Chernobyl, Drones, Tree crickets, Cern

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Science

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 28 April 2016

⏱️ 33 minutes

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Summary

30 years ago this week an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant. A fire raged for 10 days, spewing radioactive materials on the surrounding area and was detected throughout much of a continent. Yet, so many decades on, why is it so difficult to accurately measure the impacts on human health? Richard Wakeford of the University of Manchester is an epidemiologist who has looked at the research done over the years, and he explains why making definitive connections between the Chernobyl explosion and long-term illnesses or premature deaths is so very difficult.

In the last few days there have been reports that a drone hit a plane on its way into Heathrow. Investigators say there is so little evidence either way it is not possible to say whether it really was a drone, but either way, the story has raised concerns. BBC Inside science spoke to Dr Sue Wolfe of ARPAS, to find out how our increasingly crowded air space is regulated. And Adam goes drone flying with BBC innovations producer, Derrik Evans, to see how easy these things are to use.

If the hum of drones is annoying, imagine the constant din of the rain forest, especially tricky if you're a cricket and you're trying to find a mate. We have a listen to the strategies they use to be heard above the cacophony in the company of Dr Tim Cockerill.

Scientists at CERN have also been trying to sort out the wheat from the chaff, continuing their efforts to understand a blip in their data identified and scrutinised over the last few months. Jon Butterworth of UCL and CERN dons the Cloak of Speculation and talks about the possible implications for physics if it does indeed turn out to be a new, unpredicted, particle.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello You, people occasionally complain about Hello You, but lots of people say that they rather like it.
0:05.0	So this week my Hello You is specifically for listener Allison Smith on the Twitter.
0:10.0	Hello Allison.
0:11.0	On this week's show, my favorite interview of the year so far with John Butterworth from UCLs
0:14.4	has said there's a much longer version just for you lot. I hope you enjoy it just as much as I did.
0:19.2	By the way, the hashtag is BBC Inside Science, not just Inside Science, which is another thing.
0:25.0	Or you can write in at BBC inside science at BBC.co.
0:28.0	UK. And the website is BBC.co. UK slash Radio 4.
0:32.0	Lots of BBC dots and coz and UK's anyway on this week's
0:35.8	program we found a Higgs boson all the prizes are awarded and everyone is
0:39.6	dead chuffed but we're back at Cern this week because there's been a blip. The tiniest of anomalies in some new data. It might be nothing, but it could be. It just might be the beginning of an entirely new branch of physics. In the last few days there's been
0:55.2	reports of a drone that hit a plane on its way out of Heathrow. So I went drone flying this week in a safe
1:01.2	space just to find out how dense the air will become as
1:04.7	drones get cheaper and cheaper. And if the hum of drones is annoying, imagine the
1:09.0	constant din of the rainforest, especially tricky if you're a cricket and you're trying to find a mate.
1:14.6	We have a listen to the strategies they use to be heard above the cacophony.
1:19.2	But first, 30 years ago yesterday, the residents of a small Russian town called Pripyat heard this message.
1:25.2	For the attention of the residents of Pripyat,
1:30.5	the city council informs you that due to the accident at Chernobyl Power Station in the city of Pripyat,
1:37.0	the radioactive conditions in the vicinity are deteriorating.
1:41.0	With a view to keeping people as safe and healthy as possible,
1:45.5	we need to temporarily evacuate the citizens in the nearest towns of Kiev Oblast.
	...

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