Sir Attenborough's First Life
In fifty years of broadcasting, Sir David Attenborough has travelled the globe to document the living world in all its wonder. Now, in the landmark series, David Attenborough's First Life, he completes his journey by going back in time to the roots of the tree of life, in search of the very first animals.
Attenborough's journey begins in a forest near his childhood home in Leicester, where a fossil discovery transformed our understanding of the evolution of complex life. Travelling to the fog bound coastline of Newfoundland and the Australian outback, Attenborough unearths the earliest forms of animal life to exist on Earth.
David Attenborough's First Life
Thursday 31 March, 19:00, BBC Two
The Biggest Radio on Earth
Plans are advancing for the biggest radio on Earth, an array of up to 3000 radio telescopes across a continent. The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will have its central core in either South Africa or Western Australia, but its spiral arms of outlying giant dishes will reach out 3000 km across several countries.
Astronomer Dr Lucie Green hears how it could search for habitable planets, intelligent life and new-born galaxies. With 50 times the sensitivity of anything before, the rewards could be, quite literally, astronomical.
Thursday 31 March, 21:00, BBC Radio 4
The Joy of Stats
Professor Hans Rosling is an international internet legend. His eye-opening and funny online lectures have made him a superstar boffin. In this documentary, he takes viewers on a rollercoaster ride through the wonderful world of statistics to explore the remarkable power thay have to change our understanding of the world.
Rosling is a man who revels in the glorious nerdiness of statistics, and here he entertainingly explores their history, how they work mathematically and how they can be used in today's computer age to see the world as it really is, not just as we imagine it to be.
Thursday 31 March, 23:20, BBC Two
Everything and Nothing
Professor Jim Al-Khalili explores the true size and shape of the universe and delves into the amazing science behind apparent nothingness.
The second part, Nothing, explores science at the very limits of human perception, where we now understand the deepest mysteries of the universe lie. Jim sets out to answer one very simple question - what is nothing? His journey ends with perhaps the most profound insight about reality that humanity has ever made. Everything came from nothing. The quantum world of the super-small shaped the vast universe we inhabit today, and Jim can prove it.
Thursday 31 March, 23:25, BBC Four