Shocking new evidence has convinced some of the world's greatest physicists that the universe is a hologram. Using cutting-edge technology, they investigate the secrets of black holes and space-time to build the case for this game-changing discovery. The holographic principle is a supposed property of quantum gravity that states that the description of a volume of space can be thought of as encoded on a lower-dimensional boundary to the region like a gravitational horizon. First proposed by Gerard 't Hooft, it was given a precise string-theory interpretation by Leonard Susskind. The holographic principle was inspired by black hole thermodynamics, which conjectures that the maximal entropy in any region scales with the radius squared, and not cubed as might be expected. In the case of a black hole, the insight was that the informational content of all the objects that have fallen into the hole might be entirely contained in surface fluctuations of the event horizon.
David Attenborough joins an archaeological dig uncovering Britain’s biggest mammoth discovery in almost 20 years. In 2017, in a gravel quarry near Swindon, two amateur fossil hunters found an extraordinary cache of Ice Age mammoth remains and a stone hand-axe made by a Neanderthal. Professor Ben Garrod joins the team at DigVentures during the excavation as they try to discover why the mammoths were here and how they died. Could the Neanderthals have killed these Ice Age giants?
New York's Central Park Tower is the second tallest building in the US, and as engineers and builders race to complete this 1,550-foot-tall mega build, they use cutting-edge science and engineering to battle high altitudes and brutal weather. From the world's longest tunnels to the world's most advanced skyscraper, the series Building Giants reveals the extraordinary innovations that help record-breaking superstructures to be built, and uncovers the inner secrets of how they work.
Beneath the modern streets of Rome lies a city of breathtaking scale and ambition, once the heart of an empire that shaped the world. In this 15-part journey, archaeologist Dr. Darius Arya becomes your guide into a vivid time machine, where stunning CGI reconstructions resurrect the capital in all its glory. From the steamy elegance of vast bath complexes to the roar of chariot races, from awe-inspiring temples to political halls where history was forged, each episode reveals how engineering brilliance, artistic mastery, and human will transformed humble hills into the Eternal City. This is not just a tour of ruins—it’s Rome as its citizens once knew it.
Using cutting-edge research, a dedicated team of archaeologists has compiled the evidence to fill in a 400-year gap in man's knowledge of the bluestones of Stonehenge. By combining innovative 3D scanning techniques, traditional field archaeology and novel laboratory analysis, the team has discovered where the stones were quarried and where they first stood. Professor Alice Roberts shows how the team made its discoveries and joins Professor Mike Parker Pearson to piece together the final parts of the puzzle, solving one of the toughest challenges ever faced by archaeologists.
This episode covers the nature of how life may have developed on Earth and the possibility of life on other planets. Tyson begins by explaining how the human development of writing systems enabled the transfer of information through generations, describing how Princess Enheduanna ca. 2280 BCE would be one of the first to sign her name to her works, and how Gilgamesh collected stories, including that of Utnapishtim documenting a great flood comparable to the story of Noah's Ark. Tyson explains how DNA similarly records information to propagate life, and postulates theories of how DNA originated on Earth, including evolution from a shallow tide pool, or from the ejecta of meteor collisions from other planets. In the latter case, Tyson explains how comparing the composition of the Nakhla meteorite in 1911 to results collected by the Viking program demonstrated that material from Mars could transit to Earth, and the ability of some microbes to survive the harsh conditions of space. With the motions of solar systems through the galaxy over billions of years, life could conceivably propagate from planet to planet in the same manner. Tyson then moves on to consider if life on other planets could exist. He explains how Project Diana performed in the 1960s showed that radio waves are able to travel in space, and that all of humanity's broadcast signals continue to radiate into space from our planet. Tyson notes that projects have since looked for similar signals potentially emanating from other solar systems. Tyson then explains that the development and lifespan of extraterrestrial civilizations must be considered for such detection to be realized. He notes that civilizations can be wiped out by cosmic events like supernovae, natural disasters such as the Toba disaster, or even self-destruct through war or other means, making probability estimates difficult. Tyson describes how elliptical galaxies, in which some of the oldest red dwarf stars exist, would offer the best chance of finding established civilizations. Tyson concludes that human intelligence properly applied should allow our species to avoid such disasters and enable us to migrate beyond the Earth before the Sun's eventual transformation into a red giant.
The holographic principle is a supposed property of quantum gravity that states that the description of a volume of space can be thought of as encoded on a lower-dimensional boundary to the region like a gravitational horizon. First proposed by Gerard 't Hooft, it was given a precise string-theory interpretation by Leonard Susskind.
The holographic principle was inspired by black hole thermodynamics, which conjectures that the maximal entropy in any region scales with the radius squared, and not cubed as might be expected. In the case of a black hole, the insight was that the informational content of all the objects that have fallen into the hole might be entirely contained in surface fluctuations of the event horizon.