BBC Horizon - Space Tourists
Thursday 12th January 2006


http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/program ... pace.shtml The full write up from this link is below.


Information

Over 40 years ago man first went into space. Ever since ordinary people have dreamt of getting there themselves. But after several false starts, a group of space obsessed entrepreneurs believe the first commercial flights into the final frontier are only a few years away.

The concept of space tourism is not new. Following the enormous achievements made by the Americans and Russians during the 1960s many of us assumed that it was only a matter of time before it was the turn of tourists. These dreams were fuelled even further when the era's new celebrities – the astronauts – returned with tales of life-changing experiences. Space fever was so intense that by 1969 Pan-Am, one of the world's most respected airlines, opened a waiting list for a moon shuttle. It was only a concept on a drawing board but almost 100,000 people signed up.

The problem was that going to space was incredibly expensive. The vehicles being sent into space were only used once so every time a rocket lifted off millions of dollars effectively went up in flames. In order for space tourism to become a reality, that needed to change.

Budding space tourists were certain that the space shuttle was the answer to their dreams. It was reusable and capable of making several trips a year. Even the commercial world was inspired by the shuttle and in 1985 a California company started offering trips to space on a craft that would be ready for lift off in 1992.

In 1986 a civilian finally made it onto the launch pad when NASA put school teacher Christa McAuliffe on board the shuttle Challenger. But just over a minute into the mission Challenger exploded and the entire crew was killed. The accident had an immediate impact. Commercial ventures were cancelled.

It wasn't until ten years later that the dream of space tourism was revived by space entrepreneur Peter Diamandis. Convinced that it was the job of the commercial world to open the space frontier for the masses, Diamandis established the X Prize. The prize would eventually offer $10 million for the first craft to make it to sub orbital space – 62 miles above the earth – twice in 14 days.

The race attracted over 20 competitors. The first person to join up was Burt Rutan, one of the world's most prolific aircraft designers.

There was also Chuck Lauer, a former property developer who had co-founded Rocketplane Ltd. Rocketplane's approach was to build a spaceship by modifying a Lear Jet.

John Carmack, a 34 year-old computer games millionaire, signed up with his company Armadillo Aerospace. Carmack and his crew of volunteers only worked part-time but were attempting to build a vertical take-off and landing vehicle from scratch.

Most of the entrants had big ideas, but little money or concrete plans.

Burt Rutan decided to spend the first few years working in secret on his project. He eventually came up with a design he was certain could do the job, especially as it addressed two of the most dangerous aspects of space flight, lift-off and re-entry.

To avoid the dangers of a ground launch, which uses tons of highly explosive fuel, Rutan designed a carrier aeroplane that would carry his craft, SpaceShipOne, to 47,000 feet to be launched. To handle the dangerous g-force and heat encountered on re-entry, Rutan came up with the idea of using twin tails that would fold at a 90° angle. This would create incredible drag to slow the ship down. In effect the ship would go up like a bullet and come down like a shuttlecock.

With the backing of Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen, Rutan built his ship and in June 2004, SpaceShipOne became the first commercial manned craft in space. Three months later it completed the task again, twice in two weeks, and claimed the $10million X Prize.

Now Rutan and Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson have formed a partnership to build the next generation of craft capable of taking several passengers. Branson's new company, Virgin Galactic, is already selling return tickets to space for $200,000. And even though the new craft that will take the first space tourists hasn't yet been built, the company has taken $10million in deposits.















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Horizon - Space Tourists - 12 Jan 06.avi  [430.03 Mb]

BBC Horizon - Waiting for a Heartbeat
Thursday 19th January 2006


http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/program ... beat.shtml The full write up from this link is below.


Information

Rachel is just 25, but already she has suffered six miscarriages. She represents the 1% of women who struggle to give birth to a live baby. She is a patient at St Mary's Hospital in London where, in Europe's largest recurrent miscarriage clinic, a team of dedicated scientists offer women like Rachel the hope of a precious new life.

Miscarriage is surprisingly common, with as many as half of all fertilised eggs failing to develop into a foetus that survives to birth. But recurrent miscarriage, when a woman's body hits the self-destruct button time and again, is a reproductive phenomenon that medical science is battling to understand.

A woman who miscarries once may be told by her doctors that her loss was a random event, probably the result of a one-off chromosome abnormality in her foetus – unlikely be repeated – and that she and her partner should try again for a child. But the women who come to Professor Lesley Regan's Clinic at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington will usually have tried, and failed, to produce a live baby at least three times.

The challenge for Professor Regan's team is to determine which of these women have simply been unlucky several times in a row, and which are carrying an underlying medical condition that could explain their losses and may, more importantly, be treatable.

Over the course of a year, the Recurrent Miscarriage Clinic sees up to 1,000 new patients – patients like Joanne and Naomi. Both in their 30s, they have lost eight pregnancies between them. In the laboratories at St Mary's, their blood is put through a barrage of tests, hunting for the tell-tale signs of abnormality and any clues to explain their losses.

The scientists are on the trail of genetic defects which, when passed from parent to embryo, can disrupt the blueprint of life from the very start. They look for imbalances in the hormones that drive pregnancy from conception to delivery. Blood-clotting disorders have been identified that can restrict the vital flow of oxygen and nutrients between mother and baby.

And there may even be elements in a women's immune system that can attack the cells of her embryo and placenta as they develop. But the painstaking research into so many failed pregnancies, while thorough, is destined to reveal an underlying condition in fewer than 50% of cases.

For Joanne the news of her test results is disappointing. Her blood has revealed nothing unusual to account for her losses. But while she feels deflated, Professor Regan is at pains to point out that being told nothing appears to be wrong should be good news. Statistically, it has been shown that patients are more likely to be successful in the future if their test results come back negative. However for Joanne and husband Dave, the prospect of embarking on another pregnancy, with no problem diagnosed, remains daunting.

When Naomi and her husband Paul return to St Mary's for their blood results, they are surprised to learn that Naomi does in fact carry an antibody disorder which could explain their three losses. When lupus anticoagulant is present in a woman's blood it has a doubly negative effect in pregnancy. In the very early stages, it can attack the cells at the interface between embryo and uterus and cause the process of implantation – when the tiny embryo embeds itself into the lining of the womb – to fail, resulting in miscarriage.

These antibodies also cause the woman's blood to be thicker than normal. In later pregnancy (after eight to nine weeks) this can cause blood clots to form in the tiny vessels of the placenta, restricting the flow of vital nutrients and oxygen between mother and baby.

In Naomi's next pregnancy she will be given aspirin to thin the blood and daily injections of heparin, another blood-thinning drug which will also prevent the lupus anticoagulant antibodies attacking the cells of her developing pregnancy and improve the blood flow through the placenta. With treatment, Naomi and Paul's chances of having a successful pregnancy will rise from 10% to around 70%.

Rachel has had six miscarriages. Three years after being referred to the clinic, she still doesn't know why. When she falls pregnant for the seventh time, she returns to St Mary's to see what her consultant, Raj Rai, can do to prevent yet another miscarriage. Although Rachel's test results have failed to identify a specific cause for her losses, Raj Rai believes that something is preventing Rachel's embryos implanting properly.

In Rachel's previous two pregnancies, Raj Rai prescribed drugs to promote better implantation, but as those pregnancies also failed, this time he decides to add another drug, a steroid, to her treatment. He believes that steroids, given in the first trimester of pregnancy, will suppress the negative effects of certain chemical messengers within the lining of Rachel's womb. But the use of steroids in treating miscarriage is controversial. Their effectiveness has yet to be proven in a clinical trial and there are known side-effects.

Rachel's previous pregnancies have all ended by the 11th week. As her seventh pregnancy progresses towards and past that danger zone, the realisation slowly dawns that, this time, she and her husband Gary may finally have the baby they've waited seven years for.
















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BBC Horizon - The War on Science
Thursday 26th January 2006


http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/program ... /war.shtml The full write up from this link is below.


Information

When Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution nearly 150 years ago, he shattered the dominant belief of his day – that humans were the product of divine creation. Through his observations of nature, Darwin proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection. This caused uproar. After all, if the story of creation could be doubted, so too could the existence of the creator. Ever since its proposal, this cornerstone of biology has sustained wave after wave of attack. Now some scientists fear it is facing the most formidable challenge yet: a controversial new theory called intelligent design.

In the late 1980s Phillip Johnson, a renowned lawyer and born-again Christian, began to develop a strategy to challenge Darwin. To Johnson, the evidence for natural selection was poor. He also believed that by explaining the world only through material processes was inherently atheistic. If there was a god, science would never be able to discover it.

Johnson recruited other Darwin doubters, including biochemist Professor Michael Behe, mathematician Dr William Dembski, and philosopher of science Dr Stephen Meyer. These scientists developed the theory of intelligent design (ID) which claims that certain features of the natural world are best explained as the result of an intelligent being. To him, the presence of miniature machines and digital information found in living cells are evidence of a supernatural creator. Throughout the 90s, the ID movement took to disseminating articles, books and DVDs and organising conferences all over the world.

To its supporters, intelligent design heralds a revolution in science and the movement is fast gaining political clout. Not only does it have the support of the President of the United States, it is on the verge of being introduced to science classes across the nation. However, its many critics, including Professor Richard Dawkins and Sir David Attenborough, fear that it cloaks a religious motive – to replace science with god.

Throughout the 20th century Christian groups resisted the theory of evolution. Many US states did not teach it until 1968 when the Supreme Court ruled that banning the teaching of evolution contravened the first amendment of the constitution of America, the separation of church and state. It was however still legal to teach religion as part of science class until the Edwards vs. Aguillard case in 1987, where mentioning a theory called 'creation science' in biology lessons was also deemed unconstitutional. This left evolution as the only theory of biological origin that science teachers were allowed to teach.

In 2005, the school board of Dover, a small farming community in western Pennsylvania, became the first in America to adopt the theory of intelligent design. The move divided the community and the small town became the centre of national attention. The school board voted to teach the ninth grade biology class that there are gaps and problems with the theory of evolution and to present intelligent design as an alternative.
Dover science teacher Bryan Rehm and his wife Christy believed that this new policy was not only anti-science, but religious and therefore unconstitutional. By promoting religion it was a violation of the law passed in 1987. The Rehms and nine other parents and teachers filed a law suit against the school board. Neighbour was pitted against neighbour in the first legal challenge to intelligent design.

After 40 days of trial, Judge John E Jones III ruled against the school board, stating: "We have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents."

Evolution supporters heralded this victory as the damning blow to the intelligent design movement. However, as history shows, law suits have little effect on the support for creationism in a country where over 50% of citizens believe that God created humans in their present form, the way the bible describes it.*

*Gallup national poll September 2005
Further reading:

Anti intelligent design:

Eugenie Scott - Evolution Vs. Creationism Kenneth Miller - Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution
Pro intelligent design:

Michael Behe - Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution Phillip Johnson - Darwin on Trial















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Horizon - The War on Science - 26 Jan 06.avi  [349.07 Mb]

BBC Horizon - Lost City of New Orleans
Thursday 2nd February 2006


http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/program ... eans.shtml The full write up from this link is below.


Information

Modern day New Orleans was a city that defied the odds. Built on a mosquito-infested swamp surrounded by water, it sits in a bowl 2.5m below sea-level. Its very existence seemed proof of the triumph of engineering over nature.

The storm hits
But on the 29 August 2005 the city took a direct hit from Hurricane Katrina and overnight turned into a Venice from hell. In the chaos that followed the worst natural disaster in American history, a forensic investigation has begun to find out what went wrong and why. Scientists are now confronting the real possibility that New Orleans may be the first of many cities to face extinction.

The forensic analysis
Professor Ivor Van Heerden of Louisiana State University's Hurricane Centre used computer modelling to simulate hurricane paths across New Orleans. He had been appointed by the state to discover why New Orleans flooded so catastrophically and had his own unique methods of gathering data. By collecting eye-witness testimonies from residents and the stopped clocks from their flooded homes, Van Heerden pieced together a timeline of the levee breaches. He also took samples from the breach sites for analysis.

His results were shocking. He believed they showed that there was a design fault in the levees. "The old system that led to the design and the building of them, the funding, the decision making process, didn't work. We've got to change that and part of that is going to be for the federal government and the engineers corps to step up to the plate and say we screwed up."

The coast is disappearing into the sea
Over the years the levees and dams stopped annual floods from the Mississippi River. As a result sediments that were brought down by the river to replenish the land were prevented from reaching their natural destination. Gradually Louisiana started to lose its coast. Today it has the highest rate of coastal land loss in North America. Every 20 minutes an area the size of Wembley stadium is swallowed up by the sea.

Shea Penland, a coastal geologist at the University of New Orleans, knows every inlet, every cove and every stretch of marsh that surrounds the city. He also knows that Louisiana's wetlands, thought of as wasteland for years, are in fact critical to the survival of the city. Providing protection against storm surges, these wetlands are a natural defence against the onslaught of hurricanes. As he says: "The first line of defence isn't the levee in your backyard, the first line of defence is that marsh in your back yard and we're learning what that means."

After the disaster, he chartered a seaplane to investigate the overnight loss to Louisiana's precious wetlands. What he discovered sounded like the death knoll for the city. In just one night, Louisiana had lost three-quarters of the wetland that it usually loses in one year. Without this protection, New Orleans is a sitting duck against future storms.

And the problems don't just stop there. The city itself is sinking. Since 1878 it has dropped by 4.5m, one of the highest rates of subsidence in the entire United States. Once again it's mainly human intervention that is to blame. According to Professor Harry Roberts, a geologist at the Louisiana State University: "It's been accelerated by man's efforts to keep the water out of the city. When you pump the water out of those kinds of soils they start to collapse and even more importantly the organic material oxidises and goes away so you've taken out one component of the soil, and all that adds up to subsidence."

The future
The city will have to change to survive. There will have to be a paradigm shift in the thinking about the environment surrounding the city. What was once ignored as wasteland, will now have to be protected.

Radical plans are also underway for the city itself. Local urban planner Professor Bruce Sharky believes that the survival of the city is dependent on preserving its lowest lying areas, its devastated residential areas, as parkland. Areas like the Lower 9th Ward, built 2.5m below sea-level and where hundreds of people died, will exist no more. They will be turned into green spaces, serving both as buffers against future flood waters and as a reminder that sometimes nature should be left alone.

The residents of New Orleans who lived in the Lower 9th are fighting this idea but ultimately the survival of the city for future generations may depend on it.

The future for New Orleans is today uncertain. The city is sinking city, sea levels are rising, and there is an increased intensity of hurricanes. The challenges ahead are enormous, but in some form New Orleans will be rebuilt. However, one lesson will reverberate around the world – humankind cannot take on mother nature and think it can win every time.

"For man as a species we have to respect mother nature," says Dr Penland. "We have to realise that there are boundaries that have been given to us that we have to respect and our technology cannot be 100% successful all of the time."
















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BBC Horizon - Most of our Universe is Missing
Thursday 9th February 2006


http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/program ... sing.shtml The full write up from this link is below.


Information

There was a time, not so long ago, when science seemed to understand how the universe worked. Everything – us, the Earth, the stars and even exotic-sounding supernovae – was made of atoms which were all created at time-zero: the Big Bang. In between the atoms was nothing, a void: quite literally, 'space'.

But recently things have started to unravel. There is, it seems, a lot more to the universe than meets the eye. According to the best estimates, we only really know what about 4% of it is made of. But if only 4% is made of atoms, what about the rest? The rest is made of mysterious entities about which very little is understood, with equally mysterious names: dark matter and dark energy.

The accidental discovery
In 1974 the astronomer Vera Rubin, was working on a project investigating stars at the outer edges of galaxies. What she discovered was quite a surprise.

Shortly after the apple fell on his head, Newton famously declared that gravity was 'universal'. An apple falling on Earth obeys the same mathematical rules as an apple falling on the other side of the Universe. In the same way that the Sun controls the orbiting planets by exerting gravity on them, a spiral galaxy must be controlled by the gravity-giving black hole at its centre.

It has long been known that Pluto, at the edge of our solar system, travels much slower than Mercury, close to the Sun. In fact observations like these allowed Newton to pin down his laws in the 17th century. When Vera Rubin did her work on galaxies she expected to find that as you reach the edge of a galaxy the stars would be moving much slower than those close to the centre. But it didn't work out like that at all.

She found that almost all of the stars in spiral galaxies are racing around the centre at approximately the same speed. This was very strange. Could it be that Newton's laws weren't really universal and didn't apply in galaxies?

Questioning Newton seemed unthinkable, so the majority of scientists went down a different route altogether. Rather than variable gravity, they argued, there had to be something else in galaxies, something that was providing extra gravity. With extra gravity, the stars would be pulled harder, and would travel faster – as Rubin's observations suggested. And the name they gave to this extra stuff? Dark matter.

But what is dark matter?
Two men at Princeton University – Professors Peebles and Ostriker – looked further into dark matter. They even suggested that there was at least 10 times more of it than there was ordinary matter. But despite its growing acceptance, dark matter's real identity remained completely unknown. Nothing that particle physics came up with appeared to fit the bill. Even the newly-discovered neutrino had the wrong characteristics.

What was needed was something with mass but also something which does not interact with ordinary matter. Professor Tim Sumner from the Imperial College London believed he had the answer – a new, hypothetical particle called the neutralino. It is thought to have the right mass and exist in suitably vast quantities – but has never been detected.

If dark matter is everywhere in our galaxy, then it must be present here on Earth. In fact thousands of tonnes of the stuff must be passing through the Earth every day. It doesn't interact with ordinary matter, so it can pass straight through it, whatever 'it' is: us, the Earth, everything we're familiar with.

The bottom of a mine, away from the cosmic rays and atmospheric particles on the surface, is the perfect place to try to detect a signal. So that's exactly what Professor Sumner tried to do, with a detector located at the bottom of Europe's deepest mine on the coast in Cleveland, northern England.

If his team detected a neutralino, then a Nobel Prize would surely follow. But the search has so far proved fruitless.

Doubting Newton
Not everyone was so keen though. In 1974, while most scientists decided to pursue dark matter, Israeli astrophysicist Professor Milgrom tried something even more audacious – he tried to rewrite Newton's laws of gravity. Knowing this wouldn't exactly be welcomed by the rest of the community, he worked at his theory in private until he was ready to unleash it on the world in 1981.

He called it Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) and used it to showed how gravity could be a little stronger than previously thought, across the huge distances that galaxies cover.

But surely Newton couldn't have been wrong? Milgrom continued to work on the theory and has since begun to attract admirers and recruit like-minded people. The longer the identity of dark matter remains a mystery, the more credence will be given to his ideas.

A deeper mystery
In 1997 Professor Saul Perlmutter opened another can of worms. While looking at the expansion of the universe, he accidentally discovered that not only were all stars and galaxies moving away from each other, they were doing so at greater and greater speeds.

This meant that our future selves might one day look up to a sky without stars (they'd all be too far away). It also meant that 'something' was pushing the stars apart. This anti-gravity force was completely new to science, but again what it actually was remained a mystery. It did however have a name: dark energy.

It turned out that the universe is 4% ordinary matter, 21% dark matter and 75% dark energy. That's a lot of stuff that no one really understands. Inevitably then, this Standard Model has its sceptics – not everyone believes that such a huge and important set of theories can be based on so little physical evidence.

Professor Mike Disney from Cardiff University even went as far as to suggest that this wasn't "physics at all – just fairies at the bottom of the garden".

In response the dark matter believers, led by Professor Carlos Frenk at Durham University, have produced impressive computer simulations of the Universe. These apparently show that dark matter and dark energy have been vital to the development of the Universe. Without their influence the galaxies, stars and planets, and indeed life itself, would never have come to be.

The results of the WMAP satellite survey appear to confirm the quantity of each of the 'dark' components. So despite the growing popularity of Milgrom's MOND idea in some quarters, dark matter still has the backing of the vast majority of scientists.

The standard model, with its officially approved mix of atoms, dark matter and dark energy, is the latest in a long line of brilliant ideas. Every civilisation since the year dot has had its own cosmological model. Every few decades or centuries, it has been replaced by something better.

Whether we are the privileged generation living in the time of the right idea remains to be seen. Is dark matter here to stay?

















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Horizon - Most of our Universe is Missing - 09 Feb 06.avi  [450.86 Mb]

BBC Horizon - Winning Gold in 2012
Saturday 18th March 2006


no link, sorry


Information

How can science produce champions for the London Olympics?













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Horizon - Winning Gold In 2012.avi  [699.37 Mb]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/
BBC Two's flagship 50-minute science documentary series. This series marks its 41st anniversary.

BBC.-.Horizon.-.1978.-.Now.The.Chips.Are.Down.avi  [699.67 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.1980.-.Astrology.avi  [685.13 Mb]
BBC.Documentary.-.Nikola.Tesla.(1982).mpg  [304.27 Mb]
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BBC.-.Horizon.-.1983.-.The.Earthquake.Connection.avi  [642.73 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.1984.-.Colourful.Notions.avi  [692.88 Mb]
BBC.Horizon.-.The.Secret.of.the.Snake.avi  [684.49 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.1986.-.Bettelheim.Part.1.avi  [591.56 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.1986.-.Bettelheim.Part.2.avi  [666.15 Mb]
BBC.Horizon.-.The.Blind.Watch.Maker.(Richard.Dawkins,1987).avi  [655.67 Mb]
BBC.Horizon.-.Nice.Guys.Finish.First.(Richard.Dawkins,1987).avi  [687.73 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.1991.-.The.Curse.Of.Karash.avi  [655.67 Mb]
Bbc.Horizon.-.Of.Big.Bangs.Stick.Men.And.Galactic.Holes.1991.avi  [617.40 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.1994.-.Close.Encounters.avi  [341.34 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.1996.-.Inside.Chernobyl's.Sarcophagus.avi  [665.79 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.1996.-.Molecules.With.Sunglasses.avi  [363.23 Mb]
Bbc.Horizon.-.The.Time.Lords.(Carl.Sagan.-.1996).avi  [700.69 Mb]
BBC.Horizon.-.Planet.Hunters.1996.avi  [701.73 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.1997.-.Out.Of.Asia.avi  [700.48 Mb]
BBC.Horizon.1997.Antarctica.The.Ice.Forms.avi  [650.47 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.1997.-.Antarctica.The.Ice.Forms.avi  [699.61 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.1997.-.Dawn.Of.The.Clone.Age.avi  [699.69 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.1997.-.Psychedelic.Science.(Swedish.Subtitles).avi  [599.81 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.1997.-.Turned.On.By.Danger.avi  [700.10 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.1998.-.The.Man.Who.Lost.His.Body.avi  [699.90 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.1998.-.Crash.avi  [450.02 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.1999.-.The.Midas.Formula.(Stockmarket.Formula).avi  [682.15 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.1999-11-11.-.Mistaken.Identity.avi  [700.15 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.2000-02-03.-.Supervolcanoes.avi  [700.30 Mb]
BBC_-_Horizon_-_2000.10.26_-_The_Lost_World_Of_Lake_Vostok.avi  [699.65 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.2000-11-02.-.Vanished.-.The.Plane.That.Disappeared.avi  [700.04 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.2000.12.14.-.Atlantis.Reborn.Again.avi  [700.13 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.2001-01-25.-.The.Mystery.Of.The.Miami.Circle.avi  [699.70 Mb]
Bbc.-.Horizon.-.2001.02.01.-.The.Missing.Link.avi  [699.68 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.2001-02-08.-.Killer.Algae.avi  [700.15 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.2002-01-31.-.The.Lost.Pyramids.Of.Caral.avi  [700.19 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.2002-02-21.-.The.Dinosaur.That.Fooled.The.World.avi  [700.27 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.2002-12-06.-.Crater.Of.Death.avi  [700.48 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.2003-03-06.-.Earthquake.Storms.avi  [700.25 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.2003-03-28.-.The.Mystery.Of.The.Jurassic.avi  [700.58 Mb]
Bbc.Horizon.2004.Saturn.Lord.Of.The.Rings.Divx5.Mp3.Macu.avi  [699.80 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.2004-03-18.-.Project.Poltergeist-Neutrinos.Have.Mass.avi  [701.97 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.2004-09-16.-.The.Truth.About.Vitamins.avi  [503.16 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.2005-05-29.-.Does.The.MMR.Jab.Cause.Autism.avi  [699.96 Mb]
BBC.-.Horizon.-.2006-01-26.-.A.War.On.Science.(Intelligent.Design).avi  [445.93 Mb]

[ Add all 45 links to your ed2k client ]

BBC Horizon - The Woman Who Thinks Like a Cow
Thursday 08th June 2006


http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/program ... mple.shtml The full write up from this link is below.


Information

Dr Temple Grandin has a legendary ability to read the animal mind and understand animal behaviour when no one else can. But this is no feat of telepathy; her explanation is simple. She's convinced she experiences the world much as an animal does and that it's all down to her autistic brain.

Since the 1940s, when Temple was born, our understanding of autism has come a long way. For years during the fifties and sixties many psychologists and doctors believed that the condition was an emotional disorder, the product of a disturbed childhood.

Psychologist Bruno Bettelheim became famous for his theory that children with autism exhibited the symptoms of the condition because their mothers had unconsciously rejected them as babies and young children. Children, he argued, could be cured with psychotherapy.

It wasn't until psychologists such as Bernard Rimland started to put forward evidence for a biological cause of autism that the old ideas lost their public appeal.

Today, neurologists like Professor Nancy Minshew are using brain scanning techniques to investigate the brains of people with autism. As yet it is impossible to diagnose autism based on a brain scan of an individual, but the results do indicate that the brain is different in someone with autism and that this is the real cause of the condition.

When Temple was a baby, research into autism was in its infancy and the doctors didn't even have a name for her condition. Many children like her spent their whole lives in an institution. Temple was lucky, but despite intensive tutoring and care it took her many years to learn basic skills. To this day, socialising continues to be a struggle for her.

For her and many others with autism the condition makes it very difficult to understand what other people are thinking and feeling. To Temple the world is an unpredictable and frightening place.

Temple believes she experiences life like a prey animal in the wild. Her emotions are much simpler than most people's and she feels constantly anxious – always alert and looking for danger. It's this struggle with overwhelming anxiety that led her to discover just how much she has in common with animals and, in particular, cows.

During a summer spent on her aunt's ranch, when she was 16, she began to notice that nervous cattle seemed to calm down when they entered a piece of equipment called a squeeze chute.

Designed to hold the cattle still, whilst they received veterinary treatment, the wooden contraption clamped the cows along either side of the body. As the sides squeezed their flanks, Temple noticed several of the cows become visibly relaxed and calm.

Eager to find a way to conquer her own anxiety she asked her aunt to operate the chute on her. The result was a revelation. Temple felt much calmer and the effect lasted for several hours afterwards.

Inspired by her experiences on the ranch, she built her own human squeeze machine at home. She still has one installed in her bedroom.

There is a scientific explanation for what seems like her quirky behaviour. Psychologists have discovered evidence to suggest that the effects of deep pressure on the body are very real and can be beneficial and calming for many people with autism.

Twenty years ago Temple did something no one with autism had ever done before. She wrote an autobiography. It was her account of what it was like to grow up with autism.

Since then she has written several other books. For parents and scientists working in the field of autism her words are a revelation, giving them an invaluable understanding and insight into the autistic mind.

For Temple, though, her greatest achievements are in the field of animal welfare.

The slaughterhouse seems an unlikely place to look for an animal lover like Temple but it's here that she has carved a unique career. Until Temple stormed on to the scene, in the 1970s, animal welfare was an unheard of phrase in the meat industry. The animals were destined for slaughter and no one cared what happened to them along the way.

But Temple has changed all that. Using her unique ability to observe the world through an animal's eye she has fundamentally redesigned the equipment and buildings where they are held and slaughtered. Today her advice is sought from around the world and half the cattle in the US go to their deaths in humane equipment designed by her.

Labelled 'retarded' at three years old, Temple didn't learn to speak until she was five. But at nearly 60 she's an associate professor of animal science, a best-selling author and the most famous autistic woman on the planet.
















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Comments: The are a few glitches during the programme.




Horizon - The Woman Who Thinks Like A Cow - 08 Jun 06.avi  [349.72 Mb]

BBC Horizon - The Genius Sperm Bank
Thursday 15th June 2006


http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/program ... perm.shtml The full write up from this link is below.


Information

The Genius Sperm Bank was created in the late 1970s by Robert Klark Graham, an American millionaire optometrist. Officially named the Repository for Germinal Choice, its aim was to breed highly intelligent kids in order to save the world from genetic decline. Graham believed he could achieve this by getting clever men to donate sperm.

Robert Graham had made his name by inventing the shatterproof spectacle lens. He was 'the man who made it safe to wear eye glasses'. But by the 1960s, aged nearly 60, he had lost interest in correcting mankind's eyesight. Instead he turned his attention to correcting mankind itself.

'Retrograde humans' were, he felt, breeding unchecked, causing the evolutionary regression of mankind. He wanted to reverse this trend and bring thousands of geniuses into the world, geniuses fathered by the most brilliant minds. Single-handedly he dreamed of saving humanity, and he would do so using the sperm of clever men.

In the late 1970s, with the help of expert sperm banker Steve Broder, Graham secretly set up his Repository for Germinal Choice. To be safe from prying eyes, he used an underground bunker in the backyard of his ranch in San Diego, California.

He then set about sourcing the cleverest sperm and managed to convince three Nobel prize winners to donate. Booking rooms at a hotel, Graham would ask his elderly donors to provide an anonymous sample for his bank.

It wasn't long before LA Times journalist Edwin Chen found out about the clandestine sperm bank. On 2 March 1980, he exposed the 73-year-old tycoon's controversial project to the world. Chen also discovered that Nobel Prize winner and notorious racist William Shockley was a donor to the bank. Accused of being a Nazi, Graham got slammed in the press. His other donors left him and his dream was all but destroyed. Yet still the women came flocking.

Graham now needed a helping hand to keep his controversial experiment alive. He enlisted avid dog breeder Paul Smith to source new donors. Local artist Julianna McKillop was taken on to man the phones and help match-make recipients to the genius donors.

All the donors were promised anonymity. They were always referred to by a colour code-name. Graham and Paul also came up with the unique concept of a donor catalogue, where donors' hobbies, skills and interests were listed alongside their detailed bodily attributes. Sperm banking had never seen the like, recipients could now actually choose a donor with characteristics they liked.

Adrienne and David Ramm from New York, Lisa Zerr from Colorado and Andrea and Tom Gronwall from California were three families that went to Graham's Genius Sperm Bank. Each was desperate to have a child, yet each unable due to male fertility issues. But having found their way to Graham's bank, they each chose a donor and took home the genius sperm. Even with the aid of a speculum and a torch, home insemination was never an easy process.

In April 1982, the bank's first birth was announced, a girl called Victoria Kowalski. Although Graham was delighted, his delight soon soured when it was reported that the baby's parents had been previously convicted of child abuse. His bank got slammed again.

But then in August 1982, Californian psychologist Dr Afton Blake gave birth to child called Doron. Graham finally had his poster boy.

Despite this, over its 20 years of operation, Graham's Repository was beset by problems, not least that there was never enough sperm. Graham contacted high achievers personally, asking for donations.

It was on a donor recruitment expedition in February 1997 that Graham, now 90 years old, died. While attending a science conference in Seattle, he slipped in his hotel bathtub, was knocked unconscious and drowned. Unfunded, his Repository closed two years later.

Yet Graham left behind him a unique legacy, the Repository was ultimately responsible for the birth of 217 children. His poster child, Doron Blake, is now aged 23, and with an IQ 'off the scale', wants to be an elementary school teacher.

Courtney Ramm, aged 17, has always found school work easy and is determined to be in a ballet company. Jesse Gronwall is reading a degree in politics at the University of California and has plans to 'make a difference in the world'. Teenagers Paisley and Stirling Zerr are not sure what they want to do.

This bunch are all clearly intelligent, but as most of the sperm bank children still remain anonymous, no one will ever be able to test to see whether Graham's experiment to breed intelligent kids using clever sperm really worked or not.

Graham's other legacy was that he truly changed the face of modern sperm banking, not just with the innovation of the donor catalogue, but also the previously unheard of concept where clients could actively choose donors.

















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Horizon - The Genius Sperm Bank - 15 Jun 06.avi  [349.81 Mb]

Crunch time for Planet Pluto


BBC Horizon


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BBC Horizon - Bye Bye Planet Pluto
Thursday 22nd June 2006


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5099292.stm The full write up from this link is below.


Information

At its conference this August, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) will make a decision that could see Pluto lose its status as a planet.

For the first time, the organisation will be officially defining the word "planet", and it is causing much debate in the world of astronomy.

There is only one thing that everyone seems to agree on: there are no longer nine planets in the Solar System.

Matters were brought to a head by the discovery in January of last year of a potential 10th planet, temporarily named 2003 UB313.

Professor Mike Brown and his team at the California Institute of Technology have already discovered several large objects on the edge of the Solar System, but 2003 UB313 is special because it is bigger than Pluto.

The question now facing the IAU is whether to make this new discovery a planet.

Pressing issue

Co-discoverer Dr Chad Trujillo thinks the solution is pretty straightforward.

"The logically consistent thing would be to either have 2003 UB313 a planet, and Pluto be a planet; or have neither be a planet," he told the BBC's Horizon programme.

But Pluto is already an unusual planet. It is made predominantly of ice, and is smaller even than the Earth's Moon.




Guide: Nasa mission to Pluto
In 1992, Professor Dave Jewitt and Dr Jane Lu at the University of Hawaii discovered a new collection of objects beyond Neptune called the Kuiper Belt. Some suggest Pluto should no longer be considered a planet, but a Kuiper Belt Object.

As Professor Jewitt says: "We always say we found plus one Kuiper Belt, and minus one planet. And the one we lost, of course, is Pluto."

There are many astronomers who agree with Dave Jewitt and would opt for an eight-planet Solar System, with neither Pluto or 2003 UB313 making the grade; but a number of astronomers are arguing for a more specific definition of a planet.

Kuiper Belt researcher Dr Marc Buie, of the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, has come up with a clear planetary definition he would like to see the IAU adopt.

Different categories

"I believe the definition of planet should be as simple as possible, so I've come up with two criteria," he said.

"One is that it can't be big enough to burn its own matter - that's what a star does. On the small end, I think the boundary between a planet and not a planet should be, is the gravity of the object stronger than the strength of the material of the object? That's a fancy way of saying is it round?"


Trujillo thinks it's a case of both or neither for Pluto and 2003 UB313
This definition could lead to a Solar System with as many as 20 planets, including Pluto, 2003 UB313, and many objects previously classified as moons or asteroids.

One possible resolution to the debate is for new categories of planet to be introduced. Mercury, Venus, the Earth and Mars would be "rocky planets". The gas-giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune would be a second category.

Pluto, 2003 UB313, and any other objects passing the "roundness test", would be reclassified as a third type of planet - perhaps "icy dwarfs".

Whatever the final outcome, by September there will no longer be nine planets in the Solar System.















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Captured By: unknown (ex UKNova torrent)

Comments: There are some instances of pixelation during the programme






Horizon - Bye Bye Planet Pluto - 22 Jun 06.avi  [349.86 Mb]

Horizon - 2006-06-29 - We Love Cigarettes

A day in the life of the cigarette.


Horizon.2006.We_Love_Cigarettes.WS.DVBC.XviD-ACP.avi  [639.78 Mb]

BBC Horizon - We Love Cigarettes
Thursday 29th June 2006


http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/program ... ette.shtml The full write up from this link is below.


Information

A love of nicotine unites all peoples across the globe, regardless of colour, wealth or creed. Where religion and politics have failed, tobacco has succeeded, but at what cost? For over 50 years people have been knowingly paying for the pleasure of tobacco with their lives, making man's fatal tryst with the cigarette one of the weirdest love affairs ever.

A wide range of people are tangled in this web and by filming them for one day, simultaneously all over the world, Horizon has captured our extraordinary relationship with the cigarette.

Scientist and inventor of the nicotine patch Jed Rose has spent his working life trying to unravel the mysteries of nicotine addiction and searching for ever more ingenious ways to help people quit. Today, he's investigating the path of nicotine through the body by having his subject light up in a PET scanner.

Meanwhile in Texas, Dr Jeffrey Wigand, tobacco scientist turned whistleblower and subject of the Hollywood film The Insider, is preparing for his next appearance as expert witness in another anti-tobacco court case.

But as the West finally seems to be reaching the end of its affair with the cigarette, not everyone is pleased. Writer and smoking aficionado James Leavy laments the passing of a bygone age as he attempts to light up in a smoke-free Dublin. And in an attic in Yorkshire, artist David Hockney regrets the increasingly puritan, anti-pleasure sentiments that have made his "delicious vice" socially unacceptable.

Despite the woes of smokers in the West, globally the tobacco industry is worth $430 billion. Business is booming and in Southampton, British American Tobacco's blenders spend their day developing yet another irresistible smoke.

For while smoking bans in Europe and US abound, in poorer nations the love affair is still in its first flush. One third of the world's cigarettes are smoked in China. In Beijing, one man has made it his life's work to persuade 360 million Chinese smokers to give up. Zhang Yue spends this day snatching cigarettes from the lips of the unsuspecting and haranguing them in an attempt to get them to quit.

Meanwhile Allen Carr, retired accountant and discoverer of his own Easy Way to quit, faces his ultimate challenge. He will attempt to persuade every smoker watching to quit, by debunking four myths held close to every smoker's heart.

















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Captured By Wabbit

Comments: Near the beginning the On Now/Next menu appears for a short time.




Horizon - We Love Cigarettes - 29 Jun 06.avi  [504.85 Mb]

Horizon - 2006-07-13 - Nuclear Nightmares



Horizon.2006.Nuclear_Nightmares.WS.DVBC.XviD-ACP.avi  [639.77 Mb]

BBC Horizon - Nuclear Nightmares
Thursday 13th July 2006


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5173310.stm The full write up from this link is below.


Information

On 26 April 1986, reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant blew up. Forty-eight hours later the entire area was evacuated. Over the following months there were stories of mass graves and dire warnings of thousands of deaths from radiation exposure.


Horizon interviews radiation scientist Dr Mike Repacholi
Yet in a BBC Horizon report to be screened on Thursday, a number of scientists argue that 20 years after the accident there is no credible scientific evidence that any of these predications are coming true.

The anniversary of the world's worst nuclear accident in April saw the publication of a number of reports that examined the potential death toll resulting from exposure to radiation from Chernobyl.

Environmental group Greenpeace said the figure would be near 100,000. Another, Torch (The Other Report on Chernobyl), predicted an extra 30,000-60,000 cancer deaths across Europe.

But according to figures from the Chernobyl Forum, an international organisation of scientific bodies including a number of UN agencies, deaths directly attributable to radiation from Chernobyl currently stand at 56 - less than the weekly death toll on Britain's roads.

"When people hear of radiation they think of the atomic bomb and they think of thousands of deaths, and they think the Chernobyl reactor accident was equivalent to the atomic bombing in Japan which is absolutely untrue," says Dr Mike Repacholi, a radiation scientist working at the World Health Organization (WHO).

Outdated models

Scientists involved in the Forum expect the death toll to rise but not far.

"We're not going to get an epidemic of leukaemia," Dr Repacholi tells Horizon, "and we don't expect an epidemic of solid cancers either."

So why have the predictions varied so wildly?

Scientific as well as public attitudes to radiation are still dominated by the devastating effects of the atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US more than half-a-century ago.

At least 200,000 people died almost immediately from the blast, and thousands more were exposed to higher levels of radiation than anybody had ever been exposed to before.

The survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki became the most intensely studied people in the world.

"The detonation of the A-bomb," explains Professor Antone L Brooks of Washington State University, US, "was the first time that scientists had an opportunity really to look and to see the health effects of radiation; how much radiation was required to produce how much cancer."

In 1958, using data largely drawn from these bomb studies, scientists came up with an answer. It was called the Linear No Threshold (LNT) model and suggested all radiation, no matter how small, was dangerous.





It became the internationally recognised basis for assessing radiation risk.

Yet there has always been a problem with it. The data from Hiroshima and Nagasaki were for very high levels of radiation exposure, often in the range of thousands of millisieverts. There were no significant data for lower exposures, particularly below 200 millisieverts.

"The model was based on high doses and we just didn't know what was going on at lower doses of between one and 200 millisieverts," says Dr Repacholi.

Scientists simply guessed that if high-level radiation was dangerous then lower levels would also be hazardous. They made "an assumption", observes Dr Repacholi.

Chernobyl, where most people received radiation doses below 200 millisieverts, has been the first large-scale opportunity to test whether this assumption is true. The evidence from the Chernobyl Forum suggests it is not.

"Low doses of radiation are a [very] poor carcinogen," says Professor Brooks, who has spent 30 years studying the link between radiation and cancer.

"If you talk to anybody and you say the word radiation, immediately you get a fear response. That fear response has caused people to do things that are scientifically unfounded."

Beneficial effects

Other studies have come to even more startling conclusions.

Professor Ron Chesser, of Texas Tech University, US, has spent 10 years studying animals living within the 30km exclusion zone surrounding Chernobyl.

He has found that, far from the effects of low-level radiation being carcinogenic, it appears to boost those genes that protect us against cancer.

"One of the thoughts that comes out of this is that prior exposure to low levels of radiation actually may have a beneficial effect," Professor Chesser says.


Residents in nearby Pripyat were evacuated soon after the accident
Today, although most radiation scientists are reluctant to sign up to radiation hormesis, as this phenomenon is known, there is a growing body of opinion that it is time to rethink the LNT model and with it our attitude to radiation exposure below about 200 millisieverts.

However, a number of radiological protection scientists still advocate the use of the LNT model.

In April, the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) published a report that used the latest LNT-based radiation risk projection models to update the estimated cancer deaths from Chernobyl.

It concluded that about 16,000 people across Europe could die as a result of the accident.

Dr Peter Boyle, director of the IARC, put the row over the figures into perspective: "Tobacco smoking will cause several thousand times more cancers in the same population."

Chernobyl was about as bad as a power station accident gets - a complete melt down of the reactor core - yet the lessons of the accident suggest that among the myriad of issues surrounding nuclear power, the threat to human health posed by radiation has been overstated.

















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Horizon - Nuclear Nightmares - 13 Jul 06.avi  [349.80 Mb]

BBC Horizon - Tutankhamuns Fireball
Thursday 20th July 2006


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5196362.stm The full write up from this link is below.


Information

Tut's gem hints at space impact

In 1996 in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Italian mineralogist Vincenzo de Michele spotted an unusual yellow-green gem in the middle of one of Tutankhamun's necklaces.
The jewel was tested and found to be glass, but intriguingly it is older than the earliest Egyptian civilisation.

Working with Egyptian geologist Aly Barakat, they traced its origins to unexplained chunks of glass found scattered in the sand in a remote region of the Sahara Desert.

But the glass is itself a scientific enigma. How did it get to be there and who or what made it?

The BBC Horizon programme has reported an extraordinary new theory linking Tutankhamun's gem with a meteor.

Sky of fire

An Austrian astrochemist Christian Koeberl had established that the glass had been formed at a temperature so hot that there could be only one known cause: a meteorite impacting with Earth. And yet there were no signs of a suitable impact crater, even in satellite images.

American geophysicist John Wasson is another scientist interested in the origins of the glass. He suggested a solution that came directly from the forests of Siberia.

"When the thought came to me that it required a hot sky, I thought immediately of the Tunguska event," he told Horizon.

In 1908, a massive explosion flattened 80 million trees in Tunguska, Siberia.

Although there was no sign of a meteorite impact, scientists now think an extraterrestrial object of some kind must have exploded above Tunguska. Wasson wondered if a similar aerial burst could have produced enough heat to turn the ground to glass in the Egyptian desert.

Jupiter clue

The first atomic bomb detonation, at the Trinity site in New Mexico in 1945, created a thin layer of glass on the sand. But the area of glass in the Egyptian desert is vastly bigger.

Whatever happened in Egypt must have been much more powerful than an atomic bomb.

A natural airburst of that magnitude was unheard of until, in 1994, scientists watched as comet Shoemaker-Levy collided with Jupiter. It exploded in the Jovian atmosphere, and the Hubble telescope recorded the largest incandescent fireball ever witnessed rising over Jupiter's horizon.

Mark Boslough, who specialises in modelling large impacts on supercomputers, created a simulation of a similar impact on Earth.

The simulation revealed that an impactor could indeed generate a blistering atmospheric fireball, creating surface temperatures of 1,800C, and leaving behind a field of glass.

"What I want to emphasise is that it is hugely bigger in energy than the atomic tests," said Boslough. "Ten thousand times more powerful."

Defence lessons

The more fragile the incoming object, the more likely these airborne explosions are to happen.

In Southeast Asia, John Wasson has unearthed the remains of an event 800,000 years ago that was even more powerful and damaging than the one in the Egyptian desert; one which produced multiple fireballs and left glass over three hundred thousand square miles, with no sign of a crater.

"Within this region, certainly all of the humans would have been killed. There would be no hope for anything to survive," he said.

According to Boslough and Wasson, events similar to Tunguska could happen as frequently as every 100 years, and the effect of even a small airburst would be comparable to many Hiroshima bombs.

Attempting to blow up an incoming asteroid, Hollywood style, could well make things worse by increasing the number of devastating airbursts.

"There are hundreds of times more of these smaller asteroids than there are the big ones the astronomers track," said Mark Boslough. "There will be another impact on the earth. It's just a matter of when."



















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The Mystery of Easter Island
January 9, 2003

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/20 ... land.shtml

On Easter Day 1722, Dutch explorers landed on Easter Island. A civilisation isolated by 4,000km of Pacific Ocean was about to meet the outside world for the first time in centuries. The strangers were about to find something very strange themselves - an island dotted with hundreds of huge stone statues and a society that was not as primitive as they expected. The first meeting was an immense clash of cultures. (Bloody too: the sailors killed ten natives within minutes of landing.) Where had the Islanders originally come from? Why and how had they built the figures? Modern science is piecing together the story, but it is far too late for the Easter Islanders themselves.

They were virtually wiped out by a series of disasters - natural and manmade - that brought a population of 12,000 down to just 111 in a few centuries. The Island's inhabitants today all have Chilean roots, making solving the mysteries even harder. There is no one to ask about the first people of Easter Island. Although fragmentary legends have been passed down, only science can hope to explain the rise and fall of this unusual civilisation.

From where did they sail?

Genetic science has resolved the first great question: from where did they sail? In the 1950s, the world famous explorer, Thor Heyerdahl demonstrated that it was possible to cross the open ocean from South America to Easter Island. Plenty of other scientists felt that the seafaring Polynesian people were more likely to have made such an awesome journey. Only recently though has DNA evidence provided proof of the first Islanders' origins. Erika Hagelberg has studied the DNA of skeletons unearthed on Easter Island. They contain a genetic marker, the so-called Polynesian motif, characteristic DNA that categorically shows the link between Polynesia and Easter Island's first settlers. They came to the Island from the west not the east, a journey which marked the furthest outpost of Polynesian society. Heyerdahl's hypothesis has been disproved.

Carbon dating of artefacts on Easter Island shows the Polynesians landed around AD700. It seems they lived an isolated existence for the next thousand years on an island measuring 22x11km, roughly the size of Jersey. The society flourished with abundant sealife and farming to feed a growing population, estimated at up to 12,000 people. The people's success manifested itself in a way that has become the Island's iconic trademark: hundred of immense stone figures - moai.

The statue builders

The moai have intrigued all who have seen them since 1722. None was standing when scientists first arrived, those upright today have been re-erected. But how did an ostensibly Stone Age society ever make, move and raise them in the first place? And why?

There are nearly 900 moai on Easter Island, in various stages of construction. Opinions differ widely on how they were moved and raised (Some think they were walked; others that they were pushed on log rollers.) but no one disputes the years of effort involved in getting the statues carved and into place. Some stones weighed 80t, twice the weight of Stonehenge's, and were transported 16km from the quarry.

It was an Easter Islander's local knowledge that helped unlock the reason for their construction. Archaeologist, Sergio Rapu, matched coral fragments with a traditional name for the moai, 'living face of our ancestors' and realised that the figures had once had eyes. He believes the statues were overseeing the people, part of a Polynesian tradition of ancestor worship but on a scale seen nowhere else. Each totem was different to immortalise a particular chief, halfway between the living and the gods. With their backs to the sea they could inspire and protect the Islanders.

Scarce, violent times

That protection fell apart in the 1600s. The moai were torn down. Legends talk of a time of hardship, terror and cannibalism. Archaeological evidence includes wooden carvings of emaciated people and the appearance of a new implement - spear tips. Examination of skeletons from that time confirms the violence that took hold in the Island's society. He describes the people of the time as, "at war with themselves."

The civil war coincides with changes in the diet. The Island's bird life seems to have disappeared as does evidence of people eating porpoise and tuna. The wood carvings were made by starving people. A land of plenty had become desperately short of food. Had the population overexploited natural resources? It seems there is a simpler answer - the felling of the last tree.

A parable for the world?

John Flenley's studies of pollen from lakebeds shows Easter Island was once covered with palms. Yet the Dutch in 1722 described an island devoid of trees. The disappearance of tree pollen coincides with the civil war. The society relied on wood to make canoes. Treeless, their ability to fish for food was limited.

Making moai, too, must have used huge numbers of trees. The statues had been getting more elaborate at that time, which must have depleted the forests ever more rapidly. Flenley believes Easter Island is an amazing example of total deforestation, sparked by obsession. The Islanders' cult of ancestor worship cost many of them their lives. Soil erosion with no trees severely hit farming. And there were no canoes in which to escape. Trapped in a hell of their own making, the Islanders turned on each other. It was a self-inflicted ecological disaster.

Back from the brink

But if a violent, even cannibalistic, society had emerged in the 1600s, why did the Dutch in 1722 report fields of yams and healthy, fit people? The key to the recovery lies at a place called Orongo, a cliff between a volcano and a small offshore islet. There, carvings in the stones from just after the catastrophe show a birdman.

Historical accounts describe a contest between tribes - the challenge, to swim across a mile of sea and climb a cliff to bring back a bird's egg. Whichever tribe won got first call on the Island's diminishing resources. In place of warfare there was an orderly distribution of food.

Final assault

The real killer of the original Easter Islanders came across the ocean. After 1722, it became fashionable for explorers to visit Easter Island, bringing their own diseases. Syphilis appears in the bones of the native people for the first time. But the final blow came in 1862 when slave traders landed from Peru and took away 1,500 people, a third of the population. Transported to South America, within one year all but 15 were dead. They were brought back to their homes. Little did the Islanders know with what they had returned. A smallpox epidemic left only 111 alive by 1877.

Against the guns and germs of the modern world, what chance had the birdmen stood? Jo Anne van Tilburg regards their story as one of triumph over adversity, a hymn to the human spirit. Others like anthropologist Charlie Love point to a testing ground for the development of remote societies, one that reached equilibrium at a bloody end. The mystery of Easter Island is also a story of terrible folly.

In English with Chinese (I think?) subs

Horizon.What.Really.Killed.The.Dinosaurs.PDTV.XviD-NANT.avi  [698.12 Mb]

Enjoy yet another great release powershared by your friend Steven on DonkeyServer 1

Enjoy


Removed links with no sources ~ARCH

BBC Horizon - Survivors Guide to Plane Crashes
3rd October 2006


http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/program ... vorsguide/



Information

Every day across the world, more than 3 million people catch a plane. Yet despite it being the safest form of travel, many of us are terrified of flying and what we fear most is crashing and dying.

Most people believe that if they're in a plane crash their time is up, in fact the truth is surprisingly different. Over 90% of plane crashes have survivors and there are many things you can do to increase your chances of staying alive.

We have spoken to aviation safety experts, crash investigators as well as plane crash survivors - and put together the 'ultimate survivors guide to plane crashes'. Visit the links below to find out more.



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Horizon - Survivors Guide to Plane Crashes.avi  [402.75 Mb]

BBC Horizon - Chimps Are People Too
10th October 2006


http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/program ... tx/chimps/



Information

Danny Wallace is on a mission to convince the world that chimps are people too. He believes the time has come to make our hairy relatives part of the family. Our primate brethren share 99.4% of our crucial DNA and are more closely related to us than they are to gorillas. This being so, should they be afforded the same rights as people?

The reason for this scientific showdown is simple. If chimps can communicate, cook and reason, then how different are they to humans? Armed with the latest scientific evidence, Danny travels the globe to quiz primatologists, philosophers and animal rights lawyers to investigate whether or not chimps should be classed as people.



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Horizon - Chimps Are People Too.avi  [404.55 Mb]

BBC Horizon - The Great Robot Race
31st October 2006


Horizon.2006-10-31.The_Great_Robot_Race.WS.DVBC.XviD-ACP.avi  [639.77 Mb]



The Great Robot Race @ bbc


Tuesday 31 October 2006, 9pm on BBC Two

Horizon - What if H5N1 Pandemic
Tuesday 7 November 2006, 9pm BBC Two

H5n1 Pandemic - Horizon Special 1h28M 20061107.avi  [770.32 Mb]

Information

A simple virus brewed in the belly of a dead bird is set to embark on a global killing spree. The likely culprit is H5N1 - a bird flu virus with the dangerous potential to mutate into the next pandemic flu virus.
BBC follow up webpage

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Bitrate : 256 kbps

Duration : 1:28:36







First link i've posted. hope I got it right.
It probably would have been quicker to send you all a postcard.
Still I'll know for next time.

Horizon - Human v2.0
24th October 2006


http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/program ... ngularity/



Information

Meet the scientific prophets who claim we are on the verge of creating a new type of human - a human v2.0.

It's predicted that by 2029 computer intelligence will equal the power of the human brain. Some believe this will revolutionise humanity - we will be able to download our minds to computers extending our lives indefinitely. Others fear this will lead to oblivion by giving rise to destructive ultra intelligent machines.

One thing they all agree on is that the coming of this moment - and whatever it brings - is inevitable.


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Horizon - Human V2.0.avi  [392.70 Mb]

Horizon - The Great Robot Race
31st October 2006


http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/program ... robotrace/



Information

We follow 20 robot cars on a remarkable race across the Nevada desert. These cars drive themselves. There are no drivers and no remote controls, they must navigate entirely on their own.

The first time the race was run, the most successful entrant only made it seven miles into the 130 mile course. Will this year's robots do any better? And will any cross the finishing line and claim the two-million-dollar prize?

It's a story of set-backs and crashes, as a variety of teams compete to solve one of the hardest problems in robotics.


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Horizon - The Great Robot Race.avi  [430.59 Mb]

Horizon - Pandemic
07th November 2006


http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/program ... /pandemic/



Information

A simple virus brewed in the belly of a dead bird is set to embark on a global killing spree. The likely culprit is H5N1 - a bird flu virus with the dangerous potential to mutate into the next pandemic flu virus.

In a feature-length special, we tell the story of what could happen if a flu pandemic hits. Experts predict the next pandemic will be more disruptive than any disease we've seen before. And they're particularly worried that it will be most deadly for the young and otherwise healthy.

The last flu pandemic in 1918 killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide. Nowadays, with extensive global travel and movement, the virus will be able to spread even more easily. The estimates are that hundreds of millions could be infected and potentially die.


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Audio Channels: 2
RunTime: 01:28:30
Captured By: unknown



Horizon - Pandemic.avi  [775.64 Mb]

Horizon - We Are the Aliens
14th November 2006


http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/program ... tx/aliens/



Information

Clouds of alien life forms are sweeping through outer space and infecting planets with life – it may not be as far-fetched as it sounds.

The idea that life on Earth came from another planet has been around as a modern scientific theory since the 1960s when it was proposed by Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe. At the time they were ridiculed for their idea – known as panspermia. But now, with growing evidence, it's back in vogue and even being studied by NASA.

We meet the scientists on a mission to get to the bottom of the beginnings of life on Earth - from the team in Texas who are lovingly building a robotic submarine called DEPTHX to explore a moon of Jupiter, to Southern India where they are investigating a mysterious red rain which fell for two months in 2001. According to local scientist Godfrey Louis, the rain contains biological cells unlike any he had seen before – with no DNA and the ability to replicate at 300°C. Louis has come to the conclusion that the cells are extra-terrestrial in origin.

Could all this really be proof that We are the aliens?


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RunTime: 00:48:45
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Horizon - We Are the Aliens.avi  [427.22 Mb]

Horizon - 2003-11-13 - The Big Chill


Horizon.2003-11-13.The_Big_Chill.WS.DVBC.XviD-ACP.avi  [639.26 Mb]


Epside info @ BBC
Transcript @ BBC