Baby girls born today in the UK can expect to live to 82 years old, whereas boys on average will die 4 years earlier. Evolutionary biologist Dr Yan Wong looks at the latest evidence suggesting that where ageing is concerned, men seem to be at a genetic disadvantage. From research on ancient Korean eunuchs to laboratory fruit flies, new studies seek the answer to why males across the animal kingdom live faster and die younger. So, is the gender gap here to stay?
Dec 24, 2012•18 min
The most notorious fraud in the history of Science is the focus of this week’s Discovery. Exactly one hundred years ago, British scientists announced their discovery of fossilised skull and jaw bones of what appeared to be the earliest human – a species of humanity closer to our prehistoric ape ancestors than any found before it. In 1912 it was a sensational find. In 1953 it was revealed as a horrible hoax. Jonathan Amos talks to palaeontologists and archaeologists about the case of Piltdown Man...
Dec 17, 2012•18 min
Finding the Higgs boson on July 4th 2012 was the last piece in physicists' Standard model of matter. But Tracey Logan discovers there's much more for them to find out at the Large Hadron Collider. To start with there is a lot of work to establish what kind of Higgs boson it is. Tracey visits CERN and an experiment called LHCb which is trying to find out why there's a lot more matter than anti-matter in the universe today. Dr Tara Shears of Liverpool University is her guide. Tracey also talks to ...
Dec 10, 2012•18 min
Kevin Fong talks to one of the last two men on the Moon, 40 years after the final Apollo 17 mission blasted off on 7 December 1972. As an Apollo astronaut, Harrison Schmitt was special. He was was the only geologist ever to explore the lunar surface. The field work Dr Schmitt did, and the rocks he and his fellow astronauts brought back, revolutionised our understanding of the Moon and the Earth. Dr Schmitt also shares the human experience of running around another planet and explains why he thin...
Dec 03, 2012•18 min
In this programme, Geoff Watts meets researchers attempting to unlock the mysteries of hallucination as well as some of those who experience the phenomenon. Geoff visits Dr Dominic Ffytche of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, and undergoes a stroboscopic experiment designed to induce hallucinations in subjects whilst their brains are being scanned. We hear some of the vivid accounts from hallucinators, including Doris, who has macular degeneration. Over the last year, her failing eyesight h...
Nov 26, 2012•18 min
Geoff Watts meets researchers attempting to unlock the mysteries of hallucination as well as some of those who experience the phenomenon. Hallucinations aren't what they used to be. Time was when reporting a divine vision would bring fame or fortune. The Enlightenment changed all that and nowadays you'd be more at risk of being handed a prescription for a major tranquilliser for reporting what you saw or heard. Hallucinating, in essence, the experience of seeing or hearing (and sometimes smellin...
Nov 19, 2012•18 min
Gaia Vince concludes her journey through the geological age humans have launched. After climate change and mass extinction, she now explores moves how the world’s cities and manufactured artefacts (from mobile phones to plastic bottles) might become 'fossilised' and incorporated into the geological record. Some are bound to survive in crushed form for the rest of the Earth’s existence. Any distant-future geologist would recognise them as strange features unique in the planet’s 4 billion year roc...
Nov 12, 2012•18 min
Earth scientists say humanity’s impact on the Earth has been so profound that we have started a new geological time period on the planet. They call it, the Anthropocene. Gaia Vince explores our fundamental changes to the biosphere. The accelerating extinctions of animal and plant species: the rearing of agricultural animals in their billions: and, what some describe as, the general ‘macdonaldisation’ of life on Earth. All three factors will leave striking evidence in the fossil record in the lim...
Nov 05, 2012•18 min
Humanity’s impact on the atmosphere with fossil fuel burning is so profound that we’re creating a new geological time period, say geologists. They’ve named it, the Anthropocene. In this part of her journey into the Anthropocene, Gaia Vince explores how fossil fuel burning will leave enduring marks in geological record forming on the Earth in current times. Climate change and ocean acidification are in the process of transforming the planet on such a scale that humanity has shifted Earth history ...
Oct 29, 2012•18 min
Humanity’s impact on the Earth is so profound that we’re creating a new geological time period. Geologists have named the age we’re making the Anthropocene. The changes we’re making to the atmosphere, oceans, landscape and living things will leap out of the rocks forming today to Earth scientists of the far future, as clearly as the giant meteorite that ended the Age of the Dinosaurs does to today’s researchers. In this four part series, journalist Gaia Vince looks at the impact of these planeta...
Oct 22, 2012•18 min
We are in desperate need of new medicines for the major diseases facing us in the 21st century such as Alzheimer's and obesity. And we are running out of antibiotics that are effective against bacteria that are now resistant to many old varieties. As bringing new and improved drugs to patients becomes more difficult and more expensive - it can take 20 years and around $1 billion to bring a medicine to market. In the second programme looking at the problem with drug discovery, Geoff Watts asks wh...
Oct 15, 2012•18 min
We are in desperate need of new medicines for the major diseases facing us in the 21st Century such as Alzheimer's and obesity. And we are running out of antibiotics that are effective against bacteria that are now resistant to many old varieties. As bringing new and improved drugs to patients becomes more difficult and more expensive - it can take 20 years and around $1 billion to bring a medicine to market - Geoff Watts asks what's gone wrong and what can be done to get new pharmaceutical trea...
Oct 08, 2012•18 min
Nine million people in the UK alone have significant hearing problems. The mechanisms in our ears that help us hear are incredibly sensitive and are easily damanged by environmental hazards such as loud noises and chemicals or simply the passage of time. Despite the fact that many of us will gradually lose our ability to hear as we as a society grow older, many of us don’t actually know that much about the causes and consequences of deafness. What does the world sound like to a deaf person? How ...
Sep 24, 2012•18 min
Is our taste in music, and how it's changed over the centuries, governed by creative genius or simply by survival of the fittest sounds, chosen by us the consumer? Does Darwin's theory of natural selection apply to more than just life on the planet? The idea of survival of the fittest and cultural evolution can be applied to many aspects of our lives; from fashion to the naming of our children. In a world of digital sampling scientists have designed an experiment to see if they can create the pe...
Sep 17, 2012•18 min
What can astronomy tells us about great literature? Forensic astronomer Don Olson tells Andrew Luck-Baker about two of his investigative cases. He explains how plotting the path of the moon in 1816 solved a controversy about Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein. The Texas State University professor also outlines his theory that a star referred to in Shakespeare’s Hamlet was inspired by a spectacular supernova which blazed in sky one year during the playwright’s childhood. (Image: Baron Frankenstein...
Sep 10, 2012•18 min
One hundred years ago, the first humans reached the South Pole of this planet. More than 40 years ago, man first walked on the moon. When will our species first set foot to explore the planet Mars? Kevin Fong seeks a likely launch date. He asks who will get us there and why we really need to explore the Red Planet. (Image: An image, released by NASA, of the terrain of Mars taken by the Curiosity rover. Credit: AP Photo / NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS)
Sep 07, 2012•18 min
Jim Al-Khalili finds out about the life scientific of the British Antarctic Survey biologist Lloyd Peck. Amongst other creatures he studies giant sea spiders. They and other small animals grow far bigger than usual in the extreme cold. Diving is an important part of Lloyd's job and Jim hears what it's like to play football under the ice. Studies suggest that the sea temperature is rising, and Lloyd investigates whether the animals he researches will be able to adapt and survive. And Lloyd talks ...
Sep 03, 2012•18 min
One hundred years ago, Scott reached the South Pole. Fifty years later, the first geologist briefly walked on the moon. Kevin Fong asks if why we might want to return to the lunar surface and what will get us. He talks to that first lunar geologist of Apollo 17, Harrison Schmitt and Nasa's Chief Administrator Charles Bolden, among others.
Aug 31, 2012•18 min
Jim Al-Khalili meets Cambridge University neuroscientist Barbara Sahakian. She talks about her Life Scientific finding drugs to slow down the memory losses that happen in Alzheimer's disease. She worked in some of the first memory clinics that were set up in the US and the UK to help people who had problems remembering and has developed tests to find out if peoples' forgetfulness is the first sign of dementia. More recently she has turned her attention to drugs that can improve the performance o...
Aug 27, 2012•18 min
Kevin Fong looks beyond the failure of Robert Falcon Scott's expedition to be the first to reach the South Pole and focuses instead on the scientific legacy of Scott's explorations of Antarctica between 1901 and 1912. In recent years, much has been written about Scott the polar loser and bungler. But that personalised focus ignores the pioneering scientific research and discoveries. The revelations transformed Antarctica from an unknown quantity on the map into a profoundly important continent i...
Aug 17, 2012•18 min
Discovery this week goes in search of the Gangetic River Dolphin, an extraordinary creature which inhabits the muddy waters of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers. Not long ago, the dolphin was a common sight for people along these mighty water ways, but now it's one of the world's rarest freshwater mammals. Andrew Luck-Baker joins Indian biologists studying the dolphins and the threats to them along the stretch of the Brahmaputra in the state of Assam. In a joint project between Aaranyak, an Indi...
Aug 13, 2012•18 min
After the most daring and complex landing of a robot on another planet, the search for evidence of life on Mars enters a new era. Nasa's Curiosity rover is now sitting inside Gale Crater, a vast depression close to the Martian equator. Also known as the Mars Science Laboratory, the one tonne machine is the most sophisticated science robot ever placed on another world. Over the coming years Curiosity will climb a mountain at the crater's heart, gathering evidence on one of science's greatest ques...
Aug 06, 2012•18 min
Gareth Mitchell meets the engineers who are designing flying cars and green aircraft. Gareth has a go at flying a personal aircraft in the flight simulator at Liverpool University. Doctors Mike Jump and Mark White explain that the EU-funded project MyCopter is seriously looking at the prospect of flying personal vehicles that are as easy to drive as a car. Sophie Robinson, a Ph.D student at Liverpool University, explains how her research into the safety and stability of auto-gyros, flying machin...
Jul 30, 2012•18 min
Gareth Mitchell meets the engineers who will transform the way we fly around the world and finds out what aircraft might look like in the future. Gareth visits the flight gallery at the Science Museum in London with the curator, Dr Andrew Nahum, who shows him how the basic shape of aircraft has hardly changed in 70 years, since the days of the DC3. Andrew Nahum also talks about why Concorde was in service for such a short time. David Caughey, Emeritus Professor of Aeronautical Engineering at Cor...
Jul 23, 2012•18 min
Chemist Andrea Sella explores the current race to do photosynthesis better than nature ever achieved. In just a few hundred years mankind has burnt fossil fuels that had taken natural photosynthesis billions of years to create. Now, around the world hundreds of millions of pounds are being spent on the race to develop a robust, cheap and efficient way to turn the light from the sun into fuels we can use. At a time when politicians everywhere debate the economic and climatic burdens of our future...
Jul 16, 2012•18 min
Could creating "blood" in the laboratory make infections passed on through blood transfusions a thing of the past? Vivienne Parry investigates. The drive behind the quest for creating a blood substitute was originally from the US Military - during the Vietnam War a clean, reliable and portable alternative to donor blood would have helped to save many lives. Donated blood can only be kept for a limited time, needs refrigerating and has to be cross matched according to which ABO group people belon...
Jul 09, 2012•18 min
Gene therapy - repairing malfunctioning cells by mending their DNA - offers an elegant solution to diseases, such as cystic fibrosis, caused by a single flawed gene. It's a very simple concept to describe - simply insert a 'normal' gene to do the job - but it's this process, the delivery of the gene, that's proving to be so difficult and time consuming. Since the first human study began in 1990 the field has struggled with various technical challenges and set-backs. But over a decade on, researc...
Jul 02, 2012•18 min
Alan Turing, born 23 June 1912, is famous for his key role in breaking German codes in World War II. But for mathematicians, his greatest work was on the invention of the computer. Alan Turing's brilliance at maths was spectacular. Aged 22, just a year after his graduation, he was elected a fellow of King's College Cambridge. And it was just a year after that, that he turned his attention to problems in the foundations of mathematics and ended up showing that a simple machine, set up to read and...
Jun 25, 2012•18 min
Alan Turing - born a hundred years ago on June 23 - is most famous for his key role in breaking German codes in World War II. But for mathematicians, his greatest work was on the invention of the computer. Discovery explores the legacy of the great man with a two-part special. Alan Turing's brilliance at maths was spectacular. Aged 22, just a year after his graduation, he was elected a fellow of King's College Cambridge. And it was just a year after that, that he turned his attention to problems...
Jun 18, 2012•18 min
Two teams of virologists found themselves at the heart of bioterrorism maelstrom late last year when their studies on mutant bird flu were suppressed by US authorities. While security experts feared the reports were recipes for bioweapons of mass destruction, the researchers argued they held important lessons for the threat of natural flu pandemics developing in the wild. Now the authorities have backed down and the reports have been released. Kevin Fong hears how tiny variations in the genes of...
Jun 11, 2012•18 min
