NOVA - Season 39

Season 39

Episodes

Engineering Ground Zero

Surviving the Tsunami

Finding Life Beyond Earth: Are We Alone?

Iceman Murder Mystery
He's been dead for more than 5,000 years and poked, prodded, and probed by scientists for the last 20. Yet Otzi the Iceman, the famous mummified corpse pulled from a glacier in the Italian Alps, continues to keep many secrets. Now, through an autopsy like none other, scientists will attempt to unravel mysteries about this ancient mummy, revealing not only the details of Otzi's death but also an entire way of life. How did people live during Otzi's time, the Copper Age? What did they eat? What diseases did they cope with? Join NOVA as we defrost the ultimate time capsule—the 5,000-year-old man.

The Fabric of the Cosmos - What is Space?

The Fabric of the Cosmos - The Illusion of Time

The Fabric of the Cosmos - Quantum Leap

The Fabric of the Cosmos - Universe or Multiverse?

Deadliest Volcanoes
Travel with scientists who are attempting to discover how likely volcanoes are to erupt, when eruptions might happen and how deadly they could prove to be.

Bombing Hitler's Dams
Learn about the revolutionary bouncing bomb and the bombers who destroyed two gigantic dams in Germany's industrial heartland during WWII.

3D Spies of WWII
Discover the previously untold story of air photo intelligence that played a vital role in defeating Hitler.

Mystery of a Masterpiece
NOVA meets a new breed of experts who are approaching "cold case" art mysteries as if they were crime scenes, determined to discover "who committed the art," and follows art sleuths as they deploy new techniques to combat the multi-billion dollar criminal market in stolen and fraudulent art.

Ice Age Death Trap
In the Rocky Mountains, archeologists uncover a unique fossil site packed with astonishingly well-preserved bones of mammoths, mastodons, and other giant extinct beasts. The discovery opens a highly focused window on the vanished world of the Ice Age in North America.

Separating Twins
Witness the extraordinary surgery that will allow twin girls, born joined at the head, to live separate lives.

Cracking Your Genetic Code
Discover why the new era of personalized, gene-based medicine is both ominous and promising - and relevant to everyone.

Hunting the Elements
Take a spin with David Pogue through the world of weird, extreme chemistry to unlock the secrets of the elements.

Deadliest Tornadoes
In the wake of April 2011's tornado outbreak, learn how we can protect ourselves and our communities in the future. In 2011, the worst tornado season in decades left a trail of destruction across the U.S., killing more than 550 people. Why was there such an extreme outbreak? How do such outbreaks form? With modern warning systems, why did so many die? Is our weather getting more extreme - and if so, how bad will it get? In this NOVA special, we meet scientists striving to understand the forces at work behind last year's outbreak. Could their work improve tornado prediction in the future? We also meet people whose lives have been upended by these extreme weather events and learn how we all can protect ourselves and our communities for the future.

Why Ships Sink
Find out if modern cruise ships are really safe - or if we're on the brink of a 21st-century Titanic. Twenty million passengers embark on cruises each year, vacationing in deluxe "floating cities" that offer everything from swimming pools to shopping malls to ice skating rinks. And the ships just keep getting bigger: The average cruise ship has doubled in size in just the last ten years. Some engineers fear that these towering behemoths are dangerously unstable, and the recent tragedy of the Costa Concordia has raised new questions about their safety. Now, NOVA brings together marine engineering and safety experts to reconstruct the events that led up to famous cruise disasters, including the ill-fated Concordia, the Sea Diamond, and the Oceanos.

Secrets of the Sun
It contains 99.9 percent of all the matter in our solar system and sheds hot plasma at nearly a million miles an hour. The temperature at its core is a staggering 27 million degrees Fahrenheit. It convulses, it blazes, it sings. You know it as the sun. Scientists know it as one of the most amazing physics laboratories in the universe. Now, with the help of new spacecraft and Earth-based telescopes, scientists are seeing the sun as they never have before and even recreating what happens at its very center in labs here on Earth. Their work will help us understand aspects of the sun that have puzzled scientists for decades. But more critically, it may help us predict and track solar storms that have the power to zap our power grid, shut down telecommunications, and ground global air travel for days, weeks, or even longer. Such storms have happened before—but never in the modern era of satellite communication. "Secrets of the Sun" reveals a bright new dawn in our understanding of our nearest star — one that might help keep our planet from going dark.
Recently Updated Shows

Project Runway
Project Runway designers are given an opportunity to launch their careers in fashion.

King and Conqueror
King and Conqueror is the story of a clash that defined the future of a country – and a continent – for a thousand years, the roots of which stretch back decades and extend out through a pair of interconnected family dynasties, struggling for power across two countries and a raging sea. Harold of Wessex and William of Normandy were two men destined to meet at the Battle of Hastings in 1066; two allies with no design on the British throne, who found themselves forced by circumstance and personal obsession into a war for possession of its crown.

Butterfly
Butterfly revolves around David Jung, an enigmatic, highly unpredictable former US intelligence operative living in South Korea, whose life is blown to pieces when the consequences of an impossible decision from his past come back to haunt him, and he finds himself pursued by Rebecca, a deadly, sociopathic young agent assigned to kill him.

On the Case with Paula Zahn
Led by Emmy Award-winning journalist Paula Zahn, On the Case features in-depth interviews and original reporting that go beyond the headlines in search of fascinating mysteries from within our nation's justice system. Each episode is highlighted by Zahn's riveting exclusive interviews, which draw out different viewpoints from the people personally connected to tragedies that rocked their local community and the investigations that attempted to piece together the truth On the Case with Paula Zahn.