Eureka! - Alan Hirshfeld

Part 1 of Eureka!, featuring Alan Hirshfeld, Professor of physics at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, and author of Eureka Man: The Life and Legacy of Archimedes.

Eureka! - Fog Newton

Part 2 of Eureka! Newton's law of universal gravitation is lost in a haze of 8 bit sound effects.

Eureka! - Angela Duckworth

Part 3 of Eureka!, featuring Angela Duckworth, Psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. Her grit study can be found here (PDF).

Eureka! - Richard Holmes

Part 4 of Eureka!, featuring Richard Holmes, Author of The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science.

Eureka! - Stanislas Dehaene

Part 5, the final segment of Eureka!, featuring Stanislas Dehaene, cognitive neruoscientist at the the Collège de France in Paris, and author of Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention.

A Very Special 'Are We Alone'

A massive black hole lies at the center of our galaxy, a monster hunkered down in the Milky Way’s innermost sanctum. Here, the bizarre laws of General Relativity take over, as the physics we know break down. And our spaceship is headed straight for it.

Join us on a special dramatized 26,000 light-year adventure to the Galaxy’s hulking heart of darkness. We explore a cosmos held together by gravity – discover why it’s not really a force – and try to avoid getting too close to a black hole, the ultimate expression of gravity.

This program is part of the traveling exhibit: “Black Holes, Space Warps and Time Twists,” a production of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Find out more at: http://web-bh.cfa.harvard.edu/

Cast:
Seth Shostak - himself
Molly Bentley - herself, Dr. Barsky
Doug Vakoch - News Anchor
Roland Pease - Dr. Childschwartz
Lilia Roman - SOPHIA
Roe DeVasto - Ship Computer
Patrick Porter - Dr. G
Gary Niederhoff - DAN, Albert Einstein, Dr. Dutch

Master of Camouflage

This week's show about the evolution of intelligence features a segment on the ability of cuttlefish to change the colors and patterns of their skin to match their surroundings. As Roger Hanlon, senior scientist at Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, describes in "Feather Knows Best", this helpful adaptation has been honed to the point that the cuttlefish can undergo this transformation in the blink of an eye. In the video above, a cuttlefish floats just above the ocean floor, its color ranging from purple to yellow. At about 27 seconds in, it suddenly takes on the colors and pattern of the ocean floor, and if you didn't see it happen, you'd probably swim right by without seeing the animal at all. At least, that's what it hopes.