Katherine Joy

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 November 2019

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Katherine Joy studies moon rock. She has studied lunar samples that were brought to earth by the Apollo missions (382kg in total) and hunted for lunar meteorites in Antarctica, camping on ice for weeks on end and travelling around on a skidoo. Working at the forefront of the second wave of lunar exploration, she studied remote sensing data from Europe’s first mission to the moon, Smart 1 which launched in 2003 and data from many subsequent missions. She tells Jim Al-Khalili why she believes the moon is the most exciting destination in our solar system and explains what it can tell us about the long history of planet earth. Beneath the magnificent desolation of the moon’s surface, multicoloured rocks contain vital clues about the history of our solar system. Every crater on the moon is evidence of a collision and the chemistry of these rocks tells us when these collisions took place. Katherine’s research supports the idea that a period known as the late heavy bombardment was a particularly turbulent time. Could the late heavy bombardment explain the origin of life on earth?

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
0:10.1	podcast at the BBC. It's a bit of a dream job really. Comedy is 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
0:24.3	subjective and everyone has different tastes. So we've got a huge range of comedy on offer from
0:29.8	satire to silly, shocking to soothing, profound to just general pratting about.
0:35.0	So if you fancy a laugh, find your next comedy at BBC Sounds.
0:40.0	This is Discovery from the BBC.
0:42.0	I'm Jim Alkulele and today I'm talking to a leading scientist about their life and work.
0:47.0	Welcome to the Life Scientific.
0:49.0	2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. My guest has been at the
0:55.1	forefront of the second wave of lunar exploration. It began at the dawn of the 21st
1:00.3	century and continues to this day. Europe, India, Japan and China have sent missions to
1:06.1	the Moon.
1:07.1	Catherine Joy knows more about Moon Rock than most people. She's studied remote sensing data sent back by successive space missions and has spent
1:15.9	a lot of time looking for moon rock that has landed here on Earth, meteorites. She's even
1:20.7	studied meteorites that have landed on the moon. The point of it all,
1:24.1	to understand how our solar system came to be the way it is today.
1:28.4	Dr. Catherine Joy, welcome to the Life Scientific.
1:30.9	Thank you very much for having me here.
	...

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.