Perhaps the most mysterious structure on Earth, Stonehenge has stood on a plain in Southern England for 5000 years. Its foundations predate the Great Pyramids. It is one of mankind's most ancient mysteries. Why is it here? Is it a temple? A burial ground? A place for sacrifice? Or could the mystery of Stonehenge be revealed in its builders' desire to explore the unknown heavens and touch the universe? Using the cutting-edge computer-generated imagery that takes us into deep space, we'll also go inside a virtual Stonehenge to see what the ancients saw and push this prehistoric marvel to give up its age-old secrets. In this episode we explore the possibility that this was a prehistoric astronomical observatory. Here ancient astronomer priests may have divined the complex movements of the Sun and Moon, recognizing patterns that would not be discovered elsewhere for thousands of years. The primitive Shamans may have also been the first astronomers to predict eclipses.
Recently, the Event Horizon Telescope project captured the first image ever of a black hole. Now, new discoveries might finally reveal how supermassive black holes are made, and using the latest technology, experts are on the verge of understanding how these monsters grow and how they affect life on our planet. Supermassive black holes: Gargantuan monsters that lurk at the center of galaxies. Right now you are travelling at half a million miles an hour around a giant black hole four million times the mass of the sun. But there's a mystery about these colossal beasts. We have no idea where they came from. How did they get so big so quickly?
When a mysterious cigar-shaped object is spotted tumbling through our solar system, experts race to uncover it's true nature. The object, nicknamed Oumuamua, meaning 'a messenger that reaches out from the distant past' in Hawaiian, was discovered by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii. Since its discovery, scientists have been at odds to explain its unusual features and precise origins, with researchers first calling it a comet and then an asteroid before finally deeming it the first of its kind: a new class of 'interstellar objects.' A recent paper by researchers at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics raises the possibility that the elongated dark-red object, which is 10 times as long as it is wide and travelling at speeds of 196,000 mph, might have an 'artificial origin.' The theory is based on the object's 'excess acceleration,' or its unexpected boost in speed as it travelled through and ultimately out of our solar system.
Deep in the mountains of West Virginia, the Green Bank Observatory has been receiving a mysterious signal from deep space. A team of astronomers has been detecting high-energy bursts erupting from unknown sources far off in space since years ago. But one of them is different from the rest. They call it FRB 121102. What is actually giving rise to this very powerful flash? Could this be a message from an advanced civilization, or is it a much stranger and violent occurrence? Visit the largest steerable radio telescope on the planet for answers.
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
On March 13, 1997 thousands of people claimed to have simultaneously witnessed unexplainable lights in the Phoenix, Arizona night sky. What were the lights? To this day it remains a mystery and footage of the incidents has been used in documentaries on the subject of UFOs. The Phoenix Incident is a fictionalized heart-pounding thriller based on this real-life event. This one-night event uses whistleblower testimony, recovered military footage and eyewitness accounts to create a sci-fi thriller that examines the US military's alleged engagement of alien spacecrafts. In addition to being able to experience this exciting film, event attendees will be exposed to an exclusive 5-minute documentary about UFO sightings and government cover ups and a special panel discussion previously captured at this year's UFO congress.
In this episode we explore the possibility that this was a prehistoric astronomical observatory. Here ancient astronomer priests may have divined the complex movements of the Sun and Moon, recognizing patterns that would not be discovered elsewhere for thousands of years. The primitive Shamans may have also been the first astronomers to predict eclipses.