Browse documentaries

Investigation of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, after the Cassini spacecraft's seven-year trek landed the Huygens Probe on its surface. Does it reveal how life on Earth began?

Black holes are one of the most destructive forces in the universe, capable of tearing a planet apart and swallowing an entire star. Yet scientists now believe they could hold the key to answering the ultimate question - what was there before the Big Bang? The trouble is that researching them is next to impossible. Black holes are by definition invisible and there's no scientific theory able to explain them. Despite these obvious obstacles, Horizon meets the astronomers attempting to image a black hole for the very first time and the theoretical physicists getting ever closer to unlocking their mysteries. It's a story that takes us into the heart of a black hole and to the very edge of what we think we know about the universe.

Light Fantastic is the title of a television documentary series that explores the phenomenon of light

Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11 Commander and first person to walk on the moon, guides us through the history of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the half-century since its establishment in 1958. Produced by NASA TV, 2008.

Academy Award-winning actor and space enthusiast Morgan Freeman executive produces,hosts and narrates this exploration of the greatest mysteries of the universe. This new series, produced by Freeman's Revelations Entertainment, seeks the answers to the big questions: Are we alone? Where did we come from? Is there life on other planets? From the latest work at NASA and private enterprise facilities to the latest theories from futurists and physicists, this series looks at black holes, colonizing the planets, string theory and more. Science Channel invites viewers on the journey as Morgan Freeman picks up where Carl Sagan's 'Cosmos' left off and explores the new frontiers of what is beyond earth.

The moon is such a familiar presence in the sky that most of us take it for granted. But what if it wasn't where it is now? How would that affect life on earth? Space scientist and lunar fanatic Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock explores our intimate relationship with the moon. Besides orchestrating the tides, the moon dictates the length of a day, the rhythm of the seasons and the very stability of our planet. Yet the moon is always on the move. In the past it was closer to the Earth and in the future it'll be farther away. That it is now perfectly placed to sustain life is pure luck, a cosmic coincidence. Using computer graphics to summon up great tides and set the Earth spinning on its side, Aderin-Pocock implores us to look at the moon afresh: to see it not as an inert rock, but as a key player in the story of our planet, past, present and future.

The Higgs boson is a 'fundamental' particle; one of the basic building blocks of the Universe. It is also the last missing piece in the leading theory of particle physics - known as the Standard Model - which describes how particles and forces interact. The Higgs explains why other particles have mass. As the Universe cooled after the Big Bang, an invisible force known as the Higgs field formed together with its associated boson particle. It is this field (and not the boson) that imparts mass to the fundamental particles that make up atoms. Without it, these particles would zip through the cosmos at the speed of light.

A discussion on the life of Stephen Hawking and the topic of information loss in a black hole.

There was a time, not so long ago, when science seemed to understand how the universe worked. Everything us, the Earth, the stars and even exotic-sounding supernovae was made of atoms which were all created at time-zero: the Big Bang. In between the atoms was nothing, a void: quite literally, 'space'. But recently things have started to unravel. There is, it seems, a lot more to the universe than meets the eye. According to the best estimates, we only really know what about 4% of it is made of. But if only 4% is made of atoms, what about the rest? The rest is made of mysterious entities about which very little is understood, with equally mysterious names: dark matter and dark energy.