Antarctica – Life on Ice covers the history of exploration and travel, the life lived by expedition members and their methods for coping with the cold, the 5 species of penguins and their movements on land and water, life underwater the animals from tiny to huge, and how the Weddell seals feed underwater.
Subjects: Earth Science
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Amazon Rainforest
The Amazon headwaters in eastern Ecuador are some of the world’s most abundant in biodiversity. This video traces the impact of oil exploration and development on a fragile ecosystem. Local Huaorani Indians speak frankly about the impacts of First World development, oil mining, deforestation and cash cropping on their traditional culture. Ecologically sustainable alternatives are also explored.
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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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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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Last Extinction
What killed the mammoths? Near the end of the last ice age 13,000 years ago, these mighty beasts disappeared from North America together with some 35 other groups of mammals. For four decades, debate has raged over the cause of their abrupt demise. NOVA presents an in-depth investigation of a controversial new hypothesis which suggests that a massive impact from space could be the culprit, and also explores alternate theories.
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Nova: Mt. St. Helens: Back from the Dead
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.
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Lost Treasures of Tibet
Join the race against time as art and restoration experts mix history, science, and politics in a complicated and daunting mission to preserve the surviving sacred masterpieces of an ancient Buddhist kingdom. Travel to a remote part of the world for a remarkably rare look at the spectacular art created by a clandestine Buddhist culture. See astonishingly intricate and expressive Medieval wall paintings, woodcarvings, and a gravity-defying monastery built atop a cliff. And watch as science helps reveal vibrantly colored treasures from the past.
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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.
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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.