Science Archives - Page 8 of 26

Voyage of the Continents episode 3

Science / 4 minutes of reading / February 27, 2023 / By HDclump

Voyage of the Continents episode 3: Asia is a closely watched continent. Teams of scientists keep a constant eye on it. Asia is a continent on high alert. The Indian sub-continent that smashed into the mainland eons ago is still pushing the Himalayas to ever greater heights. The tectonic activity in the south of the continent extends as far as Nepal and the Tibetan plain. Off the east coast, Japan is in the grip of tectonic forces that shake its islands with devastating force while Indonesia is ravaged by volcanoes. China is also affected and, like Japan, is exposed to […]

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Secrets of the Jurassic Dinosaurs episode 2

Science / 4 minutes of reading / February 27, 2023 / By HDclump

Secrets of the Jurassic Dinosaurs episode 2: The plot thickens. As the team uncovers the remains of fearsome Jurassic predators, they consider the possibility that the site was a dinosaur hunting ground. This time, the team tries to figure out if the Jurassic’s most vicious predator was involved in the deaths of super-sized beasts, like the iconic Diplodocus, that are buried at the site, helping to reveal why so many dinosaurs came here and what killed them in such great numbers 150 million years ago. Liz Bonnin joins an international team of palaeontologists in the remote

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Voyage of the Continents episode 2

Science / 4 minutes of reading / February 24, 2023 / By HDclump

Voyage of the Continents episode 2: The history of Asia is awash with superlatives. Along with teams of scientists, we discover the incredible volcanic phenomenon that caused the greatest extinction of all time. Asia was the theatre of the world’s most violent tectonic collision, and has witnessed the birth of the Earth’s highest summits. Today, one of the countries of Asia – which is the world’s most densely populated continent – could be swallowed up, in the ceaseless Voyage of the Continents. Remote Siberia is where Asia was born. A cold and distant land that has seen billions of years

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Voyage of the Continents episode 1

Science / 4 minutes of reading / February 22, 2023 / By HDclump

Voyage of the Continents episode 1: The history of Oceania is the history of the Earth as a whole. Along with scientists, we track the information recorded in its relief, from the first forms of life on Earth, to their destruction and rebirth. Welded to Antarctica for millions of years, Australia is today a deserted landscape that enjoys extraordinary stability. Its neighbours do not share the same luck. New Zealand is perilously located between two tectonic plates, and the volcanic islands of the Southern Pacific could explode, thus disappearing from the ceaseless Voyage of the Continents. In this episode we

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Secrets of the Jurassic Dinosaurs episode 1

Science, Nature / 4 minutes of reading / February 19, 2023 / By HDclump

Secrets of the Jurassic Dinosaurs episode 1: Liz Bonnin joins an international team of palaeontologists in the remote badlands of Wyoming as they investigate a mysterious dinosaur graveyard. Packed with over a dozen skeletons, including predators such as the fearsome Allosaurus and iconic giants like Diplodocus, as well as fossilised plants and footprints, the site is a treasure trove that is helping to change the way we think about the Jurassic – the golden age of dinosaurs. The astonishing evidence also helps the team to answer why so many dinosaurs came here and what killed them in such great numbers

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Islands of Evolution episode 3 – Madeira

Nature, Science / 3 minutes of reading / February 15, 2023 / By HDclump

Islands of Evolution episode 3 – Madeira: In the final episode, Richard Fortey travels to Madeira to examine what happens to a volcanic island as it nears the end of its life cycle and starts sinking back into the sea. Here, in the island’s laurisilva forest, he examines the remains of an ancient forest that once carpeted all of Europe, finds island lizards that live to be four times older than their mainland counterparts, and meets a huge wolf spider. With the help of local divers, he also discovers an unexpectedly rich marine habitat populated by whales, dolphins and unusual

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Islands of Evolution episode 2 – Madagascar

Science, Nature / 3 minutes of reading / February 13, 2023 / By HDclump

Islands of Evolution episode 2 – Madagascar: Professor Richard Fortey travels to the rainforests of Madagascar – an ancient island that has spawned some of the most extraordinary groups of plants and animals anywhere in the world. From beautiful Indri lemurs, toxic frogs, and the cat-like giant mongoose called the fossa, to evolutionary oddities like the giraffe-necked weevil and the otherworldly aye-aye, he uncovers the secrets of the evolutionary niche – examining how, given millions of years, animals and plants can adapt to fill almost any opportunity they find. Three-part series in which Professor Richard Fortey investigates

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Your Inner Fish: An Evolution Story episode 3

Science / 6 minutes of reading / February 11, 2023 / By HDclump

Your Inner Fish: An Evolution Story episode 3: In the final episode, Neil tracks our hands, feet, colour vision, spine and upright gait to our primate and hominid progenitors, who also passed on perhaps the most important legacy of all – a path to the human brain. It took more than 350 million years for the human body to take shape. Anatomist Neil Shubin reveals how our bodies are the legacy of ancient fish, reptiles and primates, the ancestors you never knew were in your family tree. Our bodies carry the anatomical legacy of animals that

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Islands of Evolution episode 1 – Hawaii

Science, Nature / 4 minutes of reading / February 10, 2023 / By HDclump

Islands of Evolution episode 1 – Hawaii: Richard Fortey investigates why islands are laboratories of evolution. On Hawaii he finds honeycreeper birds, carnivorous caterpillars and silversword plants. In the first episode, Fortey is on Hawaii to investigate how life colonises a newly born island. According to some estimates, Hawaii has been successfully colonised by only one new species every 35,000 years due to its remote location – yet the Hawaiian Islands teem with a great diversity of life. In search of the evolutionary secrets of how one species becomes many, Fortey encounters beautiful honeycreeper birds whose evolution rivals that of

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Your Inner Fish: An Evolution Story episode 2

Science / 5 minutes of reading / February 9, 2023 / By HDclump

Your Inner Fish: An Evolution Story episode 2 traces our hair, skin, teeth, jaws and sense of hearing back to reptilian ancestors – from ferocious beasts that ruled the Earth, to a little shrew-like animal that lived 195 million years ago. It took more than 350 million years for the human body to take shape. Anatomist Neil Shubin reveals how our bodies are the legacy of ancient fish, reptiles and primates – the ancestors you never knew were in your family tree. Our bodies carry the anatomical legacy of animals that lived hundreds of millions of

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Your Inner Fish: An Evolution Story episode 1

Science / 4 minutes of reading / February 7, 2023 / By HDclump

Your Inner Fish: An Evolution Story episode 1: It took more than 350 million years for the human body to take shape. Anatomist Neil Shubin reveals how our bodies are the legacy of ancient fish, reptiles and primates, the ancestors you never knew were in your family tree. Our bodies carry the anatomical legacy of animals that lived hundreds of millions of years ago. Journeying to the Arctic, South Africa and Ethiopia, Neil uncovers an astonishing story spanning hundreds of millions of years, a tale full of strange facts and remarkable insights. Using fossils, embryos and

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The Beginning and End of the Universe episode 2

Science / 4 minutes of reading / January 28, 2023 / By HDclump

The Beginning and End of the Universe episode 2: Professor Jim Al-Khalili carries us into the distant future to try to discover how the universe will end – with a bang or a whimper? He reveals a universe far stranger than anyone imagined and, at the frontier of our understanding, encounters a mysterious and enigmatic force that promises to change physics forever. Prof Jim Al-Khalili tackles the biggest subject of all, the universe, through a series of critical observations and experiments that revolutionised our understanding of our world. The Beginning and End of the Universe episode 2

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