Just outside Paris, France, inside a high-tech vault, requiring three independently controlled keys, rests a small metallic cylinder about the diameter of a golf ball. Encased within three vacuum-sealed bell jars it may not look like much, but it is one of the most important objects on the planet. It affects nearly every aspect of our lives from the moment we are born, to the food we eat, the cars we drive, and even the medicines we take. The Last Artifact follows the high-stakes race to redefine the weight of the world reveals the untold story of one of the most important objects on the planet. The kilogram, the base unit of mass in the International System of Units, helped send humans to the moon and satellites into space. This small hunk of metal is the object against which all others are measured. Yet over time, its mass mysteriously eroded by the weight of an eyelash. A change that, unbeknownst to most, unleashed a crisis with potentially dire consequences.
Narrator (UK version)
01 Jan 1973
In 1973 Yorkshire public television made a short film of the Nobel laureate while he was there. The resulting film, Take the World from Another Point of View, was broadcast in America as part of the PBS Nova series. The documentary features a fascinating interview, but what sets it apart from other films on Feynman is the inclusion of a lively conversation he had with the eminent British astrophysicist Fred Hoyle.
09 Aug 1996
The Academy Award® nominee Cosmic Voyage combines live action with state-of-the-art computer-generated imagery to pinpoint where humans fit in our ever-expanding universe. Highlighting this journey is a "cosmic zoom" based on the powers of 10, extending from the Earth to the largest observable structures in the universe, and then back to the subnuclear realm.
20 Sep 2021
A documentary telling the remarkable human story of Stephen Hawking. For the first time, the personal archives and the testimonies of his closest family reveal both the scale of Hawking's triumphs and the real cost of his disability and success.
04 Aug 2003
No overview found
24 Mar 2009
Twenty years after A Brief History of Time flummoxed the world with its big numbers and black holes, its author, Stephen Hawking, concedes that the "ultimate theory" he'd believed to be imminent - which would conclusively explain the origins of life, the universe and everything - remains frustratingly elusive. Yet despite his failing health and the seeming impossibility of the task, Hawking is still devoted to his work; an extraordinary drive that's captured here in fleeting interview snippets and footage of the scientist sharing a microwave dinner with some fawning PhD students. Though the pop-science tutorials that dapple the first of this two-part biography are winningly perky, Hawking, alas, remains as tricky to fathom as his boggling quantum whatnots
26 Apr 2017
An exploration of the link between science and beauty through the work of scientists at CERN, in Geneva.
18 Mar 2020
Black holes stand at the limit of what we can know. To explore that edge of knowledge, the Event Horizon Telescope links observatories across the world to simulate an earth-sized instrument. With this tool the team pursues the first-ever picture of a black hole, resulting in an image seen by billions of people in April 2019. Meanwhile, Hawking and his team attack the black hole paradox at the heart of theoretical physics—Do predictive laws still function, even in these massive distortions of space and time? Weaving them together is a third strand, philosophical and exploratory using expressive animation. “Edge” is about practicing science at the highest level, a film where observation, theory, and philosophy combine to grasp these most mysterious objects.
01 Oct 1991
This shows physicist Stephen Hawking's life as he deals with the ALS that renders him immobile and unable to speak without the use of a computer. Hawking's friends, family, classmates, and peers are interviewed not only about his theories but the man himself.
26 Mar 2022
An in-depth investigation featuring world renowned philosophers and scientists into the most profound philosophical debate of all time: Do we have free will?
03 Oct 2009
Lawrence Krauss gives a talk on our current picture of the universe, how it will end, and how it could have come from nothing. Krauss is the author of many bestselling books on Physics and Cosmology, including "The Physics of Star Trek."
01 Jan 1960
An educational physics film utilizing a fascinating set consisting of a rotating table and furniture occupying surprisingly unpredictable spots within the viewing area, Leacock’s Frames of Reference (1960), features fine cinematography by Abraham Morochnik, and funny narration by University of Toronto professors Donald Ivey and Patterson Hume, in a wonderful example of the fun a creative team of filmmakers can have with a subject other, less imaginative types might find pedestrian.
01 Apr 2022
It is a daring idea: to grow food from old mattresses in a desolate camp at the edge of a war zone. When a refugee scientist meets two quirky professors, they must confront their own catastrophes - and make a garden grow. Short film now streaming on Waterbear.com.
15 Jan 1964
In a compartment of the Moscow-Novosibirsk train, a young physicist meets famous film actors. The conversation accidentally comes to Einstein, and the woman begins to explain to her fellow travelers what the theory of relativity is. The actors are incidentally on their way to the shooting of a film about physicists, but they do not understand the subject at all.
16 Jan 2020
Almost one hundred years ago, the project to reduce the world to mathematical physics failed suddenly and completely: “One of the best-kept secrets of science,” physicist Nick Herbert writes, “is that physicists have lost their grip on reality.” The world, we are now told, emerges spontaneously, out of “nothing,” and constitutes a “multiverse,” where “anything that can happen will happen, and it will happen an infinite number of times.” Legendary reclusive genius Wolfgang Smith demonstrates on shockingly obvious grounds the dead end at which physics has arrived, and how we can “return, at last, to the real world.” The End of Quantum Reality introduces this extraordinary man to a contemporary audience which has, perhaps, never encountered a true philos-sophia, one as intimately at ease with the rigors of quantum physics as with the greatest schools of human wisdom.
10 Nov 2013
CERN in Switzerland is a research center where they try to recreate the big bang. Nikolaus Geyrhalter follows the center's infrastructure and meets the people who created the "Large Hadron Collider".
01 Jan 2015
In our terrestrial view of things, the speed of light seems incredibly fast. But as soon as you view it against the vast distances of the universe, it's unfortunately very slow. This animation illustrates, in realtime, the journey of a photon of light emitted from the surface of the sun and traveling across a portion of the solar system, from a human perspective. Liberties were taken with certain things like the alignment of planets and asteroids, as well as ignoring the laws of relativity concerning what a photon actually "sees" or how time is experienced at the speed of light, but overall the size and distances of all the objects were kept as accurate as possible. It was also decided to end the animation just past Jupiter to keep the running length below an hour.
11 Feb 2013
Six days. Three frontiers. One amazing lab. From 2010 to 2012, a film crew followed a group of scientists at the Department of Energy's Fermilab and filmed them at work and at home. This 40-minute documentary shows the diversity of the people, research and work at Fermilab. Viewers catch a true behind-the-scenes look of the United States' premier particle physics laboratory while scientists explain why their research is important to them and the world. Scientists included: Brendan Casey, Herman White, Craig Hogan, Denton Morris, Mary Convery, Bonnie Fleming, Deborah Harris, Dave Schmitz, Brenna Flaugher and Aron Soha.
21 Oct 2010
Human action is often influenced by the desire for knowledge. This desire is in itself a positive impulse and could be said to be the basis of all progress. Let's move this statement to the ground of scientific research at CERN, and see if it applies here - and then test the common experience that human stupidity permeates every social stratum and, in the case of the elites, is a potential threat.
12 Dec 2000
In Astronomy Part 2, you will learn all about the planets, asteroids, comets, meteoroids, the layers of the sun, fusion, and more. The Standard Deviants make learning astronomy easier with their unique teaching style, which incorporates humor, mnemonics, and sophisticated computer graphics.
26 Sep 2000
Physics is a system of models of nature according to which all phenomena are explained in terms of matter and force. Sound confusing? It doesn't have to be! Whether you need help with high school physics, need to review for a college physics class, or you're studying for the AP Physics Exam, this physics tutorial will help you understand the basics, such as Newton's Laws, the Law of Universal Gravitation, Kepler's Law and more.