Venom scientists are in a race against time. Inside the bodies of many creatures, evolution has produced extreme toxic cocktails, all designed for one reason: to kill. It took millions of years to perfect these ultimate brews of proteins and peptides and we have only just begun to discover their potential. Now, the race is on to collect and study them before the animals that produce them disappear. But how does venom do its deadly work? NOVA reveals how venom causes the body to shut down, arteries to bleed uncontrollably and limbs to go black and die. But nature's most destructive and extreme poisons could contain the building blocks for a new generation of advanced drugs that could treat heart attack, stroke, diabetes, obesity and cancer. VENOM follows two scientists on their expeditions to track down and capture the planet's most deadly creatures, risking life and limb just to tease out milligrams of venom and get it back to the lab. Find out how nature's deadliest cocktails could be medicine's brightest new hope.

When Tony Stark's world is torn apart by a formidable terrorist called the Mandarin, he starts an odyssey of rebuilding and retribution.

Of all the continents on Earth, none preserves a more spectacular story of our planet's origins than Australia. NOVA's four-part "Australia's First 4 Billion Years" takes viewers on a rollicking adventure from the birth of the Earth to the emergence of the world we know today. With help from host and scientist Richard Smith, we meet titanic dinosaurs and giant kangaroos, sea monsters and prehistoric crustaceans, disappearing mountains and deadly asteroids. Epic in scope, intimate in nature, this is the untold story of the land "down under," the one island continent that has got it all. Join NOVA on the ultimate Outback road trip, an exploration of the history of the planet as seen through the window of the Australian continent.

How did life storm the beaches and dominate planet Earth? Ancient Australian fossils offer clues. While the oceans were teeming, the world above the waves remained an almost lifeless wasteland -- until the Silurian period, when the conquest of the land began. Host Richard Smith introduces Earth's forgotten pioneers: the scuttling arthropod armies that invaded the shores and the waves of green revolutionaries whose battle for the light pushed plant life across the face of a barren continent. Join NOVA's prehistoric adventure as four-legged animals walk onto dry land, with the planet poised for disaster.

In 1900, a storm blew a boatload of sponge divers off course and forced them to take shelter by the tiny Mediterranean island of Antikythera. Diving the next day, they discovered a 2,000 year-old Greek shipwreck. Among the ship's cargo they hauled up was an unimpressive green lump of corroded bronze. Rusted remnants of gear wheels could be seen on its surface, suggesting some kind of intricate mechanism. The first X-ray studies confirmed that idea, but how it worked and what it was for puzzled scientists for decades. Recently, hi-tech imaging has revealed the extraordinary truth: this unique clockwork machine was the world's first computer. An array of 30 intricate bronze gear wheels, originally housed in a shoebox-size wooden case, was designed to predict the dates of lunar and solar eclipses, track the Moon's subtle motions through the sky, and calculate the dates of significant events such as the Olympic Games. No device of comparable technological sophistication is known from anywhere in the world for at least another 1,000 years. So who was the genius inventor behind it? And what happened to the advanced astronomical and engineering knowledge of its makers? NOVA follows the ingenious sleuthing that finally decoded the truth behind the amazing ancient Greek computer.

An unpromising lump of metal found in a 2,000-year-old shipwreck turns out to be an extraordinary treasure: the world’s first computer. NOVA follows the ingenious detective work that painstakingly discovered the truth about the ancient Greek device: it was an astonishingly sophisticated astronomical calculator and eclipse predictor, unrivaled until the era of modern science and believed to be from the workshop of Archimedes.

It was YouTube's single most watched online video event of all time. On the morning of February 15th, car cameras and cellphones captured a blinding streak that flashed across the sky over Russia's Ural Mountains, followed by an explosion that injured some 1,500 people and damaged buildings in six cities. According to NASA, the Siberian meteor--the size of a small house and weighing around 10,000 tons--was the largest object to burst in the atmosphere since the massive Tunguska event of 1908. Within days, NOVA crews were in Russia following impact scientists as they hunted for debris from the explosion and clues to the meteor's origin. Besides this on-the-spot report, Siberian Fireball explores the evidence for far greater explosions in the past--from Tunguska to the asteroid that extinguished the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. With the U.S. spending an average of only about $3 million a year on asteroid detection, what are the chances that a massive impact will strike us without warning, as the Siberian meteor did?

Over 60,000 years ago, the first modern humansGÇöpeople physically identical to us todayGÇöleft their African homeland and entered Europe, then a bleak and inhospitable continent in the grip of the Ice Age. But when they arrived, they were not alone: the stocky, powerfully built Neanderthals had already been living there for hundred of thousands of years. So what happened when the first modern humans encountered the Neanderthals? Did we make love or war? That question has tantalized generations of scholars and seized the popular imagination. Then, in 2010, a team led by geneticist Svante Paabo announced stunning news. Not only had they reconstructed much of the Neanderthal genomeGÇöan extraordinary technical feat that would have seemed impossible only a decade agoGÇöbut their analysis showed that "we" modern humans had interbred with Neanderthals, leaving a small but consistent signature of Neanderthal genes behind in everyone outside Africa today. In "Decoding Neanderthals," NOVA explores the implications of this exciting discovery. In the traditional view, Neanderthals differed from "us" in behavior and capabilities as well as anatomy. But were they really mentally inferior, as inexpressive and clumsy as the cartoon caveman they inspired? NOVA explores a range of intriguing new evidence for Neanderthal self-expression and language, all pointing to the fact that we may have seriously underestimated our mysterious, long-vanished human cousins.

Responsible for over 250,000 deaths, the 2004 tsunami that struck the island of Sumatra before roiling Thailand, Sri Lanka, and India is chronicled in this detailed "Nova" documentary. This gripping account of the tragedy follows the devastation minute by minute and reveals the work of scientists exploring the possibilities of a similar event wreaking havoc on the United States.

Every year, armed with the best technology, thousands of firefighters battle the blazes, but in spite of all their efforts, we are not winning the fire wars. Can we win them? Should we fight all fires? Ecologists claim that fire is a necessary and revitalizing element of healthy ecosystems. What would happen if we did eliminate all wildfires? Join NOVA to explore the science of fire, from the smallest match to uncontrollable conflagrations.

In its worst crisis since World War II, Japan faces disaster on an epic scale: a rising death toll in the tens of thousands, massive destruction of homes and businesses, shortages of water and power, and the specter of nuclear reactor meltdowns. Japan's Killer Quake combines on-the-spot reporting, personal stories, compelling eyewitness videos, and exclusive helicopter footage for a unique look at the science behind the catastrophe.