Episode
NOVA: Sunken Ship Rescue
Overview
Follow the epic operation to secure, raise, and salvage the Costa Concordia cruise ship, which ran aground and tragically capsized off the coast of Italy on January 13, 2012, killing 32 people. The massive wreck—with a 160-foot-long hole in its hull—stretches the length of three football fields, weighs 45,000 tons, and was half submerged on the site of a protected reef. Moving it from its precarious perch on the edge of an underwater cliff turned into a technical and logistical challenge of staggering proportions.
Details
- Series
- NOVA
- Season
- Season 42
- Episode
- Episode 12
- Air date
- 2015-01-21
- Runtime
- 55 min
Episode context
Sunken Ship Rescue is Episode 12 in Season 42 of NOVA. It aired on 2015-01-21. The runtime is 55 min.
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Episode 11: Big Bang Machine
On July 4, 2012, scientists at the giant atom smashing facility at CERN announced the discovery of a subatomic particle that seems like a tantalizingly close match to the elusive Higgs Boson, thought to be responsible for giving all the stuff in the universe its mass. Since it was first proposed nearly fifty years ago, the Higgs has been the holy grail of particle physicists: in finding it they validate the "standard model" that underlies all of modern physics and open the door to new discoveries when CERN's giant collider switches on at higher power in 2015.
Episode 13: Sinkholes—Buried Alive
These geological hazards have swallowed highways, apartment buildings, horses, camels, even golfers, with monster-size holes cracking the earth from Siberia to Louisiana. Filled with compelling eyewitness video of dramatic collapses, and following scientists as they explore the underlying forces behind these natural disasters, NOVA travels the globe to investigate what it's like to have your world vanish beneath your feet.
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Episode 10: First Man on the Moon
When Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, he won instant fame. Yet this accomplished engineer and test pilot was so determined to stay out of the limelight that few know the personal story of how his rare combination of talent, luck and experience led to his successful command of Apollo 11. NOVA presents an intimate portrait of an unassuming American hero through interviews with Armstrong’s family and friends.
Episode 14: Colosseum: Roman Death Trap
One of the ancient world's most iconic buildings, the Colosseum is a monument to Roman imperial power and cruelty. Its graceful lines and harmonious proportions concealed a highly efficient design and advanced construction methods that made hundreds of arches out of 100,000 tons of stone. In its elliptical arena, tens of thousands of gladiators, slaves, prisoners, and wild animals met their deaths. Ancient texts report lions and elephants emerging from beneath the floor, as if by magic, to ravage gladiators and people condemned to death. Then, just as quickly, the Colosseum could be flooded with so much water that ships could engage in sea battles to the delight of the crowd. Now, archaeologists and engineers are teaming up to recreate a 25-foot lifting machine and trap door system capable of releasing a wolf into the Colosseum's arena for the first time in 1,500 years. Do they have what it takes to replicate the innovation and ingenuity of the Romans?
Episode 9: Killer Landslides
In less than two minutes in March, a one-square-mile field of debris slammed into the Washington state community of Oso, killing 41 and destroying nearly 50 homes. Drawing on analysis of other recent landslides around the world, geologists are investigating what triggered the deadliest U.S. landslide in decades and whether climate change is increasing the risk of similar disasters around the globe.
Episode 15: Petra: Lost City of Stone
In a daring experiment, an archaeologist and sculptors team up to carve an iconic temple-tomb to find out how the ancient people of Petra built their city of stone. Meanwhile, scientists using remote sensors and hydraulic flumes uncover the vast city and its sophisticated water system. The race is on to discover how these nomads created an oasis of culture in one of the harshest climates on Earth.
Episode 8: Emperor’s Ghost Army
To defend himself in the afterlife, the First Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, was buried in a vast mausoleum accompanied by around 9,000 life-sized terracotta statues. With exclusive access to groundbreaking new research, NOVA investigates the secrets of how and why the astonishing figures were made and the technology behind the still lethal and highly-advanced crossbows, spears, and swords carried by the clay warriors.
Episode 16: Hagia Sophia: Istanbul’s Ancient Mystery
Whether serving as Christian church, Islamic mosque, or secular museum, Hagia Sophia and its saring dome have inspired reverence and awe. For 800 years, it was the largest enclosed building in the world—the Statue of Liberty can fit beneath its dome with room to spare. How has it survived its location on one of the world’s most active seismic faults, which has inflicted a dozen devastating earthquakes since it was built in 537? As Istanbul braces for the next big quake, a team of architects and engineers is urgently investigating Hagia Sophia’s seismic secrets. Follow engineers as they build a massive 8-ton model of the building’s core structure, place it on a motorized shake table, and hit it with a series of simulated quakes, pushing it collapse—a fate that the team is determined to avoid with the real building.
Episode 7: Bigger Than T. rex
Follow the paleontologists who are reconstructing this terrifying carnivore, a 53-foot-long behemoth with a huge dorsal sail, scimitar-like claws and superjaws. Bringing together experts in paleontology, geology, climatology and paleobotany, this special brings to life the lost world over which Spinosaurus reigned more than 65 million years ago.
Episode 17: The Great Math Mystery
Join NOVA on a mathematical mystery tour—a provocative exploration of math's astonishing power across the centuries. We discover math's signature in the swirl of a nautilus shell, the whirlpool of a galaxy, and the spiral in the center of a sunflower. Math was essential to everything from the first wireless radio transmissions to the prediction and discovery of the Higgs boson and the successful landing of rovers on Mars. Astrophysicist and writer Mario Livio, along with a colorful cast of mathematicians, physicists, and engineers, follow math from Pythagoras to Einstein and beyond. It all leads to the ultimate riddle: Is math a human invention or the discovery of the language of the universe?
Episode 6: First Air War
When World War I began in 1914, the air forces of the opposing nations consisted of handfuls of rickety biplanes from which pilots occasionally took pot shots at one another with rifles. By 1918, the fighter had become an efficient killing machine with a growing strategic impact on the outcome of the war. With the help of a unique collection of meticulously recreated flying replicas, NOVA traces the story of the designers, engineers, and brave pilots caught up in the race to dominate the skies over the western front.
Episode 18: Invisible Universe Revealed
Twenty-five years ago, NASA launched one of the most ambitious experiments in the history of astronomy: the Hubble Space Telescope. In honor of Hubble's landmark anniversary, NOVA tells the remarkable story of the telescope that forever changed our understanding of the cosmos. But Hubble's early days nearly doomed it to failure: a one-millimeter engineering blunder had turned the billion-dollar telescope into an object of ridicule. It fell to five heroic astronauts in a daring mission to return Hubble to the cutting edge of science. This single telescope has helped astronomers pinpoint the age of the universe, revealed the birthplace of stars and planets, advanced our understanding of dark energy and cosmic expansion, and uncovered black holes lurking at the heart of galaxies. Join NOVA for the story of this magnificent machine and its astonishing discoveries.