet. But on the evening of March 1, 1932 Lucky Lindy's luck ran out. Bold kidnappers snatched his baby from the family home near Hopewell, New Jersey, while everyone in the house was awake. Negotiations with the kidnappers stretched out for weeks. But Little Charlie never came back. His body was discovered not five miles from Hopewell. Now, NOVA is reopening one of the most intriguing, grisly, and confounding crime mysteries of all time as a team of expert investigators employ state-of-the-art forensic and behavioral science techniques in an effort to determine what really happened to Lindbergh's baby and why.
S51 Ep9
7.8
2nd Oct 2024
Out in the solar system, the weather gets wacky – with globe-spanning dust storms, monsoons of liquid methane, and lightning 10 times stronger than here on Earth. Discover the forces driving the dramatic weather on neighboring planets and moons.
S46 Ep20
7.8
6th Nov 2019
Since the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947, these fragile parchment relics have intrigued scholars, religious leaders, and profiteers alike. The 2,000-year-old scrolls include the oldest-known versions of the Hebrew Bible and hold vital clues about the birth of Christianity. While certain scrolls have survived intact, others have been ravaged by time—burnt, decayed, or torn to pieces—and remain an enigma. Now, scientists are using new technologies to read the unreadable, solve mysteries that have endured for millennia, and even discover million-dollar fakes.
S48 Ep4
7.8
17th Feb 2021
Without the chemistry of photosynthesis, ozone, and a molecule called Rubisco, none of us would be here. So how did we get so lucky? To find out, host David Pogue investigates the surprising molecules that allowed life on Earth to begin, and ultimately thrive. Along the way, he finds out what we’re all made of—literally.
S31 Ep6
7.8
11th Nov 2003
Relive the engineering challenges that two bicycle makers overcame to become the first in flight.
S31 Ep2
7.8
7th Oct 2003
Forensic experts investigate the most famous aviation mystery of World War 1.
S46 Ep2
7.8
9th Jan 2019
Einstein called it “spooky action at a distance,” but today quantum entanglement is poised to revolutionize technology from computers to cryptography. Physicists have gradually become convinced that the phenomenon—two subatomic particles that mirror changes in each other instantaneously over any distance—is real.
S42 Ep17
7.8
15th Apr 2015
Join NOVA on a mathematical mystery tour—a provocative exploration of math's astonishing power across the centuries. We discover math's signature in the swirl of a nautilus shell, the whirlpool of a galaxy, and the spiral in the center of a sunflower. Math was essential to everything from the first wireless radio transmissions to the prediction and discovery of the Higgs boson and the successful landing of rovers on Mars. Astrophysicist and writer Mario Livio, along with a colorful cast of mathematicians, physicists, and engineers, follow math from Pythagoras to Einstein and beyond. It all leads to the ultimate riddle: Is math a human invention or the discovery of the language of the universe?
S45 Ep14
7.8
7th Nov 2018
Dive to the bottom of the Adriatic Sea in search of the Tulsamerican, a B-24 bomber that crashed off the coast of Croatia during World War II. In 2010, divers located the plane. Now the Department of Defense, aided by the Croatian Navy and some of the world’s leading underwater archaeologists, sets to work investigating the wreckage.
S49 Ep13
7.8
12th Oct 2022
In police departments and courts across the country, artificial intelligence is being used to help decide who is policed, who gets bail, how offenders should be sentenced, and who gets parole. But is it actually making our law enforcement and court systems fairer and more just? This timely investigation digs into the hidden biases, privacy risks, and design flaws of this controversial technology.
S41 Ep15
7.8
12th Feb 2014
The dome that crowns Florence’s great cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore—the Duomo—is a towering masterpiece of Renaissance ingenuity and an enduring source of mystery. Still the largest masonry dome on earth after more than six centuries, it is taller than the Statue of Liberty and weighs as much as an average cruise ship. Historians and engineers have long debated how its secretive architect, Filippo Brunelleschi, managed to keep the dome perfectly aligned and symmetrical as the sides rose and converged toward the center, 40 stories above the cathedral floor. His laborers toiled without safety nets, applying novel, untried methods. Over 4 million bricks might collapse at any moment—and we still don’t understand how Brunelleschi prevented it. To test the latest theories, a team of U.S. master bricklayers will help build a unique experimental model Duomo using period techniques. Will it stay intact during the final precarious stages of closing over the top of the dome?
S45 Ep2
7.8
31st Jan 2018
For the first time, two intrepid pilots fly a solar-powered airplane around the world.
S42 Ep16
7.8
25th Feb 2015
Whether serving as Christian church, Islamic mosque, or secular museum, Hagia Sophia and its saring dome have inspired reverence and awe. For 800 years, it was the largest enclosed building in the world—the Statue of Liberty can fit beneath its dome with room to spare. How has it survived its location on one of the world’s most active seismic faults, which has inflicted a dozen devastating earthquakes since it was built in 537? As Istanbul braces for the next big quake, a team of architects and engineers is urgently investigating Hagia Sophia’s seismic secrets. Follow engineers as they build a massive 8-ton model of the building’s core structure, place it on a motorized shake table, and hit it with a series of simulated quakes, pushing it collapse—a fate that the team is determined to avoid with the real building.
S32 Ep9
7.8
4th Jan 2005
NOVA follows a team of scientists as the monitor the Martian rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Spirit runs into some problems, but Opportunity takes a photograph that may confirm the existence of water on Mars.
S48 Ep18
7.8
3rd Nov 2021
Straddling the night sky, the Milky Way reminds us of our place in the galaxy we call home. But what shaped this giant spiral of stars and what will be its destiny? NOVA travels back in time to unlock the turbulent story of our cosmic neighborhood, from its birth in a whirling disk of clouds and dust to colossal collisions with other galaxies. Finally, peer into the future to watch the Milky Way’s ultimate fate as it collides with the Andromeda galaxy, over 4 billion years from now.
S44 Ep25
7.8
8th Nov 2017
All over the world, scientists are discovering traces of ancient floods on a scale that dwarfs even the most severe flood disasters of recent times. What triggered these cataclysmic floods, and could they strike again? In the Channeled Scablands of Washington State, the level prairie gives way to bizarre, gargantuan rock formations.
S51 Ep16
7.8
20th Nov 2024
From the time our species first evolved, we’ve been on the move. Not content to stay in one place, we’ve imagined and invented and built our way from one place to the next. From deep sea subs to wind-resistant skyscrapers to next-gen space habitats, see how today’s engineers are designing and building creative new ways for us to get all around – and even off – our planet.
S44 Ep22
7.8
18th Oct 2017
The Forbidden City is the world’s biggest and most extravagant palace complex ever built. For five centuries, it was the power center of imperial China and survived wars, revolution, fires, and earthquakes. How did the Ming Emperor’s workforce construct its sprawling array of nearly 1,000 buildings and dozens of temples in a little over a decade?
S44 Ep2
7.8
14th Sep 2016
How the science of learning may change education for all children.
S51 Ep4
7.8
21st Feb 2024
For decades, scientists have tried to unlock the secrets of ancient DNA. Follow the dramatic quest to recover DNA millions of years old and reveal a lost world from before the last Ice Age.
S44 Ep23
7.8
25th Oct 2017
NOVA follows a team of volcano sleuths as they embark on a worldwide hunt for an elusive volcanic mega-eruption that plunged medieval Earth into a deep freeze. They look for the signature of a volcanic eruption big enough to have blasted a huge cloud of ash and sulfuric acid into the atmosphere, which chilled the entire planet. Across the globe, it turned summer into winter.
S46 Ep4
7.8
6th Feb 2019
New archeological evidence sheds light on the stunning engineering of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
S44 Ep5
7.8
2nd Nov 2016
Gemstones like diamonds, rubies, opal and jade are the ultimate treasures. Delve into Earth's depths to discover how these precious stones are forged and what explains the unique allure of each captivating gemstone.
S43 Ep11
7.8
13th Jan 2016
Four and a half billion years ago, the young Earth was a hellish place—a seething chaos of meteorite impacts, volcanoes belching noxious gases, and lightning flashing through a thin, torrid atmosphere. Then, in a process that has puzzled scientists for decades, life emerged. But how? NOVA joins mineralogist Robert Hazen as he journeys around the globe. From an ancient Moroccan market to the Australian Outback, he advances a startling and counterintuitive idea—that the rocks beneath our feet were not only essential to jump-starting life, but that microbial life helped give birth to hundreds of minerals we know and depend on today. It's a theory of the co-evolution of Earth and life that is reshaping the grand-narrative of our planet’s story.
S35 Ep4
7.8
7th Nov 2007
On October 4, 1957, the Space Age dawned with the red hue of the Communist flag when the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite. Sputnik I stunned the world and spurred a surge in science education and innovation that changed our world forever. But was Sputnik I really a shock to America's leaders, and how close was the U.S. to getting into space first? NOVA draws on previously classified documents to tell the real story behind the opening chapter in the space race.
S33 Ep16
7.8
18th Apr 2006
Everyone has heard of global warming, but a lesser-known man-made phenomenon has been nearly as powerful at affecting Earth's climate. A look at global dimming, created by soot and pollution reflecting the sun's rays and surprisingly helping to offset global warming's catastrophic advance.
S33 Ep3
7.8
11th Oct 2005
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. Among Einstein's ideas, E = mc2 is by far the most famous. Yet how many people know what it really means? In a thought-provoking and engrossing documentary, Einstein's Big Idea illuminates this deceptively simple formula by unrevealing the story of how it came to be.
S32 Ep4
7.8
29th Sep 2004
"Origins: Back to the Beginning" explores how the colossal, mind-boggling forces of the early universe made it possible for habitable worlds to emerge. The clues begin with a race among scientists to capture lingering echoes of the big bang's ferocious energy in a microwave "whisper" from deep space. The race pits underdog astronomer Tony Readhead and his improvised detector in the high Andes against NASA scientists and their state-of-the-art satellite probe. Host astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson shares his excitement with viewers as computer animation of the big bang's echo emerges on the screen. It's as close as we can get to a "photograph" of the primordial universe. Here we glimpse the seeds from which all the galaxies, stars, and planets eventually grew.
S23 Ep12
7.8
30th Jan 1996
Travel on a perilous mission to repair and refly a rare B-29 bomber stranded on a Greenland icecap for almost 50 years.Gleaming like a jewel this well preserved bomber from World War II rests on the Arctic tundra where it was abandoned when it crash landed in 1947. This plane has long been a legend and now facing incredible hardship a team of adventurers struggle to bring the frozen warbird back to life.NOVA follows bold pilot Darryl Greenamyer and his team on two expeditions to revive Kee Bird and make it fly again in one of the most isolated and harshest environments on Earth. Despite severe weather illness and difficulties with the shuttle plane in 1994 Greenamyer returns in May 1995 with a larger crew a more reliable shuttle plane and a new plan to bring Kee Bird back to life and back home.
S7 Ep2
7.8
22nd Jan 1980
NOVA profiles Dr. Edward Teller, the "Father of the Hydrogen Bomb," an acclaimed scientific genius and brilliant theoretician, and a man considered by some the most dangerous scientist in the United States.
S6 Ep6
7.8
22nd Feb 1979
Some day hydrogen may replace the gasoline that we are now using up so rapidly. NOVA looks at the potential of hydrogen as a zero-pollution fuel.
S4 Ep1
7.8
5th Jan 1977
NOVA traces the development of Hitler's V-2 rocket through rare footage obtained from the National Archives—some never broadcast before on television.
S48 Ep14
7.7
6th Oct 2021
Outnumbering atoms a billion to one, neutrinos are the universe’s most common yet most elusive and baffling particle. NOVA joins an international team of neutrino hunters as they try to capture an elusive fourth form of neutrino. Their results may force scientists to redraw their blueprint of the subatomic world, the Standard Model of physics, and change our understanding of how the universe works.
S41 Ep21
7.7
14th May 2014
Colditz Castle, a notorious prisoner of war camp in Nazi Germany, was supposed to be escape-proof. But in the dark days at the end of World War II, a group of British officers dreamt up the ultimate escape plan: in a secret attic workshop, they constructed a two-man glider out of bed sheets and floorboards. Their plan was to fly to freedom from the roof of the castle, but the war ended before they could put it to the test. Now a crack team of aero engineers and carpenters rebuild the glider in the same attic using the same materials, and they’ll do something the prisoners never got a chance to try: use a bathtub full of concrete to catapult the glider off the roof of the castle. As the hair-raising launch 90 feet up draws near, the program explores the Colditz legend and exposes the secrets of other ingenious and audacious escapes. Then, after a 70-year wait, the team finally finds out if the legendary glider plan would have succeeded.
S38 Ep8
7.7
11th Jan 2011
In 2010, several epic earthquakes delivered one of the worst annual death tolls ever recorded. The deadliest strike, in Haiti, killed more than 200,000 people and reduced homes, hospitals, schools, and the presidential palace to rubble. In exclusive coverage, a NOVA camera crew follows a team of U.S. geologists as they enter Haiti in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy. The team hunts for crucial evidence that will help them determine exactly what happened deep underground and what the risks are of a new killer quake. Barely a month after the Haiti quake, Chile was struck by a quake 100 times more powerful, unleashing a tsunami that put the entire Pacific coast on high alert. In a coastal town devastated by the rushing wave, NOVA follows a team of geologists as they battle aftershocks to measure the displacement caused by the earthquake. Could their work, and the work of geologists at earthquake hot spots around the U.S., one day lead to a breakthrough in predicting quakes before they happen? NOVA investigates compelling new leads in this profound scientific conundrum.
S50 Ep14
7.7
25th Oct 2023
252 million years ago, the most devastating mass extinction of all time abruptly wiped out around 90% of all species on Earth. The culprits were the biggest volcanic eruptions the world has ever seen, emitting some 700 thousand cubic miles of magma and rock. Volcanic gasses permeated the atmosphere and acidified the oceans while toxic gasses destroyed the ozone layer, bathing the planet in destructive UV radiation. The event—now called "The Great Dying"—came close to wiping out all life on the planet. Follow scientists as they piece together geologic evidence from the deep past and clues from today’s ecosystems to discover how life made it through and evolved into the astonishing variety we see around us today.
S35 Ep8
7.7
8th Jan 2008
Our mastery of cold is something we take for granted, whether it s air conditioning and frozen food or the liquefied gases and superconductivity at the heart of cutting-edge technology. But what is cold? How do you achieve it, and how cold can it get? This two-part NOVA special brings the history of this frosty fascination to life with brilliant dramatic recreations of high moments in low-temperature research and the quest for ever-lower notches on the thermometer. The first hour, The Conquest of Cold, opens in the 1600s when the nature of cold and heat was a complete mystery. Were they different aspects of the same phenomenon? The experiments that settled these questions helped stoke the Industrial Revolution.
S50 Ep10
7.7
24th May 2023
Are you in control, or is your brain controlling you? Dive into the latest research on the subconscious with neuroscientist Heather Berlin. Sleepwalking, anesthesia, game theory, and more reveal surprising insights in this eye-opening journey to discover what’s really driving the decisions you make.
S44 Ep1
7.7
7th Sep 2016
From 9/11 to today’s crowd-sourced violence, trace how terrorists’ strategies have evolved.
S44 Ep4
7.7
12th Oct 2016
Join engineers as they build a massive new railway deep beneath the streets of London.
S43 Ep4
7.7
14th Oct 2015
NOVA examines the science and technology behind cyber warfare and asks if we are already in the midst of a deadly new arms race.
S42 Ep1
7.7
10th Sep 2014
Diseases that were largely eradicated in the United States a generation ago—whooping cough, measles, mumps—are returning, in part because nervous parents are skipping their children’s shots. NOVA’s “Vaccines—Calling the Shots" takes viewers around the world to track epidemics, explore the science behind vaccinations, hear from parents wrestling with vaccine-related questions, and shed light on the risks of opting out.
S40 Ep6
7.7
2nd Jan 2013
In April, 2010 the eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano turned much of Europe into an ash-strewn no-fly zone, stranding millions of travelers. But was Eyjafjallajökull just the start? Now, an even more threatening Icelandic volcano, Katla, has begun to swell and grumble. Two more giants, Hekla and Laki, could erupt without warning. Iceland is a ticking time bomb: When it blows, the consequences could be global. As CGI takes us inside these geological monsters, we meet atmospheric scientists who are working to understand just how devastating an eruption could be—not just for air travel but for the global food supply and for Earth's climate.
S35 Ep14
7.7
8th Apr 2008
The ancient Maya civilization of Central America left behind an intricate and mysterious hieroglyphic script, carved on monuments, painted on pottery, and drawn in handmade bark-paper books. For centuries, scholars considered it too complex ever to understand—until recently, when an ingenious series of breakthroughs finally cracked the code and unleashed a torrent of new insights into the Mayas' turbulent past. For the first time, NOVA presents the epic inside story of how the decoding was done—traveling to the remote jungles of southern Mexico and Central America to investigate how the code was broken and what Maya writings now reveal.
S32 Ep11
7.7
18th Jan 2005
A chronicle of the turbulent birth, life and death of the Concorde, the world's first and only supersonic airliner.
S44 Ep21
7.7
4th Oct 2017
Once upon a time, knighthood was serious business, and for countless medieval fighters, their armor was what stood between life and death. NOVA challenged a blacksmith and master armorer to recreate parts of an elite armor. We trace their journey as they rediscover centuries-old metalworking secrets, then put their new armor to the ultimate test against a period musket.
S45 Ep3
7.7
7th Feb 2018
Discover remains of a 13,000 year-old teenager in an underwater cave in Mexico.
S49 Ep7
7.7
11th May 2022
In the second episode of this two-part series, the search continues for signs of what happened on the day the dinosaurs died. Scientists uncover extremely rare fossils and more evidence that could link the dig site in North Dakota to the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Among the fossils are tiny spheres of glass locked in amber. Inside one of the spheres is a speck of rock that appears to be a chemical match to the killer asteroid itself. And scientists uncover one of the most spectacular finds of all: an almost perfectly preserved dinosaur leg. Sir David Attenborough guides us on a search for clues that could provide an unprecedented snapshot of what happened in the dinosaurs’ final moments on Earth.
S45 Ep9
7.7
3rd Oct 2018
Follow the race to rebuild the Old Blenheim Bridge in New York State, an icon of 19th century American engineering, destroyed by Hurricane Irene in 2011. Watch a team of elite craftsmen faithfully reproduce the massive, intricate wooden structure under grueling time pressure as flooding threatens their worksite.
S23 Ep15
3.0
27th Feb 1996
Carl Sagan and other scientists investigate claims that people have been visited or abducted by aliens.
S27 Ep18
4.0
29th Feb 2000
The film, which is a part of the NOVA series Secrets of Lost Empires, documents a 1999 effort by a NOVA-assembled crew of scholars and timber framers to design and build a Chinese bridge known only from an ancient painting.
S5 Ep9
5.0
8th Mar 1978
NOVA investigates the theories of von Daniken and others that the Earth has been visited by intelligent beings from outer space. Among claims examined are: that the building techniques used in the Great Pyramid of Cheops are so advanced that only an extraterrestrial intelligence could have built it; and that the engraved stones of Palenque in Mexico depict an ancient astronaut at the controls of a space rocket.
S9 Ep11
5.0
12th Oct 1982
For the first time on television a rigorous, scientific investigation into the fact, fiction, and hoax of Unidentified flying objects. With vivid film and accounts from several eyewitnesses including astronauts, NOVA sifts the evidence for and against the existence of UFOs.
S17 Ep19
5.0
4th Dec 1990
NOVA profiles the llama, alpaca, vicuna and guanaco of South America. At one time nearly extinct, these four members of the camel family are exceptionally well adapted to life in the beautiful high Andes.
S30 Ep3
5.0
8th Oct 2002
Experts rescue pricess mosaics from an ancient city that is about to disapear beneath a resivoir.
S36 Ep6
5.6
18th Nov 2008
An archeological detective story tackling some of the biggest questions in biblical studies: Where did the ancient Israelites come from? Who wrote the Bible, when, and why? How did the worship of one God—the foundation of modern Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—emerge?
S50 Ep18
6.0
22nd Nov 2023
Many descendants of enslaved people have little record of their family's ancestry. Follow one family's quest to discover their lost history, and see how science and genealogy can help rebuild a family tree broken by slavery. Join filmmaker Byron Hurt at his extended family reunion as they celebrate the joy of family in the African diaspora, and discover new details of their history that they thought were lost forever.
S3 Ep16
6.0
23rd May 1976
Margaret Sanger was responsible almost single-handedly for changing the whole attitude of the male-dominated medical profession towards "women's issues" and, above all, for gaining social and political acceptance for the concept of birth control. This NOVA docudrama reconstructs her life, told as flashbacks interspersed throughout an interview. Piper Laurie stars as Margaret Sanger.
S5 Ep7
6.0
22nd Feb 1978
In a dramatic docudrama, NOVA reconstructs the controversial lawsuit raised against renowned heart surgeon Dr. Denton Cooley when one of his patients died after heart surgery, and examines the legal and moral issues this raises in the practice of modern medicine.
S5 Ep8
6.0
1st Mar 1978
A science-based revolution in the making of wine is underway. NOVA traces the secrets of the aging process and science's involvement with the predicting of mass production high-quality vintage wines.
S28 Ep8
6.0
16th Jan 2001
The program follows a French-led expedition to recover thousands of porcelain and other artifacts from a centuries-old Chinese shipwreck off the coast of Brunei.
S35 Ep3
6.0
30th Oct 2007
Can anyone run a marathon? How do you run 26.2 miles if you have trouble making it around the block? With good coaching, discipline, and lots of group support, as NOVA shows when it follows 13 generally sedentary people through a training regimen designed to prepare them for an ultimate test of stamina and endurance. Produced in cooperation with the Boston Athletic Association®, which granted NOVA unprecedented access to the 111th Boston Marathon®, and Tufts University, "Marathon Challenge" takes viewers on a unique adventure inside the human body, tracking the physiological changes that exercise can bring about.
S5 Ep3
6.3
18th Jan 1978
It has been known since the turn of the century that there are four human blood groups, based on different red cells and serum characteristics. NOVA looks at the more recent discovery that the different white cell types, as determined by a variety of different molecular markers on the cell surface, open up the possibility of the prevention of disease.
S30 Ep4
6.3
29th Oct 2002
In this two-hour special, NOVA celebrates the story of the father of modern science and his struggle to get Church authorities to accept the truth of his astonishing discoveries. The program is based on Dava Sobel's bestselling book, Galileo's Daughter, which reveals a new side to the famously stubborn scientist—that his closest confidante was his illegitimate daughter, Sister Maria Celeste, a cloistered nun.
S36 Ep16
6.3
14th Apr 2009
In 1987, NOVA's cameras began rolling to chronicle the lives of seven young, bright medical students embarking on the longest and most rigorous endeavor in higher education: the years-long journey to become a doctor. From their first days at Harvard Medical School to the present day, none of them could have predicted what it would take, personally and professionally. In "Doctors' Diaries," a two-hour special, NOVA returns to find out what sorts of doctors—and people—the seven young students have become. The program is the latest installment in the longest-running U.S. documentary of its kind.
S32 Ep2
6.4
28th Sep 2004
"Origins: How Life Began," zeroes in on the mystery of exactly how it happened. Join the hunt for hardy microbes that flourish in the most unlikely places: inside rocks in a mine shaft two miles down, inside a cave dripping with acid as strong as a car battery's, and in noxious gas bubbles erupting from the Pacific ocean floor. The survival of these tough microorganisms suggests they may be related to the planet's first primitive life forms. Host astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson deepens the search by investigating tantalizing and controversial chemical "signatures" of life inside three-billion-year-old rocks and meteorites found around the world.
S37 Ep5
6.4
10th Nov 2009
In gripping forensic detail, the second program in “Becoming Human” investigates the first skeleton that really looks like us — “Turkana Boy” — an astonishingly complete specimen of Homo erectus found by the famous Leakey team in Kenya.
S48 Ep11
6.4
2nd Jun 2021
Five centuries ago, the Age of Exploration and Europe’s imperial colonization of far-off lands was launched by a revolution in ship design that made long-distance ocean voyages practical. But exactly how this momentous innovation happened eludes historians. Now, the excavation of a rare intact wreck discovered off the coast of Sweden offers vital new clues to a maritime mystery.
S2 Ep9
6.5
12th Jan 1975
Have you ever sensed that your body reacts differently at different times of the day? NOVA examines the best and worsetimes for work, good times for sex drives and your body's most reactive time of day for alcohol consumption.
S8 Ep12
6.5
4th Oct 1981
More people die in fires in the US than in any other industrialized country. In an alarming report that challenges the complacency of the US fire prevention establishment, NOVA uncovers glaring gaps in our defenses against flames that kill. Sealing any one of these gaps might save thousands of lives and prevent enormous pain and misery.
S9 Ep15
6.5
23rd Nov 1982
An investigative report on US dependence on foreign sources of strategic minerals, vital to the aerospace and steel industries, which examines and questions Reagan Administration policies toward those international sources.
S20 Ep2
6.5
19th Jan 1993
The Gulf War was fought in 38 days of non-stop bombing and four days of swift ground action. Did bombing win it? NOVA looks at the history of strategic bombing and asks whether bombing has now achieved preeminence in warfare.
S24 Ep2
6.5
8th Oct 1996
Helped by remote sensing, an expedition searches Oman's vast al-Khali desert for the lost city of Ubar.
S28 Ep1
6.5
24th Oct 2000
The film chronicles an expedition to study and retrieve parts of the USS Monitor, the famous Civil War ironclad, which sank off North Carolina only months after its famous battle with the CSS Virginia.
S29 Ep10
6.5
8th Jan 2002
The program probes the deep mysteries of gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful celestial explosions since the big bang.
S32 Ep17
6.5
15th Nov 2005
The auction of some of Newton's papers early in the 20th century uncovers the fact that he had a side other than the genius mathematician and visionary the world knew him as.
S33 Ep17
6.5
7th Nov 2006
Nova reviews the contribution of Alberto Santos Dumont in the early days of aircraft development and his uncanny ability to abandon one line of endeavor for a technology with better long term potential.
S33 Ep18
6.5
14th Nov 2006
This episode focuses on a scientific debate about five siblings in a Turkish family who walk on all fours. When, in 2005, scientist Uner Tan labeled them "genetic throwbacks," they became part of the dialogue about a possible missing link to an era when humans walked on all fours. Included: comments from geneticist Sean Carroll and anthropologist Brian Richmond, who disagree with Tan; and interviews with and footage of the family.
S36 Ep15
6.5
7th Apr 2009
In 1987, NOVA's cameras began rolling to chronicle the lives of seven young, bright medical students embarking on the longest and most rigorous endeavor in higher education: the years-long journey to become a doctor. From their first days at Harvard Medical School to the present day, none of them could have predicted what it would take, personally and professionally. In "Doctors' Diaries," a two-hour special, NOVA returns to find out what sorts of doctors—and people—the seven young students have become. The program is the latest installment in the longest-running U.S. documentary of its kind.
S37 Ep7
6.5
24th Nov 2009
What are dreams and why do we have them? Are they a window into a hidden realm within us? Science is only just beginning to understand. NOVA joins the leading dream researchers and witnesses the extraordinary experiments they use to investigate the world of sleep. From human narcoleptics to sleepwalking cats, from recurrent nightmares to those who can’t dream, each sequence contains a vital clue to the question these scientists are pursuing: Why do we dream?
S39 Ep12
6.5
25th Jan 2012
In October 2007, a striking portrait of a young woman in Renaissance dress made world news headlines. Originally sold nine years before for around $20,000, the portrait is now thought to be an undiscovered masterwork by Leonardo da Vinci worth more than $100 million. How did cutting-edge imaging analysis help tie the portrait to Leonardo? NOVA meets a new breed of experts who are approaching "cold case" art mysteries as if they were crime scenes, determined to discover "who committed the art." And it follows art sleuths as they deploy new techniques to combat the multibillion-dollar criminal market in stolen and fraudulent art.
S1 Ep1
6.6
3rd Mar 1974
NOVA premieres on public television with a behind-the-scenes look at the making of a nature film. Oxford Scientific Films Unit shows how it tackles such problems as filming a wood-wasp laying its egg inside trees, the hatching of a chick and the courtship rituals of the stickleback.
S36 Ep17
6.6
30th Jun 2009
An exploration of the effect of music on the brain via four case studies from neurologist Oliver Sacks book "Musicopia" and the MRI visualizations from Sacks' own brain as classical music is played, including Bach's "Mass in B Minor." Study subjects include a man with Tourettes syndrome who has found relief while playing the drums; an autistic savant who is simply dazzling on the piano; a woman who suffers the inability to process music, known as amusia; and a surgeon whose life changed after being struck by lightning.
S41 Ep9
6.6
20th Nov 2013
The asteroid that exploded over Siberia—injuring more than 1,000 and damaging buildings in six cities—was a shocking reminder that Earth is a target in a cosmic shooting range. From the width of a football field to the size of a small city, these space rocks have the potential to be killers. In a collision with Earth, they could set off deadly blast waves, raging fires and colossal tidal waves. But some audacious entrepreneurs look up at asteroids and see payday, not doomsday. Some asteroids are loaded with billions of dollars’ worth of elements like iron, nickel, and platinum. NASA is planning an ambitious mission to return samples from a potentially hazardous asteroid, and would-be asteroid miners are dreaming up their own program to scout for potentially profitable asteroids. Will asteroids turn out to be our economic salvation—or instruments of extinction?
S2 Ep4
6.7
24th Nov 1974
Most of us spend one-third of our lives in a state of which we understand remarkably little—some people sleep for only a few minutes a night, and function perfectly well, while others declare that eight hours isn't enough. NOVA explores traditional notions about how much sleep we need; looks at effects of the sleeping pill, and, perhaps the most baffling of all aspects of sleep—dreaming.
S2 Ep15
6.7
16th Mar 1975
Since the Industrial Revolution, bigger has been better. NOVA profiles E.F. Schumacher, the author of Small is Beautiful, who thinks that enough is enough; that the time has come for technology to return to a human scale, where the ability to create is returned from the machine to people.
S4 Ep6
6.7
23rd Feb 1977
NOVA recreates March 1975 at Brown's Ferry, an Alabama nuclear power plant—the largest in the world—that suffered a seven-hour fire which came very close to developing into a major public disaster.
S5 Ep15
6.7
10th May 1978
When first invented 18 years ago, lasers were called "a solution looking for a problem;" nobody could think what to do with them. But in fact research scientists immediately began to exploit their pure colors and near-perfect focusing ability. Today lasers have grown into a billion-dollar business. They are used in construction, manufacturing, clothing, dentistry and medicine. And the future uses of lasers are likely to be of major significance as the means of achieving nuclear fusion and as a very high efficiency communications medium.
S5 Ep20
6.7
21st Jun 1978
In 1965, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, two radio astronomers at Bell Telephone Laboratories, discovered faint, but ever-present, microwave signals from space—the most ancient and most distant signals detected by man: the oldest "fossils" in the universe. NOVA explores the current surge of cosmological discovery that continues to aid scientists in the "cosmic archaeology" of digging into the history of the universe.
S15 Ep3
6.7
2nd Feb 1988
Scientists investigate the frozen remains of members of the 19th century Franklin Expedition to the Canadian Arctic and ask why all perished.
S24 Ep12
6.7
28th Jan 1997
In a 90-minuite presentation, NOVA reveals the ancient secrets of how the pyramids were built by actually building one. A noted Egyptologist, Mark Lehner, and a professional stonemason, Roger Hopkins, join forces in the shadow of the Great Pyramid of Giza to put clever and sometimes bizarre pyramid construction theories to the test.
S32 Ep14
6.7
22nd Feb 2005
In 1909, Louis Bleriot undertakes a heroic first-ever flight over the English Channel.
S3 Ep8
6.8
7th Mar 1976
Author Isaac Asimov joins NOVA in the retelling of the remarkable story of the discovery of the structure of DNA. James Watson and his ex-colleague Francis Crick exchange memories of the events which led to their winning the race for the structure of the gene.
S37 Ep10
6.8
12th Jan 2010
A magnificent trading vessel embarks on a royal expedition to a mysterious, treasure-laden land called Punt. Is this journey, intricately depicted on the wall of one of Egypt's most impressive temples, mere myth--or was it a reality? NOVA follows a team of archeologists and boat builders as they reconstruct the mighty vessel shown in the mysterious carving, and then finally launch it in to the Red Sea on a unique voyage of discovery.
S37 Ep11
6.8
19th Jan 2010
A team of archeologists carries out experiments that reveal the techniques and labor invested in the carving of the Sphinx. The team also unearths new discoveries about the people who built the gigantic sculpture and why they created such a haunting and stupendous image.
S32 Ep1
6.9
28th Sep 2004
"Origins: Earth is Born" gives viewers a spectacular glimpse of the tumultuous first billion years of Planet Earth—a time of continuous catastrophe. Vivid animation lets viewers witness the traumatic birth of the moon from a titanic collision between Earth and an object believed to have been the size of Mars. Bombarded by meteors and comets, rocked by massive volcanic eruptions, and scoured by hot acid rain, the early Earth seems a highly improbable place for life to have taken root. Despite such violent beginnings, scientists have found new clues that life-giving water and oxygen appeared on our planet much earlier than previously thought.
S37 Ep6
6.9
17th Nov 2009
The final program examines the roots of our own species, Homo sapiens, which new evidence pinpoints to southern Africa some 200,000 years ago. New discoveries are upending old ideas and suggesting that our exodus from Africa was far earlier than previously thought.
S48 Ep10
6.9
26th May 2021
Can new emission-free electric planes replace our polluting airliners and revolutionize personal transportation in our cities? NOVA takes you for a ride in some impressive prototypes that are already in the air, from speedy single-seat planes that can take off like a helicopter but are half as noisy to “self-flying” air taxis that are already taking passengers on test flights in Chinese cities. But if electric airplanes are ever to advance beyond small, short-haul craft, significant hurdles of battery weight, energy storage, and cooling remain to be overcome. How long will it be before the dream of super-quiet, super-efficient airliners becomes a reality?
S47 Ep15
6.9
28th Oct 2020
As global temperatures continue to rise, scientists are wondering if we need solutions beyond reducing emissions. Enter geoengineering. From sucking carbon straight out of the air to physically blocking out sunlight, the options may seem far-fetched. But as time runs out on conventional solutions to climate change, scientists are asking the hard questions: Can geoengineering really work? How much would it cost? And what are the risks of engineering Earth's climate? (Premiering October 28 at 9 pm on PBS)
S1 Ep5
7.0
31st Mar 1974
How does a primitive nomadic tribe of the Amazon basin cope with the encroachment of Western settlers? NOVA looks at both sides of the story, revealing the misunderstandings between the two cultures.
S1 Ep10
7.0
5th May 1974
Washoe is a chimp more like a person: she talks with her hands. NOVA visits with Washoe and her teachers—Professor Allen Gardner and Dr. Trixie Gardner—to learn more about this unusual animal.
S1 Ep11
7.0
12th May 1974
When Paul Kammerer committed suicide in 1926, it was taken by most of his fellow biologists as a tacit admission of guilt that he had faked his experiments purporting to show the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Arthur Koestler joins NOVA in an in-depth examination of Kammerer's infamous experiment.
S2 Ep2
7.0
10th Nov 1974
Many insects and some mammals use smell as a primary means of communication. NOVA explains how, for example, the entire economy of an ant's nest is organized by smell, and how some moths use smell for population control—an ability we is now beginning to understand.
S2 Ep5
7.0
1st Dec 1974
NOVA joins a team of U.S. Geological Survey scientists on a mission to find out just how San Francisco Bay works: its physics, its chemistry and its biology.
S2 Ep10
7.0
19th Jan 1975
Has the case against DDT been proven? A strange question, perhaps, to be asking one year after the US has banned the insecticide, but NOVA dares to ask. Tracing the history of DDT from its discovery through its banning in the States, NOVA asks whether America overreacted with its total ban of this once acclaimed "wonder" chemical.
S2 Ep11
7.0
2nd Feb 1975
NOVA profiles two very different scientists: Richard Feynman, a theoretical physicist, at the pinnacle of his career—a Nobel prizewinner; and Richard Lewontin, a biologist and highly regarded population geneticist from Harvard University.
S2 Ep12
7.0
9th Feb 1975
NOVA explores T.D. Lynsenko's rise to power in the Soviet Union in the early 20th century, and how it affected plant genetic research in the USSR.
S2 Ep13
7.0
16th Feb 1975
High in the Hoggar Mountains, in the exact center of the Sahara desert, lives Sidi Mohammed and his family: children, grandchildren, cousins and a few former slave women. Their environment, one of the most ungenerous on earth, provides them with almost nothing. NOVA examines the changing lifestyle of Sidi Mohammed.
S2 Ep14
7.0
9th Mar 1975
How likely is it that a terrorist group will steal plutonium intended for nuclear reactor fuel and put together a blackmail weapon of unprecedented power in the shape of a homemade atom bomb? That question is posed by Theodore Taylor, former A and H bomb designer at Los Alamos, in a recent book, The Curve of Binding Energy. NOVA investigates just how easy it would be to design a bomb using unclassified information.
S2 Ep16
7.0
30th Mar 1975
For over a thousand years the Mayan civilization grew and flourished in the rain forests of Central America. Discovered and finally destroyed by the Spanish Conquistadors, it was lost again until explorers brought it to light in the 19th century. Eric Thompson, an archaeologist who has had a 45 year love affair with the Maya, takes NOVA on a pilgrimage through the Mayan world, visiting, on the way, all the great ruined cities he has known for half a century.
S2 Ep17
7.0
6th Apr 1975
Fish is an excellent source of protein; it could help ease the growing international food shortage. But in 1972 the total world fish catch dropped. NOVA explores the possible reasons for this decline.
S3 Ep1
7.0
4th Jan 1976
It is now possible to predict earthquakes. At least two successful predictions have already been made in the United States; and the NOVA crew was present and filming while a third prediction was being formulated. NOVA looks at why earthquakes occur, how predictions are made, the threat they pose to cities at risk, and examines the advantages and disadvantages of making an earthquake a predictable disaster.
S3 Ep2
7.0
11th Jan 1976
NOVA takes viewers into the world of Joey Deacon, 54 years old and a spastic since birth. Joey has lived most of his life in institutions, unable to communicate with anyone until he met Ernie Roberts. The docudrama recreates Joey's story, with remarkable performances by two spastic actors portraying him as a boy and as a young man. Joey and Ernie themselves appear in the final sequences.
S3 Ep3
7.0
18th Jan 1976
What do singer Peggy Lee, New York Jets Quarterback Joe Namath and Congressman Richard Nolas have in common? They all practice a ritual called TM—Transcendental Meditation. NOVA examines the recent phenomenal success of the TM movement in America.
S3 Ep5
7.0
1st Feb 1976
NOVA explores the mysterious ecosystem of the desert: a snowstorm; a lashing summer monsoon; and the emergence—in a pool created only minutes before—of a pair of adult spadefoot toads. Toads who had been waiting beneath the sand for a year for this brief and fortuitous moment to procreate the next generation...
S3 Ep13
7.0
18th Apr 1976
NOVA explores life underground, from foxes and badgers through moles and worms down to the myriad of micro-organisms that make soil the most complex substrate for life on earth. Included in the film is extraordinary footage of a mole burrowing and of roots growing.
S3 Ep14
7.0
2nd May 1976
NOVA shows the Netsilik eskimoes of Pelly Bay and their traditional way of life and what happens when Western civilization is imposed upon them.
S3 Ep15
7.0
9th May 1976
Benjamin is a healthy, normal baby, whom we meet at birth and whose first year of life provides the backbone of this revealing NOVA about early child development.
S3 Ep17
7.0
6th Jun 1976
As late as 1967, smallpox struck as many as 15 million people in 43 countries and killed an estimated two or three million. Experts now believe that the disease is on the verge of extinction. NOVA looks at the recent success of the World Health Organization's program to eradicate this disease, considered a triumph of western-styled medicine.
S3 Ep18
7.0
13th Jun 1976
The "Jaws" phenomenon has given sharks a bad name. But is the shark really such a barbarian? NOVA looks at the lifestyle of this remarkable survivor from the days when dinosaurs ruled the earth.
S3 Ep19
7.0
20th Jun 1976
Recent scientific developments have made it possible to detect a wide variety of defects in unborn babies. NOVA focuses on the ethical question that must be considered: What defines a defect? Should defective babies be aborted, or should they be allowed to live?
S3 Ep20
7.0
27th Jun 1976
Since 1945, hundreds of ships and planes and thousands of people have mysteriously disappeared in an area of the Atlantic Ocean off of Florida, known as the Bermuda Triangle. NOVA penetrates the mystery of the terrifying Bermuda Triangle.
S4 Ep2
7.0
12th Jan 1977
If you were a dinosaur scientist, what would you do with a pile of fossil bones? How would you even start to put the giant jigsaw puzzle together, never mind discover anything about how these dinosaurs lived? NOVA explores the incredible world of the dinosaur scientist.
S4 Ep4
7.0
2nd Feb 1977
NOVA explores the research on the 1976 drought in the western United States which led some solar scientists to discover the link between weather patterns and the 11 year sunspot mystery.
S4 Ep5
7.0
9th Feb 1977
NOVA follows the lives of three boys who have combined immuned deficiency—a disease that leaves its victims with no immune system.
S4 Ep7
7.0
2nd Mar 1977
NOVA looks at blackbirds, their winter habit of nesting in the millions, and the destruction they do to crops.
S4 Ep8
7.0
9th Mar 1977
NOVA profiles chemist Russell Marker who made the birth control pill possible by discovering a synthetic substitute for the hormone progesterone.
S4 Ep9
7.0
16th Mar 1977
NOVA explores the history of genetic engineering and the possible risks and benefits of this area of research
S4 Ep10
7.0
23rd Mar 1977
NOVA investigates the controversial theory of Harvard University biologist E.O. Wilson, that many aspects of human behavior are genetically determined.
S4 Ep11
7.0
30th Mar 1977
In the winter of 1976-77, 80 percent of the wolf population in Northwest Alaska was the target of aerial hunts. Although the area is roamed by the Western Arctic caribou herds—a natural predator of the wolf—the caribou population has been steadily decreasing in number. NOVA examines how the Dept. of Fish and Game is handling the the problem of wolf control.
S4 Ep13
7.0
20th Apr 1977
NOVA explores the huge international illegal trade in animals, penetrates the thriving underworld of smugglers and assesses the effects on vanishing wildlife.
S4 Ep14
7.0
27th Apr 1977
NOVA traces 300 years of speculation, investigation and discovery that have centered on Mars—particularly the theory that the planet could support life. Questions raised by NASA's 1976 Viking mariner missions about how the vast canyons were formed are also explored.
S4 Ep15
7.0
11th May 1977
In part one of this two-part exploration of the diversity of world languages, NOVA examines how and why the bewildering confusion of languages came about.
S4 Ep16
7.0
18th May 1977
In part two of this two-part series on the diversity of language, NOVA explores how man has coped with the confusion of language and asks if the growing acceptance of English is the answer.
S4 Ep17
7.0
1st Jun 1977
NOVA profiles Linus Pauling—the only person to have received two unshared Nobel Prizes for his work in nuclear weapons.
S4 Ep18
7.0
22nd Jun 1977
NOVA explores the different means by which hearing-impaired people have learned to penetrate the world of the hearing by visiting with Kitty O'Neil—a woman record-holding speed car racer; Frances Parsons, an advocate of hearing-impaired persons' rights; and workers at Silent Industries—a factory in Los Angeles founded by a deaf man.
S4 Ep19
7.0
29th Jun 1977
NOVA explores the delibitating diseases that are often caused by poverty and follows two paths to health care in Tanzania and the United States.
S5 Ep1
7.0
4th Jan 1978
Can a nuclear war be survived? Some members of the defense community say yes. NOVA explores the possibility.
S5 Ep2
7.0
11th Jan 1978
Botany is a neglected science and plants are all around us, but unfamiliar. NOVA examines our state of knowledge of how plants work: growth hormones, responses to light and shade, photosynthesis, root mechanisms and twining responses.
S5 Ep6
7.0
15th Feb 1978
In the rain forests of Zaire, in the heart of Africa, live the Mbuti Pygmies. The Pygmy way of life has always been extraordinarily difficult to capture on film, though many have tried. NOVA presents a rare portrait of an elusive people, made by an independent filmmaker who lived with the Pygmies and won their trust.
S5 Ep10
7.0
22nd Mar 1978
Today's scientists may be creating their own successors. Work being done in Artificial Intelligence (AI), a branch of computer science, only suggest that in the not too distant future, machines will outpace their creators. NOVA examines the possibility.
S5 Ep11
7.0
29th Mar 1978
In the summer of 1977 Paul MacCready, a California scientist and businessman, won the coveted Kremer Prize. His achievement was to design and build an airplane which completed, unaided, a one-mile figure-eight course entirely under the power provided by the pilot himself. This is the story of those many failures and MacCready's success.
S5 Ep12
7.0
12th Apr 1978
NOVA shows a year in the life of a beaver pond and includes almost every life form that exists in, on, under, around and above the water, from the microscopic plant life of summer to the eagles feeding on carcasses of deer that collapsed on the winter ice.
S5 Ep13
7.0
19th Apr 1978
The fortified plateau above Athens known as the Acropolis is the site of some of the most remarkable architecture in the world: its marble structures built in the fifth century BC, including the renowned Parthenon, represent the artistic peak of classical Greek architecture. NOVA examines how the heavily polluted air of Athens produces acid rain which is dissolving the marble sculptures and columns; and how iron tiles used extensively in repair 40 years ago are now rusting, expanding and shattering the stone structures.
S5 Ep14
7.0
3rd May 1978
Henry Ford, a great friend of Edison, was a film enthusiast who amassed some one and a half million feet of film during his lifetime. Deposited in the National Archives and known as the Ford Film Collection, it covers not only the Ford family and Ford Motor Company but also contains newsreels, and general films produced under Ford. Using the Collection, NOVA profiles Ford's life and times.
S5 Ep16
7.0
24th May 1978
In a world that each year loses up to 40 percent of its crops to insects, some form of pest control is desperately needed. But chemical pesticides have backfired. Pesticide-resistant insects frequently develop, and previously harmless insects have become devastating infestations. Farmers have found themselves trapped on a "pesticide treadmill"—the more they spray, the more they have to spray. NOVA examines several alternatives for pest control.
S5 Ep17
7.0
31st May 1978
For thousands of years people have managed to live in deserts all over the world. But in recent years, a growing population and the demands of the international market have put more stress on these poor and easily exhausted lands. NOVA examines the consequences and possible solutions to desertification.
S5 Ep18
7.0
7th Jun 1978
NOVA explores Bovine sleeping sickness. Spread by a fly, it is a deadly disease that poses a threat to Africa's cattle.
S5 Ep19
7.0
14th Jun 1978
Traditionally zoos were designed neither for people nor animals; barred cages taught people more about their separation from nature than about an animal and its habitat. But just as man has realized that he has all but destroyed much of the world's wilderness and its wildlife, he is realizing that the zoo may be the last refuge for wildlife. NOVA visits several United States zoos to examine a variety of activities of concern today: breeding, public education, creative new animal habitats, and the reintroduction of animals to their natural environment.
S5 Ep21
7.0
28th Jun 1978
Congress is currently considering a proposal that would double the size of America's national park system by designating a sizeable chunk of Alaska as off-limits to developers. NOVA explores the public debates on Alaska, such as the construction of the oil pipeline—a proposal that has sparked a bitter controversy between conservationists and developers.
S6 Ep1
7.0
4th Jan 1979
On the morning of March 16, 1978, the US owned, Liberian registered supertanker, the Amoco Cadiz, went aground off the coast of Brittany. Over the following days and weeks its entire 68 million gallons of oil drained into the sea. A NOVA production team began filmming at the scene shortly after the disaster, the biggest oil spill in history, and recorded clean-up efforts, effects of the spill on the crucial tourism and fishing industries, and the attempts of US and French marine biologists to trace the passage of the oil through the environment.
S6 Ep2
7.0
11th Jan 1979
As a child, Fred Young hunted birds and wild animals with primitive weapons, spoke only the Indian languages Ute and Navajo, went to a medicine man when he was sick, and slept under the stars. NOVA profiles Dr. Frederick Young, now a nuclear physicist working on the laser fusion project at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico.
S6 Ep4
7.0
1st Feb 1979
The bed of the northeast Pacific Ocean is covered with a "carpet" estimated to be worth a staggering ten million dollars. These manganese nodules—the bumpy carpet—are rich not only in manganese but in the key strategic minerals: copper, nickel and cobalt. NOVA examines the debate about who owns them and who has the right to exploit their use.
S6 Ep5
7.0
8th Feb 1979
Below the snow-capped peaks of the Peruvian Andes, the Q'eros Indians live a life patterned on that of their ancestors thousands of years ago. NOVA takes a look at the unchanging world of these isolated mountain people.
S6 Ep7
7.0
1st Mar 1979
Is nuclear fusion the solution to the energy crisis? NOVA examines the promise—and problems—of fusion as a future energy source.
S6 Ep8
7.0
8th Mar 1979
Health care is the third largest industry in the US. As a result of billions of dollars spent for medical education in the 1960s, there are now too many specialists and too few primary care physicians, especially in underserved areas. NOVA tells the story of one medical school in Israel that is training a new kind of family doctor.
S6 Ep9
7.0
15th Mar 1979
One hundred years after his birth, Albert Einstein remains an enigma to most Americans. NOVA presents an insightful portrait of the man and his mind through rarely viewed film footage.
S6 Ep10
7.0
29th Mar 1979
Some powerful and complex painkilling drugs have just been discovered—in a place where you would least expect to find them. Endorphins and their component enkephalins are manufactured in the brain, and perform the same painkilling function as analgesics like morphine. NOVA explores some physiological mysteries, such as why acupuncture works, and how placebos can relieve symptoms, and shows how endorphins could revolutionize the treatment of pain, depression, and even schizophrenia.
S6 Ep11
7.0
2nd Oct 1979
Is the chemical industry a boom to modern civilization, or a major threat to our health and that of future generations? NOVA examines how toxic heribicides, Pesticides, and other chemicals may cause cancer, Miscarriages and Birth defects in humans.
S6 Ep12
7.0
9th Oct 1979
Sinister, sometimes even deadly, spiders have little popular appeal; yet their silken webs are among nature's loveliest creations. NOVA takes a close-look in slow motion, as spiders reveal a delicate grace and beauty, and an amazing array of lifestyles.
S6 Ep13
7.0
16th Oct 1979
NOVA views the history of sugar—from its scientific, religious and political history to its medical controversy.
S6 Ep14
7.0
30th Oct 1979
At the 1976 Olympics, East German athletes walked off with 40 of the coveted gold medals, though their country is only the size of New Jersey. NOVA investigates whether a drug is responsible for their incredible success—or is American athletic training and commitment falling behind that of the Communist world?
S6 Ep15
7.0
6th Nov 1979
Thousands of amateur athletes are hurt every year, and many professional athletes suffer injuries that may mean the end of a career. NOVA looks at a new medical specialty—sports medicine—that promises to prevent and cure many sports related problems.
S6 Ep16
7.0
20th Nov 1979
Most of India lives by the same rhythm, the same tools, as in centuries past. But there is another India—with thriving commercial centers, spotless research laboratories and large-scale industry. NOVA looks at how the gap between these two extremes is shrinking because of a policy of "appropriate" technology that uses the resources of both to meet the greatest needs of all.
S6 Ep17
7.0
4th Dec 1979
The Iron Bridge across the River Severn in Telford, England is two centuries old this year. It remains a monument to the Shropshire iron masters who built it, and a symbol of the Industrial Revolution that was born in the area where the bridge stands. NOVA traces the development of ironmaking and its far-reaching effects on society and the world economy.
S6 Ep18
7.0
11th Dec 1979
Dr. Philip Morrison, Institute Professor and professor of Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, presents this thoughtful and provocative commentary on the nature of civilization.
S6 Ep19
7.0
18th Dec 1979
For many people the idea of life without vision is as fearful as death. NOVA looks at five people struggling to save their threatened vision using drugs, surgery, counseling and determination.
S7 Ep1
7.0
15th Jan 1980
Aborigines in Australia, woodchucks in Pennsylvania, the Nobel Prize in Stockholm and the gay community in New York City—what could possibly link such disparate elements? The answer is Hepatitis. NOVA examines this elusive disease, what causes it, how it is spread and how you get rid of it.
S7 Ep4
7.0
19th Feb 1980
More than 40 million Americans are afflicted by cardiovascular disease. NOVA examines the new information on risk factors and possible prevention of heart attacks and Strokes—often fatal diseases.
S7 Ep5
7.0
4th Mar 1980
Whaling is an integral part of Eskimo life, and a major source of food; even so, conservationists are seeking to restrict the hunting of bowheads in Alaska.
S7 Ep9
7.0
30th Sep 1980
NOVA explores the shaping and molding of the male and female personality. From infancy through childhood, the program documents the impact of culture on the development of sex differences. Known as "The Secret Of The Sexes" as the Vestron Video release of 1988.
S7 Ep10
7.0
7th Oct 1980
In one of the first films ever to come out of modern China, NOVA sifts through clues that Chinese scientists have uncovered in their pursuit of particularly virulent and elusive forms of cancer from which one out of every four people die.
S7 Ep12
7.0
28th Oct 1980
Locked in the shale of the Western Rocky Mountains is more oil than in the Middle East—more than enough to solve our dependence on foreign crude oil. But will shale oil solve our gasoline shortage, or will it simply turn the Rockies into a gigantic industrial zone? NOVA explores the promise and the problems of shale oil.
S7 Ep13
7.0
4th Nov 1980
Is interferon—known as IF in medical shorthand—the wonder drug and cure for cancer that some doctors claim? NOVA travels to London, Stockholm, Houston, San Francisco, and New Haven in search of the answer in the most complete film on interferon ever to appear on American television.
S7 Ep15
7.0
18th Nov 1980
Thomas Edison is the quintessential American hero, the Wizard whose inventions revolutionized modern living. But there was always more to Edison than met the eye. He was a complex and contradictory man; a brilliant inventor, a foolish investor; a demanding boss, a liberal benfactor—a public figure that no one ever really knew. NOVA profiles the man behind the mythical reputation.
S7 Ep16
7.0
25th Nov 1980
Water, water everywhere...but just how useful is it? NOVA travels to the Adirondack Mountains where acid rain is killing many high elevation lakes; to the Mississippi River where chlorine has combined with natural and manmade organic chemicals to form cancer-causing toxic chemical substances; to California, where conservation recycling has had to become a way of life; and to Bedford, Massachusetts, where the town wells have been contaminated by industrial waste.
S7 Ep17
7.0
2nd Dec 1980
NOVA tells the story of still and cine photography in science—from the extraordinary work of the pioneers in the early 1800s to how the ability to freeze time on film in ever shorter periods has given scientists remarkable new insights. Today photography enables us to analyze (frame by frame) the thousands of molecular reactions that can happen in less time than the blink of an eye.
S7 Ep18
7.0
9th Dec 1980
The exquisite sensitivity of touch cells in the human skin makes it possible for us to discriminate with precision the slightest changes in texture and pressure, but how the electrical impulses we receive are converted into sensation remains a mystery. NOVA explores the hidden meaning and extraordinary power of human touch.
S7 Ep20
7.0
30th Dec 1980
Time—a concept which has baffled scientists and philosophers since time immemorial. Actor Dudley Moore hosts a funny, sobering and visually stunning quest for answers to riddles, as NOVA spends an hour on time. Aired on the BBC in 1979.
S8 Ep1
7.0
6th Jan 1981
Is the fagara root a match for the stethoscope? This program looks at the contributions of both traditional herbal medicine and western orthodox medicine to the health of the Nigerian people.
S8 Ep2
7.0
20th Jan 1981
This program explores clues gathered from ancient rocks and Meteorites in an attempt to piece together how our planet formed, what happened during its earliest days, and when life first appeared. The program includes visits to the scene of a fresh fall of meteorites, several volcanic eruptions, and an underwater glimpse of molten "pillow" lava as it oozes out of volcanic vents in the sea floor.
S8 Ep3
7.0
27th Jan 1981
NOVA examines the Dead Sea. The lowest place on Earth, at 1400 feet below sea level, it is jointly owned by Israel and Jordan. If used properly it could become a vital natural resource for both countries, giving them not only salt, but protein, fertilizer, oil, and a solar energy store.
S8 Ep4
7.0
10th Feb 1981
When Mount St. Helens erupted earlier this year, it focused the attention of the whole world on the almost incredible destructive forces that volcanos can release. Geologists from around the world congregated at the volcano and NOVA joined the vigil for an in-depth look at the incident and its aftermath.
S8 Ep5
7.0
17th Feb 1981
NOVA investigates what science can do in helping to solve murder—in understanding why it occurs, and how the rate might be reduced—and explores the work of people who have the stark job of dealing with death: the police, pathologist, scientists and psychiatrists.
S8 Ep6
7.0
24th Feb 1981
Health care is no longer two Aspirins and some chicken soup—it is a huge enterprise capable of amazing feats and costing billions of dollars. How can we afford to pay the bills? Is quality health care a right or a privilege? NOVA examines these questions in a comparison between the American and British systems of health care.
S8 Ep7
7.0
3rd Mar 1981
Sophisticated instruments used by astronomers enable earthlings to see beyond what was once the cloudy barrier of the Milky Way, to a universe of perhaps 100 billion other galaxies. NOVA takes a trip into outer space to see these clusters which are as old as time and several million light years away.
S8 Ep8
7.0
10th Mar 1981
For 150 million years, non-avian dinosaurs dominated the Earth. Then, 65 million years ago, they suddenly vanished, along with a great deal of the planet's animal and plant life. NOVA examines a remarkable theory about the cause of the catastrophe—in which the first clue to the solution was a piece of clay.
S8 Ep9
7.0
17th Mar 1981
The beauty, endurance, and raw power of animals in the wild are captured on film as NOVA juxtaposes Olympic athletes performing feats which have parallels in the animal kingdom with animals who are the champions of grace and strength.
S8 Ep10
7.0
25th Aug 1981
It's over 300 years since Galileo turned his new telescope on Saturn and first saw its spectacular rings. NOVA shows the beauty and new mysteries discovered by Voyager 1 on its historic visit.
S8 Ep11
7.0
27th Sep 1981
NOVA reports on the potential danger of modern Computers that gather "routine" information about our daily lives as we buy things, go to the hospital, or make donations. Computers can know more about us than our closest friends. NOVA examines how much of that personal information is readily shared with other computers.
S8 Ep13
7.0
11th Oct 1981
A great secret lies locked inside the master Violins created by Italian craftsmen like Antonio Stradivari in the 17th and 18th centuries. Now, a Wisconsin physicist, working alone in his cellar, may have solved the violin mystery.
S8 Ep14
7.0
18th Oct 1981
A NOVA showing the extraordinary discoveries of X-ray astronomy. This new science has revealed that our universe is much stranger and more violent than ever imagined, filled with neutrons, stars, exploding galaxies, quasars and black holes—a universe seething with energy, bursting across vast distances of space and time.
S8 Ep15
7.0
25th Oct 1981
Called the "teeth of the wind" by those who have battled them for centuries, locusts continue to plague hundreds of millions of people. Rare desert rains transforms locusts from harmless grasshoppers to voracious swarms capable of destroying all vegetation in their path. NOVA reveals some of man's latest attempts to rid himself of his age-old enemy, the locust.
S8 Ep16
7.0
1st Nov 1981
The controversy which exploded a century ago when Charles Darwin published "The Origin of Species" is erupting again with new facts and emotion. NOVA explores challenges to the theory of evolution coming from evidence in fossils, from biology laboratories, and Creationists.
S8 Ep17
7.0
15th Nov 1981
Many were delighted by the extraordinary special effects in movies like "2001" and "Star Wars," but few realized how their magic relied on technologies as futuristic as their science fiction plots. NOVA introduces 20th century pioneers who use computers and lasers to create an extraordinary array of strange, exciting new art forms.
S8 Ep18
7.0
22nd Nov 1981
You are not alone! Like it or not, every human being and virtually every living creature is, in a sense, owned and operated by legions of prehistoric organisms, hordes of them in each cell in the body. That is one of the startling revelations as NOVA explores the mysterious wonder of life with Dr. Lewis Thomas, a leading biologist and award-winning author described by Time as "quite possibly the best essayist on science anywhere in the world."
S8 Ep19
7.0
29th Nov 1981
William H. Whyte's insightful and humorous look at city parks, plazas and Streets, and the people who use them. Whyte shows the remarkable research he did over a period of many years to find out why some city squares and small parks are enjoyable while others are so dreary. His work led to the transformation of some New York City plazas from barren to bustling. Whyte shows how any city—large or small—can lick the problem of downtown dreariness.
S8 Ep20
7.0
6th Dec 1981
Ever thought what it's like having your mirror image talk back to you? It can be an everyday occurrence for identical Twins. NOVA tells the incredible story of scientific research on twins—a field marked by brazen and damaging fraud, but also by surprising and important new discoveries about nature's recipe of heredity and environment which makes us all unique individuals.
S9 Ep2
7.0
17th Jan 1982
NOVA presents a dramatic, exclusive film of the first "test-tube" baby born in America, Elizabeth Jordan Carr. NOVA follows the pregnancy from the start, presenting the only view on American TV of the extraordinary medical procedures used to remove and fertilize the egg, and of the historic birth, 28 December 1981 in Norfolk, VA.
S9 Ep3
7.0
24th Jan 1982
NOVA takes an intimate look at Roger Tory Peterson, the man whose best-selling guide books to ornithology have played a pivotal role in turning birdwatching into a mass sport.
S9 Ep4
7.0
31st Jan 1982
One of the biggest investigations in medical history began when a mysterious killer disease broke out during independence celebrations in Philadelphia in 1976: Legionnaires' disease. NOVA traces the search for a cause and cure—a search bedeviled by false trails, accusations of incompetence and cover-up, and increasing urgency as the death toll mounted.
S9 Ep5
7.0
7th Feb 1982
What is it like not to be able to communicate with others? NOVA explores the severest of speech disabilities with Dick Boydell—born with cerebral palsy, confined to a wheelchair and unable for 30 years to say more than "yes" or "no" and investigates some of the new technology that gives the speechless a "voice."
S9 Ep6
7.0
14th Feb 1982
NOVA explores the past, present, and future of American television including the potential of cable, the Columbus, Ohio, two-way TV experiment, the array of new techniques and their potential social impact. Will the new video technology let people see what they really want, rather than what the networks want?
S9 Ep7
7.0
28th Feb 1982
NOVA shows how scientists go about creating new forms of life, and investigates the impact of the gene bonanza on industry, medicine, and the universities themselves. NOVA reveals that other countries are plowing far more resources than the US into the burgeoning industry.
S9 Ep8
7.0
7th Mar 1982
NOVA visits San Francisco's Exploratorium—part laboratory, part school, part three-ring circus—run by an unlikely collection of physicists and high school students.
S9 Ep10
7.0
28th Mar 1982
What is aging? Why does it happen? Can it be stopped? NOVA presents a startling report on research into the processes which make us age and how to control them.
S9 Ep12
7.0
19th Oct 1982
The Himalayas, highest peaks in the world, are crumbling. People are making them crumble, and people are the victims, as NOVA reveals in this breathtaking documentary.
S9 Ep13
7.0
9th Nov 1982
Of the 70,000 Americans hospitalized annually for severe Burns, one-third are children. NOVA tells the story of extraordinary personal resilience in an 11-year-old boy's fight to recover from burns suffered over 73 percent of his body.
S9 Ep14
7.0
16th Nov 1982
NOVA introduces some of the winners of the 1982 Westinghouse Science Talent Search: high school students whose interests range from silkworms to solar cells. With education facing a deepening financial crisis, will this year's group of well-trained young scientists be among the last of the best and the brightest?
S9 Ep16
7.0
30th Nov 1982
NOVA reports on the staggering water problems of Southern Louisiana—where the mighty Mississippi is threatening to change its course, and where last year 49 square miles of coastline disappeared into the Gulf of Mexico.
S9 Ep18
7.0
14th Dec 1982
While America's passenger-train service deteriorates, trains in Japan and Europe are speeding ahead at over 150 miles per hour. NOVA reports that the super-fast trains are finally coming to America.
S10 Ep1
7.0
18th Jan 1983
This land of fire and beauty is the most isolated island chain in the world. NOVA cameras uncover an extraordinary world far from the teeming tourist hotels, one filled with unique life forms, but also scarred by tragic extinction.
S10 Ep4
7.0
15th Feb 1983
NOVA presents the first film ever made of the incredible chain of events which turns a sperm and an egg into a newborn baby. Amazing photographic techniques give the viewers the feeling of being reduced to the size of cells, following the sperm on its perilous voyage toward the egg, and meeting protectors and enemies along the way—like Ulysses on a microscopic odyssey.
S10 Ep6
7.0
8th Mar 1983
NOVA takes a spellbinding voyage through one of the world's most fascinating and colorful ecosystems: a coral reef, where the line between plants and animals is blurred, "rocks" move, eat and fight, fish farm, and weak animals borrow the shields and weapons of stronger ones.
S10 Ep7
7.0
22nd Mar 1983
"Why can't I lose weight?" It's a question many Americans ask themselves everyday. NOVA comes up with some surprising answers about weight and dieting that could have significant impact on our daily lives.
S10 Ep10
7.0
18th Oct 1983
Seattle dentist Barney Clark received the first artificial heart implant in 1982. He died in March 1983, having survived 112 days with the world's first permanent, pneumatic, totally artificial heart. NOVA follows the case with the surgeon, William DeVries, and looks at the prospects for this technology to save lives. It also explored the work of Dr. William F. Bernhard on the Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) ongoing at the Cardiovascular Surgical Research Laboratories, Boston Children's Hospital Medical Center.
S10 Ep11
7.0
25th Oct 1983
NOVA looks at computers in the classroom through the eyes of MIT's Seymour Papert, father of the Turtle—a computerized robot that crawls on the floor and talks in versatile language even five-year-olds can learn.
S10 Ep12
7.0
1st Nov 1983
Remote tribes and exotic islanders have been made known to the world through the lens of anthropology. But in recent years, some of these people have begun to object. NOVA travels to Margaret Mead's Papua New Guinea and looks at anthropology from the other side.
S10 Ep13
7.0
8th Nov 1983
Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross has become a legend in her lifetime for her work with the dying. For the first time on American television, her explorations with patients are captured in film, as NOVA presents an intimate portrait of the Swiss-born psychiatrist at work.
S10 Ep14
7.0
15th Nov 1983
Can the thoroughbred horse run any faster? NOVA examines the billion-dollar horse racing industry in its search for the magic combination of speed, stamina and the will to win.
S10 Ep15
7.0
22nd Nov 1983
When plastic surgeons repair the shattered face of a soldier or rescue a child from a disfiguring disease, the victory is more than skin-deep. NOVA looks at the history, heroes and miracles of plastic surgery in mending the accidents of war and birth.
S10 Ep16
7.0
29th Nov 1983
Patients at an Australian institution for the severely handicapped rebel against a pair of over-zealous custodians. This astonishing true story was filmed as a docudrama, written and performed by the patients themselves.
S10 Ep17
7.0
6th Dec 1983
As the American space program celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, NOVA chronicles the effects of the space age on Earth, drawing on popular music, film and television archives from the last quarter of a century.
S10 Ep18
7.0
13th Dec 1983
Will nuclear weapons deter World War III or only make it more likely? NOVA explores the military strategies of the nuclear age, now that the challenge may no longer be to win global war but to prevent it.
S10 Ep19
7.0
20th Dec 1983
This summer's record temperatures may be one of the signs that the earth's atmosphere is warming up. NOVA looks at the climate predictions and hazard warnings for the next century, based on the effects of our soaring consumption of Fossil fuels.
S10 Ep20
7.0
27th Dec 1983
NOVA documents a dramatic encounter in international medicine when an American plane lands in China—equipped with a state-of-the-art eye-operating theater—and two very different medical systems meet eyeball to eyeball.
S10 Ep21
7.0
10th Jan 1984
In a culture laced with alcohol, the search for a scientific understanding of alcoholism is as complex as the disease. In an interdisciplinary report, NOVA looks at the many faces of alcoholism—medical, historical and social.
S11 Ep1
7.0
17th Jan 1984
In the past decade, a number of researchers have begun systematic laboratory research into extrasensory perception—ESP. NOVA considers the claims for—and against—paranormal phenomena and looks at some startling applications in the field of archaeology, criminology and Warfare.
S11 Ep3
7.0
14th Feb 1984
Efforts to control the population explosion are among the burning controversies of our time. NOVA looks at the one-child policy of the People's Republic of China, a revolutionary decree with profound implications for a people accustomed to traditionally large families.
S11 Ep5
7.0
6th Mar 1984
Al Giddings is one of the greatest underwater photographers in the world. In a riveting look at the unearthly beauties and terrors of the seas, NOVA presents a portrait of Giddings at work.
S11 Ep7
7.0
27th Mar 1984
What are America's obligations to its native population? As an important Indian health act comes up for renewal in Congress this Spring (1984), NOVA explores the state of medical care for a proud but vulnerable minority.
S11 Ep8
7.0
3rd Apr 1984
Victor Weisskopf: physicist, lover of music and citizen of the world. NOVA profiles the international statesman of science and learns that one of the giants of 20th century physics is also one of the country's greatest humanists.
S11 Ep11
7.0
23rd Oct 1984
NOVA explores the billion-dollar-plus Mahaweli Irrigation Project in Sri Lanka. Will this high-risk project prove to be a great leap forward or an industrial and sociological disaster?
S11 Ep12
7.0
30th Oct 1984
NOVA explores whether "yellow rain," described by members of the Hmong tribe of Laos, is a form of chemical warfare—or a naturally occurring phenomenon.
S11 Ep14
7.0
13th Nov 1984
NOVA looks at the "blue revolution"—modern advances in the ancient art of raising aquatic animals and plants—in the United States, Japan, Scotland and other countries.
S11 Ep15
7.0
20th Nov 1984
NOVA's sequel to "A Normal Face" examines the merging of technology and art in modern reconstruction and cosmetic surgical techniques.
S11 Ep16
7.0
27th Nov 1984
They have been part of the United States' space program for more than 20 years. Who are these talented, courageous women? NOVA looks at astronaut Sally Ride and her colleagues, how they are trained and their role in NASA's future.
S11 Ep17
7.0
4th Dec 1984
Acclaimed underwater cameraman Al Giddings takes NOVA viewers beneath the waves to explore the fact and fiction surrounding the great white shark.
S12 Ep1
7.0
15th Jan 1985
NOVA explores the fascinating world of Dr. Harold Edgerton, electronics wizard and inventor extraordinaire, whose invention of the electronic strobe, a "magic lamp," has enabled the human eye to see the unseen.
S12 Ep2
7.0
22nd Jan 1985
NOVA presents an in-depth look at India's attempt to use satellite technology to leapfrog into the era of space-age communication and whether it brings benefit or blight to India's villages and rural areas.
S12 Ep4
7.0
5th Feb 1985
A rare look at the beautiful and desolate Wrangel Island-a Soviet possession 300 miles off the coast of Alaska-as seen through the eyes of Soviet Filmmaker and naturalist Yuri Ledin. Wrangel Island is not only the home to Siberian snow geese, polar foxes and Walruses, but serves as the world's largest denning area for Polar bears.
S12 Ep5
7.0
12th Feb 1985
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS, is a deadly disease that has struck down some 2,000 people in the four years since its discovery. NOVA examines how modern science has been unraveling the mystery of this baffling ailment.
S12 Ep6
7.0
19th Feb 1985
Sea shells, Crystals, Honeycombs, Eggs and seeds: They are shaped the way they are for a reason. NOVA takes viewers on a unique journey of discovery to find out why things are shaped the way they are and why they work so well.
S12 Ep7
7.0
26th Feb 1985
It's a mystery just how children acquire language. Does the process begin in the womb? And which comes first, language or thought? NOVA explores the fascinating world of baby talk and reveals the latest theories on this remarkable achievement.
S12 Ep8
7.0
5th Mar 1985
Imagine a bottle with no inside or a number bigger than infinity or parallel lines that meet. Welcome to the world of pure mathematics. NOVA offers a look into a wholly abstract, quirky world of mathematics.
S12 Ep9
7.0
12th Mar 1985
What do Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the painter Raphael and chess champion Bobby Fischer have in common? They were all child prodigies. NOVA explores the current efforts to learn more about the nature of giftedness.
S12 Ep10
7.0
19th Mar 1985
NOVA explores the breeding, migration and survival patterns of the Rocky Mountain elk in a unique film, made totally under natural conditions. Telephoto lenses were used so as not to disturb the animals; filmmakers spent 18 months tracking the elk through the breathtaking Wyoming Rockies.
S12 Ep11
7.0
8th Oct 1985
In NOVA's special sequel to 1984's National Science Test, viewers can match wits with celebrity panelists David Attenborough, Michelle Johnson, Edwin Newman and Alvin Poussaint and a live studio audience. Art Fleming hosts.
S12 Ep12
7.0
15th Oct 1985
NOVA examines worldwide efforts of scientists who employ aggressive agricultural technologies to ensure food for the future.
S12 Ep13
7.0
22nd Oct 1985
Albert Einstein did not live to find the answer. NOVA follows a new generation of physicists in their search to explain the mystery of the universe.
S12 Ep14
7.0
29th Oct 1985
How are the computer and the robot affecting the way we work? NOVA chronicles the new industrial revolution reshaping the American workplace.
S12 Ep15
7.0
5th Nov 1985
NOVA cameras go behind-the-scenes to reveal the new art of illusion, Hollywood-style, focusing on three blockbuster films—Return of the Jedi, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and 2010: The Year We Make Contact.
S12 Ep16
7.0
12th Nov 1985
NOVA charts the progress of an ambitious worldwide health program established to save the lives of millions of children who continue to die from common but curable diseases.
S12 Ep17
7.0
19th Nov 1985
NOVA follows a chase team—a group of scientists who chart deadly Tornadoes—in an effort to learn more about predicting nature's most powerful and elusive weather phenomenon.
S12 Ep18
7.0
26th Nov 1985
NOVA examines current research and its ethical implications as modern medicine confronts the era of human gene therapy.
S12 Ep19
7.0
3rd Dec 1985
NOVA examines the intricate world of nature's construction industry and presents rare footage of unusual habits.
S12 Ep20
7.0
17th Dec 1985
NOVA joins the 50th anniversary celebration of the DC-3—the plane that revolutionized commercial air travel, served gallantly in World War II and is called the most important plane ever built.
S13 Ep1
7.0
21st Jan 1986
NOVA observes worldwide preparations as amateur comet hunters, astronomers and scientists armed with specialized cameras, high powered telescopes and spacecraft look to the heavens in search of the expected arrival in 1986 of Halley's Comet.
S13 Ep2
7.0
28th Jan 1986
Gaia, the Greek word for Earth goddess, also is the name of the controversial hypothesis that life on Earth controls the environment. NOVA explores this provocative theory that challenges conventional ways of thinking about the Earth.
S13 Ep3
7.0
4th Feb 1986
For centuries, the Chinese Kazakh horseman preserved their ancient traditions, refusing to be dominated by either the Chinese or nearby Russian cultures. Today, however, this nomadic tribe has integrated communism into its way of life. NOVA traces the ancient Kazahk lifestyle and looks at how the Chinese cultural Revolution has modernized Kazakh customs.
S13 Ep4
7.0
11th Feb 1986
NOVA explores the incredibly complex emotional development of infants and examines the current theory that early childhood psychological intervention can head off emotional problems later in life.
S13 Ep5
7.0
18th Feb 1986
In July 1982, a 42-year-old addict in a San Jose, California jail became paralyzed—unable to move or talk. His symptoms, caused by a bad batch of synthetic heroin, were indistinguishable from those associated with Parkinson's disease, a degenerative nerve disorder that strikes the elderly. NOVA traces the story of a "designer" drug which could lead to a major medical breakthrough.
S13 Ep6
7.0
25th Feb 1986
When a high number of cancer cases struck the suburban community of Woburn, Massachusetts, the town mobilized to investigate why. The result was a landmark study of the effects of hazardous wastes. NOVA explores the legal and scientific implications of the link between environmental pollution and illness.
S13 Ep7
7.0
4th Mar 1986
NOVA journeys to a remote region of southern Venezuela where the land is alive with spectacular waterfalls, colored by exotic flowers and inhabited by rare species of birds and animals.
S13 Ep9
7.0
18th Mar 1986
When Alexander Fleming discovered the penicillin mold in 1928, he never considered its possible therapeutic value. NOVA explores the "Fleming myth" and reveals the true story of the scientists who worked behind the scenes to develop the wonder drug of the century.
S13 Ep10
7.0
25th Mar 1986
NOVA examines the medical community's alarm as the spread of antibiotic-resistant infection increases, and studies how one hospital fights its own dramatic epidemic.
S13 Ep11
7.0
22nd Apr 1986
NOVA and Frontline combine resources to explore the Strategic Defense Initiative. The two-hour documentary contains the most comprehensive information on "Star Wars" ever produced. Bill Kurtis of WBBM-TV/Chicago hosts.
S13 Ep12
7.0
14th Oct 1986
NOVA joins scientists in Argentina as they help locate kidnapped children and identify thousands of dead in the aftermath of a military reign of terror.
S13 Ep14
7.0
4th Nov 1986
Scientific breakthroughs now make it possible to reproduce ourselves in ways never before imagined. NOVA looks at the medical, legal and moral questions raised by this brave new technology.
S13 Ep15
7.0
11th Nov 1986
What are the prospects for halting or curing the deadliest epidemic ever to challenge modern medicine? NOVA finds cause for both hope and alarm in the battle against AIDS.
S13 Ep18
7.0
2nd Dec 1986
NOVA dips into the sad plight of our coastal waters, where toxic chemicals, raw sewage and disease-carrying microbes are routinely dumped.
S13 Ep19
7.0
9th Dec 1986
Yankee ingenuity has designs on the America's Cup. NOVA goes behind-the-scenes to look at the engineering effort to design a technically advanced sailboat.
S13 Ep20
7.0
16th Dec 1986
Leprosy, a misunderstood disease that has been curable for 40 years, still afflicts some 12 million people. NOVA looks at the tragedy of the disease that need not be.
S13 Ep21
7.0
13th Jan 1987
NOVA explores the ground-breaking experiments that led to the discovery of a tiny sequence of molecules—and more clues to the mystery of how a complete baby develops from a single cell.
S14 Ep2
7.0
27th Jan 1987
NOVA examines a controversial theory that traces our ancestry to a small group of women living in Africa 300,000 years ago.
S14 Ep4
7.0
10th Feb 1987
NOVA cameras travel to Borneo, one of the last habitats of the wild orangutans, where scientists study the endangered ape. Who is observing whom? It is not always clear.
S14 Ep5
7.0
17th Feb 1987
Fifty years after his death, the creator of psychoanalysis is still the subject of intense debate. Was Freud right or wrong? NOVA profiles the enigmatic man and his controversial legacy.
S14 Ep6
7.0
24th Feb 1987
NOVA travels to Antarctica with an emergency scientific expedition to study a baffling "hole" in the Earth's protective ozone layer.
S14 Ep7
7.0
3rd Mar 1987
Harvard chemist George Kistiakowsky was an anti-Bolshevik soldier in 1919 Russia, an atomic bomb scientist at Los Alamos, a presidential advisor in the Eisenhower White House and an arms control activist. Shortly before Kistiakowsky death, he recounts his eventful career to interviewer Carl Sagan.
S14 Ep8
7.0
10th Mar 1987
NOVA presents two hours of the best from its 14 seasons of exciting science coverage. A "talking" chimp, an exploding volcano and a sight-and-sound space video are but a few of the memorable segments. Richard Kiley hosts.
S14 Ep9
7.0
24th Mar 1987
All over the world, farmers are taking more from the soil than they return. NOVA reports on the soil crisis in world agriculture—a plight that has already resulted in massive starvation.
S14 Ep10
7.0
31st Mar 1987
In rich and poor countries alike, once-productive farms are turning to desert because of mismanagement of water resources. NOVA examines the causes and cures of desertification.
S14 Ep11
7.0
7th Apr 1987
In a case study of the strengths and weaknesses of the United States space program, NOVA chronicles the ambitious and long-delayed Galileo mission to Jupiter—still on the ground long after its planned May 1986 launch.
S14 Ep12
7.0
6th Oct 1987
Why do stars explode and how is the energy generated? What is the effect of all those little “aftermath” particles floating through space? Nova: Death of a Star is a 60-minute science documentary that explores rare astronomical events in all their dimensions. The film features the 1987 explosion of a supernova - first observed by a Canadian astronomer in Chile - and discusses its impact on the universe. Witness the celestial phenomena that baffles the scientific community as you travel from South America to Japan to Cleveland. A discussion of supernova neutrinos is a special highlight of the tape.
S14 Ep13
7.0
13th Oct 1987
On the 25th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, NOVA investigates the spy planes and satellites that played a critical role in history and influence arms control today.
S14 Ep14
7.0
20th Oct 1987
Plants produce some of the world's most potent chemicals in the fight against disease. NOVA follows the urgent efforts to track down new medicines in nature.
S14 Ep15
7.0
27th Oct 1987
Is Detroit inventor Stanford Ovshinsky the new Thomas Edison? Japanese industries are betting that the genius behind amorphous materials-a simpler and less expensive alternative to silicon-is onto something big.
S14 Ep16
7.0
3rd Nov 1987
The Panama Canal opened in 1914 after a 30-year effort that dwarfed the building of the pyramids. Historian David McCullough navigates through the canal and tells the story of the human drama behind the engineering feat.
S14 Ep19
7.0
1st Dec 1987
NOVA joins underwater archaeologists as they explore the oldest shipwreck ever excavated, a richly-laden merchant vessel dating from the time of King Tut.
S14 Ep20
7.0
8th Dec 1987
A trail of evidence leading from a medieval abbey to a small town in Connecticut sheds new light on rheumatoid arthritis, a crippling inflammation of the joints with no known cause or cure.
S14 Ep21
7.0
15th Dec 1987
NOVA follows archaeologists as they unearth clues, some 7,000 years old, about an unknown, mysterious and advanced sea-faring people who lived along the North Atlantic coast of the United States and Canada.
S15 Ep1
7.0
19th Jan 1988
Today's sophisticated fighter jets can almost fly themselves, but well-trained pilots are still needed to win air battles. NOVA looks at how planes and pilots are adapting to high technology.
S15 Ep2
7.0
26th Jan 1988
Julia Child introduces NOVA's behind-the-scenes look at how science aids in the creation of snack foods.
S15 Ep4
7.0
9th Feb 1988
Airplane fires are often deadly. NOVA looks at efforts to make fires aboard planes less likely and more survivable.
S15 Ep5
7.0
23rd Feb 1988
In part one of a two-part special presentation, NOVA reports on the trials to determine whether the new drug Interleukin-2—the first to make use of the body's own disease-fighting strategy—will live up to its promise as a pivotal cancer breakthrough. Jane Pauley of NBC News hosts and narrates.
S15 Ep7
7.0
8th Mar 1988
Princeton professor and author Robert Mark tracks down the engineering secrets of some of the beautiful buildings in the world including Notre Dame in Paris, St. Paul in London and the Roman Pantheon.
S15 Ep8
7.0
15th Mar 1988
It was a blustery day in December 1986, and the New England Coast was in the midst of a winter storm, accompanied by strong on-shore gales and an unusually high tide—conditions perfect for stranding whales in the confined shallows of Cape Cod. NOVA recounts this tragic episode and the happy suprise ending for the young whales who survived after being nursed back to health by the New England Aquarium in Boston.
S15 Ep9
7.0
22nd Mar 1988
NOVA explores the life of Srinivasa Ramanujan, a poor clerk from India who astounded mathematicians in the 1910s with his brilliant insight into the world of numbers.
S15 Ep10
7.0
29th Mar 1988
NOVA charts an electronics revolution in the making as Japan and the United States race to develop a material that will conduct electricity at room temperature with zero resistance.
S15 Ep11
7.0
5th Apr 1988
Most cases of polio in this country are caused by the vaccine designed to prevent it. NOVA examines the controvery surrounding the nation's vaccine policy.
S15 Ep12
7.0
6th Sep 1988
Part one of a four-part series on the pioneers of modern surgery relives the early days, when surgery was practiced without the benefit of anaesthesia or antisceptics and patients usually died.
S15 Ep13
7.0
13th Sep 1988
Once unthinkable, open-heart surgery is now an everyday miracle. NOVA looks at the brave doctors and patients who make it possible.
S15 Ep14
7.0
20th Sep 1988
From kidneys to hearts, NOVA examines the daring attempts to replace diseased organs with transplanted ones.
S15 Ep15
7.0
27th Sep 1988
Surgeons have always been eager to help patients, even at the risk of killing them. NOVA looks at some of the excesses of surgery, and at how new drugs and technologies are rendering some operations obsolete.
S15 Ep16
7.0
4th Oct 1988
Science meets art in the controversial effort to restore Michelangelo's famous Sistine Chapel frescoes.
S15 Ep17
7.0
11th Oct 1988
Thirty years after Sputnik, the United States space program is mired in uncertainty, while the Russians, Europeans, Japanese and others sprint onward and upward.
S15 Ep18
7.0
18th Oct 1988
NOVA examines the troubling question of scientific fraud: How prevalent is it? Who commits it? And what happens when the perpetrators are caught?
S15 Ep21
7.0
6th Dec 1988
The life of the shy, intelligent black bear in the wild—foraging, mating, playing and constantly preparing for its remarkable hibernation—is captured for the first time on film by NOVA.
S15 Ep22
7.0
13th Dec 1988
NOVA embarks on a 10-year project to profile—in its entirety—the education of a doctor. In the premiere episode, we follow a handful of students as they start their freshman year at Harvard Medical School under a revolutionary program emphasizing early clinical contact with patients.
S16 Ep1
7.0
17th Jan 1989
Was the searing summer of 1988 a taste of things to come? NOVA looks at the greenhouse effect, which portends higher temperatures, rising sea levels and other environmental disasters.
S16 Ep3
7.0
31st Jan 1989
NOVA explains "chaos," a new science that is making surprising sense out of chaotic phenomena in nature, from the weather to brain waves.
S16 Ep4
7.0
14th Feb 1989
NOVA goes to the Soviet Union for an inside investigation of the world's most catastrophic nuclear power accident with correspondent Bill Kurtis.
S16 Ep5
7.0
21st Feb 1989
In an Idaho classroom, teacher Phil Gerrish puts an unorthodox interpretation on the day's biology lesson. As students take notes, he explains that creationism is a valid scientific explanation for the origin on life. Once relying solely on the literal word of the Bible to make their case, creationists now argue that the scientific evidence is on their side. NOVA reports on this new twist in the long-running battle between creationism and evolution.
S16 Ep6
7.0
28th Feb 1989
NOVA explores the importance of the Gulf Stream to ocean life, climate and human history.
S16 Ep7
7.0
7th Mar 1989
In this two-part series, NOVA investigates the mystery of Easter Island in the South Pacific. Who built its celebrated statues and why?
S16 Ep8
7.0
7th Mar 1989
In the second part of this two-part series, NOVA explores ancient legends hold the clues to the violent history of the South Pacific's Easter Island.
S16 Ep9
7.0
21st Mar 1989
Scientific detectives test their ingenuity in the effort to find underground oil deposits.
S16 Ep11
7.0
3rd Oct 1989
Actor Judd Hirsch narrates this behind-the scenes look at what makes New York City tick. Water, power and waste are the critical systems that usually work, but sometimes break down with disastrous consequences.
S16 Ep12
7.0
10th Oct 1989
In this profile of the former Surgeon General, NOVA follows events as they unfold in a unique behind-the-scenes account of a man who speaks his mind on AIDS, smoking and abortion.
S16 Ep14
7.0
24th Oct 1989
The atomic bomb might have ended World War II, but radar was the quiet miracle that won battles. NOVA tells the little-known wartime history of radar.
S16 Ep15
7.0
31st Oct 1989
Biologists around the world gear up to decode the three-billion-letter genetic message that describes how humans are made. Ethicists warn that it may not be such a good idea.
S16 Ep18
7.0
21st Nov 1989
East and West came into direct conflict over trade and power in the 19th century. The West won. NOVA explores how Japan was later able to master Western methods, while China was not. Part three of a four part series.
S16 Ep19
7.0
5th Dec 1989
The 1988 Yellowstone fire may have been one of the worst in human memory, but nature has had eons of experience with such events. NOVA accompanies scientists who are studying the suprisingly rapid recovery from the blaze.
S16 Ep20
7.0
12th Dec 1989
NOVA re-enacts a classic case of classroom detection when English schoolboys track down a secret Soviet launch site. Docudrama.
S17 Ep1
7.0
9th Jan 1990
NOVA reports on the 100-year-old legacy of pollution from mining that poisons the once-pristine waters of the Rocky Mountain states. Acid Rain and economic development also contribute to stress on the West's scarce water supply.
S17 Ep2
7.0
23rd Jan 1990
Using some of the largest machines ever built on earth, American and European physicists race to discover one of the most fundamental and most elusive objects in nature—the top quark.
S17 Ep3
7.0
6th Feb 1990
Sixty-five years after attempts to ban them, chemical weapons pose more of a threat than ever. NOVA looks at the problem of controlling substances that are easily produced and cruelly effective.
S17 Ep4
7.0
13th Feb 1990
NOVA examines an alarming nuclear waste problem at the Hanfrod Nuclear Reservation in eastern Washington state, where 45 years of mismanagement in the nuclear weapons industry will cost billions to correct.
S17 Ep6
7.0
20th Mar 1990
China in the 13th century was the richest, most powerful, most technologically advanced civilization on earth. NOVA looks at how China achieved what it did, and what in Chinese politics, culture and economy kept it from doing more. Part one of a four part series.
S17 Ep7
7.0
27th Mar 1990
NOVA examines the extraordinary transformation that propelled Europe outward into the world from the 15th to 18th centuries, while China remained the insular middle kingdom. Part two of a four part series.
S17 Ep8
7.0
3rd Apr 1990
Ever wonder how junk mail finds you? NOVA investigates the hidden world of direct marketing, pointing out how advertisers know a lot more about us than we think.
S17 Ep9
7.0
10th Apr 1990
NOVA covers China's long road to economic and technological equality with the West, punctuated by frequent setbacks such as the 1989 massacre of pro-democractic demonstrations in Beijing. Part four of a four part series.
S17 Ep11
7.0
9th Oct 1990
NOVA visits Neptune, the planet that took Voyager 12 years to reach. Mysteries abound in and around this big, blue world at the outer limits of the solar system. Actor Patrick Stewart hosts.
S17 Ep12
7.0
16th Oct 1990
NOVA chronicles the Voyager space mission—from Earth to the ends of the solar system. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and dozens of moons star in this epic voyage of exploration. Actor Patrick Stewart hosts.
S17 Ep13
7.0
23rd Oct 1990
Sixty-five years after attempts to ban them, chemical weapons pose more of a threat than ever. NOVA looks at the problem of controlling substances that are easily produced and cruelly effective.
S17 Ep14
7.0
30th Oct 1990
NOVA examines the troubled past and promising future of blimps, zeppelins, cyclocranes and other species of airships. There's life in the old gasbags yet.
S17 Ep15
7.0
6th Nov 1990
NOVA looks at the high-stakes quest to predict earthquakes. Despite past disappointments, geologists still hope to divine the clues that precede nature's ultimate upheavals.
S17 Ep16
7.0
13th Nov 1990
Robotic weapons that seek out and destroy ships, planes, and other targets are the wave of the future. NOVA questions whether their proliferation may spell an end to superpower invincibility.
S17 Ep18
7.0
27th Nov 1990
Ever wonder how junk mail finds you? NOVA investigates the hidden world of direct marketing, pointing out how advertisers know a lot more about us than we think.
S17 Ep20
7.0
18th Dec 1990
NOVA tracks a mysterious disease that suddenly and fatally attacks the children of a small Brazilian town. Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta are called in to crack the case.
S18 Ep1
7.0
8th Jan 1991
NOVA returns to Mount St. Helens a decade after its cataclysmic eruption to learn how nature is recovering from the disaster.
S1 Ep1
6.6
3rd Mar 1974
NOVA premieres on public television with a behind-the-scenes look at the making of a nature film. Oxford Scientific Films Unit shows how it tackles such problems as filming a wood-wasp laying its egg inside trees, the hatching of a chick and the courtship rituals of the stickleback.
S1 Ep2
7.4
10th Mar 1974
NOVA explores the mighty Colorado River which today has become the life-blood of the Southwest, providing water and electricity to the farms and cities of California, Nevada, and Arizona. The program examines the political expediency and technological over-optimism that has led to some major miscalculations of the river's capacity.
S1 Ep3
9.4
17th Mar 1974
NOVA explores the impact of whaling and the goods it produces for the industry, verses the grace and beatury of this intelligent mammal of the sea.
S1 Ep4
7.8
24th Mar 1974
Does life exist outside this planet? The Viking lander will set down on Mars in July 1976 to try to find out just that. NOVA explores how life started on Earth and examines the Viking Lander being built in its germ-free room before starting its long journey.
S1 Ep5
7.0
31st Mar 1974
How does a primitive nomadic tribe of the Amazon basin cope with the encroachment of Western settlers? NOVA looks at both sides of the story, revealing the misunderstandings between the two cultures.
S1 Ep6
8.5
7th Apr 1974
Medicine was transformed in the 19th century by the discovery of anesthesia; surgery, until then hasty, bloody and completely unable to deal with internal disorders, subsequently took its place in the front rank of medical practice. This NOVA docudrama depicts the pioneers of medicine.
S1 Ep7
9.0
14th Apr 1974
In 1054 AD, the Chinese recorded the explosion of a star so bright that it lit the sky for three weeks, even during the day. It was the explosion of a dying star that was bigger than our sun. NOVA explores this mysterious explosion that led to the discovery of Crab Nebula.
S1 Ep8
8.5
21st Apr 1974
Birds migrate in search of perpetual summer, sometimes traveling as much as 20,000 miles every year. NOVA uses radar to track and identify migrating birds that travel at night, focusing on how they coose routes tat avoid bad weather and make the best of prevailing winds—information that can aid meteorologists.
S1 Ep9
8.0
28th Apr 1974
The advance of medicine depends inevitably on the testing of experimental procedures on human volunteers from either the healthy or the sick. Yet such procedures are often dangerous, and may not be of direct benefit to the subject. NOVA examines how individuals' interests are safeguarded, and asks, under what circumstances experiments should be conducted on children.
S1 Ep10
7.0
5th May 1974
Washoe is a chimp more like a person: she talks with her hands. NOVA visits with Washoe and her teachers—Professor Allen Gardner and Dr. Trixie Gardner—to learn more about this unusual animal.
S1 Ep11
7.0
12th May 1974
When Paul Kammerer committed suicide in 1926, it was taken by most of his fellow biologists as a tacit admission of guilt that he had faked his experiments purporting to show the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Arthur Koestler joins NOVA in an in-depth examination of Kammerer's infamous experiment.
S1 Ep12
8.2
19th May 1974
Nuclear fusion offers the promises of an unlimited, clean source of energy. But achieving fusion has proved one of the most difficult and elusive goals of the physicist. NOVA tells the story of the twists and turns and the international competition along the road toward the achievement of fusion; and details the recent breakthroughs which seem at last to have brought it within reach.
S1 Ep13
8.0
26th May 1974
Who were the people that built the first cities -- complete with apartment blocks -- in North America? They were the Anasazi Indians, who lived in the Southwest for some eight or nine thousand years and who then, in about 1300 AD, abruptly abandoned their cities and apparently disappeared. NOVA traces the steps of this ancient sophisticated culture.
Loading...
The first episode of NOVA aired on March 03, 1974.
The last episode of NOVA aired on November 20, 2024.
There are 992 episodes of NOVA.
There are 51 seasons of NOVA.
Yes.
NOVA is set to return for future episodes.