The film brings viewers all the amazing news-breaking advances in science in technology from 2021, unfolding around the globe. Shattering barriers and questioning assumptions and turning ideas on their head. Stories that take a leap into the future or follow footprints to the past. Startling discoveries from a prehistoric nursery to a magic bullet that could contain the pandemic. Accomplishments like harnessing a star in a bottle or mapping invisible parts of the universe. Join us for an exclusive hyper-tour from earth to space.
To get us in the mood for the launch of the seventh Star Wars film, discover its Definitive History. Documentary taking a behind-the-scene look at how the world's biggest, multi-billion pound movie series came into existence. Featuring rare interviews with Star Wars producers Gary Kurtz and Robert Watts and insights from those members of the creative team who won Oscars making the visual effects. Plus, a few little-known and surprising facts surrounding the film franchise.
Frequent security expos feature companies like Megvii and its facial- recognition technology. They show off cameras with A.I. that can track cars, and identify individuals by face, or just by the way they walk. In China it's been projected that over 600 million cameras will be deployed by 2020. Here, they may be used to discourage jaywalking, but they also serve to remind people that the state is watching. Matching with the most advanced artificial intelligence algorithm, they can actually use this data, real-time data, to pick up a face or pick up a action. A.I. is a technology that can be used for good and for evil. So, how do governments limit themselves in, on the one hand, using this A.I. technology and the database to maintain a safe environment for its citizens, but not to encroach on a individual's rights and privacies?
We love nature and all its glorious diversity. Some creatures we admire for their deadly beauty, others because they are cute, but for some it's hard to figure out exactly why we like them so much, perhaps it's a quirk. How do you decide nature's weirdest animal? Is it the sloth that hangs upside down and moves so slowly that moss grows in its fur? Is it a sea pen that sits rooted to the seabed in endless darkness and emitting its own glow? Could it be carnivorous snails that leave the ocean to digest dead creatures on the beach, finches that drink blood, or the tarantula that keeps a frog as it's pet. But with nature's endless variety, which is the weirdest? We can't decide. Can you?
Bladderwort utricularia is a pond-dweller that is among the fastest known, its traps snapping shut in less than a millisecond. As the seasons change, David demonstrates how plants operate on a different time scale to us; how they modify their lives according to the time of year. We discover insects’ hidden links with plants, both as pests and pollinators. UV-sensitive 3D cameras reveal the invisible alter-ego of plants and their flowers’ mesmerizing patterns; a parallel-dimension of strange colours and stunning patterns through which plants communicate with them. With the aid of visual effects, David steps among the swirling vortices of plant scent; communication signals with which plants are inextricably plugged in to the natural world. And using a tuning fork, he demonstrates how plants and insects can even communicate with music. As autumn envelopes the Gardens, fungi reveal themselves not as the enemies of plants but their vital allies. In Kew’s atmospheric Fungarium, David discovers a specimen that has the power of mind control and another that lives underground where it has grown to be so big it can be counted as the largest single organism on the planet. It is 6 times bigger than Kew Gardens itself.
When our species first arrived in Europe, the peak of the Ice Age was approaching and the continent was already crawling with a rival: stronger, at home in the cold and even (contrary to their popular image) brainier than us. So how did the European pioneers survive first the Neanderthals and then the deep freeze as they pushed across the continent? Alice Roberts reconstructs the head of the 'first European' to come face to face with one of our ancestors; she discovers how art became crucial for survival in the face of Neanderthal competition; and what happened to change the skin colour of these European pioneers from black to white.
Startling discoveries from a prehistoric nursery to a magic bullet that could contain the pandemic. Accomplishments like harnessing a star in a bottle or mapping invisible parts of the universe. Join us for an exclusive hyper-tour from earth to space.