Broadcast 19 January 1995, the next instalment is devoted to the ways in which plants reproduce. Pollen and a stigma are the two components needed for fertilisation. Most plants carry both these within their flowers and rely on animals to transport the pollen from one to the stigma of another. To do this, they attract their couriers with colour, scent and nectar. It isn’t just birds that help poll
Broadcast 12 January 1995, this programme is about how plants gain their sustenance. Sunlight is one of the essential requirements if a seed is to germinate, and Attenborough highlights the cheese plant as an example whose young shoots head for the nearest tree trunk and then climb to the top of the forest canopy, developing its leaves en route. Using sunshine, air, water and a few minerals, the l
Broadcast 5 January 1995, the first episode looks at how plants are able to move. The bramble is an aggressive example: it advances forcefully from side to side and, once settled on its course, there is little that can stand in its way. An altogether faster species is the birdcage plant, which inhabits Californian sand dunes. When its location becomes exposed, it shifts at great speed to another o
Using Darwin’s own diary and field notes as a travel guide, retrace Darwin’s expedition beyond the Galapagos to uncover the forgotten evidence that inspired his revolutionary work. He wasn’t a mathematician. He wasn’t an inventor. He was just a 20-something guy who liked to poke around in the dirt.Yet, Charles Darwin developed a theory of evolution so significant that it forms the bedrock of b
This is the profile of an extraterrestrial mass murderer: one whose existence was denied by scientific orthodoxy for nearly two decades, but has now been tracked down. 65 million years ago a 15km wide asteroid hit the Earth. In 1978 Walter Alvarez, a Nobel-prize-winning physicist, and his son Luis, first proposed the outrageous idea that a meteorite strike blasted the dinosaurs into extinction, ta
David starts his journey in Darwin’s home at Down House in Kent, where Darwin worried and puzzled over the origins of life. David goes back to his roots in Leicestershire, where he hunted for fossils as a child, and where another schoolboy unearthed a significant find in the 1950s. And he revisits Cambridge University, where both he and Darwin studied, and where many years later the DNA double hel
Broadcast (2007) In this new three part series, von Hagens explores the impact that accidents and assaults have on the human body, while also demonstrating what first-aiders, paramedics and physicians can do to try to preserve life. First, he dissected human bodies to show how they work; then he did it to show how humans die. Now, Dr Gunther von Hagens, together with the British Red Cross, demonst
Join “Bonk” author Mary Roach as she delves into obscure scientific research, some of it centuries old, to make 10 surprising claims about sexual climax. Her discoveries range from the bizarre to the hilarious but are highly entertaining and educational at the same time.Scientists have been studying orgasms for years. Long before sex became an acceptable household topic, people have been tryin