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BBC Inside Science

Where next World Wide Web? Space rocks and worms

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Technology, Science

4.51.3K Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2019

⏱️ 32 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

30 years ago Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web as a way to let physicists share their papers and data on a distributed network. It's changed a lot since then and not all for the better. Dominant technology companies monopolise our data and many, including Berners-Lee are worried about the growth of state sponsored hacking, misinformation and scamming. One solution is to re-decentralise the web, giving us more control of our information and what is done with it, but at what cost? Founder and director of Redecentralize.org, Irina Bolychevsky and technology guru Bill Thompson discuss the future. BBC Space Correspondent Jonathan Amos has news on some space rocks this week. Ultima and Thule, make up a bi-lobe comet out in the far reaches of the Solar System in the Kuiper Belt. Ultima-Thule was visited by the New Horizons mission in January. More data is being analysed and giving scientists insight into how these two planetary building blocks collided and merged and also on how it got its strange flattened shape. Another rock seems to be a rubble pile. The asteroid Ryugu is currently hosting the Japanese Space Agency's Hayabusa 2 spacecraft and landers. Jonathan explains to Gareth what stage the missions' audacious sample collect and return is now at. And there's a shock discovery by spacecraft OSIRIS-REx from asteroid Bennu. The NASA spacecraft analysing the asteroid has observed it shooting out plumes of dust that surround it in a dusty haze. It's a phenomenon never seen in an asteroid before. Back down on Earth and under the surface of the earth are the earthworms. As any savvy gardener will know, earthworms make a big difference to the health of soil and plants. What isn’t as well understood is how changes to the soil - like climate change and the intensification of agricultural practices - have impacted on the all-important worm population. In fact, scientists don’t even know what’s down there, wriggling underneath the surface. To find out, farmers recently undertook to the first worm survey in the UK. Finding that 42% of fields had very few or completely lacked key types of earthworm, the results suggest that over-cultivation has led to poor soil health in significant amounts of farmland. Producer: Fiona Roberts

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey, it's Doleepa, and I'm at your service.

0:04.7

Join me as I serve up personal conversations with my sensational guests.

0:08.8

Do a leap interviews, Tim Cook.

0:11.2

Technology doesn't want to be good or bad.

0:15.0

It's in the hands of the creator.

0:16.7

It's not every day that I have the CEO of the world's biggest company in my living room.

0:20.7

If you're looking at your phone more than you're looking in someone's eyes, you're doing the wrong thing.

0:26.0

Julie, at your service, listen to all episodes on BBC Sales. B. B.C. Sounds, Music Radio Podcasts.

0:36.2

Hello everybody.

0:37.2

This is the podcast edition of BBC Inside Science from Radio 4

0:41.9

for Thursday the 21st of March.

0:44.0

I'm Gareth Mitchell standing in for Adam Rutherford.

0:46.2

Lucky me.

0:47.2

Nice to see you again.

0:48.2

And a quick shout out to Mark Rowen, Tancredi, Jill, and others who kindly

0:52.4

followed me when I was here last time.

0:54.1

I'm at Gareth M on Twitter and if you're not a bot I'll follow you back.

0:58.7

How about that?

0:59.7

As for today's edition that went from a broadcast to a podcast we're going to be discussing

1:04.2

this massive monopolies surveillance capitalism our data abused democracy disrupted and

1:10.1

geopolitics manipulated yes this isn't quite what the architects of the web hoped for three decades ago.

1:18.0

So what about the next three decades?

...

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