NOVA scienceNOW

Hunt for Alien Earths: NOVA scienceNOW visits astronomers on the brink of finding another Earth in our galaxy with a new planet-hunting machine that will soon be operational: the Kepler telescope. This and other ingenious new techniques could finally answer the age-old question: Are we alone? / Art Authentication: Try once more to spot the fake in NOVA scienceNOW's classic challenge to three different computer teams: find the meticulously forged van Gogh in a group that includes five genuine works by the artist. Can computers really be used to identify which works are really his? / Profile-Maydianne Andrade: Some arachnophobes might see Maydianne Andrade's career as a horror film (her favorite kind), but Andrade can't imagine how she would spend her days and nights if not studying the cannibalistic behavior of the Australian redback spider. And she believes the redback can teach us about how sexual selection, social interactions, and ecological conditions interact to affect the evolution of mating systems. / Autism Genes: Rudy Tanzi, a pioneer in discovering genes for Alzheimer's disease, is turning his attention to autism. Using gene chips that can scan up to a million genetic markers across the entire human genome, Tanzi and others are on the hunt for the genetic key to a heartbreaking disease that seems to come out of nowhere, and yet affects millions of children and their families.

The Science of Picky Eaters: Neil deGrasse Tyson sets out to find out more about the science behind our sense of taste and discovers that you can't understand taste without also getting into smell. Just when he thinks he's got it, HHMI scientist Bob Margolskee throws him a curve ball: receptors on taste cells are turning up in parts of the body no one ever imagined finding them! / Capturing Carbon: Can an eighth grader's science fair project tackle rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? Claire Lackner's father Klaus, a renowned scientist at Columbia University, thought so when he saw how Claire used an aquarium pump to capture carbon dioxide in the air. A decade later, Dr. Lackner has helped form a green company that is testing a product inspired by his daughter's vision. / Smart Sea Lions and Talking Walruses: Sea lions and walruses are often dismissed as circus clowns, but new evidence shows that these animals are remarkably intelligent. Scientists have found sea lions to be capable of higher order reasoning that few other animals have demonstrated, and studies of walrus and sea lion vocal abilities are also shedding light on the evolutionary roots of human language. / Profile-Sangeeta Bhatia: Sangeeta Bhatia comes from a long line of successful women. Her aunt in India went to medical school and her mother was the first woman in India to receive an MBA. Now with her own PhD in Medical Engineering, and an MD, Bhatia is a tissue engineer at MIT with a focus on the liver and cancer treatment, and she's started an outreach program to get young girls into labs wearing space suits, working with lasers, and loving science.

Moon Smasher: Tag along with a team of scientists at NASA who will smash two SUV-sized rockets onto the lunar surface and unleash a debris cloud to study with LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite). The data could provide the key to understanding how to build a permanent base on the moon, accelerating a new race to the moon. / Secrets in the Salt: In 2008, in a tunnel deep below the desert near Roswell, New Mexico, microbiologist Jack Griffith made a phenomenal discovery: the oldest known organic molecules on earth. A year later, Griffith will push the hunt for the earliest macromolecules ever further as he searches in 400 million year old salt deposits below Detroit City. / Bird Brains: Take a second look at what the songs of zebra finches can tell us about the human evolution of language. It turns out the way a finch learns to sing is very similar to how babies learn to speak. The similarity between birdsong and human speech and the evolution of human language may all be linked to an intriguing gene called FOXP2, shared by a wide range of creatures. / Profile-Lonnie Thompson: A recent winner of the prestigious National Medal of Science, Thompson has been drilling ice cores at high elevations in the tropics since 1976. Why the tropics? Many fellow scientists were skeptical until Thompson showed that such cores preserve a detailed, millennia-old record of climate shifts in the most populous regions of the world.

Public Genomes: To test or not to test? NOVA scienceNOW revisits the question Neil deGrasse Tyson asked himself last season, as he pondered whether to get a personal genetic profile that would predict his chances of contracting one of several serious diseases. In the interest of science journalism, Neil submitted his spit for analysis. But would you? / Algae Fuel: What if you could generate useable biofuels without the problems associated with corn ethanol or plant-based processes, didn't use arable land or fresh water, didn't rely on foodstuffs, cost very little, and could be "tuned" to produce hydrogen? Well, there is such a thing. It's algae, and it just may be our biofuel future. / Mystery of the Gakkel Ridge: Stretching more than a thousand miles deep beneath the Arctic Ocean, Gakkel Ridge is an eerie undersea landscape of volcanoes, hydrothermal plumes, and exotic creatures. But though Gakkel Ridge may be unique on Earth, it bears an enticing resemblance to Europa, one of Jupiter's many moons. Could exploring Gakkel bring us one step closer to finding out if Europa might host life? / Profile-Yoky Matsuoka: Growing up in Japan, Yoky Matsuoka was on her way to becoming a world-class tennis player, but it was hard to find a regular partner. So Matsuoka designed and hoped to build her own: a robotic player that would never get tired. Injuries crushed her tennis dreams, but not her interest in robotics. Now Matsuoka is a leader in the emerging field of neurobotics - a fusion of neuroscience and robotics.

The repair mission for the Hubble space telescope, as astronauts try to fix crucial equipment that was not designed to be repaired in orbit; common backyard birds with a dark secret, and a clue that might unravel the most brutal reign of terror in the avian world; a profile of neurosurgeon Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa; and studies on the brain of an epileptic to try to understand more about the link between brain structure and memory.

A trip to Mars and back could take two to three years. Can humans survive the journey, fraught with deadly meteoroids, bone and muscle wasting, and perilous levels of radiation?