Horizon
Season 55

s55e01 / The Immortalist

16th Mar '16 - 9:00pm
The Immortalist Summary

The show tells the story of how a Russian internet millionaire is using cutting-edge science so that he can try and unlock the secret of living forever.

162 have watched this episode

s55e02 / Project Greenglow

23rd Mar '16 - 9:00pm
Project Greenglow Summary

The show follows an extraordinary scientific adventure with the attempt to control gravity.

174 have watched this episode

s55e03 / The Mystery of Dark Energy

30th Mar '16 - 9:00pm
The Mystery of Dark Energy Summary

The show takes a look at dark energy, the mysterious force that is unexpectedly causing the universe's expansion to increase.

169 have watched this episode

s55e04 / Oceans of the Solar System

6th Apr '16 - 9:00pm
Oceans of the Solar System Summary

The show finds out that the hunt for oceans in space is marking the dawn of a new era in the effort to find alien life.

184 have watched this episode

s55e05 / The End of The Solar System

13th Apr '16 - 9:00pm
The End of The Solar System Summary

The show features the story of how our solar system is going to be transformed by the aging sun before coming to a spectacular end in around eight billion years times.

182 have watched this episode

s55e06 / How to Find Love Online

25th Apr '16 - 9:00pm
How to Find Love Online Summary

Hannah Fry uses Xand van Tulleken as a guinea pig to look at whether the algorithms that dating sites use to match people really work.

163 have watched this episode

s55e07 / Ice Station Antarctica

2nd May '16 - 9:00pm
Ice Station Antarctica Summary

Peter Gibbs takes an emotional return trip to Antarctica, years after he lived and worked at the British Antarctic Survey's Halley Research Station.

167 have watched this episode

s55e08 / Curing Alzheimer's

11th May '16 - 9:00pm
Curing Alzheimer's Summary

The show takes a look at a new era of Alzheimer's research, which is offering new hope to millions across the world.

161 have watched this episode

s55e09 / E-cigarettes: Miracle or Menace?

22nd May '16 - 9:00pm
E-cigarettes: Miracle or Menace? Summary

Michael Mosley takes a look at the dramatic rise in sales of e-cigarettes.

161 have watched this episode

s55e10 / Why Are We Getting So Fat?

7th Jun '16 - 9:00pm
Why Are We Getting So Fat? Summary

With over half of the country's adults currently overweight, Cambridge geneticist Dr Giles Yeo thinks that for many obese people, simply eating less is a harder than some people might think.

156 have watched this episode

s55e11 / Doping

19th Jul '16 - 9:00pm
Doping Summary

The show takes a look at the world of performance-enhancing drugs.

133 have watched this episode

s55e12 / Inside CERN

10th Aug '16 - 9:00pm
Inside CERN Summary

The show takes a look at the highs and lows of an extraordinary story in particle physics. In June 2015, teams at CERN started running the large hadron collider at the highest energy ever.

147 have watched this episode

s55e13 / My Amazing Twin

25th Aug '16 - 9:00pm
My Amazing Twin Summary

The acerbically witty and severely facially disfigured broadcaster Adam Pearson presents a personal film about genetics. He and his twin brother Neil are genetically identical and both share the same genetic disease, Neurofibromatosis 1 (Nf1) - yet they are completely different. Adam's face is covered with growths, whereas Neil has none. Neil has short-term memory loss, whereas Adam is razor sharp.

How can the same genetic disease affect identical twins so differently?

Adam is on the cusp of a successful film and television career, but the disease has left tumours on his face that are growing out of control and he could lose his sight. For years, everyone thought Adam's brother Neil had escaped symptoms, but today his life is governed by epilepsy and a mysterious memory loss that suddenly came on during his teens.

Determined to save their future, Adam tries to find out why the disease affects the twins so differently and see if there is anything he can do to stop it from tearing their lives apart.

91 have watched this episode

s55e14 / Jimmy Carr And The Science Of Laughter

11th Sep '16 - 9:00pm
Jimmy Carr And The Science Of Laughter Summary

Comedian Jimmy Carr takes over Horizon for this one-off special programme, produced as part of BBC2's sitcom season.

Jimmy turns venerable documentary strand Horizon into a chat show, with eminent laughter scientists as guests and a studio audience to use as guinea pigs. Jimmy and his guests try to get to the bottom of what laughter is, why we enjoy it so much and what, if anything, it has to do with comedy.

Between them, and with the help of contributions from other scientists on film, Jimmy and guests discover that laughter is much older than our species, and may well have contributed to making us human.

96 have watched this episode

s55e15 / The Lost Tribes of Humanity

12th Oct '16 - 9:00pm
The Lost Tribes of Humanity Summary

Alice Roberts explores the latest discoveries in the study of human origins, revealing the transformation that has been brought about in this field by genetics.

Traditional paleo-anthropology, based on fossils, is being transformed by advanced genome sequencing techniques. We now know that there were at least four other distinct species of human on the planet at the same time as us - some of them identified from astonishingly well-preserved DNA extracted from 50,000-year-old bones, others hinted at by archaic sections of DNA hidden in our modern genome. What's more, we now know that our ancestors met and interacted with these other humans, in ways that still have ramifications today. Alice uses these revelations to update our picture of the human family tree.

134 have watched this episode

s55e16 / The Wildest Weather in the Universe

23rd Oct '16 - 9:00pm
The Wildest Weather in the Universe Summary

We love talking about the weather - is it too hot or too cold, too wet or too windy? It's a national obsession. Now scientists have started looking to the heavens and wondering what the weather might be like on other planets. Today, we are witnessing the birth of extra-terrestrial meteorology, as technology is allowing astronomers to study other planets like never before. They began with our solar system, sending spacecraft to explore its furthest reaches, and now the latest telescopes are enabling astronomers to study planets beyond our solar system.

Our exploration of the universe is revealing alien worlds with weather stranger than anyone could ever have imagined - we've discovered gigantic storm systems that can encircle entire planets, supersonic winds, extreme temperatures and bizarre forms of rain. On some planets, the temperatures are so hot that the clouds and rain are believed to be made of liquid lava droplets, and on other planets it is thought to rain precious stones like diamonds and rubies.

We thought we had extreme weather on Earth, but it turns out that it is nothing compared to what's out there. The search for the weirdest weather in the universe is only just beginning.

139 have watched this episode
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