In this special episode of Science in Action, Roland Pease travels to South Africa to gain a deeper understanding of human origins.   Along the way, he speaks to ichnologist Charles Helm and national parks ecologist Mike Fabricius, who take him to a special – and extremely windy – location, where early human footprints are permanently preserved in the rock.
 
At the University of Cape Town, Roland speaks to Rieneke Weij and Georgina Luti. They are studying the geochemistry of rocks that existed in caves alongside our ancient relatives.   Across the city, in the Iziko South African Museum, Wendy Black and Amy Sephton discuss the ways in which we think about our deep past and how we can decolonise the human story.   Presenter: Roland Pease  
Producer: Ella Hubber  
Editor: Martin Smith   
Production co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth 
 
(Image: Human fossilized footprint in hardened mud or clay. Credit: Waltkopp/Getty Images)

Following in the footsteps of ancient humans

The BBC brings you all the week's science news.

Technology

Tech News

Podcasting

Gadgets

Software How-To

Science

As bird flu is found in US farm cats fed on raw cow’s milk, chimpanzees are observed eating infected bat dung instead of vegetables. There is a constant threat of infections crossing from species to us and also from species to other species, particularly because of what we do. That is, after all, what happened to start the pandemic. We hear about the ongoing struggles of the Chinese virologist who broke his instructions in China in order to share the first COVID genetic data. And a strange tale of how tobacco growing might provide bat viruses a path into other species. Presenter: Roland Pease
Producer: Alex Mansfield
Production Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth Image: Cows on an American cattle farm (Credit: Adam Davis/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)

Crossover infections

Friday, April 13th 2029 – mark it in your calendar. That’s the day an asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier will fly past Earth, closer than some satellites. Don’t worry – it will miss, but it’ll will pass so close to Earth that it will be visible to the naked eye of 2 billion people, particularly in North Africa and Western Europe. Roland Pease this week attended the Apophis T-5 Years conference at the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in the Netherlands, meeting astronomers scrambling to get missions up to the object to learn what kind of threats such asteroids might pose to us in the future and to discuss the science of planetary defence.  NASA’s OSIRIS-APEX, a follow-on to OSIRIS-REx, will study the physical changes due to the gravitational forces from the Earth as it closely passes us by. But will there be an armada of spacecraft sent to monitor Apophis? The European Space Agency hope to gather support for their own mission, RAMSES. Presenter: Roland Pease
Producer: Jonathan Blackwell Image Credit: JPL/Caltech

An armada for asteroid Apophis?

A black hole just discovered in our Milky Way galaxy, weighing 33 times the mass of the Sun, and dating back to near the time of the Big Bang, gives new clues to the origins of this dark astronomical mysteries. And dancing with a Sun-like star in our galactic neighbourhood, it offers a great opportunity for astronomers to take a detailed look in coming years, as astronomer Professor Gerry Gilmore of Cambridge University tells the programme.   Presenter Roland Pease has headed to the lab of Professor Ludovic Orlando in Toulouse, France where they are extracting ancient DNA from horses as part of a project called “Horsepower” - to reveal how our prehistoric ancestors tamed and domesticated these powerful animals (long after cattle and sheep) and in the process helped shape the extraordinary history of the first states of China and Mongolia.   
  
And a deep look into the mechanisms of addiction – showing how drugs of abuse, such as cocaine, hijack the neuronal pathways that had evolved to drive our innate needs such as eating and drinking. Roland hears from psychiatrist Eric J. Nestler of the Friedman Brain Institute at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, how this could one day improve addiction treatments.   Presenter: Roland Pease 
Producer: Jonathan Blackwell 
Production Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth  (Image: An artist's impression shows the orbits of the most massive stellar black hole in our galaxy, dubbed Gaia BH3, and a companion star. Credit: European Southern Observatory via Reuters)

Unexpected black hole in our galaxy

The highly pathogenic strain of bird flu, H5N1, has arrived on the continent. Australian bird specialist Megan Dewar, from the Federation University of Australia, has led a mission aboard the research ship the Australis.   Science in Action remembers physicist Peter Higgs 60 years after his Nobel prize winning theory of the Higgs particle.   The unfolding scandal of manipulated data behind claims of incredible room-temperature superconductivity. Science writer Dan Garisto has seen the details in a Rochester University internal investigation.  And the alga – single-celled seaweed – with superpowers. As well as capturing carbon from CO2 in the atmosphere, like other plants, this one can directly capture nitrogen too, essential for life, but which few organisms can do for themselves. We hear from the marine scientist who has revealed this evolutionary trick.  Presenter: Roland Pease 
Producer: Jonathan Blackwell  
Production Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth  (Image: KAPPA-FLU team selecting skua carcasses for post-mortem examination. Credit: Ben Wallis)

Bird flu in Antarctica

A powerful earthquake hit Taiwan on Wednesday morning, but thanks to the country’s early warning system and engineering-preparedness, there was little destruction and few deaths. Seismologist Ross Stein, CEO of earthquake consultancy Temblor, Inc., shares his analysis. 
 
The highly pathogenic bird flu H5N1 has been detected in cattle in the US and in a cattle handler in Texas. To learn more about this special animal-to-human transmission, Roland speaks to virologist Richard Webby of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Tennessee and Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals. 
 
French Space Institute Supaero in Toulouse is collaborating with Japan’s space agency JAXA to send and land a rover on Phobos, one of Mars’ tiny moons. Roland travels to the University of Toulouse to learn more about building this wheeled Rover from Supaero’s Naomi Murdoch.  Transitioning to a clean energy future requires mining materials like rare earth minerals, but how will this impact our environment? Jessi Junker of the ecology charity ReWild explains her research and concerns for great apes as mining for these materials expands in Africa.   Presenter: Roland Pease 
Producers: Roland Pease, Ella Hubber, Jonathan Blackwell 
Researcher: Imaan Moin 
Production Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth  (Photo: Damaged building caused by the earthquake in Hualien on April 4, 2024. Credit: SAM YEH/AFP via Getty Images)

Following in the footsteps of ancient humans

Download our free app to listen on your phone