episodes
- 1. In The Event of Catastrophe Can a nuclear war be survived? Some members of the defense community say yes. NOVA explores the possibility.
- 2. The Green Machine Botany is a neglected science and plants are all around us, but unfamiliar. NOVA examines our state of knowledge of how plants work: growth hormones, responses to light and shade, photosynthesis, root...
- 3. Blueprints in the Bloodstream It has been known since the turn of the century that there are four human blood groups, based on different red cells and serum characteristics. NOVA looks at the more recent discovery that the differe...
- 4. One Small Step Part one of a two-part series on the subject of man in space, NOVA examines the history of NASA—from the origin of the space race through the triumph of the Apollo programs. By tracing the history of...
- 5. The Final Frontier Second of the two-part series on space programs, NOVA looks ahead to the future, post-Apollo and the role that man in space will play, including the possibility of space colonization—huge orbiting spa...
- 6. BaMiki BaNdula: Children of the Forest In the rain forests of Zaire, in the heart of Africa, live the Mbuti Pygmies. The Pygmy way of life has always been extraordinarily difficult to capture on film, though many have tried. NOVA presents...
- 7. Trial of Denton Cooley In a dramatic docudrama, NOVA reconstructs the controversial lawsuit raised against renowned heart surgeon Dr. Denton Cooley when one of his patients died after heart surgery, and examines the legal a...
- 8. The Great Wine Revolution A science-based revolution in the making of wine is underway. NOVA traces the secrets of the aging process and science's involvement with the predicting of mass production high-quality vintage wines.
- 9. The Case of the Ancient Astronauts NOVA investigates the theories of von Daniken and others that the Earth has been visited by intelligent beings from outer space. Among claims examined are: that the building techniques used in the Gre...
- 10. The Mind Machines Today's scientists may be creating their own successors. Work being done in Artificial Intelligence (AI), a branch of computer science, only suggest that in the not too distant future, machines will o...
- 11. Icarus' Children In the summer of 1977 Paul MacCready, a California scientist and businessman, won the coveted Kremer Prize. His achievement was to design and build an airplane which completed, unaided, a one-mile fig...
- 12. Still Waters NOVA shows a year in the life of a beaver pond and includes almost every life form that exists in, on, under, around and above the water, from the microscopic plant life of summer to the eagles feedin...
- 13. Battle for the Acropolis The fortified plateau above Athens known as the Acropolis is the site of some of the most remarkable architecture in the world: its marble structures built in the fifth century BC, including the renow...
- 14. The Road to Happiness. : The Life and Times of Henry Ford Henry Ford, a great friend of Edison, was a film enthusiast who amassed some one and a half million feet of film during his lifetime. Deposited in the National Archives and known as the Ford Film Coll...
- 15. Laser : Light of the 21st Century When first invented 18 years ago, lasers were called "a solution looking for a problem;" nobody could think what to do with them. But in fact research scientists immediately began to exploit their pur...
- 16. Insect Alternative In a world that each year loses up to 40 percent of its crops to insects, some form of pest control is desperately needed. But chemical pesticides have backfired. Pesticide-resistant insects frequentl...
- 17. The Desert's Edge For thousands of years people have managed to live in deserts all over the world. But in recent years, a growing population and the demands of the international market have put more stress on these po...
- 18. The Tsetse Trap NOVA explores Bovine sleeping sickness. Spread by a fly, it is a deadly disease that poses a threat to Africa's cattle.
- 19. Memories From Eden Traditionally zoos were designed neither for people nor animals; barred cages taught people more about their separation from nature than about an animal and its habitat. But just as man has realized t...
- 20. A Whisper from Space In 1965, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, two radio astronomers at Bell Telephone Laboratories, discovered faint, but ever-present, microwave signals from space—the most ancient and most distant signal...
- 21. Alaska: The Closing Frontier Congress is currently considering a proposal that would double the size of America's national park system by designating a sizeable chunk of Alaska as off-limits to developers. NOVA explores the publi...