The film follows Opportunity, the Mars exploration rover launched in 2003, affectionately dubbed Oppy by her creators and scientists at NASA. Oppy was originally expected to live for only 90 days but she ultimately explored Mars for nearly 15 years. With access to archival and interview footage with scientists and engineers and re-creations of the rover's treks over the Martian landscape in search of water, we will explore her groundbreaking journey on Mars and the remarkable bond forged between a robot and her humans creators millions of miles away. The narrative interrogates the significance of Opportunity's endurance for the future of interstellar discovery.
Bitcoin is the world's leading virtual currency, but unlike real money, it is not backed by a government or properly regulated. Bitcoin is exchanged and held digitally by users - which is attractive to criminals selling drugs, pornography and arms. But now Bitcoin is moving into the mainstream and being openly marketed as an investment opportunity. The film investigates what Bitcoin is and what it means, going inside a Bitcoin mine in Iceland - where currency is made - and spending time with the Bitcoin millionaires of Silicon Valley. The programme also hears from others who have been scammed out of their life savings and investors who think the cryptocurrency is an enormous scam and that the writing is on the wall. Around the world, authorities are sounding the alarm that Bitcoin is too risky - is it too late, or too crazy, to try to become a Bitcoin millionaire?
The human eye is a remarkable piece of precision engineering, but it is also extremely limited. Beyond the narrow range of light that makes up the familiar colours of the rainbow is a vast spectrum of light, entirely unseen. Richard Hammond does just that, using ground-breaking new imaging technologies to take the viewer on a breath-taking journey of discovery beyond the visible spectrum, seeing the world, quite literally, in a whole new light. From death-defying aerial repairmen in the United States using ultraviolet cameras to seek out an invisible force that lurks unseen on power lines, to German scientists unlocking the secrets of animal locomotion with the world's most powerful moving x-ray camera, to infrared cameras that can finally reveal the secrets within a humble beehive, he shows how new technologies are letting us see our world anew.
Space Race is a docu-drama chronicling the major events and characters in the American/Soviet space race. It focusses on Sergei Korolev, the Soviets' chief rocket designer, and Wernher von Braun, his American counterpart. The series was a joint effort between British, German, American and Russian production teams." In the first episode, 1944-1949, we see Wernher von Braun's work on the V-2 for the Nazis during the last years of the Second World War, his surrender to American troops and his move to the USA. We see Sergei Korolev's release from the Gulag, and how he is set to work on Soviet rockets, first attempting to copy the V-2, then building a more efficient rocket of his own.
2020 has been an unprecedented year in science. From a global pandemic and race to find a cure, to exploring our planetary neighbours and our own world, stay in the know with the latest stories that defined this tumultuous year. 365 days marked by stark warnings about the planet's future and technological triumphs. During this journey around the sun, science continued to reveal stories of our past and also provide promise that we can overcome the obstacles in way some far ahead and others more immediate.
Twenty years on from the invention of the world wide web, this major new series takes stock of its profound impact – how, for better and for worse, the digital revolution is reshaping our lives. Dr Aleks Krotoski explores the meaning of a phenomenon that is transforming everything, from how we learn to how we shop, vote and make friends. With a quarter of the planet connected so far, this series examines what is in store for the remaining 75 per cent of the world's population as they come online." In the first part series, Aleks charts the extraordinary rise of blogs, Wikipedia and YouTube, and traces an ongoing clash between the freedom the technology offers us, and our innate human desire to control and profit. Dr Aleks Krotoski looks at how it is reshaping almost every aspect of our lives. Joined by some of the web's biggest names - including the founders of Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, and the web's inventor - she explores how far the web has lived up to its early promise.
With access to archival and interview footage with scientists and engineers and re-creations of the rover's treks over the Martian landscape in search of water, we will explore her groundbreaking journey on Mars and the remarkable bond forged between a robot and her humans creators millions of miles away. The narrative interrogates the significance of Opportunity's endurance for the future of interstellar discovery.