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BBC Inside Science

Mars InSight mission, Detecting dark matter, Redefining the kilogram, Bovine TB

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Science

4.61.3K Ratings

🗓️ 22 November 2018

⏱️ 38 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Government's strategy to eradicate TB in cattle is a contentious topic. The disease is extremely complicated and lots of people have different ideas on how to manage it. Professor of Zoonotic and Emerging Disease at the University of Nottingham, Malcolm Bennett, helps Adam Rutherford understand just how complex the TB bacterium is, how difficult it is to test for infection and why the vaccine BCG does and doesn't work and answers listener's question of why don't we vaccinate cows?

Citizen scientists and their smartphones are being recruited to test the supermassive particle theory of dark matter and dark energy. The CREDO (Cosmic-Ray Extremely Distributed Observatory) project utilises smartphone cameras to take 'dark photos' and hopefully capture a particle collision that could be from the cascaded decay of these early universe massive particles or WIMPS.

Metrologists from across the world have just voted to update the metric system. With the redefinition of the kilogram, alongside the units for temperature, electrical current and amount of substance. For the first time, we now have a measurement system defined by fundamental constants of the universe and not physical artefacts made by humans. Reporter Henry Bennie travelled with the UK's kilogram to Paris for the vote.

NASA's Mars InSight mission lander is expected to touch down on the red planet on Monday. BBC Science Correspondent, Jonathan Amos, explains to Adam just how this stationary science lab will explore Martian geology looking for signs that life could have existed at one time on our neighbour.

Producer: Fiona Roberts

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey, it's Doleepa, and I'm at your service.

0:04.7

Join me as I serve up personal conversations with my sensational guests.

0:08.8

Do a leap interviews, Tim Cook.

0:11.2

Technology doesn't want to be good or bad.

0:15.0

It's in the hands of the creator.

0:16.7

It's not every day that I have the CEO of the world's biggest company in my living room.

0:20.7

If you're looking at your phone more than you're looking in someone's eyes, you're doing the wrong thing.

0:26.0

Julie, at your service.

0:28.0

Listen to all episodes on BBC Sales.

0:31.0

L-O-U, this is the podcast of Inside Science from BBC Radio 4 first broadcast on the 22nd of

0:36.6

November 2018. I'm Adam Rutherford. A couple of things. One send us your questions for the end of year special physics

0:44.4

astrophysics climate genetics engineering anything really and we'll try and find

0:49.3

some answers two the curious cases of Rutherford and Fry is back, Series 13, I think, and is ever expanded on the

0:58.6

podcast, which is at least 112% longer and weirdly 114% better than the version that you hear on the wireless.

1:07.4

And three, that's more than a couple of things, this is my last show until the new year, apart from the Christmas special,

1:14.0

Marnie and Garth will be scancing up your advent until then. Today though,

1:18.0

dark matter, dark energy, and the mysteries of the structure of the universe.

1:22.0

Some of the trick of the universe.

1:22.6

Some of the trickiest areas of cosmology,

1:25.5

well find out how you can become an astrophysicist

1:28.7

and help out armed only with your phone.

1:31.7

And the kilogram is dead. Long live the

...

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