PBS Nova - Sinking The Supership

"The final phase of the Pacific war during World War II saw a terrible new tactic: massed kamikaze attacks on American ships by Japanese planes. But the biggest kamikaze attack of all was the suicidal mission of the super battleship Yamato, the largest, most advanced warship of the day. In this program, NOVA joins an international team exploring the grave of this magnificent vessel to learn the secrets of her design, her final mission, and the violent events that brought her down.

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PBS Nova: Kingdom of the Seahorse

They’re the stuff of myth: a remarkable fish whose male becomes pregnant and gives birth.
Tour the magical and complex world of the seahorse, from an underwater enclave in Australia
(where their mating dance is caught on film for the first time) to the bustling apothecary shops of Hong Kong,to a village in the Philippines dependent on the seahorse for survival.

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PBS Nova Why the Towers Fell (2002)

This documentary uses footage of the erection of the World Trade Center, the 1993 bombing, Sept 11 and Ground Zero, graphics of the towers and the planes hitting them, and testimony from survivors, engineers, firemen, and the builder Leslie Robertson. The WTC was built to overcome what was previously seen as drawbacks to older buildings like The Empire State Building, with a new approach to provide more usable floorspace. This was to make a steel outer skeleton which would bend in the force of the wind, a steel inner core of girders, and steel floor trusses that braced the skeleton to the core.

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PBS NOVA - Lizard Kings (2009) 720p HDTV SoS

They look like dragons and inspire visions of fire-spitting monsters. But these creatures with their long claws, razor-sharp teeth, and muscular, whip-like tails are actually monitors, the largest lizards now walking the planet. With their acute intelligence, these lizards—including the largest of all, the Komodo dragon—are a very different kind of reptile, blurring the line between reptiles and mammals. Thriving on Earth essentially unchanged since the time of the dinosaurs, they are a very successful species, versatile at adapting to all kinds of settings. This program looks at what makes these long-tongued reptiles so similar to mammals and what has allowed them to become such unique survivors.

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PBS NOVA - AstroSpies (2008) 720p HDTV SoS

Millions remember the countdowns, launches, splashdowns, and parades as the U.S. raced the Soviet Union to the moon in the 1960s. Few know that both superpowers ran parallel covert space programs to launch military astronauts on spying missions, and even fewer know what became of the military astronauts they trained. Highly classified for decades, these top-secret missions might easily have triggered a shooting war in orbit. NOVA travels to Russia for exclusive access to cosmonauts and their restricted space facility and obtains candid first-time interviews with astronauts in the American military space program. ASTROSPIES uncovers new clues about the tensest period of the Cold War, when the U.S. and USSR were on the verge of war and desperate for intelligence on each other’s nuclear capabilities.

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PBS NOVA - The Spy Factory (2009) 720p HDTV SoS

For the first time on television, NOVA exposes the hidden world of the high-tech, 21st-century eavesdropping carried out by the National Security Agency. Today, the NSA is the world's largest intelligence agency, three times the size of the CIA and far more secret. Its mission is to eavesdrop on the world from cell phones in Europe to pay phones in Afghanistan to e-mail messages from Pakistan to Baghdad. But since 9/11, it has also turned its giant ear inward, listening in without warrant on thousands of American citizens, many of whom are on the government's secret watch list, now more than half-a-million names long. Based on the 2008 best-seller The Shadow Factory by journalist James Bamford, "The Spy Factory" is a gripping investigation of the NSA from its tragic failures leading up to the 9/11 attacks to its secret listening rooms currently installed in the nation's telecom networks, and more generally from the threat to privacy to the effectiveness of high-tech surveillance in the age of terrorism.

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PBS NOVA - Voyage to the Mystery Moon (2006) 720p HDTV SoS

Chronicling a bold voyage of discovery - the Cassini/Huygens mission to Saturn and its enigmatic moon Titan - "Voyage to the Mystery Moon" delivers striking images of these fascinating planetary bodies nearly a billion miles from Earth. Saturn's broad rings hold myriad mysteries, and Titan, whose soupy atmosphere is similar to the one that enshrouded our planet billions of years ago, may hold clues to the origins of life. In hopes of answering some long-standing astrophysical questions, teams from NASA and the European Space Agency gamble years of effort to both ease the Cassini spacecraft into a workable orbit around Saturn and land the Huygens probe on Titan's never-before-seen surface.

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PBS NOVA - Rat Attack (2009) 720p HDTV SoS

Every 48 years, the inhabitants of the remote Indian state of Mizoram suffer a horrendous ordeal known locally as mautam. An indigenous species of bamboo, blanketing 30 percent of Mizoram's 8,100 square miles, blooms once every half-century, spurring an explosion in the rat population that feeds off the bamboo's fruit. The rats run amok, destroying crops and precipitating a crippling famine throughout Mizoram. NOVA follows this gripping tale of nature's capacity to engender human suffering and investigates the botanical mystery of why the bamboo flowers with clockwork precision every half-century.

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PBS NOVA - The Big Energy Gamble (2009) 720p HDTV SoS

Arnold Schwarzenegger is betting on green. He wants to roll California’s greenhouse gas emissions back to their 1990 levels, and he’s promising Californians that their lifestyles — and their pocketbooks— won’t feel the pinch. But is Schwarzenegger gambling with his state’s economy? With help from eco-celebrities like Ed Begley, Jr. and Bill Nye “The Science Guy,” NOVA examines California’s aggressive pursuit of a sustainable energy future. From San Francisco’s Luscious Garage, where mechanics create custom plug-in hybrids for customers like Google, to the Tehachapi Valley, where thousands of wind turbines are spinning out electricity, NOVA visits the places where green energy is already becoming a reality. Yet some critics fear that, as the nation struggles through an economic meltdown, the state’s new policies are inviting dire consequences. Will California be a role model for the rest of the country or a cautionary tale?

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PBS NOVA - Extreme Ice (2009) 720p HDTV SoS

Extreme Ice focuses on climate change shown through time-lapse cameras set by internationally acclaimed photojournalist James Balog, who has placed equipment in more than two dozen glacial locations around the world in order to assess the impact of global warming. Cameras shoot once an hour during daylight. The endeavor will build an archive of some 300,000 images over two years and is one of the most comprehensive photographic studies undertaken on shrinking glaciers and rising sea levels.

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PBS NOVA - Cracking the Maya Code (2008) 720p HDTV SoS

Cracking the Maya Code is a definitive look back at how a handful of pioneers, from the 16th century to the present, deciphered the intricate system of hieroglyphs developed by the Maya. One of the greatest detective stories in all of archeology, it has never been told in depth on television before. hieroglyphs. With magnificent footage of Mayan temples and art, this program, which was many years in the making, culminates in a fascinating account of this ancient civilization's ingenious method of communication.

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PBS NOVA - Last Extinction (2009) 720p HDTV SoS

Fifteen thousand years ago, North America was like the Serengeti on steroids, with mega-creatures roaming a continent teeming with incredible wildlife. But then, in a blip of geologic time, between 15 and 35 magnificent large types of animals went extinct. In this television exclusive, NOVA joins forces with prominent scientists to test a startling hypothesis that may finally explain these sudden and widespread extinctions—that a comet broke apart in the atmosphere and devastated North America 12,900 years ago.

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PBS NOVA - Arctic Dinosaurs (2008) 720p HDTV SoS

Most people imagine dinosaurs lurking in warm locales with swamps and jungles, dining on vegetation and each other. But a new NOVA documentary reveals that many species also survived and thrived in the harsh environments of the north and south polar regions. This program focuses on two high-stakes expeditions and the paleontologists who push the limits of science to unearth 70 million-year-old fossils buried in the vast Alaskan tundra.

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PBS NOVA - Alien from Earth (2008) 720p HDTV

NOVA presents an exclusive new investigation into the sensational discovery of the bizarre ancient bones of the so-called "Hobbit" unearthed in a cave on the island of Flores, Indonesia. No more than 3 feet tall when fully grown, these tiny humans survived in the cave for tens of thousands of years, hunting the huge and fierce Komodo dragons that roamed their remote island home. In Alien from Earth. NOVA explores the latest evidence in a furious scientific debate on what the Hobbit bones represent. Are they the remains of a dwarf race of modern humans suffering from a strange disease? Or are they the unique and tantalizing testament to a previously unknown branch of the human family?

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PBS NOVA - Fireworks (2002) 720p HDTV SoS

Everybody loves fireworks-- but why? Behind the dazzling displays and fiery explosions is a colorful past as well as a complex and secretive science that goes back over 1000 years. First discovered by the Chinese, who used firecrackers to scare away evil spirits, fireworks continue to thrill millions each year with their beauty and power. Join NOVA and travel to Italy, England, and Pennsylvania to discover the chemical secrets that put the bang in the rocket and the fizz in the Roman candle. Meet the Zambelli family, the "First family of fireworks," and see the spectacular results of secrets passed down through generations. Watch master pyrotechnicians show how intricate fireworks displays are created. Discover how elaborate computer controls turn a celebration at Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium into amazing split-second science. And enjoy some of the world’s most astounding public fireworks displays, including the record-setting millennial celebration at the Eiffel Tower.

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