The International Space Station is the ultimate extreme home. Costing $150 billion, it is the most expensive structure humans have ever built, in the most inhospitable environment known to man, with no air food or water. Assembled at 250 miles above the earth, it's an epic engineering challenge. We're going to take it apart and uncover what's going on inside the ISS. Its superstructure secrets will help our species reach other planets and beyond. Using photo-real computer graphics, we take it apart to uncover the extraordinary innovations that enable it to support life in the deadly vacuum of space.
Dr Janina Ramirez embarks on a journey through six decades of the BBC archives to create a television history of one of the most celebrated figures in art - Leonardo Da Vinci. Ramirez shows how experts and art presenters have turned to television to bring Leonardo's artwork out of galleries and into our living rooms. Through television they have explored the origins of Leonardo's boundless curiosity, his pioneering use of light and shade, and his remarkable scientific exploration. Along the way Dr Ramirez discovers Britain's little-known version of The Last Supper, the gruesome ways Leonardo acquired his anatomical knowledge - and even what lies beneath the Mona Lisa.
In this final episode we complete our journey, travelling back from the March equinox to the end of June. Kate Humble is in the Arctic at a place where spring arrives with a bang, whilst Helen Czerski chases a tornado to show how the earth's angle of tilt creates the most extreme weather on earth.
One of the main battles of the Second World War took place inside the brain of a mathematician called Alan Turing. During the war, the allies' key objective was to crack the German army's encrypted communications code. Without a doubt, the key player in the game was this interdisciplinary scientist and a long-forgotten hero. Alan Turing's breakthroughs, his story and tragic destiny, gives us a chance to look at the Second World War from a different angle.
Idolized in ancient Norse mythology as the protector god, Thor battles evil ogres and a giant serpent bent on destroying mankind. It's the quintessential fight for survival that culminates in a final showdown between good and evil. But was the rise and fall of the hero Thor ancient code for something greater? Today, new discoveries unlock the hidden truth behind the Norse god of Thunder. Able to wield thunder from his hammer, Thor was the most revered of the Norse gods, from fending humanity from the giants that brought calamity, to his pursuit of the Midgard Serpent. Though, his fate is told to sealed during Ragnarok, it is actually the invasion of Christianity that proves far more damning to this mighty god.
The film reveals the secret story behind one of the greatest intellectual feats of World War II, a feat that gave birth to the digital age. In 1943 Bill Tutte, a 24-year-old maths student and a GPO engineer called Tommy Flowers combined to hack into Hitler's personal super code machine - not Enigma but an even tougher system, which he called his 'secrets writer'. Their break turned the Battle of Kursk, powered the D-day landings and orchestrated the end of the conflict in Europe. But it was also to be used during the Cold War - which meant both men's achievements were hushed up and never officially recognised.
Its superstructure secrets will help our species reach other planets and beyond. Using photo-real computer graphics, we take it apart to uncover the extraordinary innovations that enable it to support life in the deadly vacuum of space.