NOVA SCIENCENOW

PBS, 9pm et/pt

By Kevin Downey

Diamonds are big business. Around the world, men die digging for the rare gems. Battles are fought over the hard-to-find stones – one of the hardest substances known to man. Understandably, it’s also one of the most expensive.

There’s a legend and lore, a mystique, to diamonds. These are more than beautiful stones. These are gems cherished by their owners.

Which makes the idea of easy-to-find or easy-to-make diamonds off-putting.

But that’s just what diamonds are becoming.

Diamonds are being grown in secret laboratories. The idea isn’t to flood the jewelry market with cheap diamonds. The hope is that diamonds will be used in electronics and other products that can exploit the extraordinary properties of diamonds.

This is one story on the PBS newsmagazine Nova scienceNOW, an always captivating series that occasionally strays into silly territory.

scienceNOW is kicking off its fourth season tonight.

The show is hosted by the brilliant, telegenic and familiar astrophysicist, New York’s Hayden Planetarium’s Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Deep-voiced and affable, Tyson is the source of some of the show’s silliness, which is mostly – and admirably – intended to make it accessible to anyone turned off by science.

The topics can be intense, though, likely too dry for young kids.

Each episode has a few segments and, typically, a profile of a scientist.

Tonight, in addition to the diamond story, scienceNOW, profiles an incredible system for tracking the origins of strains of anthrax, one source of post-9/11 threats.

But the segment that is most fun is Tyson’s examination of auto-tune devices. These are machines that singers, good and bad, use in the studio to have their voice cleaned up and bounced out pitch perfect.

Video Clips: pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/

Content: Appropriate for all ages