Science In Action

Scientists’ latest plans for welcoming interstellar visitor 3I/Atlas next month, and arranging a rendezvous with comet Apophis in 2029, as heard this week at the EPSC-DPS international planetary science joint meeting in Helsinki. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Ella Hubber, with Alex Mansfield Production coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth Image: Artist's impression of an asteroid in space...

Despite the relatively low magnitude, earthquakes in Afghanistan this week have left more than1000 dead. Afghan researcher Zakeria Shnizai from the University of Oxford unpicks some of the main causes of the country’s vulnerability to earthquakes. Also this week, we talk to the climate scientist who led a 400+ page rebuttal to the US Department of Energy’s report on climate change. We hear about...

What can modern epidemiological methods tell us about French Revolutionary history? Also, the origins of horse riding, solar systems, and star dust itself. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth (Image: Storming of the Bastille Paris France 1789 illustration. Credit: Grafissimo via Getty Images).

A desktop nuclear fusion reactor that uses electrochemistry to up the ante. Also, a global survey of human wildfire exposures finds Africa burning ahead, plus tiny swarming robots and record-breaking 2024 ice melts from glaciers on Svalbard. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production co-ordinator: Jana Holesworth (Photo: The Thunderbird Reactor at the University of British...

US Health Secretary RFK Jr’s call to retract a study on childhood vaccines is resisted by the journal. Also antibiotics get designed by AI, and a new way for stars to die. A study focussing on Danish childhood vaccination data has attracted the US Secretary for Health’s anger, as RFK jr calls for the journal in which it was published, the Annals of Internal Medicine, to retract it. The Editor,...

As the United States secretary of health and human services, Robert F Kennedy Jr., announces a $500 million cut to mRNA vaccine research in the United States, we hear a statement from the Nobel Prize winning biologist who made mRNA vaccines possible. A team of scientists from Northwestern University have uncovered the pathway believed to protect some people from allergic reactions (even when they...

After most of the population of the Pacific rim sought higher ground this week, we speak with the architect of the tsunami warning technology. Also how aging Killifish might help us probe our senior moments. This week, an M8.8 earthquake near Kamchatka in the western pacific led to tsunami evacuation alerts thousands of miles away. Seismologist Judith Hubbard was writing about the area in the...

Have we found Betelgeuse’s ‘Betelbuddy?’ An astronomical mystery seems to be solved as the long-predicted stellar companion to the bright star Betelgeuse has been detected by a team of researchers led by Steve Howell of the NASA Ames Research Center using the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii. Steve discusses this breakthrough alongside astronomer Andrea Dupree of the Harvard Smithsonian Center...

Two black holes have collided and combined in the largest merger yet observed. Mark Hannam of Cardiff University and member of the study explains how the Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatories (LIGO) detected this ‘violent’ event through spacetime. The lifestyle of ancient humans had an impact on their risk for infectious diseases. Astrid Iversen of the University of Oxford explains how...

The European Space Agency plans to use satellite gravity data to track weakening ocean circulation systems. Rory Bingham of the University of Bristol explains how these satellites can ‘weigh’ the Earth’s water and might help resolve whether we’re approaching the climate tipping point of a shutdown of ocean circulation in the Atlantic Ocean, something we've been following for a while. Scientists...