Morgan Freeman’s Wormhole Series Starts a New Season

Posted on May 14, 2013 at 8:00 am

Oscar-winner Morgan Freeman returns to Science Channel to host the fourth installment of the Emmy® nominated Through the Wormhole series on Wednesday, June 5, at 10:00 PM (ET/PT). Featuring nine riveting episodes, this all-new season poses thought-provoking and awe-inspiring questions spanning science, space, and humankind sure to satisfy viewers’ insatiable curiosities. Season four’s premiere episode dives right into mystery and controversy with exploration of the charged topic, “When Does Life Begin?”

“One of the inherent characteristics of mankind is our need to understand truth and meaning. Our drive to ask ‘how,’ ‘why’ and ‘what if’ makes us who we are – and provides the basis for Through the Wormhole,” said Freeman. “Working on Through the Wormhole gives me the opportunity to bring together renowned physicists, cosmologists and neuroscientists to explore some of science’s greatest questions.”

Each episode boasts innovative scientific research and groundbreaking theories brought to viewers by scientists who break down the walls of today’s most compelling subjects. Every week viewers will be challenged to consider new perspectives and confronted with ideas that push the envelope of conventional television. Other questions tackled in this new season include, “Did God Create Evolution?”, “How Do Aliens Think?”, “Can Our Minds Be Hacked?”, and “Will Sex Become Extinct?”

For the first time ever, Wormhole fans will be granted exclusive access behind the scenes with Morgan Freeman and the producers of to get a glimpse of how each question is explored and explained. Find out about Freeman’s deep interest in science and the methods used to visualize and simplify complicated, often philosophical, subjects incorporating the latest discoveries from scientists in the field. The never before seen footage will be available only at sciencechannel.com/wormhole.

Season Four will include:

Episode 1: WHEN DOES LIFE BEGIN?

Premieres Wednesday, June 5 at 10:00 PM (ET/PT)

The premiere episode explores what defines the beginning of a life. It is a debate that has raged for centuries’. Groundbreaking evidence reveals that inside all of us are traces of cells from our relatives, blurring the lines between one life and another. Technology is now giving birth to new life forms made of surprising components—from droplets of oil in a Petri dish, to conscious robots and to a new global internet-connected life form comprised of all humanity.

Episode 2: CAN WE SURVIVE THE DEATH OF THE SUN?

Premieres Wednesday, June 12 at 10:00 PM (ET/PT)

The Sun holds a dark secret. Someday it will bathe us in a fiery, planetary holocaust.. Will the Sun someday, bathe us in a fiery, planetary holocaust? How will we survive the death of our star? The technology to move our entire civilization to Mars sounds like sci-fi, but it is almost within our grasp. Reaching a second Earth across the galaxy could be possible thanks to a radical new propulsion technology from manmade black holes.

Episode 3: HOW DO ALIENS THINK?

Premieres Wednesday, June 19 at 10:00 PM (ET/PT)

By studying the non-humans in our midst, scientists are learning how alien minds might function. Biologists and computer scientists watch “dumb” ants form an intelligent super-organism; neuroscientists probe the mysterious brains of octopuses; and a team of researchers show that even plants behave in ways we normally only associate with animals. Meanwhile, a linguist tries to imagine advanced alien language by recreating centuries of human language evolution, a researcher teaches humans to feel an alien sense and a groundbreaking psychologist finds that super-intelligent aliens may still be ruled by emotions.

Episode 4: CAN OUR MINDS BE HACKED?

Premieres Wednesday, June 26 at 10:00 PM (ET/PT)

Our minds store our entire lives, our memories and our deepest desires and our brains are biological computers. Could brain hackers someday be able to rewrite our thoughts similar to how computer hackers hack email? For the first time, neuroscientists are translating patterns on a brain scan into specific pictures and words. They have learned how to insert ideas into people’s minds as they sleep and one pioneering MIT scientist has shown he can inject emotions, on demand, into a living brain.

Episode 5: WILL SEX BECOME EXTINCT?

Premieres Wednesday, July 3 at 10:00 PM (ET/PT)

Every single person who has ever lived was created from the genes of one man and one woman but human sexual reproduction, unchanged for millions of years, is about to undergo a radical revolution. Technology is on the brink of making children from two fathers, or two mothers. Marine biologists are using mechanical wombs to birth live sharks and humans could be next. We may soon cure diseases by making children with more than two genetic parents, or even give our offspring genes from the animal kingdom. If this is the case, will sex become extinct?

Episode 6: ARE ROBOTS THE FUTURE OF HUMAN EVOLUTION?

Premieres Wednesday, July 10 at 10:00 PM (ET/PT)

From our smartphones to our vacuum cleaners to our cars, we have robots that live and work beside us. We are designing these everyday objects to think for themselves giving them the power to learn to move on their own. Is it possible that these new life forms evolve to be smarter and more capable than humans or will we choose to merge with the machines, combining the best of our world with the best of theirs?

Episode 7: IS REALITY REAL?

Premieres Wednesday, July 17 at 10:00 PM (ET/PT)

Do we live in the “real world,” or is it all in our mind? Our perception of reality is controlled by society. We make unrealistic assessments about our own reality, thanks to “the optimism bias,” a twist of the brain that rejects negative information about ourselves. Human senses capture only a small part of nature, and new physics suggests we may be blind to entire dimensions of space or there could be less to reality than we think.

Episode 8: DO WE HAVE FREE WILL?

Premieres Wednesday, July 24 at 10:00 PM (ET/PT)

What if everything that has or will happen in the universe has already been determined and we are unable to change our inevitable destinies? Until the discovery of quantum uncertainty, physicists were convinced free will does not exist. Now neuroscientists and geneticists have stepped into the fray, arguing that free will is an illusion thanks to the genes we are born with, the automatic processes working in our brains, and the conforming pressures of society.

Episode 9: DID GOD CREATE EVOLUTION?

Premieres Wednesday, July 31 at 10:00 PM (ET/PT)

Is life the product of evolution or is it thanks to the guiding hand of God? Believers in Intelligent Design argue complex life could not have evolved randomly. One evolutionary scientist is filling in the gaps in the fossil record by bringing extinct creatures back to life as robots. An engineer has discovered a single pattern that appears throughout the entire universe. Is the existence of a “moral molecule” in our brains a sign that God created humanity? Was life created by evolution, by God or both?

Related Tags:

Television

The Big Brain Theory

Posted on May 3, 2013 at 8:00 am

Part “Big Bang Theory,” part “Project Runway” and “Top Chef,” and part “Mythbusters,” the new reality series beginning tonight on Discovery is a reality competition featuring really smart people solving really fun problems. The host is “Harold and Kumar’s” Kal Penn. He’s a bit of a brainiac himself — he took time off from movies and “House” to work in the White House.

Related Tags:

Television

Sid the Science Kid

Posted on August 3, 2009 at 8:00 am

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Preschool
MPAA Rating:	NR
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	None
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	August 4, 2009
Date Released to DVD:	August 4, 2009
Amazon.com ASIN:	B003C5FMM6

Preschool programs focus on words and numbers and there has not been much about science. But all children are inherently scientists, endlessly curious about the world around them and constantly performing experiments and asking “why.” The Jim Henson company introduces the “Sesame Street” audience to scientific terminology and method in this utterly engaging series filled with music, laughter, and the love of learning.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

Posted on October 14, 2008 at 8:00 am

There may be a good argument to make on behalf of teaching Intelligent Design in science class, but this documentary from Ben Stein does not make it. The movie itself is an example of design by faith and emotion rather than intelligence, defined as rationality grounded in proof. Instead of making a straightforward case for Intelligent Design as a scientific theory, Stein employs misdirection and guilt by very tangential association to try to make his case.

Intelligent Design advocates believe that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected or random or mechanical process such as Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Stein begins by interviewing scientists who lost their jobs for even mentioning the theory, baits some Darwinian scientists in selective clips from interviews, and then visits Dachau and the Hadamar euthanasia center, where the Nazis murdered thousands of disabled people. Stein tells us he is not saying that Darwinism leads to mass murder, but the connection he draws is unmistakable.

Like the tobacco companies once they could no longer question the legitimacy of the scientific evidence connecting cigarettes and disease, Stein quickly shifts the debate from a head-to-head assessment of analysis of data to frame the issue as one of freedom of speech. The movie opens with archival footage not of science labs or the animal life on Galapagos Island, where Darwin first began to develop his theory, but of the construction of the Berlin Wall. Stein tries to draw a parallel between the wall that divided Germany and the impenetrable wall that keeps Intelligent Design out of the science establishment. But he is also associating Darwinian science with Godlessness, communism, and totalitarianism, with detours into Nazi atrocities and atheism so over-the-top that it becomes shrill and irrational.

And irrationality is the opposite of scientific inquiry. Stein says that freedom of speech requires that both Intelligent Design and Darwin’s natural selection should be taught in America’s classrooms. But he never subjects Intelligent Design to the kind of scrutiny required by scientific analysis, which is based on observation and experimentation. Intelligent Design is based the fact that (1) there are questions that natural selection does not answer — which Darwinian scientists admit, and (2) therefore, some intelligent force must be behind creation — which cannot be proven by scientific means and therefore is more appropriately considered within the fields of philosophy or religion.

Science is all about challenging, refining, and refuting established theories, as the movie concedes, with Albert Einstein’s improvement of the theories of Isaac Newton as an example. But both Newton and Einstein agreed on what science was and how to evaluate scientific theories. As presented by Stein, Intelligent Design and Darwinian theory make the same observations, but come to different conclusions. Darwin says that life forms evolved through random mutation and natural selection, the survival of the fittest. Intelligent Design says that life is so complex that it is all the evidence we need to show that some intelligent (conscious, intentional) force must have created it. Stein never shows that Intelligent Design can go from theory to explanation as it must to be considered science. As a lawyer, he should understand that freedom of speech also guarantees the freedom not to have to listen to mangled, manipulative, and disingenuous rhetoric like this.

Related Tags:

Not specified

October Sky

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:16 am

This true story of a boy from a small town who dreams of becoming a rocket scientist is one of the best films ever made about the thrill and hard work of science and a great family movie.

In 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first man-made orbiting satellite. Thanks to Miss Riley (Laura Dern), a gifted teacher, Homer Hickam (Jake Gyllenhaal) and his high school friends peer up into the clear October sky over their tiny West Virginia coal mining town to see its tiny spark drift across the stars. Homer dreams of being a rocket scientist. His father, John (Chris Cooper), the mine supervisor, does not understand Homer’s longing for wider horizons. But others do. Miss Riley roots for “the unlucky ones.” Homer’s mother covers the kitchen wall with a mural of the seascape she longs to see. Homer’s friends are glad to be a part of something new and important, and the community is proud to have a hero.

We know from the beginning where this story is going, just as we know with “Rocky.” The triumph of the underdog is one of literature’s most enduring themes. As long as it is done well, audiences are happy to go along and it is never done better than it is here. The script, the production design, and the acting are all superb. Gyllenhaal’s expressive eyes show his longing for the stars a million light years away and for his father’s approval in his own home. Cooper makes a role that could have been a one-dimensional tyrant multi-layered and complex, even sympathetic. Plot twists that might seem heavy-handed or melodramatic work because we know they really happened, and because these characters make us believe. We care so deeply about them that when we see real home movie footage of the real-life Homer’s experiments over the closing credits we feel as though they are a part of our family.

Parents should use this movie to talk to kids about how Homer, not a great student and not especially strong in math, became so inspired by an idea that he begins to think in new ways. Using math and science to solve problems made it real to him, and the work involved was — like the eight- mile walk to his experimental launch site — unquestionably worth it. They should also talk about why it was hard for John to support Homer’s ambitions, why his mother saw it differently, whether Homer made the right choice in going to work in the mine — and in leaving it, how kids at school treat the “nerds” and why, how people are evaluated differently in school than they are once they get out, and how life in 1999 is different from the world of 1957.

Parents should know that a drunken stepfather beats up one of Homer’s friends in one scene (and is stopped by John) and that there are some very mild sexual references.

Kids who enjoy this movie might also enjoy “The Corn is Green,” another true story about a boy from the coal mines who is transformed by education. Two different versions are available, one with Katharine Hepburn and one with Bette Davis.