Italy's quakes, Ebola virus, Accidental rocket fuel, China in space

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Science

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2016

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the past three months, central Italy has been shaken by several large earthquakes. The quake near Norcia on 30th October was the most powerful for decades. In late August, another struck near Amatrice, causing 300 lost lives. Adam Rutherford talks to seismologist Ross Stein about why this part of the Italian peninsula is so prone to shaking, whether there is a pattern in the recent activity and whether the scientists are getting any better at earthquake forecasting.

The recent Ebola epidemic in West Africa was the largest and most deadly of its kind so far. More than 11,000 people were killed by the virus. Now two groups of virologists have discovered that early in the epidemic's course, the Ebola virus underwent a genetic change which allowed it to infect human cells more easily. Could this mutation explain the terrible scale of the outbreak of 2013 to 2016?

Also in the show, the chemists who are aiming to make ammonia fertiliser production more environmentally friendly but made rocket fuel instead; and the past and future of the Chinese space programme.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello you this is the podcast version of Inside Science from BBC Radio for first
0:04.0	broadcasts on the 3rd of November 2016 I'm Adam Rutherford now we're doing one of
0:09.2	our science question time specials in December so we we need your questions. Anything that's been bugging you or just
0:15.9	making you scratch your head, please send them in BBC inside science at BBC.co.
0:20.3	UK and we'll put them to our expert panel of experts. Now on with the show.
0:25.4	Ebola is back in the news. The recent outbreak is over but we're just beginning to
0:29.9	get to the bottom of why it struck so hard in West Africa this time around.
0:33.7	Laboratory accidents are similarly impossible to predict, but just occasionally
0:38.3	serendipity prevails.
0:39.7	We talk to the chemists who accidentally made a rocket fuel.
0:43.8	And maybe it might be of use to the Chinese.
0:45.8	You know we like a bit of space on BBC Inside Science, but we don't often talk about the
0:49.5	Chinese space program.
0:51.3	We get a handle on our comrades' plans for the moon and why they're
0:54.7	currently not allowed on the International Space Station. It's fundamentally a
0:58.9	distrust of China. One American congressman was was once heard to say we're not going to have Chinese
1:04.8	Nazis running around our space station although it's not only an American space station.
1:10.0	But first.
1:25.4	collapsing masonry in the town of Nortia last Sunday, a magnitude 6.6 earthquake shook the central Apennine region in Italy. It was the most powerful quake in this area for decades, but mercifully there were no fatalities,
1:30.9	just the destruction of old, beautiful, but tremor vulnerable buildings.
1:35.0	And earlier this morning another 4.8 struck nearby also with no fatalities.
1:40.0	In late August, a 6.2 quake centered on the town of Amatriche about 30 miles further south,
	...

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.