Imagine a time when Earth was a molten, volcanic wasteland, heavily bombarded by colossal asteroids. We’ve long feared these cosmic impacts as destroyers of life, but what if they were the key to our ...

At the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, snowboarding made its debut as an Olympic sport. No longer relegated to the fringes, snowboarders took to the snow-capped peaks of Mount Yakebitai, and 26 ...

What if the fundamental “stuff” of the universe isn’t matter or energy, but information? That’s the idea some theorists are pursuing as they search for ever-more elegant and concise descriptions of ...

Split a mile in half, you get half a mile. Split the half mile, you get a quarter, and on and on, until you’ve carved out a length far smaller than the diameter of an atom. Can this slicing continue ...

Dr. Percy Julian was a man of genius, devotion, and determination. The grandson of enslaved people from Alabama, Dr. Percy Julian met with every possible barrier in a deeply racist and segregated ...

As a Harvard undergraduate, Sarah Demers—now a professor at Yale University—didn’t have the job you would imagine of a young student of particle physics. She wasn’t running code, writing equations on ...

Receive emails about upcoming NOVA programs and related content, as well as featured reporting about current events through a science lens. To find out, we imagined a souped-up spacecraft that could ...

Whether out of mischief or just plain boredom, most of us have fired a rubber band slingshot at some point. It’s a pretty thoughtless task: Hook a rubber band around your thumb, stretch it backwards ...

The February storm left dozens of Texans dead and millions without power—and exposed an aging energy grid unprepared for a changing climate. Can we build something better? Ice and snow cover plants in ...

(This program is no longer available for online streaming.) NOVA takes you inside the historic international race to develop the first supersonic airliner, the Concorde. Hear stories from those inside ...

The planet looks blue from space, but new research shows that most of Earth's water may actually be deep underground. Share Earth is a jewel of the solar system, painted blue by the vast oceans that ...

Chris Mazurek was a freshman in college when he had a dream that he was inside the Legends of Zelda video game. He saw himself as the main protagonist, Link, in third person. Suddenly, beeping noises ...