Movies: Physics

Almost one hundred years ago, the project to reduce the world to mathematical physics failed suddenly and completely: “One of the best-kept secrets of science,” physicist Nick Herbert writes, “is that physicists have lost their grip on reality.” The ...

Professor Iain Stewart reveals the story behind the Scottish physicist who was Einstein's hero; James Clerk Maxwell. Maxwell's discoveries not only inspired Einstein, but they helped shape our modern world - allowing the development of radio, TV, mob...

The Future Circular Collider is the machine of the future. Thanks to it, we will finally be able to go back in time to the origin of our universe. But which way do we go to set up the largest scientific instrument of all time? Between metaphysics and...

With extraordinary access, BLAST exposes a world of risky, hardcore, scientific adventure. The story follows an international team of astrophysicists trying to launch a multi-million dollar telescope on a NASA high-altitude balloon. Their journey to ...

CERN, the world's largest physics laboratory, is also a society in itself. A mythological microcosm and science's answer to the Tower of Babel, with its many thousand employees as an indispensable element among cables and computers. The researchers s...

Alessandra Pacini, solar physicist and mother of two, has dedicated her life to researching our sun and its relation to the rest of our solar system. Traveling across the globe with her family, from Finland to Puerto Rico, Alessandra is on a mission ...

In our terrestrial view of things, the speed of light seems incredibly fast. But as soon as you view it against the vast distances of the universe, it's unfortunately very slow. This animation illustrates, in realtime, the journey of a photon of ligh...

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In 1973 Yorkshire public television made a short film of the Nobel laureate while he was there. The resulting film, Take the World from Another Point of View, was broadcast in America as part of the PBS Nova series. The documentary features a fascina...

CERN in Switzerland is a research center where they try to recreate the big bang. Nikolaus Geyrhalter follows the center's infrastructure and meets the people who created the "Large Hadron Collider"....

An educational physics film utilizing a fascinating set consisting of a rotating table and furniture occupying surprisingly unpredictable spots within the viewing area, Leacock’s Frames of Reference (1960), features fine cinematography by Abraham Mor...

In a compartment of the Moscow-Novosibirsk train, a young physicist meets famous film actors. The conversation accidentally comes to Einstein, and the woman begins to explain to her fellow travelers what the theory of relativity is. The actors are in...

A young agoraphobic and megalomaniac scientist expresses a strong contempt for his fellows. Obsessed with a physical paradox he can't seem to solve, he decides to clone himself, since, according to him, only a brain similar to his can accomplish his ...

A world leading team of ultra-low temperature physicists at Lancaster University decided to place a LEGO figure and four LEGO blocks inside their record-breaking dilution refrigerator. This machine - specially made at the University - is the most ef...

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At Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, Eliana Nossa studies the ionosphere. This short films tells the story of Columbian researcher Eliana Nossa as she explains her study of the ever-changing universe, Arecibo's technology and data, and her role as ...

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Kate Humble and Helen Czerski reveal the inner workings of the sun and investigate why scientists think changes in the sun's behaviour may have powerful effects on our climate....

Richard Feynman was a scientific genius with - in his words - a "limited intelligence". This dichotomy is just one of the characteristics that made him a fascinating subject. The Pleasure of Finding Things Out exposes us to many more of these intrigu...