The Observatory at Jaipur

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

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 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

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

In the generation following Copernicus, the question of planetary motions was picked up by two remarkable astronomers: Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler. Tycho was a Danish nobleman and brilliant astronomer and instrument builder whose high precision naked-eye measurements of the s ...  Show more

Can you see the light of the stars from the bottom of a well? Did an astrologer once fall into a well because he was staring up at the stars? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss a couple of well-and-cosmos-related tales from antiquity.See omnystudio ...  Show more