Being with Jane Goodall

Barrington Irving: 30S on Flying Around the World Solo

Rudy Tanzi: A Scientist Gets Transcendent

the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

The Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers

Arizona State University

University of Southern California

Fermilab

Space Telescope Science Institute

Author, Is God a Mathematician?

MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering

Science Writer

Tufts University

Princeton University

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Author, Our Mathematical Universe

Have you ever felt drawn toward choices without knowing why? Or, as seen in the movie “Inception,” have you ever felt like you’ve woken up with a decision that’s already been made for you?Neuroscience is beginning to demystify such feelings. Our agency and decisions, it turns out, can be measurably influenced by events that evade the conscious part of our brains. We’ll see three groundbreaking experiments that illustrate that influences we are unaware of in our waking life, during dreamless sleep, or even in our dreams can impact our memory and behavior.Published on February 18, 2021, in the journal Current Biology, an international team of scientists have found a bridge to the dream world by showing that it’s possible to have a direct dialogue with someone in their dream—and NOVA’s Greg Kestin (host of “What the Physics?!”) was given exclusive access.The scientific context and potential effect of this team’s work are built up in the film through two related groundbreaking experiments. These experiments also show how scientists can influence your decisions, desires, and habits without you being aware.

Watch the first-ever video documenting this live two-way dream communication.

Dream Hacking: Decisions, Addictions, and Sleep

Time Dilation and Intergalactic Travel

Could You Upload Your Brain?

FQXI

Fetzer Franklin Fund

What is The Nature of Reality? It’s a blog, and it’s pretty much the biggest question we could think of. We can’t promise that we’ll answer the question once and for all – in fact, we can pretty much guarantee that we won’t – but we promise a space that welcomes big ideas about space, time, and the universe; where we take questions as seriously as we take answers; where physics is about way more than inclined planes and levers and pulleys. Stick around; we just might expand your cosmic horizons.

What is The Nature of Reality? It’s a blog, and it’s pretty much the biggest question we could think of.

The Nature of Reality

What is The Nature of Reality? It’s a blog, and it’s pretty much the biggest question we could think of.

For something we use every day, energy is a pretty mysterious concept. This Lab investigates what energy is, how it can be converted into useful forms, and why some sources are running low.

Energy Lab

Fossils: Rocking the Earth

Take cybersecurity into your own hands. In this Lab, you’ll defend a company that is the target of increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks.

Cybersecurity Lab

Koch Foundation

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NOVA Labs

The World's Most Expensive Fungus

4 Deadly Carnivorous Plants

Three Facts About Periods

Bizarre stories from the slimy, smelly, creepy world of science. GROSS SCIENCE from NOVA is produced by WGBH for PBS Digital Studios. See more on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHiZFOa_ZrLwYmxbTaUaKEA">Youtube</a>.

Bizarre stories from the slimy, smelly, creepy world of science.

Gross Science

Bizarre stories from the slimy, smelly, creepy world of science.

Alex Clark is the Digital Video Producer for the NOVA Science Studio. He produces original videos for the program and leads video production training for site coordinators and students. Alex is a video journalist, cinematographer, and instructor of documentary filmmaking and he holds a degree in journalism from Columbia University. He has created TV and digital content for PBS, NBC, and NowThis. A lover of all things science, he produced and co-hosted Vox’s Emmy-nominated YouTube series, Glad You Asked.

In the past 50 years, thanks to Vera Rubin and others, dark matter has become an essential scientific building block, at the foundation of our understanding of the universe.

Vera Rubin's work provided convincing evidence for a mysterious substance, dark matter.

How Vera Rubin Broke Barriers in Astronomy

Pi & The Fibonacci Sequence

Learn how artificial intelligence tools can improve patient care by looking for patterns in body scans to predict the probability of cancer with this video excerpt from NOVA: A.I. Revolution.

Using A.I. for Cancer Detection

Janna Levin

Meet molecular biologist Janet Iwasa in this video profile from NOVA’s “The Secret Life of Scientists &amp; Engineers.”

Janet Iwasa

Discover how the metaphor of an iceberg can help depict the various forms of sexual harassment affecting women in STEM.

About half of women faculty and staff experience sexual harassment.

Visualizing Discrimination and Harassment of Women in STEM

NOVA Education tailors NOVA's digital resources for educators in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Our free educator library is produced according to teaching standards and includes videos, audio segments, lesson plans, and interactives designed to facilitate effective classroom integration. Please let us know how we're doing and what you might like to see. NOVA Education is committed to creating digital learning resources that work for you.

NOVA Education supports STEM education and engagement nationwide through the creation of resources from NOVA's broadcast and digital productions.

NOVA Education

NOVA Education supports STEM education and engagement nationwide through the creation of resources from NOVA's broadcast and digital productions.

Animal and human forms of communication may be much closer than we previously thought.

The Law all Languages Obey

US & Territories

The search for extraterrestrial life is an age-old quest. But recent breakthroughs make today an era like no other in the history of astronomy. From the exhilarating probing of our own solar system and the Kepler mission’s astounding discovery of thousands of extrasolar planets, to the next-generation telescopes under development, the prospects for finding life beyond Earth have never been stronger. Still, daunting hurdles remain. How can we study anything light years away, let alone a little planet? In the vast universe, where should we even start to look? Is our failure to hear any other voices in the galaxy a sign that we are special? NOVA Wonders joins leading explorers now searching the galaxy for life and intelligence on other planets—and asks, if we do find other life in the universe…what would that mean?

Hunt for clues in the universe to answer one of humanity's biggest questions: Are we alone?

Are We Alone?

<div class="rich-text">Toxoplasma gondii is a parasite that invades the brains of mice and organs of cats, resulting in a disease called toxoplasmosis. This parasite can also infect humans by way of cat feces. Although Toxoplasma research is still in its early stages, scientists estimate that one-third of the human population has been infected.
</div>

<div class="rich-text">Toxoplasma gondii is a parasite that invades the brains of mice and organs of cats.</div>

Can Cat Poop Make You Crazy?

The National Science Foundation

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation

The John Templeton Foundation

NOVA Wonders takes viewers on a journey to the frontiers of science, where researchers are tackling some of the biggest questions about life and the cosmos. From the mysteries of astrophysics to the secrets of the body to the challenges of inventing technologies that could rival—and even surpass—the abilities of the human mind, these six hours reveal how far we’ve come in our search for answers, how we managed to get here, and how scientists hope to push our understanding of the universe even further. Along the way, we meet the remarkable people who are transforming our world and our future.

A 6-part series exploring the biggest questions on the frontiers of science.

NOVA Wonders

A 6-part series exploring the biggest questions on the frontiers of science.

<div class="rich-text">
	The slime mold Physarum polycephalum is a single cell without a brain, yet it can make surprisingly complicated decisions. In this animated video short, watch as a slime mold navigates through a maze and solves a civil engineering problem.

	Learn more about slime molds at <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=brainless-slime-molds">Scientific American</a>.
</div>

<div class="rich-text">Slime molds may be brainless, but they aren't stupid.</div>

Slime Mold Smarts

<div class="rich-text">
	Cosmic rays are inescapable in space. They can rip right through an astronaut, damaging DNA and possibly causing cancer and memory loss over the long-term. But recent research shows that antioxidants, found in certain berries and fruit, may decrease the effects of this type of radiation.
</div>

<div class="rich-text">Berries and other foods containing antioxidants may alleviate cellular damage caused by cosmic radiation.</div>

Cosmic Ray Danger

Unravelling Bolero

NOVA ScienceNOW

Former Digital Production Assistant at NOVA

Bright stars in a royal blue triangular opening in deep red and purple dust clouds.

The Tarantula Nebula’s chemical composition is remarkably like the conditions in the Milky Way billions of years ago, during peak star formation. This composite of X-ray and infrared observations uses chromatic ordering to show both supernova explosion remnants (royal blue and purple) and clouds of gas (red and orange). Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State Univ./L. Townsley et al.; IR: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/JWST ERO Production Team

The James Webb Space Telescope only captures infrared light, but imaging developers can convert the invisible into something both beautiful and scientifically accurate.

How NASA makes those spectacular space images

Two tusked mastodons walk through a puddle in a lush green landscape with geese and a hare, as the sun sits on the horizon

An artist’s impression of the Kap København formation 2 million years ago, when the temperature was significantly warmer than northernmost Greenland today. Image Credit: Beth Zaiken

The oldest DNA ever retrieved, preserved in sediments in northern Greenland, reveals that Arctic and temperate species once commingled in an ecosystem unlike anything that exists today.

2-million-year-old DNA reveals surprising Arctic ecosystem

A man in a white shirt and black pants, standing knee-deep in water, seen from behind as he looks toward a dolphin with is upper body above the water, nose pointed up

A dolphin gives a cue to a fisher at Praia da Tesoura in Laguna, Brazil. Image Credit: Bianca Romeu, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina

A new study shows just what dolphins get out of cooperating with fishers in Brazil (besides lunch).

When wild dolphins help humans fish, both benefit

NOVA Next is NOVA’s award-winning digital publication that provides answers from the cutting edge of science and technology. Launched in 2012, we feature in-depth articles and commentaries from some of the most respected journalists, scientists, and engineers. NOVA Next explores the ideas that are changing the future, from the frontiers of synthetic biology to the politics of personalized medicine.Let us know what you think. We’re listening on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/NOVAonline">Facebook</a>, <a href="http://twitter.com/novapbs">Twitter</a>, and email.If you’re a journalist and have an idea for a story, send it our way.

NOVA Next is NOVA’s award-winning digital publication that provides answers from the cutting edge of science and technology.

NOVA Next

NOVA Next is NOVA’s award-winning digital publication that provides answers from the cutting edge of science and technology.

Introducing the 2024 NOVA Science Studio student producers who reported on local data-related impacts and solutions

NOVA Science Studio 2024 Student Videos

Meet the 2023 – 2024 NOVA Science Studio student-producers who covered a wide variety of big data science stories

NOVA Science Studio Alumni (2023-2024)

NOVA Science Studio launches new cohort with big data themes

Three students with cameras and a teacher in a classroom

Students from O'Bryant High School during the NOVA Science Studio pilot in 2018 take photos of a flying squirrel for a video they are producing.

The NOVA Science Studio (NSS) offers high school students the opportunity to learn science reporting and short-form video production skills. Registration is now open to participate in the program this fall.

Engage your students with science journalism about issues in their communities with the NOVA Science Studio program!

NOVA Science Studio 2023-2024 Program Registration

Introducing the 2023 NOVA Science Studio student producers who reported on local climate change impacts and solutions

NOVA Science Studio 2023 Student Videos

Meet the NOVA Science Studio Team

The NOVA Science Studio is a program that aims to empower youth — especially those that are underrepresented in STEM — to tell engaging science communication stories about the issues that matter to them.

The NOVA Science Studio is a program that aims to empower youth — especially those that are underrepresented in STEM — to tell engaging science communication stories about the issues that matter to them.

NOVA Science Studio

Mammals with pouches, like this red kangaroo, didn't originate in Australia, but they have prospered there like nowhere else on the planet. Why?

Photo credit: istockphoto.com/© Michelle Allen/WebStuff.biz Pty Ltd

How did Australia come to be marsupial heaven?

Evolution Down Under

Carlisle Companies

NOVA Official Site: Science Documentaries &amp; Articles | PBS

NOVA Official Site: Science Documentaries & Articles | PBS

NOVA

In 2023, the Tolowa Dee-ni' people alongside partnering tribes asserted sovereignty over the 700 square miles of their ancestral fisheries. Now in 2024, we see how marine science and resource management can be guided by community and culture.

In Northern California, Marine science is guided by Tolowa Dee-ni' Nation’s community and culture.

Keepers of the Coastline

In an observational survey, this short documentary presents the realities of coastal erosion by witnessing the experience of Bristol Bay community members. Interviews, local archives, and ancestral knowledge put the circumstances in stark relief as we detail the communities' adjustments to the retreating coastline.

Using photo archives and ancestral knowledge, witness coastal erosion in Bristol Bay, Alaska.

Sands of Time

Communities like the Unangax̂ rely on traditional foodways in lieu of customary, expensive grocery suppliers. Following the journey of a local subsistence hunter, we learn the realities of food access in the changing Arctic and the values that inform their harvest.

Following a local Unangax̂ hunter, hear the realities of food access in the changing Arctic.

Tides of Tradition

In a journey of reconnection, filmmaker Steven Tallas explores the hogan - a small, unassuming traditional structure found across the Navajo Nation. Remaining cool in the summers and warm in the winters, this short film revisits the hogan amidst a warming American southwest.

Reintroducing the hogan, an earthen Navajo structure that stays cool in the summers without AC.

Standing the Heat

The Southwestern United States is experiencing a megadrought, but this isn't the first time people have survived one in the region. By highlighting ideas and practices from Navajo tradition, the story recenters our relationship to water.

The Southwest is in a megadrought, but Native Americans have survived them before.

Megadroughts and Indigenous Voices

Agriculture can thrive in the desert. The Tohono O’odham people have used Ak Chin farming, a form of dry farming, to grow crops for thousands of years, and in this short documentary, cultural experts demonstrate these traditional practices as well as implementations for future community planning.

Ak-chin farming makes desert agriculture possible, and now, those practices help communities today.

Harvesting the Future

The Arthur Vining Davis Foundation

GBH Climate and Environment Fund

The first of its kind, "Legacy of the Land" is a collection of 6 short documentaries covering climate change in Native American communities. Each story is produced by a separate indigenous filmmaker making the series as dynamic and distinct as Native American communities themselves. From Alaska to Arizona, audiences witness the knowledge, tradition, and innovation of people living on the front lines of our changing climate.

Legacy of the Land

If the universe as we know it started with the Big Bang, will it also have an end? And if it’s going to end someday - how? Discover the four main ideas about how the universe might end, and find out which one has the most evidence supporting it. With host Athena Brensberger, dive into our universe's very distant future in this episode of What the Physics?!

If the universe as we know it started with the Big Bang, will it also have an end? And if it’s going to end someday - how? Here are four leading ideas.

4 Ways the Universe Could End

It’s an age-old question: Do aliens exist? And what are the odds we’ll make contact? A famous mathematical equation, known as the Drake Equation, helps scientists estimate the odds of finding intelligent alien civilizations, but new discoveries and unknown factors could change everything.

The Drake Equation helps scientists estimate the odds of finding intelligent alien civilizations.

Do Aliens Exist? This Famous Equation Offers a Clue

Imagine taking an elevator to space. Or blasting off in a nuclear rocket. That might sound like science fiction, but scientists are racing to develop new, more efficient methods of space travel - and some pretty wild ideas are on the table. Discover the rocket-less future of space travel and the quest to make it happen.

Space elevators? Nuclear rockets? The future of space travel could look radically different.

The Rocket-Less Future of Space Travel

What the Physics?!, a YouTube series from NOVA, explores mind-blowing ideas and questions from the world of physics like space travel via elevator, the odds that aliens exist, and the ultimate fate of the universe!

What the Physics?!

United States

Northern Mariana Islands

Puerto Rico

American Samoa

Guam

U.S. Virgin Islands

U.S. Minor Outlying Islands

A skeleton of a whale in a desert-like area.

When Whales Could Walk

Giant fossils uncovered in the Sahara Desert reveal new secrets of how whales evolved.

Canada

US, US Territories, Canada

Hunt for the Oldest DNA

Follow the quest to recover DNA millions of years old for the very first time.

Picture of the original construction of the Eiffel Tower

Building the Eiffel Tower

Explore the engineering behind Paris’s iconic landmark, the tallest structure of its time.

Baltimore Bridge Collapse

Follow the investigation into the deadly container ship collision that closed the Port of Baltimore.

Can forests help cool the planet? Follow scientists working in spectacular forest landscapes in Costa Rica, Brazil, Australia, and beyond as they try to untangle complex networks of trees, fungi, and creatures large and small – all in a quest to tackle the twin threats of climate change and species extinction. (Premiering April 16 at 9 pm on PBS)

Follow scientists in a quest to understand how complex forest ecosystems can help cool our planet.

Secrets of the Forest

In Egypt’s Sahara Desert, massive skeletons with strange skulls and gigantic teeth jut out from the sandy ground. This fossil graveyard, millions of years old, is known as the “Valley of the Whales.” Now, paleontologists have unearthed a whole new species of ancient whale dating to 43 million years ago, and this predator wasn’t just able to swim – it also had four legs and could walk. Follow scientists as they search for new clues to the winding evolutionary path of mammals that moved from the land into the sea to become the largest animals on Earth. (Premiered January 31, 2024 at 9 pm on PBS.)

Giant fossils uncovered in the Sahara Desert reveal new secrets of how whales evolved.

NOVA revolves around a simple premise: the world of science is exciting! For NOVA viewers, science means adventure and exploration--because from ants to aliens, this weekly documentary series probes the far reaches of earth, sea and stars.  NOVA proves that science is neither secret lore nor sacred ritual but rather, at its heart, a lifelong journey of discovery.

252 million years ago, the most devastating mass extinction of all time abruptly wiped out around 90% of all species on Earth. The culprits were the biggest volcanic eruptions the world has ever seen, emitting some 700 thousand cubic miles of magma and rock. Volcanic gasses permeated the atmosphere and acidified the oceans while toxic gasses destroyed the ozone layer, bathing the planet in destructive UV radiation. The event – now called “The Great Dying” – came close to wiping out all life on the planet. Follow scientists as they piece together geologic evidence from the deep past and clues from today’s ecosystems to discover how life made it through and evolved into the astonishing variety we see around us today. Premiering October 25 at 9 pm on PBS.

How did life bounce back after a cataclysmic extinction wiped out some 90% of all species?

Ancient Earth: Inferno

Departed pets can now live on through reproductive cloning. But many owners have been surprised to find that genetics aren’t everything—Fluffy the second turns out to be an animal all its own.

Cloning has come a long way since Dolly the sheep, but it still has limits.

The False Promise of Cloning Your Pet

cast iron skillet full of Brussels sprout halves and bits of bacon sits on a wooden surface

Here is how oil and heat can form a durable coating.

What happens when you season a cast iron pan

A dried, twisted old tree against a blue sky

"Methuselah," a bristlecone pine in California long considered to be the world's oldest tree. Image Credit: Yen Chao, Flickr

Will a Patagonian cypress in Chile prove older than California’s most elderly bristlecone pine?

The world’s oldest tree has competition

The James Webb Space Telescope, a project 30 years in the making, launched in December 2021 and arrived at its destination point in January. The telescope will be able to see further into the infrared part of the spectrum than Hubble, and further back in time.

The farther away a galaxy is, the redder it appears to our telescopes.

Why Distant Galaxies Look Red

Also known as "water bears" or "moss piglets," tardigrades are microscopic animals with extreme survival abilities. Image credit: iStock

Special proteins that help tardigrades survive extreme conditions might be the key to extending the shelf life of life-saving pharmaceuticals.

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