If you like exploring the mysteries of the (scientific) universe, this guide to Netflix documentaries can help you become the ultimate explorer — going no further than your own couch. So sit back, relax, and check out this ultimate guide for brushing up on topics as far as the cosmos and and as close as the light of your average street lamp.
The Inexplicable Universe
If the end of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey has left a Neil deGrasse Tyson-shaped hole in your heart, check out The Inexplicable Universe. Aside from being hosted by the wonderful Dr. Tyson, the series offers history-infused explanations of scientific concepts such as why the speed of light is constant and how it's possible that the atoms making up our universe are overwhelmingly empty space.
It's very much like Cosmos, but with a somewhat lower production budget. Each episode of this six-part series is only about thirty minutes long, so it's also an excellent choice if you don't have time for a full documentary.
Tyson's reboot of Cosmos is also available for streaming, in case you missed it when it aired last fall.
The City Dark
Light pollution — it's the pollution you've probably heard about and then thought, "how much does that really matter?" If that sounds about accurate, The City Dark is well worth checking out. From increasing breast cancer rates to the threat of Earthbound asteroids, the implications of the little-talked-about phenomenon of light pollution are vast.
Filmmaker Ian Cheney, who became interested in the topic after moving from rural Maine to Brooklyn, breaks down the science with charming animations and interviews with esteemed scientists — including Neil deGrasse Tyson. If you don't bother looking for stars in the night sky anymore, The City Dark will make you understand that you're probably missing them, whether you realize it or not.
Mysteries Of The Unseen World
Even just on our own relatively tiny planet, there is so much that is beyond our limited human perception. Mysteries Of The Unseen World explores phenomena that are too fast, too tiny, or just completely outside of our sensory world — like the ultraviolet light that guides bees to flowers.
This short 30-minute film is full of fantastic shots and amazing animations of the parts of our world that cameras can't capture. To a science buff, many of the concepts probably won't be new. But it's perfect for armchair scientists or anyone who appreciates the beauty of nature.
Particle Fever
If you've bumped into everything from comic books to Disney Channel Original movies to possibly every facet of sci-fi under the sun, you've probably come across a contraption that splices atoms or forces particles to collide. While Particle Fever is purely in the realm of nonficiton, it probably beats its fictive counterparts by a landslide.
Using a collage of first-hand accounts, interviews and some trailing-on-your-heels, real-time (but not auteur-ish) camerawork, the documentary tells the story of the work conducted with the Large Hadron Collider – the world's largest particle collider – in the CERN lab under the French-Swiss Border, from 2008 to 2012. It culminates in the definitive identification of the Higgs boson, aka "The God Particle" — a subatomic particle that accounts for all the mass that exists in the universe as we know it. Perfect for existentialists, anti-existentialists and fans of Ghostbusters alike.
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
If you're the kind of person who enjoys a bit of a) history, b) arthouse aesthetic and/or pretty cinematography, or c) Werner Herzog's low, meandering German-inflected voice, the famous director's exploration of the Chauvet Cave – the oldest discovered evidence of cave art, dating back more than 30,000 years – is a perfect flick. Interviews with scientists and historians alike complement Herzog's narration of the cavern, which is closed off to the general public.
While the dream-like documentary itself might not be the most science-heavy, veering more toward social sciences like anthropology, archaeology and sociology, it's a rare – if almost impossible – glimpse into our shift from the average survivalist primate into the makers and shakers of civilization as we know it.
Additional information by Andrea Alfano
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