Uncover the secrets of ancient civilizations as NOVA journeys to five archaeological sites where teams of experts use traditional techniques to test their hypotheses. Stonehenge watches a band of experts move, raise and cap a structure like the mysterious Stonehenge– armed with Stone Age tools. Inca explores magnificent mountainside citadels– and marvels as villagers create a 150-foot suspension bridge using nothing but grass. Obelisk faces the challenge of quarrying, chiseling, hauling and mounting an obelisk— using stones, ropes, logs and dirt. Colosseum tries out two possible designs for the canopy that once covered the Colosseum– one of them borrowed from ancient ships. Pyramid joins the race to erect an 18-foot stone pyramid in three weeks– while testing out some clever construction theories.
Special DVD features include: materials and activities for educators, access to the NOVA Web site, scene selections and closed captions. 300 min on 3 DVDs
Producers: WGBH
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Secrets of Lost Empires Set – 1
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Secrets of Lost Empires – Colosseum and Stonehenge
Uncover the secrets of ancient civilizations as NOVA journeys to an archaeological site where teams of experts use traditional techniques to test their hypotheses. Watch a band of experts move, raise, and cap a structure like the mysterious Stonehenge– armed with Stone Age tools.
Special DVD features include: materials and activities for educators, access to the NOVA Web site, scene selections and closed captions. 120 min on 1 disc -
Secrets of Lost Empires – Inca
Uncover the secrets of ancient civilizations as NOVA journeys to an archaeological site where teams of experts use traditional techniques to test their hypotheses. Explore the magnificent mountainside citadels– and marvel as villagers create a 150-foot suspension bridge using nothing but grass. Special DVD features include: materials and activities for educators, access to the NOVA Web site, scene selections and closed captions.
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Secrets of Lost Empires – Pyramid and Obelisk
Uncover the secrets of ancient civilizations as NOVA journeys to an archaeological site where teams of experts use traditional techniques to test their hypotheses. Face the challenge of quarrying, chiseling, hauling, and mounting an obelisk– using stones, ropes, logs, and dirt.
Special DVD features include: materials and activities for educators, access to the NOVA Web site, scene selections and closed captions. -
Physics – The Elegant Universe and Beyond
The Elegant Universe
Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory
Join host Brian Greene, professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University and the best-selling author of The Elegant Universe, for an in-depth exploration of the groundbreaking new string theory that will excite scientists and non-scientists alike. If string theory proves correct, the universe we see obscures a reality that is far richer and more complex than anyone ever imagined–a universe with numerous hidden dimensions, a universe in which the fabric of space can rip and tear, a universe that may be but one of many parallel universes
Einstein’s Big Idea
Everyone’s heard of it, but what does E=mc2 really mean? With brilliant period recreations, discover how an obscure patent clerk, Albert Einstein, came up with his shattering 1905 discovery that the realms of matter and energy are inescapably linked. Starring Aidan McArdle (Ella Enchanted) as Einstein, and Shirley Henderson (Bridget Jones’s Diary) as Einstein’s first wife, Mileva Maric.
Einstein Revealed
Journey into the mind of a genius in this penetrating profile of the world’s most renowned physicist, who contributed more than any other to our modern vision of physical reality. Andrew Sachs (Fawlty Towers) stars as Albert Einstein. 412 min on 4 DVD -
Hitler’s Sunken Secret
One of the most daring resistance operations of World War II was the 1944 sinking of the Norwegian ferry Hydro, with its cargo of “heavy water” destined for the Nazi’s secret atomic bomb project. If the Germans had obtained a large supply, it could have helped their physicists develop nuclear weapons that would have made the Third Reich invincible. Fear of that outcome sparked the Allies to undertake the Manhattan Project, which ultimately produced the first atomic bomb. Hitler’s Sunken Secret features gripping first-person interviews with the sole living Norwegian saboteur and survivors who were on board the Hydro when it blew up. Among the NOVA team’s startling new discoveries is evidence that a second secret consignment of barrels eluded the saboteurs and made it all the way to Germany, but arrived too late to make a Nazi bomb feasible. Special DVD features include: materials and activities for educators; a link to the NOVA Web site; scene selections; closed captions; and described video for the visually impaired.
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Killer Quake!
Metropolitan Los Angeles is sitting on ground zero. Slicing under the highrises of downtown is a network of potentially deadly faults which could trigger the nation’s most devastating natural disaster. On January 17, 1994 a previously unknown fault convulsed beneath Northridge. It was the most destructive earthquake in modern Los Angeles history. NOVA takes viewers from urban trench sites to the top of the Santa Susanna Mountains, in search of clues to where nature will strike next.
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In the Path of a Killer Volcano
The Philippines’ Mount Pinatubo is about to blow big. Is there enough time to evacuate the hundreds of thousands in its raging path? Stay with the scientists who remain behind- and see some astonishing footage of the world’s largest volcanic eruption in 80 years. Local tribespeople were the first to see the signs. “There was a flash of light from the sky,” said one. “I thought it was my time to die.” The Philippines’ Mount Pinatubo was acting restless- and the volcanologists at Clark Air Force Base were starting to sweat. An angry mountain is highly unpredictable. If they misread its fits and starts, a violent explosion could send pyroclastic flow- hot, dense avalanches- roaring down its sides at 100 miles per hour, burning everyone and everything in its path. But if they ordered an evacuation and nothing happened, these experts could lose their credibility for good. With a typhoon headed in their direction, the stakes are even higher. Torrential rains turn ash and rock into hot mud flows that can bury a town in minutes. Is it time to issue a Level 4 alert- ordering hundreds of thousands to flee their homes? Stay with the courageous scientists who remain behind- and see some astonishing footage as the world’s biggest eruption in 80 years really starts to blow.
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Galileo’s Battle for the Heavens
At a time when heretics were burned alive for dissent, scientist Galileo Galilei risked his life to advance his revolutionary concepts of the universe. British actor Simon Callow (Shakespeare in Love, Four Weddings and a Funeral) brings Galileo to life, humanizing the great thinker’s passion, intelligence, and arrogance while depicting his frustrations with fellow philosophers and scientists, and with Roman Based on Dava Sobel’s best-selling biography Galileo’s Daughter, this two-hour film offers a vivid re-imagining of the incredible achievements that forever changed the way we view our place in the universe. Simon Callow (Four Weddings and a Funeral) and noted Galileo authorities shed new light on Galileo’s pioneering telescopic observations, his fateful Inquisition trial for heresy, and life in the seventeenth century.
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Earth Science
This DVD set including Killer Quake, In the Path of a Killer Volcano, Tsunami: Wave that Shook the World, and Everest: The Death Zone.