NOVA brings you stories from the frontlines of science and engineering, answering the big questions of today and tomorrow, from how our ancestors lived, to whether parallel universes exist, to how technology will transform our lives. Visit the official website to watch full-length documentaries, or explore our world through short-form video, on our digital publication NOVA Next.
After crushing his leg in a mining accident, West Virginia resident Jasen Edwards was prescribed painkillers. He became addicted––and lost his job and marriage as a result. But today, Jasen’s on the road to recovery.
Puerto Ricans are innovating to find new energy solutions after the storm revealed extreme weaknesses in the island’s electrical grid.
Over 1800 rhesus macaques inhabit the tiny island of Cayo Santiago just off the east coast of Puerto Rico. Most of these monkeys managed to survive Hurricane Maria, but researchers speculate that their behavior and cognition may have been altered. The reason is a change in availability of resources on the island, including that of shade.
Follow the race to rebuild the Old Blenheim Bridge in New York State, an icon of 19th century American engineering, destroyed by Hurricane Irene in 2011. Watch a team of elite craftsmen faithfully reproduce the massive, intricate wooden structure under grueling time pressure as flooding threatens their worksite.
Explore Nyamuragira, one of the world’s most active and mysterious volcanoes in Africa. Decades of civil strife have prevented scientists from investigating the volcano, but a brief pause allows an international team of experts to fly by helicopter to the summit to investigate. Discover the volcano’s hidden dangers, and probe whether magma pressure is building up to threaten another eruption.
Climb with volcano experts to the summit of Nyiragongo, a highly active volcano in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Twice in recent memory it has erupted, devastating Goma, a neighboring city of 1 million people. To investigate when it might erupt next, scientists climb into its crater toward a bubbling lava lake to deploy sensors and monitor the volcano’s activity.
Silica is a key component of sand but also of lava. The less there is, the more fluid the lava, and the faster it flows. Nyiragongo has some of the lowest-silica-content-lava on the planet, but there’s another clue to the lava’s speed—and it’s not good news.
NOVA takes you inside the operating room to witness organ transplant teams transferring organs from donors to recipients. Meet families navigating both sides of a transplant, and researchers working to end the organ shortage. Their efforts to understand organ rejection, discover ways to keep organs alive outside the body, and even grow artificial organs with stem cells, could save countless lives.
As the number of people who need organs goes up, the number of donors has plateaued, meaning we need to find new solutions. Dr. Doris Taylor and her team’s answer: custom-building organs from cadavers.
Under the right circumstances, your brain can trick you into experiencing some time intervals as longer than others. But under other circumstances, time itself really does slow down. The two phenomena—psychological and physical—are more similar than you might think.
Remembering John Pilley, the owner and trainer of Chaser the Border Collie.
When it comes to generating power, shining light on silicon opens up many possibilities.
Could pieces of plastic garbage become the resource we need to construct buildings?
A team of scientists recently discovered a large body of liquid water beneath the southern ice cap of Mars. The presence of liquid water, an essential ingredient for life as we know it, could help inform future studies for past and potentially extant life on the red planet. Explore the discovery made with radar technology and learn what scientists think about the potential of life on Mars.
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