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BBC Inside Science

Inventing GPS, Carbon nanotube computer, Steven Strogatz and Monty Lyman discuss calculus and skin

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Technology, Science

4.51.3K Ratings

🗓️ 5 September 2019

⏱️ 31 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Global Positioning System, or GPS is perhaps the best known of the satellite navigation systems, helping us find our way every day. Back in the 1970's Bradford Parkinson and Hugo Fruehauf were two of the inventors who miniaturised atomic clocks and launched them in Earth orbit satellites. This was part of the US Department of Defense's plan to track ships and aircraft and guide targeted missiles. In the intervening years, Brad and Hugo had no idea just how far the civilian applications of GPS would go. Alongside Richard Schwartz and James Spilker, they have just been awarded the prestigious the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. The age of silicon chip based computing could be coming to an end. Difficulties in shrinking silicon transistors, or switches, into ever smaller processors led researchers at MIT to search for alternative semiconducting materials to replace them. Cue carbon nanotubes, tubes of carbon atoms many tens of thousands of times narrower than a human hair. Electrical engineer Max Shulaker and his team have overcome spaghetti-like tangles of CNTs and varying levels of conductivity to create a 16bit processor. He says that rather than a straight forward replacement to silicon, the initial hope is that CNT chip technology can be added to existing silicon wafers. Steven Strogatz and Monty Lyman have been shortlisted for the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize this year. In "Infinite Powers", Professor of applied maths at Cornell University, Steven Strogatz tells Adam Rutherford the story of calculus and why his book has a warning saying "this book is dangerous, it will make you love mathematics!" And in "The Remarkable Life of the Skin" Dr. Monty Lyman takes Claudia Hammond on an intimate journey across our surface. They discuss advances in skin treatments, new research on the importance of our diet and our skin and the vital role our largest organ plays in our lives. Producer - Fiona Roberts Presenter - Gareth Mitchell

Transcript

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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

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0:10.2

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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.

0:40.0

Greetings everybody, this is the podcast edition of BBC Inside Science for

0:44.4

Thursday the 5th of September 2019 we were on radio for as a radio program and then

0:49.3

we repackaged it and presented it to you yes all for you as a podcast edition I'm Gareth Mitchell still

0:55.1

standing in in fact my last week for Adam Rutherford and you might remember it seems like

0:59.2

millions of years ago now but we talked about Maine's electricity a few weeks ago. This was relating to those power outages across

1:06.1

part of the UK and just after that had a very nice tweet from Richard Freeman, he says,

1:11.4

hello Gareth.

1:12.5

That piece on Electricity Generation on BBC Radio 4 Inside Science

1:16.4

podcast is absolutely fascinating.

1:18.5

I actually understand how AC frequency works now. Thank you for that Richard and producer

1:24.5

Fia is nodding her head though I think it really really helped us all demystify

1:27.7

what do we mean when we say 50 hurts those basic questions so glad that we got

1:31.3

into that but we've got a whole load of science view in today's episode. So let's jump in. There's a bit more tech. So I'm very happy. This is GPS. Of course we'd be lost without it. But we've located two of its inventors. And might carbon nanotubes be on their way into our

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