South East Asia choking - again
Unexpected Elements
BBC
4.4 • 570 Ratings
🗓️ 25 September 2019
⏱️ 67 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Staying indoors might seem a good way to avoid air pollution, but scientists studying the fires in Indonesia have found there is little difference between the air quality in their hotel room and the atmosphere outside. Both levels are high enough to be considered dangerous for human health. To add to the problem, fires continue to burn underground in the peaty soil long after they were started.
In the Arctic ice melt this summer has been particularly severe, however the picture in complicated by climatic conditions. A new mission to the region involving trapping a ship in ice over winter hopes to provide answers.
Nearly 500 million of year ago the earth’s sky was darkened by a massive asteroid explosion, blotting out the sun. New data on this event may provide an insight into contemporary climate change.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous fictional detective is renowned for his feats of memory, his observational capacity, tireless energy and an almost supernatural ability to solve the most perplexing crimes from seemingly unconnected facts. But what does science have to say about the matter? We pit fact against fiction with a leading forensic expert, a sleep scientist, and we discover that most humans are able to train their brain to rival the memory capacity of Sherlock Holmes. And who wouldn’t want that?
(Image: Researcher Mark Grovener from Kings College London, measures air quality in Indonesia. Credit Marlin Wooster KCL)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In 2019, we began investigating the disappearance of Dr. Ruzha Ignatva. |
| 0:08.0 | I believe we are a very special network. |
| 0:10.0 | A scammer who stole billions from investors around the world. |
| 0:15.0 | She's on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list. |
| 0:18.0 | And now, we have some unmissable updates. She has money and when you have |
| 0:23.0 | money you have power. Join me, Jamie Bartlett, as the hunt for the missing crypto queen continues. |
| 0:29.5 | Listen first on BBC Sounds. This is the science hour from the BBC with me, Roland P's, where in half an |
| 0:36.2 | hour the case is afoot for Marnie Chesterton and |
| 0:39.1 | Krause Science, wondering what the career prospects would actually be these days for legendary |
| 0:44.3 | fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. |
| 0:47.4 | I think they'd send him out for the bacon sandwiches. |
| 0:49.8 | I really do think they'd send him out of the bacon sandwiches. |
| 0:52.7 | I suspect nobody would employ him, so he wouldn't have a career. |
| 0:56.8 | Elementary, dear listener, but Marnie has been chasing down the clues that convict Sherlock Holmes of dodgy practice. |
| 1:04.3 | Before that, on Science and Action, we've darkened shade. |
| 1:07.3 | In Southeast Asia, the darkening skies herald the arrival of the annual |
| 1:11.8 | choking fire season. Huge forest fires are burning across Indonesia's rainforests, with toxic |
| 1:17.7 | smog shutting hundreds of schools in Southeast Asia. Smoke has from the fires has caused |
| 1:23.1 | the air quality enabling them. But while most people are trying to avoid the choking fumes, |
| 1:27.3 | ecologist Martin Wooster is heading into the heart of the peat forest fires. |
| 1:31.0 | I'll be asking him in a moment what he hopes to learn. |
| 1:34.6 | And we've the ancient ice age, an astrogeobiologist, |
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