The Wonders Collection

2013 • BBC
4.3
19 reviews
Eligible
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Season 1 episodes (14)

1 Wonders of Life - What Is Life?
1/27/13
Season-only
Professor Brian Cox embarks upon an exploration of how a few fundamental laws gave birth to the most complex, diverse and unique feature of our universe; life. Professor Cox journeys to the volcanic landscapes of South-East Asia, seeking to understand how life first began and how that spark has endured to this day.
2 Wonders of Life - Expanding Universe
2/3/13
Season-only
Professor Brian Cox travels across the US and encounters some astonishing creatures that reveal how the senses evolved. A unique retelling of our evolutionary history takes Brian through life's journey, from single-celled organisms to sentient beings.
3 Wonders of Life - Endless Forms Most Beautiful
2/10/13
Season-only
Professor Brian Cox travels to the richly bio-diverse areas of Southern Africa and Madagascar and asks why is it that the Earth is so fertile and life is so diverse. The answer, he reveals, lies, in part in carbon. By following the stellar origins of carbon and the universality of the laws of nature, Brian contemplates whether there could be similar life elsewhere in the universe.
4 Wonders of Life - Size Matters
2/17/13
Season-only
Professor Brian Cox travels to Australia, the big country down under, to explain how size determines the nature of life. Gravity and electromagnetism impact heavily on different types of life - from a single bacterium to a 110 meter tree - determining shape, movement and longevity.
5 Wonders of Life - Home
2/24/13
Season-only
Professor Brian Cox considers what it is about our world that makes it a home for life and asks what ingredients were necessary to transform this once barren planet into the Earth we know today? He reveals that it was a rare chain of events combined with the power of life itself that have made Earth unique amongst the cosmos.
6 Wonders of the Solar System - Empire of the Sun
3/6/10
Season-only
Professor Brian Cox explores the powerhouse of them all, the sun. In India he witnesses a total solar eclipse and in Norway, he watches the battle between the sun's wind and Earth, as the night sky glows with the northern lights. Beyond earth, the solar wind continues, creating dazzling aurora on other planets.
7 Wonders of the Solar System - Order Out of Chaos
3/13/10
Season-only
Discover how beauty and order in Earth's cosmic backyard was formed from nothing more than a chaotic cloud of gas. Chasing tornados in Oklahoma, Professor Brian Cox explains how the same physics that creates these spinning storms shaped the young solar system. Out of this celestial maelstrom emerged the jewel in the crown, Brian's second wonder - the magnificent rings of Saturn.
8 Wonders of the Solar System - The Thin Blue Line
3/20/10
Season-only
Professor Brian Cox takes a flight to the top of earth's atmosphere, where he sees the darkness of space above and the thin blue line of our atmosphere below. Against the stunning backdrop of the glaciers of Alaska, Brian reveals his fourth wonder: Saturn's moon Titan, shrouded by a murky, thick atmosphere.
9 Wonders of the Solar System - Dead or Alive
3/27/10
Season-only
The worlds that surround our planet are all made of rock, but there the similarity ends. Some have a beating geological heart, others are frozen in time. Professor Brian Cox travels to the tallest mountain on Earth, the volcano Mauna Kea on Hawaii, to show how something as basic as a planet's size can make the difference between life and death.
10 Wonders of the Solar System - Aliens
4/3/10
Season-only
All life on Earth needs water so the search for aliens in the solar system has followed the search for water. We examine the patterns in the ice on Jupiter's moon Europa, which reveal an ocean far below with more potentially life-giving water than all the oceans on Earth. But of all the wonders of the solar system forged by the laws of nature, Brian reveals the greatest wonder of them all.
11 Wonders of the Universe - Destiny
7/26/11
Season-only
Brian Cox seeks to understand the nature of time. From an extraordinary calendar built into the landscape of Peru to the beaches of Costa Rica, Brian explores the cycles of time which define our experience of life on Earth. But even the most epic cycles of life can't begin to compare to the vast expanse of cosmic time. Just as the Earth orbits the Sun, the Solar system orbits the entire Milky Way Galaxy in a cycle that takes a staggering 250 million years to complete.
12 Wonders of the Universe - Stardust
8/2/11
Season-only
In the second stop in his exploration of the wonders of the universe, Professor Brian Cox goes in search of humanity's very essence to answer the biggest questions of all: what are we? And where do we come from? This film is the story of matter - the stuff of which we are all made. Brian reveals how our origins are entwined with the life cycle of the stars. But he begins his journey here on Earth.
13 Wonders of the Universe - Falling
8/9/11
Season-only
Professor Brian Cox takes on the story of the force that sculpts the entire universe - gravity. It seems so familiar, and yet gravity is one of the strangest and most surprising forces in the universe. Starting with a zero gravity flight, Brian considers how much of an effect gravity has had on the world around us. But gravity also acts over much greater distances. It is the great orchestrator of the cosmos.
14 Wonders of the Universe - Messengers
8/16/11
Season-only
In the last episode of Professor Brian Cox's epic journey across the universe, he travels from the fossils of the Burgess Shale to the sands of the oldest desert in the world to show how light holds the key to our understanding of the whole universe, including our own deepest origins. But first we need to understand the peculiar properties of light itself.

About this show

This beautiful and definitive series reveals how, 3.7 billion years ago, a few fundamental laws gave birth to the most complex, diverse and unique force in the universe - life. Light, gravity, time, matter and energy are the building blocks of everything, from the smallest microbe on Earth to the biggest galaxy. Today, there are thought to be as many as 100 million different species on Earth. Wonders of Life tells the story of the amazing diversity and adaptability of life through the laws that govern it. From the dance of chromosomes as cells divide to the spark of electricity that causes muscles to move, this series uncovers the secrets of life in the most unexpected locations and in the most stunning detail. Be astonished by the inventiveness of nature and discover the epic journey from the origin of life to our own existence.

Ratings and reviews

4.3
19 reviews
Steven Wrennall
November 13, 2017
Would be 5 stars but last episode is still missing so won't buy it..come on Google sort this out for us...it's like watching a film and some one stops it before the end.so you don't get the full enjoyment from watching it
James Cullinane
April 12, 2015
The final episode from The wonders of the universe seems to be missing! Otherwise I would give 5
Harry Cantrill
May 30, 2016
I would quite happily buy this if it included the last episode.