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Intimate Relations

2005 Nature

The world of invertebrates exists in a web of relationships with plants and other animals. Unique footage of the world's smallest insect (a fairy wasp only quarter of a millimetre long) shows it flying underwater to find the eggs of water beetles in which to lay its own brood. Some ants 'farm' the trees that give them shelter, creating areas ...known as 'Devil's gardens'. To make sure these grow without competition, they kill off other seedlings in the surrounding vegetation. The blister beetle's larvae huddle together on the end of a piece of grass and mimic a female bee. When a male bee tries to mate with the 'female', the larvae grab on to his belly. Confused, he flies away and searches for a real female. When he eventually finds her and mates with her, the beetle larvae hurriedly swap from his front on to her back, and hence get carried back to her nest where they eat her pollen supplies. Show More

Series: Life in the Undergrowth

Ape Man: Search for the First Human

2005 Science

After eight grueling years of hunting in the hot, wind-scoured desert of central Africa, an international team of researchers has uncovered one of the most sensational fossil finds in living memory: the well-preserved 7 million years old skull of a chimp-size animal, probably a male, that doesn't fit any known species. According to paleontolo ...gist Michel Brunet of the University of Poitiers in France, whose team reported the find in Nature last week, there is no way it could have been an ape of any kind. It was almost certainly a hominid — a member of a subdivision of the primate family whose only living representative is modern man. Show More

The Hawking Paradox

2005 Science

Stephen Hawking is the most famous scientist on the planet. But behind the public face lies an argument that has been raging for almost 30 years. Has he been wrong for the last 30 years? Hawking shot to fame in the world of physics when he provided a mathematical proof for the Big Bang theory. This theory showed that the entire universe explo ...ded from a singularity, an infinitely small point with infinite density and infinite gravity. Hawking was able to come to his proof using mathematical techniques that had been developed by Roger Penrose. These techniques were however developed to deal not with the beginning of the Universe but with black holes". Science had long predicted that if a sufficiently large star collapsed at the end of its life, all the matter left in the star would be crushed into an infinitely small point with infinite gravity and infinite density – a singularity. Hawking realised that the Universe was, in effect, a black hole in reverse. Instead of matter being crushed into a singularity, the Universe began when a singularity expanded to form everything we see around us today, from stars to planets to people. Hawking realised that to come to a complete understanding of the Universe he would have to unravel the mysteries of the black hole and its paradoxes Show More

Workingman Death

2005 Culture

Austrian director Michael Glawogger travels to five countries to focus on some of the worst jobs imaginable: Ukrainian miners crawl into tiny cracks in old coal pits to scratch out a few bags of winter fuel; Indonesian workers trudge long distances carrying baskets with hundreds of pounds of sulfur chunks extracted from a steaming mountain; P ...akistanis risk explosions and burial under tons of scrap iron as they dismantle huge carrier ships. The visuals are everything here. Despite the hardships depicted, many sequences have a dreamlike beauty. In addition, the director has a bone-dry sense of irony; during the Ukraine scenes, he frequently cuts away to a statue of Stakhanov, the "hero" lauded by the Soviets for his superhuman work habits. He also shows us an old German smelting works that's been converted into a theme park. Show More

Magnificent Desolation Walking on the Moon

2005 Technology 3D

Exploring the moon was humankind’s most incredible journey. Now through the magic of 3D, you can take that giant leap for yourself. Presented and narrated by Tom Hanks, Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon will transport you to the lunar surface to walk alongside the 12 extraordinary astronauts who have been there to experience what th ...ey saw, heard, felt, thought and did. A romantic, inspirational depiction of the Apollo astronauts travels on the moon peppered by their quotations of their impressions. Show More

Sharks

2005 Nature 3D

Jean-Michel Cousteau invites you to embark on a breathtaking underwater voyage to discover the ultimate predator: the shark. Experience an astonishing up-close encounter in 3D with the Lions and Tigers of the Ocean. Come face-to-face with a multitude of shark species, including the Great White, Hammerhead, and Whale Shark. Witness them as the ...y really are: not wicked man-eating creatures, but wild, fascinating and endangered animals that have been in existence a million years before dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Join a team of ocean explorers on a round-the-globe expedition documenting the life of the ultimate predator. Show More

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