Naked Science

Engineers wondered if a plane that operated solely on solar power could be built. Their efforts over a decade result in the Solar Impulse HB-SIA, the plane that triumphantly takes to the air. Making a 26-hour nonstop day-night-day flight climaxes the success of the Solar Impulse.

Over a century ago, sponge divers recovered an extremely complex mechanical device from a shipwreck. It was decades before they determined it's purpose, to accurately track the movement of the stars in the night sky. Dubbed the Antikythera mechanism (for the location of the shipwreck from which it came), the device is considered the world's first computer, developed by the Greeks around the 1st century B.C. Scientists continue to marvel at its intricate system of gears which rival that of the most complex Swiss watch.

We were all taught that dinosaurs were scaly creatures with skin like we're accustomed to seeing on reptiles. With the discovery of new fossils including feathered prehistoric beasts in China, scientists now believe they were wrong. Using computers to realize the new discoveries, Naked Science gives a more accurate look at the fathered monsters from the past.

A centuries-old Voynich manuscript has remained an enigma. Filled with bizarre drawings and written in a language that even the best cryptographers cannot decipher, the tome has remained a puzzling mystery. The efforts to decode the book and determine its unknown author continue.

The formation of one of nature's greatest wonders continues to be debated. Experts explore various theories as to how the Grand Canyon was formed, and how it continues to be shaped by natural forces.

The most unimaginable weather in our universe occurs at places other than on our planet. This episode imagines what would happen if those bizarre conditions were to manifest themselves on Earth.

It's often said that we are breathing the same oxygen that the cavemen did. The life of a single molecule of oxygen is traced on it's astonishing journey spanning millions of years, from its creation, into photosynthesis, through the age of the dinosaurs, early man, and on into today.

The weirdest of science fiction doesn't compare to the concept of alternate versions of the universe we inhabit. Many scientists are starting to embrace the idea that there are perhaps endless variations on our own world where its inhabitants--all of us--constantly make opposite choices from the ones we make here. The rules of physics predict them, but can we ever travel to see one of them firsthand?

After nearly dying from a rattlesnake bite, scientist Bryan Fry has made it his mission to seek out and study the most poisonous venoms in the world. The toxins he collects could hold the key future life-saving drugs. In this episode, he goes after the three most-deadly venoms found in North America.

The nearly intact skull of a 6-year-old child was found in a Moroccan cave in 2009. Dental tests date it at over 100,000 years of age. A team of scientists attempts to reconstruct the world the child lived in, one that existed before agriculture, the pyramids, and modern religion.

Superhuman capabilities like running faster than a speeding bullet or being more powerful than a locomotive could be available at the push of a button. NGC explores the latest in wearable mechanical getups, designed to duplicate human movement with enhanced strength and locomotion. See how these futuristic suits are being used for medical, military, industrial and recreational uses.

Life After Dinosaurs recreates the evolutionary history of mammals from the dinosaur age up to the appearance of the first humans to explore how the present ecosystem on this planet was formed and how remarkable the fact is that we exist now.