NOVA - Season 20
Season 20
Network
DatesAug 25, 1992 - Mar 30, 1993
Episodes
Season 20Episode 160 min
Animal Olympians II
NOVA looks at grace, speed, strength and endurance of humans and animals.
Aug 25, 1992
Season 20Episode 260 min
The Genius Behind the Bomb
Physicists Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard reenact the signing of the 1939 letter that alerted President Franklin Roosevelt to the feasibility of atomic weapons. Szilard drafted and Einstein signed the famous warning, which led to the building of the first atomic bomb.
Sep 29, 1992
Season 20Episode 360 min
Mind of a Serial Killer
NOVA goes behind the scenes to give the real story behind the FBI unit popularized in the Academy Award-winning film, The Silence of the Lambs. Using a detailed psychological profile, the unit helped the Rochester, New York police department catch a notorious serial killer who targeted prostitutes. Actor Patrick Stewart narrates.
Oct 13, 1992
Season 20Episode 460 min
Search for the First Americans
NOVA follows the trail of America's first inhabitants. Did they migrate across a Bering Sea land bridge at the end of the last ice age, as we all learned in school? Or did they arrive thousands of years earlier, possibly by some different route, as new archaeological evidence increasingly hints?
Oct 20, 1992
Season 20Episode 560 min
Rafting Through the Grand Canyon
NOVA explores Earth's greatest natural wonder by rafting down the river that created it, repeating the spectacular first canyon voyage of the 19th-century explorer John Wesley Powell. The Grand Canyon tells the story of nearly 2 billion years of Earth history plus the changes caused by three decades of human intervention.
Oct 27, 1992
Season 20Episode 690 min
This Old Pyramid
In a 90-minute special presentation, NOVA reveals the ancient secrets of how the pyramids were built by actually building one. A noted Egyptologist, Mark Lehner, and a professional stonemason, Roger Hopkins (This Old House), join forces in the shadow of the Great Pyramid of Giza to put clever and sometimes bizarre pyramid construction theories to the test.
Nov 4, 1992
Season 20Episode 760 min
Iceman
Five thousand years ago, a man perished in a mountain storm. In 1991, his frozen body was found along with artifacts of his vanished way of life. NOVA covers the international effort to unlock the secrets of this astonishing discovery.
Nov 10, 1992
Season 20Episode 860 min
Private Lives of Dolphins
NOVA delves into the deep sea drama of life among the dolphins at research stations in Florida and Australia. Like humans and chimpanzees, dolphins have evolved a sophisticated social system that provides clues about the origins and purpose of big brains and intelligence.
Nov 17, 1992
Season 20Episode 960 min
Brain Transplant
Two paralyzed drug addicts travel to Sweden to receive a revolutionary treatment for brain disease that is largely unavailable in the US due to the ban on fetal tissue research. "Brain Transplant" continues the remarkable story of a mysterious malady linked to a bad batch of synthetic heroin that NOVA first covered in the 1986 award-winning film, The Case of the Frozen Addict.
Dec 1, 1992
Season 20Episode 1060 min
Can You Stop People from Drinking?
NOVA looks at how Russia and the United States are attacking the intractable problem of alcohol abuse with old and new weapons—including prohibition, hypnotism, imprisonment, surveillance, deception, aversion therapy and group therapy as practiced by Alcoholics Anonymous.
Dec 22, 1992
Season 20Episode 1160 min
Sex and the Single Rhino
NOVA examines the high-tech efforts to preserve the world's animal diversity. Noah needed only an ark—but today's conservationists need all the tools that biology, ecology, diplomacy and politics can muster if endangered species are to survive beyond the next century.
Dec 29, 1992
Season 20Episode 1260 min
The Hunt for Saddam's Secret Weapons
NOVA follows the international team of advisors who are fulfilling the UN mandate to dismantle Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Nuclear technology, poison chemicals, missiles and giant guns are some of the threats that inspectors must hunt down in a cat-and-mouse game with the Iraqis.
Jan 5, 1993
Season 20Episode 1360 min
Can Bombing Win a War?
The Gulf War was fought in 38 days of non-stop bombing and four days of swift ground action. Did bombing win it? NOVA looks at the history of strategic bombing and asks whether bombing has now achieved preeminence in warfare.
Jan 19, 1993
Season 20Episode 1460 min
The Deadly Deception
For four decades, 400 African American men from Macon, Alabama were unwitting participants in a government study of untreated syphilis. NOVA tells the story of this notorious human experiment. George Strait, ABC News Medical Correspondent, hosts.
Jan 26, 1993
Season 20Episode 1560 min
Nazis and the Russian Bomb
NOVA tells the story of the German scientists abducted to the Soviet Union after World War II to help build an atomic bomb. The success of the crash program in 1949, with the explosion of the first Soviet nuclear weapon, shocked the world.
Feb 2, 1993
Season 20Episode 1660 min
In the Path of a Killer Volcano
NOVA covers scientists on the brink of a sputtering, shaking, impatient volcano, trying to forecast when it will go off. When it does, Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines goes big time, producing the largest volcanic eruption in 80 years.
Feb 9, 1993
Season 20Episode 1760 min
Can Science Build a Champion Athlete?
Athletes are training smarter, running faster, jumping higher and generally outperforming their predecessors—thanks to high technology. NOVA covers the record-setting trend for improving sports performance with science.
Feb 16, 1993
Season 20Episode 1860 min
Diving for Pirate Gold
These days, piracy on the high seas often involves sonar, magnometers, metal detectors and other high-tech equipment for finding and plundering sunken ships. NOVA explores the swashbuckling seafaring pirates of old and their present-day successors.
Feb 23, 1993
Season 20Episode 1960 min
Murder, Rape and DNA
Wherever we shed our body cells, we leave an indisputable identity card: our DNA. NOVA investigates the new science of DNA typing which is putting increasing numbers of murderers and rapists behind bars.
Mar 2, 1993
Season 20Episode 2060 min
The Lost Tribe
NOVA covers both sides of the stormy controversy over the Tasaday tribe. When these isolated cave dwellers were discovered in the Philippines in 1971, they were hailed as a Stone Age relic. Now, many anthropologists denounce them as fakes.
Mar 30, 1993
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