Movies: Nova

When the U.S. trade embargo left Cuba isolated from medical resources, Cuban scientists were forced to get creative. Now they've developed lung cancer vaccines that show so much promise, some Americans are defying the embargo and traveling to Cuba fo...

Earth teems with a staggering variety of animals, including 9,000 kinds of birds, 28,000 types of fish, and more than 350,000 species of beetles. What explains this explosion of living creatures—1.4 million different species discovered so far, with p...

Could scientists recreate Hollywood's Jurassic Park using 100-million-year-old dinosaur DNA? Director Steven Spielberg, author Michael Crichton, actor Jeff Goldblum, and a host of scientific experts answer this compelling question in the award-winnin...

NASA launches its most ambitious hunt for traces of life on Mars, landing a car-sized rover in a rocky, ancient river delta. The rover will stow samples for possible return to Earth and test technology that may pave the way for human travel to Mars....

For 25 centuries the Parthenon has been shot at, set on fire, rocked by earthquakes, looted for its sculptures, and disfigured by catastrophic renovations. To save it from collapse, the modern restoration team must uncover the secrets of how the anci...

In 1889, Gustave Eiffel decides to attempt the impossible for the Universal Exhibition in Paris: to build the tallest tower in the world. Before this project, this pioneer and visionary had created more than 300 metal structures around the world....

NOVA's groundbreaking investigation explores how new discoveries are transforming views of our earliest ancestors. Becoming Human explores the origins of us -where modern humans and our capacities for art, invention, and survival came from, and how ...

Thundering across the sky on elegant white wings, the Concorde was an instant legend. But behind the glamour of jet setting at Mach 2 were stunning scientific innovations and political intrigue. Fifteen years after Concorde's final flight, this docum...

The Vikings were the most ferocious warriors of the Middle Ages. Especially fearsome were the select few who wielded a formidable weapon: a light, razor sharp, virtually indestructible sword with its maker's name, Ulfberht, inlaid along the blade....

David Attenborough brings to life, in unprecedented detail, the last days of the dinosaurs. Palaeontologist Robert DePalma has made an incredible discovery in a prehistoric graveyard: fossilised creatures, astonishingly well preserved, that could he...

Astrophysicists show how black holes might hold answers to how the universe evolved, leading to life on Earth and, ultimately, the human race....

Nova and National Geographic present exclusive access to an astounding discovery of ancient fossil human ancestors....

Considered the finest example of Byzantine architecture in the world, Hagia Sophia was constructed on a scale unprecedented in human history. Built in the amazingly short time of five years, it bears witness to an amazing scientific knowledge and a r...

Spacecraft OSIRIS-REx attempts to grab a piece of an asteroid to bring back to Earth so scientists can study it to learn about the planet's origins....

A post-modern theater adaptation of a classic Greek tragedy takes place in a central theater of Athens. Like every night, the audience take their seats and the play begins. Suddenly, the lights on stage go out. A group of young people, dressed in bla...

At the dawn of the Christian era, Petra, capital of the rich kingdom of the Nabataeans, bordering the deserts of Arabia, Syria and the Negev, was absorbed by the Roman Empire and, after being sacked by the Bedouins, disappeared from the memory of man...

The events and coincidences that led to rapid advances in human intelligence 50,000 years ago....

Leonardo da Vinci was a Renaissance genius. Not only did he paint masterpieces of art, but he was an obsessive scientist and inventor, dreaming up complex machines centuries ahead of his time, including parachutes, armored tanks, hang gliders and rob...

Three million years ago, camels roamed through Greenland’s endless forests and our ancestors lived in the trees. It all came to an end with the Ice Ages. What died and what survived, as natural selection shaped the evolutionary tree during this epoc...

The long running, often bitter scientific debate over the origin of birds and the evolution of flight....