Discovery

Is there a test that tells you how long you'll live?

If you read and believed some newspaper headlines in recent months, you might think so.

The claim surrounds an area of ageing research known as telomere biology.

Telomeres are DNA structures which cap the ends of our chromosomes.

They shorten over the course of our lives.

Some scientists believe measuring their length reveals how fast we are ageing biologically and are making telomere tests available to the public for the first time.

What's the science behind telomere length and what can it really tell you about your heath and life prospects?

Andrew Luck-Baker reports from a meeting of leading telomere researchers in Stockholm.

On 28 June 1911 an explosion erupted in the sky over the Nakhla region of Alexandria in Egypt.

A chunk of rock, about the size of a football, had broken away from the surface of Mars several million years ago.

It floated around the Solar System until eventually the Martian rock was pulled into our planet's gravitational field.

When it fell to Earth a century ago, eyewitnesses saw an explosion high in the atmosphere, as the meteor split into dozens of fragments which hurtled towards them and were buried up to a meter deep in the ground.

Dr Marek Kukula, Public Astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, looks at the legacy of the Nakhla meteorite.

These precious rocks are now being used by scientists to ground-truth data sent back from Spirit and Opportunity - the two rovers currently exploring the Martian surface.

Producer: Michelle Martin

The magnitude 9 earthquake that hit the coast of Japan in March was the most powerful in the country’s recorded history.

Over 25,000 died, most because of the vast tsunami stirred up in the Pacific.

But Japan is a country with long experience of devastating quakes.

In 1923, 100,000 died in Tokyo following an earthquake and the capital city was hit again eight decades before that.

The whole island of Honshu has been seismically 'turned on' by the stresses generated in March, one expert has told the BBC.

Does that mean more major devastating quakes will follow?

Or is the whole attempt to forecast earthquakes doomed to failure?

Roland Pease reports.

Around 25,000 died in the tsunami that hit Japan on 11 March 2011.

The authorities had built defences against possible tsunamis and prepared evacuation plans.

But these had not considered the scale of events that actually happened.

Roland Pease talks to the experts in Japan about how the science failed the victims.

Roland Pease joins scientists investigating the effects of the tsunami in Japan last March.

Japan has the most sophisticated tsunami defences anywhere in the world, yet still nearly 25,000 died on 11 March 2011.

Researchers from around the world are attempting to find out what lessons can be learned from the events of that devastating day.