- Douglas Richards
Sure, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and has received a number of other honours, but has Sir Tim Berners-Lee yet received his due? Douglas Richards argues that for a man who brought into being a tool - the hypertext language around which the Internet is based - that will have as profound an impact on human civilization as the wheel or electricity, the answer is an emphatic no...
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- Frank Witte
Physics is full of surprises, but none so great as the discovery that 95% of the mass of the Universe is invisible to us. This is the so-called "Dark Matter" and "Dark Energy", but what are they, and how can we find out...?
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- Chris Smith
Simpsons fans will know only too well the opening sequence to the cartoon in which Homer discovers, during his commute, that he’s taken some of his work home with him – in the form of a radioactive fuel rod from the nuclear power plant! Unsurprisingly, the lump of material he subsequently throws out of the car window is glowing an ethereal green colour. But therein lies multiple myths of atomic-powered proportions, because most radioactive substances don’t really glow at all, let alone light up green!
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- Stuart Clark
When the clipper ship Southern Cross sailed into a living hell off Chile during the night of 2 September 1859, little did the sailors know that they were witnessing the aftermath of a gigantic solar explosion that had engulfed the Earth. Today, astronomers are still unpicking the consequences of this tremendous event.
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- Chris Smith
What is a thunderstorm, how is lightning generated by clouds, how much energy is there in a lightning bolt, and could it be harnessed to power a town?
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- Frank Witte
Recent Mars missions have produced compelling evidence for what was once a wet world, where life could well have flourished. Now scientists are about to embark on a mission with the best chances yet of finding it. Touching down near the Martian north pole, the Phoenix lander will begin looking for the chemical hallmarks of life past and present. But what do we already know about our near planetary neighbour? Frank Witte finds out...
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- Catherine Zentile
Scientists recently spotted a planet being born. It's just formed and is still enshrouded within the disk of dust that formed it. So like a baby in the birth canal, the newborn, placenta and amniotic fluid of planetary formation are all still there for scientists to see. In terms of age, this was a teenage pregnancy, but what it can tell us about the planetary birth process makes this particular cosmic conception very exciting...
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- Bob Bury
Radiologist Bob Bury investigates some of the new 'scanning' technologies, which have revolutionised medical practise. What is a CT scan, how do CT scanners work, what is nuclear medicine and PET (positron emission tomography) ?
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- Bob Bury
Ultrasound Scans (USS), and now Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), allows us to visualise body tissues in high resolution, without the risks associated with the use of ionising radiation such as X-Rays. Bob Bury explains how ultrasound scans and MRI scanning works.
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- Phil Rosenberg
Imagine we had discovered another world, slightly smaller than our own, with rain clouds, rivers and lakes on gently hilly continents. Sounding a bit bland and Earth like? Okay then lets add some twists...
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