The Miracle of Life

A baby's birth is the culmination of nature's most complex, mysterious, and seemingly miraculous process. Renowned Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson presents the incredible voyage of a new life with his stunning look at the microscopic world of the human body. Magnification of up to half a million times actual size shows just what happens at the moment of conception, and how a single new cell forms first an embryo, then a fetus. (PBS NOVA documentary)

Related Links
Body Story
Inside the Living Body

Earth: Making of a Planet (National Geographic)

Earth: Making of a Planet is a 96-minute documentary by National Geographic Channel, telling the story of planet Earth from its birth 4.5 billion years ago, through ice-ages and the dinosaur’s reign to the first humans. Go back to five billion years ago and discover the birth of the Earth that is the only home to life as far as we know, see how life flourished and evolution worked, from the first single-celled organism to age of the dinosaurs and the first humans who walked on the planet, through the dazzling images and CGI animations.

Related Links:
How the Earth Was Made
Rise of the Continents

Finding Life Beyond Earth: Are We Alone?

Finding Life Beyond Earth: Are We Alone? is a PBS documentary which takes a spectacular trip to distant realms of our solar system to discover where secret forms of life may lie hidden. Combining the latest telescope images with dazzling animation, Finding Life Beyond Earth immerses audiences in the sights and sounds of alien worlds, while top astrobiologists explain how these places are changing how we think about the potential for life in our solar system. We used to think our neighboring planets and moons were fairly boring—mostly cold, dead rocks where life could never take hold. Today, however, the solar system looks wilder than we ever imagined. Powerful telescopes and unmanned space missions have revealed a wide range of dynamic environments—atmospheres thick with organic molecules, active volcanoes, and vast saltwater oceans. This ongoing revolution is forcing scientists to expand their ideas about what kinds of worlds could support life. If we do find primitive life-forms elsewhere in the solar system, it may well be that life is common in the universe—the rule, and not the exception.

Related Links
Life in the Universe
Astrobiology and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life