Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the wonders of the natural world. In 1875 in the western Pacific, the crew of HMS Challenger discovered the Mariana Trench which turned out to be deeper than Everest is high, by two kilometres. Trenches like Mariana form when one tectonic pl ...Show more
The Evolution of Lungs
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the evolution of lungs and of the first breaths, which can be traced back 400 million years to when animal life spread from rock pools and swamps onto land, as some fish found an evolutionary advantage in getting their oxygen from air rather than w ...Show more
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the man who, in 1905, produced several papers that were to change the world of physics and whose name went on to become a byword for genius. This was Albert Einstein, then still a technical expert at a Swiss patent office, and that year of 1905 bec ...Show more
Albert Einstein is the theoretical physicist who discovered the theory of relativity and E=MC². He changed our understanding of the universe more than any other scientist. How and why was he such an original thinker? How did his personal life inform his scientific works? Learn mo ...Show more
Albert Einstein overhauled our understanding of the universe—from the sub-atomic level to beyond the edges of the cosmos. Today his ideas are in evidence everywhere, from televisions and GPS systems, to our understanding of black holes and the Big Bang. But who was Einstein as a ...Show more
It wasn’t always obvious that Albert Einstein was destined for greatness. Long before he won the Nobel Prize, he was a rebellious, lovesick young man and a music lover who infuriated his professors and struggled to find a job. It would take years of struggle, but eventually Einst ...Show more