Science Channel

Go behind the scenes to follow the 18 months of preparations for launch, close up. Hear personal testimonies of engineers, astronauts and others who have spent their lives working on the Shuttle Program. For them, this flight is loaded with mixed emotions as the clock ticks down to the last launch.

Research into the inner workings of human's senses opens up a new world.

Take two anvils, add a pile of gunpowder and ignite. What might seem like a recipe for disaster is actually the formula for high-flying, explosive fun this Labor Day with the world-premiere special FLYING ANVILS. SCIENCE transforms a 200-year-old tradition into a 21st century extreme competition that tests the boundaries of physics-and good judgment. As the latest addition to the popular SCI SPORTS franchise, FLYING ANVILS joins the ranks of one-of-a-kind, extreme engineering events including PUNKIN CHUNKIN, LARGE DANGEROUS ROCKET SHIPS (LDRS) and most recently, KILLER ROBOTS: ROBOGAMES 2011. FLYING ANVILS premieres on SCIENCE on Monday, September 5, at 10 PM (ET/PT). Hosted by Tory Belleci of MYTHBUSTERS, FLYING ANVILS takes viewers to Farmington, Mo.- the Mecca of anvil launching-for the 2011 U.S. Anvil Shooting Championship. There, teams from around the country gather to compete in a pyrotechnics playground that seemingly defies both physics and common sense. The annual competition features a marquee event in which contestants fire a 100-pound anvil off another using one pound of gunpowder. In a second, super-modified event, teams use specially engineered anvils with two pounds of gunpowder to send anvils flying in excess of 500 feet in the air. "I've seen a lot of crazy things on MYTHBUSTERS, but hosting FLYING ANVILS was one of the most intense things I've ever experienced,: says Tory Belleci. "This sport is so raw, so explosive and so exciting-how did I not know about it before?!" "With FLYING ANVILS, SCIENCE continues its mission of celebrating everyday engineers and backyard geniuses, because not all science comes from men in white lab coats," said Debbie Adler Myers, general manager and executive vice president of SCIENCE. "FLYING ANVILS offers access into a unique American subculture that combines unconventional science with larger-than-life characters and, most important, mind-blowing explosions. It's a world that many may never have im

What Is Reality? — an inquiry so deep and complex it has occupied the seemingly insufficient minds of brilliant scientists and philosophers for eons. "It’s one of the simplest yet most profound questions in science: The search to understand the nature of reality. But on this quest, common sense is no guide.” From the discovery of quarks, the fundamental building blocks of matter, to the story of the Large Hadron Collider, to the elusive Higgs boson, better-known as the God particle, the series takes an ambitious peer into the depths of intellectual inquiry and the outermost frontiers of human understanding. Perhaps most fascinatingly, the documentary bridges concepts familiar from science fiction — parallel universes, time travel, teleportation — with areas of rigorous scientific research, brimming with concepts and discoveries so mind-bending yet grounded in present scientific investigation that they leave you questioning the very nature of everything you’ve come to know and accept as real.