Gravity

Jim Al-Khalili investigates the amazing science of gravity, recreating groundbreaking experiments, including the moment when Galileo first worked out how to measure it. He investigates gravity waves, finds out from astronauts what it's like to live without gravity, sets out to find where in Britain gravity is weakest and so where we weigh the least, and helps design a smartphone app that volunteers use to demonstrate how gravity affects time and makes us age at slightly different rates.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili investigates the science of gravity, recreating ground-breaking scientific experiments including the moment when Galileo first discovered how to measure gravity.

Jim Al-Khalili investigates the amazing science of gravity. A fundamental force of nature, gravity shapes our entire universe, sculpting galaxies and warping space and time. But gravity's strange powers, discovered by Albert Einstein, also affect our daily lives in the most unexpected ways. As Jim tells the story of gravity, it challenges his own understanding of the nature of reality. The science of gravity includes the greatest advances in physics, and Jim recreates groundbreaking experiments in gravity including when the Italian genius Galileo first worked out how to measure it. Gravity science is still full of surprises and Jim investigates the latest breakthrough - 'gravity waves' - ripples in the vast emptiness of space.

The story of an extraordinary scientific adventure - the attempt to control gravity. For centuries, the precise workings of gravity have confounded the greatest scientific minds, and the idea of controlling gravity has been seen as little more than a fanciful dream. Yet in the mid 1990s, UK defence manufacturer BAE Systems began a groundbreaking project code-named Greenglow, which set about turning science fiction into reality. On the other side of the Atlantic, Nasa was simultaneously running its own Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project.

A gravity-defying boy raised in seclusion matures into an extraordinary man – and an international celebrity – who longs for human connection.

With the help of some surprising creatures from around the world, this series sets out to discover how animals take to the air, defying the force all airborne animals must conquer, gravity. In Africa, a caracal's 'rocket-propelled' launch enables it to catch birds in flight. In the Australian outback, a kangaroo's hop is key to finding water in a desert of over a million square kilometres. On an English farm, an insect's ultimate ejector seat accelerates it to 700G with help from a clutch in its crotch. And high above the jungles of Borneo, a leaping snake's unique shape allows it to glide, even without wings.

This series helps teachers demystify physics by showing students what it looks like. Field trips to hot-air balloon events, symphony concerts, bicycle shops, and other locales make complex concepts more accessible. Inventive computer graphics illustrate abstract concepts such as time, force, and capacitance, while historical re-enactments of the studies of Newton, Leibniz, Maxwell, and others trace the evolution of theories.

"Secrets of the Earth" explores our planet with the same sense of awe and wonder normally reserved for alien worlds. Computer graphics, visual analogies and expert scientists combine to reveal amazing, little-known aspects of the world, from canyons of gravity that warp space and time to rain triggered by cosmic rays.

Across the globe, radical architects, ingenious engineers, and skilled builders are creating structures so outrageous, they defy logic…and often even gravity. From a Manhattan skyscraper that looks like a Jenga tower to a Singapore glass dome big enough to house a mountain to a high rise in Italy with a built-in forest, we examine the world's most extraordinary buildings, bridges, and lifts, reveal their design secrets, and discover the incredible stories of their construction as we try to answer the question: How Did They Build That?

What role will the moon play in man's next attempts to conquer space?