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Lost Horizons: The Big Bang

2008 Science

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, fr ...om 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. Show More

The Story of Maths The Genius of the East

2008 Science

When ancient Greece fell into decline, mathematical progress stagnated as Europe entered the Dark Ages, but in the East mathematics reached new heights. In the second episode, Du Sautoy explores how maths helped build imperial China and discovers how the symbol for the number zero was invented in India. He also looks at the Middle Eastern inv ...ention of algebra and how mathematicians such as Fibonacci spread Eastern knowledge to the West. Show More

Series: The Story of Maths

Zeitgeist Addendum

2008 Culture

Zeitgeist Addendum attempts to locate the root causes of this pervasive social corruption, while offering a solution. This solution is not based on politics, morality, laws, or any other 'establishment' notions of human affairs, but rather on a modern, non-superstitious based understanding of what we are and how we align with nature, to which ... we are a part. The work advocates a new social system which is updated to present day knowledge, highly influenced by the life long work of Jacque Fresco and The Venus Project. Show More

Series: Zeitgeist

Inside the Medieval Mind: Knowledge

2008 History

To our medieval forebears the world could appear mysterious, even enchanted. Sightings of green men, dog heads and alien beings were commonplace. The world itself was a book written by God. But as the Middle Ages grew to a close, it became a place to be mastered, even exploited.

Series: Inside the Medieval Mind

Dangerous Knowledge: God messenger

2007 Science

brilliant mathematicians, whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically drove them insane and eventually led to them all committing suicide. Georg Cantor, the great mathematician whose work proved to be the foundation for much of the 20th-century mathematics. He believed he was God's messenger and was eventually driven insane ...trying to prove his theories of infinity. Ludwig Boltzmann's struggle to prove the existence of atoms and probability eventually drove him to suicide. Show More

Series: Dangerous knowledge

Dangerous Knowledge: The Enigma

2007 Science

brilliant mathematicians whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically drove them insane and eventually led to them all committing suicide. Kurt Gödel, the introverted confidant of Einstein, proved that there would always be problems which were outside human logic. His life ended in a sanatorium where he starved himself to dea ...th. Finally, Alan Turing, the great Bletchley Park code breaker, father of computer science and homosexual, died trying to prove that some things are fundamentally unprovable. Show More

Series: Dangerous knowledge

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