Discovery Channel - Through The Wormhole: Series 4 (2014)

In season four of Through The Wormhole With Morgan Freeman, Science Channel dares to take on some of today’s most controversial topics. Each episode boasts innovative scientific research and groundbreaking theories brought to viewers by scientists who break down the walls of today’s most compelling subjects. Every week viewers will be challenged to consider new perspectives and confronted with ideas that push the envelope of conventional television. Other questions tackled in this new season include, “Did God Create Evolution?”, “How Do Aliens Think?”, “Can Our Minds Be Hacked?”, and “Will Sex Become Extinct?”

Part 1: Is there a God Particle?
Scientists have hunted for a particle to explain how matter came to exist in the universe. In 2012 they found it - the Higgs Boson, the God Particle. But the discovery raises many questions. And what if we owe our existence something else?


Part 2: When Does Life Begin?
This episode explores what defines the beginning of a life. It is a debate that has raged for centuries’. Groundbreaking evidence reveals that inside all of us are traces of cells from our relatives, blurring the lines between one life and another. Technology is now giving birth to new life forms made of surprising components—from droplets of oil in a Petri dish, to conscious robots and to a new global internet-connected life form comprised of all humanity.


Part 3: Can We Survive the Death of the Sun?
The Sun holds a dark secret. Someday it will bathe us in a fiery, planetary holocaust.. Will the Sun someday, bathe us in a fiery, planetary holocaust? How will we survive the death of our star? The technology to move our entire civilization to Mars sounds like sci-fi, but it is almost within our grasp. Reaching a second Earth across the galaxy could be possible thanks to a radical new propulsion technology from manmade black holes.


Part 4: How Do Aliens Think?
By studying the non-humans in our midst, scientists are learning how alien minds might function. Biologists and computer scientists watch “dumb” ants form an intelligent super-organism; neuroscientists probe the mysterious brains of octopuses; and a team of researchers show that even plants behave in ways we normally only associate with animals. Meanwhile, a linguist tries to imagine advanced alien language by recreating centuries of human language evolution, a researcher teaches humans to feel an alien sense and a groundbreaking psychologist finds that super-intelligent aliens may still be ruled by emotions.


Part 5: Can Our Minds be Hacked?
Our minds store our entire lives, our memories and our deepest desires and our brains are biological computers. Could brain hackers someday be able to rewrite our thoughts similar to how computer hackers hack email? For the first time, neuroscientists are translating patterns on a brain scan into specific pictures and words. They have learned how to insert ideas into people’s minds as they sleep and one pioneering MIT scientist has shown he can inject emotions, on demand, into a living brain.


Part 6: Will Sex Become Extinct?
Every single person who has ever lived was created from the genes of one man and one woman but human sexual reproduction, unchanged for millions of years, is about to undergo a radical revolution. Technology is on the brink of making children from two fathers, or two mothers. Marine biologists are using mechanical wombs to birth live sharks and humans could be next. We may soon cure diseases by making children with more than two genetic parents, or even give our offspring genes from the animal kingdom. If this is the case, will sex become extinct?


Part 7: Are Robots the Future of Human Evolution?
From our smartphones to our vacuum cleaners to our cars, we have robots that live and work beside us. We are designing these everyday objects to think for themselves giving them the power to learn to move on their own. Is it possible that these new life forms evolve to be smarter and more capable than humans or will we choose to merge with the machines, combining the best of our world with the best of theirs?


Part 8: Is Reality Real?
Do we live in the “real world,” or is it all in our mind? Our perception of reality is controlled by society. We make unrealistic assessments about our own reality, thanks to “the optimism bias,” a twist of the brain that rejects negative information about ourselves. Human senses capture only a small part of nature, and new physics suggests we may be blind to entire dimensions of space or there could be less to reality than we think.


Part 9: Do We Have Free Will?
What if everything that has or will happen in the universe has already been determined and we are unable to change our inevitable destinies? Until the discovery of quantum uncertainty, physicists were convinced free will does not exist. Now neuroscientists and geneticists have stepped into the fray, arguing that free will is an illusion thanks to the genes we are born with, the automatic processes working in our brains, and the conforming pressures of society.


Part 10: Did God Create Evolution?
Is life the product of evolution or is it thanks to the guiding hand of God? Believers in Intelligent Design argue complex life could not have evolved randomly. One evolutionary scientist is filling in the gaps in the fossil record by bringing extinct creatures back to life as robots. An engineer has discovered a single pattern that appears throughout the entire universe. Is the existence of a “moral molecule” in our brains a sign that God created humanity? Was life created by evolution, by God or both?