Nova

- Season 38

(2011)

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David Pogue hosts this examination of what makes material strong. He looks at the underlying material science behind steel, Kevlar, glass, chalk, carbon nanotubes, and spiderwebs.

David Pogue hosts this examination of miniaturization. He looks at what it takes to make things smaller focusing nanotechnology and micro-robots that one day may be used to save lives.

This program looks at cleaner ways to generate power principally in our cars and electrical power plants. It reviews alternatives for all the steps in the fuel generation, storage and distribution processes with a particular emphasis on how unwanted waste products can play a significant role.

Watson, an IBM computer with a brain the size of 2,400 home computers and a database of 10 million documents, competes on the game show Jeopardy! (1984) against champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Will Watson win?

Making stuff smarter isn't about artificial intelligence. It's more about engineering materials at the microscopic level to behave in specific ways. Today is it possible to create materials with clever designs or micro structures that permit control of a material's ability to self-heal, stick and release, self-clean, prevent disease, alter their shape and other properties. This program explains where several of these materials came from, how they work and how they are put to practical use.

Forensic investigators reconstruct the final moments of the Air France disaster.

Nova and National Geographic follow researchers collecting venom from the world's most dangerous snakes, spiders, lizards and other creatures. The program explains why the researchers do it and what is known about how venom works and why some animals are especially dangerous.

On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck Japan resulting in waves up to 130 ft. (40 m.) that devastated coastal villages and initiated meltdowns, gas explosions and the release of radioactive materials at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

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On the 10th anniversary of 9/11, NOVA presents an epic story of engineering, innovation and the perseverance of the human spirit.

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Scientists are on the verge of answering one of the greatest questions in history: Are we alone? Finding Life Beyond Earth immerses audiences in the sights and sounds of alien worlds, while top astrobiologists explain how these places are changing how we think about the potential for life in our solar system.

Conclusion. The effort to locate life elsewhere in the universe is examined. It's a difficult task due to the many planets that could theoretically support life.

An autopsy on the 5000-year-old remains of Otzi the Iceman, the mummified corpse recovered from a glacier in the Italian Alps in 1991.

Simple, obvious, ever-present aspects of our daily lives give scientists fits trying to understand them. One of these aspects is space which physicists are convinced is something more than nothing. This program explains the experiments that are giving scientists hints about what space is.

This program challenges our traditional questions about time such as; does it flow in one direction or does it flow at all? Does everyone experience the same now? Is time travel possible? Will time come to an end?

This program explains some of the weirdest aspects of quantum mechanics: uncertainty and entanglement. Despite the absurdity of these behaviors they have been confirmed time and again and have never been refuted. Lastly the theory that suggests the possibility that teleportation and quantum computers may be possible are examined.

Hard as it is to swallow, cutting-edge theories are suggesting that our universe may not be the only universe. Instead, it may be just one of an infinite number of worlds that make up the multiverse. In this show, Brian Greene takes us on a tour of this brave new theory at the frontier of physics, explaining why scientists believe it's true and showing what some of these alternate realities might be like.