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Super Flares - Could They Cause Mass Extinction?

Instructional & Educational

TV-G

46

Feb 4, 2009

Superflares are amongst the greatest events of the Universe. These magnetic explosions can release energy millions of times greater than atomic bombs. They produce streams of highly energetic particles which can be highly destructive to life. Naked Science reveals the true power of superflares, reviews the damage they have done, and asks whether Earth is at risk of mass extinction…

Season 6, 13 episodes

The Big Bang - The First Three Seconds,

13.7 billion years ago there was absolutely nothing. No space, no time, and no matter. Naked Science follows the first three seconds of creation when a speck of light appeared from nothing and rapidly expanded into an enormous Universe, in an event known as the ‘Big Bang’. How did just three seconds shape our universe and our place in it?

The Great Lakes are sometimes referred to as inland seas; they are the largest freshwater system in the world. Naked Science examines the early history of these amazing bodies; we uncover how they formed, how they have changed, and how they continue to shape their environment. And as a global water shortage begins to bite we ask, what is the future of the Great Lakes?

Magnetic Earth,

The Earth hurtles through space protected by an invisible force field, known as a magnetosphere. Without it Earth’s atmosphere would be destroyed by powerful solar radiation, ending life as we know it. But what happens when the magnetic polarity of the North and South poles swap? – Are we heading for a technological meltdown? Will Earth be left vulnerable to the sun's radiation and can our atmosphere survive?

The Great Flood,

Almost every culture on Earth tells the story of an ancient flood – details vary but the basic plot is the same - An angry God wipes out an unrepentant population. One of the most famous flood stories is written in the bible and tells of a man named Noah who built an ark and saved two of every type of animal. But is this just ancient storytelling or could a global flood have actually happened 7,500 years ago and if so could it happen again.

Super Flares - Could They Cause Mass Extinction?,

Superflares are amongst the greatest events of the Universe. These magnetic explosions can release energy millions of times greater than atomic bombs. They produce streams of highly energetic particles which can be highly destructive to life. Naked Science reveals the true power of superflares, reviews the damage they have done, and asks whether Earth is at risk of mass extinction…

Anatomy Of A Hurricane,

Hurricanes are one of the most destructive weather events to strike our planet and have the same power as a nuclear weapon. Naked Science travels to the heart of a hurricane to understand how these violent winds are formed and the devastation they inflict on the communities they strike.

Death Of The Earth,

The earth is 4.5 billion years old and it is slowly dying. Tectonic activity is slowly cooling the planet – the continents will eventually move together to form a new supercontinent called Pangea Ultima. Once formed they will not separate again. Once it has cooled the liquid core will solidify and lose its magnetic properties – the earth will no longer be shielded from the lethal solar radiation emitted from the sun. This solar wind will blast away our atmosphere – the air pressure will drop, liquid water will boil away into space and without the warming cocoon of the atmosphere the whole planet will cool to hundreds of degrees below zero. Slowly the planet will die – the ocean will dry up and the earth becomes an arid freezing desert. Just like Mars – which died billions of years ago when it also lost its liquid protective core. Then in five billion years the Sun too will die and as it expands it will consume the earth burning the surface to a cinder. Naked Science tells the story of earth’s demise.

Earth has an evil twin. Venus. It is shrouded in a lethal atmosphere of carbon dioxide and acid rain. The surface temperature is hot enough to melt lead and the pressure high enough to crush a nuclear submarine. Yet its twin Earth is a haven for life in the solar system. How did Venus become so deadly and Earth so safe? Naked Science investigates.

How To Destroy A Planet,

The Earth is built to last. It is a 4,550,000,000-year-old, 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne ball of rock and iron. It has taken more devastating asteroid hits in its lifetime than you've had hot dinners, and it still orbits happily around the sun. But physics is a curious thing – and it can harness devastating power – enough even to destroy the world…..Naked Science will analyze how physics could destroy a planet by exploding with 1,300,000,000,000 tonnes of antimatter, or a fission machine, being sucked into a black hole: pulverized by a cosmic impact or hurled into the Sun. So strap in, buckle up, and enjoy the ride to doomsday…

By far the largest planet, 1300 times the size of Earth, it’s a world so enormous it could swallow every planet and moon in the solar system and still have room to spare. Understanding Jupiter is essential to solve the mysteries of our Solar System’s formation and early development. This film follows the ongoing journey of unlocking Jupiter’s secrets.

Naked Science follows the story of a diamond from the creation of carbon inside the heart of a dying sun, through to the cutting of a diamond mine in South Africa. It follows how the early universe created the element carbon in the nuclear furnace of early suns, how the atoms were blasted off into space to be captured in the dust around our early sun. This dust accretes to form the earth where the carbon is heated and compressed to created diamonds the hardest thing on the planet.

Inside The Mind Of Stephen Hawking,

Stephen Hawking, though suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis has developed a unique understanding of the universe. He supplied mathematical proof, that any black hole is fully described by the three properties of mass, angular momentum, and electric charge. Hawking also suggested that, upon analysis of gamma-ray emissions, after the Big Bang, primordial or mini black holes were formed. He calculated that black holes should thermally create and emit subatomic particles, known today as Hawking radiation until they exhaust their energy and evaporate. Among Hawking’s many other scientific investigations, included in the study of quantum cosmology, cosmic inflation, helium production in anisotropic Big Bang universes, large N cosmology, the density matrix of the universe, topology and structure of the universe, baby universes, Yang-Mills instantons, and the S matrix; anti-de Sitter space, quantum entanglement, and entropy; the nature of space and time, including the arrow of time; spacetime foam, string theory, supergravity, Euclidean quantum gravity, the gravitational Hamiltonian; Brans-Dicke and Hoyle-Narlikar theories of gravitation; gravitational radiation, and wormholes. Naked Science investigates the extraordinary work of Stephen Hawking explaining how the universe works.

Anatomy Of Tornado,

Tornados are one of the most destructive forces of the planets with winds at 300 miles an hour. They can destroy buildings and hurl cars hundreds of feet through the air. Every year tornadoes decimate communities around the world killing hundreds of people. Naked Science deconstructs a tornado to learn how they form and how they develop such ferocious winds.

Details

Naked Science

Instructional & Educational

TV-G

2

46

Naked Science tackles the science of one of the biggest mysteries of our time - natural phenomena.

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