Transcripts for BBC Radio Norfolk BBC Radio Norfolk 20191010 020000

Serafin and the shakha was find with head injuries in a leg last month England's outgoing chief medical officer says the government is nowhere near meeting its target of half thing childhood obesity by 23rd professor at d.m. Sally Davies says ministers should consider things like introducing plain packaging for unhealthy food and extending the sugar tax the government says it'll study the report closely and England's Rugby World Cup clash against France on Saturday has been cancelled because of an approaching typhoon official confirmation is expected in the next are it's not the only game in tights Here's Nick Hatton with that sound the rest of the sport's Scotland are expected to find out this morning if they've been knocked out of the Rugby World Cup despite their 61 will win over Russia yesterday keeping them in contention for a place in the last 8 their final group game against Japan on Sunday is in doubt because the fast approaching typhoon Well we have called a press conference for 4 am well the discuss what action they're taking if the game is cancelled then the Scots will be eliminated bigger will most Wales final pulled the game against your ago-I because of a head injury suffered in the 2917 win over Fiji Aaron Ramsey will Miss Wales Euro qualifier in Slovakia tonight Leventis midfielder hasn't trouble with the squad because of fitness concerns he is are expected to be available for Sunday's match against Croatia in Cardiff Marques Whitlock fell on the pommel horse in the men's team final as Great Britain finished 5th of the world gymnastics championships in Stuttgart Russia took gold ahead of China and Japan and the former Chelsea Arsenal goalkeeper better check Hassel grass for ice by signing for the National Ice Hockey League team Guilford Phoenix's a goaltender is currently the technical and performance director at Stamford Bridge but will be the 3rd choice keeper for the Phoenix and will train with his Chelsea schedule Alas this is b.b.c. Radio 5 Live on digital b.b.c. Sound smart speak out some of the weather forecasts are mainly dry in a overnight for many that showers will continue in western areas and turn heavy in northern Scotland the day had wells. All sunny and. In the last as the day goes on. 16. Little bit of. Meals every year. 1000000 children. School. Which keeps them going. I wouldn't say. But it's part of it's nutrition. That. Is going to. Issue with this but I understand a mug. Wouldn't. We're going to spend the next hour in a different place than we usually do because usually we're in Sydney in the studios of the a.b.c. . We with Dr Karl but I must say that Dr Caro is absent he's an absolute friend this week because he's coming to London and he's got a big weekend in London and when I can find the relevant Eveillard I will very soon I'm going to tell you all about it but in the meantime let us welcome to answer all our questions we aren't going to Grady Hello Bianca Hello Rod how you were very well awfully nice to have you with us I must say and I'm sure the nutritional value of porridge is a kind of it's a closely held secret among those who who know and love porridge isn't it once when she got to get into porridge it's hard to give it up you never get out. Right I remember that I I love porridge I must admit it's I and my pond hates it because I always make it in a pot and then the pot bust be left to soak which can last for several days which is my way of avoiding having to wash the pot but it funny you talk about this this notion of the dinner the the miracle mystical magical nature of Part I remember having a nutritionist and when she was asked you know what is the one food if you could say to people the one thing you could add to your diet that would improve your life and she said oats whole whole grain Horridge really was the as far as we can imagine the best single thing if you're going to pick a meal and especially if you have it drizzle with lots of golden syrup it's my preference. Where there we might differ you know being. Scottish and salty and all that but anyway yes I was of course I want to go on I would go out I've seen porridge treated in many cruel ways but there we all are let's start. I don't know if there's a happy topic or not but Swiss scientists are coming up with a way to talk about earthquakes that might give people a clue as to what's going to happen next. Yes And this is important to some degree we're very lucky in Australia and similarly in the u.k. That generally we don't experience earthquakes at all and when we do have them they have pretty small and usually subject of much help on social media but as we know in other parts of the world they can be devastating and one of the the big issues with earthquakes is that often then not an isolated incident so you have your main quake and then there might be foreshocks And then there might be aftershocks and some of the off the shelves can actually be as devastating Ravan more devastating than the main event and it's actually thought that these bigger aftershocks happen about 5 to 10 percent of the time and that's particularly dangerous because people you know obviously they evacuate their lave when the main quake happens and then as a period you know maybe a grace period and then as people go back and sometimes that price period can be quite long they can be a matter of weeks they go back home and then the aftershocks strike and you know you've got weakened infrastructure weakened buildings and the aftershock can often cause significant amount of damage but the challenge is we haven't really known worked out how to predict whether that Mainak quake event is actually the main event or whether it's just a hobby or all of come. And so a couple of scientists were trying to work out whether it's possible to forecast these and so they looked at 2 major earthquake events that happened in 2016 so there was the I'm a tree so I'm a tree. Quake in Italy which was $6.00 on the Richter scale which killed nearly $300.00 people so really devastating and then the same year in Japan there was the Komodo earthquake which also killed 50 people so terrible terrible events but the distinguishing feature with both of these quakes was that they were both followed by even bigger aftershocks so people who you know people thought that the worst was over but it was yet to come and that was part you know one of the contributors to their being so much devastation so what these researchers did was they looked. That the average size of the disk a distribution of aftershocks in both what we labeled as off shocks the both of these quakes and I did notice something interesting so normally when you have a bigger quake you kind of get these sort of run of small aftershocks and they're always there's more small aftershocks than bigger aftershocks. And so that tells you that the whole thing is kind of winding down it's had its big dummy spit and now things are kind of calming calming down but when they looked at these 2 earthquakes they saw the opposite so they were actually more bigger aftershocks than small aftershocks which suggests that things were still building up to that that these subsequent really big big aftershocks that caused so much damage so it's it points to in both of those quakes it pointed to the fact that these 1st quakes were actually foreshocks they were the main event so using that information and there was obviously a lot of mathematical calculations that went on the behind all of this they proposed this formula that could generate a kind of a warning system for the likelihood of things getting bigger rather than small and they could do this in real time so what they would be doing would be monitoring these aftershocks and you know as an event happens monitoring and measuring the size of those aftershocks and from that working out whether these aftershocks look like they were getting bigger or smaller and they tested this because they they got records for historical records from $58.00 earthquakes that were all greater than 6 in magnitude and they found that using this method they were able to predict whether a specific event was an aftershock or the main quake with an accuracy of 95 percent which is really really important because if they could say to people actually not don't go back to has dug about 2 buildings go to safety and stay there because this is going to go to get worse they must be there would be so many lives that could be saved from having that knowledge so it's really really useful information and I guess and you know the. So much that we don't understand about these things but if we could if we could save lives by by just having an understanding of which direction the severity is going in that would be modeless be tremendous. You know this is this quite fun because it kind of holds up the value of paddling pools and you know if you're a highest mom or a dad you know about paddling pools in hot weather they are they are the best thing but there's science behind just putting your toe in the water. Yes And this is obviously how to keep cool in summer is going to be increasingly important we're just coming into we're in mid spring here and actually quite cold today but yes coming into some of is always that Ok How are we going to get through those mid afternoon where it's just sweltering and you desperately trying to cool down but you know we used to this idea of will turn on a fan or we'll turn on the air conditioning and I think we've talked before about using fans and how fans can can work in hot weather if you combine them with you know which in your skin to help help with evaporation but what happens if the power is out and this is obviously a very timely because at the moment this huge areas of San Francisco that going into blackout because they've got really high fire danger weather and the power company is really afraid of power lines sparking wildfires and so that actually opted to shut down the grid in these vast areas of this kind of bush exposed areas of I think a San Francisco might be kind of callous as well as northern California it's all the area right in San Francisco Yes yes which is I mean it makes sense I mean in Australia we've got a number of bushfires that get sparked by a by Palin's trees falling on power lines every year so it's certainly I mean it points to this being an increasingly common scenario where there is no power you can't turn the fan on so what do you do well one solution is to dip your feet in cold water. Which is a lovely idea and it's funny it makes me it makes me tingle that notion of putting my feet in cold water like it makes my toes cold but that's because I think it's cold and so really it's not an appealing scenario at the moment but a group of research is naturally from from Australia. Trying to work at it like I had 3 scenarios of ways to keep cool in a hate wave that don't rely electricity on electricity so they had 90 volunteers bless. Them and they were exposed to 2 hours of these simulated hate wave conditions and importantly they were looking at hate waves that were hot and dry and hate waves that were hot and humid because the body behaves very differently under those scenarios so whenever you're looking at how to keep cool you've really got to look at it in both of those kind of settings and so the volunteers had 3 kind of though testing 3 approaches so one was drinking water which obviously we do a lot of wouldn't when it's hot in which great day hydrated The 2nd was actually using a sponge to kind of douse yourself to really cover your arms and legs and chest and back and everything bits that you can reach just with the water and then the 3rd option was putting your feet into water above the ankles now obviously in this case I found that dousing yourself with a wet sponge is actually the best option. Because what you're doing is you're helping evaporation from your skin cooling yourself down and it actually decreases how much she sweat which means that you are also conserving more of your own your own liquid so you're less likely to get dehydrated and this always reminded me because it's a it's a time honored childhood classic of running through the sprinkler I are presume it's probably similar in the u.k. You know you put the sprinkler on in the garden hose on a godly kids run through it and everyone has a great time and I think you will this this says adults should be doing that as well but if you don't have that space if you don't have a gun to put a sprinter on and you don't want to spend yourself down just putting your fate into a bucket of cold water really really helps and and this isn't just about this so they're looking at a number of things they're looking at your core temperature you know your body temperature but importantly they're looking at cardiovascular strain so how hard your heart is working because in hate waves when you're trying to cool down you cut it puts a lot of strain on your heart you hot strong to circulate the blood trying to dump hate and it can't and so it that's really what kills off and what kills people and hate waves is just extremely hot stress. So. Yes So the message is if it's very hot and you don't want to put a fan or any conditioner on which you know if you're if you're not using green energy probably shouldn't be putting those on it is a kind of contributing to the problem then really just get a sponge yourself with water or if you don't want to do that oh you can't do that or in addition to that sit down put your feet in a bucket of cold water pick up a book and chill. It's it's exactly like the damp towel solution I mean why here we are talking about staying cool you're you've got more reason to think about staying cool and we right now we're trying to get. But if you put a damp toe on your head or on your neck specially on your neck it has a marvelous effect seems it seems to go far. Greater you know reaches far far more of the body than you would imagine. And it's such a delicious feeling when you're really hard she just that you know putting your lies again really but we can only dream about it really hard to the last mean a few months and I'll be able to give you the reality that I think. For your tech say 5058 if you please or 59 or 96 night 3 for your phone calls and a poll might be b.c. Dot co dot u.k. If you are listening to the podcast so with no further ado we had a little discussion last week Dr Carl actually about geese fly information and we had a botanist saying you know it's not all just physics and so on but it just a little follow up on this from John in currency who says if you look at a wind tunnel video of a are coming off the tip of an aircraft wing you'll see a vortex swirl. When geese flying a v taking the right wing of the lead goose from the rear as it flaps on the left wing of the goose next to it rises up using the vortex swirl to aid the wing upwards conversely on the upward flap of the lead goose the other goes flaps down as they all position themselves to take the upward part of the wing vortex saving energy the lead goose does most of the work but swaps a lead when tired that's a that's a fun thing to to think about and watch you know watch the geese where they're going overhead and see what you make of what John says from Gurnsey What do you think of that what's phenomenal I mean a mount of coordination an awareness of what your you know your fellow bird is doing both in front of you and behind you I mean there's still so much awareness that goes into that it and also what I find fascinating watching birds fly information about equally when you get those big and I can't say the word probably but when you get those huge flocks of stylings and that kind of wheel and crash dive around and they don't hit each other and I don't know how they move so fast and similarly with fish how do they coordinate so much that they all stayed just the right distance from each other and respondent with such accuracy and such timing it's quite extraordinary if you tried to get a group of people to do that you'd have to rehearse for 6 months and even then they'd still be one Plunker who goes left instead of right that's right could I just say by the way in reference to maybe a couple of you have said or sorry didn't catch Bianca's name this is Bianca Grady who is a science journalist and who do you write for I mean you write for a few people don't you. I do I do well I write a lot for Nature magazine which is a science magazine. And I have write for The Guardian of The Australian branch of its rights for sometimes for the baby save for. A graphic written for mit Technology Review in the us a great environmental magazine called in Sia I'm afraid Lance which is great because it means I get to write for lots and lots of different outlets and editors and audiences around the world which suits me very well as I like a variety of wonderful where you are again very welcome terribly pleased that you're here to take over from Dr Carl who is coming London words this point. He is going to be in London from Friday the 11th to the 16th of October that much I know I also noise at the Royal Institution on Friday night and I continue to look through my e-mails for any further information oh here we go I did just catch something in one of his emails he he writes quite long emails he says. I'll be doing shows a Royal Institution on Friday the 11th of Tobar and the New Scientist live on Saturday Saturday the 12th Tobar So if you haven't got a ticket for the Royal Institution or indeed cannot get a ticket for the Royal Institution on your in or are on the London or coming to London you can also try New Scientist live I can tell you where that says a word is quite often. Towards Docklands way in one of the big centers out there so just basically Google it and you will find out Carla will help people and we were small the best Anyway back to questions and this is a species of question that we get a lot and it's it's it's supposed you know mankind's part in climate change and obviously we're all thinking about that right now oh and Helen in Newberry says you know do we have any idea what percentage of climate change is due to man's activities humankind's activity and what percentage is jus to Mother Nature which has obviously gently change the climate for these millions of years. Well it is a very difficult question to answer because it's necessarily attribute a certain degree like say that this much is response is is human induced climate warming but what we can point to is if you look at the kind of the historical climate record and yes there is variation along that record there's this ice age is there a much warmer periods for example when the for in the dinosaurs dominated there had been periods when much of the earth was covered with ice and so those variations have always been there but what is different now is the speed of change so what we're seeing now is rapid warming and it's warming far more rapidly than it has ever done in history and since you know the it's I guess and since things kind of settle down we got an atmosphere that remained fairly stable and you know if things started to to not be kind of volcanic and planet forming and so whilst we can say 80 percent is human and used 100 percent as human ages what we can say is that we have changing the climate of this planet faster than it has ever change before and the reason that we know that it's because there's no other variation natural variation you know people talk about sunspot activity all the talk about you know solar cycles and all of these other things none of those account for any significant proportion of the change that we are now saying that has taken place literally in the last 100 years which is barely I mean it's it's a micro micro amount of time on a planetary scale so you know I think what we can say with absolute certainty is that our human activity is changing the climate of this planet faster than it has ever changed in history and everything that we know about atmospheric science and climate tells us that that changes come about because of being crazy. The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere because we we know that these concentrations have been this high in in past times but they were that high for a whole range of other reasons that were you know much much broader timescales much you know that the Earth was very very different and so when people say oh yeah well that we've had this much atmospheric carbon in the past it's like yes we did but then sea levels were 20 metres higher the climate was far different so it's it's that notion that. Nothing is ever certain sides it's always important to say that the overwhelming evidence overwhelming evidence is that. What we are experiencing now is our fault. That just to add to that a little bit we read a book a lovely book on Monday actually called the ice at the end of the world by John Gartner from the New York Times and in it he talks about ice cores and how they started taking ice cores in Greenland of course an ice core is a marvelous way isn't it of looking at the contents of the atmosphere because it captures the deposits of carbon of suit and other things so perfectly and then bubbles of air I mean ice traps bubbles of air and so that the most extraordinary atmospheric time capsules that you can take these ice cores and then off the top I had no had deep I go out how far back they go but it's definitely you know it will only go as it is and they can go 8000 feet but in terms of yes that's a long way. That is a lot of size of yours anyway yes and so the little bubbles of air that are trapped in that ice when it forms because you know the snow falls it gradually gets compressed into us and air is trapped in there and so what Atmospheric Research is can do is then study the composition of those bubbles of air and that tells us an amazing amount that's how we know that you know how the concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane and other greenhouse gases have changed in our atmosphere over time and that's how we know. That the changes we're seeing now are unprecedented in terms of the speed of the acceleration of that concentration and also we can look back and we can go Ok well you know when we had 2 degree warming how many millions of years ago. The earth then was completely different to what you know what it is now I mean if you had that degree of warming back then most of the major coast major coastal metropolises around the world would have been under water and so that's that's what's really scary about this is yes shall we do it in planet has experienced this degree of warming before but we weren't there and we certainly hadn't built most of our population our most populated cities a sea level so that's where it starts getting a little alarming because interesting question from looking Arbroath referring to a new story I wasn't aware of about the largest gold nugget ever found in Australia which is called Welcome Stranger says geologically what dictates the sizes of mineral deposits is it compaction by outside forces growth from within meeting a mole like Killer growth or some meteoric lump shattered upon hitting the us. Well gold Funnily enough I think gold is one of those minerals that we know is formed in the heart of stock. And so I know but when you kind of I was like the idea that you know the gold that you have on your on your ring around your neck lace comes from the heart of a stop my understanding it's not coming from within it is coming from within the earth but it derived from the solar system. I well I'm probably going to offend a whole lot of planets or geologists if I speculate on this but I do remember it's I think because it's one of those elements that it's not necessarily formed through a chemical product better not go there because I'll get it wrong but. There's something wonderfully romantic about it so leaving that aside which an offender is religious. So my understanding is that gold forms in seems in Iraq so you kind of. Not quite sure exactly how but it that's it's basically buried in same's in I'm presuming. Not quite sure what kind of rock generally it's found in but when we talk about nuggets these are basically fragments or giant fragments of gold that have been knocked off and where that all weathered out of it original big load all same of this gold so it you know it could be that in pots somewhere under the earth that we will call on their nuggets that you know the size of a car all the size of a house but it's just that they you know they so deep down we can't get to them we don't know where they are we don't see them and by the time we do encounter them if they're exposed they come to the surface through weathering you know millions of years then that large large is kind of way that awful broken off into smaller nuggets and those are the things that we find in some cases literally just lying on the ground as seems to happen with so many of the funny gold nuggets that a found in Australia. But they are quite I mean there's such fairy tales in Australian kind of you know mythology in some ways there's discovery of these absolutely massive lumps of gold by someone who just you know pulled up next to the road for a week. And it looks down and oh my gosh this is enormous chunk of gold. But I think the largest the largest gold nugget on are those using a metal detector or someone's. She gone hunting for hours and that was $27.00 kilos which is enormous a load knowing how heavy gold is that's probably actually about the size my figure but yes I do basically wear them with a lid or maybe sliding a little of your fingernail be slightly bigger Yes I'm exaggerating slightly. Let's take it so so that that necessarily answers it but no avoiding that the idea that at some point in the history the gold arrived on the surface from somewhere else it's quote from thought that if it were the probably grown some are well below coalesced I think Cohen when the Earth formed I think they were kind of they were the material that was you know that we coalesced from material floating around in you know the big planetary disk of our solar system so it's it's not necessarily that it's landed on the Earth from space it's just when the Earth formed that the gold that was there is as originally would have come from you know the hearts of stars that other stars that had exploded and gone supernova chucked all of their units out to the universe and so it's. Yeah not that it necessarily has fallen to it from from space all over your semester it's up there it'll gathering boss that sort of thing yes very much. Let's take a moment it's half past 3 on digital b.b.c. 7 last week from various cities b.b.c. Radio 5 live here with the news is clear Graeme thank you rolled world leaders have condemned Turkey's attack on North East Syria several European countries have requested a meeting of the un Security Council including press had the American military has taken 2 British Islamic state detainees into custody they were part of a British cell nicknamed The Beatles they have been removed from a prison run by the Kurdish led militia in northern Syria the outgoing Chief Medical Officer Franklin says eating on public transport should be banned and the sugar tax extended. Professor Dame Sally Davies says the government needs to take more action if it's to meet its target to cut childhood obesity and England's Rugby World Cup match against France on Saturday has been called off because of a typhoon under the rules the match will be recorded as a draw we'll have more on this at a right half an hour's time live from Tokyo with the rest of this morning sport Here's Nick Hatton Scotland are expected to find out this morning if they've been knocked out of the Rugby World Cup despite their 61 will win over Russia yesterday keeping them in contention for a place in the last 8 their final group game against Japan in Yokohama on Sunday is in doubt because the fast approaching typhoon Well rugby have called a press conference for 4 am Will a discuss what action they'll take they have the option of delaying the match by 24 hours by which time the typhoon is expected to have passed but cancelling the game will see Scotland eliminated if he's got the scrum half price a game of of this magnitude with so much on the line for both sides surely you car to Sky or 00 obviously Japan would go through which they'd be delighted with but I think even if you'd us there they probably want to. I guess the biplane at 80 minutes of rugby elsewhere Wales will be without down bigger for their final pull the game against year ago after suffering a head injury in their $2917.00 whenever Fiji is head coach Warren Gatland he didn't do an h. I was just because of the contact it was just from moves from the bottom of field because of it which means that you know he's not in consideration for the Sunday and then he'll have to go through the protocols and we probably get someone to have a look at them as well in football Wales will be without Aaron Ramsey for tonight's Euro 2020 qualifier away to Slovakia the event is midfielder didn't travel with the squad but his manager Ryan Giggs says he should be fit to face Croatia this weekend just a little bit tight as he is a doctor from Sunday sit down to trouble with both Monday evening to debate on the group. Today physio stayed back to work with him over the next couple of days and yeah we hope followed it be available for select more than a manager Michael O'Neill says he believes his squad are capable of doing something special when they face Netherlands the same in the league to need at least a draw to keep their qualification hopes alive Germany top group c. After 5 games with Northern Ireland 3 points ahead of the Dutch in 2nd you can hear that game on 5 Live tonight from 745 Meanwhile England right back Trent Alexander Arnold says they have to be tighter defensively if they want genuine success guys Sask a side of all 4 of the qualify so far but they have been sloppy at the back at times including conceding 3 at home to Kosovo last month but I think if you want to be regarded as one of the best teams in your opinion go off on your all those in and try and win when the competition are clean sheets and all our goals conceded need to need to be sure we need to see if your goals are not she score more saw I think for those as defenders and and as a team as you know we know where we need to improve and that's what we will be working on and then play the Czech Republic tomorrow night the former Chelsea and Arsenal goalkeeper to check Cas what grass for ice by signing for national ice hockey league Guilford Phoenix as a goaltender He's currently the technical and performance director at Stamford Bridge but with a 3rd choice keeper for the Phoenix and what frame his Chelsea schedule allows a Max Whitlock felony Paul holes in the men's team final as is Great Britain finished face of the world gymnastics championships in Stuttgart Russia took gold at of China and Japan. Russia. As. She was. Out thanks to our it was. She was always trying to be the next to show he's got a brace. 3 for 6. And a Basque law school this is b.b.c. 5. And we're back with the Australian science journalist Bianca Grady and here we are Bianca and Nobel Prize week and there's one Nobel Prize which is really accessible I think at least the result of it is something that we all use every day and that's the Nobel Prize for chemistry. Absolutely and what's particularly interesting about this Nobel Prize is that one of the laureates is actually the No the oldest ever Nobel laureate So John I'm not sure if it's good enough or good no I'm. Let's go. Let's call him good enough I think he's got a Nobel Prize and I'm sure that Jack is going to get Mike a lot but he's 97 as so it goes to show never give up but yes so the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was eroded to John good enough Stanley wishing him and Akira just say no for the development of the lithium ion battery specifically lithium ion rechargeable batteries which I'm pretty sure everybody will have at least a couple of days lying around the house and they have revolutionized energy storage and they continue to do so actually because for a long time you know we used to having them add devices and you know it started out with the the Walkman or the camcorder all those kind of early devices but now Lissie m i n rechargeable batteries are underpinning the renewable energy. Infrastructure because one of the issues with some forms of renewable energy such as solar and wind power is that sooner or later the sun sets and the wind dies down and so lithium ion batteries provide a way for us to store the excess energy that is generated when the sun is up and when the wind is blowing and stored in these with human batteries for night time Wolf when the wind dies down so that we can then kind of continue to use it during what is often actual peak hour félix or city usage that's always the problem is often. A time of generation doesn't necessarily match the peak time for the usage but lithium ion batteries they are quite extraordinary So they're basically a bit of a kind of background a so a typical lithium ion battery you've got a graphite electrodes who got to kind of solid electrodes Now one of them is might have graphite and the other is made of a lithium or lithium compound it's often come. With cobalt for example and these are immersed in a liquid in a fluid and a kind of ironic liquid and so what happens is when the batteries in use you get a flow of charged lithium atoms or ions which flow from the graphite electrode to the a lithium based electrode through this liquid and that flow of charged particles is what generates the electricity but then when you recharge the battery it reverses that flow so it drives the lithium ion back from the lithium electrode back to the graphite and I would wear this Stuart and so it's in ready for discharge again and so I mean for example in Australia down in South Australia I think we have one of the largest lithium stationary lithium ion battery setups in the world because South Australian Government has built it to store renewable energy for use to fade back into the grid at night. So it's it is I mean it's a an extraordinary discovery that I made and definitely not that I know who the competitors were but it definitely up there in terms of being Nobel prize worthy. So yes it is really interesting isn't it because one of them to think of it and then to have them to make the batteries really efficient and make them about tricks that we of to day and that we all value so much. Absolutely and I mean that's the thing I the Nobel Prize is in some way they kind of honor I only have a few people but it's the tip of the iceberg of all of the people and the researches who would have made contributions to enabling that development to come to fruition and I guess what's also exciting about this is that lithium ion batteries in a lot of ways that there have been so successful because they've been the 1st I've been the 1st type of rechargeable batteries that have really been developed made it to market gone gone Lacina been made it wides at a large scale but really they're just the start of the start of kind of battery storage technology and what's happening now is that this field is expanding rapidly because lithium ion batteries obviously are fantastic they're very efficient they're good they have a really good delivery of electricity but Lithium is a finite resource we're using a lot of it we're not necessarily in danger of running out yet but it is a mind resource as it Comal is an unstable because we think about a number of the fires you know there was a. Samsung one Samsung for Galaxy galaxy about 7 of us yes and this is this is one of the the big issues with lithium ion batteries is that the the liquid that the 2 electrodes are immersed in that liquid is very highly volatile. And it's and it and it that this is why these batteries can bust into flame they can explode if they if they damaged and so that's another reason why it is so much research going on at the moment to try and develop batteries that use different different kind of liquids different electrolytes that aren't so volatile an explosive year or else is also research as are hence the premium suppose on making phones that have stronger cases. Indeed and why you know when you go on air on an airplane and they say feet drop you find down the side of your chair or your headphones down the side of a chair Darrent move your chair because there's a concern that if you move your chair and you somehow rupture distort that better enough that it can explode burst into flame which is not what you wanted 30000 feet above sea level is. It it's it's a really exciting area battery particularly around the sort of stationary energy storage which is going to be essential as we transition away from fossil fuels to to renewable energy batteries are going to play a really important part in that this is from go well I'm. Writing from Cheshunt back I'm sure he says I was recently wondering how a shock wave can travel in space I often see on simulations on t.v. Programmes and hear of shock waves being produced in certain celestial events for example when fusion begins the birth of a star or when a star goes supernova and the resulting shock wave can trigger the birth of new stars but how can a shockwave travel in space when there is a vacuum and a medium for its travels through well the interesting thing with spices. There is isn't really a total vacuum there is always a tiny tiny amount of matter and look at might be one electron or one tiny atom of material into over a vast distance but it's there so it is it that's a really good point I mean shock waves compression you know you have something compressions and then expands as as it's kind of I guess shoved by that energy. But the in space even though there is hardly anything out there in that in deep space it is almost a complete vacuum there's still just enough material that these shock waves can propagate but I mean they they probably don't propagate very much you know they probably lose a lot of their energy once they get past that initial kind of area of much higher density of material that we see so we know supernova if you look at the kind of an image of a supernova or a kind of a name that's a supernova remnant remanent they don't just continue to spread out through the universe they they they quite discreet and you can you know you get these beautiful pretty little shapes. Like the Crab Nebula and all of these but they do eventually paper out because the density of material becomes so small there's so little there that the shockwave basically pages out but it can still spread so I don't know how far guys I mean what we we do detect I guess we detect gravitational waves which is a slightly different thing because that's that doesn't require material because that's actually kind of distortions of I guess space time. But it could question to how far would sound spread you know the sound of a supernova Could we hear the sound of a supernova that was halfway across the universe I suspect the answer would be no because that just wouldn't it would just peter out like it but I've been a huge raise you raise a point I mean what kind of sirens if they are signs are people getting back from space you know with radio telescopes. Well I get that's that's the you know that is a great question How far does that sound travel how far have we listened and I I don't know you hear this this probably is a stupid question can you hear the solar wind yes I'm sure you'd be able to yes because it's it is a movement of charged particles I mean we couldn't hear it in obviously our only is would not be able to detect those vibrations because I suspect they would be very low. But if you had the right instrument you listening at the right frequency then if you have that that kind of movement presumably they would be a sound accompanying that but it's I don't know enough to know what it sounds like in fact I was listening the other day there was some recording from and I can't remember the name of the craft that's currently sitting on mas but it a recorded Mas quakes and so I sat and it's very kind of very subterranean rumbling you know like you'd get at some start of some huge spacecraft landing in a science fiction film but you could just you can actually hear the sound of Mars quakes this something quite intriguing about hearing sounds from beyond our own planet and Sam says on earth think about shock waves don't forget the dark matter because of dark massacred can talk these shockers to. Indeed Yes Well Doc matter in fact that's interesting you should bring that up because Doc matter is behind one of the Nobel Prizes in physics which is just awarded this week as well as that there's a Canadian scientist James Paypal's and amongst here as well as a printers I was looking at all right yes but his work was also around Doc matter and dark energy which which is believed to make up about 95 percent of the universe so now if we are only really know 5 percent of what's out there the rest of it is a big we'd wonderful mystery but yes absolutely I mean this if even though this may not be what we understand to be conventional matter that we can detect there's something out there man Maybe Doc matter is also helping to propagate those shock waves and those sound waves as a result of Lee a lovely story which I fear I might get wrong but it was about. Peoples who is who is actually proving through his calculations something that Albert Einstein earlier thought about which is the way that you know dark matter exists that doesn't interact with ordinary matter at all and when I proposed it he then put it to one side because according to The New York Times account of this Einstein called it his biggest blunder and there's a lovely There's a lovely complimentary nature about this because people's is at Princeton and Einstein was also at Princeton when he made that discovery so there's a lot of pride there I think for the institution. So let's let's go on and this is from Charlie in Glasgow who says during the Apollo program How did not figure out the gravity of the mood in order to orbit and then finally aligned and further to this how do we know the gravity of other planets in our solar system. Well I believe that gravity is essentially a function of mass the mass of a planet so I think it's a it's probably I imagine it's a fairly. Straightforward calculation if we understand generally the mass of a planet which we can learn by. Looking at its orbit how it orbits its if it has a sun how it orbits its sun but also the orbit of other celestial bodies around it all of those things give us clues as to the mass of a planet and once we know the mass then we can work out the kind of the gravity what the gravity would be on the planet's surface or the equivalent of its surface . Obviously I don't know that exact formula but what way this doesn't change though is the the makeup of the planet so what it what a planet is actually made for Megs obviously the gas giants have different different makeup to you know rocky planets so or what about you know more water or ice planets and so those things would also change the gravitational field of the gravitational force of a planet and sometimes we can measure we can actually learn more about planets make up by measuring that gravitation so I think it was the Juno mission that was going around Jupiter. Or maybe in Cassini a current member there was one of the 2 missions that went around the big gas giants and so their actual recordings that they took of the gravitational field around these planets were then used to tell us a little bit more about the composition of those planets so it can well it works both ways but the relationship between gravity and mass is a fairly direct one so we can use one to try and work out the other or derive a lot of information right about the other so you could really you could do this sitting behind a desk as it did last so long before they ever ever got there. Absolutely and it is actually then ties into one of the other Nobel Prizes in physics which is quite convenient which was to Michael Marin da kilo's who were awarded the prize for one of the 1st the 1st exoplanet discovery which is a planet that's orbiting a star similar to our own and the reason that they were able to discover this planet because it was too far away to necessarily see directly but it was because as the planet orbit the star it's the gravitational relationship between those 2 made the star what will because it's almost like you know you know if you imagine like a shot put a swing around and around and around the shot put it moves as well as the shot put so that don't just sort of pivot exactly on the part the way on the spot the weight of the shot put also makes the shot put a move a little bit and so that's a similar thing that happens with planets orbiting suns and so they were actually able to detect that wobble of the shotput or is shot put the one that all the spin around yes are good for getting the wrong sport and so that wobble that gravitational really. For that would be the hammer wouldn't it if you're sure that I think yes not the shot put the hammer and so that was how they were able to detect that there was a an exoplanet orbiting the stop because they could see that wobble in the parent Stoss so that that was a little a kind of a gentle segue way across from the the original question been tied in nicely with the Nobel Prize. John from Aberdeen can you explain the Van Allen belts I was watching an old sixty's black and white apocalyptic science fiction film where the swing that it properties are affected by solar flares and meteors but like a cross between Day Of The Triffids and the day the suits still do the hail and Sun C.F.C.'s that affect the ozone layer fact the Van Allen belts or is it too high. I think it's too high said the Van Allen belts. Belts of energetic charged particles that are kind of pulled into a certain shite by the Earth's magnetic field will by the magnetic field of the of any planet so these charged particles actually come from the solar wind from from the sun and as they kind of stream down onto towards earth they are actually captured because they charged the Earth's magnetosphere the Earth's magnetic field actually captures them into these big shapes if you sort of picture the way a child would draw a butterfly you know you have the the round circle in the middle which is the planet and then you have these 2 big round wings coming out on a the side and that's kind of what the Van Allen Belts alike but I believe there are a lot further out than most of the atmospheres so I don't think that they necessarily interact at all with things like c.f. Ses or kind of. The the dense dense or kind of materials that are in the lower area of our atmosphere and yes atmosphere does go out a very long way but once it gets to those attributes it's much much there's not as much material there and so I'd actually don't know the distance all he got us are they did they were from about 64258000 kilometers out from the surface of the earth and I believe the Earth's atmosphere extends to about 300 kilometers above the earth's surface so they're probably 2 quite separate entities. Well. Here's a tricky 15 if I say I'm good you know this is from Charlotte in New Castle in New South Wales he says I've always had difficulty understanding the scope of equals mc squared until I had to explain that a podcast by Professor Richard Paul pards p o g g Paga from Ohio State University which is untitled a stormy $162.00 stars galaxies in the Universe episode 13 sun I would go that way while explaining how stars convert matter to energy he states that when converting hydrogen to helium through nuclear fusion or a 1000 grams of hydrogen only 993 grams of helium is obtained with the remaining 7 grams being converted to energy Professor Paga explains just one gram of hydrogen liberates enough energy to lift 64000 metric tons of rock up to one kilometer in the sky at and he says Now admittedly aiming this at our dear friend Dr Karl I'd love to hear you expound on this and perhaps offer other insights does sound like an awfully good podcast doesn't it Richard aga. Yes I shall have to check that out. Look I This would probably be much more in Dr calls territory as coming from the sort of physics space that he does but. And I'm probably I guess explaining what the podcast would have already explained in terms of the significance of equals mc squared which is essentially that we know that matter and energy. The same thing and age cause mc squared is the equation that tells us how much matter how much the kind of the equivalence between matter and energy so energy equals mass or Matta times the speed of light squared obviously there would have been a lot of thought that went into coming up with that and I am no Einstein. But yes it's if we could. Tap into that in some fashion but I think the tricky thing here is that when you stop talking about trying to get things up to the speed of light. That's that's very difficult we can't even get even remotely close to accelerate ing much to the speed of light unless you're talking about sort of the Cern particle accelerators which do get up to an appreciable fraction of the speed of light but. The technology to convert something like that into usable energy I think is probably a fair way off in the future but I could be wrong this bad there's probably some research going on into how to do this but I think when you when you start talking about getting anything up towards a spate of lot you know again if you look at the size of particle accelerators and the amount of energy that's required for them to do what they do and that's just for a single particle. Somewhere down the road if technology continues to progress and if we all survive to see technology progress that's a phenomenal reward doesn't it for for that amount of of energy to be real it was easy it would be nice be nice Well look I can only say thank you Bianca for doing a an incredibly difficult job at very short notice you've been awfully kind to come to the party for us. But you know I hope I hope it just hasn't been too bad you haven't lost you know too much too much weight sushi or nervous exhaustion and . Oh it's a lovely challenge and I love it I love getting asked about Van Allen belts and and even mc squared. Was. A very good morning to you it's 4 am on Thursday the 10th of October b.b.c. News on while the Web Turkey is conducting coordinated ground and air assaults against Kurdish forces in northern Syria despite international condemnation of the offensive President Trump has been blamed for giving the green light for the Turkish advance by withdrawing American troops from the border area the Kurds had previously won praise for their role in defeating the Islamic state group Senator Lindsey Graham normally a staunch ally of Mr Trump's So the u.s. Had to shamefully abandoned its Our Laurie but Mr Trump defended his move the worst mistake that the United States has ever made in my opinion was going into the Middle East it's a quagmire we are up too close to 8 trillion dollars and we're bringing our.

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