Measuring human impact on earth, Awards for engineers, Sounds of space junk.
BBC Inside Science
BBC
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 9 February 2017
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Quantifying the impact of humanity on the earth's natural systems. Why human activity now has a larger effect on our planet than the forces of nature. We look at how mathematical equations can now be used to compare historical natural processes with contemporary man made changes. And we ask where current developments will take us in years to come.
The Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering has been awarded to the inventors of digital imaging sensors. First invented in the 1970's, many of us use this technology everyday. These sensor can be found inside every digital camera ever made, from the devices used on space probes to collect distant images from the far reaches of the universe to the ubiquitous pocket cameras in our mobile phones.
The earth is surrounded by junk - space junk. Many thousand of pieces of junk orbit the planet, left over from the history of everything we've ever sent into space. A new project has given a voice to this junk, and created a machine which plays simulated sounds of the junk as it passes overhead.
Producer: Julian Siddle
Presenter: Gareth Mitchell
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:03.0 | Hello, this is a download from the BBC. |
| 0:05.0 | I think that's what we're meant to say when we start a podcast. |
| 0:08.0 | I like calling them podcast anyway. |
| 0:10.0 | It's Gareth Mitchell here by the way, standing in for Adam Rutherford on the BBC Inside Science |
| 0:14.0 | podcast if you were hanging around last summer then I might have seen you in August because I stood |
| 0:18.6 | in then anyway enough about me apart from if you want to follow me on Twitter I am |
| 0:22.0 | at Gareth M if you want to say |
| 0:24.0 | anything about what you're about to hear because I should warn you it's not the |
| 0:28.2 | happiest of programs but it's certainly interesting and it's chock full of science |
| 0:32.3 | in fact it's allock full of science. |
| 0:32.8 | In fact, it's all a bit cataclysmic today, earthquakes, |
| 0:35.3 | violent storms, asteroid impacts, things that aren't necessarily compatible |
| 0:39.4 | with a prosperous and good life. |
| 0:41.6 | So we have an equation for you. They call it the Anthropocene equation and when you plug in the numbers it says worrying things. |
| 0:48.0 | Oh it's that word again. It says worrying things about our impact on the planet. |
| 0:53.9 | And if you worry about space debris capable of knocking out |
| 0:56.8 | satellites that we all rely on, then this certainly won't be music to your ears. But on the lighter side points mean prizes. Well actually points of light mean prizes with |
| 1:15.0 | royal recognition of the engineers who helped make our camera phones happen. |
| 1:19.3 | We developed the first cameras and this goes back to the early 1970s so this is old |
| 1:24.9 | this technology still has a place in scientific applications but it's been |
| 1:30.8 | totally superseded elsewhere by the Seymos. |
... |
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