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This documentary goes behind the scenes of the exciting, fast paced world of frontline cryptography to meet the experts working at the very frontiers of science, battling to keep our secrets safe.

Comic Alan Davies attempts to answer the proverbial question: how long is a piece of string? But what appears to be a simple task soon turns into a mind-bending voyage of discovery where nothing is as it seems. An encounter with leading mathematician Marcus du Sautoy reveals that Alan's short length of string may in fact be infinitely long. Ultimately, Alan finds that measuring his piece of string could - in theory at least - create a black hole, bringing about the end of the world.

Since 1889 when Henri Poincare discovered the solar system was not stable, developments in mathematics have changed our understanding of the world.