The Best Episodes of NOVA

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10.0/10(1 votes)
#1 - Fusion: The Energy of Promise
S1:E125/19/1974
Nuclear fusion offers the promises of an unlimited, clean source of energy. But achieving fusion has proved one of the most difficult and elusive goals of the physicist. NOVA tells the story of the twists and turns and the international competition along the road toward the achievement of fusion; and details the recent breakthroughs which seem at last to have brought it within reach.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
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Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
10.0/10(12 votes)
#2 - One Small Step
S5:E41/25/1978
Part one of a two-part series on the subject of man in space, NOVA examines the history of NASA—from the origin of the space race through the triumph of the Apollo programs. By tracing the history of three key programs—Mercury, Gemini, Apollo—we show how the basic challenges surrounding space flight were answered: rendezvous and docking, life support, weightlessness, space sickness, equipment reliability and so on.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
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Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
10.0/10(58 votes)
#3 - Secret of Photo 51
S30:E164/15/2003
On April 25, 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick published their groundbreaking discovery of the double helix structure of DNA, the molecule essential for passing on our genes and the ''secret of life.'' But their crucial breakthrough depended on the pioneering work of another biologistÐRosalind Franklin. She would never know that Watson and Crick had seen a crucial piece of her data without her permission. This was an X-ray image, ''Photo 51,'' that proved to be a vital clue in their decoding of the double helix. 50 years later, NOVA investigates the shocking truth behind one of the greatest scientific discoveries and presents a moving portrait of a brilliant woman in an era of male-dominated science. Sadly, Franklin never lived to see her vital role in the discovery vindicated. While Watson and Crick went on to win the Nobel Prize in 1962, Franklin died in 1958, at 37, from ovarian cancer; and the Nobel is not awarded posthumously. Hear the inside story from Maurice Wilkins, the colleague who showed her crucial x-ray to Watson; Raymond Gosling, FranklinÕs Ph.D. student with whom she made Photo 51; and Nobel Prize winner Sir Aaron Klug, FranklinÕs last collaborator, who shows new evidence of just how close Franklin came to making the vital double helix discovery herself.
Director:Gary Glassman
Writer:Gary Glassman
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Director:Gary Glassman
Writer:Gary Glassman
10.0/10(52 votes)
#4 - The Spy Factory
S36:E112/3/2009
In this program, an eye-opening documentary on the National Security Agency by best-selling author James Bamford and Emmy Award-winning producer Scott Willis, NOVA exposes the ultra-secret intelligence agency's role in the failure to stop the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent eavesdropping program that listens in without warrant on millions of American citizens.
Director:C. Scott Willis
Writer:James Bamford
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Director:C. Scott Willis
Writer:James Bamford
10.0/10(1052 votes)
#5 - Black Hole Apocalypse
S45:E11/10/2018
Astrophysicist and novelist Janna Levin talks about black holes and their importance to the universe.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
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Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
10.0/10(60 votes)
#6 - Ancient Earth: Life Rising
S50:E1310/18/2023
For billions of years, life teemed in the oceans of planet Earth while the land was desolate and inhospitable. So how did life make the leap to land? Scientists explore how some of the earliest life emerged and invaded a barren, rocky landscape, eventually transforming it into a verdant, green world. Gripping visual effects reveal an alien landscape dominated by towering fungi before the arrival of plants. Witness how the first plants made landfall and partnered with fungi to create soil that would sustain them. And discover how, once life emerged on land, it fundamentally altered the very ground it grew on.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
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The 20 WORST Episodes of NOVA

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10.0/10(65 votes)
#7 - Ancient Earth: Inferno
S50:E1410/25/2023
252 million years ago, the most devastating mass extinction of all time abruptly wiped out around 90% of all species on Earth. The culprits were the biggest volcanic eruptions the world has ever seen, emitting some 700 thousand cubic miles of magma and rock. Volcanic gasses permeated the atmosphere and acidified the oceans while toxic gasses destroyed the ozone layer, bathing the planet in destructive UV radiation. The event—now called "The Great Dying"—came close to wiping out all life on the planet. Follow scientists as they piece together geologic evidence from the deep past and clues from today’s ecosystems to discover how life made it through and evolved into the astonishing variety we see around us today.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
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Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
10.0/10(36 votes)
#8 - Return to the Moon
S53:E64/15/2026
A half-century after Apollo, the Artemis missions aim to bring astronauts back to the Moon and establish a lunar space station. Follow the Artemis II engineers and crew on the perilous 10-day journey to orbit the Moon.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
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Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
9.0/10(43 votes)
#9 - Rat Attack
S36:E122/24/2009
Once every 48 years, bamboo forests in parts of northeast India go into exuberant flower. Then, like clockwork, the flowering is invariably followed by a plague of black rats that appear to spring from nowhere to spread destruction and famine in their wake. For the first time on film, NOVA and National Geographic capture this rat population explosion in vivid detail and show how scientists are unraveling the connections between bamboo flowering and rat outbreaks. Ultimately, their research should help local people better cope with the next attack—due in 2056.
Director:Rick King
Writer:Unknown
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Director:Rick King
Writer:Unknown
9.0/10(49 votes)
#10 - Becoming Human: Birth of Humanity
S37:E511/10/2009
In gripping forensic detail, the second program in “Becoming Human” investigates the first skeleton that really looks like us — “Turkana Boy” — an astonishingly complete specimen of Homo erectus found by the famous Leakey team in Kenya.
Director:Graham Townsley
Writer:Graham Townsley
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Director:Graham Townsley
Writer:Graham Townsley
9.0/10(73 votes)
#11 - Ice Age Death Trap
S39:E132/1/2012
In a race against developers in the Rocky Mountains, archeologists uncover a unique fossil site packed with astonishingly well-preserved bones of mammoths, mastodons, and other giant extinct beasts. The discovery opens a highly focused window on the vanished world of the Ice Age in North America.
Director:Eleanor Grant
Writer:Unknown
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Director:Eleanor Grant
Writer:Unknown
9.0/10(91 votes)
#12 - Building Pharaoh's Chariot
S40:E102/6/2013
3,600-year-old reliefs in Egyptian tombs and temples depict pharaohs and warriors proudly riding into battle on horse-drawn chariots. Some historians claim that the chariot launched a technological and strategic revolution, and was the secret weapon behind Egypt's greatest era of conquest known as the New Kingdom. But was the Egyptian chariot really a revolutionary design? How decisive a role did it play in the bloody battles of the ancient world? In "Building Pharaoh's Chariot," a team of archaeologists, engineers, woodworkers, and horse trainers join forces to build and test two highly accurate replicas of Egyptian royal chariots. They discover astonishingly advanced features, including spoked wheels, springs, shock absorbers, anti-roll bars, and even a convex-shaped rear mirror, leading one of them to compare the level of design to the engineering standards of 1930's-era Buicks! By driving our pair of replicas to their limits in the desert outside Cairo, NOVA's experts test the claim that the chariot marks a crucial turning point in ancient military history.
Director:Martin O'Collins
Writer:Unknown
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Director:Martin O'Collins
Writer:Unknown
9.0/10(137 votes)
#13 - Australia's First 4 Billion Years: Awakening
S40:E154/10/2013
Hidden in the red hills of western Australia are clues to the mysteries of when the Earth was born, how life first arose, and how it transformed the planet.
Director:Richard Smith
Writer:Unknown
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Director:Richard Smith
Writer:Unknown
9.0/10(168 votes)
#14 - Australia's First 4 Billion Years: Life Explodes
S40:E164/17/2013
How did life storm the beaches and dominate planet Earth? Ancient Australian fossils offer clues in "Life Explodes." Half a billion years ago, Australia was still part of the super-continent Gondwana. The oceans were teeming with weird and wonderful animals, but the world above the waves remained an almost lifeless wasteland. All that was about to change, though. Host Richard Smith introduces Earth's forgotten pioneers: the scuttling arthropod armies that invaded the shores and the waves of green revolutionaries whose battle for the light pushed plant life across the face of a barren continent. Evolution continued underwater as well, with armor-plated fish experimenting with teeth, jaws, sex, and lungs. NOVA's prehistoric adventure continues with four-legged animals walking onto dry land—and the planet poised for disaster.
Director:Richard Smith
Writer:Unknown
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Director:Richard Smith
Writer:Unknown
9.0/10(91 votes)
#15 - Australia's First 4 Billion Years: Monsters
S40:E174/24/2013
"Monsters" begins Down Under at the dawn of the Age of Dinosaurs. Host Richard Smith comes face-to-face with the previously unknown reptilian rulers of prehistoric Australia. NOVA resurrects the giants that stalked the Great Southern Land and discovers that some of these animals were among the largest ever to have walked the Earth. Others were some of the most dangerous. In the dry desert heart, scientists unearth an ancient inland ocean full of sea monsters. Opal fossils of some of these beasts paint a colorful picture of the exotic seascape, where long-necked plesiosaurs snacked on shelled creatures that grew as large as truck tires. The most fearsome was Kronosaurus, with a skull twice as long as T. rex. But reptiles didn't have the world all to themselves. Mammals like the enigmatic platypus lived alongside them, ready for their moment in the sun.
Director:Richard Smith
Writer:Unknown
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Director:Richard Smith
Writer:Unknown
9.0/10(71 votes)
#16 - Big Bang Machine
S42:E111/14/2015
On July 4, 2012, scientists at the giant atom smashing facility at CERN announced the discovery of a subatomic particle that seems like a tantalizingly close match to the elusive Higgs Boson, thought to be responsible for giving all the stuff in the universe its mass. Since it was first proposed nearly fifty years ago, the Higgs has been the holy grail of particle physicists: in finding it they validate the "standard model" that underlies all of modern physics and open the door to new discoveries when CERN's giant collider switches on at higher power in 2015.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
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Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
9.0/10(102 votes)
#17 - Invisible Universe Revealed
S42:E184/22/2015
Twenty-five years ago, NASA launched one of the most ambitious experiments in the history of astronomy: the Hubble Space Telescope. In honor of Hubble's landmark anniversary, NOVA tells the remarkable story of the telescope that forever changed our understanding of the cosmos. But Hubble's early days nearly doomed it to failure: a one-millimeter engineering blunder had turned the billion-dollar telescope into an object of ridicule. It fell to five heroic astronauts in a daring mission to return Hubble to the cutting edge of science. This single telescope has helped astronomers pinpoint the age of the universe, revealed the birthplace of stars and planets, advanced our understanding of dark energy and cosmic expansion, and uncovered black holes lurking at the heart of galaxies. Join NOVA for the story of this magnificent machine and its astonishing discoveries.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
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Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.5/10(98 votes)
#18 - Becoming Human: First Steps
S37:E411/3/2009
The first hour examines the factors that caused the split from the apes. The film explores the fossil of “Selam,” also known as “Lucy’s Child” — an amazing, nearly complete child fossil that helps shed light on our ancestors’ early development and how we began to depart from that of chimps.
Director:Graham Townsley
Writer:Graham Townsley
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Director:Graham Townsley
Writer:Graham Townsley
8.5/10(66 votes)
#19 - The Fabric of the Cosmos: Quantum Leap
S39:E711/16/2011
Join Brian Greene on a wild ride into the weird realm of quantum physics, which governs the universe on the tiniest of scales. Brian brings quantum mechanics to life in a nightclub like no other, where objects pop in and out of existence, and things over here can affect others over there, instantaneously-without anything crossing the space between them.
Directors:Josh Rosen, Julia Cort
Writer:Unknown
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Directors:Josh Rosen, Julia Cort
Writer:Unknown
8.5/10(197 votes)
#20 - Bigger Than T. rex
S42:E711/5/2014
Follow the paleontologists who are reconstructing this terrifying carnivore, a 53-foot-long behemoth with a huge dorsal sail, scimitar-like claws and superjaws. Bringing together experts in paleontology, geology, climatology and paleobotany, this special brings to life the lost world over which Spinosaurus reigned more than 65 million years ago.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
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Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.3/10(87 votes)
#21 - Secrets of the Psychics
S20:E1210/19/1993
Secrets of the Psychics was a PBS NOVA episode following James Randi's work. Also appearing in stock footage are Peter Popoff, Uri Geller, and many others. In the program, "Randi argues that successful psychics depend on the willingness of their audiences to believe that what they see is the result of psychic powers." This program is not to be confused with a later UK documentary Secrets of the Psychics, which was transmitted under this title as well as Secrets of the Super Psychics.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
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Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.3/10(126 votes)
#22 - The Fabric of the Cosmos: Universe or Multiverse?
S39:E811/23/2011
Hard as it is to swallow, cutting-edge theories are suggesting that our universe may not be the only universe. Instead, it may be just one of an infinite number of worlds that make up the multiverse. In this show, Brian Greene takes us on a tour of this brave new theory at the frontier of physics, explaining why scientists believe it's true and showing what some of these alternate realities might be like.
Director:Rushmore DeNooyer
Writer:Unknown
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Director:Rushmore DeNooyer
Writer:Unknown
8.2/10(87 votes)
#23 - The Fabric of the Cosmos: What is Space?
S39:E511/2/2011
Space. It separates you from me, one galaxy from the next, and atoms from each other. It is everywhere in the universe. But to most of us, space is nothing, an empty void. Well, it turns out space is not what it seems.
Directors:Sabin Streeter, Graham Judd
Writer:Unknown
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Directors:Sabin Streeter, Graham Judd
Writer:Unknown
8.2/10(37 votes)
#24 - Hunting the Elements
S39:E164/4/2012
Where do nature’s building blocks, called the elements, come from? They’re the hidden ingredients of everything in our world, from the carbon in our bodies to the metals in our smartphones. To unlock their secrets, David Pogue, the lively host of NOVA’s popular "Making Stuff" series and technology correspondent of The New York Times, spins viewers through the world of weird, extreme chemistry: the strongest acids, the deadliest poisons, the universe’s most abundant elements, and the rarest of the rare—substances cooked up in atom smashers that flicker into existence for only fractions of a second.
Director:Chris Schmidt
Writer:Unknown
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Director:Chris Schmidt
Writer:Unknown
8.0/10(1 votes)
#25 - Swimming With Whales
S18:E93/5/1991
Gregory Peck narrates a scientific voyage around Vancouver Island in search of whales. Humpbacks, Killers, Grays and other whale species make their appearance in spectacular, never-before-seen footage both above and below the waves.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
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Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown