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
It means even on the lower levels of life, there is a profound consciousness or awareness that bonds all things together. Published in 1973, The Secret Life of Plants was written by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird. It is described as “A fascinating account of the physical, emotional, and spiritual relations between plants and man.” Essentially, the subject of the book is the idea that plants m
Ticks: The Real Vampires has been filmed on two continents - Europe and North America. It is comprised of two action curves. One is a portrait of the life cycle of the tick throughout its three stages of development - as larvae, as nymphs and as adults. All action will take place in natural surroundings. Using special lenses the tick will be shown full-screen from its hatching stage, on the hunt f
In this documentary Nobel Prize recipient Sir Harry Kroto attempts to answer one of world's most puzzling question: how did life on earth come to be? Take a look at the recent scientific research in the field and learn about the ancient world of RNA and DNA.There are of course no definative answers offered by this documentary, but we get the feeling that we are closer than ever to discovering th
The American biotechnology firm, Monsanto, has applied for a patent for pig breeding in 160 countries. The patent is for specific parts of the genetic material of pigs which Monsanto's genetic researchers have decoded. If this patent is granted, pig breeding would be possible with the approval of the company.Farmers and breeders are naturally alarmed because these genes have long existed in th
Our genes carry unbelievable information of our past. And it is this genetic information, that affects our present, because the only way forward is to look into the past. This documentary film explains genetic science and it’s impact on our future life.A gene is the basic unit of heredity in a living organism. The field of genetics predates modern molecular biology, but it is now known that all
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