Mobile phones that read your mind? Video games that can cure cancer? Wearable robots that give you the strength of Ironman? David Pogue predicts which technologies will transform our daily lives. These advancements are already taking shape in laboratories around the world – and gadgets that once were purely science fiction are on the verge of becoming as common as the iPhones and Androids Pogue reviews every day.
Grade levels: Adult
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NOVA: Ultimate Mars Challenge
Mars Curiosity. It could be NASA’s last chance to set wheels down on Mars until the end of the decade: This August, a rover named Curiosity will touch down inside Mars’ Gale Crater, carrying 10 new instruments that will advance the quest for signs that Mars might have once been suitable for life. But Curiosity’s mission is risky. After parachuting through the Martian atmosphere at twice the speed of sound, Curiosity will be gently lowered to the planet’s surface by a “sky crane.” This first-of-its-kind system has been tested on Earth, but will it work on Mars? With inside access to the massive team of scientists and engineers responsible for Curiosity’s on-the-ground experiments, NOVA will be there for the exhilarating moments after Curiosity’s landing-and for the spectacular discoveries to come. But no rover does it alone: Curiosity will be joining a team that includes the Mars Odyssey, Express, and Reconnaissance orbiters, along with the tireless Opportunity rover. As we reveal the dynamic new picture of Mars that these explorers are painting, we will discover the deep raised by forty years of roving Mars: How do we define life? How does life begin and what does it need to survive? Are we alone in the universe?
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Telescope: Hunting the Edge of Space DVD – Home Use
Hunting the Edge of Space, celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope, and takes viewers on a global adventure of discovery, exploring the rich history of the telescope. Then NOVA turns its attention to a new generation of ever-larger telescopes, poised to reveal answers to longstanding questions about our universe, and, in turn, to raise new questions.
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Telescope: Hunting the Edge of Space DVD – Public Performance
Hunting the Edge of Space, celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope, and takes viewers on a global adventure of discovery, exploring the rich history of the telescope. Then NOVA turns its attention to a new generation of ever-larger telescopes, poised to reveal answers to longstanding questions about our universe, and, in turn, to raise new questions.
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scienceNOW – Can We Make it to Mars? – Public Performance
This NOVA scienceNOW poses the question – Can We make it to Mars? – and host Neil deGrasse Tyson tackles one of science’s major challenges in each episode. He will guide us as he explores dramatic discoveries and the frontiers of research that connect each central, provocative mystery. Program episodes include Space Dangers – A trip to Mars and back could take two to three years. Can humans survive the journey, fraught with deadly meteoroids, bone and muscle wasting, and perilous levels of radiation? Scientists are developing new ways to keep astronauts alive, using novel meteoroid-proof materials, artificial gravity, and exercise. But will they be enough?
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scienceNOW – Can We Make it to Mars? – Home Use
This NOVA scienceNOW poses the question – Can We make it to Mars? – and host Neil deGrasse Tyson tackles one of science’s major challenges in each episode. He will guide us as he explores dramatic discoveries and the frontiers of research that connect each central, provocative mystery. Program episodes include Space Dangers – A trip to Mars and back could take two to three years. Can humans survive the journey, fraught with deadly meteoroids, bone and muscle wasting, and perilous levels of radiation? Scientists are developing new ways to keep astronauts alive, using novel meteoroid-proof materials, artificial gravity, and exercise. But will they be enough?
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The Perfect Corpse – Public Performance
Central Ireland’s waterlogged landscape is no ordinary ground. Here, the moist earth halts decomposition, perfectly preserving stunning evidence of brutal ritualistic killings, corpses from the prehistoric Iron Age, over 2,000 years ago. These are not skeletons or mummies, but the soft tissue and remains of people trapped in time. NOVA is granted exclusive access to the investigation of two recently unearthed and exceedingly rare bog bodies.
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Lightning!
Lightning! takes you on a high-voltage trip into the most electrically charged weather in the world–culminating in a dazzling lightning show set to music that rivals the most extraordinary fireworks display. The program also visits with some of lightning’s tragic victims who thought they were out of harm’s way. Lightning’s fleeting rivers of electricity strike Earth 6,000 times a minute; jolt every commercial airplane one to two times a year; wipe out power to entire cities; hit 1,000 people annually; and account on average for more deaths than hurricanes and tornadoes put together. Join the scientists as they tempt nature by creating the world’s tallest lightning rod, a wire leading thousands of feet into storm clouds, which triggers awe-inspiring thunderbolts a few hundred feet from the observers–and creates a chunk of “petrified” lightning. “I think lightning fascinates everyone,” says “stormchaser” Dan Davis. “It’s a personification of the intensity, the chaos and the unpredictability of nature.”
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Odyssey of Life: The Ultimate Journey
From the maker of The Miracle of Life comes another astounding glimpse into the mysteries of life before birth. Once again, the micro-photography of Lennart Nilsson takes you into the hidden world of life in the womb, from the dance of the egg and sperm to the emergence of our first tiny features to the thrill of birth.
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Doctors’ Diaries
Over the past 21 years, NOVA has followed a group of seven doctors from their first day at Harvard Medical School in 1987. All young, bright and accomplished, none of them could have predicted what it would take, personally and professionally, to become a member of the medical tribe. In this special two-part program, NOVA returns one last time to get an update on the kind of doctors, and people, they have become.