Science Archives - Page 18 of 25

Chemistry – A Volatile History episode 1 : Discovering the Elements

Science / 2 minutes of reading / June 23, 2020 / By HDclump

Chemistry – A Volatile History episode 1: The explosive story of chemistry is the story of the building blocks that make up our entire world – the elements. From fiery phosphorous to the pure untarnished lustre of gold and the dazzle of violent, violet potassium, everything is made of elements – the earth we walk on, the air we breathe, even us. Yet for centuries this world was largely unknown, and completely misunderstood. In this three-part series, professor of theoretical physics Jim Al-Khalili traces the extraordinary story of how the elements were discovered and mapped. He follows in […]

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The Atom

Science / 2 minutes of reading / April 30, 2020 / By HDclump

The Atom : The story of the discovery that everything is made from atoms, one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs in history, and the brilliant minds behind it. The series tells a story of geniuses like Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg who were driven by their thirst for knowledge and glory. It is a story of false starts and conflicts, ambition and revelation, a story which leads us through some of the most exciting and exhilarating ideas ever conceived by the human race. The Atom – The Clash of the Titans part 1 The first of three programmes

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Hubble – The Wonders of Space Revealed

Science / 2 minutes of reading / April 25, 2020 / By HDclump

Hubble – The Wonders of Space Revealed: To celebrate the 30th anniversary of its launch, this film tells the remarkable story of how Hubble revealed the awe and wonder of our universe and how a team of daring astronauts risked their lives to keep it working. Horizon tells amazing science stories, unravels mysteries and reveals worlds you’ve never seen before. Hubble – The Wonders of Space Revealed The Hubble Space Telescope (often referred to as HST or Hubble) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was

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The Sky at Night – Here Comes the Sun

Science / 3 minutes of reading / April 20, 2020 / By HDclump

The Sky at Night – Here Comes the Sun: Esa’s solar orbiter was launched from Cape Canaveral earlier this year on a decade long mission to discover the secrets of our sun. And the Sky at Night was there to capture all the action. Two aspects of this mission make it unique. First, the spacecraft is designed to capture the highest resolution images of the sun ever taken. And then it will orbit the sun to give us a glimpse of what’s happening at the its poles, areas we have never seen before. In this programme, we discover

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The Joy of AI

Science / 3 minutes of reading / April 14, 2020 / By HDclump

The Joy of AI: Professor Jim Al-Khalili looks at how we have created machines that can simulate, augment, and even outperform the human mind – and why we shouldn’t let this spook us. He reveals the story of the pursuit of AI, the emergence of machine learning and the recent breakthroughs brought about by artificial neural networks. He shows how AI is not only changing our world but also challenging our very ideas of intelligence and consciousness. Along the way, we’ll investigate spam filters, meet a cutting-edge chat-bot, look at why a few altered pixels makes a computer

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The Story of Maths episode 4 – To Infinity and Beyond

Science / 3 minutes of reading / April 13, 2020 / By HDclump

The Story of Maths episode 4 – To Infinity and Beyond: Marcus du Sautoy concludes his investigation into the history of mathematics with a look at some of the great unsolved problems that confronted mathematicians in the 20th century. After exploring Georg Cantor’s work on infinity and Henri Poincare’s work on chaos theory, he looks at how mathematics was itself thrown into chaos by the discoveries of Kurt Godel, who showed that the unknowable is an integral part of maths, and Paul Cohen, who established that there were several different sorts of mathematics in which conflicting answers to

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The Story of Maths episode 3 – The Frontiers of Space

Science / 4 minutes of reading / April 12, 2020 / By HDclump

The Story of Maths episode 3 – The Frontiers of Space: By the 17th century, Europe had taken over from the Middle East as the world’s powerhouse of mathematical ideas. Great strides had been made in understanding the geometry of objects fixed in time and space. The race was now on to discover the mathematics to describe objects in motion. Marcus explores the work of Rene Descartes and Pierre Fermat, whose famous Last Theorem would puzzle mathematicians for more than 350 years. He also examines Isaac Newton’s development of the calculus, and goes in search of Leonard Euler,

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The Story of Maths episode 2 – The Genius of the East

Science / 3 minutes of reading / April 10, 2020 / By HDclump

The Story of Maths episode 2 – The Genius of the East: When ancient Greece fell into decline, mathematical progress stagnated as Europe entered the Dark Ages, but in the east mathematics reached new heights. Du Sautoy visits China and explores how maths helped build imperial China and was at the heart of such amazing feats of engineering as the Great Wall. In India, he discovers how the symbol for the number zero was invented and Indian mathematicians’ understanding of the new concepts of infinity and negative numbers. In the Middle East, he looks at the invention of

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The Story of Maths episode 1 – The Language of the Universe

Science / 3 minutes of reading / April 9, 2020 / By HDclump

The Story of Maths episode 1 – The Language of the Universe: After showing how fundamental mathematics is to our lives, Marcus du Sautoy explores the mathematics of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece. In Egypt, he uncovers use of a decimal system based on ten fingers of the hand, while in former Mesopotamia he discovers that the way we tell the time today is based on the Babylonian Base 60 number system. In Greece, he looks at the contributions of some of the giants of mathematics including Plato, Euclid, Archimedes and Pythagoras, who is credited with beginning the

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How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?

Science / 2 minutes of reading / February 26, 2020 / By HDclump

How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth? – naturalist Sir David Attenborough investigates whether the world is heading for a population crisis. In his lengthy career, Sir David has watched the human population more than double from 2.5 billion in 1950 to nearly seven billion. He reflects on the profound effects of this rapid growth, both on humans and the environment. While much of the projected growth in human population is likely to come from the developing world, it is the lifestyle enjoyed by many in the West that has the most impact on the planet. Some

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The Saturn V Story

Science / 2 minutes of reading / February 10, 2020 / By HDclump

The Saturn V Story: In 1961 when President Kennedy pledged to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, no rocket existed with the power or capability to rise to the challenge. In order to win the race to space, the United States would need to establish a multi-billion dollar space program. One man, Werner Von Braun believed he had the knowledge and vision to make Kennedy’s dream a reality. This is the story of the most powerful machine ever built, and the men and women who believed it could fly. The Saturn

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Einstein’s Quantum Riddle

Science / 4 minutes of reading / January 18, 2020 / By HDclump

Einstein’s Quantum Riddle: Einstein’s Quantum Riddle tells the remarkable story of perhaps the strangest phenomenon in science – quantum entanglement. It’s a story of mind-bending concepts and brilliant experiments, which lead us to a profound new understanding of reality. At the start of the 20th century Albert Einstein helped usher in quantum mechanics – a revolutionary description of the behaviour of tiny particles. But he soon became uncomfortable with the counter intuitive ideas at the heart of the theory. He hunted for flaws in the equations and eventually discovered that they predicted a seemingly impossible situation. Quantum theory

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