Lecture 34: Venus Unveiled

Mars is a cold desert planet with a thin, dry carbon-dioxide atmosphere. The geology of Mars, however, shows signs of an active past, with hot-spot volcanism, and tantalizing signs of ancient water flows. While a cold, dead desert planet today, Mars' past may have been warmer and ...  Show more

Having completed our tour of the Terrestrial Planets, we want to step back and compare their properties. In particular, we will wi review the processes that drive the evolution of their surfaces, their interiors, and their atmospheres. Recorded 2007 Nov 13 in 1000 McPherson Lab o ...  Show more

There was a time when science and religion worked in harmony, as two parts of a celestial design. Astrologer and philosopher Johannes Kepler oversaw this marriage of theory and belief when he proposed the revolutionary laws of planetary motion in the early 17th century. Amidst pe ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the flow of particles from the outer region of the Sun which we observe in the Northern and Southern Lights, interacting with Earth's magnetosphere, and in comet tails that stream away from the Sun regardless of their own direction. One way of defi ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546 – 1601) whose charts offered an unprecedented level of accuracy.In 1572 Brahe's observations of a new star challenged the idea, inherited from Aristotle, that the heavens were unchanging. He went o ...  Show more

The sun is out, the weather is warm, and summer school is in session! Neil deGrasse Tyson, co-host Matt Kirshen, and astrophysicist Charles Liu answer fan-submitted questions on mathematics, the Big Bang, the laws of physics, neutrinos, relativity, Pluto, the smell of the Milk ...