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Following the Sun

   2023    Nature
As summer spreads across our planet, honey bees toil, snow geese breed, tadpoles awaken and lions stalk wildebeest in search of lush grass.
Our planet is solar-powered. But due to the Earth's tilt, it doesn't strike its surface evenly. This solar energy arrives in varying amounts at different times of the year. The huge increase that comes with summer also triggers countless migrations.
Series: Our Planet Season 2

The Moons of Saturn

   2023    Science
The magnificent ringed planet Saturn, along with its more than 80 moons, forms the most dynamic planetary system in our neighborhood. With underground oceans and protective magnetic fields, experts are exploring how this collective of satellites has the potential to rewrite the rules of the Solar System.
The closer that we look, the more we see these extraordinary moons like worlds of their own -- so dynamic, so Earth-like. Almost a billion miles from the Sun, these icy worlds could be home for Life 2.0. The moons of Saturn offer possibly the best chance of finding extraterrestrial life in our solar system. With each new mission, we get closer to unraveling the mysteries of Saturn's moons.
Series: How the Universe Works Season 11

Black Sabbath: The End Of The End

   2017    Art
The film documents the English heavy metal band Black Sabbath's final show of their farewell concert tour, The End Tour. The performance was held at the Genting Arena in Birmingham, England, hometown of the band's founding members: vocalist Ozzy Osbourne, guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler, and drummer Bill Ward. Osbourne, Iommi, and Butler performed this final concert with session drummer Tommy Clufetos in place of Ward, as well as Adam Wakeman on keyboards and guitar.
The concert opens with a performance of the song 'Black Sabbath'. The film goes on to show the band performing 'Fairies Wear Boots', 'Under the Sun/Every Day Comes and Goes', 'Into the Void', 'Snowblind', 'War Pigs', 'Hand of Doom', 'Iron Man', and 'Children of the Grave'; at the end of the setlist, the band performs the song 'Paranoid' as an encore.
Interspersed with the final concert are interviews with Osbourne, Iommi, and Butler, in which they talk about their careers and past drug addictions. Additionally, Iommi's 2012 lymphoma diagnosis, which impacted the band's 2012–14 reunion tour and the recording of their 2013 album 13, is discussed. The film also features footage of 'The Angelic Sessions'—the band's final studio recordings, which took place in the days following the final show. Of these recordings, the film shows Osbourne, Iommi, and Butler performing 'The Wizard', 'Wicked World', and 'Changes'.

Perpetual Power

   2021    Technology
The meteoric rise of renewable energy has consequences for our electricity supply. While coal and gas fired power stations can generate electricity whenever you need it, renewables are intermittent by nature. So we need a backup plan for when the wind stops or the sun goes down.
All over the world, engineers and scientists are racing to solve one key problem; how to safely and efficiently store electricity at a huge scale but at a low cost. The quest is producing some truly remarkable ideas and this episode details three of them.
Series: Engineering the Future

Black Holes: Heart of Darkness

   2021    Science
The centre of our galaxy is home to an invisible monster of unimaginable power – a supermassive black hole named Sagittarius A star, with four million times the mass of the Sun. Recent astronomical breakthroughs have confirmed not only that black holes like Sagittarius A star exist, but that these bizarre invisible objects may be the ultimate galactic protagonists.
Stunning CGI takes us back to witness the fiery origins of our galaxy’s black hole 13.6 billion years ago, when the early universe was home to colossal blue stars, and when they ran out of fuel, they collapsed under their own enormous mass, crushing down into an object so small and so dense it punched a hole in the fabric of the universe. Over billions of years, Sagittarius A star feasted on nearby gas, stars, and through cataclysmic mergers with other black holes. A breakthrough discovery by Nasa’s Fermi gamma-ray telescope has shown that our black hole had the power to sculpt the entire galaxy, creating vast bubbles of gas above and below our galaxy and even protecting stars systems as ours.
In a mind-bending conclusion, Brian Cox reveals how our modern understanding of black holes is challenging our concepts of reality to the breaking point. In trying to understand the fate of objects that fall into Sagittarius A star, scientists have come to a stunning conclusion: space and time, concepts so foundational to how we experience the world around us, are not as fundamental as we once thought.
Series: Universe

The Milky Way: Island of Light

   2021    Science
Professor Brian Cox continues his epic exploration of the cosmos by looking at the faint band of light that sweeps across the night sky - our own galaxy, the Milky Way. The Sun is just one of almost 400 billion stars that form this vast, majestic disk of light, our own home in the universe. Thanks to a cutting-edge space we’re finally able to reveal the Milky Way’s dramatic history and predict its cataclysmic future.
Our galaxy started out a fraction of the size it is today, and Gaia telescope has revealed how it grew over the eons. Beautifully rendered VFX based on the very latest Gaia data has uncovered the remarkable story of our galaxy’s evolution. As our young galaxy encountered rival galaxies, it experienced a series of violent growth spurts and intense periods of cataclysmic change while battling to survive. Each time our galaxy feeds, a new era of star formation begins, fuelled by incoming torrents of fresh gas and energy. And there is another collision to come. Another, larger galaxy is coming our way. Andromeda is heading straight for us at a quarter of a million miles per hour. The Milky Way’s long-term fate is in the balance.
Series: Universe