TV
Ron Batzdorff / Universal Pictures |
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"Apollo 13," starring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon and Bill Paxton, ranks
among the best fictional movies about NASA's moon effort.
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If you're lusting to relive the glory days of NASA's early space effort, the best time for doing that is right now: Video resources about the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs are at their peak as the 40th anniversary of humanity's first moon landing approaches. Here's a Top 10 list, plus a couple of extra-credit pointers to more space video:
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msnbc.com |
Click for video: The
primate fossil known
as "Ida" has caused
a scientific stir.
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A growing number of online ventures are serving up regular doses of science video to fill the gaps in TV coverage - including some ventures that are led by media-hopping TV types.
The latest entrant in the field is "Science Nation," a weekly video series funded by the National Science Foundation and created by former CNN producers. The first installment, released Monday, focuses on Earth's "alien" species - that is, extremophile organisms that can survive in Antarctica's frozen deserts or volcanic vents at the bottom of the ocean.
"Science Nation" is just the tip of the video iceberg: Here are the beginnings of a mini-TV guide for science video online:
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NASA |
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The documentary "Orphans of Apollo" focuses on the effort to privatize Russia's Mir
space station, shown here during a 1995 space shuttle mission to the outpost. The
effort helped prolong Mir's life but ultimately failed, leading to its demise in 2001.
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A behind-the-scenes documentary on the unsuccessful effort to turn Russia's Mir space station into a money-making operation serves as a cautionary tale for the private sector's present-day space ambitions.
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Warner Bros. Pictures |
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Can time travel save Los Angeles? Marcus Wright (played by Sam Worthington)
surveys post-Judgment Day destruction in the movie "Terminator Salvation."
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Time travel has been a standard feature of science fiction, but never more so than today: The latest "Star Trek" and "Terminator" movies, as well as the TV series "Lost" and "Heroes," play off the classic paradoxes, and still more shows are on the way. In fiction, all it takes to travel back in time is a black hole or a flash of energy, with nothing more than a hand-waving explanation. If only real-life experiments in time and causality were that simple ...
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Photo by B. Janine Morison |
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"Battlestar Galactica" scientific adviser Kevin Grazier takes a seat in a Viper fighter
during a visit to the series' Vancouver set. The series finale airs tonight.
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How does a naked singularity work? What happens when a spacecraft gets stressed-out? Answering such questions is all in a day's work for Kevin Grazier, the scientific adviser for the critically acclaimed TV series "Battlestar Galactica."
Over the course of five years, the planetary scientist has figured out how to juggle his day job on the Cassini science team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory as well as his duties for "Battlestar Galactica" and other sci-fi projects. But even though Galactica is gearing up for its last ride tonight, Grazier still hasn't completely figured out how the spaceship manages to travel faster than light.
"If I knew exactly how it worked, I'd be going to Stockholm for my Nobel," Grazier joked.
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Ironbound Films |
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Linguist Gregory Anderson, left, discusses counting systems with Oranchu
Gomongo, who speaks India's endangered Sora language.
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The Indiana Jones movies make it look as if the archaeologists have all the fun - but if you really want to see lost worlds and uncover cultural riches, you should think about becoming a linguist. At least that's the message I got from "The Linguists," a documentary that makes the leap from the film-festival circuit to the airwaves on PBS tonight.
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137 Films |
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Theoretical physicist Marcela Carena is one of the scientists appearing in "The
Atom Smashers," a behind-the-scenes look at Fermilab's hunt for the Higgs boson.
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Can the movies turn real-life physicists into stars? "The Atom Smashers," airing Tuesday on PBS, packs a lot of real life into its saga about the world's biggest subatomic quest - plus a bit of movie magic.
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Providence Pictures |
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Biblical archaeologist Ron Tappy examines the Tel Zayit abecedary, a 2,900-
year-old alphabet stone that suggests King Solomon was a real historical figure.
Tappy's findings figure in "The Bible's Buried Secrets," a PBS documentary.
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"The Bible's Buried Secrets," premiering tonight on PBS, presents archaeological findings that will annoy believers as well as skeptics - which suggests the TV documentary just might be on the right track.
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Caltech / Palomar Observatory |
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Stars whirl over the 200-inch Hale Telescope's dome in a time-exposure photo.
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Astronomer George Ellery Hale's decades-long drive to build bigger and bigger telescopes is the stuff that operas are made of. The epic brought him in contact with the richest and smartest people of a century ago ... forced him to struggle against petty jealousies and personal demons ... and led him to grand achievements that some thought were impossible.
"The Journey to Palomar," a PBS documentary premiering tonight, touches upon all those operatic elements while keeping its focus squarely on the quest's deeper meaning: In the first half of the 20th century, telescope-building was the biggest science around.
"This was the equivalent of a moonshot in that time period," historian Kevin Starr explains during the 90-minute documentary.
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Space.com |
An artist's conception shows a
massive black hole in action.
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If big black holes are so scary, why do scientists think it's not a problem to be around teeny-tiny black holes? Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson literally wrote the book on "Death by Black Hole," so he ought to know. He also ought to be good at explaining the difference, since he's the director of the Hayden Planetarium at New York's American Museum of Natural History as well as the host of "NOVA scienceNOW," the TV magazine show that begins its summer season on PBS tonight.
If you're wrestling with all the claims and counterclaims over matter-gobbling black holes, this is the guy you want on your side.
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