How can scientists study a faraway black hole that emits no light? By observing its quasar. As objects get pulled onto the accretion disk orbiting a supermassive black hole, friction creates a bright light known as a quasar. In this video, researchers use a “galaxy-sized lens” to analyze light from a distant quasar—revealing a supermassive black hole with a truly voracious appetite.
Astronomers have located more than 1,000 planets orbiting stars other than our own, and the latest observations are starting to reveal what these planets are like. The AMNH-led Project 1640 is at the forefront of this research. The project’s advanced telescope instrumentation can spot chemical fingerprints that will help characterize how exoplanets form, evolve, and differ from familiar planets closer to home.
Filmmaker Peter Sasowsky examines the life and work of artist Joe Davis
Carl and Susan, husband and wife, scientist and artist, navigate the challenges of Carl’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
The story of Muhammad Iqbal, a turn of the century poet/philosopher from South Asia. Through Iqbal's work we open a dialog between the East and West, refute the notion of a class of civilizations and discover our shared humanity.
Six young women programmed the world's first all-electronic programmable computer, ENIAC, as part of a secret US WWII project. They changed the world, but were never introduced and never received credit. These pioneers deserve to be known and celebrated: Betty Snyder Holberton, Jean Jennings Barik, Kay McNulty Mauchly Antonelli, Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer, Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum, and Frances Bilas Spence.
Raising angora rabbits for wool; new marine navigation and safety technology; kitchen gadgets; developing new rose varieties.
Orson Welles — with contributions from scientists George Wald, Carl Sagan, and others — examines the possibility and implications of extraterrestrial life. In examining our perceptions of alien 'martians' from his "War of the Worlds" broadcast, to then-modern explorations of Mars, this film from NASA provides a unique glimpse at life on earth, and elsewhere in the universe.
Die Phosphor Krise
A documentary film using high quality stereoscopic 3D and exploring the secrets of our universe. All imagery is based on actual NASA data and astronomical research. The high-end stereo visual give audiences the first-hand experience of visiting real otherworldly landscapes. The 3D-team behind the Oscar-nominated "Pina" will bring the stars as close to you as no other documentary has ever done before.
Is building our own starship Enterprise possible? Will we ever travel between the stars as easily as they do in Star Trek? JJ Abrams' new feature, Star Trek Into Darkness, hits the screen in a golden age of scientific discoveries. HISTORY is there, giving viewers a deep look behind the scenes, on the set, and into the science–amazing new exoplanets, the physics of Warp drive, and the ideas behind how we might one day live in a Star Trek Universe.
This film shows how far we have come since the cold-war days of the 50s and 60s. Back then the Russians were our "enemies". And to them the Americans were their "enemies" who couldn't be trusted. Somewhere in all this a young girl in Oklahoma named Shannon set her sights on becoming one of those space explorers, even though she was told "girls can't do that." But she did.
Four young Americans who've each suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury emerge from their comas at a New Jersey medical facility. Their eyes may be open, but now the real challenge for each of the patients, their families, their doctors and their therapists begins. Brain healing isn't predictable, we're told, and certainly is not guaranteed. So with each 'major' step forward that is observed (opening one's eyes, bending a thumb upon command, vocalizing a word, answering a question correctly) comes a sense of jubilant relief and hope from the families of these patients, but as we soon see, the more a patient progresses, the more difficult things can be for all involved. Moments of faith & hope contrast with disappointments & frustrations, moments of confidence with moments of doubt. It's difficult to watch, and unimaginable to have to ever live through.
In The Womb is a 2005 National Geographic Channel documentary that focus on studying and showing the development of the embryo in the uterus. The show makes extensive use of Computer-generated imagery to recreate the real stages of the process.
Join the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity for an awe-inspiring journey to the surface of the mysterious red planet.
Fascinating -- and unintentionally funny -- experiments at Austria's famed Institute for Experimental Psychology involve a subject who for several weeks wears special glasses that reverse right and left and up and down. Unexpectedly, these macabre and somehow surrealist experiments reveal that our perception of these aspects of vision is not of an optical nature and cannot be relied on, while the unfortunate, Kafkaesque subject stubbornly struggles through a morass of continuous failures.
This film is dedicated to Mas-Félipe Delavouët, the poet discovered by Lawrence Durrell, who wrote 14,000 verses in Provençal over a period of thirty years, and who died on November 18, 1990. "The sky, history and Mediterranean and Provençal myths are the inexhaustable wellspring of this man rooted down there, near Salon-de-Provence" (J.-D. Pollet). "Mas-Félipe Delavouët wrote five books in Provençal, 14,000 verses. A sort of "Odyssey". Of myths. What is stunning in him is that he always talks of disappearances. Cities, works, men, writings, television, etc., everything has to disappear. In order to be reborn. No pain. A sort of hand-to-hand of man and nature. During the filming, I would simply throw out some words... For example, one time I said "creation" and he said: "creation doesn't exist..., creation is before me..., I can only read creation"; this sentence describes Delavouët perfectly (J.-D. Pollet, 1989 and 1993).
A documentary on Al Gore's campaign to make the issue of global warming a recognized problem worldwide.
Tour Montparnasse : le chantier record
Lyon-Turin : Le Dernier Tunnel XXL