Homo naledi, First humans in America, Dark matter detector, New theory of dark matter
BBC Inside Science
BBC
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 27 April 2017
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Controversy has followed the remains of a new species of human, Homo naledi, since it was described in 2015. Buried deep in a South African cave, its primitive features led scientists to believe it was up to three million years old. This week it's been revealed that this estimate was wrong. New dating evidence suggests the skeletons are only 200 000 to 300 000 years old and that means they may have lived alongside other homo species.
Previously, humans were thought to have travelled to America via a land bridge between eastern Siberia and modern day Alaska, somewhere between 17 000 - 40 000 years ago when sea levels were lower than they are today. Researchers from the San Diego Natural History Museum now present evidence that suggests this transition could have been much earlier - nearly 100 000 years earlier. Adam talked to Chris Stringer, researcher in human evolution at the Natural History Museum in London, to unpick the evidence.
Dark matter is a mystery that has evaded scientists for decades. Now the biggest and most sensitive detector is being built in South Dakota and scientists believe the Lux-Zeppelin experiment will soon be able to detect one of the candidates for dark matter, the elusive particle known as a weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP). Graihagh Jackson got a sneak peak of the key components, including the 'eyes' of the detector, before they're sent off for installation.
Adam Rutherford talks to cosmologist Carlos Frenk from the University of Durham and learns of an alternative theory to describe this mysterious dark matter - a whole new dark sector. This sector contains a vast range of different dark particles, from photons to bosons, that could interact with normal particles.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
| 0:06.8 | searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the |
| 0:11.8 | telly we share what we've been watching |
| 0:14.0 | Fladiated. |
| 0:16.0 | Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming. |
| 0:19.0 | Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:25.0 | searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds this is the |
| 0:30.8 | BBC hello you this is the podcast of Inside Science from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:36.0 | First broadcast on the 27th of April 2017. |
| 0:39.0 | I'm Adam Rutherford. |
| 0:41.0 | We had a whole bunch of stuff planned for this week's show and then the world of human |
| 0:44.0 | evolution exploded with two big stories about the story of us, so that's what you get. And a bit of |
| 0:49.2 | hardcore cosmology just to keep the physicist happy. It's an absolute whopper this week. |
| 0:54.0 | Big news on human evolution and the evolution of the universe. |
| 0:58.0 | Where else on Radio 4 do you get that kind of scale? |
| 1:01.0 | In a few minutes we'll be finding out the latest on the elusive dark matter, |
| 1:05.2 | the structure of the universe and possibly a glimpse into the dark sector. Cosmologist Bagsy all the best names. |
| 1:11.6 | But first, the story of humankind is the one that we get most excited by. |
| 1:16.7 | How we fit into the great sprawling evolutionary tree of life is one of the biggest questions in science. In a few minutes I'll be heading to the Natural |
| 1:25.1 | History Museum in London to pick apart a new study that purports to completely overturn |
| 1:31.0 | what we know about how the Americas were peopled. |
... |
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