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The Self-Access Centre - English - TV Documentaries - Physics

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	Title	Author	Subcategory	Subtitles	Length	Rating
For one night only, Professor Brian Cox goes unplugged in a specially recorded programme from the lecture theatre of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. In his own inimitable style, Brian takes an audience of famous faces, scientists and members of the public on a journey through some of the most challenging concepts in physics. 1	A Night with the Stars	BBC 2	Physics		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Professor Al-Khalili takes us from the discovery of the atom to the development of quantum mechanics 2	Atom I - Clash of Titans	Jim Al-Khalili	Physics		50 mins	Like (0 likes)
This episode tackles world-changing discoveries such as radioactivity, the Atom Bomb and the Big Bang, and tries to answer the biggest questions of all - why are we here and how were we made? 3	Atom II - The Key to the Cosmos	Jim Al-Khalili	Physics		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Al-Khalili discovers that there might be parallel universes in which different versions of us exist, and finds out that empty space isn’t empty at all, but seething with activity 4	Atom III - The Illusion of Reality	Jim Al-Khalili	Physics		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
How scientist James Lovelock came to see the Earth as a holistic, self-regulating system. 5	Beautiful Minds - James Lovelock	BBC	Physics	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
In the first of a three-part series, Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell describes how she discovered pulsars, the by-products of supernova explosions which make all life in the universe possible. She describes the moments of despair and jubilation as the discovery unfolded and her excitement as pulsars took the scientific world by storm. 6	Beautiful Minds - Jocelyn Bell Burnell	BBC	Physics	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Physicist Professor Andre Geim's constant search for new ideas has led to some extraordinary discoveries, from levitating frogs to a tape that sticks to surfaces like a gecko's foot. He reveals how his playful approach to his research helped him uncover the properties of graphene, the world's thinnest material, and won him a Nobel Prize. 7	Beautiful Minds Seies 2 - Professor Andre Geim	BBC 4	Physics		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Science turns superhero as it battles to save the planet and preserve the human race. 8	Brave New World with Stephen Hawking - 4 - Environment	Channel 4	Physics	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
The documentary follows the fictional scientist Dr. Howell as he travels from his hotel room in London, England to his laboratory in New York City, and shows how each catastrophe, including a mega-tsunami, a global pandemic and a killer asteroid, affects him as well as those around him, with various experts providing commentary on that specific disaster as it unfolds 9	End Day	BBC	Physics		10 mins	Like (0 likes)
Engineer Jem Stansfield is used to creating explosions, but in this programme he uncovers the story of how we have learnt to control them and harness their power for our own means. 10	Explosions: How We Shook the World	BBC 4	Physics	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
In this film, Professor Marcus du Sautoy explores one of the most dramatic scientific announcements for a generation. In clear, simple language he tells the story of the science we thought we knew, how it is being challenged, and why it matters. 11	Faster Than the Speed of Light?	BBC 4	Physics		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
As the world swaps theories on global warming, Five Disasters Waiting To Happen looks at how some of the world's leading cities are dealing with the practical reality of climate change. 12	Five Disasters Waiting To Happen	BBC	Physics		45 mins	Like (0 likes)
Five of the world's top scientists present the revolutionary scientific inventions they believe could stop global warming and prevent worldwide disaster. Ideas include putting a giant glass sunshade in space to deflect a small portion of the sun's rays back into space and the firing ofrockets loaded with tons of sulphur into the stratosphere creating a vast, but very thin sunscreen of sulphur around the earth 13	Five Ways to Save the World	Jonathan Barker	Physics		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Drama-documentary relating the remarkable story of Stephen Hawking's early years as a PhD student at Cambridge. 14	Hawking	BBC 4	Physics	English	90 mins	Like (0 likes)
lan Davies attempts to answer the proverbial question: how long is a piece of string? But what appears to be a simple task soon turns into a mind-bending voyage of discovery where nothing is as it seems. 15	Horizion - How Long is a Piece of String?	BBC	Physics	English	58 mins	Like (0 likes)
Mathematicians have discovered there are infinitely many infinities, each one infinitely bigger than the last. And if the universe goes on forever, the consequences are even more bizarre. In an infinite universe, there are infinitely many copies of the Earth and infinitely many copies of you. Older than time, bigger than the universe and stranger than fiction. This is the story of infinity. 16	Horizion - To Infinity and Beyond	BBC	Physics	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Horizon takes the ultimate trip into the unknown, to explore a dizzying world of cosmic bounces, rips and multiple universes, and finds out what happened before the big bang. 17	Horizion - What Happened Before the Big Bang?		Physics	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Comedian Ben Miller returns to his roots as a physicist to try to answer a deceptively simple question: what is one degree of temperature? 18	Horizion - What is One Degree?	BBC	Physics		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Black holes are one of the most destructive forces in the universe, capable of tearing a planet apart and swallowing an entire star. Yet scientists now believe they could hold the key to answering the ultimate question - what was there before the Big Bang? 19	Horizion - Who's Afraid of a Big Black Hole?	BBC	Physics	English	59 mins	Like (0 likes)
It's the process that powers the Sun, and scientists know that if they could just make nuclear fusion happen here on Earth they could solve all the world's energy problems. Billions of dollars have been spent on trying to make it happen, but now an American scientist claims to have created nuclear fusion simply by bombarding a flask of liquid with sound waves. Many scientists refuse to believe his claims, so Horizon has assembled a team to replicate the experiment. This film reveals the team's findings 20	Horizon - An Experiment to Save the World	BBC	Physics		11 mins	Like (0 likes)
Professor Brian Cox takes a global journey in search of the energy source of the future. Called nuclear fusion, it is the process that fuels the sun and every other star in the universe. Yet despite over five decades of effort, scientists have been unable to get even a single watt of fusion electricity onto the grid. 21	Horizon - Can We Make a Star on Earth?	BBC	Physics	English	50 mins	Like (0 likes)
Earthquakes are among the most devastating natural disasters on the planet. In the last hundred years they have claimed the lives of over one million people. Earthquakes are destructive mainly because of their unpredictable nature. It is impossible to say accurately when a quake will strike but a new theory developed by Professor Geoffrey King could help save lives by preparing cities long in advance for an earthquake 22	Horizon - Earthquake Storms	UKTV	Physics		46 mins	Like (0 likes)
As Albert Einstein lay on his deathbed, he asked only for his glasses, his writing implements and his latest equations. He knew he was dying, yet he continued his work. In those final hours of his life, while fading in and out of consciousness, he was working on what he hoped would be his greatest work of all. It was a project of monumental complexity. It was a project that he hoped would unlock the mind of God. 23	Horizon - Einstein's Unfinished Symphony	BBC 2	Physics		46 mins	Like (0 likes)
Dark flow is the latest in a long line of phenomena that have threatened to re-write the textbooks. Does it herald a new era of understanding, or does it simply mean that everything we know about the universe is wrong? 24	Horizon - Is Everything We Know About The Universe Wrong?	BBC 2	Physics	English	58 mins	Like (0 likes)
Around the world, a new generation of astronomers are hunting for the most mysterious objects in the universe. Young stars, black holes, even other forms of life. 25	Horizon - Seeing Stars	BBC 2	Physics	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Scientists are expecting a fit of violent activity on the sun which will propel billions of tonnes of superheated gas and pulses of energy towards our planet. 26	Horizon - Solar Storms - The Threat to Planet Earth	BBC 2	Physics		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
For centuries we have dreamt of reaching the centre of the Earth. Now scientists are uncovering a bizarre and alien world that lies 4,000 miles beneath our feet, unlike anything we know on the surface 27	Horizon - The Core	BBC 2	Physics		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Examining Stephen Hawking's most controversial theory and possibly his greatest mistake. 28	Horizon - The Hawking Paradox	BBC 2	Physics	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Horizon goes behind the scenes at CERN to follow one of the most epic and expensive scientific quests of all time: the search for the Higgs particle, believed to give mass to everything in our universe. 29	Horizon - The Hunt for the Higgs: A Horizon Special	BBC	Physics	English	80 mins	Like (0 likes)
There is a strange and mysterious world that surrounds us, a world largely hidden from our senses. The quest to explain the true nature of reality is one of the great scientific detective stories. 30	Horizon - What is Reality ?	BBC 2	Physics	English	59 mins	Like (0 likes)
Particle physicist and ex D:Ream keyboard player Dr Brian Cox wants to know why the Universe is built the way it is. He believes the answers lie in the force of gravity 31	Horizon - What on Earth is Wrong with Gravity	BBC	Physics		48 mins	Like (0 likes)
Last century, earthquakes killed over one million, and it is predicted that this century might see ten times as many deaths. Yet when an earthquake strikes, it always takes people by surprise. 32	Horizon - Why can't we predict an Earthquake?	BBC	Physics		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Famed for their ability to inflict Armageddon from outer space, asteroids are now revealing the secrets of how they are responsible for both life and death on our planet. 33	Horizon- Asteroids - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly	BBC	Physics	English	58 mins	Like (0 likes)
Professor Jim Al Khalili delves into over 50 years of the BBC science archive to tell the story behind the emergence of one of the greatest theories of modern science, the Big Bang. 34	Horizon: The Big Bang	BBC 4	Physics	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Professor Iain Stewart explores the story of our turbulent relationship with the wind. 35	How Earth Made Us - Part 03: Wind	BBC	Physics	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Iain explores man's relationship with fire. He begins by embarking on an extraordinary encounter with this terrifying force of nature - a walk right through the heart of a raging fire. 36	How Earth Made Us - Part 04 : Fire	BBC	Physics	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Professor Mark Miodownik traces the story of ceramics. 37	How it Works - Ceramics	BBC 4	Physics		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Professor Mark Miodownik travels to Israel to trace the history of our love affair with gleaming, lustrous metal. 38	How it Works - Metal	BBC 4	Physics		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Professor Mark Miodownik tells the story of plastics - created in the lab, they have brought luxury to the masses and shaped the modern age. 39	How it Works - Plastic	BBC 4	Physics		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Professor Robert Winston presents his top ten scientific breakthroughs of the past 50 years. Tracing these momentous and wide-ranging discoveries, he meets a real-life bionic woman, one of the first couples to test the male contraceptive pill, and even some of his early IVF patients. He explores the origins of the universe, probes the inner workings of the human mind and sees the most powerful laser in the world. To finish, Professor Winston reveals the breakthrough he thinks is most significant. 40	How Science Changed Our World	BBC 1	Physics	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
In this series Professor Iain Stewart tells a stunning new story about our planet. He reveals how the greatest changes to the Earth have been driven, above all, by plants. 41	How to Grow a Planet - 01 - Life from Light	BBC	Physics		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
In the second episode, Iain discovers how flowers have transformed our planet. He journeys to the remote islands of the South Pacific to track down the earliest flowers. 42	How to Grow a Planet - 02 - The Power of Flowers	BBC	Physics		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
In the third episode, Iain discovers the remarkable impact of just one plant: grass. On the savannah of South Africa he sees how grass unleashed a firestorm to fight its greatest enemy, the forests. 43	How to Grow a Planet - 03 - The Challenger	BBC	Physics		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Using cutting edge visual effects and CGI, this scientific visual extravaganza creates the first accurate non-stop journey from here to the edge of the universe 44	Journey to the Edge of the Universe	More 4	Physics	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Right now you're hurtling around the sun at 64,000 miles an hour (100,000 kms an hour). In the next year you'll travel 584 million miles, to end up back where you started. Presenters Kate Humble and Dr Helen Czerski follow the Earth's voyage around the sun for one complete orbit, to witness the astonishing consequences this journey has for us all. In this first episode they travel from July to the December solstice, experiencing spectacular weather and the largest tides on Earth. To show how the Earth's orbit affects our lives, Helen jumps out of an aeroplane and Kate briefly becomes the fastest driver on Earth. 45	Orbit: Earth's Extraordinary Journey Episode 01	BBC	Physics		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Professor Jim Al-Khalili discovers the intriguing story of how we discovered the rules that drive the universe. Energy is vital to us all, but what exactly is energy? 46	Order and Disorder: Part 01 - Energy	BBC	Physics		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
This is the epic story of the stars, and how discovering their tale has transformed our own understanding of the universe. 47	Seven Ages of Starlight	BBC	Physics		90 mins	Like (0 likes)
How pioneers unlocked electricity's mysteries and built strange instruments to create it. 48	Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity - Episode 01: Spark	BBC 4	Physics		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
How harnessing the link between magnetism and electricity transformed the world. 49	Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity - Episode 02: The Age of Invention	BBC 4	Physics		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
How we finally came to understand the science of electricity. 50	Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity - Episode 03: Revelations and Revolutions	BBC 4	Physics		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
In this one-off documentary, Space Dive tells the behind-the-scenes story of Felix Baumgartner's historic, record-breaking freefall from the edge of space to Earth. 51	Space Dive	BBC	Physics		90 mins	Like (0 likes)
In the last month of the space shuttle programme, Kevin Fong is granted extraordinary access to the astronauts and ground crew as they prepare for their final mission. 52	Space Shuttle: The Final Mission	BBC	Physics	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Engineer Jem Stansfield looks back through the Horizon archives to find out how scientists have come to understand and manipulate the materials that built the modern world. 53	Stuff: A Horizon Guide to Materials	BBC	Physics		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
When Polish priest and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus developed his extraordinary theory of a sun-centred universe 500 years ago, he was flying in the face of both science and religion. Mankind had believed for thousands of years that the earth was at the centre of the cosmos, and to disagree was to risk derision and accusations of heresy. For decades he was too afraid to publish, but the arrival of a young German scientist gave Copernicus courage, and his book and its extraordinary diagram were published in 1543, when he was on his deathbed. His image of the heliocentric universe changed forever our understanding of the Cosmos, and of our place in it. 54	The Beauty of Diagrams - Episode 02: Copernicus	BBC	Physics	English	30 mins	Like (0 likes)
In the mid-1660s, Isaac Newton bought a pair of prisms at a fair near Cambridge, which were to be the basis of a series of experiments that would unlock a secret that had occupied scientists for centuries - the nature of light itself. To explain what he had done, Newton created a diagram. It is called The Crucial Experiment and is a pivotal image in scientific history, a graphic moment when the ancient world was overturned by modern science. Newton demonstrated that white light is not pure, but made up of a number of different colours, the colours of the rainbow. Newton's ideas transformed our knowledge of what we see and how we see, and the prism and its refracted colours became a captivating image. From fibre-optics to the cover of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album, Newton's work went on to influence centuries of science and art. 55	The Beauty of Diagrams - Episode 03: Newton's Prism	BBC	Physics	English	30 mins	Like (0 likes)
Dr Thomas Dixon delves into the BBC's archive to explore the troubled relationship between religion and science. From the creationists of America to the physicists of the Large Hadron Collider, he traces the expansion of scientific knowledge and asks whe 56	The End of God? A Horizon Guide to Science and Religion	BBC 4	Physics		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Our understanding of the world around us is better now than ever before. But are we any closer to knowing how its all going to end? 57	The End of the World? A Horizon Guide to Armageddon	BBC 4	Physics	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Professor Brian Cox takes a look through nearly 50 years of BBC archive at the story of man's relationship with the Moon. 58	The Horizon Guide: Moon	BBC	Physics	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
In the 2012 Richard Dimbleby Lecture, leading geneticist and Nobel laureate Sir Paul Nurse explores the wonder of science and how it enhances our culture and civilisation. 59	The Richard Dimbleby Lecture 2012	BBC	Physics		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Chaos theory has a bad name, conjuring up images of unpredictable weather, economic crashes and science gone wrong. But there is a fascinating and hidden side to Chaos, one that scientists are only now beginning to understand. 60	The Secret Life of Chaos	Nic Stacey	Physics	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Science writer Dr Gabrielle Walker has been obsessed with ice ever since she first set foot on Arctic sea ice. In this programme she searches out some of the secrets hidden deep within the ice crystal to try to discover how something so ephemeral has the 61	The Secret Life of Ice	BBC 4	Physics		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
It's the start of a new solar cycle, and the spacecraft Ulysses faces retirement, but solar missions Stereo and SOHO are still revealing our nearest star in a new light 62	The Sky at Night - The Sun Revealed	BBC	Physics		29 mins	Like (0 likes)
Michael Mosley takes an informative and ambitious journey exploring how the evolution of scientific understanding is intimately interwoven with society's historical path. The question of our human origins is one of the most controversial science has wrestled with. This is the story of how scientists came to explain the beauty and diversity of life on earth, and reveal how its evolution is connected to the long and violent history of our planet. Featuring ocean adventurers, eccentric French aristocrats, mountain climbers, a secret Victorian publisher with 12 fingers, a ridiculed German meteorologist, and only a brief hint of Charles Darwin. 63	The Story of Science: Power, Proof and Passion - Episode 03: How Did We Get Here?	BBC 2	Physics	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Theoretical physicist and futurist Michio Kaku shows how quantum physics is giving mankind the almost godlike power to manipulate the fundamental building blocks of matter. Science fiction ideas like the space elevator, teleportation, invisibility cloaks, or nanosized molecular machines might soon become a reality. But will we use our unprecedented scientific mastery wisely? 64	Visions of the Future - Episode 2: The Quantum Revolution	BBC 4	Physics	English	58 mins	Like (0 likes)
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? 65	Wonders of Life - 1: What Is Life? HD	Brian Cox	Physics		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
In this episode, Brian travels around Australia to explore the physics of the size of life. Beginning with the largest organisms on our planet, a forest of giant eucalyptus trees, he then takes to the seas to get up-close with an ocean giant - the great white shark. 66	Wonders of Life - 4 : Size Matters	Brian Cox	Physics		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Professor Brian Cox explores the sun - the powerhouse of our solar system. 67	Wonders of the Solar System - Episode 01: Empire of the Sun	BBC	Physics	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Professor Brian Cox looks at the rings of Saturn, formed from a chaotic cloud of gas. 68	Wonders of the Solar System - Episode 02: Order out of Chaos	BBC	Physics	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
How an envelope of gas can create some of the most wondrous sights in the solar system. 69	Wonders of the Solar System - Episode 03:The Thin Blue Line	BBC	Physics	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Brian Cox shows how a planet's size can make the difference between life and death. 70	Wonders of the Solar System - Episode 04: Dead or Alive	BBC	Physics	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Brian Cox explores how the search for aliens has followed the search for water. 71	Wonders of the Solar System - Episode 05: Aliens	BBC	Physics	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Professor Brian Cox seeks to understand the nature of time. 72	Wonders of the Universe - Episode 01: Destiny	BBC	Physics	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Brian Cox takes on the story of the force that sculpts the entire universe - gravity. 73	Wonders of the Universe - Episode 03: Falling	BBC	Physics	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)

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