Nova (2008)
Science documentaries.
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Episode 1 - Ground Zero Supertower
Release Date: Sep. 2013From PBS - NOVA returns to Ground Zero to witness the completion of One World Trade Center.
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Episode 2 - Megastorm Aftermath
Release Date: 9 Oct. 2013From PBS - In October 2012, Superstorm Sandy cut a path of devastation across the Caribbean and the East Coast of the United States, killing hundreds and causing tens of billions of dollars in damage. One year after Sandy's deadly strike, NOVA investigates the critical question raised by this historic storm: What can we do to prepare ourselves for the next Sandy?
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Episode 3 - Making Stuff Faster
Release Date: 13 Oct. 2013From PBS and NOVA: Are there physical limits to how fast humans can go? David Pogue wants to find out how much we can tweak physiology and engineering to move humans and machines even faster. He investigates everything from lightning-fast electric muscle cars to ultra-sleek sailboats to ultra-fast cameras and quantum teleportation. But faster is also about efficiency and the science of optimization: getting things done in less time. From the floor of the New York Stock Exchange to UPS headquarters and inside a packed 737, Pogue's quest for ultimate speed limits takes ...
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Episode 4 - Making Stuff Wilder
Release Date: 23 Oct. 2013From PBS and NOVA: What happens when engineers open up nature's toolbox? David Pogue explores bold innovations inspired by the Earth's greatest inventor, life itself. From underwater wi-fi based on dolphin communication, to robotic "mules" and "cheetahs" for the military, to swarms of robotic bees, Pogue travels the world seeing the "wildest" ideas put into action in new inventions and technologies. It is a journey that sees today's bacteria turned into tomorrow's metallurgists, viruses building batteries, and even DNA, the Code of Life, put to work in "living" ...
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Episode 5 - Making Stuff Colder
Release Date: 30 Oct. 2013From PBS and NOVA: Cold. For centuries we've fought it, shunned it and huddled against it. Cold has always been the enemy of life, but now it may hold the key to a new generation of science and technology that will improve our lives. David Pogue explores the frontiers of cold science, from saving the lives of severe trauma patients and cooling a warming planet to ultracold physics, where bizarre new properties of matter are the norm and the basis of new technologies like levitating trains and quantum computers. In this brave new world, cold isn't to be avoided. Cold ...
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Episode 6 - Making Stuff Safer
Release Date: 6 Nov. 2013From PBS and NOVA: Is it possible to engineer an absolutely safe world for ourselves? Host David Pogue explores the extent to which science and technology can protect us from monumental forces of nature such as earthquakes and epidemics. He challenges researchers to save us from dangers of our own making, such as traffic accidents and contact sports. Our increasing reliance on the internet makes us vulnerable to new risks: Pogue delves into cyber security, where computer experts work to shield us from attacks from hackers and terrorists. Risk is all around us -- but ...
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Episode 7 - Cold Case JFK
Release Date: 13 Nov. 2013From PBS and NOVA: Cold Case JFK. For decades, the assassination of John F. Kennedy has fueled dark rumors of conspiracies and mishandled evidence. Now, fifty years later, NOVA asks: Could modern investigators do better? We'll see how state-of-the art forensic tools would be applied to the investigation were it to happen today. At the same time, NOVA takes a critical look at contemporary cases, like the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, to reveal how charges of evidence mishandling and human error can mar even scientifically sophisticated detective ...
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Episode 8 - At the Edge of Space
Release Date: 20 Nov. 2013Between the blue sky above and the infinite blackness beyond lies a frontier that scientists have only just begun to investigate. In "At the Edge of Space," NOVA takes viewers on a spectacular exploration of the Earth-space boundary that's home to some of nature's most puzzling and alluring phenomena: the shimmering aurora, streaking meteors, and fleeting flashes that shoot upwards from thunderclouds, known as sprites.
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Episode 9 - Asteroid: Doomsday or Payday?
Release Date: 20 Nov. 2013The asteroid that exploded over Siberia--injuring more than 1,000 and damaging buildings in six cities--was a shocking reminder that Earth is a target in a cosmic shooting range. From the width of a football field to the size of a small city, these space rocks have the potential to be killers. In a collision with Earth, they could set off deadly blast waves, raging fires and colossal tidal waves.
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Episode 10 - Alien Planets Revealed
Release Date: 8 Jan. 2014From PBS - It's a golden age for planet hunters: recently, they've discovered more than 750 planets orbiting stars beyond our sun. Some of them, like a planet called Kepler-22b, might even be able to harbor life. What would that life look like? Combining startling animation with input from expert astrobiologists, Alien Planets Revealed takes viewers on a journey of the imagination as we "build" aliens from the ground up.
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Episode 11 - Zeppelin Terror Attack
Release Date: 15 Jan. 2014From PBS - In the early days of World War I, Germany, determined to bring its British enemies to their knees, launched a new kind of terror campaign: bombing civilians from the sky. But the aircraft delivering the lethal payloads weren't planes. They were Zeppelins, enormous airships, some the length of two football fields. With a team of engineers, explosives experts, and historians, NOVA investigates the secrets behind these deadly war machines. Zeppelin Terror Attack explores the technological arms race that unfolded as Britain desperately scrambled to develop ...
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Episode 12 - Killer Typhoon
Release Date: 22 Jan. 2014From PBS - It was the strongest cyclone to hit land in recorded history. On November 8, 2013, Typhoon Haiyan -- what some are calling "the perfect storm" -- slammed into the Philippines, whipping the low-lying and densely-populated islands with 200 mile-per-hour winds and sending a two-story-high storm surge flooding into homes, schools, and hospitals. It wiped villages off the map and devastated cities, including the hard-hit provincial capital Tacloban. Estimates count more than 5,000 dead and millions homeless. What made Haiyan so destructive? In-depth interviews ...
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Episode 13 - Ghosts of Murdered Kings
Release Date: 29 Jan. 2014From PBS - A corpse found in a bog in the hills of Ireland's County Tipperary dates to the Bronze Age, more than 3,000 years ago. A CAT scan reveals a violent demise: the body covered in axe marks, the spine snapped and the arm broken in two places. NOVA follows archaeologists and forensic experts in their hunt for clues to the identity and the circumstances of this and other violent deaths of victims unearthed in bogs. A new theory suggests that they were ritually murdered kings, slain to assure the fertility of land and people.
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Episode 14 - Roman Catacomb Mystery
Release Date: 5 Feb. 2014From PBS - Beneath the streets of Rome lies an ancient city of the dead known as the catacombs, a labyrinth of tunnels, hundreds of miles long, a cemetery for the citizens of ancient Rome. In 2002, maintenance workers stumbled through an opening in one of the tunnel walls and discovered a previously unknown complex of six small rooms, each stacked floor to ceiling with skeletons. It was a mass grave, locked away for nearly 2,000 years. Who were these people? Why were so many interred in one place, piled atop each other? And most important, what killed them? NOVA's ...
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Episode 15 - Great Cathedral Mystery
Release Date: 12 Feb. 2014From PBS - The dome that crowns Florence's great cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore -- the Duomo -- is a masterpiece of Renaissance ingenuity and an enduring source of mystery. Still the largest masonry dome on earth, it is taller than the Statue of Liberty and weighs as much as an average cruise ship. Historians and engineers have long debated how its architect, Filippo Brunelleschi, kept the dome perfectly aligned and symmetrical as the sides rose and converged toward the center. More than four million bricks could collapse at any moment -- and we still don't ...
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Episode 16 - Wild Predator Invasion
Release Date: 2 Apr. 2014Add a Plot
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Episode 17 - Inside Animal Minds: Bird Genius
Release Date: 9 Apr. 2014Add a Plot
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Episode 18 - Inside Animal Minds: Dogs & Super Senses
Release Date: 16 Apr. 2014Add a Plot
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Episode 19 - Inside Animal Minds: Who's the Smartest?
Release Date: 23 Apr. 2014Add a Plot
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Episode 20 - Why Sharks Attack
Release Date: 7 May 2014From PBS - In recent years, an unusual spate of deadly shark attacks has gripped Australia, resulting in five deaths in 10 months. At the same time, great white sharks have begun appearing in growing numbers off the beaches of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, not far from the waters where Steven Spielberg filmed Jaws. What's behind the mysterious arrival of this apex predator in an area where it's rarely been seen for hundreds of years? Are deadly encounters with tourists inevitable? To separate fact from fear, NOVA teams with leading shark experts in Australia and the United...
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Episode 21 - Escape from Nazi Alcatraz
Release Date: 14 May 2014From PBS - Colditz Castle, a notorious prisoner of war camp in Nazi Germany, was supposed to be escape-proof. But in the dark days at the end of World War II, a group of British officers dreamt up the ultimate escape plan: in a secret attic workshop, they constructed a two-man glider out of bed sheets and floorboards. Their plan was to fly to freedom from the roof of the castle, but the war ended before they could put it to the test. Now a crack team of aero engineers and carpenters rebuild the glider in the same attic using the same materials, and they'll do ...
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Episode 22 - D-Day's Sunken Secrets
Release Date: 28 May 2014From PBS - On June 6, 1944, the Allies launched the biggest armada in history to invade the Normandy beaches and liberate Europe from the Nazis. In less than 24 hours, more than 5,000 ships crossed the English Channel, along with thousands of tanks and landing craft and nearly 200,000 men. Hundreds of ships sank while running the gauntlet of mines and bunkers, creating one of the world's largest underwater archeological sites. Now, NOVA has exclusive access to a unique collaboration between military historians, archeologists, and specialist divers to carry out the ...