Gravitational Waves, UK Spaceport, Big Brains and Extinction Risk, Conservation in Papua New Guinea

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Science

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 18 February 2016

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

Gravitational waves were announced last week, in what may be the science discovery of the decade. The Ligo detector, the most sensitive instrument on the surface of the planet, detected the ripples given off by the collision of two black holes. Adam Rutherford puts a selection of listener questions to UCL cosmologist Dr Andrew Pontzen.

In March 2015, Campbeltown, Glasgow Prestwick, Stornoway, Newquay, Llanbedr and Leuchars were shortlisted by the government as possible sites for a "cosmodrome" or spaceport. With the UK space industry worth an estimated £40 billion by 2030, various stakeholders met for the UK spaceport conference at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London to discuss the progress of the project. What would the impact be for scientists, industry and the public?

Big brains have traditionally been considered an advantage. Animals with larger brains are better at using tools, working as a social group and assessing how to react to predators. But when Dr Eric Abelson cross referenced relative brain size against the mammals on the endangered list, he found something surprising. Many animals with the bigger brains are threatened within extinction. He talks to Adam about why that may be.

Tim Cockerill, ecologist and adventurer, returns from Papua New Guinea to discuss how one group of indigenous people have decided to work with scientists in order to conserve and study their local environment.

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
0:04.3	18th of February I was off last week making another Radio 4 program the curious cases of
0:09.1	fri and Rutherford so I missed out on the most important discovery of the goddamn year stroke decade
0:14.4	gravitational waves but mercifully you wrote in with some fab questions so I get my
0:19.2	crack of the whip and there's some other science too more things at
0:22.1	BBC.co.
0:23.0	UK slash Radio 4.
0:24.4	We're all over the world today, Kazakhstan for space
0:27.0	launches can they be brought home to Britain.
0:29.5	We're in Papua New Guinea for a conservation project where
0:32.0	local villages have shunned
0:34.0	loggers and instead invited scientists in. And we're all over the place with our big
0:38.7	brains. But what does having a lot of gray matter mean for your chance of extinction? A lot, it turns out.
0:45.4	First though, last week was the big announcement. The discovery of gravitational waves by the
0:50.1	LIGO detectors, it was front-page news all around the world deservedly so as it filled
0:55.2	in a missing piece of cosmology and showed Einstein's great idea, the general theory of
1:00.0	relativity, to be spot on. Ladies and gentlemen, we have detected gravitational waves.
1:10.0	We did it.
1:12.0	Two black holes colliding in deep space.
1:16.0	It was emotional, a truly great piece of work.
1:19.2	Gravitational waves are probably the great scientific discovery of the year, of the decade and I was on
1:24.5	flipping holiday. Tracy Logan of course was hosting inside science brilliantly as
	...

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