Boldly going where no science show has gone before.

The Naked Scientists.

For this special naked scientists, we'll be looking at both naked astronomy and naked

archaeology.

I'm Diana O' Carroll.

And I'm Ben Valsler.

The sciences of space and human history may seem like strange bedfellows, but every month we look at the latest news and fascinating discoveries in both, and we thought we'd highlight some of them here.

So coming up, I'll be looking into Bronze Age burial practices, meeting some of our

oldest known walking ancestors and finding out how past human migrations are written in our

genes.

And I'll explore the challenges of building extremely large telescopes,

find out how Rubik's cube-sized satellites can help test new technology,

and consult a team of experts to answer your questions on dark matter, planets and spacecraft propulsion.

That's all coming up on today's Naked Scientists.

Bringing the fact to Ben, The Naked Scientists.

This is The Naked Scientists with me Ben Valzler and me Diana O' Carroll.

A slightly grisly start to this week as we're looking at Bronze Age cremations.

During the period which spans roughly from 2000 to 700 BC in the UK, there was a fashion for cremating the dead.

Joe Appleby, a postdoctoral researcher in the University of Cambridge's Archaeology department has been studying these very early cremation

burials, plus some which appear even earlier, and the information that can be drawn from them

is quite surprising. Listeners of a sensitive nature are warned that this interview does contain some graphic descriptions of what happens during the cremation process.

I'm looking at the changing nature of burial practices from the mid-third

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