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BBC Inside Science

Cassini's finale; Science and Technology Select Committee; Crick's lecture; Cave acoustics

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Science

4.61.3K Ratings

🗓️ 21 September 2017

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

After last week's Inside Science's edition devoted to Cassini ended, the Cassini spaceship plunged into the atmosphere of Saturn, and became part of the planet it studied. But the project lives on, as the data and photos generated by Cassini right up until contact was lost will be studied and scrutinised for years to come. Linda Spilker is the Project Scientist for the Cassini mission. Adam Rutherford spoke to her to find out what was captured in the last few moments of Cassini's closest and fatal encounter with the ringed planet.

The House of Commons has announced its Science and Technology Select Committee - the body of MPs that holds the Government to account on scientific matters, and offers advice on scientific issues of the day. Some controversy has followed, concerning the scientific credentials and the gender imbalance of the committee make-up so far. Norman Lamb, MP for North Norfolk was elected chair of the committee, and he came into the Inside Science studio to discuss the committee selection and its future ambitions.

This week was the 60th anniversary of one of the greatest conceptual leaps in all biology, made by Crick at a lecture at University College London. Matthew Cobb, biologist and historian from Manchester University, who's written a new account of the lecture, discusses its fundamental significance.

It has long been suggested that there's something about the acoustics of a cave that correlates with the location of motifs and sometimes paintings on the walls.Bruno Fazenda is an acoustic scientist at the University of Salford, and reveals how he went into the caves to conduct the first methodical study of this theory by listening to the past.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello you, this is the podcast of Inside Science from BBC Radio 4, first broadcast on the 21st of September 2017.

0:07.6

I'm Adam Rutherford.

0:08.8

We're having a good old sing song in ancient caves today to see whether the acoustics might have influenced

0:14.4

the location of paintings for our prehistoric ancestors.

0:18.2

And you all know the double helix, but it's the 60th anniversary of what Francis Crick did next, which was to formulate one of the most important

0:25.4

ideas that anyone ever had, we call it the central dogma.

0:29.9

And we talked to the MP charged with holding the government to account on scientific matters

0:34.2

and we hold him to account on why the gender balance in the Science and Technology Committee

0:38.7

is way off kilter.

0:41.0

But first...

0:42.0

Just heard the signal from the spacecraft is gone and this has been an incredible mission, an incredible

0:48.8

spacecraft.

0:49.8

I'm going to call this at the end of mission, project manager off the net.

0:55.0

I think we can all hear a slight crack in the voice of Cassini project manager Earl May's there as he signed off the mission.

1:06.0

Last week we devoted the whole program to Cassini, a sort of love letter to one of the greatest of all space missions,

1:12.0

as it plunged into the atmosphere of Saturn and became part of the planet that it studied.

1:17.0

The spaceship might be no more, but the project lives on as the data and photos generated by Cassini right up till contact was lost will be

1:24.8

studied and scrutinized for years to come.

1:27.5

Linda Spilker is the project scientist for the Cassini mission, I spoke to her from the

1:31.5

Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California.

1:34.3

We went on air last week a few hours before the final plunge, so I asked Linda what happened

1:40.0

in the last few seconds.

...

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