Professor Jim Al-Khalili's three-part documentary about the basic building block of our universe, the atom. He shows how, in our quest to understand the tiny atom, we unravelled the mystery of how the universe was created. It's a story with dramatic twists and turns, taking in world-changing discoveries like radioactivity, the atom bomb and the big bang. All this forms part of an epic narrative in which the greatest brains of the 20th century competed to answer the biggest questions of all - why are we here and how were we made?
Ep2 is on Iplayer, the others are in the usual places.
There seems to be a few similar documentaries going on at the same time. I watched Genius Of Britain last night on Channel 4, 4oD more specifically. The Story of Science is probably my personal favourite as it highlights the less well known elements of the stories of discovery. But they're all worth a look.
The first episode was fantastic; very enlightening. Jim Al-Khalili is a great presenter. This level of fizzics is completely beyond me, but he managed to make it (almost) understandable. Cracking show with some absolutely jaw-dropping SCIENCE™.
