The WORST episodes of Through the Wormhole

Every episode of Through the Wormhole ever, ranked from worst to best by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The worst episodes of Through the Wormhole!

Hosted by Morgan Freeman, Through the Wormhole explores the deepest mysteries of existence - the questions that have puzzled mankind for eternity. What are we made of? What was there before the beginning? Are we really alone? Is there a creator? These questions have been pondered by the most exquisite minds of the human race. Now, science has evolved to the point where hard facts and evidence may be able to provide us with answers instead of philosophical theories. Through the Wormhole brings together the brightest minds and best ideas from the very edges of science - Astrophysics, Astrobiology, Quantum Mechanics, String Theory, and more - to reveal the extraordinary truth of our Universe.

Last Updated: 9/23/2024Network: Science ChannelStatus: Ended
What Do Aliens Look Like?
star
7.18
411 votes

#1 - What Do Aliens Look Like?

Season 2 - Episode 9 - Aired 8/3/2011

Science fiction writers have always had their little green men. But these humanoid aliens were based soundly on Earth-based life, not any extra terrestrial evidence. Today, we've discovered hundreds of planets around other stars. As we learn what some of these alternative Earths might look like, science and imagination have allowed us to use real science to imagine the biology of their inhabitants. Will they have two eyes? Two legs? What color will their skin be? Which species on Earth can give us clues about likely biology of aliens? And what can we learn from how life on Earth developed to help us understand what ET really looks like?

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How Do Aliens Think?
star
7.28
343 votes

#2 - How Do Aliens Think?

Season 4 - Episode 4 - Aired 6/19/2013

If the stuff of life is spread throughout the cosmos, then the universe could be teeming with aliens. Will alien brains think in ways we understand?

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Can Our Minds Be Hacked?
star
7.33
296 votes

#3 - Can Our Minds Be Hacked?

Season 4 - Episode 6 - Aired 7/3/2013

Our minds store our entire lives, our memories and our deepest desires. Tell no one, and our thoughts remain our own. But our brains are biological computers. Computer hackers can tamper with our email. Could brain hackers someday be able to rewrite our thoughts?

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Are There Parallel Universes?
star
7.39
305 votes

#4 - Are There Parallel Universes?

Season 2 - Episode 10 - Aired 9/4/2011

Most scientists believe that you are not really you, but rather, you all. On the edge of space, buried in a black hole, or right on top of you, there could be an exact copy of yourself living a parallel reality. In those parallel worlds, you may be living your wildest dreams, or your worst nightmares. Finding them is no longer restricted to the realm of science fiction. Recent game-changing theories now suggest that if these worlds exist, intelligent life in these alternative worlds could be trying to send us messages. As scientists further unravel this astounding possibility, a new possibility emerges: the fate of our entire universe may depend on these hidden cosmic twins.

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Mysteries of the Subconscious
star
7.41
338 votes

#5 - Mysteries of the Subconscious

Season 3 - Episode 8 - Aired 7/25/2012

Does your subconscious know more than you ever will, and is your conscious mind holding you back? Do thoughts control actions, or vice versa? Research shows that opening the subconscious may make people healthier and more creative. There are also dangers lurking in the dark recesses of the mind.

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Is the Force With Us?
star
7.41
208 votes

#6 - Is the Force With Us?

Season 8 - Episode 1 - Aired 4/25/2017

New research is beginning to reveal a hidden force in the universe - one that penetrates space with trillions of invisible connections, instantly linking every place in our world and joining our future with our past. Is the Force with us?

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Did God Create Evolution?
star
7.43
208 votes

#7 - Did God Create Evolution?

Season 4 - Episode 10 - Aired 7/31/2013

What or who created all of the billions of species that have lived on Earth? Is all life the product of evolution as Charles Darwin proposed or was it the guiding hand of a higher power?

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When Did Time Begin?
star
7.43
147 votes

#8 - When Did Time Begin?

Season 5 - Episode 10 - Aired 6/4/2014

We float along the river of time. But does that river have a source? Where did time come from? Some believe time and space are one thing, and the Big Bang started the cosmic clock. Others believe the universe existed for almost half a million "years" before light could move and time began. Still others say time is older than our universe. But what if time itself is an illusion? Incredible new experiments may hold the answer. One groundbreaking experiment gives us the power to punch holes in time…and another may create a machine that operates outside time’s boundaries!

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Can We Live Forever?
star
7.47
573 votes

#9 - Can We Live Forever?

Season 2 - Episode 8 - Aired 7/27/2011

Medical advances have doubled human life expectancy in past centuries. But can humans ever beat death altogether? Can we control and fix the errors that build up in our DNA over the years? Can we find a way to replace the chemistry of life with something more durable? This episode wonders into the mystifying definition of 'eternity' as it relates to human lifespan.

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Will Eternity End?
star
7.47
349 votes

#10 - Will Eternity End?

Season 3 - Episode 9 - Aired 8/1/2012

Many religious traditions have predicted that our world will come to an apocalyptic end. Scientists agree that Earth can't last forever, but disagree on whether the universe and time itself can ever disappear. Some may hope for eternity, but the possibility of never-ending time has mind-bending implications for the present.

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Can We Resurrect the Dead?
star
7.47
271 votes

#11 - Can We Resurrect the Dead?

Season 3 - Episode 6 - Aired 7/11/2012

With cloning and genetic engineering, we can bring back extinct animals. But could we also bring back dead humans? Is it possible to keep our brains alive after our bodies have died? Could we rise from the dead in some strange new form? Can we - should we - resurrect the dead?

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Is There Life After Death?
star
7.48
651 votes

#12 - Is There Life After Death?

Season 2 - Episode 1 - Aired 6/8/2011

In the premiere episode of the second season, Morgan Freeman dives deep into this provocative question that has mystified humans since the beginning of time. Modern physics and neuroscience are venturing into this once hallowed ground, and radically changing our ideas of life after death. Freeman serves as host to this polarized debate, where scientists and spiritualist attempt to define 'what is consciousness,' while cutting edge quantum mechanics could provide the answer to what happens when we die.

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Do We Have Free Will?
star
7.52
232 votes

#13 - Do We Have Free Will?

Season 4 - Episode 9 - Aired 7/24/2013

We like to think we are the masters of our fates. But is that really true? What if everything that has happened or will happen in the universe has already been set, from the Big Bang to the Last Gasp, and we are unable to change our inevitable destinies?

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Can Time Go Backwards?
star
7.54
194 votes

#14 - Can Time Go Backwards?

Season 6 - Episode 2 - Aired 4/23/2015

Could science ever make the clock move backwards? Experiments in quantum physics are showing that the future influences the present: what happens later limits the choices we think we have now.

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Can We Travel Faster Than Light?
star
7.54
670 votes

#15 - Can We Travel Faster Than Light?

Season 2 - Episode 7 - Aired 7/20/2011

It's called the speed limit of the universe. Einstein blew all of our minds when he worked out the Theory of Relativity, and showed that space and time were malleable substances. He also theorized that we as humans can never travel faster than the speed of light, which leaves the stars and other galaxies almost impossibly out of our reach. But the dreams of Star Wars and Star Trek are not dead. In fact, there could be ways to travel faster than the speed of light - and some of them are already being tested in labs around the world.

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Is The Universe Alive?
star
7.55
371 votes

#16 - Is The Universe Alive?

Season 3 - Episode 3 - Aired 6/13/2012

As scientists peer across the galaxy, a new revelation emerges: The universe is shockingly organic. Are the secrets to the life and death of the universe hidden not in physics, but biology? Could it be that the universe is alive?

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Are We Alone?
star
7.55
697 votes

#17 - Are We Alone?

Season 1 - Episode 6 - Aired 7/14/2010

Aliens almost certainly do exist. So why haven't we yet met E.T.? It turns out we're only just developing instruments powerful enough to scan for them, and science sophisticated enough to know where to look. As a result, race is on to find the first intelligent aliens. But what would they look like, and how would they interact with us if we met? The answers may come to us sooner than we imagine, for one leading astronomer believes she may already have heard a hint of their first efforts to communicate.

Directors: Geoffrey Sharp
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Can We Cheat Death?
star
7.55
160 votes

#18 - Can We Cheat Death?

Season 8 - Episode 2 - Aired 5/2/2017

Scientists are peering inside the mechanisms of aging, tampering with the cellular makeup of our DNA, and imagining a world where death is cured like a disease. Are we entering a new age of immortality? Or is dying necessary for our race's survival?

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What Makes a Terrorist?
star
7.56
144 votes

#19 - What Makes a Terrorist?

Season 7 - Episode 1 - Aired 8/30/2016

A dissection of the causes of terrorism.

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Can We Outlive the Sun?
star
7.58
314 votes

#20 - Can We Outlive the Sun?

Season 4 - Episode 3 - Aired 6/12/2013

We are all at the mercy of the Sun. Its glowing disc sustains nearly all life on Earth. But the Sun also holds a dark secret: someday, our aging, expanding star will bathe the Earth in a fiery holocaust. Everything we know will turn to hot, bubbling, plasma.

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Is There a Creator?
star
7.59
1387 votes

#21 - Is There a Creator?

Season 1 - Episode 1 - Aired 6/9/2010

It's perhaps the biggest, most controversial mystery in the cosmos. Did our Universe just come into being by random chance, or was it created by a God who nurtures and sustains all life? The latest science is showing that the four forces governing our universe are phenomenally finely tuned. So finely that it had led many to the conclusion that someone, or something, must have calibrated them; a belief further backed up by evidence that everything in our universe may emanate from one extraordinarily elegant and beautiful design known as the E8 Lie Group. While skeptics hold that these findings are neither conclusive nor evidence of a divine creator, some cutting edge physicists are already positing who this God is: an alien gamester who's created our world as the ultimate SIM game for his own amusement. It's an answer as compelling as it is disconcerting.

Directors: Geoffrey Sharp
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Are There Aliens Inside Us?
star
7.60
164 votes

#22 - Are There Aliens Inside Us?

Season 6 - Episode 5 - Aired 5/12/2015

Odds are excellent that extra-terrestrial life exists. So why haven't we found aliens out in the galaxy? Are we looking in the wrong places?

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How to Collapse a Superpower
star
7.60
167 votes

#23 - How to Collapse a Superpower

Season 5 - Episode 4 - Aired 6/25/2014

With a little imagination, could a few terrorists sabotage a mighty nation? Perhaps even tear down modern civilization? The stability of the US, Europe, China, or any global power depends on high-speed digital communication. Our increasing dependence on digital devices and global interactivity may be placing us in grave danger. Scientists around the world are dealing with new threats such as body hacking, Trojan horse viruses, and brain-damaging Internet addiction. But what if the ultimate threat isn’t an attack on technology, but the technology? Could the final superpower be the disembodied mind of the Internet itself?

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Is Luck Real?
star
7.61
173 votes

#24 - Is Luck Real?

Season 5 - Episode 2 - Aired 3/12/2014

Do you make your own luck, or does luck make you? Some scientists believe luck is strictly a matter of statistics and probabilities…but others believe unseen forces are at work, and randomness is built into every particle of the universe. We’ll find luck, good and bad, in casinos, basketball courts, genetics labs and the subatomic world. How much does the genetic lottery rule your fate? Are lucky streaks and unfortunate accidents merely our own minds fooling us? It’s a scientific journey that will radically revise your understanding of the laws of nature and the workings of the human brain.

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What Happened Before the Beginning?
star
7.62
1036 votes

#25 - What Happened Before the Beginning?

Season 1 - Episode 4 - Aired 6/30/2010

Every cosmologist and astronomer agrees: our Universe is 13.7 billion years old. Using cutting-edge technology, scientists are now able to take a snapshot of the Universe a mere heartbeat after its birth. Armed with hypersensitive satellites, astronomers look back in time to the very moment of creation, when all the matter in the Universe exploded into existence. It is here that we uncover an unsolved mystery as old as time itself — if the Universe was born, where did it come from? Meet the leading scientists who have now discovered what they believe to be the origin of our Universe, and a window into the time before time.

Directors: Geoffrey Sharp
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