Ten years of Zooniverse; what happened to volcano Anak Krakatau and visualising maths

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Technology, Science

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 19 December 2019

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Adam Rutherford talks to Chris Lintott about the citizen science platform he set up ten years ago. Zooniverse is a place where the public can help scientists analyse huge swathes of data. Projects such as spotting distant galaxies, counting penguins and tagging WW2 diaries have all has a huge boost thanks to the people-power of the Zooniverse. The Indonesian volcano Anak Krakatau, which means 'Son of Krakatoa', was born out of the ashes of the mega volcano which erupted and collapsed in the 1880s. Last year the island volcano Anak collapsed, causing a tsunami which killed 400 people. The collapse of millions of tonnes of rock into the ocean has now been mapped and chunks of rock, the size of office blocks, have been found tossed kilometres from the island. It really brings home how dangerous these volcanoes can be. BBC Inside Science producer Fi is always scribbling and doodling during interviews. It turns out she is a visual thinker and she compulsively draws the science being discussed. She is not alone: many scientists working in fields involving complex maths and physics resort to pictures to illustrate what's happening. But not everything in science can be reduced down to a 2D sketch and not everyone needs a visual aid. Marnie Chesterton finds the scientists who can look at an equation, and 'see' in their heads, the graph it describes. Others get intensely annoyed at analogies that just aren't quite right - like spacetime being a ball on a rubber sheet. She asks a physicist, a philosopher and a mathematician about the relationship they have between maths, reality and our senses. Producer - Fiona Roberts

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and trust me you'll get there in a moment but if you're a comedy fan
0:05.2	I'd really like to tell you a bit about what we do. I'm Julie Mackenzie and I commission comedy
0:10.2	podcast at the BBC. It's a bit of a dream job really.
0:13.0	Comedy is a fantastic joyous thing to do because really you're making people laugh,
0:18.0	making people's days a bit better, helping them process, all manner of things.
0:22.0	But you know I also know that comedy is really
0:24.4	subjective and everyone has different tastes so we've got a huge range of comedy on offer
0:29.6	from satire to silly shocking to soothing profound to just general pratting about. So if you
0:36.2	fancy a laugh, find your next comedy at BBC Sounds.
0:41.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:45.0	Hello You, this is the podcast of Inside Science from BBC Radio 4, first broadcast on the 19th of December 2019.
0:52.0	I'm Adam Rutherford. This week we are reminded of the
0:55.2	awesome power of the earth with a trip to Anak Krakertow, an active island
1:00.1	volcano that caused a devastating tsunami this time last year. And fear not, if you, like me, have great
1:07.1	difficulty imagining quarks, quantum physics and black holes, later we explore analogies,
1:12.3	allegories and metaphors in describing the indescribable.
1:16.0	But first, science is of the people, by the people and for the people.
1:21.0	It's a public service to increase knowledge for the benefit of all
1:23.6	humankind which is nice the trouble is that science is also quite hard and
1:28.4	requires years of training and practice that old fib that children are born
1:32.4	scientists well they're not. They might be born curious, but you have to learn to become a scientist. But that doesn't mean that everyone can't get involved. Citizen science is a grand endeavor where
1:45.4	anyone can be part of discovery and we are big fans. The driving force behind
	...

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