Summary: Is M theory Einstein's elusive "theory of everything"? In this program, visionary physicists Neil Turok, of Cambridge University; Burt Ovrut, of the University of Pennsylvania; Paul Steinhardt, of Princeton University; and others theorize on a revolutionary cosmology that explains what happened at the Big Bang-and in the process posit a continuum in which our universe is but one bubble among an...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: This program introduces string theory and shows how modern physics—composed of two theories that are ferociously incompatible—reached its schizophrenic impasse. One theory, general relativity, successfully describes the stars and galaxies, while another, quantum mechanics, is equally successful at explaining small things like atoms and subatomic particles. Albert Einstein, the inventor of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2003
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Summary: This program opens with a whimsical scene in a movie theater in which the history of the universe trails backwards to the big bang, the moment at which general relativity and quantum mechanics both come into play, and therefore the point at which our conventional model of reality breaks down. Then it’s string theory to the rescue as physicist Bryan Greene describes the serendipitous steps that...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2003
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Summary: In this program, Dennis Wholey has a conversation about Native American religions with Suzan Shown Harjo, executive director of The Morning Star Institute in Washington, D.C. Topics of discussion include the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978; some common aspects of the approximately 300 remaining Native American religions being practiced in the U.S. today; the concepts of a supreme...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: An astronomer recently made an unexpected discovery - that the universe is expanding faster than ever and is actually being pushed apart. This episode of NOVA follows two rival astronomy teams as they work to unlock the secrets of the universe, including the riddle of a mysterious force that some scientists believe counteracts gravity. Stunning three-dimensional cosmic simulations captured with...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2000
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Summary: Dramatic shot of Indian chief up close; mythology of Native American culture
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1950
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Summary: Steve Jones investigates what constitutes Native American blood, then follows three individuals as they use DNA matching of a female gene to attempt to confirm a genetic link between themselves and their Pequot ancestors. How Native Americans were disconnected from their heritage is examined by several tribal members, and the point is made that some want to establish their Indian bloodlines to...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Once forced to hide their heritage, Native Americans now enjoy both an acceptance and a celebration of their history and culture. By presenting the experiences of Native Americans from a wide array of fields including artisans, performers, and teachers, this program shows how many tribes are returning to the traditions and spirituality of their ancestors. Among those interviewed are Kevin...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: This program explores the many similarities among tribal nations, including a profound respect for nature, myth, and tradition; matriarchal governance; a communal lifestyle; a belief in an afterlife; and the use of pictographs, symbols, and patterns rather than an alphabet-based language. Also featured are brief scenes of re-created warfare: the French and Iroquois vs. the British as a part of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: The Big Bang is a widely accepted theoretical model, but CERN's Large Hadron Collider offers something more tangible: creating the physical conditions surrounding the birth of the universe. This program introduces viewers to that experiment and to others under way around the world-all of them designed to increase our knowledge of the physical structure of the cosmos. Dr. Andy Kirk of the U.K....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: MS's of an American Indian (wearing war headdress) showing a group of scrawny white girls (some of whom wear Indian-associated accoutrements) how to shoot arrows.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1922
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Summary: For the nearly two million Native Americans, representing 500 Indian nations, life in the U.S. today is a frustrating struggle to retain their ancient ways while functioning in the modern world, to carve out an identity in an overwhelmingly non-Indian culture. This program examines the needs and problems of today's Native Americans, both those who live on the reservation and those who have...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: The laws of physics are all well and good, but near-chaos apparently rules the cosmos. This program illustrates the extreme volatility of the forces at work in our universe, underscoring both the creative and destructive potential of celestial collisions, eruptions, and explosions. From awe-inspiring supernova bursts to fiery coronal mass ejections to careening asteroids that threaten our...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: The Lucasian chair of mathematics at Cambridge University is one of the most prestigious professorships in the world, occupied at one time by Isaac Newton. Its present incumbent is Stephen Hawking, who established his reputation as one of this century's most brilliant astrophysicists and mathematicians with his discovery that black holes are not necessarily black, and that some of them even...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: Today's astronomers use more sophisticated "eyes" than stargazers of centuries past, but peering into the night sky remains the principal way of exploring the depths of space. This program features observatories and instruments that use state-of-the-art technology to provide glimpses of the distant cosmos. Journeying to Chile's Atacama Desert, home of the world's largest telescope, the film...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: To walk around with Murray Gell-Mann is to see the world through the keen eyes of a scientist. Gell-Mann, by temperament, approaches elementary particle physics from the point of view of a naturalist. We owe to him the discovery in 1952 of the quantity in theoretical physics called "strangeness. In 1969, he received the Nobel Prize for work that led to the discovery of "quarks. In this program...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: For the limitless imagination of a scientific mind, the ever-expanding universe is an ideal subject of inquiry! This collection of 50 video clips (45 seconds to 2 minutes 30 seconds each) uses high-quality film footage and detailed animations to investigate the structure of the universe, the stars, the Solar System, the planets of the Solar System, Earth and the Moon, astronomical observation,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: The remains of more than 10,000 Native Americans unearthed at archaeological sites across the U.S. are in the possession of museums such as the Smithsonian. Is the analysis of the bones valid scientific research, or is it a desecration of Native American culture? This program focuses on the tensions between scientists, historians, and museum curators and Native American groups, as the bones...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Janna Levin is a professor of physics and astronomy at Barnard, where she studies the early universe, chaos, and black holes. She's also the author of How the Universe Got Its Spots and the novel A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines. According to Levin, the universe has a soundtrack - a sonic composition that records celestial events - and she offers the example of black holes, which bang on...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: In the spring of 1805, Tenskwatawa, a Shawnee, fell into a deep trance and claimed to have met the Master of Life, who told him that the Indians were in dire straits because they had adopted white culture and rejected traditional spiritual ways. In this episode the young prophet starts a spiritual revival movement that drew thousands of adherents from tribes across the Midwest. His elder...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: This episode begins in March of 1621, in what is now southeastern Massachusetts, when Massasoit, the leading sachem of the Wampanoag, negotiated with a ragged group of English colonists. The pale-skinned Pilgrim foreigners were in desperate need of Native help. Massasoit’s people had been decimated by unexplained sickness, and he calculated that an alliance with the foreigners could help...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: On the night of February 27, 1973, American Indian Movement (AIM) and Oglala Lakota activists seized the hamlet of Wounded Knee, and police cordoned off the area. Demanding redress for grievances, the protesters captured the world's attention for 71 gripping days. With heavily armed federal troops tightening a cordon around the Indians, the event recalled the massacre at Wounded Knee almost a...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: In this program, Professor Marcus du Sautoy explores mathematical milestones of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece. Topics include Egypt's unusual method of multiplication and division, as well as Egyptians' understanding of binary numbers, fractions, and solids such as the pyramid; Babylon's base-60 number system - the foundation of minutes and hours - and Babylonians' use of quadratic...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: The origins of the cosmos are shrouded in the distant past. But new discoveries may emerge in a place that is just as dark and obscure-buried, in fact, under 100 meters of Swiss bedrock. This program goes inside the massive research facility known as CERN to follow work undertaken with its Large Hadron Collider. Viewers learn about an experiment that forces sub-atomic particles to crash into...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010