Perfect disasters are storms that are larger, more dangerous and more deadly than any before them. When all the right ingredients combine, the resulting catastrophes will be "impossible" — a tornado with wind speeds that exceed those seen in a category 5, or a solar storm that causes a worldwide blackout. What would happen if one of these "super storms" crashed into a city like New York, London, Hong Kong, Dallas, Sydney or Toronto?

Do you know how your dog uses its tongue to drink? In what exact way a face contorts when punched by a UFC contender? What happens when an egg falls into the pinwheeling blades of a fan? Or an apple is hit with a bullet? Likely, with nothing but your naked eye to guide you, you haven't got a clue. In fact, there are countless events the world has to offer that our limited senses can't fully appreciate ... until now, anyway. Welcome to Discovery Channel's new series Time Warp, in which MIT scientist and teacher Jeff Lieberman uses new technologies to bring truly never-before-seen wonders into a form that your body can actually process. Using the latest in high-speed photography, the Time Warp team takes some natural events (a cat licking its paw, a champagne bottle being opened) — and some not-so-natural (a water balloon to the face, a raw piece of chicken exploding) — and turns them into a thing of both beauty and learning.

Roar into Sweden with a look at one of the world's fastest cars: the Koenigsegg. This U.S. $650,000 vehicle is capable of reaching speeds of 388km per hour. For more automotive marvels, "MegaWorld" heads out to top secret winter driving courses where the world's leading car manufacturers test their prototypes.

Cracking the Maya Code is a definitive look back at how a handful of pioneers, from the 16th century to the present, deciphered the intricate system of hieroglyphs developed by the Maya. One of the greatest detective stories in all of archeology, it has never been told in depth on television before. hieroglyphs. With magnificent footage of Mayan temples and art, this program, which was many years in the making, culminates in a fascinating account of this ancient civilization's ingenious method of communication.

How will the car of the future be powered? Will it run on hydrogen, batteries, ethanol or some as-yet undiscovered technology? Find out as NOVA takes a look at the latest and greatest in the automotive industry. Tom and Ray Magliozzi of NPR's Car Talk" fame take viewers on a roller-coaster ride into the world of cars - examining new technologies and ideas about America's most common form of transportation. With constantly increasing prices at the pump and a growing concern about the impact of emissions on global warming, there is a keen interest in alternative fuel sources to power our cars. The hydrogen fuel cell has long been the holy grail of zero emissions energy, and countries like Iceland are trying out the technology by transforming their public transportation. Closer to home, there are attempts to create fuels like "biodiesel" - made of used vegetable oil - or ethanol from corn crops. Will these be our future fuels or just a useful intermediate? Can an all-electric sports car being developed in California change the face of driving for good? With in-depth interviews and the unique humor of the much-loved Magliozzi brothers, "Car of the Future" takes a light-hearted but knowledgeable look at the serious issue of what's to come for our transportation.

Space is a visually impressive six-part popular science series from the BBC that follows their runaway successes Walking with Dinosaurs and The Planets into the realm of lavish computer animation. In a stroke of inspired casting Jurassic Parks Sam Neill (no stranger to acting alongside CGI effects) is our earthbound anchor, and he takes the viewer on journeys across the universe in each half-hour segment, thanks to some nifty special effects. Like Carl Sagans pioneering Cosmos from 1980, Space delves in to the mysteries of how stars and planets were created; but unlike Sagans visionary and optimistic view of cosmic wonders, Space is astronomy for the Age of Anxiety, revealing with terrifying clarity and in graphic detail how fortunate we are to exist at all, and how it could all end at any moment as a result of space-bound monsters like rogue comets and asteroids that might crash into our planet; or, the worst horror of the universe, wandering black holes that could tear our sun apart. Even if we survive these implacable cosmic forces bent on our destruction, viewers will not be reassured to be told that the sun is doomed anyway, and its inevitable death will swallow our planet whole (but not before burning it to a crisp first). Finally, the series finds cause for faint optimism with Star Trek-style speculations on the development of Ion-drive and solar-powered spaceships, terraforming new worlds and wormhole technology that might, just might, allow humanity to escape from a doomed Earth and seek refuge somewhere else in the galaxy. A series that sheds light on both the secrets of the universe and, implicitly, the anxious state of our new millennial society, Space is a compelling combination of popular astronomy and really, really scary cosmology. The handsomely illustrated companion book is lucidly written by astronomer John Gribbin.