Professor Jim Al Khalili from the University of Surrey delves into over 50 years of the BBC science archive to tell the story behind the emergence of one of the greatest theories of modern science, the Big Bang. The remarkable idea that our universe simply began from nothing has not always been accepted with the conviction it is today and, from fiercely disputed leftfield beginnings, took the best part of the 20th century to emerge as the triumphant explanation of how the universe began. Using curious horn-shaped antennas, U-2 spy planes, satellites and particle accelerators, scientists have slowly pieced together the cosmological jigsaw, and this documentary charts the overwhelming evidence for a universe created by a Big Bang.

We inhabit a cosmos of undiscovered dimensions and paradoxical realities. We live on one level of perception, but there are others. Every once in a while, a searcher happens upon the doorway to one of these other levels. One of them discovered a paradox about reality that proved to be so profound, we have yet to understand how it could be possible. The universe, or perhaps we should say, universes have never been the same.
In the counterintuitive realm of quantum mechanics, light can be two contradictory things, and somehow - no one knows how - an unseen observer can alter the nature of reality. The man who stumbled on this hole in reality and the still- unfolding technological revolution that it made possible.

Professor Brian Cox travels from the fossils of the Burgess Shale to the sands of the oldest desert in the world to show how light holds the key to our understanding of the whole universe, including our own deepest origins. To understand how light holds the key to the story of the universe; you first have to understand its peculiar properties. Brian considers how the properties of light that lend colour to desert sands and the spectrum of a rainbow can lead to profound insights into the history and evolution of our universe. Finally, with some of the world's most fascinating fossils in hand, Brian considers how but for an apparently obscure moment in the early evolutionary history of life, all the secrets of light may have remained hidden. Because although the universe is bathed in light that carries extraordinary amounts of information about where we come from, it would have remained invisible without a crucial evolutionary development that allowed us to see. Only because of that development can we now observe, capture and contemplate the incredible wonders of the universe that we inhabit.

The key to understanding the universe seems to be understanding its smallest components. But the quantum realm bears little resemblance to the universe we know. Image a particle that can be many places at the same time and communicate changes instantly across vast distances, even to the other side of the Universe. Shrinking down billions of times, into the realm of atoms and sub-atomic particles, takes us into a bizarre world of paradoxes and multiverses. Explore with us quantum physics and the potential applications in computer science.

The Rosetta mission was a ground-breaking expedition to land on a comet for the first time, the 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet. The Rosetta mission tries to answer our most fundamental questions and to change our understanding of the cosmos forever. Special access reveals what this cutting-edge journey discovered and how these mysterious objects helped create life on Earth.

The center of our galaxy is one of the most nightmarish places in the cosmos. It's the home to some of the most incredible forces the universe has to offer. Gas streaming everywhere, stars are being born and dying and exploding, radiation blasting out. And at the very heart is the super massive black hole, 4 million times the mass of the sun. But also the Milky Way, is our safe harbour, our island in this vast, cosmic ocean. And so to understand the heart of our galaxy, is to understand our home in this cosmic void.