There’s something very odd going on in space something that shouldn’t be possible. It is as though vast swathes of the universe are being hoovered up by a vast and unseen celestial vacuum cleaner. Sasha Kaslinsky, the scientist who discovered the phenomenon, is understandably nervous: ‘It left us quite unsettled and jittery’ he says, ‘because this is not something we planned to find’.
The series’ first hour, Earth is Born, gives viewers a spectacularglimpse 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.
Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go "on the Record", this special explores sightings that are supported by numerous creditable sources, from Air Force and commercial pilots, FAA officials, investigators, military Generals and NASA officials as well as hard data: photos, film, radar and audio recordings. This evidence presents a startling look at the very real possibility of alien visitation. With the proliferation of video and photo technology in the modern era, reports of these events along with visual evidence have only increased. 95% of UFO sightings are false, resulting either from misidentification or deliberate hoaxes. But the other 5% cannot be dismissed.
What are we made of? What was there before the beginning? Are we really alone? Is there a creator? These questions have been pondered by the most brilliant minds of the human race. Now, science has evolved to the point where hard facts and evidence may be able to provide us with answers. It’s perhaps the biggest, most controversial mystery in the cosmos. Did our Universe just come into being by random chance, or was it created by a God who nurtures and sustains all life? The latest science is showing that the four forces governing our universe are phenomenally finely tuned. So finely that it had led many to the conclusion that someone, or something, must have calibrated them; a belief further backed up by evidence that everything in our universe may emanate from one extraordinarily elegant and beautiful design known as the E8 Lie Group. While skeptics hold that these findings are neither conclusive nor evidence of a divine creator, some cutting edge physicists are already positing who this God is: an alien gamester who’s created our world as the ultimate SIM game for his own amusement. It’s an answer as compelling as it is disconcerting.
From a distance, our galaxy would look like a flat spiral,some 100,000 light years across, with pockets of gas, clouds of dust, and about 400 billion stars rotating around the galaxys center. Thick dust and blinding starlight have long obscured our vision into the mysterious inner regions of the galactic center. And yet, the clues have been piling up, that something important, something strange is going on in there. Astronomers tracking stars in the center ofthe galaxy have found the best proof to date that black holes exist.
Athens was a democratic city built on slave labor, manipulated by aristocrats, where women wore the veil and men pursued a bloody foreign policy, slaughtering thousands in the pursuit of the world’s first democratic empire. Bettany Hughes searches for the truth about the Golden Age of Ancient Athens, investigating how a barren rock wedged between the East and West became the first democracy 2,500 years ago.
Life in Cold Blood looks at reptiles and amphibians, bringing into focus a series of creatures very much of all shapes and sizes. the filmmakers delve into the lives and mannerisms of its subjects with some quite stunning camera work, bringing to our screens things that have quite simply never been seen before.
Bert Hölldobler is a renowned authority on these amazing tiny animals. He has dedicated his life, travelling around the world, to understand them. Through his eyes and his words we will be transported into the world of the ants. A world more wonderful and bizarre than any science fiction. Ants will reveal this alien world for the first time, in the company of a true authority and enthusiast.
Featuring exclusive footage of experiments that show how our choices can be confounded by temperature, warped by post-rationalisation and even manipulated by the future, Horizon presents a guide to better decision making, and introduces you to Mathematician Garth Sundem, who is convinced that conclusions can best be reached using simple math and a pencil! Assuming that we haven’t already been hijacked by our surroundings or led astray by our subconscious!
Over three thousand years ago, in the fertile jungles of lowland Mexico, the first civilization in the Americas was born. Five hundred years before Rome was founded, the Olmec were building great cities with pyramids and ball courts. Considered by most archaeologists to be the mother culture of Mexico, the roots of the later Maya and Aztec cultures lie with the Olmec.
