NOVA: Season 45

Episode 1: Black Hole Apocalypse 2018-01-10 | 55 min Astrophysicist and novelist Janna Levin talks about black holes and their importance to the universe. Episode 2: The Impossible Flight 2018-01-31 | 55 min For the first time, two intrepid pilots fly a solar-powered airplane around the world. Episode 3: First Face of America 2018-02-07 | 55 min Discover remains of a 13,000 year-old teenager in an underwater cave in Mexico. Episode 4: Great Escape at Dunkirk 2018-02-14 | 55 min How courage and ingenuity saved Allied troops during the epic Dunkirk operation in 1940. Episode 5: Prediction by the Numbers 2018-02-28 | 55 min Discover why some predictions succeed and others fail as experts forecast the future. Episode 6: Decoding the Weather Machine 2018-04-18 | 55 min Disastrous hurricanes. Widespread droughts and wildfires. Withering heat. Extreme rainfall. It is hard not to conclude that something’s up with the weather, and many scientists agree. It’s the result of the weather machine itself—our climate—changing, becoming hotter and more erratic. In this 2-hour documentary, NOVA will cut through the confusion around climate change. Episode 7: Rise of the Superstorms 2018-06-27 | 55 min In just one devastating month, Houston, Florida, and the Caribbean were changed forever. In summer 2017, three monster hurricanes swept in from the Atlantic one after another, shattering storm records and killing hundreds of people. As the planet warms, are these superstorms the new normal? How well can we predict them? Episode 8: Transplanting Hope 2018-09-26 | 55 min NOVA takes you inside the operating room to witness organ transplant teams transferring organs from donors to recipients. Meet families navigating both sides of a transplant, and researchers working to end the organ shortage. Their efforts to understand organ rejection, discover ways to keep organs alive outside the body, and even grow artificial organs with stem cells, could save countless lives. Episode 9: Operation Bridge Rescue 2018-10-03 | 55 min Follow the race to rebuild the Old Blenheim Bridge in New York State, an icon of 19th century American engineering, destroyed by Hurricane Irene in 2011. Watch a team of elite craftsmen faithfully reproduce the massive, intricate wooden structure under grueling time pressure as flooding threatens their worksite. Episode 10: Volatile Earth: Volcano on Fire 2018-10-10 | 55 min Climb with volcano experts to the summit of Nyiragongo, a highly active volcano in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Twice in recent memory it has erupted, devastating Goma, a neighboring city of 1 million people. To investigate when it might erupt next, scientists climb into its crater toward a bubbling lava lake to deploy sensors and monitor the volcano’s activity. Episode 11: Volatile Earth: Volcano on the Brink 2018-10-10 | 55 min Explore Nyamuragira, one of the world’s most active and mysterious volcanoes in Africa. Decades of civil strife have prevented scientists from investigating the volcano, but a brief pause allows an international team of experts to fly by helicopter to the summit to investigate. Discover the volcano’s hidden dangers and probe whether magma pressure is building up to threaten another eruption. Episode 12: Addiction 2018-10-17 | 55 min Hear firsthand from individuals struggling with addiction and follow the cutting-edge work of doctors and scientists as they investigate why addiction is not a moral failing, but a chronic, treatable medical condition. Easy access to drugs like heroin, fentanyl, and even prescription medications like OxyContin has fueled an epidemic of addiction—the deadliest in U.S. history. Episode 13: Flying Supersonic 2018-10-24 | 55 min NOVA takes you inside the historic international race to develop the first supersonic airliner, the Concorde. Hear stories from those inside the choreographed effort to design and build Concorde in two countries at once—and the crew members who flew her. Then, follow Concorde’s legacy to a new generation of innovators reviving the dream of supersonic passenger travel today. Episode 14: Last B-24 2018-11-07 | 55 min Dive to the bottom of the Adriatic Sea in search of the Tulsamerican, a B-24 bomber that crashed off the coast of Croatia during World War II. In 2010, divers located the plane. Now the Department of Defense, aided by the Croatian Navy and some of the world’s leading underwater archaeologists, sets to work investigating the wreckage. Episode 15: Thai Cave Rescue 2018-11-14 | 55 min In July 2018, the world held its breath as an international team of cave divers endeavored to rescue 12 boys and their soccer coach stranded deep in a flooded cave in Thailand. Follow the harrowing operation and discover the scientific ingenuity that made the rescue possible. Episode 16: World's Fastest Animal 2018-11-21 | 55 min See the world through the eyes of nature’s fastest animal: the peregrine falcon. Though once perilously endangered in the U.S., this spectacular predator is now thriving again in American cities and on every continent but Antarctica. What is the secret to its predatory prowess? Join expert falconer Lloyd Buck as he trains a captive peregrine and puts its hunting skills to the test. Episode 17: Apollo's Daring Mission 2018-12-26 | 55 min Apollo astronauts and engineers tell the inside story of Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon. The U.S. space program suffered a bitter setback when Apollo 1 ended in a deadly fire during a pre-launch run-through. In disarray, and threatened by the prospect of a Soviet Union victory in the space race, NASA decided upon a radical and risky change of plan: turn Apollo 8 from an earth-orbit mission into a daring sprint to the moon while relying on untried new technologies. Fifty years after the historic mission, the Apollo 8 astronauts and engineers recount the feats of engineering that paved the way to the moon. Episode 101: NOVA Wonders What Are Animals Saying? 2018-04-25 | 55 min From singing whales and squeaking bats to thumping spiders and clicking dolphins, the world is filled with the exotic sounds of our fellow creatures. What are they saying? Can we decode their own communications? NOVA Wonders follows researchers around the globe who are deciphering an amazing array of clues that reveal how animals share information critical to their survival. Episode 102: NOVA Wonders What's Living in You? 2018-05-02 | 55 min Whether they make you fat, fart, or freak out, microbes play a central role in your life. Right beneath your nose—on your face, in your gut, and everywhere in between—trillions of bacteria, viruses, and fungi are so abundant in your body, they outnumber your human cells. But these aren’t just nasty hitch-hikers. Many are crucial to your survival. Episode 103: NOVA Wonders Are We Alone? 2018-05-09 | 55 min The search for extraterrestrial life is an age-old quest. But recent breakthroughs make today an era unlike any in the history of astronomy. From the exhilarating probing of our own solar system and the Kepler mission’s astounding discovery of thousands of extrasolar planets, to the next-generation telescopes under development, the prospects for finding life beyond Earth have never been stronger. Episode 104: NOVA Wonders Can We Build a Brain? 2018-05-16 | 55 min Artificially intelligent machines are taking over. They’re influencing our everyday lives in profound and often invisible ways. They can read handwriting, interpret emotions, play games, and even act as personal assistants. They are in our phones, our cars, our doctors’ offices, our banks, our web searches…the list goes on and is rapidly growing ever longer. Episode 105: NOVA Wonders Can We Make Life? 2018-05-23 | 55 min "It's alive!" Since Dr. Frankenstein spoke those famous words, we've been alternately enthralled and terrified by the idea of creating life in the lab. Now, a revolution in genetic engineering and thrilling innovations in synthetic biology are bringing that dream—or nightmare, as the case may be—closer to reality. New tools allow researchers to use cells to create their own DNA. Episode 106: NOVA Wonders What's the Universe Made Of? 2018-05-30 | 55 min The universe is hiding something. In fact, it is hiding a lot. Everything we experience on Earth, the stars and galaxies we see in the cosmos—all the “normal” matter and energy that we understand—make up only 5% of the known universe. Find out how scientists are discovering new secrets about the history of the universe, and why they’re predicting a shocking future.