Blow to the LHC "bump", Crow intelligence, Robot mudskippers, Royal Society book prize
BBC Inside Science
BBC
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 11 August 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
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Summary
New results have squashed the hope that the hints of a new particle detected by the Large Hadron Collider would confirm the existence of something extremely exotic, such as a new Higgs, or even the theoretical Graviton. Instead, the intriguing data 'bump' turns out to be nothing more than a statistical fluctuation. Physicist Jonathan Butterworth of UCL discusses whether this false alarm affects the LHC's chances of finding something else.
Crows, ravens and other members of the bird family we call Corvids are well known to have sophisticated skills in tool use and problem solving. Research out this week reports ravens bending wire to help forage for their food. But what constitutes intelligence in bird brains? Adam Rutherford visits the Tower of London where ravens have been permanent residents since the 16th Century, and so quite a good spot for scientists to go and put bird brains to the test. He meets Sophie Hamnett and Nathan Emery from Queen Mary, University of London.
Animals evolved in the seas, but by about 400 million years ago, some fishy creatures had evolved to begin walking on terra firma. Nowadays we look at creatures like mudskippers, that can swim and wade, to see how those first crawlers might have crept up the beach. A new study has gone one step further: Jonathan Webb went to Georgia Tech in Atlanta to meet the robot mudskippers.
We're profiling each of the shortlisted books for the Royal Society book prize this year, and this week it is the turn of oncologist Siddartha Muhkerjee. He has turned his attention to trying to understand the root of all cancers, and the mental health issues his own family endure. His new book, The Gene, details the central concept in inheritance.
Producer Adrian Washbourne.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello you'll this is the podcast of Inside Science from BBC Radio 4 |
| 0:04.0 | first broadcast on the 11th of August 2016. I'm Adam Rutherford and I'm off on holiday for the next three weeks |
| 0:10.6 | so you'll have Gareth Mitchell feeding your science fixes in the |
| 0:13.7 | interim back in September so till then stay frosty terms and conditions at |
| 0:18.1 | BBC.co. UK slash radio 4. |
| 0:21.3 | crawling out of the water onto the beach, no not you on your summer holidays, but the very first landlubbers |
| 0:27.1 | 400 million years ago that we're recreating with robots and the help of little fish that both swim and wade. |
| 0:34.5 | Imperfect, though they may be, mud skippers are an analog for the earliest tetrapods. |
| 0:41.0 | And so we created a robotic mud skipper and we're able to run it on a variety of |
| 0:46.8 | inclines and use motion capture technology to track the robot's movements. |
| 0:52.0 | And I take a trip to the tower to look at the ravens who we |
| 0:57.5 | discover are far from bird brains. And more from the Royal Society Book Prize shortlist. This week we deal with one of the great ideas of the 20th century, the gene. |
| 1:09.0 | But first, science, warts and all is what we promise in these pastures. |
| 1:13.0 | Science is a process of getting stuff wrong and then refining and refining until you're less wrong. |
| 1:19.0 | So it's our duty to be excited when things are right and honest when they are wrong. |
| 1:23.8 | We'd been hearing rumors since December about a new bump in the data that was pouring in |
| 1:28.8 | from the Large Hadron Collider. |
| 1:30.5 | A few years ago, a similar bump in the data turned out to be the Higgs boson. |
| 1:35.0 | So back in April we asked UCL physicist John Butterworth to don the cloak of speculation |
| 1:41.0 | and think what this bump might be if it turned out to be real. |
| 1:45.0 | The bump was at 750 giga electron volts, which is how particle physicists measure mass in these tiny entities. |
| 1:52.0 | A signal at 750 meant that it could be something extremely exotic, such as a new Higgs, or even the theoretical graviton. |
... |
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