Fracking moratorium; Bloodhound; Big Compost Experiment; transit of Mercury

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Technology, Science

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 7 November 2019

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced an indefinite moratorium this week on mining of shale gas by hydraulic fracturing, aka fracking, in the UK, citing fears of earthquakes and seismic activity caused by fracking in the past. In August this year, a 2.9 magnitude earthquake was recorded at the Preston New Road fracking site in Lancashire, which prompted an immediate shutdown, as required by the strict protocols that we have in place. Adam Rutherford talks to Dr James Verdon, a geophysicist at Bristol University and a co-author of one of the Oil & Gas Authority studies on the Preston New Road, about the science of fracking. Bloodhound is the latest British attempt at the supersonic land speed record. All this week Wing Commander Andy Green has been burning across a dried out lake in the Kalahari Desert, as he and his team are building up to break the sound barrier at 740mph, and his own land speed record of 763 mph. BBC science correspondent Jonathan Amos reports from the trackside. The Big Compost Experiment is a new citizen science project about the wonderful, rich, fruity and essential substance you can produce by doing not that much at all. Architect Danielle Purkiss and Mark Miodownik, material scientist at UCL tell Adam why they are launching this experiment. The planet Mercury, messenger of the Gods, passes between us and the Sun on average just thirteen times a century. This astronomical event will be visible in the UK – weather permitting – next Monday, 11th November. Solar physicist Lucie Green explains how to see the transit of Mercury.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and trust me you'll get there in a moment but if you're a comedy fan
0:05.2	I'd really like to tell you a bit about what we do. I'm Julie Mackenzie and I commission comedy
0:10.2	podcast at the BBC. It's a bit of a dream job really.
0:13.0	Comedy is a fantastic joyous thing to do because really you're making people laugh,
0:18.0	making people's days a bit better, helping them process, all manner of things.
0:22.0	But you know I also know that comedy is really
0:24.4	subjective and everyone has different tastes so we've got a huge range of comedy on offer
0:29.6	from satire to silly shocking to soothing profound to just general pratting about. So if you
0:36.2	fancy a laugh, find your next comedy at BBC Sounds.
0:41.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:44.8	Hello you, this is the podcast of Inside Science from BBC Radio 4, first broadcast on the 7th of November 2019.
0:51.3	I'm Adam Rutherford. Today we're launching a great big pile of rotting mulch. Yes, it's the big compost challenge. A new citizen science initiative to assess just what recycling achieves, what and how people compost and what we can do to help a sustainable
1:06.8	lifestyle and we need you to get involved and to get your hands really dirty.
1:11.6	And we take a speedy look at Bloodhounds, the super speedy car, rockets, rocket
1:17.7	car, whatever, it's the one that's having a crack at the land speed record in the
1:21.1	Calahari Desert this week.
1:23.6	But first, the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced an indefinite moratorium
1:27.6	this week on mining of shale gas by hydraulic fracturing, aka fracking, citing fears of earthquakes and seismic activity caused by fracking in the past.
1:38.0	In August this year, a 2.9 magnitude quake was recorded at the Preston New Road fracking site in Lancashire,
1:44.0	which prompted an immediate shutdown as required by the strict protocols that we have in place.
1:49.0	Fracking does not currently contribute to energy generation in the UK, though Boris Johnson had previously
1:55.3	enthusiastically committed to it as a gas mining technology, but we do import more than half of the
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.