Discovery

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**Discovery**

Explorations in the world of science.

Latest Episodes:

Episode 3 Sep 07, 2012

Show notes

One hundred years ago, the first humans reached the South Pole of this planet.

More than 40 years ago, man first walked on the moon.

When will our species first set foot to explore the planet Mars?

Kevin Fong seeks a likely launch date.

He asks who will get us there and why we really need to explore the Red Planet.

(Image: An image, released by NASA, of the terrain of Mars taken by the Curiosity rover. Credit: AP Photo / NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS)

The Life Scientific : Lloyd Peck - Antarctic Scientist Sep 03, 2012

Show notes

Jim Al-Khalili finds out about the life scientific of the British Antarctic Survey biologist Lloyd Peck.

Amongst other creatures he studies giant sea spiders. They and other small animals grow far bigger than usual in the extreme cold.

Diving is an important part of Lloyd's job and Jim hears what it's like to play football under the ice. Studies suggest that the sea temperature is rising, and Lloyd investigates whether the animals he researches will be able to adapt and survive.

And Lloyd talks about the difficulty of leaving his family behind in the UK while he spends months in the Antarctic.

Producer: Geraldine Fitzgerald

(Image: A young woman studying a sea spider in the Science Museum in London. Credit: AFP / Getty Images)

Episode 2 Aug 31, 2012

Show notes

One hundred years ago, Scott reached the South Pole.

Fifty years later, the first geologist briefly walked on the moon.

Kevin Fong asks if why we might want to return to the lunar surface and what will get us.

He talks to that first lunar geologist of Apollo 17, Harrison Schmitt and Nasa's Chief Administrator Charles Bolden, among others.

The Life Scientific : Barbara Sahakian - Neuroscientist Aug 27, 2012

Show notes

Jim Al-Khalili meets Cambridge University neuroscientist Barbara Sahakian.

She talks about her Life Scientific finding drugs to slow down the memory losses that happen in Alzheimer's disease.

She worked in some of the first memory clinics that were set up in the US and the UK to help people who had problems remembering and has developed tests to find out if peoples' forgetfulness is the first sign of dementia.

More recently she has turned her attention to drugs that can improve the performance of surgeons or pilots or other professions where it is important to be alert for long times.

Barbara says that they could even be used to make us more entrepreneurial. And some students are taking them as they think they could be giving them an edge in exams.

Jim and Barbara discuss the thorny ethical issues raised by these uses of these drugs.

Episode 1 Aug 17, 2012

Show notes

Kevin Fong looks beyond the failure of Robert Falcon Scott's expedition to be the first to reach the South Pole and focuses instead on the scientific legacy of Scott's explorations of Antarctica between 1901 and 1912.

In recent years, much has been written about Scott the polar loser and bungler. But that personalised focus ignores the pioneering scientific research and discoveries. The revelations transformed Antarctica from an unknown quantity on the map into a profoundly important continent in the Earth's past and present.

Before Scott and Shackleton trekked across the vast ice sheets in the early 1900s, no-one was sure whether there was even a continent there. Some geographers had suggested Antarctica was merely a vast raft of ice anchored to a scattering of islands. The science teams on Scott’s expeditions made fundamental discoveries about Antarctic weather and began to realise the frozen continent's fundamental role in global climate and ocean circulation. They discovered rocks and fossils which showed Antarctica was once a balmy forested place. They mapped the magnetism around the South Pole for both science and navigators. They found many new species of animals and revealed the extraordinary winter breeding habits of the penguins.

The dedication to scientific discovery is most poignantly revealed by fossils that Scott's party collected after their disappointment of being beaten by Amundsen and a few weeks before they froze to death trudging across the Ross ice shelf. They found a particular plant fossil which had been one of the Holy Grails on the early explorations of Antarctica's interior. Its discovery proved an hypothesis raised by Darwin among others that all the southern continents were once linked together by a landmass that would lain where Antarctica is today. The fossils were also important evidence to support the new and controversial theory of Continental Drift - a theory which now underpins the entirety of modern Earth science.

(Image: Captain Robert Falcon Scott writing at a table in his quarters at the British base camp in Antarctica. Credit: Press Association)

Saving the Ganges River Dolphin Aug 13, 2012

Show notes

Discovery this week goes in search of the Gangetic River Dolphin, an extraordinary creature which inhabits the muddy waters of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers.

Not long ago, the dolphin was a common sight for people along these mighty water ways, but now it's one of the world's rarest freshwater mammals.

Andrew Luck-Baker joins Indian biologists studying the dolphins and the threats to them along the stretch of the Brahmaputra in the state of Assam.

In a joint project between Aaranyak, an Indian conservation organisation, and the Zoological Society of London, the scientists are also mobilising local communities to protect this special animal and the ecosystem they share with it.

Nasa's Curiosity robot lands on Mars Aug 06, 2012

Show notes

After the most daring and complex landing of a robot on another planet, the search for evidence of life on Mars enters a new era.

Nasa's Curiosity rover is now sitting inside Gale Crater, a vast depression close to the Martian equator.

Also known as the Mars Science Laboratory, the one tonne machine is the most sophisticated science robot ever placed on another world.

Over the coming years Curiosity will climb a mountain at the crater's heart, gathering evidence on one of science's greatest questions – was there ever life on Mars?

The $2.5 billion project will discover whether Mars once had conditions suitable for the evolution and survival of life.

BBC Space specialist Jonathan Amos talks to mission scientists about where Curiosity is going and what it will do as it trundles up Mars' Mount Sharp.

(Image: Nasa's Curiosity rover. Credit: Nasa/JPL-Caltech/PA Wire)

Future Flight: Prog 2 of 2 Jul 30, 2012

Show notes

Gareth Mitchell meets the engineers who are designing flying cars and green aircraft.

Gareth has a go at flying a personal aircraft in the flight simulator at Liverpool University. Doctors Mike Jump and Mark White explain that the EU-funded project MyCopter is seriously looking at the prospect of flying personal vehicles that are as easy to drive as a car.

Sophie Robinson, a Ph.D student at Liverpool University, explains how her research into the safety and stability of auto-gyros, flying machines that already exist for personal travel, could set standards for the flying cars of the future.

Prof Jeff Jupp, who worked on the wings of the largest passenger plane, the A380, talks about alternative fuels to kerosene and new designs for engines. These look rather old-school, as they have propellers, but they will make the aircraft more energy efficient. But there may be a downside in that they could be noisier and slower than jet engines.

Dr Will Graham describes the work he has done on the Silent Aircraft project, in which the engines are set inside the wings.

(Image: The SkyRider, one of the concepts of the MyCopter project. Image courtesy of Gareth Padfield, FS&C)

Future Flight: Prog 1 of 2 Jul 23, 2012

Show notes

Gareth Mitchell meets the engineers who will transform the way we fly around the world and finds out what aircraft might look like in the future.

Gareth visits the flight gallery at the Science Museum in London with the curator, Dr Andrew Nahum, who shows him how the basic shape of aircraft has hardly changed in 70 years, since the days of the DC3. Andrew Nahum also talks about why Concorde was in service for such a short time.

David Caughey, Emeritus Professor of Aeronautical Engineering at Cornell University, points out that the blended wing shaped aircraft is more energy efficient. So Gareth asks why we don't see them in service today - the answer is that apart from the innate caution of the airline manufacturers, the passengers would have no windows and it could be hard to evacuate such a craft speedily in an emergency.

Gareth talks to Professor Jeff Jupp who worked on the wings of the largest passenger plane, the A380, about the technical challenges.

Professor Paul Weaver at Bristol University tells Gareth about his work on making wings that change shape like birds'.

And Colin Sirett, Head of Research and Technology at Airbus UK, discusses some ideas for planes of the future, such as see-through fuselages and pods that take passengers from the airport and attach to the aircraft.

(Image: The Douglas DC-3)

Artificial Photosynthesis Jul 16, 2012

Show notes

Chemist Andrea Sella explores the current race to do photosynthesis better than nature ever achieved.

In just a few hundred years mankind has burnt fossil fuels that had taken natural photosynthesis billions of years to create.

Now, around the world hundreds of millions of pounds are being spent on the race to develop a robust, cheap and efficient way to turn the light from the sun into fuels we can use.

At a time when politicians everywhere debate the economic and climatic burdens of our future energy needs, such a "solar fuel" would be a genuinely novel alternative energy.

(Image: Some beech leaves. Credit: Martin Dohrn /Science Photo Library)

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