Big Science: What's The Big Idea? From Resonance Fm

Informações:

Sinopse

Big Science FM began as an experiment borne of a belief that the laws that govern the Universe are simple. Fantastical, astonishing, often unbelievable, but ultimately comprehensible to anyone who wants to understand. For an hour each week, Dr Ed Gerstner and guests explore the ideas that make the Universe tick.

Episódios

  • Big Science FM: The Mathematics of Donkey Kong

    18/04/2012 Duração: 55min

    What is it about video games that makes them so addictive? Do we play these things not because they are easy but because they are hard? How hard are they? We asked MIT mathetmaticians Erik Demaine and Alan Guo.

  • Big Science FM: Medicating morality

    21/03/2012 Duração: 52min

    Can racism be treated with heart drugs? A recent study suggests so. Does this mean that we can alter a person's moral values with drugs? And what other possibilities are there for engineering the human condition? We ask Julian Savulescu.

  • Big Science FM: Teaching relativity to your dog

    07/03/2012 Duração: 45min

    Dogs were the first sentient beings to venture into space. Yet, they know surprisingly little about physics. Chad Orzel, professor of physics at Union College in upstate New York, hopes to redress this.

  • Big Science FM: Drug discovery crowdsourced

    22/02/2012 Duração: 52min

    There are several ways that the public can contribute to the world of scientific exploration. We talk to David Baker and Chris Eibens how the networked computer game 'Foldit' is contributing to the development of new medical drugs.

  • Big Science FM: Newt's in space?

    01/02/2012 Duração: 57min

    US Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich declared that if he were elected president, he would build a manned base on the Moon by 2020. Does this make him a visionary or a fantasist? We ask space guru and Royal Society Fellow, Mike Lockwood.

  • Big Science FM: Have we found the Higgs, yet?

    14/12/2011 Duração: 54min

    The Large Hadron Collider is working better than expected. And it's collected oodles of data. But have they found the Higgs, yet? We ask Davide Castelvecchi, who flew to Geneva to find out.

  • Big Science FM: Neuroscience in the sky with diamonds

    07/12/2011 Duração: 52min

    Within ten years of the first synthesis of LSD in 1938, it was being used to treat a range of psychiatric conditions, including addiction, anxiety and even headaches. It fell out of favour in the 60s. But the therapeutic use of LSD and other psychoactive drugs could be making a comeback.

  • Big Science FM: The trouble with neutrinos

    30/11/2011 Duração: 54min

    In September, physicists announced results suggesting that beams of neutrinos were travelling from Switzerland to Italy at faster than the speed of light, in flagrant violation Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity. Was Einstein wrong? And what the hell is a neutrino anyway? We ask neutrino guru Dr Ryan Nichol.

  • Big Science FM: How to build a brain

    16/11/2011 Duração: 57min

    IBM's BlueGene supercomputer can carry out a similar number of operations per second as the brain of a rat. But while a rat's brain takes up a half a cubic centimetre and uses 50 milliwatts of power, BlueGene covers around 600 square feet and uses 400 kilowatts of power. We ask neuroscientist Richard Wingate what we're doing wrong.

  • Big Science FM: It's a Small World after all

    09/11/2011 Duração: 51min

    In 1929, Frigyes Karinthy wrote a short story suggesting that everyone is connected to everyone else by six or seven degrees of separation. In 1967, Stanley Milgrim did an experiment proving it. And twenty years later, Duncan Watts & Steve Strogatz build the mathematics to describe it. We talk to Samuel Hansen about why this means our friends are more popular than we are.

  • Big Science FM: Multiverses and the Big Bang

    12/10/2011 Duração: 49min

    How did the Universe begin? What made it expand from the size of a grapefruit to billions of lightyears across in a fraction of a second after the Big Bang? And why did it stop? And is ours the only Universe? We ask cosmologists Hiranya Peiris and Matt Johnson.

  • Big Science FM: Understanding the Cosmos, Part 1

    05/10/2011 Duração: 54min

    2011 Nobel Prize in Physics Special. In this show, we talk supernovae, cosmic acceleration, dark energy and the history and implications of this year's physics award to Perlmutter, Schmidt, and Riess, with Professor Ofer Lahav.

  • Big Science FM: History of an Ancient Sponge

    28/09/2011 Duração: 55min

    Geological evidence suggests that around 650 million years ago, the Earth was covered in ice. It was believed only single-celled organisms could have survived 'Snowball Earth'. Until Adam Maloof found a fossilized sponge predating this by millions of years.

  • Big Science FM: Higgs update

    14/09/2011 Duração: 49min

    In this episode we discuss the intriguing results hot off the press from Cern's Large Hadron Collider with particle physicist Professor Jonathan Butterworth. Have we found the Higgs particle, yet? And if we had, what would that mean for the future of particle physics?

  • Big Science FM: Probing unconsciousness

    07/09/2011 Duração: 53min

    We assume that modern medicine can distinguish between life and death. But when it comes to ‘brain death’, things aren't so clear cut. In this episode we explore unconsciousness, coma, and the bits in between with neuroscience writer, Mo Costandi.

  • Big Science FM: Green car tech

    31/08/2011 Duração: 50min

    In recent shows we've been talking about technologies for generating energy. In this episode we look at the flip side with Ralph Clague who's working on green car technologies that use the energy we've got more efficiently.

  • Big Science FM: Alternative nuclear power

    17/08/2011 Duração: 52min

    Conventional nuclear fission won't solve the world's energy problems. Thankfully, it's not the only nuclear game in town. Tonight we explore an alternative nuclear tech, in accelerator-driven subcritical nuclear reactors fueled with thorium. With Dr Hywel Owen from the University of Manchester.

  • Big Science FM: Update on Fukushima

    03/08/2011 Duração: 51min

    Five months after the nuclear disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daiich power plant, the crisis has all but slipped off the front pages. But the crisis continues. Nature reporter, Geoff Brumfiel gives us status update.

  • Big Science FM: Of Mice and Flies

    20/07/2011 Duração: 56min

    How do you make a fly with the same genes you use to make a mouse? It's complicated. But that's what Big Science is all about.

  • Big Science FM: Anaesthesia, What's Your Poison?

    13/07/2011 Duração: 53min

    From alcohol to ether and beyond, in this episode we explore the science of anaesthesiology with clinical anaesthetist, Dr Katie Grant.

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