Horizon - Season 49 / Year 2012

Marcus Du Sautoy wants to find out how close we are to creating machines that can think like us: robots or computers that have artificial intelligence. His journey takes him to a strange and bizarre world where AI is now taking shape. Marcus meets two robots who are developing their own private language, and attempts to communicate to them. He discovers how a supercomputer beat humans at one of the toughest quiz shows on the planet, Jeopardy. And finds out if machines can have creativity and intuition like us. Marcus is worried that if machines can think like us, then he will be out of business. But his conclusion is that AI machines may surprise us with their own distinct way of thinking.

Liz Bonnin presents a Horizon special about a rare and beautiful event in our solar system, one that we should all be able to see for ourselves - the transit of Venus across the face of the sun. It will start just before midnight of the 5th of June, and won't happen again for more than a century. Liz is joined by Lucie Green and Helen Czerski to show why the transit is such a remarkable event - transforming our understanding of our own solar system as well as helping scientists hunt for alien life on distant planets, hundreds of light years away.

Horizon goes behind the scenes at Nasa as they count down to the landing of a 2.5 billion-dollar rover on the surface of Mars. The nuclear-powered vehicle - the size of a car - will be winched down onto the surface of the red planet from a rocket-powered crane. That's if things go according to plan - Mars has become known as the Bermuda Triangle of space because so many missions there have ended in failure. The Curiosity mission is the most audacious - and expensive - attempt to answer the question of whether there is life on Mars.