Comets • 2007 • Planet Science

11:22

Here it is, folks: the end. In our final episode of Crash Course Astronomy, Phil gives the course a send off with a look at some of his favorite topics and the big questions that Astronomy allows us to ask.

46 • Crash Course Astronomy • 2016 • Astronomy

80:03

"This film documents an event that has never taken place – man's first encounter with intelligent life from space". We've been fantasizing about an extraterrestrial visit for decades, but what would happen if it actually took place? How would we cope? Should we be afraid? These and many other questions are addressed in this philosophical film about a hypothetical initial contact with aliens. Scientists and space affairs specialists at the UN and NASA and in the British government cooperate in this cinematic simulation of the undoubtedly exciting meeting between extraterrestrial life and humanity. The interviewees speak directly to the unknown entities as if they've already arrived. From their own fields – politics, theology, sociology, biology or space science – they ask probing questions. What are you doing here? Do you have a sense of right and wrong? Do you carry bacteria that could make us sick? Are we hazardous to your immune system? Information specialists in the British government show how a first summit in this situation could go. How do you inform the public? Will countries work together? Is there a danger involved? Above all, the alien visit raises questions about the relation between our own history of exploration, colonization and warfare, and the expectations with which we approach the unknown. This is a journey beyond terrestrial perspective, revealing the fears, hopes, and rituals of a species forced not only to confront alien life forms, but also its own self image.

2015 • Astronomy

46:04

The Ship of the Imagination travels back in time to reveal 11th century Europe and North Africa during the golden age of Islam, when brilliant physicist Ibn al-Haytham discovered the scientific method and first understood how we see, and how light travels. Later, William Herschel discovers the infrared and the signature hidden in the light of every star, eventually unlocking one of the keys to the cosmos.

S1E5 • Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey • 2014 • Astronomy

88:38

To celebrate the Apollo moon landing's 50th anniversary, Professor Brian Cox and Dara O Briain travel to where the historic Apollo 11 mission began – Cape Canaveral in Florida. They hear first hand from astronaut general Charlie Duke what it was like to guide Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the surface of the Moon in the Lunar Lander and how he followed in their footsteps three years later. They also look at the most exciting new developments and, with privileged access, they broadcast from the top of launch tower that is being prepared for crewed missions and from the assembly line of a spacecraft factory. They are joined by astrophysicist and medic Dr Kevin Fong and mathematician Dr Hannah Fry, who explore the latest developments in human space flight - from cutting-edge spacewalk technology to a future Mars buggy.

2019 • Astronomy

59:00

Dame Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, with the help of the world’s most powerful telescope, ventures through the Milky Way and into the universe beyond, on the hunt for alien worlds.

S1E3 • Royal Institution Christmas Lectures: Is There Life Beyond Earth? • 2025 • Astronomy

58:53

Documentary marking the fiftieth anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight into space. It was hailed by the Soviet Union as a triumph for socialist science over capitalism, but the true story is much stranger. George Carey's film shows how the Soviet space programme was kick-started by a mystic who taught that science would make us immortal, and carried forward by a scientist who believed that we should evolve into super-humans who could leave our overcrowded planet to colonise the universe. Stranger still, Carey shows how those ideas have survived Communism and adapted themselves to the science of the modern world.

2011 • Astronomy