NOVA - Season 16
Run Time: 55 mins
Air Date: Tue, 17 Jan 1989
Average Rating: ⭐ 7 (133 votes)
PBS20 Episodes
Hot Enough for You?
Season 16 - Episode 1
Was the searing summer of 1988 a taste of things to come? NOVA looks at the greenhouse effect, which portends higher temperatures, rising se...
The Last Journey of a Genius
Season 16 - Episode 2
NOVA looks at the bongo-playing scientist, adventurer, safecracker and yarn-spinner Richard Feynman, most recently famous for his role as ga...
The Strange New Science of Chaos
Season 16 - Episode 3
NOVA explains "chaos," a new science that is making surprising sense out of chaotic phenomena in nature, from the weather to brain waves.
Back to Chernobyl
Season 16 - Episode 4
NOVA goes to the Soviet Union for an inside investigation of the world's most catastrophic nuclear power accident with correspondent Bill Ku...
God, Darwin and the Dinosaurs
Season 16 - Episode 5
In an Idaho classroom, teacher Phil Gerrish puts an unorthodox interpretation on the day's biology lesson. As students take notes, he explai...
Adrift on the Gulf Stream
Season 16 - Episode 6
NOVA explores the importance of the Gulf Stream to ocean life, climate and human history.
Secrets of Easter Island (1)
Season 16 - Episode 7
In this two-part series, NOVA investigates the mystery of Easter Island in the South Pacific. Who built its celebrated statues and why?
Legends of Easter Island (2)
Season 16 - Episode 8
In the second part of this two-part series, NOVA explores ancient legends hold the clues to the violent history of the South Pacific's Easte...
The World Is Full of Oil!
Season 16 - Episode 9
Scientific detectives test their ingenuity in the effort to find underground oil deposits.
Confronting the Killer Gene
Season 16 - Episode 10
Arlo, Nancy and Janice each have a 50/50 chance of developing a devastating nerve disorder. A laboratory test can tell them if in fact they ...
The Hidden City
Season 16 - Episode 11
Actor Judd Hirsch narrates this behind-the scenes look at what makes New York City tick. Water, power and waste are the critical systems tha...
The Controversial Dr. Koop
Season 16 - Episode 12
In this profile of the former Surgeon General, NOVA follows events as they unfold in a unique behind-the-scenes account of a man who speaks ...
Design Wars!
Season 16 - Episode 13
Five architects compete for the approval of architecture-obsessed Chicagoans in the contest to build the city's new public library. NOVA loo...
Echoes of War
Season 16 - Episode 14
The atomic bomb might have ended World War II, but radar was the quiet miracle that won battles. NOVA tells the little-known wartime history...
Decoding the Book of Life
Season 16 - Episode 15
Biologists around the world gear up to decode the three-billion-letter genetic message that describes how humans are made. Ethicists warn th...
Hurricane!
Season 16 - Episode 16
NOVA studies hurricanes—the lurking giants waiting to destroy many coastal areas—by flying straight into one. Scientists hope that such clos...
Will Venice Survive Its Rescue?
Season 16 - Episode 17
Increasingly awash in high water, the romantic city of Venice is counting on high-tech floodgates to save it from drowning. Environmentalist...
What Is Music?
Season 16 - Episode 18
East and West came into direct conflict over trade and power in the 19th century. The West won. NOVA explores how Japan was later able to ma...
Yellowstone's Burning Question
Season 16 - Episode 19
The 1988 Yellowstone fire may have been one of the worst in human memory, but nature has had eons of experience with such events. NOVA accom...
The Schoolboys Who Cracked the Soviet Secret
Season 16 - Episode 20
NOVA re-enacts a classic case of classroom detection when English schoolboys track down a secret Soviet launch site. Docudrama.