The film discusses the evolution and potential of using light waves, particularly coherent light, for communication. It highlights the development of lasers at Bell Telephone Laboratories, explaining how they produce a highly controlled and intense beam of light that could revolutionize communication. The film emphasizes the vast possibilities of lasers, including applications in telecommunications, surgery, and exploring the universe, suggesting that this technology represents a significant step in humanity's understanding and use of light.
Narrator
7.8Before the internet. Before social media. Before breaking news. The victims of Thalidomide had to rely on something even more extraordinary to fight their corner: Investigative journalism. This is the story of how Harold Evans fought and won the battle of his and many other lives.
7.2This shows physicist Stephen Hawking's life as he deals with the ALS that renders him immobile and unable to speak without the use of a computer. Hawking's friends, family, classmates, and peers are interviewed not only about his theories but the man himself.
6.0This 1971 color anti-drug use and abuse film was produced by Concept Films and directed by Brian Kellman for Encyclopedia Britannica. “Weed: The Story of Marijuana” combines time-lapse, montage, illustrations, animation (by Paul Fierlinger and emigre Pavel Vošický) and dramatized, documentary-style interviews to survey the evolving role of cannabis in U.S. society, with emphasis on the legal risks faced by young people. A unique score of experimental synthesizer music is provided by Tony Luisi on an EMS VCS 3 “Putney”
0.0The Estonian national team is the first Baltic team to participate in the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge, the solar car world championship in Australia. This is a competition with a 35-year history, which has been launched to push the boundaries of both green technology and the capabilities of young talents. The documentary follows young Estonian engineers and software developers and tells the story through their eyes of how the solar car is developed, built and prepared for the challenge in one of the most complex competitions in the world. Young people have to face tough competition conditions, technical and mental challenges and competitors from the world's top universities.
7.6A documentary of insect life in meadows and ponds, using incredible close-ups, slow motion, and time-lapse photography. It includes bees collecting nectar, ladybugs eating mites, snails mating, spiders wrapping their catch, a scarab beetle relentlessly pushing its ball of dung uphill, endless lines of caterpillars, an underwater spider creating an air bubble to live in, and a mosquito hatching.
0.0A team of scientists search for the lost island of Testerep in front of the Belgian coast, venturing into artificial landscapes and virtual realities.
0.0An educational film about the nervous system produced by Encyclopædia Britannica Films, an educational film production company in the 20th century owned by Encyclopædia Britannica Inc.
0.0An educational film about frogs produced by Encyclopædia Britannica Films, an educational film production company in the 20th century owned by Encyclopædia Britannica Inc.
7.0The first American space station Skylab is found in pieces scattered in Western Australia. Putting these pieces back together and re-tracing the Skylab program back to its very conception reveals the cornerstone of human space exploration.
7.7The sun is the miracle that makes everything possible - but also the greatest danger. For the first time, a feature-length documentary is dedicated to the search for the significance of our home star for mankind, science and nature. Thanks to the researchers from the American space agency NASA, who work at the Canary Islands observatories in the hottest and coldest places on the planet.
7.4In this two-part Channel 4 series, Professor Richard Dawkins challenges what he describes as 'a process of non-thinking called faith'. He describes his astonishment that, at the start of the 21st century, religious faith is gaining ground in the face of rational, scientific truth. Science, based on scepticism, investigation and evidence, must continuously test its own concepts and claims. Faith, by definition, defies evidence: it is untested and unshakeable, and is therefore in direct contradiction with science. In addition, though religions preach morality, peace and hope, in fact, says Dawkins, they bring intolerance, violence and destruction. The growth of extreme fundamentalism in so many religions across the world not only endangers humanity but, he argues, is in conflict with the trend over thousands of years of history for humanity to progress to become more enlightened and more tolerant.
6.0An illuminating look inside the lives of the Grucci family, whose Long Island-based fireworks business has been lighting up night skies around the world with spectacular displays since the 1800s.
7.1The Academy Award® nominee Cosmic Voyage combines live action with state-of-the-art computer-generated imagery to pinpoint where humans fit in our ever-expanding universe. Highlighting this journey is a "cosmic zoom" based on the powers of 10, extending from the Earth to the largest observable structures in the universe, and then back to the subnuclear realm.
0.0A large iron meteorite is found by two enthusiasts. But who owns it? A subtle film about property rights that develops into a philosophical and slightly absurd story.
7.5Before the joint NASA/ESA Cassini-Huygens mission, humanity only knew what had been learned, decades earlier, with the previous limited, rapid "fly-by" Pioneer and Voyager missions. Cassini-Huygens spent more than 13 years in wildly varied orbits around Saturn, allowing the spacecraft to pass near many of its moons, as well as execute a soft-landing of its Huygens lander on the moon Titan. By mission end, it accumulated a mountain of imagery and scientific data that will continue to be studied for years to come. This film is a testament to the amazing efforts of the scientists who planned and executed the mission. It combines breathtaking images, movies, and a variety of animations to take the viewer into Saturn's complex system of rings and moons, as well as stepping viewers through some of the more exciting scientific discoveries made over the course of the elaborately complex mission.
0.0With rising sea levels, land reclamation runs rampant in Singapore. Labrador Park is one such waterfront facing this change, and both the ecosystem and frequent fishermen have often been overlooked. This documentary seeks to explore the park's development from a scientific, economic and sociological perspective, produced in collaboration with SOTA and NUS.
