Microplastics; Holey Ice; Vesalius; Overeating

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Technology, Science

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2014

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Microplastics For the first time, scientists have studied the abundance of microplastics in deep sea sediments They have found that tiny fibres of plastic are everywhere and that levels found in the ocean sediments are 4 times higher than in contaminated sea-surface waters.

Marine debris, mostly consisting of plastic, is a global problem, negatively impacting wildlife, tourism and shipping. However, despite the durability of plastic, and the exponential increase in its production, there was a considerable proportion of the manufactured plastic that was unaccounted for. But now scientists have found that deep-sea sediments are a likely sink for microplastics.

Holey Ice You'd have thought, given how much water and ice there is around, that we'd know pretty much all there is to know about them. Among the notable facts is that ice is less dense than water - which is why it floats on your pond rather than sinking to the bottom. But like carbon - which exists in two distinct forms, diamond and graphite - the molecules in solid H2O can be packed in many different ways. And this week, scientists have found another completely different form of ice, which is perhaps stranger than all the others.

Overeating Why do some people overeat? In order to find out, brave scientists tucked into 9000 calorie meals.

Vesalius Andreas Vesalius, the founder of the modern science of anatomy was born 500 years ago, on the 31st December 1514. He was a proponent of, and yet, a strong critic of the ancient Greek physician Galen, who implied human anatomy from animal dissections. Vesalius challenged physicians and medical scholars to get their hands dirty and carry out dissections themselves.

Producer: Fiona Roberts.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
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0:35.4	Sounds.
0:36.4	Hello, try as we will, we've failed to avoid the Christmas theme this week.
0:40.8	We've got a grotesque excess of useless plastic not toys but millions
0:45.4	of tons of micro fibers discovered in the ocean bed. The season of grotesque
0:50.6	overeating is upon us and we take a look at what a 9,000 calorie meal
0:54.4	does to us all in the name of science and scientists have discovered a new type of
0:58.9	ice and it's wholly as in it's full of holes than divine. And as well as wishing the baby Jesus
1:05.4	a very happy birthday we celebrate the five hundredth anniversary of the greatest of
1:09.4	all anatomists Andreas Vesalius. But first we live in a heavily plastic world as all those with small kids will be aware on Christmas day.
1:18.0	We know how plastic makes it into the oceans as large lumps like bottles but also as micro fragments and we've talked on
1:25.2	inside science before about how these enter the food chain.
1:28.6	Now the rate at which we're manufacturing plastic is increasing but there hasn't been a corresponding increase in
1:35.2	ocean plastic. That's not actually good news, it's just that we couldn't find it.
1:39.6	Well, Dr Lucy Woodall, a marine biologist at the Natural History Museum, has found it.
1:44.4	It turns out it's under the sea bed.
1:46.5	Really what we found was very small fiber-like particles. If you just imagine like a fiber that you pull from your clothing, so very narrow,
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