Black Hole Apocalypse

Black holes are the most enigmatic and exotic objects in the universe. They're also the most powerful, with gravity so strong it can trap light. And they're destructive, swallowing entire planets, even giant stars. Anything that falls into them vanishes...gone forever. Now, astrophysicists are realizing that black holes may be essential to how our universe evolved - their influence possibly leading to life on Earth and, ultimately, us. In this two-hour special, astrophysicist and author Janna Levin takes viewers on a journey to the frontiers of black hole science. Along the way, we meet leading astronomers and physicists on the verge of finding new answers to provocative questions about these shadowy monsters: Where do they com from? What's inside? What happens if you fall into one? And what can they tell us about the nature of space, time, and gravity?

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Black Holes

Understanding the Universe

Join astronomers and astrophysicists as they probe light years beyond the Milky Way, in Understanding The Universe, part of Discovery's popular television series. Narrated by actress Candice Bergen, This enriching and entertaining video employs graphic models and spectacular computer animation to illustrate some of the most complex theories of all time. Peer through the largest telescopes on Earth. Get a close-up look at our sun, nebulas and supernovas, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. Listen via satellite to echoes of the Big Bang. See how "red Shift" among the stars suggests that our universe if much younger than previously thought. Visit the set of Star Trek: Voyager and ponder the questions, could black holes be "wormholes," or shortcuts to other worlds? Understanding the Universe boldly goes where no television show has gone before.

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The Universe
Hubble Space Telescope

The Hunt for Gravitational Waves

In March 2014, a team of astronomers stunned the scientific world when they announced that their BICEP2 telescope at the South Pole had possibly detected a signal of "gravitational waves" from the early universe. This is the inside story of the hunt for gravitational waves from the beginning of time. How the BICEP2 team came close to making one of the greatest discoveries of the century – and what happened when it all began to unravel...

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Gravitational Waves
The Early Universe

The Pluto Files

When the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium stopped calling Pluto a planet, director Neil deGrasse Tyson found himself at the center of a firestorm led by angry Pluto-loving elementary school students. What is it about Pluto - a cold, distant, icy rock - that captures so many hearts? Four years after the IAU (International Astronomical Union) officially reclassified the ninth planet as a plutoid, NOVA travels cross-country with Tyson to find out.

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The Year of Pluto: 2015 - NASA New Horizons
A Traveller's Guide to the Planets

Asteroids: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Famed for their ability to inflict Armageddon from outer space, asteroids are now revealing the secrets of how they are responsible for both life and death on our planet. Armed with an array of powerful telescopes, scientists are finding up to 3,000 new asteroids every night. And some are heading our way. But astronomers have discovered that it's not the giant rocks that are the greatest danger - it's the small asteroids that pose a more immediate threat to Earth. Researchers have explained the photon propulsion that send these rocks across space, and have discovered that some asteroids are carrying a mysterious cargo of frost and ice across the solar system that could have helped start life on Earth.

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Catastrophe - Asteroid Strike
Asteroid Impacts with Earth

Stargazing: A Graphic Guide to the Heavens

On a crystal-clear evening, on vacation perhaps, how often do we contemplate the night sky and promise to learn the stars and constellations? Somehow, we never get round to it. Charts in newspapers look too complicated. Astronomical handbooks are equally daunting. STARGAZING is the answer - the night sky simply and beautifully mapped, an animated stellar atlas that works from anywhere on Earth. Season-by-season, it signposts and explains. Little by little - like learning a language - the cosmos is comprehensible. STARGAZING is a glossy work of reference that will last and last. Animated vignettes turn points of light - stars, nebulae, galaxies - into supernovae, flashing pulsars, searing quasars and rotating swarms of 150-billion stars with supermassive black holes at their centers. The sky is viewed from three latitude bands - from the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere (Japan, Europe, North America), from the tropics, and from the mid-latitudes of the southern hemisphere (Australasia and southern South America).

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Everything and Nothing by Jim Al-Khalili

Everything and Nothing is a two-part BBC documentary presented by Professor Jim Al-Khalili, dealing with two of the deepest questions there are - what is everything, and what is nothing? In two epic, surreal and mind-expanding films, Professor Jim Al-Khalili searches for an answer to these questions as he explores the true size and shape of the universe and delves into the amazing science behind apparent nothingness.

1. Everything

The first part, Everything, sees Professor Al-Khalili set out to discover what the universe might actually look like. The journey takes him from the distant past to the boundaries of the known universe. Along the way he charts the remarkable stories of the men and women who discovered the truth about the cosmos and investigates how our understanding of space has been shaped by both mathematics and astronomy.

2. Nothing

The second part, Nothing, explores science at the very limits of human perception, where we now understand the deepest mysteries of the universe lie. Jim sets out to answer one very simple question - what is nothing? His journey ends with perhaps the most profound insight about reality that humanity has ever made. Everything came from nothing. The quantum world of the super-small shaped the vast universe we inhabit today, and Jim can prove it.

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Order and Disorder