When Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, every living thing in the blast zone was buried beneath 300 feet of avalanche debris, covered with steaming mud, and finally, topped with a superheated layer of frothy rock from deep within the earth. It seemed as though Mount St. Helens might remain a wasteland forever. Then, to everyone’s surprise, life began to bloom again. Over the course of thirty years, biologist Charlie Crisafulli has been documenting the dramatic return of plant and animal life to the barren landscape. But he has also tracked a new threat: The mountain, like the wildlife, is coming back to life. Soon after the 1980 eruption, new lava was bubbling up to the surface, and in 2004, a flurry of explosions blasted steam and ash thousands of feet into the air over Mount St. Helens. What force is driving this baffling pattern? Using GPS, magnetic mapping, and more, geologists are tracking the movement of magma deep within the volcano and revealing a hidden lattice of faults that lies beneath the volatile landscape. NOVA presents a pioneering look at the interplay between biology and geology that may help scientists predict future volcanic eruptions.
Languages: English
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Becoming Human — Unearthing Our Earliest Ancestors – Home Use
Why the AV version? Because it provides additional usage options for PBS videos. AV versions come with limited performance rights so they can be shown in classrooms, at PTA meetings, during after school programs, and transmitted on a closed-circuit system within a building or on a single campus. They also can be enjoyed in admission-free public screenings, which also makes them ideal for use by library patrons and businesses involved in community clubs and organizations.
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Becoming Human — Unearthing Our Earliest Ancestors – Public Performance
Why the AV version? Because it provides additional usage options for PBS videos. AV versions come with limited performance rights so they can be shown in classrooms, at PTA meetings, during after school programs, and transmitted on a closed-circuit system within a building or on a single campus. They also can be enjoyed in admission-free public screenings, which also makes them ideal for use by library patrons and businesses involved in community clubs and organizations.
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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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DNA – Secret of Photo 51
NOVA investigates the shocking truth behind the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA and presents a moving portrait of a brilliant woman in an era of male-dominated science-Rosalind Franklin. Watson and Crick had seen a crucial piece of her data without her permission, an X-ray image, ”Photo 51,” that proved to be a vital clue in their decoding of the double helix. Narrated by Sigourney Weaver.
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First Flower
In a vivid story, blooming with beauty and scientific mystery, NOVA goes hunting for the world’s earliest flower. Although flowers have long been at the center of human life, gracing our gardens and expressing our emotions-not to mention providing us with food, crops, and medicines-the question of how flowers evolved has long baffled scientists. Charles Darwin called it “an abominable mystery.”
But now a tantalizing fossil that bloomed during the reign of the dinosaurs has surfaced in China. In First Flower, NOVA probes the controversy ignited by this unique fossil, and pursues the trail through the stunning lost world of China’s remote Hengduan Mountains. In this spectacular landscape-dubbed the “Mother of All Gardens”-lie the origins of dozens of plants we take for granted today, including forsythia, clematis, rhododendrons, dogwoods, primroses, and the regal lily. How did they reach our gardens? The detective story behind the evolution of our favorite flowers continues to unfold. Join NOVA on the trail of botany’s most beguiling mystery. -
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
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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?