National Insect Week, Venus' electric field, Green mining, Wimbledon grass science
BBC Inside Science
BBC
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 23 June 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week is National Insect Week. Almost all animals on Earth are insects, and entomologist Adam Hart told us why we're celebrating and studying them in such detail - particularly diamondback moths, which have recently arrived the UK in large numbers. On the first official (and rather rainy) day of summer, we went down to Butterfly Paradise at London Zoo for the event launch. Entomologist Adam Hart tells us what the Week is all about.
New research out this week suggests that a so called "electric wind" has stripped all the water away from the surface of Venus. Space scientist Glyn Collinson at NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre has led this electrical field study.
Wales has 1300 rivers with illegal levels of heavy metals. Toxic metals like lead, zinc and copper are a legacy left over from when the area was heavily mined. Natural Resources Wales and Innovate UK set a competition to look for technology that would clean up these rivers. One of the winners was Steve Skill from Swansea University, who has come up with some biotechnology that uses algae to suck the poison out of the rivers.
The Championships at Wimbledon start next week, and whatever the weather, the grass has to be perfect. Adam Rutherford headed to London's SW19 to find out how the ground staff are using scientific evidence to cultivate the courts.
Producers: Marnie Chesterton & Jen Whyntie.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello you this is the podcast of Inside Science from BBC Radio 4 first broadcast on the 23rd of June 2016 |
| 0:07.3 | More information and that type of thing can be found at BBC.co. |
| 0:10.8 | dot UK. |
| 0:11.5 | UK slash radio 4. We're off to Venus in a minute which rather than being a love goddess of a planet |
| 0:17.4 | is actually a super-hot, supercharged electrified hell which is very exciting for planetary scientists. |
| 0:24.0 | We're off to Wales to see how we can purify the rivers polluted by centuries of mining. |
| 0:29.0 | Do algae hold the answer? |
| 0:31.0 | And on Monday Wimbledon kicks off? T's off? What does tennis actually do? Anyway, we went down to |
| 0:36.9 | center court to find out the science behind those pristine lawns. So yes, it is Wimbledon next week, which means it's officially summer did you notice |
| 0:45.0 | between the deluges but first this week is National Insect Week if you doubt the |
| 0:50.7 | need for celebrating our six-legged friends, bear in mind that almost all animals |
| 0:55.2 | on earth are insects. On Monday, the first day of British summertime, I went down to the Butterfly |
| 1:00.4 | Exhibit at London Zoo, where as you'll hear we enjoyed all of the rain, and entomologist Adam |
| 1:05.8 | Hart told me what Insect Week is all about. |
| 1:09.3 | National Insect Week is a celebration of, as the strap line says, little things that run the world. Insects are incredibly |
| 1:14.5 | important ecologically. They're incredibly important scientifically. And National Insect Week is really a way of bringing |
| 1:19.0 | that to the public's attention, having lots and lots of events throughout the week all over the country where |
| 1:23.8 | members of the public can get involved with all sorts of entomological stuff. |
| 1:26.7 | I mean we're sitting here in this beautiful butterfly house at London Zoo. |
| 1:30.1 | It might be going along to an event where you're going on a beewalk for example |
| 1:33.2 | anything like that that can happen across the country so it's a celebration of insects |
| 1:36.5 | as you say we're in the butterfly house at London Zoo |
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