BBC Inside Science
Episodes
Coronavirus - Lockdown efficacy; viral testing; surface survival; dog walking safety
26 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, we promised we’d tackle your coronavirus and associated Covid 19 questions and you came up trumps. So this week we’re be talking about ...
TB vaccination to replace culling in badgers; Neil Shubin on the wonders of evolution
19 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The government have announced that the controversial cull of badgers across England will begin to be phased out in the next few years. It will be repl...
Biology of the new coronavirus
12 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Rutherford explores what makes the new coronavirus so effective at making us ill. Jonathan Ball, Professor of Virology at Nottingham University...
Banning lead shot for hunting; UK Fireball Network and Extremely thin gold
05 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We have known for centuries about the toxic properties of lead, and we have known since at least 1876 that birds die of lead poisoning when they eat l...
The Big Compost Experiment; Using AI to screen for new antibiotics; Science of slapstick
27 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Composters - we need you! Or rather materials scientists at UCL, Mark Miodownik and Danielle Purkiss, need you to take part in their Big Compost Exper...
Coronavirus questions; HMS Challenger and ocean acidification; Sean Carroll's quantum world
20 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Rutherford is joined by Professor of Virology at Nottingham University, Jonathan Ball, to help answer some of your questions on the latest corona...
Ordnance Survey - Britain's 220-year-old tech company; Launching synthetic voices and personality test
13 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For the past 220 years, Ordnance Survey have been mapping Great Britain with extraordinary accuracy. But as Gareth discovers when he visits their HQ i...
Solar Orbiter launch; Mutational signatures in cancer; paleo-oncology
06 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The latest space mission to the Sun is due to launch on Sunday. SolO, the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter, will loop around our star in an ellip...
Coronavirus update, Typhoid Mary and 200th anniversary of the first sighting of Antarctica
30 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
With the recent coronavirus outbreak spreading around the world, and concerns about people being infectious before they exhibit any symptoms. Professo...
Coronavirus outbreak in China; Genetic diseases in Amish communities and getting an Egyptian mummy to speak
23 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
With news reports moving as quickly as the virus may be spreading, the latest coronavirus outbreak which is thought to have started in Wuhan in centra...
Reproducibility crisis in science; Aeolus wind-measuring satellite; electric cars
16 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Science is built upon the idea that results can be verified by others. Scientists do their experiments and write up their methods and results and subm...
Australian bush fires; Veganuary and LIGO
09 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
2019 was the hottest and driest year on record in Australia. The Indian Ocean Dipole and the Southern Annular Mode weather systems, plus existing drou...
The hidden history in our DNA - Part 2 - Travel and Culture
02 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Our genomes are more than just an instruction manual for our bodies. They are maps, diaries, history books and medical records of our and our ancestor...
The hidden history in our DNA - Part 1 - Sex and Disease
26 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Our genomes are more than just an instruction manual for our bodies. They are maps, diaries, history books and medical records of our and our ancestor...
Ten years of Zooniverse; what happened to volcano Anak Krakatau and visualising maths
19 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Rutherford talks to Chris Lintott about the citizen science platform he set up ten years ago. Zooniverse is a place where the public can help sci...
Earliest hunting scene cave painting; animal domestication syndrome
12 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
A cave painting in Sulawesi, Indonesia, has been dated and is at least 43,900 years old. The mural portrays a group of part-human, part-animal figures...
Global Carbon Emissions; Parker Solar Probe and simulating swaying buildings
05 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Reports from the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 25) in Madrid are saying that global warming is increasing and that we're not doing enough, fast en...
What's the problem with palm oil and should we be supporting sustainably grown oil? Virtual reality skin
28 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Palm oil is now such a dirty word for household products and processed food, that it often hides behind a list of dozens of pseudonyms (from the ubiqu...
Noise pollution and wildlife; No till farming; Cornwall's geothermal heat
21 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The effects of human-made noise on the natural world has been surprisingly little studied. Hanjoerg Kunc at Queen's University in Belfast has collecte...
Soils and floods, Air pollution and ultra-low emission zones, detecting the drug Spice
14 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The UK's soils are the first line of defence against flooding, but the condition of the soil is vital to how well it can soak up and slowly release ra...
Fracking moratorium; Bloodhound; Big Compost Experiment; transit of Mercury
07 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced an indefinite moratorium this week on mining of shale gas by hydraulic fracturing, aka fracking, in the UK,...
African genomes sequenced; Space weather; sports head injuries
31 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Since the human genome was first sequenced nearly 20 years ago, around a million people have had theirs decoded, giving us new insights into the links...
Organic farming emissions; Staring at seagulls; Salt and dementia
24 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Switching to 100% organic food production in England and Wales would see an overall increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Although going fully organic...
Ebola model, Partula snails, Malaria origin
17 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Zoonotic diseases are infections that transfer from animals to people, and include killers such as bubonic plague, malaria, ebola and a whole host of ...
Extinction Rebellion, UK net zero emissions and climate change; Nobel Prizes
10 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Extinction Rebellion is in the news with its stated aim of civil disobedience and protest, and goal to compel governments around the world to act on t...
HIV protective gene paper retraction, Imaging ancient Herculaneum scrolls, Bill Bryson's The Body
03 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In November 2018 news broke via YouTube that He Jiankui, then a professor at Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China had crea...
Oceans, ice and climate change; Neolithic baby bottles; Caroline Criado-Perez wins RS Book Prize
26 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's special report on the oceans and cryosphere makes pretty grim reading on the state of our seas and icy...
MOSAiC Arctic super-expedition, Likely extinction of the Bahama nuthatch, Tim Smedley's book on air pollution
19 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On Friday, 20 September, a powerful icebreaker called The Polarstern will set sail from Tromsø, Norway, with the aim of getting stuck into the polar ...
Model embryos from stem cells, Paul Steinhardt's book on impossible crystals, Mother Thames
12 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most fundamental developmental stages we humans go through is extremely poorly understood. The first few days of the embryo, once it's been...
Inventing GPS, Carbon nanotube computer, Steven Strogatz and Monty Lyman discuss calculus and skin
05 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Global Positioning System, or GPS is perhaps the best known of the satellite navigation systems, helping us find our way every day. Back in the 1970's...
Amazon fires, Royal Society Book Prize shortlist announced, John Gribben on quantum physics
29 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Satellite data has shown an 85% increase in the number of fires across Brazil this year. There are more than 2,500 fires active across the Amazon regi...
UK's black squirrels' genetic heritage; nuclear fusion in the UK and the Royal Society's science book prize
22 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Perhaps you’ve been lucky enough to spot the uncommon black grey squirrel in the UK. The bizarre mutation that causes a change in fur colour has fin...
UK power cut, Huge dinosaur find in Wyoming, Micro-plastics in Arctic snow
15 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Following the simultaneous outages of two UK power plants last Friday, affecting nearly 1 million people across the country, we at Inside Science want...
Making the UK's dams safe, AI spots fake smiles, How many trees should we be planting?
08 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the light of the evacuation of the Derbyshire town of Whaley Bridge due to damage to the Todbrook reservoir dam and the threat of a catastrophic co...
Lovelock at 100; Hydrothermal vents and antibiotic resistance in the environment
01 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
James Lovelock is one of the most influential thinkers on the environment of the last half century. His grand theory of planet Earth - Gaia, which is ...
False positives in genetic test kits, Impact of fishing on ocean sharks, Sex-change fish
25 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Adam Rutherford uncovers the worrying number of false positive results that the DNA sequencing technologies used by 'direct to consumer' genetic te...
Turing on the new £50 note, Moon landing on the radio, 25 years since Shoemaker-Levy comet
18 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Code-breaker and father of computer science, Alan Turing has been chosen to celebrate the field of science on the new £50 note. Adam Rutherford asks ...
Earliest modern human skull, Analysing moon rocks, Viruses lurking in our genomes
11 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
A new study shows that 210,000-year-old skull found in Greece is the earliest evidence for modern humans in Eurasia. A second skull found in the same ...
X-Rays on Mercury, Monkey Tools, Music of Molecules, AI Drivers
04 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The 2019 Royal Society Summer Science exhibition in London is free to enter and continues until Sunday 7th July. BBC Inside Science this week comes fr...
Global Food Security, Reactive Use-By Labels, Origins of the Potato
27 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On the day that the UK government launches a year long “food-to-Fork” review of food production in the UK, we present a food themed special editio...
Rinderpest destruction, Noise and birdsong, Science as entertainment
20 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Rinderpest – Sequence and Destroy Last week the UK’s Pirbright Institute announced that it had destroyed its remaining stocks of the deadly cattle...
Net-Zero carbon target, Science Policy Under Thatcher, Screen time measures
13 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Net-Zero Carbon Target The UK is set to become the first member of the G7 industrialised nations group to legislate for net-zero emissions after There...
CCR5 Mutation Effects, The Surrey Earthquake Swarm, Animal Emotions
06 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Some people have a genetic mutation in a gene called CCR5 that seems to bestow immunity to a form of HIV. This is the mutation which controversial Chi...
How maths underpins science
30 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Rutherford and guests at the Hay Festival discuss how maths underwrites all branches of science, and is at the foundation of the modern world. Hi...
New CFC emissions, Cannabis and the Environment, The Noisy Cocktail Party, Automated Face Recognition
23 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
New CFC emissions Researchers say that they have pinpointed the major sources of a mysterious recent rise in a dangerous, ozone-destroying chemical. C...
Hubble Not-So Constant, Synthetic E. Coli, The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt
16 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Hubble Constant The Hubble constant is the current expansion rate of the universe but it seems to have changed over time. Hiranya Peiris, Professo...
Forensic science provision, optimal garden watering strategy, and a mystery knee bone
09 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
A damning House of Lords' report into the provision of forensic science in England and Wales makes for uncomfortable reading for some but is broadly w...
Sex, gender and sport - the Caster Semenya case and the latest Denisovan discovery
02 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 2018, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) introduced new eligibility regulations for female athletes with differences in ...
Thought-to-speech machine, City Nature Challenge, Science of Storytelling
25 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Patients who suffer neurological impairments preventing them from speaking potentially face a severely limited existence. Being able to express yourse...
Notre-Dame fire, Reviving pig brains, ExoMars, Evolution of faces
18 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The horror of the blazing Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris has been slightly quenched by the fact that so much of the French landmark has been saved. But...
Visualising a black hole, Homo luzonensis, Two ways to overcome antimicrobial resistance
11 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
"We have now seen the unseeable" according to scientists who are part of the Event Horizon Telescope group. The international team has released a pict...
Cretaceous catastrophe fossilised, LIGO and Virgo, Corals, Forensic shoeprint database
04 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
About 66 million years ago an asteroid at least 6 miles wide crashed into the Earth, in the shallow sea that is now the Yucatan Peninsular in Mexico. ...
UK pollinating insect numbers, Tracking whales using barnacles, Sleep signals
28 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
One of the longest running insect pollinator surveys in the world, shows that a few generalist pollinators are on the increase, whereas specialist ins...
Where next World Wide Web? Space rocks and worms
21 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
30 years ago Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web as a way to let physicists share their papers and data on a distributed network. It's changed...
Rules and ethics of genome editing, Gender, sex and sport, Hog roasts at Stonehenge
14 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
When the news broke last December that Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui had successfully edited the genomes of twin girls using the technique known as ...
A cure for HIV? Sleepy flies, Secrets of the Fukushima disaster, Science fact checking
07 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
An HIV-1 sufferer, who had developed aggressive cancer, and underwent a revolutionary stem cell transplant, has been declared HIV resistant. It's been...
Falling carbon and rising methane; Unsung heroes at the Crick
28 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Efforts to cut emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and tackle climate change in many developed economies are beginning to pay off, according to research...
Mars - rovers v humans? Forests and carbon, Ethiopian bush crow
21 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Nasa have called time on the 14 year mission with the Mars Opportunity rover. Curiosity is still there. But what's next for our exploration of the Red...
Insect decline, Gut microbiome, Geomagnetic switching
14 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
A very strongly worded, meta-review paper (looking at 73 historical reports from around the world published over the past 13 years) has just been publ...
Sea Level Rise, Equine Flu, Generator Bricks, Iberian Genes
07 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 2016 some scientists suggested that with climate change so much ice in Antarctica could melt that the global sea level could rise up to a metre. Th...
Sprinting Neanderthals, Geodynamo, Spreading Sneezes and Dying Hares
31 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Many physical features of Neanderthals might not be for cold climate adaptation as previously thought. They may be for types of locomotion. Which, acc...
Ultima Thule, Dry January, Periodic Table
04 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
2019 means the opportunity to explore the most distant object yet encountered in our solar system – the brilliantly named Ultima Thule as Nasa’s N...
Gene-edited twins, Placenta organoids in a dish, When the last leaves drop
29 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Claims by a Chinese scientist that he has gene-edited human embryos, transplanted them producing genetically edited twins, who will pass on these chan...
Mars InSight mission, Detecting dark matter, Redefining the kilogram, Bovine TB
22 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Government's strategy to eradicate TB in cattle is a contentious topic. The disease is extremely complicated and lots of people have different ide...
Bovine TB and badger culling, Shrimp hoover CSI, Shark-skin and Turing
15 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Bovine TB Strategy Review has just been released. It contains a review of the science and offers advice and guidance to Government ministers on ho...
Oldest cave picture; the Anthropocene under London; a new scientist for the £50 note
08 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What could be the oldest figurative cave paintings in the world have been found in a cave complex in remote Borneo. A reddish orange depiction of an a...
Repairing potholes, Ozone hole, Internet of hives, Drugs from fingerprints
01 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Potholes are one of the biggest frustrations to any road-user, but why do they keep occurring? Following Philip Hammond’s announcement of £420 mill...
Science and Brexit, Antibiotic livestock growth promoters, Bepicolombo goes to Mercury
25 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How might Brexit affect UK Science? Why is feeding a 'last resort' antibiotic to farm animals not a good idea? Why is space probe Bepicolombo going ...
Old Dogs and Physics in Space
18 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How far back can we trace the ancestry of dogs? For just how long have they been following us around? The answer is for a very long time - long before...
IPCC report, Cairngorms Connect project, grass pea, the Sun exhibition at Science Museum
11 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Rutherford speaks to Dr Tamsin Edwards, a lecturer in Physical Geography at Kings College London and a lead author for the latest IPCC report. Dr...
Nobel Prizes - Hayabusa 2 latest - IPCC meeting - North Pole science
04 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Rutherford reviews this year's Nobel science prizes, and talks to Professor Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, a 2009 laureate and president of the Royal ...
Hyabusa 2 at Ryugu, deadly 1918 flu pandemic; WW2 bombing and ionosphere, teenage brain
27 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Japan’s Hayabusa-2 spacecraft has arrived after more than a three year journey at the Ryugu asteroid which is just over half a mile long. It has suc...
Science of Addiction
20 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Science Gallery London at Kings College London, right under the Shard, is a brand new venue for the collision of art, science and culture, and its...
First human drawing, Cycling genes, Oden Arctic expedition, Hello World
13 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A new discovery of abstract symbolic drawings on a rock has been found in the Blombos Cave, about 300 km east of Cape Town in South Africa. The fragme...
Complexity in Biology
06 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Rutherford takes the show to Dublin this week, to wrestle with great matters of biological complexity. Trinity College Dublin has organised a mas...
Electronic brain probe; Rural stream biodiversity; Arctic weather research trip; Science book prize
30 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Scientists have shown how an electronic gadget, implanted in the brain, can detect, treat and even prevent epileptic seizures. Epilepsy is usually tre...
Cavendish banana survival; Guillemot egg shape; Unexpected Truth About Animals; Tambora's rainstorm
23 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The last banana you probably ate was a type called Cavendish. But this, our last commercially viable variety is under severe threat, as the fungus, ca...
Capturing greenhouse gas, Beating heart failure with beetroot, Why elephants don't get cancer, Exactly - a history of precision
16 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Researchers have found a way to produce a naturally occurring mineral, magnesite, in a lab, that can absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, offering a potent...
New Horizons' next mission, Helium at 150, The Beautiful Cure, Oden arctic expedition
09 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Astronomers this week have been warming up for an encounter as far from the Sun as ever attempted. It's the finale of the New Horizons mission which s...
Parker solar probe, Diversity in the lab, Royal Society book prize, Arctic circle weather
02 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The sun still has many mysterious properties. The Parker Solar Probe, launched next week will be the closest a spacecraft has ever flown to our star. ...
Liquid water on Mars, Early embryo development, Earth Biogenome Project, Marine wilderness
26 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The European Space Agency's satellite Mars Express has identified what we think is a subterranean lake of liquid near the south pole of the red planet...
Peatbog wildfires, Coral acoustics, Magdalena Skipper, Fuelling long-term space travel
19 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The wildfires on Saddleworth Moor may well be the most widespread in modern British history. Thanks to herculean efforts by Greater Manchester Fire an...
Out of Africa, Predicting future heatwaves, Virtual reality molecules, Life in the dark
12 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Scientists have found the earliest known evidence of a human presence outside Africa. A set of 96 stone tools has been found in the mountains of south...
Northern white rhino preservation, Deep sea earthquake detection, Twitter's rare Heuchera discovery, Human roars
05 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The northern white rhinoceros is the world's most endangered mammal. The death earlier this year of the last male of this rhino subspecies leaves just...
Hyabusa mission; ProtoDUNE neutrino detector; Caledonian crow skills; Koala microbiome
28 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Yesterday a small Japanese ion-thruster spaceship arrived at its destination after a three year and half year, 2 billion mile journey. Hyabusa2 is cur...
The Large Hadron Collider Upgrade, Voltaglue, Cambridge Zoology Museum, Francis Willughby
21 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
It's been 8 years since the Large Hadron Collider went online and started smashing protons together at just below the speed of light. CERN announced t...
Antarctic melt speeds up, Antarctica's future, Cryo-acoustics, Narwhals
18 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Rutherford goes totally polar this week with news of accelerating ice melt in Antarctica, two visions of the continent's future, and the sounds o...
Dinosaur auction, Who owns the genes of the ocean life, Cancer immunotherapy
14 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A spectacular predatory dinosaur fossil was auctioned this week in Paris. It was bought by a private collector at the cost of about 2 million Euros. A...
Hay Festival
31 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Rutherford and his guests at the Hay Festival, neurologist Dr Suzanne O'Sullivan, acoustic engineer Professor Trevor Cox and science writer Dr Ph...
CO2 and rice, Underground farming, Ancient interstellar asteroid, Microplastics air pollution
24 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
New research suggests that rice will be depleted in important B vitamins and minerals by rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Adam Rutherford to talks...
Face Recognition, ‘Thug’ plants, Cancer Funding Inequalities, Feynman’s 100th birthday
17 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Facial recognition technology is on the rise and in some places used to fight crime. In the UK the police have been heavily criticised for falsely ide...
Rat eradication; elephant talk; the rise of the dinosaurs; physics of snooker
10 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On the remote island of South Georgia, the invasion of rats from passing ships has wreaked havoc on the local wildlife. But the South Georgia Heritage...
Antarctic, Kew, Paleogenomics, Sea birds
03 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Thwaites glacier in Western Antarctica is twice the size of the UK and accounts for about 4% of sea level rise, but what is unknown is whether the...
Human Consciousness: Could a brain in a dish become sentient?
26 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As the field of neuroscience advances, scientists are increasingly growing brain tissue to study conditions like autism, Alzheimer's and Zika virus. B...
Plastic-eating bacteria, Foam mattresses for crops, The evolved life aquatic, The Double Helix
19 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A breakthrough for closed loop plastic recycling? Two years ago Japanese scientists discovered a type of bacteria which has evolved to feed on PET pla...
Pesticides in British Farming
12 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A few weeks ago, Inside Science featured an item on neonicotinoids and the negative impact these pesticides have on insects like honey bees. The discu...
Stephen Hawking Tribute
05 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Rutherford presents a special tribute to the science of Stephen Hawking. He is joined by Fay Dowker, a former PhD student of Hawking and now a pr...
Genes and education, John Goodenough, Caring bears and hunting
29 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A widely reported study published last week suggests that on average children at selective schools have more gene variants associated with higher educ...
Data Scraping
22 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The story of how Cambridge Analytica had scraped Facebook data in its attempt to influence voting behaviour has been reported widely this week. Andrew...
Buzz kill
15 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As spring and Brexit loom, Adam Rutherford examines what stance the UK might take on neonicotinoids. The pesticide has been shown to harm bee populati...