Sunday, September 28, 2008

The 11th Hour

Narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, this captivating documentary explores the perilous state of our planet, and the means by which we can change our course. Contributing to this crucial film are noted politicians, scientists and other ambassadors for the importance of a universal ecological consciousness.




"We reached out to independent experts on the front lines of what could be the greatest challenge of our time: the collapse of our planet's ecosystems and our search for solutions to create a sustainable future," says Leonardo DiCaprio.

"We ourselves wanted to understand why humans were on a crash course with nature, and what we had to do to change course," says co-writer/co-director/producer Leila Conners Petersen. Her sister and collaborator, Nadia Conners, adds, "One of the great things about doing this project was being able to meet people that inspired me or opened my mind through their work and writings. It was a great honor and a huge learning experience."




The 11th Hour examines the human relationship with earth from its earliest glimmers of innovation, to the challenges humanity faces in the present, to the possibilities of the future.




"It was the human mind that was the key to our very survival," David Suzuki, an award-winning scientist, environmentalist and broadcaster, says in the film. "Now, when you think that we evolved in Africa about a hundred and fifty thousand years ago, and compared to the other animals that must have been on the plains of that time, we weren't very impressive. We weren't very many; we weren't very big; we weren't gifted with special senses. The one thing, the key to our survival and our taking over the planet, was the human brain. But because the human mind invented the concept of a future, we're the only animal on the planet that actually was able to recognize: we could affect the future by what we do today."





The film posits that in many ways, humanity has detached itself from nature, and grown accustomed to using without thinking to manage the earth's resources.


Click here to visit the official website.


More documentaries like this...

The Kogi - From the Heart of the World

Life After People

A World Without Water

Global Dimming

Own this important documentary on DVD...

Friday, September 26, 2008

Are We Alone in the Universe?

This documentary investigates one of the most controversial questions of the past hundred years...are we alone in the universe? This is not one those films that claims to have conclusive proof, but rather a look at the serious science of the search for extraterrestrial life.




The search for extra-terrestrial life has been going for 50 years - but there's been a recent breakthrough. Astronomers have discovered a new planet called Gliese 581 c. It is the most Earth-like planet ever found. It orbits a star and may have habitats capable of supporting life. NASA hopes to find 50 more Earth-like planets by the end of the decade, all of which increases the chance that alien life has begun elsewhere.






Click here to to find out more about the Drake equation.

Click here to visit the SETI website.


More documentaries like this...

The Quest for Life

Hubble - 15 Years of Discovery

Titan: A Place Like Home?

BBC Space - with Sam Neil

The Elegant Universe

What We Still Don't Know

Thursday, September 25, 2008

The Dark Lords of Hattusha

From their capital, the Hittites ruled a mighty empire. However, two and a half thousand years ago, their civilisation disappeared and their capital city, Hattusha, was lost to history. The Hittites developed advanced military, political, and legal systems but what other secrets did its disappearance hide? Only the marvels of 20th century archaeology have led to its rediscovery.



During this one hour documentary, we explore this ancient marvel, using the latest discoveries to answer questions surrounding this mystical city.





More documentaries like this...

The Lost Pyramids of Caral

China from the Inside

The Kogi - From the Heart of the World

Inside Mecca

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

How Did Life Begin?

In this documentary Nobel Prize recipient Sir Harry Kroto attempts to answer one of world's most puzzling question: how did life on earth come to be? Take a look at the recent scientific research in the field and learn about the ancient world of RNA and DNA.




There are of course no definative answers offered by this documentary, but we get the feeling that we are closer than ever to discovering the answer to the age old question of how life began.





Click here for a NOVA interview with Harry Kroto on the subject of how life began.

Click here to view Harry Kroto's autobiography.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Crude - The Incredible Journey of Oil

The audio is pretty bad on this documentary up to 3:30 minutes, but fine after that...

From the food on our tables to the fuel in our cars, crude oil seeps invisibly into almost every part of our modern lives. It is the energy source and raw material that drives transport and the economy. Yet many of us have little idea of the incredible journey it has made to reach our petrol tanks and plastic bags.



Coming in the wake of rising global concerns about the continued supply of oil, and increasingly weird weather patterns, Crude spans 160 million years of the Earth's history to reveal the story of oil; from its birth deep in the dinosaur-inhabited past, to its ascendancy as the indispensable ingredient of modern life.



Filmed on location in 11 countries across five continents, the program's award-winning Australian filmmaker Richard Smith consults the leading international scientific experts to join the dots between geology and economy and provide the big-picture view of oil.



Crude takes a step back from the day to day news to illuminate the Earth's extraordinary carbon cycle and the role of oil in our impending climate crisis. Nearly seven billion people have come to depend on this resource, yet the Oil Age that began less than a century and a half ago, could be over in our lifetimes.



Click here to visit the official website.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

In It's Image

In the mid 70s, an aspiring theoretical physicist made what he and many others feel is the most important discovery in the world. This very significant documentary is about the resulting invention, one that can author all subsequent ideas, provide a totally unanticipated cosmology, and possibly deliver us from death.






This is a blurb from the In Its Image Incorporated website...

In Its Image Incorporated is a California non-profit corporation that is literally dedicated to saving everyone's lives. Its primary mission is to achieve life extension through the melding of human consciousness with a radically new kind of machine intelligence. Its secondary mission is to demonstrate the plausibility of achieving this profound purpose, and in so doing, fund the main objective of immortality.




Click here to visit the official website.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Brief History of Disbelief - Jonathan Miller

In this first ever television history of disbelief, Jonathan Miller goes on a journey exploring the origins of his own lack of belief and uncovering the hidden story of atheism.




Shadows of Doubt




Jonathan Miller visits the absent Twin Towers to consider the religious implications of 9/11 and meets Arthur Miller and the philosopher Colin McGinn. He searches for evidence of the first 'unbelievers' in Ancient Greece and examines some of the modern theories around why people have always tended to believe in mythology and magic.





Noughts and Crosses




With the domination of Christianity from 500 AD, Jonathan Miller wonders how disbelief began to re-emerge in the 15th and 16th centuries. He discovers that division within the Church played a more powerful role than the scientific discoveries of the period. He also visits Paris, the home of the 18th century atheist, Baron D'Holbach, and shows how politically dangerous it was to undermine the religious faith of the masses.





The Final Hour




The history of disbelief continues with the ideas of self-taught philosopher Thomas Paine, the revolutionary studies of geology and the evolutionary theories of Darwin. Jonathan Miller looks at the Freudian view that religion is a 'thought disorder'. He also examines his motivation behind making the series touching on the issues of death and the religious fanaticism of the 21st century.





Take a cool atheist quiz here

Check out the BBC atheist page here

More on atheism here

Other documentaries like this...

Flock of Dodos

Who Wrote the Bible?

Zeigeist

Richard Dawkins - The Root of All Evil


Evolution - Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Friday, September 19, 2008

The Death Star

Out in deepest space lurks a force of almost unimaginable power. Explosions of extraordinary violence, are blasting through the Universe every day. If one ever struck our Solar System it would destroy our Sun and all the planets.




For years no one could work out what was causing these awesome explosions. Now scientists think they have identified the culprit. It's the most extreme object ever found in the Universe; they have christened it a 'hypernova'.

Cold War cosmology

The mystery began in 1967. A US military satellite was launched to detect Soviet nuclear tests which the Pentagon believed were secretly taking place on the dark side of the Moon. Instead, the satellite picked up evidence of explosions far bigger than any bomb. Something was emitting bursts of gamma rays - the deadliest form of energy known - on a massive scale. What was worse, these blasts just kept on coming.




Breaking the law

For decades scientists were baffled. Especially disturbing was evidence that these explosions might be coming from the furthest reaches of the Universe, billions of light years away. If this was so, then for us to see them on Earth they had to be on a scale that was beyond our comprehension. According to some, these explosions were so huge that they might even violate the most sacred law in all science: Einstein's famous equation relating mass and energy, E=mc². That law underpins nothing less than our understanding of how our Universe works.




Live fast, die young

It was not until 1997, when a satellite pinpointed the exact location of these bursts, that scientists began to solve the puzzle. It seems these huge explosions are caused by the death throes of stars twenty times the size of our Sun, which burn themselves out and explode, creating hypernovae. What then unfolded was a chain of events, which would ultimately point towards some of the most exotic wonders in the Universe: stellar nurseries (where new stars are born) and black holes.




Observations show that - instead of fading away, as an explosion might be expected to - radiation continues to emerge from the area of a hypernova. This ongoing emission is characteristic of the process of star birth. Astronomers conclude that the hypernova grows rapidly along with other normal stars in a nursery, but burns out when its contemporaries are still in their infancy.





Pointing to the past

Find a hypernova, therefore, and you have also tracked down a part of space where stellar synthesis is underway. Which is why some scientists now believe that the huge explosions of hypernovae may be the key to unlocking one of the great unsolved mysteries in the Universe: how the first stars were made at the very dawn of time.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Light Fantastic

Light Fantastic explores the phenomenon that surrounds and affects nearly every aspect of our lives but one which we take for granted - light.




I have not been able to locate full versions parts 2 & 3 to this documentary series yet, but will post links when they become available.


PART ONE - Let There be Light




Greek and Arab scholars, and later Europeans such as Descartes and Newton all tried to understand light to gain a better understanding of God. Episode one shows how much of modern science's origins came from the desire to penetrate the divine nature of light.





PART TWO - The Light of Reason




The second programme explores the link between the development of practical tools that manipulate light and the emergence of new ideas. For example, Galileo's observation that the sun did not go around the earth, was made with a telescope that had been invented for Venetian soldiers and traders.


























PART THREE - The Stuff of Light




Episode three charts the discovery of the true nature of light and its impact on the modern world. All of today's technologies - electricity, mobile communications and our ability to illuminate the world 24 hours a day - stem from unravelling the mystery of light.


PART FOUR - Light, The Universe and Everything




In the final programme Simon Schaffer finds that as more people were able to manipulate light, the more puzzling and tricky it became. This led to investigations into the strange relationship between light, the eye and the mind, and the development of new technology such as photography and cinema.




I apologise for the 8 section posting for part 2 of this series...better links will be found soon.


Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Invaders From the Sea

A BBC Worldwide-IMO Production "Invaders From the Sea" gives a unique insight into an important environmental issue: the trnsfer of harmful organisms in ships' ballast water.




Filmed by the internationally renowned BBC Wildvision, this amazing story looks at how this phenomenon is affecting our coasts and millions of lives around the world and the measures taken by the global community to fight against these alien stowaways. Globallast is a cooperative initiative of the Global Environment Facility, United Nations Development Programme and International Maritime Organization.




Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Brainman

Meet Daniel Tammet, a 27 year-old math and memory wizard. He can do things with numbers that will truly amaze you. He is a savant. . . with a difference. Unlike most savants, he shows no obvious mental disability, and most importantly, he can describe his own thought process. Join correspondent Morley Safer as he explores the extraordinary life and mind of Daniel Tammet.




This documentary investigates the world of savants through the story of Daniel and others like him. In doing so, many common misconceptions are smashed.



Monday, September 15, 2008

The Quest for Life

How did life on Earth begin? Is there life beyond our planet? Is there a future for humankind on other planets?




This documentary examines the search for life, from its origins on Earth to possibilities in space. Produced in high definition, the program features interviews with scientists who share their opinions about the possibility of life beyond Earth, and examines the latest developments in astrobiology, one of the hottest fields in science today. The quest for answers takes EXPLORING SPACE to earthly locales ranging from Greenland to the mountains of eastern Mexico, from a French vineyard to a research facility in Japan - as well as deep into outer space. From a trip through space alongside a city-sized meteor to a walk on the surface of Mars with the first crew to explore the Red Planet, spectacular computer-animated imagery creates a viewing experience that will bring audiences as close to space as possible without leaving home.




Earth may be a rare environment uniquely designed for nurturing living organisms, but as humans explore the creation of the planet, the realization grows that the answers to the origins of life may lie beyond earthly bounds.

Click here for the official PBS site

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Rise of the Video Game

The video game revolution has been under way for decades, progressing from simple amusements created in the 1950s to an all-pervasive force in today's popular culture that rivals — and will perhaps soon surpass — film and television. What began as a subculture pastime has evolved and transcended genres to become a unique form of expression impacting everything from modern warfare to interpersonal relationships.



Rise of the Video Game is a comprehensive and progressive exploration of the past, present and future of video games and video gamers. From the early days of Pong to today's ever-popular Halo 2, and from Atari 2600 to Nintendo to PlayStation, Rise of the Video Game tells the story of the people, the ideologies and the technology behind video games and how they have exploded into a cultural phenomenon. The evolution of gaming has seen the pendulum move from the days of games replicating society, to society replicating games. Featuring interviews with giants in the gaming industry of yesterday and today, this five-part series examines the evolution of the video game and its cultural impact on the world of entertainment today.



LEVEL ONE




The videogame started not with a bang but with a ping. Unlike other forms of entertainment, videogames turn the viewer into a player who actively shapes the outcome of their experience. At first video games and the creators were as misunderstood by the public as rock & roll in its infancy. But those closest to the videogame business persevered and never lost sight of the ability videogames had to become a dominant form of entertainment.






LEVEL TWO



In the late 1970s and early 1980s, instead of controlling spaceships and tennis rackets, videogame technology allowed players to command recognizable characters with real faces and back stories. This paralleled the importance of the hero's journey that was popular in movies of the time like "Rocky" and "Star Wars," as well as mirrored the rise of individualism and conservative meritocracy, where one man can make a difference. Game creators were liberated to create more complex videogames with heroic journeys, and Japanese creators like Shigeru Miyamoto rose to prominence with star characters Super Mario, Luigi and Zelda.




LEVEL THREE



It was a foreign concept to early game designers but with games like "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" and "DOOM", video games grew from their primitive 2-D roots into richly detailed 3-D worlds. These groundbreaking 3-D games led the industry down new paths both thrilling and troubling. Critics questioned if these games were getting too real, too violent and too addictive. For the first time game designers had to grapple with tough questions.







LEVEL FOUR



Since the invention of the computer man has feared "the machine" and its ability to think. But a computer's unique computational power has also led to the development of seminal games that are unpredictable, intelligent and malleable. "God games" like SimCity and Civilization simulate entire worlds and let players experiment with cause and effect. Other designers have used artificial intelligence to create lifelike characters and worlds that shape themselves to each player. And some games are so technologically advanced that they have become tools for learning, or better yet, creative expression.






LEVEL FIVE



Can a computer game make you cry? With the introduction of PlayStation 2's "emotion engine" in 1999 game developers had the technology to enable deep, moving stories that tugged at gamers' heartstrings. The rise of online virtual world games added another emotional dimension, letting players make real connections (including marriages) through a virtual game and helping them escape a world rife with violence and terror.


Saturday, September 13, 2008

Hubble - 15 Years of Discovery

ESA’s anniversary DVD film “Hubble - 15 years of discovery” covers all aspects of the Hubble Space Telescope project – a journey through the history, the troubled early life and the ultimate scientific successes of Hubble. This portrait, directed by Lars Lindberg Christensen, contains large amounts of previously unpublished footage of superb quality. With more than 500,000 copies distributed, this DVD movie is probably the most widely available science documentary ever.




Hubble's spectacular visual images make a stunning backdrop throughout the film, bringing an immediacy and vitality as the narrative reveals the new insights Hubble has inspired in all fields of astronomy from exoplanets to black holes. Complex though the science behind the telescope’s images often is, Art Director Martin Kornmesser has developed a unique style of elaborate 3D animation that enhances and vividly clarifies the underlying science.



The movie is presented by an ESA scientist, Dr. Robert (Bob) Fosbury, who has himself used Hubble for his own research on many occasions.






Buy this amazing documentary on DVD now...



Total Isolation

For the first time in 40 years Horizon re-creates a controversial sensory deprivation experiment. Six ordinary people are taken to a nuclear bunker and left alone for 48 hours. Three subjects are left alone in dark, sound-proofed rooms, while the other three are given goggles and foam cuffs, while white noise is piped into their ears.



The original experiments carried out in the 1950s and 60s by leading psychologist Prof Donald Hebb, was thought by many in the North American political and scientific establishment to be too cruel and were discontinued.



Prof Ian Robbins, head of trauma psychology at St George's Hospital, Tooting, has been treating some of the British Guantanamo detainees and the victims of torture who come to the UK from across the world. Now he evaluates the volunteers as their brains undergo strange alterations.



Friday, September 12, 2008

The Real Eve

Narrated by actor Danny Glover, "The Real Eve" reveals that our shared genetic heritage links every living person on earth and traces the expansion of modern humans throughout the world. The discovery of the Eve gene stunned the world. It seems we could all be descended from just a few females – or even just one. In this telling anthropological video, we access the very latest DNA reconstructions, and for the first time, tell conclusively the story of where, when and how the human race came about and then populated the world.




Mitochondrial DNA is passed from mother to children, both male and female, unchanged and it mutates at a predictable rate; i. e., the more the genetic mutations in the DNA, the more ancient the origin of the population. Using these facts, some scientists are studying mitochondrial DNA to try to trace back the origins of the human race. Using this method, the scientists have traced the human race to one female in Africa several million years ago. Then they traced the migration patters of her descendants as they spread across the earth.




The Real Eve is a fascinating documentary presenting a new and controversial theory of human evolution. It does what all good documentaries do, it makes you think, and it entertains at the same time.






More documentaries like this...

Evolution - Darwin's Dangerous Idea

The Kogi

The Lost Pyramids of Caral

Buy the DVD today...

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Space Tourists

This documentary deals with an issue that many still find hard to believe is possible.

Over 40 years ago man first went into space. Ever since ordinary people have dreamt of getting there themselves. But after several false starts, a group of space obsessed entrepreneurs believe the first commercial flights into the final frontier are only a few years away.



The concept of space tourism is not new. Following the enormous achievements made by the Americans and Russians during the 1960s many of us assumed that it was only a matter of time before it was the turn of tourists. These dreams were fuelled even further when the era's new celebrities – the astronauts – returned with tales of life-changing experiences. Space fever was so intense that by 1969 Pan-Am, one of the world's most respected airlines, opened a waiting list for a moon shuttle. It was only a concept on a drawing board but almost 100,000 people signed up.

The problem was that going to space was incredibly expensive. The vehicles being sent into space were only used once so every time a rocket lifted off millions of dollars effectively went up in flames. In order for space tourism to become a reality, that needed to change.

Budding space tourists were certain that the space shuttle was the answer to their dreams. It was reusable and capable of making several trips a year. Even the commercial world was inspired by the shuttle and in 1985 a California company started offering trips to space on a craft that would be ready for lift off in 1992.

In 1986 a civilian finally made it onto the launch pad when NASA put school teacher Christa McAuliffe on board the shuttle Challenger. But just over a minute into the mission Challenger exploded and the entire crew was killed. The accident had an immediate impact. Commercial ventures were cancelled.



It wasn't until ten years later that the dream of space tourism was revived by space entrepreneur Peter Diamandis. Convinced that it was the job of the commercial world to open the space frontier for the masses, Diamandis established the X Prize. The prize would eventually offer $10 million for the first craft to make it to sub orbital space – 62 miles above the earth – twice in 14 days.

The race attracted over 20 competitors. The first person to join up was Burt Rutan, one of the world's most prolific aircraft designers.

There was also Chuck Lauer, a former property developer who had co-founded Rocketplane Ltd. Rocketplane's approach was to build a spaceship by modifying a Lear Jet.

John Carmack, a 34 year-old computer games millionaire, signed up with his company Armadillo Aerospace. Carmack and his crew of volunteers only worked part-time but were attempting to build a vertical take-off and landing vehicle from scratch.

Most of the entrants had big ideas, but little money or concrete plans.

Burt Rutan decided to spend the first few years working in secret on his project. He eventually came up with a design he was certain could do the job, especially as it addressed two of the most dangerous aspects of space flight, lift-off and re-entry.



To avoid the dangers of a ground launch, which uses tons of highly explosive fuel, Rutan designed a carrier aeroplane that would carry his craft, SpaceShipOne, to 47,000 feet to be launched. To handle the dangerous g-force and heat encountered on re-entry, Rutan came up with the idea of using twin tails that would fold at a 90° angle. This would create incredible drag to slow the ship down. In effect the ship would go up like a bullet and come down like a shuttlecock.

With the backing of Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen, Rutan built his ship and in June 2004, SpaceShipOne became the first commercial manned craft in space. Three months later it completed the task again, twice in two weeks, and claimed the $10million X Prize.




Now Rutan and Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson have formed a partnership to build the next generation of craft capable of taking several passengers. Branson's new company, Virgin Galactic, is already selling return tickets to space for $200,000. And even though the new craft that will take the first space tourists hasn't yet been built, the company has taken $10million in deposits.

Monday, September 8, 2008

Evolution - Darwin's Dangerous Idea

This is perhaps one of the most comprehensive documentary journeys through the "fact" of evolution.

Evolution determines who lives, who dies, and who passes traits on to the next generation. The process plays a critical role in our daily lives, yet it is one of the most overlooked -- and misunderstood -- concepts ever described.



The Evolution project's eight-hour television miniseries travels the world to examine evolutionary science and the profound effect it has had on society and culture. From the genius and torment of Charles Darwin to the scientific revolution that spawned the tree of life, from the power of sex to drive evolutionary change to the importance of mass extinctions in the birth of new species, the Evolution series brings this fascinating process to life. The series also explores the emergence of consciousness, the origin and success of humans, and the perceived conflict between science and religion in understanding life on Earth.



The Evolution series' goals are to heighten public understanding of evolution and how it works, to dispel common misunderstandings about the process, and to illuminate why it is relevant to all of us.

Episode 1: Darwin's Dangerous Idea




Why does Charles Darwin's ''dangerous idea'' matter more today than ever, and how does it explain the past and predict the future of life on Earth? The first show interweaves the drama of Darwin's life with current documentary sequences, introducing key concepts of evolution.







Episode 2: Great Transformations




What underlies the incredible diversity of life on Earth? How have complex life forms evolved? The journey from water to land, the return of land mammals to the sea, and the emergence of humans all suggest that creatures past and present are members of a single tree of life.




Episode 3: Extinction!




Five mass extinctions have occurred since life began on Earth. Are humans causing the next mass extinction? And what does evolutionary theory predict for the world we will leave to our descendants?




Episode 4: The Evolutionary Arms Race




Survival of the fittest: Raw competition? Intense cooperation? Both are essential. Interactions between and within species are among the most powerful evolutionary forces on Earth, and understanding them may be a key to our own survival.


Episode 5: Why Sex?




In evolutionary terms, sex is more important than life itself. Sex fuels evolutionary change by adding variation to the gene pool. The powerful urge to pass our genes on to the next generation has likely changed the face of human culture in ways we're only beginning to understand.




Episode 6: The Mind's Big Bang




Fifty thousand years ago, something happened -- the modern human mind emerged, triggering a creative, technological, and social explosion. What forces contributed to that breakthrough? Where might our power of mind ultimately lead us?




Episode 7: What About God?




Of all species, we alone attempt to explain who we are and how we came to be. This final show explores the struggle between science and religion. Through the personal stories of students and teachers, it offers the view that they are compatible.





Click here to visit PBS's amazing evoltion site!


More documentaries like this...

Flock of Dodos

What Makes Us Human

The Genius of Charles Darwin

Life After People

Own this amazing documentary series on DVD...