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Countries: US

  • Solar Energy – Saved by the Sun

    In the face of global warming and other potentially harmful climate changes, there’s new urgency about finding a solution to our uncertain energy future. Could it be time to take solar energy seriously again? Breakthroughs in new materials and ingenious designs for solar collectors are transforming the technology into a vastly cheaper, more efficient alternative. NOVA presents the latest thinking from solar enthusiasts and skeptics as it investigates these cutting-edge research developments. The film will introduce viewers to the scientists and businesspeople who are racing to make solar power practical-for lighting and heating, and for running power plants.

    WG41709

  • Pocahontas Revealed

    On May 13, 1607, three English sailing vessels drop anchor beside a small island fringed by swamps in the James River, Virginia. On board: 104 colonists who will establish the first successful English settlement in the New World at Jamestown. The exploits of one colonist — the brash, swashbuckling John Smith; the venerable chief Powhatan; and his infatuated daughter Pocahontas will be recited, retold, and embroidered until they gather the status of an epic founding myth of the new nation.
    Now, 400 years later, science is investigating the truth behind the myth. Virginia archaeologists recently discovered the site of Chief Powhatan’s capital, Werowocomoco, some 17 miles from Jamestown. This is the very spot where the smitten Pocahontas begged her father to spare the neck of the captive John Smith – or so Smith claimed. Join NOVA on this exclusive investigation of the archaeological clues that are revealing the Native American side of the Jamestown story for the first time.

  • Bone Diggers

    During the Ice Age-a million or more years ago-Australia was home to a zoo of extraordinary giant animals, including eight-foot-tall kangaroos, wombats the size of hippos, snakes that were three feet in diameter, and a horned tortoise as big as a Volkswagen. But none was quite as bizarre or fearsome as Thylacoleo, the meat-eating marsupial lion. Pound for pound, this creature had the most powerful bite of any mammal, living or extinct. But even though it was the king of ancient Australian predators, Thylacoleo was eventually toppled from its throne, dying out along with all the rest of the outsized beasts. What happened to drive so many extraordinary megabeasts into oblivion?

  • Earthquake!

    Prediction is the siren song of earthquake studies-the alluring problem on which reputations can be won or wrecked. Not just careers, but million of lives and billions of dollars depend on the ability of scientists to say just when and where the earth will move. Follow as NOVA takes a look at the high-stakes quest to predict earthquakes.

  • The Four-Winged Dinosaur

    Imagine a moment from the age of dinosaurs frozen in time: primitive birds, bees, insects, early mammals, the first known flowering plants, and of course, dinosaurs, all exquisitely preserved in fine-grained fossils from China’s Liaoning province. Volcanic eruptions in this “dinosaur Pompeii” killed and buried victims quickly, capturing soft, fragile features not normally preserved in fossils – notably the feathers on animals that had never been known to have them before. Now, with state-of-the-art animation to bring this lost world to life, NOVA investigates the mysterious feathered dinosaurs that are challenging old ideas about the origin of bird flight. The central character in this drama is a strange little dinosaur with wings on its legs as well as its arms. The pigeon-sized Microraptor is the smallest adult dinosaur ever found, perhaps the first known tree-dweller. But could it really fly? Is it the key to understanding the origin of flight or merely an evolutionary dead end unrelated to the ancestry of birds? To help solve the riddle, NOVA assembles a team of top paleontologists, aeronautical engineers, and paleo-artists to reconstruct Microraptor and build a sophisticated model for a wind tunnel experiment. The results have surprising implications for long-accepted ideas about how winged flight began.

  • Astrospies

    Millions remember the countdowns, launchings, splashdowns and parades as the U.S. raced the USSR to the Moon in the 1960s. Few know that both superpowers ran parallel covert space programs to launch military astronauts on spying missions. In Astrospies, NOVA delves into the untold story of this top-secret space race, which might easily have turned into a shooting war in orbit. In Astrospies, viewers meet the elite corps of U.S. military astronauts, several of whom have never before talked about their clandestine training missions during the 1960s. As seen in footage broadcast for the first time, they practiced in full-scale mock-ups of the spy station, complete with spy cameras capable of resolving three-inch objects on the earth below. While the Apollo astronauts enjoyed ticker-tape parades, their astrospy colleagues trained in total obscurity until cost overruns and the new satellite technology doomed the program. Meanwhile, in response, the Soviets actually built three manned spy stations named Almaz and flew five missions during the 1970s. NOVA gains first-time access to a surviving Almaz station in a restricted Russian space facility, where an ex-cosmonaut demonstrates the high-powered spy cameras that were trained on U.S. cities. With a cannon designed to destroy hostile satellites-or attack American astrospies-Almaz was probably the only manned spacecraft ever equipped for space war. Astrospies is co-produced by Emmy Award winning producer Scott Willis and investigative journalist James Bamford, acclaimed best selling author of The Puzzle Palace and Body of Secrets.

  • Secrets of the Parthenon

    Erected by the ancient Greeks as a temple to Athena, the Parthenon has served as a church, a fortress, an ammunition dump, and the model for countless banks, courthouses, and museums across the world. It has been shot at, exploded, set on fire, rocked by earthquakes, looted for its magnificent sculptures, and subjected to restorations that have been termed “catastrophic.” Surprisingly, despite much abuse and renown as an icon of Western civilization, the question of how the Parthenon was built has been largely ignored until recently. Thanks to the Greek government’s $10 billion restoration program, scholars are finally probing the enigmas of its planning and construction. With unprecedented access, NOVA presents the inside story of the official restoration, which reaches far beyond the challenges and controversies of conserving one of the world’s best-known buildings. The researchers are confronting some truly monumental riddles: How did the ancient Athenians build their great temple with incredible precision in a mere eight years? How did they manage to incorporate subtle, eye-pleasing distortions into the Parthenon’s layout, such that there are few straight lines or right angles to be seen? And, most baffling of all, how did they accomplish all of this without an overall building plan or blueprint, which would be indispensable to a modern architect?

  • Missing in MIG Alley

    In 1950, during the Korean War, Soviet and U.S. jet fighters clashed in the fastest dogfights ever seen. The most advanced planes of their day, the MiG-15 dueled with the F-86 Sabre over MiG Alley, a notorious strip of airspace along the Korean-Chinese border. With rare archival footage and interviews with veteran aces, NOVA puts viewers in the cockpit to experience the danger and drama of MiG Alley, revealing how the Sabre and the MiG acquired their reputations as fearsome fighting machines.
    Missing in MiG Alley is also a gripping human story. Over 30 U.S. and British pilots disappeared during combats over MiG Alley, leaving their family members today with painful unanswered questions. NOVA traces the efforts of U.S. government investigators, forensic experts, and family members to determine the missing pilots’ fate, drawing on eyewitness interviews and newly opened Soviet archives. In a few cases, closure has finally come to families more than a half-century after the ferocious dogfights that claimed their loved ones.

  • Master of the Killer Ants

    In the Mandaras Mountains of northern Cameroon live the Mofu – an ancient tribe that shares its homes and crops with insects in a mutual balance of survival. But this year, a terrible drought has hit the region and a legion of termites has invaded their huts and granaries. To drive them out, the Mofu shaman calls for help from Jaglavak, a ferocious red army ant protected by a thick carapace and armed with pincers that cut, tear and slice through anything in its path.
    Filmed in an intimate style that reveals the traditional customs of the Mofu shaman and the villagers who depend on him, Master of the Killer Ants also uses stunning macro photography to go underground, giving us a terrifying up-close look at a termite’s fortress and the war that rages between termites and Jaglavak. Winner of best film awards at the Shanghai Film Festival and Japan’s Wildlife Film Festival.

  • Judgment Day – Intelligent Design on Trial

    This program captures the turmoil that tore apart the community of Dover, Pennsylvania in a landmark battle over the teaching of evolution in public schools. In 2004, the Dover school board ordered science teachers to read a statement to high school biology students about an alternative to Darwinist theory of evolution called intelligent design the idea that life is too complex to have evolved naturally and so must have been designed by an intelligent agent. The teachers refused to comply, and both parents and teachers filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing the school board of violating the constitutional separation of church and state.
    Now, NOVA explores the arguments by lawyers and expert witnesses in riveting detail and provides an eye-opening crash course on questions such as: What is evolution? and is intelligent design a scientifically valid alternative? Featuring trial reenactments based on court transcripts and interviews with key participants and expert scientists, this gripping program presents the celebrated case of Kitzmiller v. Dover School District.