BBC Inside Science

By BBC Radio 4

What's BBC Inside Science about?

Dr Adam Rutherford and guests illuminate the mysteries and challenge the controversies behind the science that's changing our world.

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Global Carbon Emissions; Pa...

12.05.2019

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 enough, to change things. The World Meteorological Organisation's provisional State of the Climate 2019 report ...

BBC Inside Science episodes:

12.05.2019 Global Carbon Emissions; Parker Solar Probe and simulating swaying buildings 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 enough, to change things. The World Meteorological Organisation's provisional State of the Climate 2019 report ...
11.28.2019 What's the problem with palm oil and should we be supporting sustainably grown oil? Virtual reality skin 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 ubiquitous sodium laureth sulphate to the slightly more obvious palm kernel oil, to ...
11.21.2019 Noise pollution and wildlife; No till farming; Cornwall's geothermal heat The effects of human-made noise on the natural world has been surprisingly little studied. Hanjoerg Kunc at Queen's University in Belfast has collected all experimental data on the effects of anthropogenic noise on wild animals and found it to be ...
11.14.2019 Soils and floods, Air pollution and ultra-low emission zones, detecting the drug Spice 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 rainwater. Jane Rickson, Professor of soil erosion and conservation at Cranfield ...
11.07.2019 Fracking moratorium; Bloodhound; Big Compost Experiment; transit of Mercury The Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced an indefinite moratorium this week on mining of shale gas by hydraulic fracturing, aka fracking, in the UK, citing fears of earthquakes and seismic activity caused by fracking in the past. In August this ...
10.31.2019 African genomes sequenced; Space weather; sports head injuries 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 between genes, ancestry and disease. But most of the genomes studied have been in ...
10.24.2019 Organic farming emissions; Staring at seagulls; Salt and dementia Switching to 100% organic food production in England and Wales would see an overall increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Although going fully organic would produce fewer direct emissions than conventional farming, researchers say it would limit food production. Making up ...
10.17.2019 Ebola model, Partula snails, Malaria origin Zoonotic diseases are infections that transfer from animals to people, and include killers such as bubonic plague, malaria, ebola and a whole host of others. Trying to understand how diseases make the leap from animals to humans – so called ...
10.10.2019 Extinction Rebellion, UK net zero emissions and climate change; Nobel Prizes 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 the climate crisis. Meanwhile, the UK government this week announced that it was overruling ...
10.03.2019 HIV protective gene paper retraction, Imaging ancient Herculaneum scrolls, Bill Bryson's The Body In November 2018 news broke via YouTube that He Jiankui, then a professor at Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China had created the world’s first gene-edited babies from two embryos. The edited gene was CCR5 delta 32 ...
09.26.2019 Oceans, ice and climate change; Neolithic baby bottles; Caroline Criado-Perez wins RS Book Prize 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 places. Ocean temperatures are rising, permafrost and sea ice are melting, sea levels are rising ...
09.19.2019 MOSAiC Arctic super-expedition, Likely extinction of the Bahama nuthatch, Tim Smedley's book on air pollution 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 ice. The plan is for the ship to spend the next year drifting past the ...
09.12.2019 Model embryos from stem cells, Paul Steinhardt's book on impossible crystals, Mother Thames 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 implanted in the womb is incredibly hard to study. Yet it's the time when the ...
09.05.2019 Inventing GPS, Carbon nanotube computer, Steven Strogatz and Monty Lyman discuss calculus and skin 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 Bradford Parkinson and Hugo Fruehauf were two of the inventors who miniaturised atomic clocks ...
08.29.2019 Amazon fires, Royal Society Book Prize shortlist announced, John Gribben on quantum physics 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 region. This represents the most active number of fires since 2010. The increase in ...
08.22.2019 UK's black squirrels' genetic heritage; nuclear fusion in the UK and the Royal Society's science book prize 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 finally divulged its historic evolution. Dr Helen McRobie at Anglia Ruskin University studies the ...
08.15.2019 UK power cut, Huge dinosaur find in Wyoming, Micro-plastics in Arctic snow Following the simultaneous outages of two UK power plants last Friday, affecting nearly 1 million people across the country, we at Inside Science wanted to get back to the basics of electricity and get our heads round how the National ...
08.08.2019 Making the UK's dams safe, AI spots fake smiles, How many trees should we be planting? 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 collapse, questions inevitably arise as to how ‘future proofed’ UK dams are? This ...
08.01.2019 Lovelock at 100; Hydrothermal vents and antibiotic resistance in the environment 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 the idea that from the bottom of the Earth's crust to the upper ...
07.25.2019 False positives in genetic test kits, Impact of fishing on ocean sharks, Sex-change fish Dr Adam Rutherford uncovers the worrying number of false positive results that the DNA sequencing technologies used by 'direct to consumer' genetic test kits are producing. Many of these tests offer analysis on your ancestry, but some also offer to ...
07.18.2019 Turing on the new £50 note, Moon landing on the radio, 25 years since Shoemaker-Levy comet 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 Chief Cashier at the Bank of England, Sarah Johns how and why he was selected ...
07.11.2019 Earliest modern human skull, Analysing moon rocks, Viruses lurking in our genomes 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 site is found to be a Neanderthal from 170,000 years ago. These findings suggest ...
07.04.2019 X-Rays on Mercury, Monkey Tools, Music of Molecules, AI Drivers 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 from the Society’s HQ in central London. BepiColombo and the X-rays from Mercury Prof Emma ...
06.27.2019 Global Food Security, Reactive Use-By Labels, Origins of the Potato 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 edition. Global Food Security Maia Elliot is an analyst and writer for Global Food Security, ...
06.20.2019 Rinderpest destruction, Noise and birdsong, Science as entertainment Rinderpest – Sequence and Destroy Last week the UK’s Pirbright Institute announced that it had destroyed its remaining stocks of the deadly cattle virus Rinderpest. This repository was one of the biggest remaining stores of it since it was announced ...
06.13.2019 Net-Zero carbon target, Science Policy Under Thatcher, Screen time measures 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 Theresa May’s announcement this week. The proposed legislation would commit the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions to ...
06.06.2019 CCR5 Mutation Effects, The Surrey Earthquake Swarm, Animal Emotions 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 Chinese scientist Jianqui He tried to bestow upon two baby girls last year ...
05.30.2019 How maths underpins science 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. His guests are the following. Professor Steve Strogatz, of Cornell University, the author of a ...
05.23.2019 New CFC emissions, Cannabis and the Environment, The Noisy Cocktail Party, Automated Face Recognition New CFC emissions Researchers say that they have pinpointed the major sources of a mysterious recent rise in a dangerous, ozone-destroying chemical. CFC-11 was primarily used for home insulation but global production was due to be phased out in 2010. ...
05.16.2019 Hubble Not-So Constant, Synthetic E. Coli, The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt The Hubble Constant The Hubble constant is the current expansion rate of the universe but it seems to have changed over time. Hiranya Peiris, Professor of Astrophysics from University College London and Adam Riess, Professor of Physics and Astronomy from ...
05.09.2019 Forensic science provision, optimal garden watering strategy, and a mystery knee bone 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 welcomed by those in the field. Prof. Niamh Nic Daeid, one of many who gave ...
05.02.2019 Sex, gender and sport - the Caster Semenya case and the latest Denisovan discovery In 2018, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) introduced new eligibility regulations for female athletes with differences in sex development (DSDs). These regulations are based on the contention that women with high levels of endogenous testosterone and androgen sensitivity ...
04.25.2019 Thought-to-speech machine, City Nature Challenge, Science of Storytelling Patients who suffer neurological impairments preventing them from speaking potentially face a severely limited existence. Being able to express yourself in real time is a large part of our identity. In the journal Nature this week, scientists from the University ...
04.18.2019 Notre-Dame fire, Reviving pig brains, ExoMars, Evolution of faces 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 what was it about the structure of the roof, with some the beams ...
04.11.2019 Visualising a black hole, Homo luzonensis, Two ways to overcome antimicrobial resistance "We have now seen the unseeable" according to scientists who are part of the Event Horizon Telescope group. The international team has released a picture of the first black hole. Data gathered from an array of over 8 radio telescopes ...
04.04.2019 Cretaceous catastrophe fossilised, LIGO and Virgo, Corals, Forensic shoeprint database 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. It gouged the Chicxulub crater 18 miles deep; threw 25 trillion tonnes ...
03.28.2019 UK pollinating insect numbers, Tracking whales using barnacles, Sleep signals One of the longest running insect pollinator surveys in the world, shows that a few generalist pollinators are on the increase, whereas specialist insects are declining. Using data collected by volunteers across Great Britain to map the spatial loss of ...
03.21.2019 Where next World Wide Web? Space rocks and worms 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 a lot since then and not all for the better. Dominant technology companies ...
03.14.2019 Rules and ethics of genome editing, Gender, sex and sport, Hog roasts at Stonehenge When the news broke last December that Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui had successfully edited the genomes of twin girls using the technique known as CRISPR-Cas9, scientists and the public were rightly outraged that such a procedure had taken place. Jiankui ...
03.07.2019 A cure for HIV? Sleepy flies, Secrets of the Fukushima disaster, Science fact checking An HIV-1 sufferer, who had developed aggressive cancer, and underwent a revolutionary stem cell transplant, has been declared HIV resistant. It's been 18 months since the 'London patient' underwent a stem cell transplant of donated HIV resistant cells. This has ...
02.28.2019 Falling carbon and rising methane; Unsung heroes at the Crick Efforts to cut emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and tackle climate change in many developed economies are beginning to pay off, according to research led by Corinne Le Quere at the Tyndall Centre at the University of East Anglia. The ...
02.21.2019 Mars - rovers v humans? Forests and carbon, Ethiopian bush crow 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 planet? Adam asks Senior Strategist in Space Systems at Airbus, Liz Seward and ...
02.14.2019 Insect decline, Gut microbiome, Geomagnetic switching 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 published looking at the fate of insects around the world. The researchers have collated other people’s ...
02.07.2019 Sea Level Rise, Equine Flu, Generator Bricks, Iberian Genes 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. There would be an "ice apocalypse". Now another group has refined the models ...
01.31.2019 Sprinting Neanderthals, Geodynamo, Spreading Sneezes and Dying Hares Many physical features of Neanderthals might not be for cold climate adaptation as previously thought. They may be for types of locomotion. Which, according to paleo-ecologist, John Stewart at Bournemouth University, makes the long thigh to calf ratios more likely ...
01.04.2019 Ultima Thule, Dry January, Periodic Table 2019 means the opportunity to explore the most distant object yet encountered in our solar system – the brilliantly named Ultima Thule as Nasa’s New Horizons spacecraft hit the headlines this week when it flew past an object 4 billion ...
11.29.2018 Gene-edited twins, Placenta organoids in a dish, When the last leaves drop Claims by a Chinese scientist that he has gene-edited human embryos, transplanted them producing genetically edited twins, who will pass on these changes to their offspring, has the scientific community outraged. The work, which was carried out in secret, has ...
11.22.2018 Mars InSight mission, Detecting dark matter, Redefining the kilogram, Bovine TB The Government's strategy to eradicate TB in cattle is a contentious topic. The disease is extremely complicated and lots of people have different ideas on how to manage it. Professor of Zoonotic and Emerging Disease at the University of Nottingham, ...
11.15.2018 Bovine TB and badger culling, Shrimp hoover CSI, Shark-skin and Turing 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 how to eradicate this costly and hard to manage disease in cattle. Controversially it does ...
11.08.2018 Oldest cave picture; the Anthropocene under London; a new scientist for the £50 note 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 animal that could be a Banteng (wild cattle found in the region) is ...

Older episodes

BBC Inside Science

What's BBC Inside Science about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

BBC Inside Science episodes:

Global Carbon Emissions; Parker Solar Probe and simulating swaying buildings

What's the problem with palm oil and should we be supporting sustainably grown oil? Virtual reality skin

Noise pollution and wildlife; No till farming; Cornwall's geothermal heat

Soils and floods, Air pollution and ultra-low emission zones, detecting the drug Spice

Fracking moratorium; Bloodhound; Big Compost Experiment; transit of Mercury

African genomes sequenced; Space weather; sports head injuries

Organic farming emissions; Staring at seagulls; Salt and dementia

Ebola model, Partula snails, Malaria origin

Extinction Rebellion, UK net zero emissions and climate change; Nobel Prizes

HIV protective gene paper retraction, Imaging ancient Herculaneum scrolls, Bill Bryson's The Body

Oceans, ice and climate change; Neolithic baby bottles; Caroline Criado-Perez wins RS Book Prize

MOSAiC Arctic super-expedition, Likely extinction of the Bahama nuthatch, Tim Smedley's book on air pollution

Model embryos from stem cells, Paul Steinhardt's book on impossible crystals, Mother Thames

Inventing GPS, Carbon nanotube computer, Steven Strogatz and Monty Lyman discuss calculus and skin

Amazon fires, Royal Society Book Prize shortlist announced, John Gribben on quantum physics

UK's black squirrels' genetic heritage; nuclear fusion in the UK and the Royal Society's science book prize

UK power cut, Huge dinosaur find in Wyoming, Micro-plastics in Arctic snow

Making the UK's dams safe, AI spots fake smiles, How many trees should we be planting?

Lovelock at 100; Hydrothermal vents and antibiotic resistance in the environment

False positives in genetic test kits, Impact of fishing on ocean sharks, Sex-change fish

Turing on the new £50 note, Moon landing on the radio, 25 years since Shoemaker-Levy comet

Earliest modern human skull, Analysing moon rocks, Viruses lurking in our genomes

X-Rays on Mercury, Monkey Tools, Music of Molecules, AI Drivers

Global Food Security, Reactive Use-By Labels, Origins of the Potato

Rinderpest destruction, Noise and birdsong, Science as entertainment

Net-Zero carbon target, Science Policy Under Thatcher, Screen time measures

CCR5 Mutation Effects, The Surrey Earthquake Swarm, Animal Emotions

How maths underpins science

New CFC emissions, Cannabis and the Environment, The Noisy Cocktail Party, Automated Face Recognition

Hubble Not-So Constant, Synthetic E. Coli, The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt

Forensic science provision, optimal garden watering strategy, and a mystery knee bone

Sex, gender and sport - the Caster Semenya case and the latest Denisovan discovery

Thought-to-speech machine, City Nature Challenge, Science of Storytelling

Notre-Dame fire, Reviving pig brains, ExoMars, Evolution of faces

Visualising a black hole, Homo luzonensis, Two ways to overcome antimicrobial resistance

Cretaceous catastrophe fossilised, LIGO and Virgo, Corals, Forensic shoeprint database

UK pollinating insect numbers, Tracking whales using barnacles, Sleep signals

Where next World Wide Web? Space rocks and worms

Rules and ethics of genome editing, Gender, sex and sport, Hog roasts at Stonehenge

A cure for HIV? Sleepy flies, Secrets of the Fukushima disaster, Science fact checking

Falling carbon and rising methane; Unsung heroes at the Crick

Mars - rovers v humans? Forests and carbon, Ethiopian bush crow

Insect decline, Gut microbiome, Geomagnetic switching

Sea Level Rise, Equine Flu, Generator Bricks, Iberian Genes

Sprinting Neanderthals, Geodynamo, Spreading Sneezes and Dying Hares

Ultima Thule, Dry January, Periodic Table

Gene-edited twins, Placenta organoids in a dish, When the last leaves drop

Mars InSight mission, Detecting dark matter, Redefining the kilogram, Bovine TB

Bovine TB and badger culling, Shrimp hoover CSI, Shark-skin and Turing

Oldest cave picture; the Anthropocene under London; a new scientist for the £50 note

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