Koch Foundation

NOVA Science Trust Logo

Draper

NOVA airs Wednesday nights at 9PM on most PBS stations. See the national schedule or check local listings.

Ghosts of Stonehenge Hero

Stonehenge is the grandest and most enigmatic of Europe’s prehistoric monuments, and it has inspired countless theories to explain who built it and why. Was it an ancient cathedral or burial place or even a Stone Age observatory or computer? Over the last decade, fresh answers have come from an ambitious program of research, including the first scientific study of human remains—thousands of fragments of cremated men, women, and children—buried at the site 5,000 years ago. In this Stone Age detective story, archaeologists analyze the bones and piece together tantalizing details of the elite families who presided over Stonehenge. Remnants of huge feasts that fed the laborers at the site have come to light, including evidence that they traveled from the far corners of the British Isles to raise the stones and celebrate the winter solstice. Yet Stonehenge’s place as a centerpiece of ancient culture was not to last. Join NOVA as we reveal intimate details of the Stonehenge people and why their power began to fade soon after they raised the mighty stones. (Premiered October 11, 2017)

Archaeologists have uncovered provocative new clues about Stonehenge and the culture that drove its construction.

Ghosts of Stonehenge

B-24 bomber underwater

Dive to the bottom of the Adriatic Sea in search of the Tulsamerican, a B-24 bomber that crashed off the coast of Croatia during World War II. In 2010, divers located the plane. Now the Department of Defense, aided by the Croatian Navy and some of the world’s leading underwater archaeologists, sets to work investigating the wreckage. Join the team of archaeologists and forensics experts as they search for the crew and identify their remains. (Premiered November 7, 2018)

Dive beneath the sea to the wreckage of a WWII bomber. Search for the remains of its fallen crew.

Last B-24

Eagle Power

Eagles dominate the skies. But what makes these predators so special? Researchers study one special bird—and stunning up-close footage reveals her exceptional strength, eyesight, and flying skills. With intimate access to a new bald eagle family, NOVA takes you into the nest to witness the drama of chicks struggling to survive. (Premiered May 20, 2020)

Follow eagles from the nest to the skies to see what makes these predators so remarkable.

Australia's First 4 Billion Years: Awakening Hero

What can Australia reveal about how Earth was born and how life took hold? Join NOVA and host Dr. Richard Smith as they journey back to the very beginning of the Australian story in &quot;Awakening.&quot; The first stop is Western Australia, around four and a half billion years ago, where we encounter an Earth shortly after its fiery birth. Hidden in the red hills of Australia are clues to the mysteries of when the Earth was born, how life first arose, and how it transformed the planet. Experts unveil how the earliest forms of life—an odd assortment of bacterial slime—flooded the atmosphere with oxygen, sparking the biological revolution that made animal life possible. It is the beginning of the great drama of life on Earth.

Australia&#x27;s ancient landscape holds clues to Earth&#x27;s early history and the beginning of life.

Australia: Awakening

Australia's First 4 Billion Years: Life Explodes Hero

How did life storm the beaches and dominate planet Earth? Ancient Australian fossils offer clues in &quot;Life Explodes.&quot; Half a billion years ago, Australia was still part of the super-continent Gondwana. The oceans were teeming with weird and wonderful animals, but the world above the waves remained an almost lifeless wasteland. All that was about to change, though. Host Richard Smith introduces Earth&#x27;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. Evolution continued underwater as well, with armor-plated fish experimenting with teeth, jaws, sex, and lungs. NOVA&#x27;s prehistoric adventure continues with four-legged animals walking onto dry land—and the planet poised for disaster.

Fossils reveal how life&#x27;s explosion in the ocean was recreated on dry land.

Australia: Life Explodes

Australia's First 4 Billion Years: Monsters Hero

&quot;Monsters&quot; begins Down Under at the dawn of the Age of Dinosaurs. Host Richard Smith comes face-to-face with the previously unknown reptilian rulers of prehistoric Australia. NOVA resurrects the giants that stalked the Great Southern Land and discovers that some of these animals were among the largest ever to have walked the Earth. Others were some of the most dangerous. In the dry desert heart, scientists unearth an ancient inland ocean full of sea monsters. Opal fossils of some of these beasts paint a colorful picture of the exotic seascape, where long-necked plesiosaurs snacked on shelled creatures that grew as large as truck tires. The most fearsome was Kronosaurus, with a skull twice as long as T. rex. But reptiles didn&#x27;t have the world all to themselves. Mammals like the enigmatic platypus lived alongside them, ready for their moment in the sun.

Some 250 million years ago, some of the largest, most dangerous reptiles ruled this land.

Australia: Monsters

Australia's First 4 Billion Years: Strange Creatures Hero

In the wake of the catastrophic asteroid impact believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs, Australia was set adrift on a lonely voyage across southern seas. With host Richard Smith, NOVA travels the walkabout continent to uncover how it became the strange land it is today. In this final episode, &quot;Strange Creatures,&quot; NOVA traces the last 65 million years, revealing the events that shaped the Australia we know today. Prehistoric jungles retreated, replaced by eucalypt forests, grasslands, and deserts. When humans first arrived, giant marsupials dominated the land and the Great Barrier Reef was yet to form. This is a tale of calamity and conquest; how a conspiracy of climate, biology, and geology shaped the Earth we now call home.

After a massive extinction, diverse marsupials came to dominate this isolated continent.

Australia: Strange Creatures

Making North America: Origins Hero

The epic 3 billion-year story of how our continent came to be. From the palm trees that once flourished in Alaska to titanic eruptions that nearly tore the Midwest in two, discover how forces of almost unimaginable power gave birth to North America.

Experience the colossal geologic forces that shaped our continent over billions of years.

Making North America: Origins

Making North America: Life Hero

How did life emerge on our primeval continent? Why was North America home to so many iconic dinosaurs like T. rex? And how did a huge sea filled with giant marine reptiles end up covering Kansas? We tell the surprising intertwined story of life and the landscape in North America.

How did massive volcanic eruptions, inland seas, and land bridges pave the way for life?

Making North America: Life

mna-human.jpg

Explore the intimate connections between the landscape, the colonizing of the continent, and the emergence of our industrial world. Beginning with Native American ancestors who crafted hunting weapons from stone traded across hundreds of miles, the program shows how pre-Columbian civilizations developed an expert knowledge of the landscape and its resources. With the arrival of Europeans, North America’s hidden riches became to key to prosperity, from the gold rush to today’s oil and gas boom. As a result, human activity has transformed the continent on a scale that rivals the geological forces that gave birth to it billions of years before. Yet, scientists warn of sleeping giants like the Cascadia fault, and the earthquake/tsunami one-two punch it could unleash on the Pacific Northwest. Even as we re-mold the continent to suit our needs, geologic processes inexorably continue, and they raise potential risks of catastrophe to our human civilization.

How has the land shaped our lives, from the arrival of the first Americans to today?

Making North America: Human

Rise of the Mammals

Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs in a fiery global catastrophe. But we know little about how their successors, the mammals, recovered and took over the world. Now, hidden inside ordinary-looking rocks, an astonishing trove of fossils reveals a dramatic new picture of how rat-sized creatures ballooned in size and began to evolve into the vast array of species—from cheetahs to bats to whales to humans—that rule our planet today.

Amazing fossils reveal how mammals took over after an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs.

Decoding the Great Pyramid

The 6 million-ton Great Pyramid of Giza is the last surviving wonder of the ancient world. How did the Egyptians engineer the mighty pharaoh Khufu’s tomb so precisely, with none of today’s surveying and power tools? And who were the thousands of laborers who raised the stones? Were they slaves or volunteers, and how were they housed, fed, and organized? &quot;Decoding the Great Pyramid&quot; presents the latest evidence from groundbreaking archaeological research that has transformed our understanding of the ancient world’s most ambitious engineering project, revealing a “lost city&quot; and intimate details of the lives of the laborers and officials who toiled on the vast construction. Amazingly, French archaeologists recently found the logbook of a labor team that delivered limestone blocks to build the Great Pyramid, yielding crucial insights into the planning and logistics behind the operation. Beyond these construction secrets, &quot;Decoding the Great Pyramid&quot; traces how mobilizing the colossal labor and resources invested in the monument transformed ancient Egypt, uniting a nation behind the common goal of ensuring eternity for the pharaoh and continuing prosperity for everyone in this life and the next. (Premiered February 6, 2019)

New archeological evidence sheds light on the stunning engineering of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Schedule

Upcoming Episodes