It was the greatest flood of the past two million years, and it posed a giant scientific riddle. A maverick geologist became convinced that thousand-foot-deep floodwaters had scoured out vast areas of the American northwest near the end of the last ice age. Mainstream scientists scorned his theory while he searched patiently for answers to what could have triggered such an inconceivably violent event. Finally, an ingenious solution silenced the skeptics: traces of an enormous ice dam half a mile high, which had blocked a valley in present-day Montana and created an enormous lake behind it. With the help of stunningly realistic animation, NOVA takes viewers back to the Ice Age to reveal what happened when the dam broke, unleashing a titanic flood that swept herds of woolly mammoth and everything else into oblivion.

The search for the wreck of the Yamato, the largest and mightiest battleship ever floated and the pride of the Japanese Imperial Fleet. Constructed in absolute secrecy and sunk by American planes toward the end of World War II, her rapid demise had been a mystery, rather like a military Titanic.

Exactly 100 years ago, Albert Einstein grappled with the implications of his revolutionary Special Theory of Relativity and came to a startling conclusion: mass and energy are one, related by the formula E = mc2.

Among Einstein's ideas, E = mc2 is by far the most famous. Yet how many people know what it really means? In a thought-provoking and engrossing documentary, Einstein's Big Idea illuminates this deceptively simple formula by unrevealing the story of how it came to be.

A restless mountain threatens a bustling metropolis perched on its flanks.

An expedition to the bottom of Norway's Lake Tinn illuminates Nazi Germany's nuclear ambitions.

This docudrama looks at Isaac Newton's discoveries in mathematics, physics and optics, as well as his lesser known pursuit of alchemy and hidden meanings in the Bible.

The narration is melodramatic, some of the interviews feel stagy--but the footage of Hurrican Katrina and its horrendous aftermath is staggering. Hurrican Katrina - The Storm That Drowned a City, a NOVA special, begins a year earlier, when a team of scientists created a computer simulation of the destructive effect a powerful storm could have on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Though local officials took it seriously, the federal response was skeptical, and little was done to strengthen the city's protection. Using a combination of remarkable video of the developing storm and interviews with scientists, city residents (black and white), and member of the Army Corps of Engineers, Hurrican Katrina builds a compelling story of the disaster as it unfolded. Sophisticated graphics explain how hurricanes form and how the levees failed. The special touches lightly on the possibility that global warming may be exacerbating the intensity of hurricanes, but shies away from the political storm of the meager federal response to the devastation of New Orleans. The result is a vivid, detailed description of the natural disaster, but an incomplete portrait of the social one. --Bret Fetzer

Could a mummy found in Niagara Falls be the remains of a long-lost Pharaoh?

Doctors, rescuers and mountaineers try to determine why people die attempting to climb Mount McKinley.

Forensic investigators tease secrets from the well preserved bodies of people buried long ago under peat bogs.

David Attenborough probes the mystery of ancient life-forms perfectly preserved in amber.

A 40-year hunt for solar neutrinos leads to a new understanding of matter itself.

NOVA recreates the expeditions of Sir John Franklin and Roald Amundsen, two Arctic explorers who set out to find the legendary Arctic sea route known as the Northwest Passage.

Driverless vehicles compete in a 130-mile race across the Majove Desert.

A mission to Saturn and its enigmatic sattelite, Titan, looks for clues to the origins of life.

Everyone has heard of global warming, but a lesser-known man-made phenomenon has been nearly as powerful at affecting Earth's climate. A look at global dimming, created by soot and pollution reflecting the sun's rays and surprisingly helping to offset global warming's catastrophic advance.