CrowdScience

The Moon and Earth are drifting gradually further apart. Every year the gap between them increases by a few centimetres. We know that the Moon’s gravity has an important effect on Earth - from controlling the tides to affecting the planet’s rotation - but slowly, imperceptibly, over billions of years, that influence will diminish as the Moon moves away.

Anand begins his journey on Brighton beach on the South coast of the UK. He’s there to watch the full Moon rise - and get a few insights on Tony’s question - from astronomer Darren Baskill and astrophotographer (and cellist) Ivana Perenic.

Anand talks to Darren about the influence of the Moon’s gravity on Earth today. As they stand on the beach, with the sea lapping at their feet, they can certainly see its effect on the ocean tides. But did you know that the Moon also causes tides on the land as well? Every time it’s overhead the ground you’re standing on is higher by a few centimetres.

Professor Neil Comins, author of the book What If the Moon Didn’t Exist, explains why the tides are the reason the Moon is moving away from Earth – and it has been ever since it was first formed.

And how was it formed anyhow? We turn back time with Prof. Sara Russell from the Natural History Museum in London to discover one of the most dramatic events in the early history of our solar system... when two worlds collided.

And, of course, it helps to know what a dinosaur weighed in the first place. Anand turns to paleontologist Nicolas Campione, who’s been puzzling over the most accurate way to calculate the bulk of a Brontosaurus.

Contributors:

Presenter: Anand Jagatia

(Image: Tyrannosaurus Rex and Spinosaurus in front of the moon - stock photo Credit: MR1805via Getty Images)

18 is the age of majority, or maturity, in most countries around the world. Depending where you live, it might be when you can vote, buy alcohol, or get married. But what's so special about 18 that makes it the beginning of adulthood?

Presenter: Caroline Steel

An apex predator is a killer. Usually large and terrifying, they enjoy the privilege of life at the top of a food chain. Nothing will eat them, leaving them free to wreak carnage on more vulnerable creatures.

In biology, it’s a term normally reserved for animals like polar bears, tigers and wolves. But CrowdScience listener Eoin wonders whether there’s a non-animal candidate for apex predator: the car. After all, worldwide, more than 1.5 million humans die on the roads each year, while pollution from traffic kills millions more. And that’s just the impact on us. What are cars doing to all the other species on this planet?

Host Anand Jagatia hits the road to investigate. En route, we’ll be picking up some scientists to help answer the question. It turns out to be so much more than a question of roadkill: cars, and the infrastructure built to support them, are destroying animals in ways science is only now revealing.

How did the wildlife cross the road? We go verge-side to test four different approaches. And we hear how cars manage to kill, not just on the roadside, but, in the case of some salmon species, from many miles away. Gathering as much evidence as possible, we pass judgement on whether the car truly is an apex predator.

Contributors:

Presenter: Anand Jagatia

(Image: Illustration of a deer in front of a car - stock illustration Credit: JSCIEPRO/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY via Getty Images)

Many of us experience an inner voice: we silently talk to ourselves as we go about our daily lives. CrowdScience listener Fredrick has been wondering about the science behind this interior dialogue.

Caroline also has an encounter with a robot that has been programmed to dialogue with itself. Which leads us to some deep questions: is our inner voice part of what makes us human, and if so, what are the consequences of robots developing this ability? Scientist Arianna Pipitone describes it as a step towards artificial consciousness.

Featuring:

(Image: Mixed Race boy looking up Credit: Jose Luis Pelaez Inc via Getty Images)

It would be quite a superpower to regrow entire body parts. CrowdScience listener Kelly started pondering this after a discussion with her friend on whether human tongues could regrow. Finding out that they couldn't, she asked us to investigate the extent of human regenerative abilities.

Presenter Alex Lathbridge travels to Vienna, a hotbed of research in this area. He meets an animal with much better powers of regeneration than humans - the axolotl. In Elly Tanaka’s lab he finds out how she studies their incredible abilities – and shows off his new axolotl tattoo.

Why can these sweet-looking salamanders regrow entire limbs while we can’t even regrow our tongues? Palaeontologist Nadia Fröbisch has looked into the evolutionary origins of regeneration, and it goes a lot further back than you might think.

And in fact, even humans are constantly regenerating, by renewing the building blocks of our bodies: cells. New cells grow and replace old ones all the time – although, in some parts of the body, we do keep hold of the same cells throughout our lives.

However, cell turnover isn’t the same as regrowing entire organs or limbs. But can we grow new body parts in the lab instead? We meet Sasha Mendjan, who creates heart organoids using our cells’ innate ability to self-organise. How far off are we from implanting organs, grown from a patient’s stem cells, back into the human body?

Contributors:

Presenter: Alex Lathbridge

Why do we have two eyes? Two ears? Two arms and two legs? Why is one side of the human body – externally at least – pretty much a mirror image of the other side?

CrowdScience listener Kevin from Trinidad and Tobago is intrigued. He wants to know why human beings – and indeed most animals - have a line of symmetry in their bodies. Yet, beyond their flowers and fruits, plants don’t seem to have any obvious symmetry. It seems that they can branch in any direction.

Anand Jagatia sets out to find out why the animal kingdom settled on bilateral symmetry as the ideal body plan. And it takes him into the deep oceans of 570 million years ago. Paleobiologist Dr. Frankie Dunn is his guide to a time when animal life was experimenting with all sorts of different body plans and symmetries.

Frankie shows Anand a fossil of the animals which changed everything. When creatures with bilateral symmetry emerged they began to re-engineer their environment, outcompeting everything else and dooming them to extinction.

Well... nearly everything else. One very successful group of animals which have an utterly different symmetry are the echinoderms. That includes animals with pentaradial - or five-fold - symmetry like starfish and sea urchins. And that body shape poses some intriguing questions... like “where’s a starfish’s head?” Dr. Imran Rahman introduces us to the extraordinary, weird world of echinoderms.

To answer the second part of Kevin’s question - why plants don’t seem to have symmetry – Anand turns to botanist Prof. Sophie Nadot. She tells him that there is symmetry in plants... you just have to know where to look! Beyond flowers and fruits, there’s also symmetry in a plants leaves and stem. The overall shape of a plant might start out symmetrical but environmental factors like wind, the direction of the sun and grazing by animals throws it off-kilter.

And, while the human body may be symmetrical on the outside, when you look inside, it’s a very different story. As listener Kevin says, “our internal organs are a bit all over the place!” Prof. Mike Levin studies the mechanisms which control biological asymmetry. He tells Anand why asymmetry is so important... and also why it’s so difficult to achieve consistently.

Contributors:

Presenter: Anand Jagatia

(Image: Orange oakleaf butterfly (Kallima inachus) on tropical flower, Credit: Darrell Gulin/The Image Bank via Getty Images)

It's a simple metal box that moves nearly all of our goods around the world. Designed for uniformity and interchangeability, the shipping container has reshaped global trade and our lives in the nearly 70 years since its creation.

But listener Paul wants to know if these heavy steel containers could be made with lighter materials to cut down on the fuel needed to transport them, especially when they're empty. Could we make shipping containers a more efficient process and reduce the shipping industry’s sizable greenhouse gas emissions?

Host Anand Jagatia travels to Europe's largest port in Rotterdam looking for answers. Speaking to environmental scientists and industry insiders along the way, he takes a look at how the humble container might be modified to once again remake global shipping, from materials, to designs, to how it’s shipped. And thinking outside the box, we explore which innovations might benefit the whole system – from machine learning to new, carbon-free energy sources.

For an industry that’s not always quick to change, we speak with the changemakers trying to disrupt the way 90% of the stuff we buy moves, in hope of a greener future.

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Presenter: Anand Jagatia

(Photo: Port of Rotterdam, Maasvlakte Deep Sea Carrier Area. Credit: Sam Baker, BBC)

When listener Watum heard about the Titan submersible implosion in the news in 2023, a question popped up in his mind: if a machine that we specifically built for this purpose cannot sustain the water pressure of the deep ocean, how do fish survive down there?

In this episode, we travel with marine biologist Alan Jamieson to the second deepest place in our oceans: the Tonga trench. Meanwhile, presenter Caroline Steel speaks to Edie Widder about the creatures that illuminate our oceans, and travels to Copenhagen to take a closer look one of the strangest deep sea creatures and its deep sea adaptations.

But even fish have their limits! Scientist Paul Yancey correctly predicted the deepest point that fish can live, and it all comes down to one particular molecule.

So is there anything living beyond these depths? Well, there is only one way to find out…

Contributors:

Presenter: Caroline Steel

(Image: Deep-sea fish - stock photo, Credit: superjoseph via Getty Images)

CrowdScience listener Azeddine from Algeria has had bad handwriting since he was a child. In fact, it was so untidy that, when he later became a chemistry lecturer, his university students complained that they could not read his lecture notes. That was when he decided he had to do something about it.

In many languages across the world, all nouns are classed as either male or female, or sometimes neuter. The English language, however, only signals gender in its pronouns - he, she, it or they. For inanimate objects, gender just crops up in occasional examples like ships or countries, which, for some reason, are deemed female.

Contributors:

Presenter: Anand Jagatia