How Small is the Universe? (BBC Horizon)

Horizon plunges down the biggest rabbit-hole in history in search of the smallest thing in the Universe. It is a journey where things don't just become smaller but also a whole lot weirder. Scientists hope to catch a glimpse of miniature black holes, multiple dimensions and even parallel Universes. As they start to explore this wonderland, where nothing is quite what it seems, they may have to rewrite the fundamental laws of time and space.

The World’s Most Expensive Paintings (hosted by Alastair Sooke, BBC)

Art critic Alastair Sooke tracks down the ten most expensive paintings to sell at auction, and investigates the stories behind the astronomic prices art can reach. Gaining access to the glittering world of the super-rich, Sooke discovers why the planet's richest people want to spend their millions on art. Featuring works by Picasso, Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh, Klimt and Rubens, Sooke enters a world of secrecy and rivalry, passion and power. Highlights include a visit to the art-crammed home of millionaire author Lord Archer; a rare interview with the man at the heart of the sale of the most expensive old master of all time; privileged access to auctioneers Christie's; and a glimpse of the world of the Russian oligarchs. These revelatory journeys allow Sooke to present an eye-opening view of the super wealthy, and their motivations as collectors of the world's great art treasures.

Related Links:
Modern Masters

Planet of the Apemen: Battle for Earth

Planet of the Apemen: Battle for Earth is a two-part BBC documentary series about human evolution. The series tells the story of how Homo sapiens once shared the Earth with other species of hominid, and how, against all the odds, we survived. The first episode deals with the struggles of Homo sapiens with Homo erectus, and the second episode depicts Homo sapiens's encounter with Homo neanderthalensis.

Episode 1 - Homo Erectus


This episode is set 75,000 years ago in India, following a catastrophic super-volcanic eruption which forced a showdown between our ancestors and a completely different species of human, Homo erectus, who up until that point had reigned supreme.

Episode 2 - Neanderthal


This episode is set 35,000 years ago and depicts Homo sapiens's encounter with Homo neanderthalensis. As the ice caps retreated, the Neanderthal stronghold in Europe weakened, providing a window of opportunity to which modern humans owe their existence.

Related Links:
Ape to Man
Walking with Cavemen

The Life and Times of El Nino

The massive fluctuations that El Nino causes in the world's weather systems have changed the course of history. Unusually cold winters and the resulting poor crops helped forment the French Revolution. Hitler's march across Russia was halted by one of the harshest winters on record. Severe drought in India in 1877 killed millions while a drop in sea temperatures, leading to dwindling food stocks, precipitated the fall of the mighty Aztecs.

Would these events have happened without the impact of El Nino? This compelling documentary investigates El Nino; its history; its rise from little known occurrence to headline grabbing phenomenon; and whether its devastating power can be accurately predicted, or possibly even harnessed.

Charting the rise of El Nino in the world's consciousness, this intriguing documentary combines history and science to show how this meteorological monster has affected global economy and political history.

As knowledge of El Nino grows, increasingly sophisticated super computer models have been developed to predict global effects and allow vulnerable communities to try to adapt. Scientists are confident that they will soon be able to predict El Nino a year in advance. But now there is a new threat - global warming. The race is now on to find out what effect this will have on El Nino, and the future of this planet.

Related Links:
Australia: Eye of the Storm

Logic - The Structure of Reason

As a tool for characterizing rational thought, logic cuts across many philosophical disciplines and lies at the core of mathematics and computer science. Drawing on Aristotle's Organon, Russell's Principia Mathematica, and other central works, this program tracks the evolution of logic, beginning with the basic syllogism. A sampling of subsequent topics includes propositional and predicate logic, Bayesian confirmation theory, Boolean logic, Frege's use of variables and quantifiers, Godel's work with meta-mathematics, the Vienna Circle's logical positivism, and the Turing machine. Commentary by Hilary Putnam, of Harvard University; NYU's Kit Fine; and Colin McGinn, of Rutgers University, is featured.

Related Links
The Great Philosophers
The Story of Maths

Colliding Continents (National Geographic)

What will Earth look like in 250 million years? With a team of scientists, this film investigates the dynamic process of Colliding Continents, by examining the forces deep below the Earth's surface that are constantly reshaping our world. These powerful forces rip vast land masses apart and send them smashing into one another - causing natural disasters, such as tsunamis and earthquakes, and creating awe-inspiring landscapes, like mountains and canyons.

Related Links:
Earth Story
How the Earth Was Made

Stuff: A Horizon Guide to Materials

Engineer Jem Stansfield looks back through the Horizon archives to find out how scientists have come to understand and manipulate the materials that built the modern world. Whether it is uncovering new materials or finding fresh uses for those man has known about for centuries, each breakthrough offers a tantalising glimpse of the holy grail of materials science - a substance that is cheap to produce and has the potential to change the world. Jem explores how a series of extraordinary advances has done just that - from superconductors to the silicon revolution.

Related Links:
Making Stuff
Richard Hammond's Engineering Connections

The Secret Life of Ice

Ice is one of the strangest, most beguiling and mesmerising substances in the world. Full of contradictions, it is transparent yet it can glow with colour, it is powerful enough to shatter rock but it can melt in the blink of an eye. It takes many shapes, from the fleeting beauty of a snowflake to the multi-million tonne vastness of a glacier and the eeriness of the ice fountains of far-flung moons.

Science writer Dr Gabrielle Walker has been obsessed with ice ever since she first set foot on Arctic sea ice. In this programme she searches out some of the secrets hidden deep within the ice crystal to try to discover how something so ephemeral has the power to sculpt landscapes, to preserve our past and inform our future.

Related Links:
Frozen Planet

The Two-Thousand-Year-Old Computer

In 1901, a group of divers excavating an ancient Roman shipwreck near the island of Antikythera, off the southern coast of Greece, found a mysterious object - a lump of calcified stone that contained within it several gearwheels welded together after years under the sea. The 2,000-year-old object, no bigger than a modern laptop, is now regarded as the world's oldest computer, devised to predict solar eclipses and, according to recent findings, calculate the timing of the ancient Olympics. Following the efforts of an international team of scientists, the mysteries of the Antikythera Mechanism are uncovered, revealing surprising and awe-inspiring details of the object that continues to mystify.

Related Links:
Ancient Discoveries
Decoding the Heavens: Solving the Mystery of the World’s First Computer