PODCAST

Discovery

BBC World Service

Explorations in the world of science.

science

All Episodes

26:59

The Human Race: The Global Body - Sri Lanka

Discovery ·

2012/03/12

As part of the Human Race season on the BBC, Discovery starts its exploration into the Global Body. Over the next 4 weeks, Lynne Malcolm finds out how the modern world is affecting our biology. The series starts in Sri Lanka, where it asks whether the predominantly rural lifestyle of fishermen and farmers is well suited to the human body. BBC Correspondent Charles Haviland takes us to the shores of Sri Lanka to see what life is like for fishermen and to the mountains where people live off the

49:48

Fukushima nuclear accident

Discovery ·

2012/03/05

It's nearly a year (11 March 2011) since Japan was struck by a huge earthquake and Tsunami. Clouds of radioactive fall out from damaged nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power station spread across heavily populated areas - many kilometres from the plant. The government and power company TEPCO have been heavily criticised for not telling the local population soon enough about what was going on - in many cases people evacuated to areas with higher radiation levels than those they fled. As

26:57

Episode 2

Discovery ·

2012/02/27

Located in the western pacific, the Mariana Trench is the deepest part of the ocean, plunging down 11km. Down there it's pitch black, icy cold and the pressure is immense. Now explorers with funding from the private sector are planning to return to the bottom of the Trench, for the first time for over 50 years. Rebecca Morelle meets Jim Gardner, who works for the US Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping, and has just completed the most detailed survey ever of the Mariana Trench, using sonar.Alan

26:58

Episode 1

Discovery ·

2012/02/20

Located in the western pacific, the Mariana Trench is the deepest part of the ocean, plunging down 11km.Down there it's pitch black, icy cold and the pressure is immense. The only time it was visited, was over 50 years ago by US naval lieutenant Don Walsh and Swiss engineer Jacques Picard. Now four teams of explorers are risking their lives in a new race to the deep. Rebecca Morelle travels to California to meet former property developer Chris Welsh who is hoping to travel by himself to the bottom

18:00

Time

Discovery ·

2012/02/13

It sometimes seems to rule our lives and yet some scientists think it is an illusion. From birth to death we seem to be swept up in a relentless and inescapable journey through time, but what is this strange place we call the present moment? Why does the past seem fixed and the future so uncertain. Was the universe born into time or did time arise with the universe? Will time continue forever or will it fade like the stars? These are some of the questions that were discussed at a recent conference

17:58

Smart Streets

Discovery ·

2012/02/06

Angela Saini explores the revolution taking place in the streets beneath our feet as she reveals the story behind a new urban design movement called shared space. She travels to The Netherlands where shared space was born, inspired by the radical traffic planner, Hans Monderman, who envisaged a world without barriers, signs, pavement and traffic lights. But not everyone is taken with this revolution, in particular the blind and visually impaired who say that shared space is fundamentally flawed and

18:00

Depression

Discovery ·

2012/01/30

Geoff Watts meets researchers trying to find a new way to fight depression by studying those who never get it. In the second of two programmes Geoff meets scientists at the University of Manchester, studying the brains of people who have undergone traumatic life events without becoming seriously depressed and comparing them to the brains of those people who do. The hope is that new psychological therapies or even preventative medications might be developed to treat the one in five people who will at

18:01

Depression

Discovery ·

2012/01/23

Geoff Watts meets researchers looking for clues to the origins of depression as a way of finding new solutions to treating it. In the first of two programmes Geoff talks to the father of evolutionary medicine, Randolph Nesse and asks why hasn't natural selection made us less vulnerable to psychological diseases? Could it be that depression is in some way useful to our lives?(Image: A depressed young boy. Credit: Science Photo Library)

17:28

Seti, the past, present and future

Discovery ·

2012/01/16

Jason Palmer explores the past, present and future of Seti. In the second programme he looks at what sort of signal might ET send us, and how might we respond?Jason talks to Seti's co-founder Frank Drake as well as its current active researchers, including Seth Shostak, Jill Tartar and Doug Vakoch.

17:58

Seti, the past, present and future

Discovery ·

2012/01/09

In the first of two programmes, the BBC's science reporter Jason Palmer, meets the researchers behind Seti, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence and looks at the prospects for success in the face of funding issues and the sheer size of the task. He talks to Seti's co-founder Frank Drake as well as its current active researchers, including Seth Shostak, Jill Tartar and Doug Vakoch.(Image: Computer artwork of our solar system. Credit: Science Photo Library)

18:00

Hypersonic Flight

Discovery ·

2012/01/02

For more than half a century aeronautical engineers have been working on the dream of hypersonic passenger flight. London to Sydney in four hours is an often cited goal. In Discovery Gareth Mitchell looks not at the past history of hypersonics, but at current developments. He meets engineers working on the propulsion systems and developing new materials specifically for hypersonic flight. Technologies which could be one applied to space craft as well as aeroplanes.

17:59

Spooklights

Discovery ·

2011/12/26

Folk tales are full of fleeting phenomena like will o' the wisps, faint glows that must have spooked our ancestors. But these days, it's just about impossible to escape the omnipresent illumination of modern life, and these evocative spooklights have vanished like ghosts. Chemist Andrea Sella explores the science of lights so dim, they can be witnessed only in complete darkness. From the spontaneous combustion of marsh gas to the lightning sparks emitted by crushed sugar, Professor Sella finds

18:01

19/12/2011 GMT

Discovery ·

2011/12/19

The Higgs particle is the final cornerstone of scientists’ model of the material universe. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN was built so researchers could discover it. Last week, they announced a partial sighting – the ghost of a Higgs particle hoving into view in their plethora of data. But it could be just a phantom, and may start to fade with more data next year. Roland Pease meets the scientists who are chasing this legendary particle, and gets exclusive access to the preparations for next

18:00

Antivirals

Discovery ·

2011/12/12

An increasing understanding of genetics has uncovered new targets for antiviral drug treatments. Although still in the very early stages, scientists say they may be able to develop drug treatments which can be used against a range of viruses. At present antiviral drugs are very specific, usually attacking just one virus. However the research which Kevin Fong examines in this edition of Discovery suggests 'broad spectrum antivirals', drugs capable of curing all viral infections from the common cold

17:59

05/12/2011 GMT

Discovery ·

2011/12/05

When leptin failed to be a wonder solution to obesity, this hormone produced by fat cells, disappeared from the headlines. Twenty years on scientists now believe leptin is critical to how the body works, regulating appetite, the immune response, inflammation and depression. Vivienne Parry investigates.

18:00

Antarctic subglacial lake exploration

Discovery ·

2011/11/28

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

18:00

Neutrinos

Discovery ·

2011/11/21

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

17:59

14/11/2011 GMT

Discovery ·

2011/11/14

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

18:00

Robots that Care

Discovery ·

2011/11/07

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

17:59

India's e-governance project

Discovery ·

2011/10/31

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

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