Professor Brian Cox probes our moment of creation. How did our Universe come into existence? Was there a time before the Big Bang? Do our laws of physics inexorably lead to the existence of us?
Professor Brian Cox tells the biggest story of them all. Inspired by the Southern Sky as he travels Australia, Brian reveals our very latest understanding about how the Universe began & how it will end.
2017 • Astronomy
This first episode begins in 1957 and tracks the early years of the space race as the United States struggles to catch up with the Soviet Union. The episode reveals breathtaking failures and successes of the nascent American space program and demonstrates the stakes and costs of reaching the moon.
1/3 • Chasing the Moon • 2019 • Astronomy
The first of the two-part series, titled "From Space," explores the birth and early life of Earth, as seen from orbit, using clues from over 300 satellites and space stations surveying Earth’s landmarks to work backwards and piece together what the planet’s early days might have looked like.
1/2 • The Life of Earth • 2019 • Astronomy
Venus is a gorgeous naked-eye planet, hanging like a diamond in the twilight -- but it’s beauty is best looked at from afar. Even though Mercury is closer to the sun, Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system, due to a runaway greenhouse effect, and has the most volcanic activity in the solar system. Its north and south poles were flipped, causing it to rotate backwards and making for very strange days on this beautiful but inhospitable world.
14 • Crash Course Astronomy • Astronomy
The worlds that surround our planet are all made of rock, but there the similarity ends. Some have a beating geological heart, others are frozen in time. Professor Brian Cox travels to the tallest mountain on Earth, the volcano Mauna Kea on Hawaii, to show how something as basic as a planet's size can make the difference between life and death.
4/5 • Wonders of the Solar System • Astronomy
The simple act of making an apple pie is extrapolated into the atoms and subatomic particles (electrons, protons, and neutrons) necessary. Many of the ingredients necessary are formed of chemical elements formed in the life and deaths of stars (such as our own Sun), resulting in massive red giants and supernovae or collapsing into white dwarfs, neutron stars, pulsars, and even black holes. These produce all sorts of phenomena, such as radioactivity, cosmic rays, and even the curving of spacetime by gravity. Cosmos Update mentions the supernova SN 1987A and neutrino astronomy.
9/13 • Cosmos: A Personal Voyage • 1980 • Astronomy
For years, scientists suspected that the oceans came from molecules delivered to Earth from distant stars by asteroids, but a new discovery suggests that their true origins may be more exotic.
S4E7 • How the Universe Works • 2015 • Astronomy
