Miracle Cure? A Decade of the Human Genome

This documentary chronicles the promising research in gene therapy medicine ten years after the human genome was first mapped. The story is told through the eyes of 3 people with complex genetic diseases - a breast cancer survivor, a cystic fibrosis patient and a recovering alcoholic. Each of them undertakes a journey of discovering what were the major medical breakthroughs relevant to their respective condition and what is the current research and future promise of genetically targeted medical treatment.

It was seen as one of the greatest scientific achievements of our age, a breakthrough that would usher in a new age of medicine. A decade later, Horizon finds out how close we are to developing the life-changing treatments that were hoped for.

Through the Wormhole: Does Time Really Exist

It is a question that has vexed philosophers and scientists for centuries; 'What is Time?' Exactly how is our past, present, and future connected by that arrow of cause and effect that we call Time? Is time simply another dimension, just like the dimensions of space we know? Can you run time backwards just as easily as it runs forward, just as left-to-right can swap for right-to-left?

The Thorium Dream: Alternative Energy Resource

There's much to take for granted in the evolution of technology, or at least in the way that technology appears to us today -- refined, perfected, ever cutting-edge.

This documentary featured the topic of thorium as alternative energy resource. Globally, our energy and resource supplies are becoming increasingly costly to extract and use. Demand has never been higher; ditto levels of CO2 and other terrible greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Asteroids: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Famed for their ability to inflict Armageddon from outer space, asteroids are now revealing the secrets of how they are responsible for both life and death on our planet.

Armed with an array of powerful telescopes, scientists are finding up to 3000 new asteroids every night. And some are heading our way.

First Orbit

In a unique collaboration with the European Space Agency, and the Expedition 26/27 crew of the International Space Station, this film shows what Gagarin first witnessed fifty years ago.

April 12th 1961 – Yuri Gagarin is about to see what no other person has seen in the history of humanity – the Earth from space.

We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists

Some attack governments, large corporations... and steal personal identities. Others use their skills for political activism. They are hackers.

Anonymous is a loosely associated hacktivist group. It originated in 2003, representing the concept of many online and offline community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic, digitized global brain.

To Infinity and Beyond

By our third year, most of us will have learned to count. Once we know how, it seems as if there would be nothing to stop us counting forever. But, while infinity might seem like an perfectly innocent idea, keep counting and you enter a paradoxical world where nothing is as it seems.

Mathematicians have discovered there are infinitely many infinities, each one infinitely bigger than the last. And if the universe goes on forever, the consequences are even more bizarre. In an infinite universe, there are infinitely many copies of the Earth and infinitely many copies of you. Older than time, bigger than the universe and stranger than fiction. This is the documentary of infinity.

Earth Story: Secrets of our Planet

The Documentary Earth Story unravels the secrets of our planet and brings it alive. The series took three years to make, cost 3 million and was filmed all over the world, from the craters of active volcanoes to the ocean floor.

Where the cameras could not go, in both time and space, the latest animation techniques take over.

Rise of the Machines: The Military Drones are Coming Home

Most people see drones as a controversial weapon prowling over foreign battlegrounds. But as America's military campaigns wind down, these machines are coming home and set to change civilian lives forever.

"This is a powerful technology. No amount of hand-wringing is going to stop it", says drone expert, Peter Singer. Whether it's a floating TV station streaming live to the web, the prying lens of the paparazzi, the police chasing a criminal or a government agency spying, small domestic drones are experiencing an exponential growth.

God, The Universe and Everything Else

In a studio setting, Stephen Hawking, Arthur C. Clarke and Carl Sagan (who joins them via satellite) discuss the Big Bang theory, God, our existence as well as the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

God, the Universe and Everything Else is an educational colloquium, attempting to uncover a grand unified theory of the laws that govern the universe.

This enlightening program delves deep into topics such as the Big Bang Theory, the expansion of the universe, black holes, extraterrestrial life and the origins of creativity.

Ice Age Columbus: Who Were the First Americans?

Traditional history tells us that European settlers discovered America in the Renaissance. But revolutionary new archaeological data and the latest DNA research reveal that Europeans visited our shores long before about 17,000 years before Columbus was born.

Filmed in glorious HD, this epic drama follows a family of intrepid hunters of the Stone Age as they journey from their home country in the southwest of France, crossing 3,000 miles of ocean and eventually making their first permanent settlement in what is now the northeastern U.S.

Through the Wormhole: The Riddle of Black Holes

They are the most powerful objects in the universe. Nothing, not even light, can escape the gravitational pull of a black hole. Astronomers now believe there are billions of them in the cosmos, engulfing the planets to the stars around the feeding frenzy of violence. A new theoretical research in the twisted reality of a black hole suggests that the three-dimensional space can be an illusion. That reality really takes place in a two-dimensional hologram on the edge of the universe.

Black hole is almost as difficult to imagine how it will be detected, but some scientists have been up for the task of centuries. Cambridge scholar John Michell wrote an article in 1783 in which the hypothesis of the existence of “dark stars” -- stars as big and with so much gravity that light could not escape its surface. Most astronomers of the time thought it was an absurd idea.

Journeys from the Centre of the Earth

Geologist Dr Iain Stewart shows how the rocks beneath our feet have shaped the history of the Mediterranean. In this series he takes us on a tour of the Med and shows us how geology is behind everything from the rise and fall of civilizations to religion, architecture and food.

Risky Rocks - Earthquakes created a huge network of cracks in the ground that have had a huge impact on human history. These faults are pathways for materials to rise to the surface which can bring life or death. They are behind everything from catastrophic volcanoes to natural health spas and valuable mineral deposits. Filmed in Greece, Turkey and Jordan.

Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey

A fantastic documentary tracing the earliest human migration on this planet, as shown by our genetic roots.

This informative film, full of surprising news, is based on the work of Spencer Wells, who is both innovative scientist and enthusiastic host.

He and crew scour the world for indigenous people with deep roots in one place, asking for samples of DNA to test, in order to piece together our "big family" genetic tree.

Through the Wormhole: Is There an Edge to the Universe?

It is commonly theorized that the universe began with the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. But since we can only see as far as light has traveled in that time, we can't actually make out the edge of the universe. Could it be that the universe is infinite? Is there any way to find out what the shape of the universe really is? Can we find the edge, discover what might lie beyond it, and perhaps even discover a universe next to ours?