We spend one-third of our lives sleeping and still we don't fully understand why it is we sleep. We know some of the functions that lie behind it but overall it's still very much a mystery. From the beginning of time, all living beings have been governed by the need for sleep, it is considered to be one of the most critical components of life. If a human or animal doesn't sleep the outcome is sim
Humanity is going through the largest health crises in more than a century as the coronavirus (Covid-19) has killed nearly 2 million people globally, brought turmoil to the world economy, and caused us to question some of the most fundamental norms about the environment, international politics, public health, and global security.However, the fight against covid has also united the world scie
The planet Earth is filled with a vast collection of species, with over 9,000 types of birds, 28,000 types of fish, and more than 350,000 species of beetles. It's Charles Darwin's brilliant theory of evolution that explains how the 1.4 million different species that have been discovered have adapted and changed over time. The theory has been called the best idea anyone ever had but there is one b
In July 2003, twin sisters Ladan and Laleh Bijani underwent a dangerous and controversial 50-hour operation to separate their conjoined heads. Nearly 30 years of being joined together was long enough. They had now wished to look at each other face to face. Early in their lives, the twins realized that they were very different people. They had different ambitions, hobbies, and tastes, both wanted
Coronavirus (COVID-19) struck just a few months ago, it was a deadly virus that took an unprepared world by storm. But as the world scrambled to react to this growing emergency an astonishing global scientific effort began to understand the nature of this new enemy and how we could fight it. In this two-part documentary series, we see Horizon assemble a team of BBC science experts to analyze the
In 1943 chemist Albert Hofmann was developing medicines to aid blood circulation lysergic acid derivatives, his reach would lead to the discovery of the drug known as LSD and the isolation of other psychoactive compounds such as psilocybin. These breakthroughs showed great promise for use in therapy and were commonly prescribed by psychiatrists. However, the medicines would later be caught in a d
Imagine you're a child but trapped in the body of a giant, these are the children who simply tower above everyone and they live in a world that is just to small for them. In this film we meet Brendan, the 13 year old who is currently 7ft and 3 inches tall and can't stop growing, the Van Nes', a family of super tall children who get their height from genetics alone and Marley, a 17 year old Thai gi
Would you like to loose a little bit of weight without doing any exercise or dieting? Or perhaps age just a little slower than your friends? Well you might be surprised to hear that the laws of physics can help. The key to unlocking these everyday questions is gravity, it sculpts the universe, it warps space and time, it is a fundamental force of nature. Gravities strange powers discovered by Albe
Welcome a new and very strange world of nature, it's being taken over by the weird subatomic particles of quantum physics. As a physicist Jim Al-Khalili has spent his working life studying how these particles behave in the laboratory but in this BBC special we see him head out into the natural world. Al-Khalili is on a mission to prove quantum physics can solve the greatest mysteries in biology as