Inside the heart of the atom, its nucleus houses energy. This hidden treasure was forged billions of years ago in distant stellar furnaces. The secret of starlight is nothing to fool with. It can bring a civilization to life and it can burn it to the ground. Two atoms from different parts of the universe meet on a small planet. A deadly embrace between science and state altered the fate of the world and a gripping cautionary tale of others who grew used to living in the shadow of grave danger until it killed them all except one.
Immense shoals of fish throng our shallow seas. Small fish, in turn, sustain bigger ones. The rich coastal seas are the fishing grounds of our planet and can provide an abundance of food for wildlife and humanity. The seas fringing land make up less than a tenth of the world's oceans but 90 percent of marine creatures live in coastal waters, from fearsome sharks to lowly urchins. Protecting these habitats is a battle humanity must win.
Bill Gates is on a mission. He needs to unlock the mysteries of the PDP-10 computer. But the adults won't share the source code with 13-year-old Bill. So he enlists his older friend Paul Allen. Together they boldly go where no one has gone before. If they find the source code, Bill and Paul will finally be able to master the computer. The connections that shaped Bill Gates' life come into focus, including a childhood friendship and his unique bond with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.
A fifth of the land on our planet is covered by desert. Deserts may appear to be barren and empty, but they are of crucial importance to life. For those that can overcome their challenges they provide a vital refuge. The Grasslands are one of our planet's most productive landscapes. They support the greatest aggregations of large animals on Earth. Cameras follow desert elephants seeking sustenance, bison roaming North American grasslands and caterpillars living the good life underground.
The written word is so important in everyday life that there can be few more radical acts than forcing an entire nation to learn a new script. Yet that is what happened in Turkey in 1928 when Mustafa Kemal decreed that the Arabic script would be replaced by the letters of the Latin alphabet. Communication with computers using human language is usually made with Latin letters. This is how most Chinese people interact with their computers and smart phones, using a Latin-based phonetic script called Pinyin. As a result, even highly educated Chinese are losing the ability to write using Chinese characters. Could what is happening in China be the future of writing everywhere?
This remarkable science-history series investigates the blistering pace of human endeavour in space exploration, computing, energy, resources, Earth science and our understanding of the evolution of life itself. Across the last 50 years, humans have set a blistering pace and scientific discovery. We've crossed the boundaries of our solar system, made machines that can learn harnessed the power of the sun and built life from scratch. It's a period like no other in history, where human endeavour is changing everything: this is The Great Acceleration. As we race toward the future, we must examine the journey. In the first episode, Dr Shalin Naik explores the ambitious space shuttle mission that began in the '70s plus the future colonization of Mars. Over the past 50 years, space has become central to everything, from communications to entertainment to climate modelling. And as private enterprise enters space exploration, our understanding of the universe will only continue to expand. We will know if we can survive on other objects - the moon, maybe Mars, maybe even some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Deep space is the last and infinite frontier. That's what we do as human beings. We explore, we learn, we make discoveries, from the moment we're born to the moment we die.
Two atoms from different parts of the universe meet on a small planet. A deadly embrace between science and state altered the fate of the world and a gripping cautionary tale of others who grew used to living in the shadow of grave danger until it killed them all except one.