Stars, Fracking, Ice Cores, Drunken Chimps

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Technology, Science

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 11 June 2015

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The ALMA telescope array in the Atacama Desert is one of the most sensitive earth based telescopes. It has now captured images of the very first galaxies. Adam talks to Dr Mark Swinbank of Durham University who's part of the team who've unleashed data this week from that universal hinterland that's set to fill in the missing gaps in our understanding of the evolution of the universe.

The European Parliament voted this week to place a moratorium on new licences for member states to frack for shale gas until proven safe for the environment. But how dangerous is fracking? A set of articles out this week in the journal Seismological Research Letters attempts to address and dispel some of the myths and misconceptions about fracking, and to get to the root of the very real, increasing frequency of seismic activity. US Geologist Justin Rubinstein and University of Strathclyde geologist Zoe Shipton discuss the evidence

As global temperatures increase Ice Core scientists searching for clues to Earth's past climatic history face a ticking clock to gather enough core samples before they melt. Only a tiny amount of mountain glacial ice has ever been collected and studied, and in 2016 ice cores from the Alps will be moved to safer storage in Nature's freezer - a giant vault in Antarctica. Marnie Chesterton meets Ice Core researchers from British Antarctic Survey to find out why they need this archive.

A new paper shows the first recorded instances of alcohol drinking in wild chimpanzees. Tanya Humle from the University of Kent describes the novel behaviour. With anthropologist Professor Catherine Hill, Dr Humle discusses whether "wild" chimp research is even possible in an age when human and chimp habitats overlap.

Producer Adrian Washbourne.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello you this is the podcast of Inside Science from the BBC first broadcast on the 11th of June 2015 I'm Adam Rutherford
0:07.4	I have left a small bait for listeners to the live broadcast in referring to chimps as monkeys as I believe is correct
0:15.2	based on nested taxonomies. If anyone picks it up we can talk about it on next
0:19.0	week's program. And also Sir Christopher Lee died as we were recording the program today.
0:24.0	He played a few scientists in his long and illustrious career, but as Saraman, Dracula,
0:28.6	Count Dukku, Lord Summer Isle, Henry Baskerville, he really was one of us. Come, it is time to keep your appointment with
0:35.9	the Wiccaman. For more information, go to BBC.co.
0:41.6	K. Fracking is back in the news with a vote this week on a proposed European moratorium on new ventures.
0:47.3	We get to the bottom of weather and how dangerous this mining technique actually is.
0:52.4	We're not bringing coal's to Newcastle, but taking ice to Antarctica.
0:57.0	As global temperatures increase, we've got to get ice cores back to the pole before they melt and
1:02.1	are lost forever.
1:04.2	And when animals get drunk, which sounds like it could be a BBC 3 series, but in fact, lots of
1:08.8	species seem to voluntarily partake of intoxicating substances, and we're having a look at chimps on the lash
1:15.2	and more importantly what it means for studying animals as we overlap with their
1:19.8	territories. But first a piece of really basic science worth studying simply because it's interesting, and we love that.
1:28.0	There's a big gap in the universe. We know a lot about what happened in the first few fractions of a second after the Big Bang and we've got a decent idea of what it looks like today,
1:37.0	but the young universe in its infancy is a mysterious country and difficult to explore.
1:43.2	The Hubble Space Telescope is up there,
1:44.9	orbiting the Earth and generating some of the greatest space images ever.
1:48.8	But down on the ground, the Alma Telescope Array in the Atticama Desert is also building pictures of the sky,
1:55.3	including now the formation of the very first galaxies.
	...

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