science Archives - Page 18 of 20

Wonders of Life episode 2 – Expanding Universe

Science, Nature / 2 minutes of reading / January 24, 2019 / By HDclump

Wonders of Life episode 2 – Expanding Universe – Professor Brian Cox encounters the astonishing creatures that reveal how the senses evolved. Every animal on Earth experiences the world in a different way, using a unique suite of senses to detect its physical environment. Tracing the evolution of these mechanisms is a story that takes us through life’s journey – from single-celled organisms to more complex, sentient beings. Brian finds that over the course of 3.8 billion years, the senses have driven life in new directions and may, ultimately, have led to our own curiosity and intelligence. Brian […]

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Pluto and Beyond

Science / 2 minutes of reading / January 20, 2019 / By HDclump

In Pluto and Beyond: the New Horizons spacecraft attempts to fly by a mysterious object known as Ultima Thule, believed to be a primordial building block of the solar system. Three years after taking the first spectacular photos of Pluto, New Horizons is four billion miles from Earth, trying to achieve the most distant flyby in NASA’s history. If successful, it will shed light on one of the least understood regions of our solar system: the Kuiper Belt. NOVA is embedded with the New Horizons mission team, following the action in real time as they uncover the secrets of what

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The Sky at Night – Beyond Pluto episode 1 2019

Science / 2 minutes of reading / January 14, 2019 / By HDclump

The Sky at Night – Beyond Pluto: On 1st January 2019, Nasa’s New Horizons probe notched up another historic first: the first ever Kuiper belt fly-by. Its target was 2014 MU69, a chunk of ice and rock about four billion miles (approximately 6.4 billion kilometres) from Earth, dubbed Ultima Thule, a Latin phrase meaning a distant, unknown region. It is the most distant fly-by in history, and it is believed the data New Horizons gathers will shed new light on the solar system’s early days. Chris Lintott reports from the John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland to bring the

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The Story of 1

History, Science / 2 minutes of reading / January 13, 2019 / By HDclump

The Story of 1 is a documentary about the history of numbers, and in particular, the number 1. It was presented by former Monty Python member Terry Jones. Terry Jones first journeys to Africa, where bones have been discovered with notches in them. However, there is no way of knowing if they were used for counting. Jones then discusses the Ishango bone, which must have been used for counting, because there are 60 scratches on each side of the bone. Jones declares this “the birth of one”; a defining moment in history of mathematics. He then journeys to

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Wonders of Life episode 1 – What Is Life?

Science, Nature / 2 minutes of reading / January 11, 2019 / By HDclump

Wonders of Life episode 1 – What Is Life?: in this episode Brian Cox visits South East Asia’s ‘Ring of Fire’. In the world’s most volcanic region he explores the thin line that separates the living from the dead and poses that most enduring of questions: what is life? The traditional answer is one that invokes the supernatural, as seen at the annual Day of the Dead celebrations in the Philippine highlands. Brian sets out to offer an alternative answer: one bound up in the flow of energy through the universe. On the edge of Taal Volcano lake,

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How the Universe Works episode 1 2019: Nightmares of Neutron Stars

Science / 2 minutes of reading / January 10, 2019 / By HDclump

Neutron stars are strange and violent phenomena that defy the laws of physics, and new discoveries reveal that these bizarre nightmares are far more deadly than previously believed, with the power to destroy planets and even other stars. A neutron star is the collapsed core of a giant star which before collapse had a total of between 10 and 29 solar masses. They are the smallest and densest stars, not counting hypothetical quark stars and strange stars. Neutron stars have a radius of the order of 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) and a mass lower than 2.16 solar masses.

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10 Things You Need to Know About the Future

Science / 1 minute of reading / January 6, 2019 / By HDclump

10 Things You Need to Know About the Future looks at the issues that will change the way we live our lives in the future. Rather than relying on the minds of science fiction writers, mathematician Hannah Fry delves into the data we have today to provide an evidence-based vision of tomorrow. With the help of the BBC’s science experts – and a few surprise guests – Hannah investigates the questions the British public want answered about the future. Hannah tries to discover whether we could ever live forever or if there will ever be a cure for

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Mass Extinction: Life at the Brink

Science / 3 minutes of reading / December 23, 2018 / By HDclump

It’s death on an unimaginable scale, when a majority of Earth’s species quickly die out. It’s called “mass extinction,” and it’s happened at least five times before. Cataclysms, such as supervolcanoes or asteroids, are thought to cause these events, but some experts believe a man-made mass extinction could be next. Is our planet in trouble? And if so, is there anything we can do to stop the next catastrophic annihilation? Experts are traveling the world, performing groundbreaking scientific detective work to answer these very questions. Mass Extinction: Life at the Brink An extinction event (also known as

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Human Universe episode 5: What Is Our Future?

Science / 3 minutes of reading / December 12, 2018 / By HDclump

In Human Universe episode 5: Professor Brian Cox concludes his exploration of our place in the universe by asking what next for the ape that went to space. In northern Spain, he begins in a cave that was once home to our distant ancestors. Here, he discovers some of the earliest art in the universe – a child’s hand painted onto the wall that has remained intact for around 40,000 years. That child – if raised today – would be just as bright and just as capable as any modern child. Yet its vision of the future would be very

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Human Universe episode 4: A Place in Space and Time

Science / 3 minutes of reading / December 9, 2018 / By HDclump

In Human Universe episode 4: A Place in Space and Time: professor Brian Cox explores our origins, place and destiny in the universe. We all start our lives thinking that we are at the centre of the universe, surrounded by our family and the world as it spins around us. But the urge to explore is strong. Brian tells the story of how our innate human curiosity has led us from feeling that we are at the centre of everything, to our modern understanding of our true place in space and time – that we are living 13.8 billion years

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Human Universe episode 3: Are We Alone?

Science / 2 minutes of reading / November 8, 2018 / By HDclump

In Human Universe episode 3: Brian Cox explores the ingredients needed for an intelligent civilisation to evolve in the universe – the need for a benign star, for a habitable planet, for life to spontaneously arise on such a planet and the time required for intelligent life to evolve and build a civilisation. Brian weighs the evidence and arrives at his own provocative answer to the puzzle of our apparent solitude. Human Universe episode 3: Are We Alone? In 1977 a radio signal was received that bore all the hallmarks of coming from an alien intelligence. To this

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Human Universe episode 2: Why Are We Here?

Science / 3 minutes of reading / November 6, 2018 / By HDclump

In Human Universe episode 2: Brian Cox reveals how the wonderful complexity of nature and human life is simply the consequence of chance events constrained by the laws of physics that govern our universe. But this leads him to a deeper question – why does our universe seem to have been set up with just the right rules to create us? In a dizzying conclusion Brian unpicks this question, revealing the very latest understanding of how the universe came to be this way, and in doing so offers a radical new answer to why we are here. Professor

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