Posts By: Documentary Heaven

How Did the Universe Begin?

Only a man with the brain the size of Stephen Hawking's would seriously accept the challenge of answering the question "How did the universe begin?" in less than 30 minutes, while making it accessible for the population at large.Hawking's lecture is a masterclass in concision and clear- thinking. He spins through the history of thought on the subject, beginning with the early Biblical view that

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Newton: The Dark Heretic

Delve into a frighteningly brilliant but deeply troubled mind...This documentary reveals a very different Isaac Newton from that of popular myth - a much more fascinating and complex man than the powder-wigged puritan of the history books.Discoveries uncovered in this documentary piece together the dramatic and tragic tale of Newton's dark genius. The great Sir Isaac Newton spent only a re

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Einstein’s Unfinished Symphony

As Albert Einstein lay on his deathbed, he asked only for his glasses, his writing implements and his latest equations. He knew he was dying, yet he continued his work. In those final hours of his life, while fading in and out of consciousness, he was working on what he hoped would be his greatest work of all. It was a project of monumental complexity. It was a project that he hoped would unlock t

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Einstein’s Equation of Life and Death

e=mc²The equation showed that mass and energy were related and that one could, in theory, be transformed into the other. But because the speed of light squared is such a huge number, it meant that even a small amount of mass could potentially be converted into a huge amount of energy. Ever since the discovery of radioactivity in the late 19th century, scientists had realised that the atomic nu

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Do You Know What Time It Is?

Particle physicist Professor Brian Cox asks, 'What time is it?' It's a simple question and it sounds like it has a simple answer. But do we really know what it is that we're asking?Brian visits the ancient Mayan pyramids in Mexico where the Maya built temples to time. He finds out that a day is never 24 hours and meets Earth's very own Director of Time. He journeys to the beginning of time, an

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Absolute Zero

This two-part scientific detective tale tells the story of a remarkable group of pioneers who wanted to reach the ultimate extreme: absolute zero, a place so cold that the physical world as we know it doesn't exist, electricity flows without resistance, fluids defy gravity and the speed of light can be reduced to 38 miles per hour. Each film features a strange cast of eccentric characters, includi

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Project Poltergeist

This is the story of two genuine scientific heroes. For forty years, John Bahcall and Ray Davis were engaged in a single extraordinary experiment - to find out why the Sun shines. In the end they would triumph. Davis would win the Nobel Prize and, thanks to their work, a whole new theory about how the universe is put together may have to be created.At the heart of this story is a tiny, utterly m

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Can We Make a Star on Earth?

Professor Brian Cox takes a global journey in search of the energy source of the future. Called nuclear fusion, it is the process that fuels the sun and every other star in the universe. Yet despite over five decades of effort, scientists have been unable to get even a single watt of fusion electricity onto the grid.Brian returns to Horizon to find out why. Granted extraordinary access to the

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The Atom Smashers

Physicists at Fermilab, the most powerful particle accelerator in the United States, are closing in on one of the universe’s best-kept secrets: what is known as the Holy Grail of physics or the reason why everything has mass. With the Tevatron, an underground particle accelerator buried deep beneath the Illinois prairie, Fermilab scientists smash matter together, accelerating protons and antiproto

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