For decades some have suspected that there might be others out there, intelligent beings capable of communicating with us, even visiting our world. It might sound like science fiction, but today scientists from across the globe are scouring the universe for signals from extraterrestrials.
In 2006, husband and wife team Duncan Lorimer and Maura McLaughlin discovered an enigmatic...
Volcanoes have long helped shape the Earth. But what is less well known is that there are volcanoes on other planets and moons that are even more extraordinary than those on our own home planet.
Horizon follows an international team of volcanologists in Iceland as they draw fascinating parallels between the volcanoes on Earth and those elsewhere in the solar system. Through the...
A few weeks ago, the National Health Service was hit by a widespread and devastating cyber attack - Horizon tells the inside story of one of the most challenging days in the history of the NHS.
On the morning of 12 May the attack started. Appointment systems, pathology labs, x-rays and even CT scanners were infected - putting not just data but patients lives at risk, and on eve...
The car has shrunk the world, increased personal freedom and in so many ways expanded our horizons, but there is a flipside. Fumes from car exhausts have helped to destroy our environment, poisoned the air we breathe and killed us in far more straightforward ways. But all that is going to change.
This episode enters a world where cars can drive themselves, a world where we are ...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bcmjht/horizon-2018-4-spina-bifida-me
One in every 1,000 pregnancies in Britain has a spine or brain defect like spina bifida. Thirty years ago, actress Ruth Madeley was one of them. Despite having spina bifida herself, it is a condition she doesn't fully understand. In this programme, Ruth sets out to discover why she has it, whether it ...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bb33ht/horizon-2018-3-how-to-build-a-time-machine
Time travel is not forbidden by the laws of nature, but to build a time machine, we would need to understand more about those laws and how to subvert them than we do now. And every day, science does learn more. In this film Horizon meets the scientists working on the cutting edge of discov...
Suicide is the biggest killer of men under 50 in the UK - causing more deaths in this group than car accidents, and even more than cancer. This means that the most likely thing to kill Dr Xand Van Tulleken is himself. And he wants to know why.
In this sensitive film, Xand finds out what we know about why people develop suicidal thoughts, and whether there is anything that we ca...
Artificial Intelligence is starting to transform healthcare beyond recognition. The vision for tech companies is to get AI computers to diagnose diseases as well as a human doctor, which could ultimately result in accessible, more affordable, better healthcare for almost everyone.
In a world with a chronic shortage of doctors, but where even the very poor own mobile phones, it ...
We all have a biological clock ticking away inside us that governs our daily rhythms. This affects our health as much as our diet and whether we exercise. So what can we do to manage this internal clock better?
To find out, evolutionary biologist Ella Al-Shamahi locks former commando Aldo Kane in an abandoned nuclear bunker with no way of telling the time - for ten days. Monito...
The BBC's Horizon programme began in 1964, and since then has produced films looking at computer technology and the emergence of 'artificial intelligence'.
Our dreams always begin with ideology and optimism, only for this optimism to be replaced with suspicion that AI machines will take over. However, as the Horizon archive shows, throughout each decade once we have learnt to l...
According to the UN, it is predicted that the human population could reach ten billion people by the year 2050. For broadcaster and naturalist Chris Packham, who has dedicated his life to championing the natural world, the subject of our growing population and the impact it is having on our planet is one of the most vital – and often overlooked – topics of discussion in an era ...
Is your smart phone making you stupid? Can you make yourself cleverer? The Great British Intelligence Test measures the brainpower of the nation in one of the largest intelligence experiments of its kind.
Devised with leading scientists at Imperial College, London, over 250,000 people around the nation have taken part so far - revealing important new science about the nation’s ...
Drones are transforming our world. We use them to deliver our medicines, clean our skyscrapers and even fight fires. But there is a dark side to this airborne revolution, from a shocking rise in drone-plane near misses above our heads to last year's sustained drone disruption at Gatwick – Britain's second largest airport – that ruined the Christmas plans of 140,000 people and c...
