Particle Fever

In a compartment of the Moscow-Novosibirsk train, a young physicist meets famous film actors. The conversation accidentally comes to Einstein, and the woman begins to explain to her fellow travelers what the theory of relativity is. The actors are incidentally on their way to the shooting of a film about physicists, but they do not understand the subject at all.

Almost one hundred years ago, the project to reduce the world to mathematical physics failed suddenly and completely: “One of the best-kept secrets of science,” physicist Nick Herbert writes, “is that physicists have lost their grip on reality.” The world, we are now told, emerges spontaneously, out of “nothing,” and constitutes a “multiverse,” where “anything that can happen will happen, and it will happen an infinite number of times.” Legendary reclusive genius Wolfgang Smith demonstrates on shockingly obvious grounds the dead end at which physics has arrived, and how we can “return, at last, to the real world.” The End of Quantum Reality introduces this extraordinary man to a contemporary audience which has, perhaps, never encountered a true philos-sophia, one as intimately at ease with the rigors of quantum physics as with the greatest schools of human wisdom.

Kapky a bubliny

A documentary telling the remarkable human story of Stephen Hawking. For the first time, the personal archives and the testimonies of his closest family reveal both the scale of Hawking's triumphs and the real cost of his disability and success.

Free Will? A Documentary is an in-depth investigation featuring world renowned philosophers and scientists into the most profound philosophical debate of all time: Do we have free will?

This shows physicist Stephen Hawking's life as he deals with the ALS that renders him immobile and unable to speak without the use of a computer. Hawking's friends, family, classmates, and peers are interviewed not only about his theories but the man himself.

Professor Iain Stewart reveals the story behind the Scottish physicist who was Einstein's hero; James Clerk Maxwell. Maxwell's discoveries not only inspired Einstein, but they helped shape our modern world - allowing the development of radio, TV, mobile phones and much more. Despite this, he is largely unknown in his native land of Scotland. Scientist Iain Stewart sets out to change that, and to celebrate the life, work and legacy of the man dubbed "Scotland's Forgotten Einstein".

Horizon: Which Universe Are We In?

With extraordinary access, BLAST exposes a world of risky, hardcore, scientific adventure. The story follows an international team of astrophysicists trying to launch a multi-million dollar telescope on a NASA high-altitude balloon. Their journey to discover thousands of early galaxies takes them from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Revealing frustrations, inevitable failures and ultimate triumph, BLAST puts a human face on the quest to answer our most basic question - How did we get here?

CERN, the world's largest physics laboratory, is also a society in itself. A mythological microcosm and science's answer to the Tower of Babel, with its many thousand employees as an indispensable element among cables and computers. The researchers speak the same esoteric and nerdy language. But their physical trials are not the only experiments in the human anthill. CERN is also a utopian experiment in collaboration across cultures, where the world's most advanced technology meets the world's sharpest—and some of the quirkiest—minds.

Where did the universe come from and did a creator have a hand in making it? As scientists learn more about the universe, our ideas about exactly what God made (the earth, the universe, the multi-verse even nothing but empty space) have come into question.

A team of international skiers embark on a two-week glacier traverse connecting two remote research stations in Kazakhstan. The Tien Shan's 4000+ meter peaks host an active scientific community, leveraging the rare environmental conditions for groundbreaking research. Established during the Soviet Union's occupation, the high-altitude research stations here are home to some of the longest-standing glacier and cosmic radiation experiments in the world - and are surrounded by deadly alpine terrain.

Follow leading scientists around the world and to the edge of the universe on their quest to solve one of the greatest mysteries of the universe, the mysterious invisible “dark matter.”

Twenty years after A Brief History of Time flummoxed the world with its big numbers and black holes, its author, Stephen Hawking, concedes that the "ultimate theory" he'd believed to be imminent - which would conclusively explain the origins of life, the universe and everything - remains frustratingly elusive. Yet despite his failing health and the seeming impossibility of the task, Hawking is still devoted to his work; an extraordinary drive that's captured here in fleeting interview snippets and footage of the scientist sharing a microwave dinner with some fawning PhD students. Though the pop-science tutorials that dapple the first of this two-part biography are winningly perky, Hawking, alas, remains as tricky to fathom as his boggling quantum whatnots

The Academy Award® nominee Cosmic Voyage combines live action with state-of-the-art computer-generated imagery to pinpoint where humans fit in our ever-expanding universe. Highlighting this journey is a "cosmic zoom" based on the powers of 10, extending from the Earth to the largest observable structures in the universe, and then back to the subnuclear realm.

Just outside Paris, France, inside a high-tech vault, requiring three independently controlled keys, rests a small metallic cylinder about the diameter of a golf ball. Encased within three vacuum-sealed bell jars it may not look like much, but it is one of the most important objects on the planet. It affects nearly every aspect of our lives from the moment we are born, to the food we eat, the cars we drive, and even the medicines we take. The Last Artifact follows the high-stakes race to redefine the weight of the world reveals the untold story of one of the most important objects on the planet. The kilogram, the base unit of mass in the International System of Units, helped send humans to the moon and satellites into space. This small hunk of metal is the object against which all others are measured. Yet over time, its mass mysteriously eroded by the weight of an eyelash. A change that, unbeknownst to most, unleashed a crisis with potentially dire consequences.

Richard Feynman was a scientific genius with - in his words - a "limited intelligence". This dichotomy is just one of the characteristics that made him a fascinating subject. The Pleasure of Finding Things Out exposes us to many more of these intriguing attributes by featuring an extensive conversation with the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner. During the course of the interview, which was conducted in 1981, Feynman uses the undeniable power of the personal to convey otherwise challenging scientific theories. His colorful and lucid stories make abstract concepts tangible, and his warm presence is sure to inspire interest and awe from even the most reluctant student of science. His insights are profound, but his delivery is anything but dry and ostentatious.

Physicist Dr Helen Czerski takes us on a journey into the science of bubbles - not just fun toys, but also powerful tools that push back the boundaries of science.

Kate Humble and Helen Czerski reveal the inner workings of the sun and investigate why scientists think changes in the sun's behaviour may have powerful effects on our climate.

CERN in Switzerland is a research center where they try to recreate the big bang. Nikolaus Geyrhalter follows the center's infrastructure and meets the people who created the "Large Hadron Collider".