Discovery

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**Discovery**

Explorations in the world of science.

Latest Episodes:

Episode 1 Feb 20, 2012

Show notes

Located in the western pacific, the Mariana Trench is the deepest part of the ocean, plunging down 11km.

Down there it's pitch black, icy cold and the pressure is immense.

The only time it was visited, was over 50 years ago by US naval lieutenant Don Walsh and Swiss engineer Jacques Picard.

Now four teams of explorers are risking their lives in a new race to the deep.

Rebecca Morelle travels to California to meet former property developer Chris Welsh who is hoping to travel by himself to the bottom of the trench in a five metre long torpedo like submarine equipped with wings and a tail fin.

Her next stop is with the Triton team, who take her for a ride under the Caribbean sea in one of their submersibles, a prototype for the vessel that will be able to travel to the Mariana Trench.

Rebecca also reports on a project being lead by James Cameron, the director of the film Titanic. And her final visit is to DOER Marine, where Liz Taylor tells her about the company’s plans to build a reusable submarine.

Time Feb 13, 2012

Show notes

It sometimes seems to rule our lives and yet some scientists think it is an illusion.

From birth to death we seem to be swept up in a relentless and inescapable journey through time, but what is this strange place we call the present moment?

Why does the past seem fixed and the future so uncertain.

Was the universe born into time or did time arise with the universe?

Will time continue forever or will it fade like the stars?

These are some of the questions that were discussed at a recent conference in Bergen and Copenhagen and on a ship between the two.

In Discovery this week, science writer Zeeya Merali joins some of the leading physicists and cosmologists discussing the nature of time and its place in our lives and the Universe.

Producer: Martin Redfern

Smart Streets Feb 06, 2012

Show notes

Angela Saini explores the revolution taking place in the streets beneath our feet as she reveals the story behind a new urban design movement called shared space.

She travels to The Netherlands where shared space was born, inspired by the radical traffic planner, Hans Monderman, who envisaged a world without barriers, signs, pavement and traffic lights.

But not everyone is taken with this revolution, in particular the blind and visually impaired who say that shared space is fundamentally flawed and makes their lives less safe.

Depression Jan 30, 2012

Show notes

Geoff Watts meets researchers trying to find a new way to fight depression by studying those who never get it.

In the second of two programmes Geoff meets scientists at the University of Manchester, studying the brains of people who have undergone traumatic life events without becoming seriously depressed and comparing them to the brains of those people who do.

The hope is that new psychological therapies or even preventative medications might be developed to treat the one in five people who will at some point in their lives, become clinically depressed.

(Image: MRI scan of the head and brain. Credit: Corbis Royalty Free)

Depression Jan 23, 2012

Show notes

Geoff Watts meets researchers looking for clues to the origins of depression as a way of finding new solutions to treating it.

In the first of two programmes Geoff talks to the father of evolutionary medicine, Randolph Nesse and asks why hasn't natural selection made us less vulnerable to psychological diseases?

Could it be that depression is in some way useful to our lives?

(Image: A depressed young boy. Credit: Science Photo Library)

Seti, the past, present and future Jan 16, 2012

Show notes

Jason Palmer explores the past, present and future of Seti.

In the second programme he looks at what sort of signal might ET send us, and how might we respond?

Jason talks to Seti's co-founder Frank Drake as well as its current active researchers, including Seth Shostak, Jill Tartar and Doug Vakoch.

Seti, the past, present and future Jan 09, 2012

Show notes

In the first of two programmes, the BBC's science reporter Jason Palmer, meets the researchers behind Seti, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence and looks at the prospects for success in the face of funding issues and the sheer size of the task.

He talks to Seti's co-founder Frank Drake as well as its current active researchers, including Seth Shostak, Jill Tartar and Doug Vakoch.

(Image: Computer artwork of our solar system. Credit: Science Photo Library)

Hypersonic Flight Jan 02, 2012

Show notes

For more than half a century aeronautical engineers have been working on the dream of hypersonic passenger flight.

London to Sydney in four hours is an often cited goal.

In Discovery Gareth Mitchell looks not at the past history of hypersonics, but at current developments.

He meets engineers working on the propulsion systems and developing new materials specifically for hypersonic flight.

Technologies which could be one applied to space craft as well as aeroplanes.

Spooklights Dec 26, 2011

Show notes

Folk tales are full of fleeting phenomena like will o' the wisps, faint glows that must have spooked our ancestors.

But these days, it's just about impossible to escape the omnipresent illumination of modern life, and these evocative spooklights have vanished like ghosts.

Chemist Andrea Sella explores the science of lights so dim, they can be witnessed only in complete darkness.

From the spontaneous combustion of marsh gas to the lightning sparks emitted by crushed sugar, Professor Sella finds there's more to light than ever meets the eye.

19/12/2011 GMT Dec 19, 2011

Show notes

The Higgs particle is the final cornerstone of scientists’ model of the material universe. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN was built so researchers could discover it.

Last week, they announced a partial sighting – the ghost of a Higgs particle hoving into view in their plethora of data. But it could be just a phantom, and may start to fade with more data next year.

Roland Pease meets the scientists who are chasing this legendary particle, and gets exclusive access to the preparations for next year’s experiments.