Dr Alice Roberts asks one of the great questions about our species: are we still evolving? There’s no doubt that we’re a product of millions of years of evolution. But thanks to modern technology and medicine, did we escape Darwin’s law of the survival of the fittest?

Alice follows a trail of clues from ancient human bones, to studies of remarkable people living in the most inhospitable parts of the planet, to the frontiers of genetic research to discover if we are still evolving – and where we might be heading.

In a Horizon special, naturalist Sir David Attenborough investigates whether the world is heading for a population crisis. In his lengthy career, Sir David has watched the human population more than double from 2.5 billion in 1950 to nearly seven billion. He reflects on the profound effects of this rapid growth, both on humans and the environment.

While much of the projected growth in human population is likely to come from the developing world, it is the lifestyle enjoyed by many in the West that has the most impact on the planet. Some experts claim that in the UK consumers use as much as two and a half times their fair share of Earth’s resources.

Could you have come up with Einstein’s theory of relativity? If not – why not? Marcus du Sautoy readily admits that he is no genius, but wants to know if geniuses are just an extreme version of himself – or whether their brains are fundamentally different.

Marcus meets some remarkable individuals – Tommy, an obsessive artist who uses his whole house as his canvas; Derek: blind, autistic, and a pianist with apparently prodigious gifts; Claire who is also blind, but whose brain has learnt to see using sound.

Nobel Prize winner Sir Paul Nurse examines why science appears to be under attack, and why public trust in key scientific theories has been eroded – from the theory that man-made climate change is warming our planet, to the safety of GM food, or that HIV causes AIDS.

He interviews scientists and campaigners from both sides of the climate change debate, and travels to New York to meet Tony, who has HIV but doesn’t believe that that the virus is responsible for AIDS.

This is a passionate defence of the importance of scientific evidence and the power of experiment, and a look at what scientists themselves need to do to earn trust in controversial areas of science in the 21st century.

Professor Iain Stewart examines the powerful geological forces that unleashed the devastating Japanese earthquake, and explores how the release of this power of the planet brought Japan to the brink of a nuclear meltdown.

He follows moment by moment how the earthquake was generated under the Pacific Ocean, travelled to the Japanese mainland, and the rare conditions that unleashed a tsunami.

Climate change has registered significant change to the ice caps and these changes have a profound environmental effect on all of us. According to the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States the earth has experienced a rise in global temperature of about half a degree Celsius over the past 100 years. This apparently modest increase over the past century is responsible for a rise in the world’s sea level of six to eight inches.

Antarctica holds approximately 90 per cent of the world’s ice and has been measured to be at least 7,000 feet thick. If all of the Antarctic ice melted, sea levels around the world would rise about 200 feet. But the average temperature in Antarctica is -37°C, so the ice there is in no danger of melting. In fact in most parts of the continent it never gets above freezing.

The Arctic contains much less ice and most of it floats on the Arctic Ocean, the world’s smallest ocean (about eight per cent the size of the Pacific Ocean). Unlike Antarctica, people live here with the farthest northern city in the world being Norlisk, Russia, home to an estimated 230,000 hearty souls.

In 1995 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report which contained various projections of the sea level change by the year 2100. They estimate that the sea will rise 20 inches with the lowest estimates at six inches and the highest at 37 inches. The rise will come from thermal expansion of the ocean and from melting glaciers and ice sheets.

Documentary-maker David Malone delves into the secrets of ocean waves. In an elegant and original film he finds that waves are not made of water, that some waves travel sideways and that the sound of the ocean comes not from water but from bubbles. Waves are not only beautiful but also profoundly important, and there is a surprising connection between the life cycle of waves and the life of human beings.

In the year 2210, scientists uncover the ruins of a great civilisation – so powerful one could argue it dwarfed anything that came before it. Sifting through the wreckage of cities overtaken by the desert and swallowed up by the sea, they piece together a remarkable story of collapse – the story of what on Earth happened to us.

Sir Martin Rees explores the possibility that life exists on planets beyond our own. He unveils an unsettling scientific debate that has startling consequences for us Earthlings. Do you believe in aliens? If not, a quick glance through these pages might change your mind.

Everything you thought you knew about the universe is wrong. It’s made of atoms, right? Wrong. Atoms only account for a measly 15% of everything that exists. The mass of the universe consists of something so mysterious and elusive that it has been dubbed ‘dark matter’.

There is a fundamental chasm in our understanding of ourselves, the universe, and everything. To solve this, Sir Martin Rees takes us on a mind-boggling journey through multiple universes to post-biological life. On the way, we learn of the disturbing possibility that we could be the product of somebody else’s experiment.

Professor Marcus du Sautoy goes in search of answers to one of science’s greatest mysteries: how do we know who we are? While the thoughts that make us feel as though we know ourselves are easy to experience, they are notoriously difficult to explain. So, in order to find out where they come from, he subjects himself to a series of probing experiments.