Earth and Space Science: Geology

Antarctica: A Challenging Work Day
What happens when the ground under your feet is ice and it's moving? This video segment adapted from NOVA features some of the dangers faced by scientists conducting research in Antarctica.

Antarctic Ice Movement: Part II
Within Antarctic ice sheets are fast-moving streams of ice. This video segment adapted from NOVA hypothesizes about how ice streams are the result of warming at the end of the last ice age.

Are We Alone?
This video segment adapted from NOVA features a variety of scientific perspectives on the age old question, "Are we alone in the universe?" Animations make vivid the improbability that we could intercept a radio wave signaling extra terrestrial intelligence.

Becoming a Fossil
This video segment describes how the Australopithecus afarensis skeleton known as Lucy could have been fossilized. Footage courtesy of NOVA: "In Search of Human Origins."

Booming Sands
This video segment, adapted from NOVA scienceNOW, presents basic concepts of physics behind "booming" sand dunes. See how surface tension affects potential and kinetic energy and how it all works together to create sound.

Cave Formation: Biogeochemical Cycles
This video segment adapted from NOVA chronicles the discoveries that led to a radical new theory in which living organisms, not just geological processes, play an active role in cave formation.

Caves: Extreme Conditions for Life
This video segment adapted from NOVA raises the provocative idea that if life can exist in the most extreme environments on Earth — such as in dark, toxic caves — then perhaps living things can also survive in harsh environments on other planets.

Dating Lava Flows on Mauna Loa Volcano, Hawaiʻi
In this video segment adapted from NOVA, scientists search for carbonized remains of plants preserved in lava flows to find out how long it has taken rain forests on Hawaiʻi to regenerate after a volcanic eruption.

Deep-Sea Vents and Life's Origins
Deep-sea vents are home to life forms that do not rely on the Sun's energy. They depend instead on energy from volcanoes on the ocean floor. This video segment adapted from NOVA hypothesizes that life on Earth may have begun in this extreme environment.

Diamonds: The Science Behind the Sparkle
This illustrated essay from the NOVA Web site explains why the atomic structure of a diamond slows down light and produces a sparkle more brilliant than from any other colorless substance.

Earthquakes: Los Angeles
In this video segment adapted from NOVA, animations are used to show how the hills around Los Angeles were formed by earthquakes at small thrust faults that extend outward from the larger San Andreas fault.

Earthquakes: The Prehistoric Record
In this video segment adapted from NOVA, a geologist digs a trench along the San Andreas Fault to reveal three thousand years of earthquake history. Information from the layers of sediment may help geologists to predict earthquakes.

Exploring the Arctic Seafloor
In this interactive activity adapted from NOVA scienceNOW, learn what some of the first imagery ever shot on the Arctic Ocean seabed tells us about life in extreme environments.

Fastest Glacier
In this video segment adapted from NOVA scienceNOW, scientists in western Greenland explain how a glacier there is shrinking and moving faster due to increased melting.

Global Warming: Beyond Fossil Fuels
Martin Hoffert, professor of physics at New York University, discusses global warming and alternative energies in this interview from the NOVA/FRONTLINE Web site.

Global Warming: Graphs Tell the Story
Examine graphs from the NOVA/FRONTLINE Web site to see dramatic changes in the temperature of Earth's surface and in the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The Grand Canyon: Ancient Mountains
This video segment adapted from NOVA features the twisted and melted forms of the Grand Canyon's oldest rocks, the 1.7-billion-year-old Vishnu Schist.

The Grand Canyon: Evidence of Earth's Past
In this video segment adapted from NOVA, a fossil found among the Grand Canyon's rock layers reveals the existence of a shallow sea that once covered most of western North America.

The Grand Canyon: Its Youngest Rocks
This video segment adapted from NOVA features the youngest rock formations in the Grand Canyon, lava dams, and how they are subject to the eroding power of water.

The Great Flood of 1993
In this video segment adapted from NOVA, a meteorologist explains how an unusual weather pattern led to one of the most devastating floods of this century.

Hurricanes: New Orleans Under Threat
This video segment adapted from NOVA scienceNOW exposes how decades of development and geography combined to make the potential damage from a hurricane uniquely devastating in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Ingredients for Life: Water
This video segment adapted from NOVA goes on a whimsical journey in search of life forms thriving in extreme conditions on Earth and in outer space. Animations show ice on Jupiter's moon, Europa, and signs that water once existed on Mars.

Lava Sampling on Kilauea Volcano, Hawaiʻi
In this video segment adapted from NOVA, scientist Mike Garcia draws lava samples at the foot of the active Kilauea volcano to see if it is related to its neighboring volcano, Mauna Loa.

Life Before Oxygen
This Interactive NOVA: "Earth" video segment looks at ancient organisms that lived anaerobically, the origins of photosynthesis, and the new forms of life this process made possible.

Mars Dead or Alive: A Hostile Environment
This NOVA video segment describes the challenges presented by the frozen desert environment of Mars to NASA engineers designing two robots that will journey millions of miles to the red planet.

Mount Pinatubo: The Aftermath of a Volcanic Eruption
This video segment adapted from NOVA features footage of the aftermath of the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines, including falling ash and mud flows.

The Origin of the Moon
This video segment adapted from NOVA follows the Apollo 15 astronauts as they collect samples of ancient rock from the Moon's crust, whose discovery helps lead to a radical new theory about the Moon's origin.

Relativity and the Cosmos
This illustrated essay from the NOVA Web site introduces the basic concepts of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and what we know about cosmology as a result.

Sound Waves Underwater: The Loch Ness Monster
This video segment, adapted from NOVA follows a team of enthusiasts and scientists who attempt to find a trace of the Loch Ness monster by scouring the lake with sonar.

Sources of Radiation
This interactive activity from the NOVA Web site explores sources of radiation, both harmful and beneficial, natural and manmade.

Taking the Earth's Temperature
This video segment from FRONTLINE/NOVA: "What's Up with the Weather?" depicts research efforts to record Earth's past and present temperatures shifts.