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Numbers as God

   2018    Science
Mathematician Dr Hannah Fry explores the mystery of maths. It underpins so much of our modern world that it's hard to imagine life without its technological advances, but where exactly does maths come from? Is it invented like a language or is it something discovered and part of the fabric of the universe? It's a question that some of the most eminent mathematical minds have been wrestling with. To investigate this question, Hannah goes head first down the fastest zip wire in the world to learn more about Newton's law of gravity, she paraglides to understand where the theory of maths and its practice application collide, and she travels to infinity and beyond to discover that some infinities are bigger than others.
In this episode, Hannah goes back to the time of the ancient Greeks to find out why they were so fascinated by the connection between beautiful music and maths. The patterns our ancestors found in music are all around us, from the way a sunflower stores its seeds to the number of petals in a flower. Even the shapes of some of the smallest structures in nature, such as viruses, seem to follow the rules of maths. All strong evidence for maths being discovered. But there are those who claim maths is all in our heads and something we invented. To find out if this is true, Hannah has her brain scanned. It turns out there is a place in all our brains where we do maths, but that doesn't prove its invented.
Experiments with infants, who have never had a maths lesson in their lives, suggests we all come hardwired to do maths. Far from being a creation of the human mind, this is evidence for maths being something we discover. Then along comes the invention of zero to help make counting more convenient and the creation of imaginary numbers, and the balance is tilted in the direction of maths being something we invented. The question of whether maths is invented or discovered just got a whole lot more difficult to answer
Series: Magic Numbers

Sea Rex Journey to a Prehistoric World

   2010    Science
Experience a wondrous adventure from the dinosaur age with 'Sea Rex Journey to a Prehistoric World'. Join Julie, an imaginative young woman, as she travels from a modern-day aquarium to the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Explore an amazing underwater universe inhabited by larger-than-life creatures including the powerful Liopleurodon, long-necked Elasmosaurus and gigantic Shonisaurus which were ruling the seas before dinosaurs conquered the earth.
Thanks to state-of-the-art ultra-photorealistic imagery in 3D or 2D, see science come alive in a unique and entertaining manner. Immerse yourself in a lost age, 200 million years back in time, and get ready for a face-to-face encounter with the T-Rex of the seas. Directed by Ronan Chapalain and Pascal Vuong.

The A.I. Race

   2018    Technology
Explore how Artificial Intelligence will change your job as new research shows how much of what you do could be done by robots. From truckers to lawyers & doctors, we bring affected workers face to face with AI experts. How can we prepare for the coming changes to the world economy? We are on the precipice of another technological transformation. The last industrial revolution turned society upside down. It ultimately delivered greater prosperity and many more jobs, as well as the eight hour day and weekends. But the transition was at times shocking and violent.
The question is, can we do better this time? We don't realize that the future is not inevitable. The future is the result of the decisions we make today. These technologies are morally neutral, they can be used for good or for bad. There's immense good things they can do, they can eliminate many disease, they can help eliminate poverty, they can tackle climate change. Equally, the technology can be used for lots of bad. It can be used to increase inequality,it can be used to transform warfare. It can be used to make our lives much worse. We get to make those choices.

Expedition Asteroid

   2018    Science
A look at two missions attempting one of the most difficult feats of space exploration - to collect a rock from another world. The film checks in on the US and Japanese attempts to bring a piece of an asteroid back to Earth. The missions have taken decades of planning, but the results will be worth it. We find out how studying these space rocks can teach us about the origins of our solar system and may one day help save Earth from a catastrophic collision.
Series: The Sky at Night

The Joy of AI

   2018    Technology
Professor Jim Al-Khalili looks at how we have created machines that can simulate, augment, and even outperform the human mind - and why we shouldn't let this spook us. He reveals the story of the pursuit of AI, the emergence of machine learning and the recent breakthroughs brought about by artificial neural networks. He shows how AI is not only changing our world but also challenging our very ideas of intelligence and consciousness.
Along the way, we'll investigate spam filters, meet a cutting-edge chatbot, look at why a few altered pixels makes a computer think it's looking at a trombone rather than a dog and talk to Demis Hassabis, who heads DeepMind and whose stated mission is to 'solve intelligence, and then use that to solve everything else'. Stephen Hawking remarked 'AI could be the biggest event in the history of our civilisation. Or the worst'. Jim argues that AI is a potent new tool that should enhance our lives, not replace us.

Natural History Museum Alive

   2013    Science
In this ground-breaking film, Sir David Attenborough takes us on a journey through the world-famous Natural History Museum in London in a captivating tale of discovery, adventure, and magic, where state-of-the-art CGI, science, and research combine to bring the museum's now long-extinct inhabitants to life to discover how these animals once roamed the planet. As the doors are locked and night falls, Attenborough stays behind and meets some of the most fascinating extinct creatures which come alive in front of his eyes; dinosaurs, ice age beasts, and giant reptiles.
The film fulfils a lifelong dream of him, who said: 'I have been coming to the Natural History Museum since I was a boy. It's one of the great places to come to learn about natural history. In this film we have the technology to bring back to life some of the most romantic and extraordinary extinct creatures that can be conceived; some are relatively recent animals like the dodo, others older like the dinosaurs, and some we only know through fossil evidence. Using our current scientific knowledge, this film brings these creatures alive, allowing me to look at some of the biggest questions surrounding them.'