Discovery

By BBC World ServiceScience

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Discovery episodes

November 28, 2011 Antarctic subglacial lake exploration
One hundred years since humans first ventured to the South Pole, we are on the verge of a new era in Antarctic exploration.
In Discovery, Andrew Luck-Baker talks to scientists who'll soon be entering the last untouched realms on the planet.
They are poised to drill into ancient lakes trapped beneath thousands of metres of polar ice.
British, Russian and United states scientists all have ambitious projects underway to do this.
Among other quests, they will search for unique forms of life in these deep and hidden icy lakes.
Their efforts might ultimately lead to finding life on other worlds.
18 min
November 21, 2011 Neutrinos
For six months, CERN scientists guarded the best kept secret in science - that they'd seen tiny subatomic particles called neutrinos breaking the universal speed limit. The measurements were at the boundaries of scientific techniques - the discrepancy was just 10s of nanoseconds; parts of their apparatus barely ran at that speed. For six months they checked and then re- checked again every step of their analysis. And still the result held up.
When the results were finally released at the end of September, the headline writers had a field day. Nothing sells copy like proof that Einstein was wrong. But fellow researchers at CERN were less excited. The overwhelming belief was that there still remained some hidden error. And for those who ran the experiment, the dreadful concern that sooner or later that error could turn up, and their triumph might become the stuff of mockery. And the next day the investigations continued.
Roland Pease meets the scientists who have staked their reputations on the result, on the critics who think they can spot the mistake, and the theoreticians who think they can explain it all.
18 min
November 14, 2011 14/11/2011 GMT
In the second of a two-part Discovery series, Robots that Care, Jon Stewart visits research institutes in the USA and UK to explore the brave new ideas about how robots may be able to help humans on a one-to-one basis.
He talks to key roboticists in Japan, Europe and the USA, their collaborators and volunteers about the practicalities and ethics of using robots to help people.
A number of studies have been done and more are underway in the use of robots for people wanting to lose weight and for children who are autistic.
Robotocists are also conducting long-term projects with people who have suffered strokes.
The robots are designed as personal instructors to help motivate and restore motor function.
But they must be emotionally smart and coax rather than order about like a sergeant major.
The roboticists are also examining how they might customise their robots to fit the personalities of the people whom they will serve.
We have put robots on the moon but it seems that it is more difficult to put them in homes.
A visit to a robot house in the UK shows that there are many pitfalls still to overcome before robots will be useful in our living rooms and kitchens.
Finally, Robots that Care asks: what are the dangers of making the robots too human?
Are there problems of dependency?
What ethical and moral questions arise when robots socialise human beings?
18 min
November 14, 2011 14/11/2011
In the second of a two-part Discovery series, Robots that Care, Jon Stewart visits research institutes in the USA and UK to explore the brave new ideas about how robots may be able to help humans on a one-to-one basis.
He talks to key roboticists in Japan, Europe and the USA, their collaborators and volunteers about the practicalities and ethics of using robots to help people.
A number of studies have been done and more are underway in the use of robots for people wanting to lose weight and for children who are autistic.
Robotocists are also conducting long-term projects with people who have suffered strokes.
The robots are designed as personal instructors to help motivate and restore motor function.
But they must be emotionally smart and coax rather than order about like a sergeant major.
The roboticists are also examining how they might customise their robots to fit the personalities of the people whom they will serve.
We have put robots on the moon but it seems that it is more difficult to put them in homes.
A visit to a robot house in the UK shows that there are many pitfalls still to overcome before robots will be useful in our living rooms and kitchens.
Finally, Robots that Care asks: what are the dangers of making the robots too human?
Are there problems of dependency?
What ethical and moral questions arise when robots socialise human beings?
18 min
November 07, 2011 Robots that Care
In the first of a two-part series, Jon Stewart charts the advances in robotics that are increasingly leading to direct one-to-one contact between humans and robots.
Jon visits robotocists and their collaborators in the US and UK and asks how the robots will be used in the future.
He examines the way cinema has shaped our ideas of robots and investigates the gulf between our expectations of what robots can do and the reality.
A fundamental question that scientists are posing is how we should consider the robots who, in the near future, will live alongside us in our homes.
Should they be considered slaves, pets or friends?
Jon also explores how the ideas of author Isaac Asimov, that firstly robots should do no harm, have evolved over the decades.
Photo: Getty
18 min
October 31, 2011 India's e-governance project
Angela Saini reports from India on the country’s vast e-governance project aimed at driving out corruption, reducing bureaucracy and getting the nation’s 1.2 billion people online.
Everything from a country-wide unique ID scheme (based on the iris system – Biometrics), to a roll out of service kiosks where everything from a parking fine to a death certificate can be issued.
One of the main drivers behind this is immense task reducing both corruption and bureaucracy by going electronic - that's the idea - does it stand up? She asks critics as well as proponents.
This can be thought of as a kind of Click special - and combines some of the science and technology with the impact and implications on society.
18 min
October 24, 2011 24/10/2011 GMT
Explorations in the world of science.
18 min
October 24, 2011 Tribes of Science 3 - Volcanologists
A British magazine claimed that being a volcanologist was the second coolest job in the world after being an astronaut. This scientific tribe also loses one member each year, on average, in a fatal accident on a volcano.
Peter Curran puts on his anthropological hard hat and asks what makes these researchers risk life and limb, clambering around active volcanoes? Are they driven by a desire to protect local people by understanding the timing of eruptions. Or are they drawn like moths to the sulphurous flames in a purely scientific quest.
Peter talks to volcanologists based at the University of Bristol, some of whom worked on Montserrat during the heights of the Caribbean island's volcanic crisis in 1997. He hears stories of crater-based craziness inside Mount Etna and a slide down a flow of volcanic glass.
18 min
October 17, 2011 17/10/2011 GMT
Explorations in the world of science.
18 min
October 17, 2011 Tribes of Science 2 - Diamond Light Source
The scientific tribe that Peter Curran meets this week has a spectacular gleaming home. The tribal dwelling place is a gigantic silver bagel in the Oxfordshire countryside of England. Within this flying saucer-like construction is the UK's largest particle accelerator and it functions as Britain's most powerful x-ray machine. It's called the Diamond Light Source synchrotron and it enables scientists to peer deep inside matter at the scale of atoms.
Hordes of researchers visit every year to image and study everything from new drug compounds to novel materials for computers, from tiny viruses to meteorites.
The work of the visitors is only possible thanks to the resident scientists who run Diamond's experimental stations called beam lines. These are labs are positioned at different points around the giant accelerator's ring.
Peter Curran puts the beam line scientists under his own anthropological microscope. The beam line scientists are largely physicists and chemists by background and each of the 15 beam lines has its own team of them, working in units called 'hutches'. The researchers have designed and built each station and are responsible for its smooth operation and pristine maintenance. They host the researchers who come to use the facilities. Some of these beam lines are operating 24 hours a day, 6 days a week.
Peter aims to discover what working life is like in the UK's most glittering, new science facility. What are the thrills of harnessing radiation from Britain's biggest particle accelerator, and what are the more onerous aspects? How do the beam line scientists feel about having the responsibility of being keepers of Diamond's light when that role means they forgo full pursuit their own research? What's the formula for maintaining a harmonious hutch?
18 min