NOVA - Season 16
Season 16
Network
DatesSep 6, 1988 - Mar 28, 1989
Episodes
Season 16Episode 160 min
Pioneers of Surgery: The Brutal Craft
Part one of a four-part series on the pioneers of modern surgery relives the early days, when surgery was practiced without the benefit of anaesthesia or antiseptics and patients usually died.
Sep 6, 1988
Season 16Episode 260 min
Pioneers of Surgery: Into the Heart
Once unthinkable, open-heart surgery is now an everyday miracle. NOVA looks at the brave doctors and patients who make it possible.
Sep 13, 1988
Season 16Episode 360 min
Pioneers of Surgery: New Organs for Old
From kidneys to Hearts, NOVA examines the daring attempts to replace diseased organs with transplanted ones.
Sep 20, 1988
Season 16Episode 460 min
Pioneers of Surgery: Beyond the Knife
Surgeons have always been eager to help patients, even at the risk of killing them. NOVA looks at some of the excesses of surgery, and at how new drugs and technologies are rendering some operations obsolete.
Sep 27, 1988
Season 16Episode 560 min
Can the Vatican Save the Sistine Chapel?
Science meets art in the controversial effort to restore Michelangelo's famous Sistine Chapel frescoes.
Oct 4, 1988
Season 16Episode 660 min
Can the Next President Win the Space Race?
Thirty years after Sputnik, the United States space program is mired in uncertainty, while the Russians, Europeans, Japanese and others sprint onward and upward.
Oct 11, 1988
Season 16Episode 760 min
Do Scientists Cheat?
NOVA examines the troubling question of scientific fraud: How prevalent is it? Who commits it? And what happens when the perpetrators are caught?
Oct 25, 1988
Season 16Episode 860 min
Who Shot President Kennedy?
Using previously unavailable technology, NOVA probes the available evidence surrounding the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Nov 15, 1988
Season 16Episode 960 min
The Light Stuff
Reliving a Greek myth takes an effort of mythic proportions, as NOVA reveals in its behind-the-scenes report of a human powered-flight across the Aegean Sea, a journey that symbolically recreated the mythical flight of Daedalus. NOVA follows the epic journey of the human-powered plane Daedalus 88 from the early prototypes to its dramatic landing in the surf after a 74-mile flight from the island of Crete to Santorini.
Nov 22, 1988
Season 16Episode 1060 min
The All-American Bear
The life of the shy, intelligent black bear in the wild—foraging, mating, playing and constantly preparing for its remarkable hibernation—is captured for the first time on film by NOVA.
Dec 6, 1988
Season 16Episode 1160 min
Can We Make a Better Doctor?
NOVA embarks on a 10-year project to profile—in its entirety—the education of a doctor. In the premiere episode, we follow a handful of students as they start their first year at Harvard Medical School under a revolutionary program emphasizing early clinical contact with patients. Part one of a ten-year study. See also "So You Want to Be a Doctor?", "Making of a Doctor", and "Doctors' Diaries".
Dec 13, 1988
Season 16Episode 1260 min
Hot Enough for You?
Was the searing summer of 1988 a taste of things to come? NOVA looks at the greenhouse effect, which portends higher temperatures, rising sea levels and other environmental disasters.
Jan 17, 1989
Season 16Episode 1360 min
The Last Journey of a Genius
NOVA looks at the bongo-playing scientist, adventurer, safecracker and yarn-spinner Richard Feynman, most recently famous for his role as gadfly of the Presidential Commission investigating the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger.
Jan 24, 1989
Season 16Episode 1460 min
The Strange New Science of Chaos
NOVA explains "chaos," a new science that is making surprising sense out of chaotic phenomena in nature, from the weather to brain waves.
Jan 31, 1989
Season 16Episode 1560 min
Back to Chernobyl
NOVA goes to the Soviet Union for an inside investigation of the world's most catastrophic nuclear power accident with correspondent Bill Kurtis.
Feb 14, 1989
Season 16Episode 1660 min
God, Darwin and the Dinosaurs
In an Idaho classroom, teacher Phil Gerrish puts an unorthodox interpretation on the day's biology lesson. As students take notes, he explains that creationism is a valid scientific explanation for the origin on life. Once relying solely on the literal word of the Bible to make their case, creationists now argue that the scientific evidence is on their side. NOVA reports on this new twist in the long-running battle between creationism and evolution.
Feb 21, 1989
Season 16Episode 1760 min
Adrift on the Gulf Stream
NOVA explores the importance of the Gulf Stream to ocean life, climate and human history.
Feb 28, 1989
Season 16Episode 1860 min
Secrets of Easter Island (1)
A team attempts to recreate the original islanders' success at moving and erecting giant moai statues. (Part 1 of 2)
Mar 7, 1989
Season 16Episode 1960 min
Legends of Easter Island (2)
A team attempts to recreate the original islanders' success at moving and erecting giant moai statues. (Part 2 of 2)
Mar 7, 1989
Season 16Episode 2060 min
The World Is Full of Oil!
Scientific detectives test their ingenuity in the effort to find underground oil deposits.
Mar 21, 1989
Season 16Episode 2160 min
Confronting the Killer Gene
Arlo, Nancy and Janice each have a 50/50 chance of developing a devastating nerve disorder. A laboratory test can tell them if in fact they will fall victim. In their shoes, would you take the test? Thousands of others face a similar choice: to know, or not know, if they will carry the genetic time bomb of Huntington's disease. NOVA looks at this incurable disease which affects 20,000 people in the US and threatens tens of thousands of others.
Mar 28, 1989
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