Documentary series depicting historic images that have changed our view of the world.
Some of the most important moments in the history of science have left traces in the form of photos, sketches, or films. Andreas Vesalius' drawings revealed what the human body looks like on the inside-its anatomy. Arthur Eddington's photo of the solar eclipse in 1919 confirmed Einstein's theory of relativity. Charles Darwin summarized his theory of evolution in a sketch. Shocking Exposures: Images that Changed Science depicts these and many other historic images that have changed our view of the world.
Episode 1: To the End of the UniverseIn 1923, astronomer Edwin Hubble took a photo that settled one of the hottestdebates in the history of science, providing the very first clue in calculatingthe size of the universe by showing that Andromeda is not a gas cloud in ourMilky Way, but a galaxy far, far away. This episode covers this and many otheramazing images: The Apollo Program's photos from the Moon's surface;Martellus' World Map, considered to have convinced the Spanish crown tofinance Columbus' daring expedition westward; Copernicus' heliocentrism-adiagram of the Solar System with the Sun, not the Earth, in the center; AlfredWegener's sketch showing how continental drift re-shaped the face of theplanet; and Arthur Eddington's photo of the solar eclipse in 1919.
Episode 2: Into the Core of the AtomWhen neuroscientist Joseph Altman developed the film from one of hisexperiments in the early 1960s, the photos proved that new brain cells arecreated, even in adult brains. Other groundbreaking images in this episodeinclude: Andreas Vesalius' detailed drawings of the inside of the human body;Darwin's controversial theory of evolution summarized as a sketch in a notebook;Rosalind Franklin's and Raymond Gosling's "Photo 51", which becamethe decisive piece of the puzzle in the search for the structure of the DNAmolecule; Don Eigler's atomic-sized image of computer company IBM's logo,that in some ways marks the start of the nanotechnology revolution; and CarlAnderson's photo of the positron, which revealed the unknown and paradoxicalworld of antimatter.
