Naked Science - Solar Force

National Geographic's Naked Science

Naked Science is a one-hour American documentary television series that premiered in 2004 on the National Geographic Channel. The program features various subjects related to science and technology. The last series was released in 2009. There has been a new series each year since 2004.

Watch Documentary - Solar Force

Do the sun's invisible cosmic rays influence our weather? Can solar winds impact Earth? The level of cosmic rays emitted by the sun is anything but constant. Scientists are just now discovering the ways in which the sun's fluctuating output affects our planet's weather and overall climate.

Heavy Watergate and Heavy Water

Two Documentaries in one Post!

Watch documentary; Heavy Watergate: The War Against Cold Fusion

On March 23, 1989, respected chemists, Dr. Stanley Pons and Dr. Martin Fleishman made an announcement that rocked the world of science.

Their tabletop experiments with heavy water, a renewable resource readily available in ocean water, yielded enormous amounts of heat energy. Appropriately named, “Cold Fusion,” this breakthrough challenged many basic scientific concepts.

In response, a group of powerful physicists, heavily reliant upon government funding for their hot fusion research, leveled an unprecedented smear campaign against Pons, Fleishman and the entire field of Cold Fusion science. Was the discovery of Fire From Water too good to be true? Or was it the discovery of the millennium? (text from epiphanypictures.com)

Heavy Water: a film for Chernobyl 

Buy DVD (below) - Heavy Water: a film for Chernobyl

On April 26th, 1986, reactor four at Chernobyl nuclear power station explodes, sending an enormous radioactive cloud over Northern Ukraine and neighbouring Belarus. The danger is kept a secret from the rest of the world and the nearby population who go about their business as usual. May Day celebrations begin, children play and the residents of Pripyat marvel at the spectacular fire raging at the reactor. After three days, an area the size of England becomes contaminated with radioactive dust, creating a 'zone' of poisoned land. Based on Mario Petrucci's award-winning book-length poem, Heavy Water: a film for Chernobyll tells the story of the people who dealt with the disaster at ground-level: the fire-fighters, the soldiers, the 'liquidators', and their families. Poetry read by David Bickerstaff, Francine Brody, Juliet Stevenson, David Threlfall and Samuel West.

Watch Excerpts;

Heavy Water: a film for Chernobyl Part One

Heavy Water: a film for Chernobyl Part Two

Heavy Water: a film for Chernobyl Part Three

Heavy Water: a film for Chernobyl Part Four

Heavy Water: a film for Chernobyl Part Five

Heavy Water: a film for Chernobyl Part Six

A Brief History of Time

A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
An amazing and fascinating documentary about Stephen Hawking's ideas from his book titled the same and about his life.

A Brief History of Time attempts to explain a range of subjects in cosmology, including the Big Bang, black holes, light cones and superstring theory, to the nonspecialist reader. Its main goal is to give an overview of the subject but, unusual for a popular science book, it also attempts to explain some complex mathematics. The author notes that an editor warned him that for every equation in the book the readership would be halved, hence it includes only a single equation: E = mc2. In addition to Hawking's abstinence from equations, the book also simplifies matters by means of illustrations throughout the text, depicting complex models and diagrams.
In 1991, Errol Morris directed a documentary film about Hawking, but although they share a title, the film is a biographical study of Hawking, and not a filmed version of the book - and here it is;

Watch Documentary - A Brief History of Time - Prof. Stephen Hawking

Fun Notes;Before the book was published, an editor warned him that for every equation in the book the readership would be halved, hence it includes only a single equation: E = mc²

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The Illusion of Reality

Quantum Physics explained
In the last in his Documentary series Professor Jim Al-Khalili explores how studying the atom forced us to rethink the nature of reality itself. He discovers that there might be parallel universes in which different versions of us exist, finds out that empty space isn't empty at all, and investigates the differences in our perception of the world in the universe and the reality.
About the Maker of this Documentary
Jim Al-Khalili OBE (born 20 September 1962) is a British theoretical nuclear physicist, academic, author and broadcaster. Born in Baghdad in 1962 to an Iraqi father and English mother, Professor Al-Khalili studied physics at the University of Surrey. He graduated with a B.Sc. in 1986 and stayed on to pursue a Ph.D. in nuclear reaction theory, which he obtained in 1989. In that year he was awarded a Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) postdoctoral fellowship at University College London.

He returned to Surrey in 1991, first as a research assistant then lecturer. In 1994, Al-Khalili was awarded an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Advanced Research Fellowship for five years, during which time he established himself as a leading expert on the structure of neutron halo nuclei (atomic nuclei exhibiting the unusual feature of having one or two loosely bound neutrons orbiting the rest of the nucleus). He has published widely in his field. He currently holds an EPSRC Senior Media Fellowship. As a broadcaster, Jim Al-Khalili appears regularly on television and radio and writes regular articles for the British press. On television he is presenter of the BBC4 three part series Science and Islam about the leap in scientific knowledge that took place in the Islamic world between the 8th and 14th centuries.

The Six Billion Dollar Experiment

BBC Horizon Documentary - The Six Billion Dollar Experiment

If the video doesnt work then you can watch it on the following links;

Google Videos The Six Billion Dollar Experiment
Youku dot com - The Six Billion Dollar Experiment

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, intended to collide opposing particle beams, of either protons at an energy of 7 TeV per particle, or lead nuclei at an energy of 574 TeV per nucleus. The Large Hadron Collider was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) with the intention of testing various predictions of high-energy physics, including the existence of the hypothesized Higgs boson and of the large family of new particles predicted by supersymmetry. It lies in a tunnel 27 kilometres (17 mi) in circumference, as much as 175 metres (570 ft) beneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland. It is funded by and built in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 100 countries as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories.


On 10 September 2008, the proton beams were successfully circulated in the main ring of the LHC for the first time.On 19 September 2008, the operations were halted due to a serious fault between two superconducting bending magnets. Due to the time required to repair the resulting damage and to add additional safety features, the LHC is scheduled to be operational in mid-November 2009.

It is anticipated that the collider will either demonstrate or rule out the existence of the elusive Higgs boson, the last unobserved particle among those predicted by the Standard Model. Experimentally verifying the existence of the Higgs boson would shed light on the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking, through which the particles of the Standard Model are thought to acquire their mass. In addition to the Higgs boson, new particles predicted by possible extensions of the Standard Model might be produced at the LHC. More generally, physicists hope that the LHC will help answer key questions such as:

* Is the Higgs mechanism for generating elementary particle masses in the Standard Model indeed realised in nature? If so, how many Higgs bosons are there, and what are their masses?
* Are electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force just different manifestations of a single unified force, as predicted by various Grand Unification Theories?
* Why is gravity so many orders of magnitude weaker than the other three fundamental forces? See also Hierarchy problem.
* Is Supersymmetry realised in nature, implying that the known Standard Model particles have supersymmetric partners?
* Are there additional sources of quark flavour violation beyond those already predicted within the Standard Model?
* Why are there apparent violations of the symmetry between matter and antimatter? See also CP-violation.
* What is the nature of dark matter and dark energy?
* Are there extra dimensions, as predicted by various models inspired by string theory, and can we detect them?



Of the discoveries the LHC might make, the possibility of the discovery of the Higgs particle and supersymmetric partners have been keenly awaited by physicists for over 30 years, although neither of these can be considered certainties. Of the Higgs Stephen Hawking said in a BBC interview that "I think it will be much more exciting if we don't find the Higgs. That will show something is wrong, and we need to think again. I have a bet of one hundred dollars that we won't find the Higgs." Of supersymmetry it has been said "If the LHC does find supersymmetry, this would be one of the greatest achievements in the history of theoretical physics", which Hawking says "would be a key confirmation of string theory" and adds that "Whatever the LHC finds, or fails to find, the results will tell us a lot about the structure of the universe."

The expectation that the Higgs boson will be discovered at the LHC is reinforced by the impressive agreement between the precise measurements of particle processes at the LEP and the Tevatron and the predictions of the Standard Model (formulated under the assumption that the Higgs boson exists). Moreover, there are strong theoretical reasons leading physicists to expect that the LHC will discover new phenomena beyond those predicted by the Standard Model. Referring to the so-called hierarchy problem, namely the fact that the Higgs boson mass is subject to quantum corrections which - barring extremely precise cancellations - would make it so large as to undermine the internal consistency of the Standard Model, Chris Quigg writes: "Physicists have learned to be suspicious of immensely precise cancellations that are not mandated by deeper principles. Accordingly, in common with many of my colleagues, I think it highly likely that both the Higgs boson and other new phenomena will be found with the LHC." He then goes on presenting supersymmetry as a leading candidate for physics beyond the Standard Model, together with composite-Higgs models and large extra dimensions.

Ion collider

The LHC physics program is mainly based on proton–proton collisions. However, shorter running periods, typically one month per year, with heavy-ion collisions are included in the program. While lighter ions are considered as well, the baseline scheme deals with lead ions (see A Large Ion Collider Experiment). This will allow an advancement in the experimental program currently in progress at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The aim of the heavy-ion program is to provide a window on a state of matter known as Quark–gluon plasma, which characterized the early stage of the life of the Universe.
Wikipedia Link

Super String Theory

BBC Horizon's Super-String Theory - M-Theory Origin of the Universe




Insightful Scientific documentary about the Grand Unification Theory for the universe and its implications on our understanding of the universe's nature - String theory?.. Membrane Theory!
In theoretical physics, M-theory is an extension of string theory in which 11 dimensions are identified. Because the dimensionality exceeds the dimensionality of five superstring theories in 10 dimensions, it is believed that the 11-dimensional theory unifies all string theories (and supersedes them). Though a full description of the theory is not yet known, the low-entropy dynamics are known to be supergravity interacting with 2- and 5-dimensional membranes.

This idea is the unique supersymmetric theory in eleven dimensions, with its low-entropy matter content and interactions fully determined, and can be obtained as the strong coupling limit of type IIA string theory because a new dimension of space emerges as the coupling constant increases.

Drawing on the work of a number of string theorists (including Ashoke Sen, Chris Hull, Paul Townsend, Ben Freeling, Michael Duff and John Schwarz), Edward Witten of the Institute for Advanced Study suggested its existence at a conference at USC in 1995, and used M-theory to explain a number of previously observed dualities, sparking a flurry of new research in string theory called the second superstring revolution.

In the early 1990s, it was shown that the various superstring theories were related by dualities, which allow physicists to relate the description of an object in one super string theory to the description of a different object in another super string theory. These relationships imply that each of the super string theories is a different aspect of a single underlying theory, proposed by Witten, and named "M-theory".

Originally the letter M in M-theory was taken from membrane, a construct designed to generalize the strings of string theory. However, as Witten was more skeptical about membranes than his colleagues, he opted for "M-theory" rather than "Membrane theory". Witten has since stated that the interpretation of the M can be a matter of taste for the user of the word "M-theory".

M-theory is not yet complete; however it can be applied in many situations (usually by exploiting string theoretic dualities). The theory of electromagnetism was also in such a state in the mid-19th century; there were separate theories for electricity and magnetism and, although they were known to be related, the exact relationship was not clear until James Clerk Maxwell published his equations, in his 1864 paper A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field. Witten has suggested that a general formulation of M-theory will probably require the development of new mathematical language. However, some scientists have questioned the tangible successes of M-theory given its current incompleteness, and limited predictive power, even after so many years of intense research.

In late 2007, Bagger, Lambert and Gustavsson set off renewed interest in M-theory with the discovery of a candidate Lagrangian description of coincident M2-branes, based on a non-associative generalization of Lie Algebra, Nambu 3-algebra or Filippov 3-algebra. Practitioners hope the Bagger-Lambert-Gustavsson action (BLG action) will provide the long-sought microscopic description of M-theory.

Watch Documentary - Super-String Theory - M-Theory Origin of the Universe

Uncertain Principles

"Uncertain Principles" - this documentary features the miscellaneous ramblings of a physicist at a small liberal arts college. Physics, politics, pop culture, and occasional conversations with his dog.

Werner Heisenberg formulated the uncertainty principle in Niels Bohr's institute at Copenhagen, while working on the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics.

In 1925, following pioneering work with Hendrik Kramers, Heisenberg developed matrix mechanics, which replaced the ad-hoc old quantum theory with modern quantum mechanics. The central assumption was that the classical motion was not precise at the quantum level, and electrons in an atom did not travel on sharply defined orbits. Rather, the motion was smeared out in a strange way: the time Fourier transform only involving those frequencies that could be seen in quantum jumps.



Heisenberg's paper did not admit any unobservable quantities like the exact position of the electron in an orbit at any time; he only allowed the theorist to talk about the Fourier components of the motion. Since the Fourier components were not defined at the classical frequencies, they could not be used to construct an exact trajectory, so that the formalism could not answer certain overly precise questions about where the electron was or how fast it was going.

Watch Documentary; Uncertain Principles

About the Uncertainty Principle
In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that certain pairs of physical properties, like position and momentum, cannot both be known to arbitrary precision. That is, the more precisely one property is known, the less precisely the other can be known. It is impossible to measure simultaneously both position and velocity of a microscopic particle with any degree of accuracy or certainty. This is not only a statement about the limitations of a researcher's ability to measure particular quantities of a system, but once the wave-nature of matter is accepted, the general properties of waves cause the uncertainty principle to be a statement about the nature of the system itself.

In quantum mechanics, a particle is described by a wave. The position is where the wave is concentrated and the momentum is determined by the wavelength. The position is uncertain to the degree that the wave is spread out, and the momentum is uncertain to the degree that the wavelength is ill-defined.

The only kind of wave with a definite position is concentrated at one point, and such a wave has an indefinite wavelength. Conversely, the only kind of wave with a definite wavelength is an infinite regular periodic oscillation over all space, which has no definite position. So in quantum mechanics, there are no states that describe a particle with both a definite position and a definite momentum. The more precise the position, the less precise the momentum.

The uncertainty principle can be restated in terms of measurements, which involves collapse of the wavefunction. When the position is measured, the wavefunction collapses to a narrow bump near the measured value, and the momentum wavefunction becomes spread out. The particle's momentum is left uncertain by an amount inversely proportional to the accuracy of the position measurement. The amount of left-over uncertainty can never be reduced below the limit set by the uncertainty principle, no matter what the measurement process.

This means that the uncertainty principle is related to the observer effect, with which it is often conflated. The uncertainty principle sets a lower limit to how small the momentum disturbance in an accurate position experiment can be, and vice versa for momentum experiments.

Wikipedia Link
Hyperphysics - the uncertainty Principle