Discovery Science

A complex of tall, windowless buildings in the American Rust Belt holds the secrets to a lost empire of industry and wealth; experts investigate these mysterious structures to reveal why this once powerful metropolis is now home to abandoned ruins.

Professor Kentaro Shimizu (45), of the University of Zurich in Switzerland, is trying to uncover the secrets to plant diversity by decoding plant genes while conducting field work in the Swiss Alps. Most organisms including animals have only about 20,000 to 30,000 genes, and Shimizu is hoping to understand why there are so many different species of organisms living on the earth. Through his research, he's learned that the numbers of chromosomes inherited from parents play a significant role in the evolution and diversification of living organisms. Shimizu is also applying his research findings to creating an improved wheat variety that will survive the changing global environment.

Satellites capture a temple-like, Nazi structure hidden deep in the forests of Poland, leading an expert to investigate and uncover a tale of terrifying rituals, black magic and the rise of the most feared division of Hitler's war machine.

The battle over the food supply becomes the last straw for Adam, Evan, Christine and Gerrid. Andrew and Jennifer are abandoned at base camp. Adam and Evan join Oliver on a nearby claim, leading to a final confrontation with Andrew.

In midst of an existential threat to the indigenous Assyrians by ISIS, the filmmaker travels back to his ancestral homeland, Syria, on a journey of nostalgia and discovery.

Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are homes to the deadliest storms in our solar system, and new discoveries reveal the secrets of this hellish alien weather, helping experts understand these alien worlds better than ever.

What will the future look like? How will new discoveries and research impact our everyday lives in 2050?

The BBC's Horizon programme began in 1964, and since then has produced films looking at computer technology and the emergence of 'artificial intelligence'.

Our dreams always begin with ideology and optimism, only for this optimism to be replaced with suspicion that AI machines will take over. However, as the Horizon archive shows, throughout each decade once we have learnt to live with the new emerging technology of the time, the pattern begins again. We become once more optimistic, before becoming fearful of it. The dream for decades had been for a computer with AI to be embedded within a humanoid robot, but just as scientists began to perfect machines with these qualities, something happened nobody expected.

Episodes are about individual planets in our solar system

How to have a happier life and a better world all thanks to maths, in this witty, mind-expanding guide to the science of success with Hannah Fry.

Following in the footsteps of BBC Four's award-winning maths films The Joy of Stats and The Joy of Data, this latest gleefully nerdy adventure sees mathematician Dr Hannah Fry unlock the essential strategies you'll need to get what you want - to win - more of the time. From how to bag a bargain dinner to how best to stop the kids arguing on a long car journey, maths can give you a winning strategy. And the same rules apply to the world's biggest problems - whether it's avoiding nuclear annihilation or tackling climate change.

Imagine if you could change the quality of the air we breathe - in just one day. Air pollution in the UK has been declared a public health emergency by a cross-party group of MPs, and Dr Xand van Tulleken is checking what can be done about it. Enlisting the help of enthusiasts and sceptics from the Kings Heath community in Birmingham, Xand stages the first ever large-scale experiment of its kind - using people power to try and bring about a quantifiable improvement in air quality for a single day.

In a unique science experiment, Dr George McGavin and Dr Zoe Laughlin chronicle the history of rubbish and explore how what we throw away tells us about the way we live our lives. With unprecedented access to one of the UK's largest landfill sites, the team of experts spend three days carrying out tests all over the site, revealing the secret world of rubbish. They also carry out three other 'archaeological' digs into historic landfills to chart the evolution of our throwaway society. Ultimately, their quest is to discover whether the items we throw away today have any value for tomorrow's world.

In 2017, two solar eclipses crossed the planet. Millions were awestruck as the earth, moon, and sun aligned, casting watchers into total darkness. America experienced the most extensive total eclipse, lasting ninety straight minutes, visible along a path pinpointed by NASA scientists.

One evening in early September 1859, a spectacular blood-red aurora borealis appeared across America. Earlier that same day, in a leafy garden in the UK, a gentleman astronomer had noted a 'white light flare' on the sun's surface.

The two events were linked; it's now known that the flare caused the aurora. The flare was a particularly violent eruption from the sun's surface known as a CME, a coronal mass ejection. Back then, it was considered an astronomical curiosity. But when it happens again, it will be a different story. For the modern, technological world such a violent solar phenomenon could be devastating. This episode examines just how damaging a CME could be and how astronomers, using two new satellites that will travel closer to the sun than ever before, can better prepare us for its impact.

Part science documentary, part historical investigation, this film celebrates one of the most iconic trees in the British countryside.

Simon Schaffer tells the stories behind some of the most extraordinary engineering wonders of the 19th century. These were gigantic feats of technology which transformed everyday life but also had the capacity to challenge the Victorians' faith in God, their place in the universe and their hopes for the future. Through stunning images of these beautiful creations, this film investigates the origins of our love-hate relationship with technology.
First, Simon visits the industrial landscape of Ironbridge in Shropshire to show how new technology of the early 19th century made possible the construction of monstrous machines. He examines a giant steam hammer which could crush a railway sleeper but could also be controlled so precisely that it could crack the shell of an egg and keep the egg intact.
Throughout the film, Simon shows how technological breakthroughs inspired and elevated the Victorians but also unsettled and threatened them. Machines drove the British Empire and held apparently infinite potential, but they were also terrifying - they replaced workers by carrying out their jobs more efficiently, they polluted the environment, and they dwarfed life on a human scale.

Documentary exploring one of the world’s most heated and divisive debates: is it right to take monkeys’ lives to try to improve the lives of humans? Who decides what is acceptable, and where do you draw the line?
Despite huge advances in medicine, scientists argue that the use of monkeys in medical testing is still crucial to cure certain diseases. However, anti-vivisection activists and three quarters of the British public disagree with testing on monkeys. In this documentary we visit the Biomedical Primate Research Centre in the Netherlands, where 200 rhesus macaque monkeys are used each year to help find cures to some of the world’s most deadly diseases. We meet those on the front line of this work, from the deputy director of the lab, who believes their work is essential to help stop human suffering, to the animal trainers who get to know the monkeys well and have to wrestle with their emotions every day, knowing that the animals they work with will die in the research lab. We also speak to the activists who protest outside the facility daily in the hope that one day it will be shut down.

Astronaut Mike Massimino reveals the alien secrets of comets, strange visitors from deep space that might be responsible for life on Earth.

'To send a spacecraft there is a little bit insane,' says Scott Bolton when talking about Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system. But that is exactly what he has done, because Scott is head of Juno, the Nasa mission designed to peer through Jupiter's swirling clouds and reveal the wonders within. But this is no ordinary world. This documentary, narrated by Toby Jones, journeys with the scientists into the heart of a giant.

Professor Kaitlin Kratter shows us how extreme Jupiter is. She has come to a quarry to measure out each planet's mass with rocks, starting with the smallest. Mercury is a single kilogram, and the Earth is 17. But Jupiter is on another scale entirely. It is seven tonnes - that is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets combined. On Kaitlin's scale it is not a pile of rocks, it is the truck delivering them. With extreme size comes extreme radiation. Juno is in the most extreme environment Nasa has visited. By projecting a 70-foot-wide, life-size Juno on a Houston rooftop, Scott shows us how its fragile electronics are encased in 200kg of titanium. As Scott puts it, 'we had to build an armoured tank to go there.'

Earth's climate is changing - understanding how has become one of the biggest scientific projects ever undertaken.