NOVA

Science and Nature Series / 24 Seasons

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.

53m 40s

These Ancient Stones Helped Track the Seasons

2m 57s

Along the river Gambia in Senegal, there are more than a thousand stone circles. The people who placed these stones would have observed how the locations of sunrise and sunset varied over the year.

Star Chasers of Senegal Preview

27s

A NASA spacecraft named Lucy blasts off from Cape Canaveral on a mission to the Trojans, a group of asteroids over 400 million miles from Earth thought to hold important clues about the origins of our solar system. Just hours before, in Senegal, West Africa, a team of scientists sets out to capture extraordinarily precise observations vital to the success of the Lucy mission.

The Area of a Circle, Explained with Pizza

4m 23s

One of the oldest calculus problems, finding the area of a circle, can be visualized using a pizza. By dividing it up into ever smaller slices and laying them out next to one another, eventually you get something close a rectangle.

Zero to Infinity Preview

28s

Zero and infinity. These seemingly opposite, obvious, and indispensable concepts are relatively recent human inventions. Discover the surprising story of how these key concepts that revolutionized mathematics came to be – not just once, but over and over again as different cultures invented and re-invented them across thousands of years.

Crypto Decoded Preview

30s

From Bitcoin to NFTs, crypto is making headlines. But what exactly is it, and how does it work? Experts go beyond the hype and skepticism to unravel the social and technological underpinnings of crypto – exploring how it came to be and why this new technology may change more than just money.

Who Carved These Mysterious Lines in the Desert?

6m 57s

The Nazca were an ancient group of farmers and fishermen that used desert plateaus as a canvas for giant geoglyphs. But some of these drawings pre-date the Nazca. Who created them and why?

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