Why can’t we remember being a baby?

Discovery

BBC

Science

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 13 November 2017

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Astronomical Balloon "How far up can a helium balloon go? Could it go out to space?" asks Juliet Gok, aged 9. This calls for an experiment! Dr Keri Nicholl helps Adam launch a party balloon and track its ascent. But their test doesn't quite go to plan. Meanwhile, Hannah discovers where space begins by asking Public Astronomer Dr Marek Kukula, from the Royal Observatory Greenwich. Send your Curious Cases to the team: curiouscases@bbc.co.uk

The Forgetful Child "Why don't we remember the first few years of our lives?" asks David Foulger from Cheltenham. The team investigate the phenomenon of 'infant amnesia' with Catherine Loveday from the University of Westminster. 40% of us claim to remember being under two years old and 18% recall being babies. But can we really trust these early memories? Martin Conway from City University thinks not.

Picture: A baby contemplates the sole of its foot, circa 1950, Credit: H. Armstrong Roberts/Retrofile/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Producer: Michelle Martin.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Rory Stewart and I grew up wanting to be a hero and I'm still fascinated by the ideas of heroism.
0:08.9	In my new series, I'm taking in the long sweep of history from Achilles to Zelensky and asking, what is a hero?
0:16.1	Simply doing your job, being a decent human being.
0:20.0	A true hero is someone who just kind of shines by
0:23.1	their own light and that light is to be recognised by others. The long history of heroism with me,
0:28.6	Rory Stewart. Listen on BBC Sounds. Hello, welcome to episode three of the curious cases of
0:34.7	Rutherford and Fry. I'm Dr. Adam Rutherford. And I'm Dr. Hannah Frye. And we investigate your everyday science conundrums, your questions that have been burning. We use the power of science to answer them. Indeed. So if there is anything that you have been wondering for a while, then please do send it into us curious cases at BBC.credit UK and we shall investigate.
0:55.5	Now this one is, this is coming from a young listener, a nine-year-old Juliette Gok.
0:59.7	And it seems like a very simple question, but in fact turned out to be quite complex and enormously good fun.
1:05.8	Indeed. The question is, if you let go of a helium balloon, just how high does it go?
1:12.1	And always in this programme, we try to do experiments as often as we can.
1:15.6	Lots of experiments in this one.
1:16.7	Real science. And in this programme, we get to investigate how big balloons go, set them off, explode them, do all sorts of fun stuff.
1:24.6	Plus bring some helium into the studio.
1:26.8	Which we did not abuse because we're very, very serious people.
1:30.0	And professionals.
1:35.4	In today's episode, we bring you the Curious Case of the Astronomical Balloon.
1:42.8	Yes, lovely question winged its way to us at curious cases at BBC.co.uk.
1:47.4	From Leeds, care of Juliet Gok aged nine.
1:51.2	And she asks, how far up can a helium balloon go?
1:55.2	Could it go out to space?
1:57.4	You know what? I reckon we can calculate this.
	...

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