NOVA

Since it explored Pluto in 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft has been zooming toward NASA's most distant target yet. Join the mission team as the probe attempts to fly by Ultima Thule, an object 4 billion miles from Earth.

David Attenborough brings to life, in unprecedented detail, the last days of the dinosaurs. Palaeontologist Robert DePalma has made an incredible discovery in a prehistoric graveyard: fossilised creatures, astonishingly well preserved, that could help change our understanding of the last days of the dinosaurs. Evidence from his site records the day when an asteroid bigger than Mount Everest devastated our planet and caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. Based on brand new evidence, witness the catastrophic events of that day play out minute by minute.

A post-modern theater adaptation of a classic Greek tragedy takes place in a central theater of Athens. Like every night, the audience take their seats and the play begins. Suddenly, the lights on stage go out. A group of young people, dressed in black and carrying guns, come up on stage. They apologize for the interruption and invite people from the audience to participate on stage. The play resumes with a main difference; life imitates art and not the opposite.

Astrophysicists show how black holes might hold answers to how the universe evolved, leading to life on Earth and, ultimately, the human race.

How were the giant stone heads of Rapa Nui – also known as Easter Island – carved and raised, and why? Since Europeans arrived on this remote Pacific island over 300 years ago, controversy has swirled around the iconic ancient statues and the history of the people who created them. Now, a new generation of researchers is overturning old theories, revealing the rich history, innovation, and resilience of the Rapanui people, and uncovering intriguing new evidence about where they – and their practice of monumental stone building – came from.

Could scientists recreate Hollywood's Jurassic Park using 100-million-year-old dinosaur DNA? Director Steven Spielberg, author Michael Crichton, actor Jeff Goldblum, and a host of scientific experts answer this compelling question in the award-winning Nova documentary, The Real Jurassic Park. Behind-the-scenes clips, interviews, and demonstrations with leading paleontologists investigate the viability of reviving the extinct species. All phases of logistics are addressed, including extracting prehistoric insect DNA, creating embryos for placement in host eggs, and more. The scientific analysis of the process leads to the examination of the ethics of recreating a vanished life form.

NASA launches its most ambitious hunt for traces of life on Mars, landing a car-sized rover in a rocky, ancient river delta. The rover will stow samples for possible return to Earth and test technology that may pave the way for human travel to Mars.

' Red string tied, wrapped in the creel, please turn kicks tale n'archinisei 'used to say older before they start their tales. But Knit Red Thread of Costas Charalambous does not narrate a tale but a nightmare that haunts the Greek history for more than 60 year. The nightmare of civil war.

Three million years ago, camels roamed through Greenland’s endless forests and our ancestors lived in the trees. It all came to an end with the Ice Ages. What died and what survived, as natural selection shaped the evolutionary tree during this epochal shift from hot to cold? Until now, scientists have known less about the natural world before the Ice Age than they did about the age of dinosaurs, which ended 64 million years ago. A new discovery is set to reveal this lost world, species by species. Led by Danish gene-hunter Eske Willerslev, a team of scientists for the first time in history is sequencing DNA from before the Ice Age. The picture that emerges is of a hot planet, when forests blanketed the Arctic and carbon levels matched those in our atmosphere today. Is this a portrait of our own climate future?

Thundering across the sky on elegant white wings, the Concorde was an instant legend. But behind the glamour of jet setting at Mach 2 were stunning scientific innovations and political intrigue. Fifteen years after Concorde's final flight, this documentary takes you inside the historic international race to develop the first supersonic airliner. Hear stories from those inside the choreographed effort to design and build Concorde in two countries at once - and the crew members who flew her.

Earth teems with a staggering variety of animals, including 9,000 kinds of birds, 28,000 types of fish, and more than 350,000 species of beetles. What explains this explosion of living creatures—1.4 million different species discovered so far, with perhaps another 50 million to go? The source of life's endless forms was a profound mystery until Charles Darwin brought forth his revolutionary idea of natural selection. But Darwin's radical insights raised as many questions as they answered. What actually drives evolution and turns one species into another? To what degree do different animals rely on the same genetic toolkit? And how did we evolve?

In 1889, Gustave Eiffel decides to attempt the impossible for the Universal Exhibition in Paris: to build the tallest tower in the world. Before this project, this pioneer and visionary had created more than 300 metal structures around the world.

Murdered more than 5,000 years ago, Otzi the Iceman is the oldest human mummy on Earth. Now, newly discovered evidence sheds light not only on this mysterious ancient man, but on the dawn of civilization in Europe.

Join "Nova" science detectives as they journey to Southeast Asia to reveal details of one of Earth's most destructive volcanic events. Known as the Toba eruption, this cataclysmic explosion that occurred 75,000 years ago is considered one of the most devastating natural occurrences in history. Watch scientists reconstruct this monstrous catastrophe as they ponder the fragile nature of Earth's crust and the power of the magma within its core.

When the U.S. trade embargo left Cuba isolated from medical resources, Cuban scientists were forced to get creative. Now they've developed lung cancer vaccines that show so much promise, some Americans are defying the embargo and traveling to Cuba for treatment. In an unprecedented move, Cuban researchers are working with U.S. partners to make the medicines more widely available.

For 25 centuries the Parthenon has been shot at, set on fire, rocked by earthquakes, looted for its sculptures, and disfigured by catastrophic renovations. To save it from collapse, the modern restoration team must uncover the secrets of how the ancient Greeks built this icon of western civilization in less than nine years without anything resembling an architectural plan.

Determined to understand the repeating patterns he was finding in nature, French mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot used an early form of computer imagery to produce his own versions, coining the recurring shapes fractals. This installment of the PBS series "Nova" examines the rules of these self-similar patterns and explores the ways these fascinating geometric configurations can be applied in the fields of science, medicine and the arts.

In July 2022, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope released its first images, looking further back in time than ever before to show our universe in stunningly beautiful detail. But that was just the beginning. With tons of new data and spectacular images flooding in, Webb is allowing scientists to peer deep in time to try to answer some of astronomy’s biggest questions. When – and how – did the first stars and galaxies form? And can we see the fingerprints of life in the atmospheres of distant worlds – or even within our own solar system?

In Egypt's Sahara Desert, massive skeletons with strange skulls and gigantic teeth jut out from the sandy ground. This fossil graveyard, millions of years old, is known as the "Valley of the Whales." Now, paleontologists have unearthed a whole new species of ancient whale dating to 43 million years ago, and this predator wasn't just able to swim – it also had four legs and could walk. Follow scientists as they search for new clues to the winding evolutionary path of mammals that moved from the land into the sea to become the largest animals on Earth.