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Nova Season 31 Episodes
Season 31 Episode Guide
18 Episodes 2004 - 2005
Episode 1
Mars Dead or Alive
Sun, Jan 4, 200457 mins
NOVA goes behind the scenes at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to offer a look at the construction and launch of two Martian exploratory rovers: "Spirit" and "Opportunity".
Episode 2
Secrets of the Crocodile Caves
Tue, Jan 20, 2004
Tracking the wildlife in Ankarana northern Madagascar, where jagged, 1000-foot ridges wall off lush forests. The rulers of Ankarana: Nile crocodiles, sun lovers that nonetheless live in caves that honeycomb the ridges.
Episode 3
Dogs and More Dogs
Tue, Feb 3, 200455 mins
Nova explores ideas, many of them speculative, about how dogs became domesticated from wolves and how, under human influence, their great diversity of 600 breeds arose. Finally, the challenges many dogs face fitting into modern human society are examined.
Episode 4
Descent Into the Ice
Tue, Feb 10, 2004
A scientist scuba dives a flooded ice cave searching for a hidden lake under the Mount Blanc glacier. Such a lake burst its ice dam in 1892 causing a flash flood that killed hundreds.
Episode 5
Crash of Flight 111
Tue, Feb 17, 2004
Can the lessons of one air disaster help prevent another? What caused Swissair Flight 111 to plunge into waters off the coast of Nova Scotia on September 2, 1998, killing all 229 people aboard? After four years and almost $40 million, investigators revealed that the accident was caused by factors that, alarmingly, still exist on many planes today. NOVA was given unprecedented access to this intricate investigation, involving a seemingly hopeless search for evidence among two million pieces of debris scattered across the ocean floor. The recovery of the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder raised hopes until both were found to have failed during the last six minutes of the flight. Despite these daunting challenges, crash detectives methodically collected, sifted, and sorted through the wreckage to reassemble a large portion of the plane in a giant hangar, building a detailed picture of Flight 111's last moments. After years of painstaking recovery, reconstruction, and testing, the investigators submitted their conclusions and recommended new safety measures. But some experts still believe that another disaster like this one could be just a matter of time.
Episode 6
Life and Death in the War Zone
Tue, Mar 2, 2004
Nova examines the practice of wartime medicine by taking an inside look into the medical care offered to injured US troops during the Iraq War.
Episode 7
Hunt for the Supertwister
Tue, Mar 30, 200455 mins
Tornado-chasing scientists with an eye to better forecasting risk their lives to plumb the secrets of nature's most terrifying killer.
Episode 8
World in the Balance: The People Paradox
Fri, Mar 18, 2005
Examining the "demographic divide" between developed and underdeveloped nations. Visits to India, Japan and Kenya explore problems caused by too many people in the underdeveloped world and too few in many industrialized nations.
Episode 9
World in the Balance: China Revs Up
Thu, Apr 15, 2004
Reviewing upsides and downsides of China's economic "binge" of the last quarter century. "The world has never seen a country get so rich so fast," says narrator Oliver Platt. One telling statistic: 200,000 cars in 1995; 30 million in 2004.
Episode 10
Battle Plan Under Fire
Tue, May 4, 2004
A report (produced with the New York Times) on how military technology was tested during the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the occupation that followed.
Episode 11
Origins: Earth Is Born
Tue, Sep 28, 2004
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson measures Earth's 4.5 billion year history in terms of one 24-hour day. And covers the first hour, when, he says, the planet was "beaten, bombarded, mangled and melted" for several hundred million years.
Episode 12
Origins: How Life Began
Tue, Sep 28, 2004
Following the formation of the Earth, life didn't waste any time getting started. Scientists explore the evidence and conduct experiments to determine how life could form on the inhospitable early Earth then change to cover the entire Earth.
Episode 13
Origins: Where Are the Aliens?
Wed, Sep 29, 2004
This program reviews the Drake equation to provide an updated estimate of the likelihood that there is another civilization close enough to Earth for us to talk with. And it ponders the question; with so many strange life forms on earth how would we know an alien if we met one?
Episode 14
Origins: Back to the Beginning
Wed, Sep 29, 2004
Scientists discover and explore the the cosmic microwave background and with it, the big bang and understanding of the first stars and the formation of the elements.
Episode 15
The Most Dangerous Woman in America
Tue, Oct 12, 2004
Documents the emerging science of public health and the social, ethical, and legal dilemmas it posed at the turn of the 20th century concerning Mary Mallon, AKA: Typhoid Mary, who was identified as a healthy carrier of typhoid fever,
Episode 16
America's Stone Age Explorers
Tue, Nov 9, 200454 mins
Who were the first Americans? Where did they come from? Archaeologists thought they were a culture of prehistoric big game hunters that came over a land bridge from Asia. But new clues are forcing scientists to rewrite an epic story.
Episode 17
History's Great Escapes
Tue, Nov 16, 2004
"Great Escape" follows archaeologists---and original escapees---as they retrace the daring World War II POW escape dramatized in the 1963 Steve McQueen movie.
Episode 18
Ancient Refuge in the Holy Land
Tue, Nov 23, 200460 mins
Nova follows an archaeological expedition into the Cave of Letters and examines the Jewish Bar Kokhba revolt against the Roman Empire.