And the Hello and welcome to the naked scientists. This week we come to you with a

special program looking back at all the great science we've uncovered over the last year.

And what a year it's been, especially for space science, with the Phila Lander finally waking up on a comet,

and the New Horizons probe, reaching Pluto nine years after its launch.

Of course it's also been pretty exciting back on Earth too with the discovery of a whole

new species of hominid in September.

And it's not all been about science news

from parasites to plastics. We've also been digging beneath the surface of

science. I'm Gray Jackson and I'm Connie Orback and this is the Naked Scientists.

The Naked Scientists Podcast is powered by UKfast.coDokuk. You've probably heard bits and bobs from both Connie and myself before. We're two of

the producers of the program so we work behind the scenes collecting stories

writing scripts but this week instead of Chris and Cat we've hijacked the mics to play

some of our favorite moments Georgia wanted to be here too but alas she's in the

midst of her next show it's about black holes stay tuned for that

but now the beginning of the program and in fact the beginning of everything but is there actually a

beginning of time I decided to try and answer one of the really big questions of not only science, but also philosophy.

Many cosmologists now think that there is. This view goes back to the discovery that the universe is expanding,

discovery made in the 1920s.

The logical implication of that is that there must have been a time when it was at minimum size and that's what we now think of as the big bang and on most views that's the beginning of time. There's literally nothing before that.

Basically, with the Big Bang, time was created.

Time didn't exist before the Big Bang because, well, the Big Bang created time.

Armed with the best physics in the 20th century, Albert Einstein came to a very similar conclusion

...