Szilard believed that recent scientific breakthroughs meant it was now possible to convert mass into energy. And that this could be used to make a bomb. If this were to happen, it would be a terrible realisation of the law of nature Einstein had discovered some 34 years earlier. September 1905 was Einstein’s ‘miracle year’. While working as a patents clerk in the Swiss capital Berne Einstein submitted a three-page supplement to his special theory of relativity, published earlier that year. In those pages he derived the most famous equation of all time; e=mc², energy is equal to mass multiplied by the speed of light squared.

The equation showed that mass and energy were related and that one could, in theory, be transformed into the other. But because the speed of light squared is such a huge number, it meant that even a small amount of mass could potentially be converted into a huge amount of energy. Ever since the discovery of radioactivity in the late 19th century, scientists had realised that the atomic nucleus could contain a large amount of energy. Einstein’s revolutionary equation showed them, for the first time, just how much there was. (Excerpt from bbc.co.uk)

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Beckham looks back on his life, explaining how the skinny boy from Leytonstone grew up to become one of the world’s most idolised footballers, and discusses how it feels to be perceived as one of the true greats of football. He picks out the games, goals, events and characters that shaped his career and transformed him into the international football superstar he is today.

ITV’s cameras follow David as he prepares for the biggest summer of his career, training with Real Madrid, practising his legendry free kicks, playing against Arsenal in the Champions League and facing the media at England football team’s press conferences.

Beckham looks ahead, revealing some of his ambitions for the future. One already in motion is his new pride and joy: the David Beckham Academy. A key part of his football legacy, David gives a personal tour of these state of the art coaching facilities in London which he hopes will give something back to the game which has given so much to him. (Excerpt from memorabletv.com)

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He has never regained that feeling, yet against all the odds, he has made an apparently miraculous recovery. HORIZON tells Ian’s extraordinary story. Ian had contracted a disease of the nervous system so rare that the doctors on Jersey were unable to diagnose it. It had destroyed all the sensory nerves responsible for touch, and for conveying information about muscle and joint position, senses so fundamental to our capacity to move in the world that they have been called a sixth sense.

Without this “proprioception” we can have no inner sense of posture or limb position and cannot initiate or control movement. Ian was told that he would spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. But Ian wasn’t paralyzed, and he was determined that he was going to lead as normal a life as he could.

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Shot in a cinema verite style, a style of documentary filmmaking that stresses unbiased realism, the film shows these anonymous, one-time encounters between both sides and the lasting political, social and cultural effects. Checkpoint gives a chilling look at the destructive impact on both societies.

This movie is riveting. I can only call the treatment of the Palestinians trying to get through the checkpoint humiliating (and shocking). The woman are harassed and the men are abused. The border guards fair no better in system that places these young men in situations beyond their training or capacity for judgement.

It is a real-time tragedy unfolding on the screen, full of hapless players, endless conflict, and implied ripples for generations. When the old Palestinian heads for the border line saying “Shoot me” you wonder how far it will go. If you love freedom, this movie is painful. (Excerpt from amazon.com)

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The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is the first known list of the most remarkable man-made creations of classical antiquity, and was based on guide-books popular among Hellenic sight-seers and only includes works located around the Mediterranean rim.

The number seven was chosen because the Greeks believed it to be the representation of perfection and plenity. Many similar lists have been made, including lists for the Medieval World and the Modern World.

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To make it happen, individual atoms must be slammed into each other with enough energy to make them fuse together, something that requires temperatures found only in the core of stars like our Sun – over 10 million Kelvin. The idea that these temperatures had been reached in a small scale laboratory using only soundwaves took many scientists by surprise. To them, fusion projects were huge multibillion-pound, intergovernmental schemes with the far off goal of producing energy in several decades time.

Taleyarkhan’s fusion breakthrough was based on a little-understood process called sonoluminescence. It’s a process that magically transforms sound waves into flashes of light, focusing the sound energy into a tiny flickering hot spot inside a bubble. It’s been called the star in a jar. The star in a jar effortlessly reaches temperatures of tens of thousands of degrees, hotter than the surface of the sun. Many scientists had wondered if the core of the bubble was even hotter – maybe even as hot as the core of the sun. If so, fusion would happen there. But until Taleyarkhan, no one had been able to either prove it or disprove it. (Excerpt from docuwiki.net)

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The search for the ultimate answer has taken a number of twists and turns, with careers made and broken along the way. Ape to Man is the story of the quest to find the origins of the human race – a quest that spanned more than 150 years of obsessive searching The search for the origins of humanity is a story of bones and the tales they tell.

It was in 1856 that the first bones of an extinct human ancestor were encountered, unearthed by a crew of unskilled laborers digging for limestone in Western Europe. The find, which would be known as Neanderthal Man, was seeing the light of day for the first time in more than 40,000 years.

At the time, the concept of a previous human species was virtually unthinkable. Yet just a few years later, Charles Darwin’s work The Origin of Species first broached the subject of evolution, and by the end of the nineteenth century, it had become the hottest topic of the age.

Adventurers had embarked on the search for the Missing Link, the single creature that represented the evolutionary leap from apes to humans. Ape to Man examines the major discoveries that have led us to the understanding we have today, including theories that never gained full acceptance in their time, an elaborate hoax that confused the scientific community for years, and the ultimate understanding of the key elements that separate man from apes. (Excerpt from amazon.com)

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But, wracked with guilt over the real – world applications of his science – specifically, how the use of atomic weapons clashed with his religious beliefs – Einstein spent the last half of his life desperately trying to disprove the implications of so much of his work.

Learn how the greatest scientist of the 20th century would spend his final years enduring appalling professional humiliation. While most of the world hailed him as a genius, he slowly became a marginal figure within the scientific community – revered, but ignored. And it was all because he could not accept the fact that his life’s work stood at odds with his personal beliefs.

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But the monsters were still there. 300,000 years ago, Homo erectus learned to hunt the giant Irish elk, using fire to drive these great beasts through a narrow gorge and over a cliff. While hunting skills improved, proximity remained a necessity to kill a huge beast.

40,000 years ago, Neanderthals were at the top of their form, hunting beasts like the Giant Steppe Bison. The Neanderthals were usurped by an entirely new race of humans, the Cro-Magnons. They adapted and survived when the Neanderthals could not.

They would become the undisputed masters of our planet. They would become the humans we are today. (Excerpt from Amazon.com)

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From his birth on the rugged island of Corsica to his final exile on the godforsaken island of St. Helena, Napoleon brings this extraordinary figure to life.

Napoleon bears passionate witness to a man whose charisma swayed an empire and sparked his exalted belief in his own destiny.

“The Summit of Greatness” recounts Napoleon’s brilliant conquest of most of Europe, including a legendary victory at Austerlitz.

To sustain his rule, he must keep fighting, but invading Spain reaches too far.

“The End” describes Napoleon’s downfall, including the invasion of Russia and his final battles. First exiled to Elba, he escapes to face final defeat at Waterloo.

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He asks whether respect for Islam combined with the heated response to the cartoons is now leading us towards self-censorship. How tolerant should we be, he wonders, of the intolerant. And what limits should there be, if any, to freedom of speech in a democracy.

The director films in Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Qatar, France, Turkey and Denmark, talking to some of the people that played key roles during the cartoon crisis.

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Had dinosaurs survived, the world today would be very different. If humans managed to survive alongside them, we wouldn’t have the company of most, if not all, of the mammals with which we are familiar today. Giraffes, elephants and other mammals wouldn’t have had space to evolve.

Would we be hunting Hadrosaurs instead of elk? Or farming Protoceratops instead of pigs? Would dinosaurs be kept as pets? And could the brighter dinosaurs have evolved into something humanoid?

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Following circumstantial research and in cooperation with top-calibre scholars, this series sheds light upon, unmasks and takes the magic from centuries-old superstition and also reports on breathtaking, super sensory experiences.

It also shows if, and where, things that cannot be explained really do exist… The journey in search of the Supernatural leads to all six continents, to such fascinating spots as the holy Tibetan city, Lhasa and to the great universities of the world; to the secret archives of the CIA and the KGB, the Vatican, and to the most modern centres of nuclear research in the world.

The result is a thrilling combination of contemporary history, scientific background reporting, and a touch of the pleasant shiver within the dark side of parapsychology.

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Supported by the world’s leading scientists and research institutes, we embark on a quest to answer some of society’s most fundamental questions and reveal the dramas of tomorrow’s world along the way. State-of-the-art computer graphics in combination with a dynamic story line will create a world usually only seen in feature films, but with the accuracy and relevance of a documentary. This series is all about opening the window of our future based on science fact, not science fiction.

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The Nile Perch, a voracious predator, extinguished almost the entire stock of the native fish species. However, the new fish multiplied so fast, that its white fillets are today exported all around the world.

Huge hulking ex-Soviet cargo planes come daily to collect the latest catch in exchange for their southbound cargo… Kalashnikovs and ammunitions for the uncounted wars in the dark center of the continent.

This booming multinational industry of fish and weapons has created an ungodly globalized alliance on the shores of the world’s biggest tropical lake: an army of local fishermen, World bank agents, homeless children, African ministers, EU-commissioners, Tanzanian prostitutes and Russian pilots. (Excerpt from darwinsnightmare.com)

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Following six and a half years of dreaming of the towers, Petit spent eight months in New York City planning the execution of the coup. Aided by a team of friends and accomplices, Petit was faced with numerous extraordinary challenges: he had to find a way to bypass the WTCs security; smuggle the heavy steel cable and rigging equipment into the towers; pass the wire between the two rooftops; anchor the wire and tension it to withstand the winds and the swaying of the buildings.

The rigging was done by night in complete secrecy. At 7:15 AM, Philippe took his first step on the high wire 1,350 feet above the sidewalks of Manhattan James Marshs documentary brings Petits extraordinary adventure to life through the testimony of Philippe himself, and some of the co-conspirators who helped him create the unique and magnificent spectacle that became known as the artistic crime of the century. (Excerpt from imdb.com)

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Regions of radio-emitting gas called “radio lobes” could be even bigger. Then there are super galaxy clusters which are hundreds of galaxies merged together due to cosmic collisions.

Discover which is the largest planet, star, star cluster, constellation, black hole, volcano, galaxy, explosions, moon, storm, impact crater and “void” in space.

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The organization is monitored by the Anti-Defamation League, and classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The group has achieved national notice because of its picketing of funeral processions of U.S. soldiers killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The church bases its work around the belief expressed by its best known slogan and the address of its primary website, “God hates fags”, and expresses the opinion, based on its Biblical interpretation, that nearly every tragedy in the world is God’s punishment for homosexuality – specifically society’s increasing tolerance and acceptance of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. It maintains that God hates homosexuals above all other kinds of “sinners” and that homosexuality should be a capital crime. Louis Theroux stated that the Phelpses are the most extreme people he has ever met. (Excerpt from en.wikipedia.org)

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The documentary includes interviews with authors from the Immortality Institute’s book, The Scientific Conquest of Death, plus more than 80 other individuals working to advance Life Extension.

What prompted you to explore life extension? How long do you want to live and why? What is the biggest hurdle to life extension? What technologies are most promising for life extension and why? (Excerpt from imminst.org)

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From the Biblical tale of his fall to the incredible stories of those who believe they have crossed his path, join BIOGRAPHY® for a chilling journey through the long and legendary history of Satan.

Scholars, historical experts, and theologians examine classic paintings, academic texts, and modern movies for an unprecedented look at the many ways Satan has been portrayed throughout the centuries.

Satan: Prince Of Darkness paints the ultimate portrait of the face of evil, and reveals how over millennia the Devil has come to personify mankind’s greatest fears. (Excerpt from amazon.com)

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