How we finally came to understand the science of electricity.
How harnessing the link between magnetism and electricity transformed the world.
How we finally came to understand the science of electricity.
Professor Simon Schaffer presents the amazing and untold story of automata - extraordinary clockwork machines designed hundreds of years ago to mimic and recreate life. The film brings the past to life in vivid detail as we see how and why these masterpieces were built. Travelling around Europe, Simon uncovers the history of these machines and shows us some of the most spectacular examples, from an entire working automaton city to a small boy who can be programmed to write and even a device that can play chess. All the machines Simon visits show a level of technical sophistication and ambition that still amazes today. As well as the automata, Simon explains in great detail the world in which they were made - the hardship of the workers who built them, their role in global trade and the industrial revolution and the eccentric designers who dreamt them up. Finally, Simon reveals that to us that these long-forgotten marriages of art and engineering are actually the ancestors of many of our most loved modern technologies, from recorded music to the cinema and much of the digital world.
2013 • Physics
Richard Feynman was one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists and original thinkers of the 20th century. He rebuilt the theory of quantum electrodynamics, and it was for this work that he won the Nobel Prize in 1965. In 1981, he gave Horizon a candid interview, talking about many things close to his heart.
Exploring the universe on a ship that can boldly go where no man has gone before isn't just a sci fi dream. Dr Michio Kaku reveals how we really could one day build a warp drive and set out on our own star trek.
S1E1 • Physics of the Impossible • 2009 • Physics
Zach charts a journey to determine whether time travel is possible. He meets a man who claims to have traveled back in time due to a secret government program and a group of people living in Liverpool known as “time slippers.” Zach then makes an visit to the CERN headquarters in Geneva, where he attempts to understand the origins of the universe and the dimension of time. Equipped with this new knowledge, Zach tests his own perception of time with an elaborate skydiving experiment to see if he can slow down time itself.
2018 • Physics
Scientists investigate the way the Sun builds its power -- through fusion -- hoping to find a way to use fusion as a less dangerous and less radioactive waste-producing path to energy than fission. But there are some major difficulties along the way...
2017 • Physics
The human race has succeeded in explaining nearly everything in this universe using mathematical formulae. Yet there is one place that remains shrouded in mystery -– black holes. Physicists believe that if they could discover a formula that explains the center of black holes, the last remaining mystery of the universe could finally be unraveled -– how the universe came into being. Their attempts have been mired by unforeseen pitfalls but with the development of superstring theory, physicists have arrived at a formula that could finally end their century-long search. What the formula described was a world beyond our wildest imaginations. This is the incredible story of physicists like Einstein, Hawking and the superstring theorists who have endeavored to solve the mystery of the origin of the universe.
2/2 • The Ultimate Formula • 2016 • Physics
