The BEST episodes of NOVA season 42
Every episode of NOVA season 42, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of NOVA season 42!
Helps viewers of all ages explore the science behind the headlines.
#1 - Invisible Universe Revealed
Season 42 - Episode 8 - Aired 4/22/2015
Follow the historic rescue of Hubble—the space telescope that unveiled the cosmos.
Watch Now:Amazon
#2 - Dawn of Humanity
Season 42 - Episode 13 - Aired 9/16/2015
Deep in a South African cave, an astounding discovery reveals clues to what made us human.
#3 - Making North America: Human
Season 42 - Episode 20 - Aired 11/18/2015
Explore the intimate connections between the landscape, the colonizing of the continent, and the emergence of our industrial world. Beginning with Native American ancestors who crafted hunting weapons from stone traded across hundreds of miles, the program shows how pre-Columbian civilizations developed an expert knowledge of the landscape and its resources. With the arrival of Europeans, North America’s hidden riches became to key to prosperity, from the gold rush to today’s oil and gas boom. As a result, human activity has transformed the continent on a scale that rivals the geological forces that gave birth to it billions of years before. Yet, scientists warn of sleeping giants like the Cascadia fault, and the earthquake/tsunami one-two punch it could unleash on the Pacific Northwest. Even as we re-mold the continent to suit our needs, geologic processes inexorably continue, and they raise potential risks of catastrophe to our human civilization.
Watch Now:Amazon
#4 - Colosseum: Roman Death Trap
Season 42 - Episode 4 - Aired 2/11/2015
One of the ancient world's most iconic buildings, the Colosseum is a monument to Roman imperial power and cruelty. Its graceful lines and harmonious proportions concealed a highly efficient design and advanced construction methods that made hundreds of arches out of 100,000 tons of stone. In its elliptical arena, tens of thousands of gladiators, slaves, prisoners, and wild animals met their deaths. Ancient texts report lions and elephants emerging from beneath the floor, as if by magic, to ravage gladiators and people condemned to death. Then, just as quickly, the Colosseum could be flooded with so much water that ships could engage in sea battles to the delight of the crowd. Now, archaeologists and engineers are teaming up to recreate a 25-foot lifting machine and trap door system capable of releasing a wolf into the Colosseum's arena for the first time in 1,500 years. Do they have what it takes to replicate the innovation and ingenuity of the Romans?
Watch Now:Amazon
#5 - Hagia Sophia: Istanbul’s Ancient Mystery
Season 42 - Episode 6 - Aired 2/25/2015
Whether serving as Christian church, Islamic mosque, or secular museum, Hagia Sophia and its saring dome have inspired reverence and awe. For 800 years, it was the largest enclosed building in the world—the Statue of Liberty can fit beneath its dome with room to spare. How has it survived its location on one of the world’s most active seismic faults, which has inflicted a dozen devastating earthquakes since it was built in 537? As Istanbul braces for the next big quake, a team of architects and engineers is urgently investigating Hagia Sophia’s seismic secrets. Follow engineers as they build a massive 8-ton model of the building’s core structure, place it on a motorized shake table, and hit it with a series of simulated quakes, pushing it collapse—a fate that the team is determined to avoid with the real building.
Watch Now:Amazon
#6 - Lethal Seas
Season 42 - Episode 10 - Aired 5/13/2015
A unique coral garden in Papua New Guinea shows what the future may hold as oceans acidify
Watch Now:Amazon
#7 - Sinkholes—Buried Alive
Season 42 - Episode 3 - Aired 1/28/2015
A look at one of the most destructive natural phenomena known to man. All over the world sinkholes are causing chaos and destruction wherever they appear: swallowing up whole streets, ripping up motorways, destroying entire forests and even dragging unfortunate bystanders to their untimely deaths.
#8 - Sunken Ship Rescue
Season 42 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/21/2015
Efforts to secure, raise and salvage the Costa Concordia cruise ship which capsized off the Italian coast on Jan. 13, 2012, killing 32 people.
#9 - Petra: Lost City of Stone
Season 42 - Episode 5 - Aired 2/18/2015
More than 2,000 years ago, the thriving city of Petra rose up in the bone-dry desert of what is now Jordan. An oasis of culture and abundance, the city was built by wealthy merchants whose camel caravans transported incense and spices from the Arabian Gulf. They carved spectacular temple-tombs into its soaring cliffs, raised a monumental Great Temple at its heart, and devised an ingenious system that channeled water to vineyards, bathhouses, fountains, and pools. But following a catastrophic earthquake and a slump in its desert trade routes, Petra's unique culture faded and was lost to most of the world for nearly a thousand years. Now, in a daring experiment, an archaeologist and sculptors team up to carve an iconic temple-tomb to find out how the ancient people of Petra built their city of stone. Meanwhile, scientists using remote sensors and hydraulic flumes uncover the vast city and its sophisticated water system. The race is on to discover how these nomads created this oasis of culture in one of the harshest climates on Earth.
#10 - Making North America: Life
Season 42 - Episode 19 - Aired 11/11/2015
How did life emerge on our primeval continent? Why was North America home to so many iconic dinosaurs like T. rex? And how did a huge sea filled with giant marine reptiles end up covering Kansas? We tell the surprising intertwined story of life and the landscape in North America.
#11 - The Great Math Mystery
Season 42 - Episode 7 - Aired 4/15/2015
Join NOVA on a mathematical mystery tour—a provocative exploration of math's astonishing power across the centuries. We discover math's signature in the swirl of a nautilus shell, the whirlpool of a galaxy, and the spiral in the center of a sunflower. Math was essential to everything from the first wireless radio transmissions to the prediction and discovery of the Higgs boson and the successful landing of rovers on Mars. Astrophysicist and writer Mario Livio, along with a colorful cast of mathematicians, physicists, and engineers, follow math from Pythagoras to Einstein and beyond. It all leads to the ultimate riddle: Is math a human invention or the discovery of the language of the universe?
#12 - Animal Mummies
Season 42 - Episode 17 - Aired 10/28/2015
NOVA joins a team of leading Egyptologists who deploy the latest medical imaging to peer beneath the wrappings of Egyptian mummified beasts without damaging the animal bodies inside. The results are enlightening, often surprising insights into the weird beliefs and practices that clung to the Egyptian quest for immortality.
#13 - Arctic Ghost Ship
Season 42 - Episode 14 - Aired 9/23/2015
The Franklin Expedition is explored 160 years after vanishing while charting the Northwest Passage.
#14 - Cyberwar Threat
Season 42 - Episode 16 - Aired 10/14/2015
NOVA examines the science and technology behind cyber warfare and asks if we are already in the midst of a deadly new arms race.
#15 - Nuclear Meltdown Disaster
Season 42 - Episode 12 - Aired 7/29/2015
NOVA reveals the minute-by-minute story of the Fukushima nuclear crisis—the one you know about, and the one you likely don’t: the perilously close call at the other Fukushima nuclear power plant a few miles away from the meltdowns. With unprecedented access inside both Fukushima nuclear power plants, NOVA speaks with workers who were there during the harrowing days—a crisis that began as a natural a disaster but was made worse by human beings. But why did the worst happen at one plant while another that faced nearly identical challenges emerged unscathed? It may come down to the skill and knowledge of one man, who has worked there since they started construction. These are crucial questions as the company that runs both plants, TEPCO, tries to clean up an unprecedented radioactive mess and seeks to reopen the plant that was just barely saved.
#16 - Inside Einstein's Mind
Season 42 - Episode 21 - Aired 11/25/2015
On November 25th, 1915, Einstein published his greatest work: general relativity. The theory transformed our understanding of nature’s laws and the entire history of the cosmos, reaching back to the origin of time itself. Now, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s achievement, NOVA tells the inside story of Einstein’s masterpiece. The story begins with the intuitive thought experiments that set Einstein off on his quest and traces the revolution in cosmology that is still playing out in today’s labs and observatories. Discover the simple but powerful ideas at the heart of relativity, illuminating the theory—and Einstein’s brilliance—as never before. From the first spark of an idea to the discovery of the expanding universe, the Big Bang, black holes, and dark energy, NOVA uncovers the inspired insights and brilliant breakthroughs of “the perfect theory.”
#17 - Nazi Attack on America
Season 42 - Episode 9 - Aired 5/6/2015
A sunken German U-boat off the coast of New Orleans tells the story of Operation Drumbeat
#18 - Making North America: Origins
Season 42 - Episode 18 - Aired 11/4/2015
The epic 3 billion-year story of how our continent came to be. From the palm trees that once flourished in Alaska to titanic eruptions that nearly tore the Midwest in two, discover how forces of almost unimaginable power gave birth to North America.
#19 - Big Bang Machine
Season 42 - Episode 1 - Aired 1/14/2015
CERN scientists prepare to restart the Large Hadron Collider to examine the world's tiniest particles.
#21 - Chasing Pluto
Season 42 - Episode 11 - Aired 7/15/2015
On July 14, 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft, one of the most advanced ever built, is scheduled to fly by Pluto to take the very first detailed images of the dwarf planet. After nine years and 3 billion miles, we will finally get a close look at this strange, icy world, but only if the craft can survive the final, treacherous leg of its journey, which could take it through a dangerous field of debris. If it does, New Horizons is poised to make dramatic new discoveries, not just about Pluto, but about the vast realm of icy bodies lurking beyond Neptune, relics of the earliest days of the solar system’s formation. Back on Earth, the planetary scientists who have spent decades working on this mission anxiously await a signal from their spacecraft. Our cameras will be there to witness the moment. If all goes well, we’ll see Pluto’s mysterious surface in unprecedented detail and learn new secrets about other alien worlds at the far limits of our solar system.