Have you ever wondered what’s going on inside your pet’s mind? In What Are Animals Thinking? find out how a beehive resembles a human brain and whether your dog is really feeling guilty when it gives you that famous “guilty look.”
Producers: PBS Distribution
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NOVA scienceNOW: What will the future be like?
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.
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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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NOVA: Ultimate Mars Challenge Blu-ray
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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NOVA scienceNOW: How smart can we get?
How Smart Can We Get? How do you get a genius brain? Is it all in the genes? Or is it hard work? Episodes include: Einstein’s Brain; Mystery of the Savant Brain; What is Intelligence?; and Profile: Sian Beilock.
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NOVA: Hurricane Sandy: Inside the Megastorm
Was Hurricane Sandy a freak combination of weather systems? Or are hurricanes increasing in intensity due to a warming climate? How did this perfect storm make search and rescue so dangerous? “Inside the Megastorm” takes viewers moment by moment through Hurricane Sandy, its impacts and the future of storm protection. Through first person accounts from those who survived, and from experts and scientists, “Inside the Megastorm” gives scientific context to a new breed of storms.
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NOVA: Doomsday Volcanoes
n April 2010, the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano turned much of the northern hemisphere into an ash-strewn no-fly zone, stranding hundreds of thousands of travelers. But Eyjafjallajökull was just the start. Now, an Icelandic volcano ten times bigger, 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 will be global. As CGI takes us inside these geological monsters, 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. Could we be plunged into years of cold and famine? What can we do to prepare for the disaster to come?
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NOVA: Decoding Neanderthals
Over 60,000 years ago, the first modern humans – people physically identical to us today – left their African homeland and entered Europe, then a bleak and inhospitable continent in the grip of the Ice Age. But when they arrived, they were not alone: the stocky, powerfully built Neanderthals had already been living there for hundreds of thousands of years. So what happened when the first modern humans encountered the Neanderthals? Did they make love or war? That question has tantalized generations of scholars and seized the popular imagination. Then, in 2010, a team led by geneticist Svante Paabo announced stunning news. Not only had they reconstructed much of the Neanderthal genome – an extraordinary technical feat that would have seemed impossible only a decade ago – but their analysis showed that “we” modern humans had interbred with Neanderthals, leaving a small but consistent signature of Neanderthal genes behind in everyone outside Africa today. In “Decoding Neanderthals,” NOVA explores the implications of this exciting discovery. In the traditional view, Neanderthals differed from “us” in behavior and capabilities as well as anatomy. But were they really mentally inferior, as inexpressive and clumsy as the cartoon caveman they inspired? NOVA explores a range of intriguing new evidence for Neanderthal self-expression and language, all pointing to the fact that we may have seriously underestimated our mysterious, long-vanished human cousins.
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NOVA: Rise of the Drones
NOVA reveals the amazing technologies that make drones so powerful. From cameras that can capture every detail of an entire city at a glance, to swarming robots that can make decisions on their own, to giant air frames that can stay aloft for days on end, drones are changing our relationship to war, surveillance and each other. Discover the cutting-edge technologies that are propelling us toward a new chapter in aviation history.
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NOVA: Ancient Computers
An unpromising lump of metal found in a 2,000-year-old shipwreck turns out to be an extraordinary treasure: the world’s first computer. NOVA follows the ingenious detective work that painstakingly discovered the truth about the ancient Greek device: it was an astonishingly sophisticated astronomical calculator and eclipse predictor, unrivaled until the era of modern science and believed to be from the workshop of Archimedes.