Does Pluto have an ocean, Antarctica's oldest ice, Meat emissions, Swifts fly ten months non-stop

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Science

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 17 November 2016

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

Does the distant dwarf planet Pluto have an ocean beneath its thick crust of ice? It's certainly possible, according to a group of researchers who are analysing the data from the New Horizons Pluto flyby last year. They argue that a deep ocean of water would best explain the position of the great heart shaped depression on Pluto's surface. Adam Rutherford quizzes planetary scientist Francis Nimmo about this new hypothesis.

Adam also talks to glaciologist Robert Mulvaney of the British Antarctic Survey, who is now setting off for the frozen south to prospect for the oldest ice in Antarctica. He's part of a European project which aims to drill deep into the ice sheet of East Antarctica and chart the climate and atmosphere history of Antarctica back to 1.5 million years ago.

Are grass-fed cattle better for the global climate than cattle fed on grain-based feeds? Dr Tara Garnett of the Food Climate Research Network at Oxford University responds to listeners comments on carbon emissions and diet.

Swifts can fly for 10 months non-stop, never touching the ground. Anders Hedenstrom of Lund University discovered this remarkable fact by fitting birds with a tiny electronic backpack which recorded their location and flight activity across a whole year.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello you and notably to Ultra-fan Indigo Buckner from Orpington.
0:04.6	This is the podcast of Inside Science from BBC Radio 4, first broadcast on the 17th of
0:10.0	November 2016. I'm Adam Rutherford.
0:13.0	We're still soliciting questions from you lot for our science question time special in December.
0:18.4	BBC inside science at BBC.co.uk is the email address.
0:21.6	Anything really we do read every single email you send even
0:25.3	the totally bonkers ones. Now here's some science. Swifts on the wing, stunning
0:30.1	revelations about these birds migratory behaviour revealed by getting them to keep an electronic diary
0:36.2	and a follow-up on flatulence in cattle and their contribution to global warming.
0:40.8	It turns out not all cows are equal and a hunt for the oldest ice on earth,
0:46.2	the hows, wares and wise of scientists looking for samples of Antarctic ice that are 1.5 million years old. But before we get to
0:56.1	terrestrial ice let's turn to some ice that is much colder. Pluto, it was our story
1:01.2	of last year the spaceship New Horizons sped past the former ninth planet in July 2015, and it wowed us all.
1:08.0	But analysis of the hundreds of pictures shot in this fly-by will go on for decades.
1:14.0	The revelations about Pluto have been coming thick and fast since summer last year, too many to
1:18.5	mention, but the top line is that Pluto is geologically active, ice
1:23.2	sheets, tectonic movements.
1:26.1	Recall the giant heart shape in those pictures.
1:29.1	Half of it made up of the so-called Sputnik Planitia,
1:32.3	a vast depression in the water ice crust filled with
1:35.2	creeping nitrogen glassiers. Now the latest theory is that Sputnik Planitia was caused by a comet impact and this caused the whole dwarf planet to tilt over by around 60 degrees,
1:48.0	the equivalent of the UK moving to just south of Nigeria.
	...

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