MilitaryChanneI

In December 1938, in Berlin, a simple chemical experiment showed for the first time that the atom can be split, releasing immense power. Within months, the Wehrmacht had started research into nuclear weapons. The Germns were the first to start work on the atom bomb. The programme investigates the reasons why Hitler was not the first leader to use it, drawing on new evidence gathered by historian Mark Walker. Dramatised scenes, eyewitness accounts from Allied and German scientists, interviews and archive footage are all employed.

The Earth is under constant bombardment. Each year, many fragments of debris hit our planet. Fortunately for us, most are so small that they burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere.

However, there are hundreds of larger asteroids orbiting near the Earth. Many scientists now believe that one of these hit the Earth 65 million years ago, killing the dinosaurs, along with 90% of all life on the planet. What is more, it is only a matter of time before the Earth is hit again.

Experts warn that nuclear weapons might not destroy an approaching asteroid. But Jay Meloch thinks he can use the power of the Sun to nudge an asteroid away from the Earth.

265 people died when an Airbus operated by American Airlines crashed into the New York suburb of Queens in November 2001. The twin-engined jet took off from John F Kennedy Airport in fine conditions but hit trouble after just 67 seconds. In the following 38 seconds the plane started to disintegrate before nose-diving into the residential Rockaway area of the city.

Patrick Twohig, eyewitness
Everyone aboard was killed (along with five people on the ground) so the crash investigators had to rely on eyewitnesses, recovered parts of the plane and information from both air traffic control and the flight data recorders. The discovery of the Airbus' vertical tailfin hundreds of metres from the fuselage immediately focussed attention on whether the pilots lost the ability to control the plane.

Why the tailfin detached was at the heart of the investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board. The airline and the manufacturer blame each other for creating a situation in which the stress on the rudder and tailfin exceeded the so-called ultimate load, the worst-case scenario set by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). A number of American Airlines pilots have taken matters into their own hands though: requesting transfers to other aircraft because of their safety concerns.

1982 BBC documentary on the history of travel by helicopter.

Easter Island is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle. A special territory of Chile that was annexed in 1888, Easter Island is famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai, created by the early Rapanui people. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with much of the island protected within Rapa Nui National Park. In recent times the island has served as a warning of the cultural and environmental dangers of exploitation. Ethnographers and archaeologists also blame diseases carried by European sailors and Peruvian slave raiding of the 1860s for devastating the local peoples.

Easter Island is claimed to be the most remote inhabited island in the world.

The island belongs administratively to Chile's Valparaíso Region (which also includes Juan Fernández Islands), and more specifically form one of the nine communes of Valparaíso Province named Isla de Pascua.

Easter Island is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle. A special territory of Chile that was annexed in 1888, Easter Island is famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai, created by the early Rapanui people. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with much of the island protected within Rapa Nui National Park. In recent times the island has served as a warning of the cultural and environmental dangers of exploitation. Ethnographers and archaeologists also blame diseases carried by European sailors and Peruvian slave raiding of the 1860s for devastating the local peoples.

Easter Island is claimed to be the most remote inhabited island in the world.

The island belongs administratively to Chile's Valparaíso Region (which also includes Juan Fernández Islands), and more specifically form one of the nine communes of Valparaíso Province named Isla de Pascua.

Nick Griffin's British National Party, already under investigation for breaches of electoral law, is facing fresh allegations of corruption. Panorama uncovers new evidence of financial documents being falsified and fabricated in order to deceive the Electoral Commission. The programme also has evidence of the BNP's failure to declare major donations to the party.

As Darragh MacIntyre reports, the BNP, which is better known for its controversial views on race, is in debt and according to its own published accounts appears to be technically insolvent.

Young Iranians speak out for the first time about life in a state where putting up a poster can get you jailed, releasing a rap CD calling for change gets you tortured and being gay is punishable by death. In a country where men and women can still be stoned to death for adultery, reporter Jane Corbin asks how much longer Iran can keep a lid on internal unrest as revolution and regime change sweep across the Middle East.

As the extradition hearing to decide whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange must return to Sweden to face a rape allegation reaches its judgement, Panorama talks to his former right hand man who walked out last year.

Assessing what WikiLeaks and its exposing of sensitive official material has achieved, the film examines claims that the organisation famous for leaking government secrets was paranoid about leaks from within and that it has failed to live up to its own ideals on openness.

Inside Chernobyl's Sarcophagus is a fascinating documentary on the scientists that risked their lives to go inside the Chernobyl reactor. It covers the sarcophagus built to contain the remains of the destroyed reactor and the work of the Russian scientists, staff and soldiers who risked and continue to risk their lives in the clean-up operation. Horizon takes an look at the horror and effects of Chernobyl 10 years after the disaster. Watch the true story of what is really happening inside of chernobyl's sarcophagus.

HMS Sheffield (D80) was the second Royal Navy ship to bear the name Sheffield, after the city of Sheffield in Yorkshire. She was a Type 42 Guided Missile Destroyer laid down by Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering at Barrow-in-Furness on 15 January 1970, launched on 10 June 1971 and commissioned on 16 February 1975.

An explosion during construction killed two dockyard workers and damaged a section of hull which was replaced, ironically, with a section from an identical ship, ARA Hercules, being built for the Argentine Navy. The ship was part of the Task Force sent to the Falkland Islands during the Falklands War. She was struck by an Exocet air-launched anti-ship missile from a Super Etendard aircraft belonging to the Argentine Navy on 4 May 1982 and foundered on 10 May 1982.

On 7 July 2005 Britain experienced its first ever suicide attack. Four bombs exploded in central London, killing 52 people and injuring over 700. When Scotland Yard launched one of the biggest investigations in its history, another first was quickly uncovered: the suicide bombers were home-grown, they were young British men, attacking their own country.

A handful of scientists have dedicated their lives to understanding the mind of the suicide bomber. It's a field that has grown rapidly in recent years as suicide attacks have become the weapon of choice for extremist groups around the world. These scientists are challenging our preconceptions about who these suicide bombers are.

Much of the early research was conducted by Ariel Merari from Tel Aviv University. He interviewed the friends and family of suicide bombers, as well as those who were stopped before their bombs went off. Merari tried to piece together a personality type capable of such acts. The unsettling finding that emerged was that suicide bombers weren't mad, weren't psychopaths, in fact they did not have any psychological flaws that set them apart.

After the 9/11 attacks on America in 2001, ex-CIA case officer and forensic psychiatrist Marc Sageman decided to look beyond the individual. He wanted to know exactly how the 9/11 cell had formed. Looking for patterns in their behaviour, he noticed that the leaders of the cell all joined al-Qaeda while they were living abroad. As he extended his research, he realised this was true for 75% of all al-Qaeda members. It seemed that living abroad was significant. Sageman believed that their isolation from cultural origins meant they had developed an ex-pat mentality and become 'more royal than the king'.

As his database grew, he found that another sub-group had been cut off from their cultural origins. Second or third generation immigrants formed 10% of al-Qaeda members. This led Sageman to conclude that 85% of all al-Qaeda members had experienced some form of cultural estrangement.

Sageman seemed to have discovered a fertile ground for creating suicide bombers. But this still does not explain why some people are willing to kill themselves and others in the process. According to psychologists, the answer lies in a force that can be more powerful than an individual's personality or upbringing. That force is group dynamics, one of the strongest motivational factors in human psychology.

When humans are in a group, they conform to the group, they become more and more like each other. Bonds within a close-knit group can grow surprisingly strong -- strong enough that they match, or even trump biological family ties. Throughout history, organisations such as the military have harnessed this power of the group to motivate individuals.

It's no surprise that virtually all suicide attacks in modern times have relied on group psychology. From the squadrons of Kamikaze pilots in Japan to the highly trained suicide units of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.

But new evidence from Marc Sageman shows that extremist cells can form spontaneously, without any connections to established organisations. His analysis of al-Qaeda has shown that most people who join the organisation join when they are already radicalised, and crucially this radicalisation process has happened among a group of friends. He calls it his 'bunch of guys' theory.

The 'bunch of guys' theory is a vital breakthrough in understanding the mind of suicide bombers. The willingness to carry out attacks very often pre-dates any contact with an organisation. There is no need for a mastermind figure. Recognising the importance of this and of these group dynamics, it is hoped, will help spot future cells before it is too late and, ultimately, prevent further attacks.

Using newly-released (in 1994) files, concealed by the KGB in Moscow and held in archives for nearly 50 years, the programme exposes the events behind the planning and building of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Professor Gerald Fleming, a researcher into Nazi war crimes and architect Robert van Pelt, investigate these files and reveal evidence which shows how German civilian engineers and Bauhaus-trained architects deliberately colluded with the SS to plan the genocide.

A dirty bomb is a radiological weapon but unlike a nuclear bomb, its purpose is to contaminate rather than destroy. It uses normal explosives to disperse radioactive materials in the local environment, creating a hazard to health that could last for years unless cleaned up.

The relative ease of making such a bomb means it is a potent terrorist weapon but Horizon's investigation shows that the risk to health from most such devices need not be great. It also underlines the need for governments to act to secure radioactive sources from falling into criminal hands. Horizon deliberately avoids outlining the production process in any detail.

Dr Michael Levi, Defence expert, Federation of American Scientists
Horizon publishes the results of specially commissioned research, modelling two possible dirty bomb scenarios: attacks on either London or Washington DC. The main conclusion is that the health risks from a dirty bomb explosion are localised to people who are close to the incident or are in contact with the contamination. Although the modelled attack scenarios could have wide-ranging economic repercussions, the majority of the population of either capital city would have only a negligible increase in their risk of developing cancer.

No one has ever exploded a dirty bomb in anger, but there has been at least one close call. In November 1995, a security alert in Moscow eventually unearthed a package of radioactive material, wired with explosives. The Russian authorities kept the incident from the public; a warning to the world about the risk of so called 'radiological dispersion devices' went unannounced. More recently, documents found in Afghanistan as well the FBI's arrest of Jose Padilla en route to Chicago have made security services the world over take seriously the risk of an attack.