Horizon

“June 2000, astronomers made an extraordinary discovery. One that promises to solve one of the biggest problems in cosmology – how and why galaxies are created. Incredibly, the answer involves the most weird, destructive and terrifying objects in the Universe – supermassive black holes. Scientists are beginning to believe that these forces of pure destruction actually help trigger the birth of galaxies and therefore are at the heart of the creation of stars, planets and all life.”

Documentary on the commercial airline pilots, and the factors causing human errors in flying. Can the ‘human element’ ever be taken out of flying or is it true that when people work with sophisticated technology, accidents will always happen. This BBC Horizon video looks at work being done by psychologists to analyse and prevent catastrophes.

In November 2005, 37 year old, mother of two, Isabelle Dinoire became the first person in the world to receive a new face. The decision made by French surgeons to perform the operation went against the findings of almost every other ethical committee in the world and has since sparked a fierce debate over the ethics of the operation.

Description: BBC2 documentary which takes an in-depth look at the life and bizarre death of the British mathematician, logician and cryptanalyst, Alan Mathison Turing (1912 – 1954). Turing’s life was also memorably dramatised in the 1996 series “Breaking The Code” starring Derek Jacobi. During the Second World War, Turing worked at Bletchley Park, Britain’s codebreaking centre, and played an important role in the British attempts to crack the German Enigma codes. He is also considered by many to be the father of modern computer science.

When a fire gets out of control in a skyscraper it tests fire fighters to their limits. Predicting how a fire is behaving high up in a building is almost impossible. The fire fighters who entered the Twin Towers on 11 September 2001 could only guess at what was happening almost 1000 feet above them. That fateful day brought about the death of 343 New York fire fighters.

Professor Lesley Regan, one of the UK’s most well-respected (and glamorous) medical experts, turns her scientific eye on the world of cosmetics. She’s just turned 50, and is out to create an experimentally proven beauty cabinet.

When veteran broadcaster Alistair Cooke died in 2004 few suspected that he was yet to uncover his greatest story. What happened to his body as it lay in a funeral home would reveal a story of modern day grave robbery and helped smash a body-snatching ring that had made millions of dollars by chopping up and selling-off over 1000 bodies. Dead bodies have become big business.

Horizon: Tutunkhamun’s Fireball, made by production company TV6, was broadcast on BBC Two on Thursday, 20 July. In 1996 in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Italian mineralogist Vincenzo de Michele spotted an unusual yellow-green gem in the middle of one of Tutankhamun’s necklaces. The jewel was tested and found to be glass, but intriguingly it is older than the earliest Egyptian civilisation.