The Biggest Things in Space

We cannot compare anything on earth to the largest things known in space. The Lymann Alpha blob is a bubble-like structure containing countless galaxies, perhaps the biggest object in the entire universe.




Regions of radio-emitting gas, called radio lobes, could be even bigger. Then there are super galaxy clusters, which are hundreds of galaxies merged together due to cosmic collisions.

In this documentary we discover which is the largest planet, star, star cluster, constellation, black hole, void, volcano, galaxy, explosion, moon, storm and impact crater in space.

Time - A Documentary

In this four-programme series, string theory pioneer Michio Kaku goes on an extraordinary exploration of the world in search of time. He discovers our sense of time passing and the clocks that drive our bodies. He reveals the forces of time that make and destroy us in a lifetime. He journeys to some of the Earth's most spectacular geological sites to look for clues to the extraordinary depths of time at a planetary level. Finally, he takes us on a cosmic journey in search of the beginning (and the end) of time itself.




PART ONE - Daytime
We humans seem to run to the beat of time, often without being aware of how this is the case or how our perception of it may differ from another person's, from nature's rhythms or from our own internal clock. In the first episode of the series, string theory pioneer Michio Kaku witnesses one of the most extraordinary feats of timing in nature on a remote Californian beach.




We also meet a French caver who spent months in complete isolation to see what would happen to his sense of time - and discovered that we have an internal clock that drives our days. Michio self-experiments by being monitored over 24 hours to see how this clock shapes his whole body chemistry. And we test a family with a rare disease to uncover the very roots of the body clock itself.

Where does our sense of time passing come from? We all know it's critical - as comedians demonstrate at a Soho comedy club. Michio discovers this critical timer (the stopwatch) in a brain-scan experiment at Duke University. It seems that this 'sense' of time is plastic: crash victims report that time seems to slow under extreme stress. We conduct a unique experiment to test this - by dropping someone 150 feet. Meanwhile, back at Duke an experiment with cocaine and marijuana on rats reveals the chemical process by which our sense of time is altered.

But time for us is even more than this. We have a unique knowledge of time. We 'know' past and future. It's an ability shared by no other animals... apart from a special few. King the Gorilla demonstrates his awareness of time to researchers in Miami. We meet a man with no memory and reveal how much we depend on being able to place ourselves in time. This special awareness of time raises some of the most important questions about time itself: Why does it only flow in one direction? Why can't we stop it, see it or hold it? And if it so elusive, then is it real or just a figment of our minds?

PART TWO - Lifetime
Why is our time limited? And does it have to be? Could our age-old dream of immortality ever be possible? In episode two, Michio Kaku explores these questions and meets some of the key people involved in the cutting-edge research into ageing. He travels to the amazing Methuselah tree, which is almost 5000 years old and still producing new pine cones. He discovers that time does get faster as you get older and, under hypnosis, he goes in search of his lost time, stored as memories. But it only proves that lost time is really gone forever.




We are incredible machines for living - but if we're programmed to live, are we also programmed to die? As we grow, our cells divide into a complex colony of three trillion individual cells in our bodies. Sir Paul Nurse has spent a lifetime studying cells to search for the most basic process of life - the secret of cell division. We discover that cells seem to be potentially immortal. They continue to divide again and again perfectly. Even our own bodies are replaced through our lives - most of our cells are replaced in a roughly seven-year cycle. Yet we know that we age and that time wreaks changes on our bodies.

This episode reveals the biological changes in our cells that make our skin wrinkle and our bones become brittle. This new understanding is beginning to reveal the process of time in our bodies and, through this, scientists are now looking at ways of slowing or even stopping time. Scientists in California are studying sea urchins for clues as they not only live longer than ever thought before but they appear to show no sign of ageing. Genetic manipulation is extending the lives of mice. And a British scientist is now suggesting that the pace of advance is so fast that the first immortals are already living today; that before our children have reached the end of their natural lives, the technology to stop and even reverse ageing will exist. But what will that mean for our essential humanity?

PART THREE - Earth Time
Our awareness that time stretches back long before we were born, and will continue to stretch into the future long after we're gone, lies at the heart of our humanity. Without this sense we couldn't learn from the past, and wouldn't plan for the future But where did we come from, and where are we going in time? Every culture mythologises time and attempts to answer the ultimate questions: was there a beginning? And will there be an end?




In the 17th century an Irish bishop used the scientific method and the Bible to calculate a date of creation - approximately 6000 years ago. It was a remarkable achievement, but he was wrong. Michio climbs down the layers of rock from which the Grand Canyon is carved to discover that the world must be much older. Meteorites hold the ultimate clues to the formation of the Earth - a staggering 4.6 billion years ago. Michio reveals that, far from being fixed, the Earth has been reshaped with incredible violence. It's usually too slow to witness directly, but inhabitants close to the world's most active volcano, Kilauea, on Hawaii know the Earth's forces all too well as they recover their homes from volcanic ash.

It's almost impossible to conceive of the vastness of Earth time: in an attempt to illustrate the planet's lifespan, Michio travels from the West to the East coast of America each millimetre representing one year. But where do we fit in? Our time seems so insignificant, but we're part of perhaps the greatest story ever told - the story of life itself. The programme looks at bacteria that have been brought to life from a time capsule of rock after 250 million years, encounters creatures in which evolution can be seen in action, and explores the ultimate biological clock - DNA. Michio has his own DNA tested to reveal his ancestral journey all the way back to our first human ancestors in Africa. Finally, the episode concludes with a look into the future to ask where we are ultimately going.


PART FOUR - Cosmic Time
Throughout history, one thing has never changed - time. It is something we rely on to plan our lives, and it is consistent, regular and ceaseless. But is it? High in the Alps, Michio encounters a mystery - tiny particles called muons which shouldn't exist. They don't last long enough to be detected on Earth - and yet here they are. The answer to this mystery lies in one of the greatest discoveries of all time - Einstein's theory of relativity. The faster you travel, the slower time ticks. So time is not fixed at all.




Michio goes on a journey to places where time becomes very strange. Inside atoms, time blurs to such an extent that something can be in two places at once. Within extreme places in space, like black holes, time is squeezed to such an extent that, to an observer, it seems to stand still. Time is more variable that it could ever have been thought possible. It can even, theoretically, move backwards. This leads to one of the most extraordinary possibilities - a time machine. This episode shows a graphical representation of what it might look like: the size of a planet and consuming unimaginable amounts of energy but still a possibility.

Finally, Michio tackles the greatest questions of all - did time itself have a beginning, and will it have an end? He explains how the time capsule of the stars revealed the evolution of the Universe - and pointed the way to the ultimate beginning, the Big Bang, 13.6 billion years ago. And the future? Michio discovers that the cosmos of the stars is only a moment in the Universe's history, that we live in the stelliferous age - the age of the stars - the second of the Universe's five ages of time. But Michio explains that it is hardly an age at all: within the entire lifetime of the Universe the stars shine for less than a finger-click of history.

Stupidity, a documentary

Stupidity by Albert Nerenberg Features Bill Maher, Noam Chomsky, George W. Bush, Mark Crispin Miller and many others. A humorous examination of stupidity in contemporary American culture, covering: the effects of television and mass media on the American intellect; the "dumbing down" of American culture; the popularity of Steve-O and Jackass; role of religion in willful stupidity; the identifaction of many Americans with George W. Bush; the evolution of such concepts as "idiot" and "moron."

The DVD edition contains extra interviews commentaries and readings. The film is not connected to Matthijs van Boxsel's book called Encyclopaedia of Stupidity -- also 2003- but recommended.

What We Still Don't Know Documentary

Part 1 - Are we alone?

Hear the word ‘alien’ and what might spring to mind is something approaching HG Wells’ vision of a warlike Martian invader from War of the Worlds. His fantastical dreams of dumpy aliens sporting octopod tentacles and camouflage coloured skin have long been inclined to place the topic of alien life well beyond the realm of intelligent discourse and into the world of weird and wacky belief.

But no longer. In this documentary film - Are We Alone?, Martin Rees puts paid to the flights of fantasy and takes us on a journey of unsettling consequence.

Seth Shostak is one of SETI’s (Institute for the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) leading investigators. He is utterly convinced that there is someone out there. The most compelling evidence is simply in the vast scales of space. There are 10,000 billion billion stars visible from Earth’s telescopes alone, and a conservative estimate places orbiting planets around one in ten of them. Would it not then be very strange if Earth were the only planet out of so many boggling billions to have been a cradle for life?

Peter Ward is a paleontologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. He’s an expert biologist and not given to inventing weird alien creatures. But even he has to admit that life elsewhere is more than likely: ‘When you think there are 400 billion stars in our galaxy alone, and there are billions of galaxies, we now think that virtually every star has a planet, more than one planet, you’re going to have abodes for life almost everywhere. It’s ridiculous to think it happened on this planet and this planet alone. Life is definitely out there.’

Part 2 - Why are we here?

Philosophers and theologians have long debated our purpose in the universe. We have always assumed that there is some higher purpose for humanity, but the universe it seems may have other ideas.

In Why Are We Here? Martin Rees explains how scientists have had to revise long-held beliefs about the very nature of the universe, and in the process re-evaluate our place here. To do this, Rees presents some of the most fundamental questions about the universe and our own origins: What was the beginning? What is the nature of life? What is the future of the cosmos and the nature of reality?

The answers may not be what you expect. Empty space is not so empty after all. Most of the universe is made up not of atoms, as previously thought, but of a mysterious and elusive substance called ‘dark matter’. Without it the universe simply would not exist.

But working against dark matter is an even more mysterious force that threatens to tear the universe apart – ‘dark energy’.

Part 3 - Are we real?

All life on Earth is nothing more than an elaborate facade created by super-intelligent beings. Humans now exist in a computerized version of the world – a simulation that keeps us happy, while our powers are drained by our creators for use as fuel in their campaign for dominance in the ‘real’ world. This is the premise of the cult sci-fi thriller The Matrix.

‘The simulation hypothesis, that we are currently living in a computer simulation, should be understood literally, it’s not just in a metaphorical sense whereby one could view the universe as a simulation, but literally we would be living in a simulation created by some advanced civilization in a computer they built in their universe. And everything we see and our brains themselves would just be parts of this simulation.’ Oxford University philosopher Dr Nick Bostrom echoes the thoughts of sci-fi writers and scientists alike. The simulation hypothesis is not sci-fi, it’s serious academic thought.

In Are We Real? Martin Rees navigates the extraordinary territory between science fact and science fiction. He reveals the logical steps that have led cosmologists and philosophers to the shocking conclusion that The Matrix scenario cannot be safely relegated to our storybooks. Whether it’s true or not, and it might be, here is a story that is altogether more serious and more deeply disturbing than any sci-fi fantasy could ever be.

Cosmologist Professor Max Tegmark from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology warns us that ‘We humans have undergone a series of demotions, a series of blows to our ego.’ Prepare yourself for another.

Visions of the Future

In this new three-part documentary, leading theoretical physicist and futurist Dr Michio Kaku explores the cutting edge science of today, tomorrow, and beyond. He argues that humankind is at a turning point in history. In this century, we are going to make the historic transition from the 'Age of Discovery' to the 'Age of Mastery', a period in which we will move from being passive observers of nature to its active choreographers. This will give us not only unparalleled possibilities but also great responsibilities.




PART ONE - THE INTELLIGENCE REVOLUTION

In the opening installment, Kaku explains how artificial intelligence will revolutionise homes, workplaces and lifestyles, and how virtual worlds will become so realistic that they will rival the physical world. Robots with human-level intelligence may finally become a reality, and in the ultimate stage of mastery, we'll even be able to merge our minds with machine intelligence.




For the first time on television, see how a severely depressed patient can be turned into a happy person at the push of a button - all thanks to the cross-pollination of neuroscience and artificial intelligence.

PART TWO - THE BIOTECH REVOLUTION

Genetics and biotechnology promise a future of unprecedented health and longevity: DNA screening could prevent many diseases, gene therapy could cure them and, thanks to lab-grown organs, the human body could be repaired as easily as a car, with spare parts readily available. Ultimately, the ageing process itself could be slowed down or even halted.




But what impact will this have on who we are and how we will live? And, with our mastery of the genome, will the human race end up in a world divided by genetic apartheid?

PART THREE - THE QUANTUM REVOLUTION

The quantum revolution could turn many ideas of science fiction into science fact - from metamaterials with mind-boggling properties like invisibility through limitless quantum energy and room temperature superconductors to Arthur C Clarke's space elevator. Some scientists even forecast that in the latter half of the century everybody will have a personal fabricator that re-arranges molecules to produce everything from almost anything.




Yet how will we ultimately use our mastery of matter? Like Samson, will we use our strength to bring down the temple? Or, like Solomon, will we have the wisdom to match our technology?

Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness

This six part series on philosophy is presented by popular British philosopher Alain de Botton, featuring six thinkers who have influenced history, and their ideas about the pursuit of the happy life.




Episode 1: Socrates on Self-Confidence - Why do so many people go along with the crowd and fail to stand up for what they truly believe? Partly because they are too easily swayed by other people's opinions and partly because they don't know when to have confidence in their own.

Episode 2: Epicurus on Happiness - British philosopher Alain De Botton discusses the personal implications of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270BCE) who was no epicurean glutton or wanton consumerist,but an advocate of "friends, freedom and thought" as the path to happiness.

Episode 3: Seneca on Anger Roman philosopher Lucious Annaeus Seneca (4BCE-65CE), the most famous and popular philosopher of his day, took the subject of anger seriously enough to dedicate a whole book to the subject. Seneca refused to see anger as an irrational outburst over which we have no control. Instead he saw it as a philosophical problem and amenable to treatment by philosophical argument. He thought anger arose from certain rationally held ideas about the world, and the problem with these ideas is that they are far too optimistic. Certain things are a predictable feature of life, and to get angry about them is to have unrealistic expectations.

Episode 4: Montaigne on Self-Esteem looks at the problem of self-esteem from the perspective of Michel de Montaigne (16th Century), the French philosopher who singled out three main reasons for feeling bad about oneself - sexual inadequecy, failure to live up to social norms, and intellectual inferiority - and then offered practical solutions for overcoming them.

Episode 5: Schopenhauer on Love - Alain De Botton surveys the 19th Century German thinker Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) who believed that love was the most important thing in life because of its powerful impulse towards 'the will-to-life'.

Episode 6: Nietzsche on Hardship - British philosopher Alain De Botton explores Friedrich Nietzsche's (1844-1900) dictum that any worthwhile achievements in life come from the experience of overcoming hardship. For him, any existence that is too comfortable is worthless, as are the twin refugees of drink or religion.