Transcripts for BBC Radio Scotland MW BBC Radio Scotland MW 20180315 020000

This c.b.c. 5. It's 2 o'clock on 5 Live I'm Richard Foster this is a bull market I'm a news this hour Washington offers Britain is back in the diplomatic row with Russia. A point Mark Hughes as manager and Chelsea are out of the Champions League this is b.b.c. 5 live with the b.b.c. News on 5 Live Here's Lisa McCormick Russia's demanding material evidence that it was behind the poisoning of a former spy in Solsbury the un Security Council's held an emergency session to discuss the attack following 2 reason Mazen on XM and the 23 diplomats to be expelled from the u.k. He is a security correspondent Gordon Corera the aspiration is ambitious simply to dismantle Russia's espionage capability here in the u.k. Other measures as well the government wants including the ability to stop suspected spies at the border report something they could only do with terrorism suspects as well and to do more to check private quite right the government's to spend almost 50000000 pounds in a new chemical weapons defense Center report and Dawn scientists there helped identify the nerve agent used to poison surgery skiffle. Of troops will be vaccinated against anthrax as a precaution. Bricks and secretaries told the b.b.c. He can live with a transition period of less than 2 years after the u.k. Leaves the e.u. David Davis says he's more concerned about getting the right deal more important that blunt that he is that we get the implementation period agreed in March legally side up until the autumn but that's more important to me than a few months either way so I'm not bothered too much about the question of whether it's Christmas 2020 or. 2021 thousands of students across the u.s. Walked out of their classrooms to demand tighter gun safety laws the protests were organized to commemorate. The Florida school shooting a month ago in which 17 people were killed likely took part in a war god in Chicago I want to feel safe in my own score which ever since for a shooting happened I haven't. I just wanted to honor the 17 or so experts say at least 300000 extra university places will be needed in England by 2030 to keep up with demand research published in the Higher Education Policy Institute warns it'll put more pressure on the public purse and a cap on student numbers may be needed to be introduced to researchers in the u.s. So they find particles of plastic and some of the most popular brands of bottled water in the largest study of its kind more than 200 bottles were examined food safety experts say it doesn't mean the water's unsafe to drink but Professor Sherry Mason who is involved in the project says more research is needed some of these particles are so incredibly small that they can actually make their way across the gastrointestinal tract cross the line and be carried throughout the body and we don't know the implications of what that means on our various organs and tissues and a police dog who protected his handler when he was stabbed with a 10 inch knife is to be honored with the George Cross for animals for his bravery the German Shepherd Finn was also injured during the chase in Stephen aged the news with the sport here Shojo Southampton have appointed Mark Hughes as their new manager until the end of the season they dismissed a mercy 0 pelligrino on Monday after a run of just one win in 17 matches Hughes takes over with the team one place above the Premier League relegation zone with 8 rounds of games to go the Chelsea manager Antonio Conti reckons anyone watching their last 16 tie against Barcelona in the Champions League would agree the final result is unfair the league leaders won the 2nd leg 3 mil of the new camp and progress to the quarter finals 41 on aggregate Arsenal women won the continental tires cup for a record 5th time they beat Manchester City one mil in the final. England rugby union head coach Eddie Jones has apologised unreservedly after a video of him making disparaging comments about Wales and Ireland appeared online he made the remarks at a sponsors event in July and Ruby Walsh will not ride again at the Chelton Festival this year after a fall which resulted in him aggravating a recent leg injury this is b.b.c. 5 live on digital on smartphones and tablets a quick look at the weather forecast rain continuing across the west and sithe over 9 it could be heavy through the early hours in the western hills eastern areas will be clawed Eve It should stay dry them even into Thursday rain will persist in the north and extreme east I disguised to follow in the side west there were further shower of rain as spreading into wells and sites west England throughout the afternoon. Every race from the children festival continues today from one of the 5 Coming up before 3 o'clock students and school staff across the u.s. Have been commemorating the Florida school shootings with a walkout it's exactly a month after those killings took place we'll be hearing from a reporter at a better demonstration and a student who's been involved plus more small tributes to Stephen Hawking who of course died around about 24 hours ago aged. Mt 6 we hear from a man who took him up on a bet about theoretical physics and one he was actually a physicist himself and the animation director who worked on the episode of The Simpsons he featured it and which of course memorably Homer mistakes him for Larry Flynt the founder of Hustler magazine that's coming up in the next hour. First to 6 minutes past to here's the news from c.b.s. . This is c.b.s. News on the hour. I'm Pam Colter yet there are tens of thousands of students staged a nationwide walkout today to demand action on gun violence stop the violence stop killing. And put the good news that people can hurt c.b.s. Is Adriana Diaz in Parkland Florida they gravitated to the memorials or 70 memorials set up with crosses and Stars of David representing each of the 70 people who died they gravitated to those memorials and they sat in circles around them they hugged each other they cried there was a lot of emotion it was very somber The House has passed a bill designed to prevent school shootings c.b.s. Is Steve Dorsey the stop school violence act passed nearly unanimously it funds efforts to train students teachers and officers to identify early warning signs of violent behavior and intervene early supported by the White House the bill now goes to the Senate for a vote in Birmingham Alabama police responded to a call about an active shooter at a local hospital officials say 2 people were shot and the gunman is down Attorney General Jeff Sessions is considering a recommendation by f.b.i. Officials to fire a former deputy director Andrew McCabe c.b.s. Is Paul or his just days away from retirement so if he was to be fired he could potentially lose his pension and all of his other retirement benefits became has been harshly criticized by President Trump Oklahoma officials are preparing a new method. For executions nitrogen hypoxia breathe it you die it's painless and you go to sleep in a matter of seconds Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter clearly satisfies the 8th Amendment prescription against cruel and unusual punishment it is unusual no one in the United States has ever carried out an execution by nitrogen hypoxia Robert Dunn at the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center it will be human experimentation Oklahoma executioners used to be pretty busy but botched legal injections put death on hold there since 2015 Jim Taylor c.b.s. News a Navy fighter jet crashed off the coast of Key West today Commander Dave Hecht of Enable Air Force Atlantic says there was a mishap on approach to landing during that mishap the pilot and the weapons systems officer ejected from the aircraft about a mile away from the runway the 2 crew members were picked up we can buy online competition including from Amazon toys r us is on the ropes Several reports say the bankrupt retailer is poised to close all of its u.s. Stores c.b.s. Has just lessened its sad because it is an iconic brand you know I keep thinking that Geoffrey the giraffe just went from the endangered list to the extinct list this is c.b.s. News a Boston man did freeze up while rushing to the aid of snowbound police officer to the rescue of a police wagon stuck in a snow bank in Boston. 'd and dressed like Elsa from the movie Frozen Chris Haines is a lawyer who put on a long blue dress in a silver wig for a man in drag outing at a bar in the south end when he noticed police were stopped he ran outside and helped get their wagon back on track the video has gone viral on Facebook. C.b.s. News lots of restaurants may be envious of a small eatery in freedom and the last kitchen is so popular it's turning to a post card lottery for reservations recommendations magazine mentions in. Video They got $2000000.00 views fueled interest in the restaurant that owner Aaron French says reflects an old fashioned Maine style she says they received $10000.00 phone calls and 24 hours from prospective diners last year Pam Colter c.b.s. News c.b.s. There well as you hearing in the news that students across the United States have walked out of their classrooms to demand tighter gun safety laws across the nation they staged a 70 minute protest to represent the 17 people who were killed in the Florida school shooting exactly a month ago these students in Washington have been explaining why they took pot actually I don't see why average American citizens to have a ar 15 rifle was a military style weapon on the streets like no normal citizen to have that we were just having guys as just to have a use for whatever they want we can come in and wait about are we going to be the next most i love was going to be the next month or not and so way so we had to come out and that it was well Jiabao is a freelance journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area Hi there Julia Yes well what exactly has been happening in your area today well quite a bit a lot of what you were hearing just a minute ago I walked out I play went silent vigil for those who were killed last month and 4 and. A lot of discussion about where that's where these gun laws the where this gun control debate is going what did the students say to us when you spoke to the. Well the students I spoke to some of them said that they did not want to partake in the. In the protest themselves because they want to get in trouble with their parents but I also know other parents who were very supportive about their students or their children walking out and felt it was important for them to take a stand for something that they felt very strongly about it has been any come back from the schools it's a little the students be punished as this demonstration being allowed to go ahead. I am seeing mixed responses from different school districts around the Bay Area some school districts are very supportive of what the students are doing others are quite different over in a town not too far from Oakland there were students that actually were photographed breaking open locked gates to actually scape sort of speak to break free from the high school and go out and protest So there's definitely people on both ends of the spectrum in this issue even out here in California I'm interested to know have been the any sort of opposing demagogues you know who was in favor of guns not that I've heard about not specifically I wouldn't be surprised if maybe a few people showed up but some may be in other parts of the state but to my awareness No no nothing specifically staged as a counter protest and what about the reaction from officials as well I mean conventionally bring in statewide controls the guns sold to the holders have to come from from the White House and from Congress. Ah Well lawmakers in California have been taking steps for over the years to implement their own gun a gun control a gun control laws excuse me whether it be background checks the age restrictions that sort of thing the same is also recently happened in Florida and I think mostly in response to the school shooting there but the National Rifle Association has swiftly responded and the courts by. Alleging that that is unconstitutional so of course there's going to be some back and forth in the courts for a while I have imagine absolutely and you experience and just from your own post experience where do you think the the balance lies at the moment you do see people most people in America will certainly in your area are generally in favor of the the the the greater cold for full price you can control well in California in general of course there are people who I know got owners personally in California but generally speaking getting a gun control law in California historically has never been much of an issue especially here in the Bay Area. Julie abound freelance journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area thanks very much indeed for speaking to us here on up all night will love Violet Gilbert was one of the students who walked out of school today in protest for stricter gun laws and she's a high school student in the state of Illinois hello there violence Hi Hi How did the walkout happen at your school how did people get involved. Well I know there was a committee that hoped to like make posters and sort of advertise it if you will and they sort of they reached out on social media and sort of instructed everyone on what to do and when we 1st got to school we had a late start so classes started at $940.00 and the students at $950.00 started chanting up and down the hallways to sort of call everyone out who wanted to protest and we all went outside so how many people were involved in all do you think. I really don't know hundreds or lot of kids most of the school yes most of the school definitely I thought was interesting the woman before me was mentioning how there she didn't seem to know if there were any counter protest at my school there actually was a counter protest but it wasn't it wasn't many kids what's the strength of feeling to just describe the strength of feeling in of tougher gun control. Well for me personally I feel strongly about it I tried I've been trying to do as much as I can in terms of activism towards subject mostly like say for schools and everything like that I wrote a letter to the superintendent of our district which I thought was a really great little thing that I could do to sort of get involved and the demonstration I understand took about took 70 minutes and then everyone but went back to class today is that right yes yeah we you chanting throughout the throughout the protest Yeah we were chanting different things like about how we are we are we are students and we will make a change and why do you think it is that the school school shooting celibacy happened recently do you think that is why it's become such an issue for young people Yeah definitely because like seeing it happen so often is terrifying for us because that can happen to us any day really like being a high school student and that's where the peak of it is happening and it's really ridiculous that we should even have to worry about that but we do what chances do you think you have of success here. What do you mean well actually have to be able to get tougher gun control I think the magnitude of it all like all of the students that are involved there's so many kids across America that are like my age and even younger that are really just trying to make a difference and I think the amount of people the number of people really it's going to make a change I think it really is possible that we can all make a change together and the area where you live in Chicago does have quite a lot of gun crime doesn't it particular in the in the south of Chicago Yes I mean how how Major does a gun crime have to be now before it makes the news in your area. I don't know I just think it really stands out when it's at a school full of young people whose lives are ended before they have even even like started what about 2nd Amendment rights and that and that kind of thing that's what we hear all the time in the counter-arguments and like you said it was a cancer prostate cancer protest at your school today where do you stand on that people have a right to bear arms in the United States it's part of the Constitution yes they do that is part of Constitution and. The group who organized it all there was a girl who gave a speech and she did mention in her speech that we are not standing against 2nd Amendment rights we are standing to protect people's the American citizens 2nd amendment rights however we are trying to recognize the lives that were lost and bring awareness to the fact that schools are not as safe as they should be and gun control should be better how is it possible though to actually do that with the 2nd Amendment being in place do you think. Well because I feel like 2nd Amendment rights should be taken away obviously but with the guns that are out there right now they can't that are committing these mass shootings that the people who can take the people who can take these huge guns and just kill so many people at one time I think those huge just like semi auto semiautomatic rifle should not be allowed for sale what do you want the politicians in your area think about this are they are they broadly in favor of your claims. I don't know what kind of depends like some are either here or there yeah she had me sort of contact with them and know how they feel no not really I see so where do you think leave the protests will will go from here. Well I know that there's another one scheduled to happen soon I'm not sure exactly what I'm but I'm excited to see what will happen I'm hoping that an actual difference can be made and I think there's a really good chance of that actually happening Violet thanks so much indeed for speaking to us here on file a global one of the students who were walked out of school today in protest for stricter gun laws She's a high school student in Illinois. And she's 16 years old thanks very much indeed for speaking to us here on up all night Well tributes have been made throughout the last 24 hours for Stephen Hawking from around the world the physicist and author died early yesterday at his home in Cambridge Not only was he of course one of the world's most brilliant scientists he also became a cultural icon Michaels is an animation director he directed episodes of The Simpsons in which Professor Hawking guest starred Hello there Pete Oh no you didn't Very well thanks very well tell us more about how Stephen Hawking got involved in The Simpsons have how on earth did that come about when he was a big fan of the show years. From now on American television. I know he was a huge hit basher been on the show 4 different times the surrender it was the 1st time he had been on and I know a lot of the writers are also fans of his and I think Misty rocking the smart he was he was also in science he was also smart in the 2nd knowing. To get the word out there to get more people involved in science and reading his books he was very much very savvy at media marketing as well I mean you know just by being a fan of the show and kind of. He was invited by the writers they wrote him into an episode that was the episode with Lisa tribesman. People and so that was the 1st episode he was he was a was it yes that was the 1st before he appeared on the show 4 times. Did you direct all of those particular episodes. You know I just heard that 1st one I was very much involved with. Proving his design and making sure that was much fully done and he didn't want to make fun of his disability or anything you want to make sure it was very classy did he actually come to the studio Oh did you will do it did it was also just done over the Internet kind of thing oh he did yes actually he visited several times I got to meet him under one of the table reads us when the actors read or write table and bring new episodes read the script and see where we think working and what's not working but a lot of times we had. Guests at table read even talking in there several even if he wasn't even in the episode he was so kind. If he was in happened in the area he would. Come in and the temperature is very very very expensive he didn't read it seriously but it was. From what I said it was inserted and the way that. The characters very much for flicker are human condition and he just love how we present he I guess in a table read when he came down. To the Fox lot and it was I think it was the 1st time he'd come to a table and everybody was so excited. Bro lined up to meet him and when it was my turn. To get to meet the Hawking I'm thinking you know and he starts at the time he had a little device that he would say or so we had to scroll through words so here scroll through these words and so here I am you know Steve Harvey looking at me and he's about to say something I'm thinking what is the world's smartest man is going to say something profound intro spirit he says hi which to me was the greatest thing that just made him so to me and you know you think of. I guess because you know it's because he couldn't move and couldn't do all the things that were we take for granted. Because he is so smart because he was so iconic that you almost forget that there's a person inside there and then you know friendly high was great Did you did you find out to you what you must have found out what he actually thought of the way he was drawn in the way he was portrayed on screen. Yeah I heard that he actually enjoyed it and I do remember anything else he had. Completely forgotten until he read that algae. Producer hadn't actually an interview that he the only thing he was very much. On board with with the jokes and everything the only thing he didn't want was to trump I see why it would be a very you know got my quote right when Lisa joins Mensa one of the funniest quotes quotes in the particular episode is when Homer Simpson confuses Professor Stephen Hawking with Larry Flynt and he says that Larry Flynt is right you can little suck . Yeah he loved that show he was on board so we need to Larry Flynt here already oh sure course yeah yeah he was very much. He didn't take it too seriously and he had a great sense of humor Yeah a lot of people have spoken about that in the last 24 hours I suppose that was that was one of the things that made him so great wasn't it was it was this incredible incredible brain but with the sort of real good design as well right I mean we tend to think of scientists and people that are you know too serious charges they don't have a sense of humor but you know the details like everybody else has a little laugh and pretty and of course he's paid in so many shows didn't he wasn't just the Simpsons that was also a Family Guy Futurama Why do you think he had that sort of engineering appeal to the show's writers. And I think you know in our case our writers are very well read a lot of kind of Harvard and. We're familiar with his work so I think there were always fans of his and it was also an element of I think of. As artists and writers were also you know science fiction fans and you know if you're science fiction fan you're also a fan of science and how it applies and. He. You know is he's our Generation Einstein So I think there's a popular that he became like the face of. The sciences. Is strange isn't it because I mean I was thinking earlier today you know the one of his children described him as a showman and I suppose that's that's correct as well mainly because mainly because he had an outgoing personality you know the the voice synthesis was became who he was and he said himself but of course you know how do you how you been in a quieter person an interview he just wouldn't have worked he would have he wouldn't have achieved the fame that he did absolutely and it kind of makes me wonder if he if he didn't have a disability what would he have been Mike. With you know. It would have been as much a sham and I think you would have been even more so I think you would have been on your lot it would have had a lot of shows here and in many ways progressed I see you doing that now. And I think Stephen Hawking would have been even more. More of a more of a pop cultural icon as well as a scientist you think is Pete still there. Still are I think Peter's I think we've lost Pete sorry about that Peter Michelle's the animation director directed the episode of The Simpsons in which Stephen Hawking guest starred you're still left feet stand so you're still there so I just lost you very briefly is a slightly dodgy phone but yeah I mean just just to sort of to to wrap up he he's going to be remembered both as a fundamental scientist and also a pop cultural icon Yes Yes And rightly so. Yeah there there's also some some mystique about him because he was in a wheelchair because he had to speak to the voice box. That kind of brings him up to a good another another level absolutely How do you remember you know how we how we met him how we were about it. I'll remember him as you know as. Just a regular guy having him in a wheelchair and just a fan of the show I mean I could never you know comprehend a lot of his theories it's you know. I'm not that smart but just getting to meet him and seeing the person that's how I remember him. P. Michaels animation director from The Simpsons thanks very much Eddie for speaking to us a man who were mad Stephen Hawking on a few occasions and indeed directed that particular episode of The Simpsons where as I was saying Homer just does tend to confuse him with Larry Flynt's the founder of Hustler magazine Go figure what listening to up all night here on 5 Live just coming up to 234 digits on my smartphone and tablet this is b.b.c. 5 Live and Lisa McCormack has the headlines the White House is about to resume a decision to expel 23 Russian diplomats in retaliation for the nerve agent attack in Solsbury the Kremlin continues to deny any involvement and says it wants material evidence governments to spend almost 50000000 pounds updating the chemical weapons defense and reporting Don scientists there identified the nerve agent used to poison Sergei scruple the backs that secretary says he could live with a transition period of less than 2 years after the u.k. Leaves the David Davis says it's more important to strike the right deal during a summit in Brussels next week and tiny particles of plastic have been found in the bottles of many major brands of water scientists in the u.s. Analyzed 250 bottles bought in 9 different countries that's the 5 Live news England's cricketers are playing the 2nd day of the 2 day tour match against New Zealand 11 some a man is watching in Hamilton and they're struggling at the Pinball The $73.00 for 5 with half an hour to go until the tea break got the latest to go played on to Jamison for 30 odd hitting for 4 stoma not for one court behind bench also caught behind looking to leave for 14. Just came back into him. Drive taken in the slips by Got Till. Livingston is 14 not out better yet to score 7345 to score now the rest of the sport from Shojo Sarka Messi scored twice in the process took his Champions League goals tally to 100 as Barcelona sunk Chelsea 3 mail in the 2nd leg of their last 16 tie. In the competition the Argentine also set a bar says other goal as they completed a 41 aggregate victory Chelsea manager Antonio can't take sort method out after the game to congratulate him whether you have a deal to make a great compliment to Messi I think that it's right it's right that we can you guys are super super super to talk Larry out. Because we're talking about the player that it never is able to score 60 gods Dutch international They have scored the only goal as Arsenal women beat Manchester City in the final of the continental tires cup she says winning Euro 2017 with her country last year really helped her years or maybe one of the biggest finals in football and yet today I think experience helps a lot even when you're like one are now are the last 10 minutes you just know what to do new Southampton manager Mark Hughes says he's excited by the challenge of trying to keep them in the Premier League he replaces Maurizio pelligrino who was sacked on Monday the team are one point in one place above the relegation zone midfielder Charlie Adam played under Hughes at Stoke the club which sacks him earlier this season I think is a sensible appointment for said I'm thin he's a good manager to go get back and stuff and you know try and organized on let's say the triangle believe but games I think they've got 5 away the whole is going to offer them England rugby head coach Eddie Jones has apologised unreservedly for offensive comments he made about Wales and Ireland on stage at a sponsors event last July the video of Jones's speech was uploaded to the Internet at the time but has only now gained wider public attention top jockey Ruby Walsh is out of the festival after suffering a suspected stress fracture to his leg the festival's all time leading rider who only returned from breaking his right leg 6 days ago heard the same leg after a fall in the r. I say chase on Wednesday his sister Katie was very emotional after winning the final race of the Day herself was a true being poured out that's very soon and what is by far too has turned out to be a marvelous name for me. Yeah all I can think of is have to be honest one sees so when he's talking that's the main thing we're not waiting to hear as he walking up yes you know so. You know that's the main tank and Masters champion Sergio Garcia and here's why. On July have given the new daughter the same name as the 13th hole of the Augusta National the Spanish Gautham a vital part of the 13th on his way to winning his 1st major title last year the new baby is called. And that's the very latest from b.b.c. Sport. Dickson macaque I'm looking to the train station instead $2117.00 steps taking part in a sponsor don't roll call $968.00 status just guessing not to change the t.v. Channel instead of using the mother's old was 12 years old and in the nation's big steps get the school we need to get stopping and start raising money today find out more b.b.c. Documentary 6 winning cross the u.k. This is b.b.c. 5 the cocaine right. With me rich full stop until 5 o'clock More now on Stephen Hawking on the combi too many people who've taken on his brain and one who actually managed to find someone who were up all night he's John press cool who's the Richard p. Fineman professor of theoretical physics of counting and he actually won a bet against Stephen Hawking he told me how it came about I had a couple of that's with Stephen and the 1st one arose when I was visiting Cambridge in 1991 with my friend Ken Starr and we were in a rather heated scientific discussion and you see there and of course there's a brilliant scientist but sometimes he's so sure of himself that it can be a little bit irritating so at one point I said well what makes you so sure Mr Know it all and there was a pause and after a beat Stephen said I want to bet. And since Kant was there he stepped in and facilitated it that now that that was about. What we call naked singularities a singularity is a place where gravity grows so strong that the laws of physics as we know them break down and don't apply and what we're arguing about is whether singularities can be naked or if they're always hidden where no one can see them like inside black calls Stephen was very firm that there should be no naked singularities and Kip and I said well why not who would be fun to see one and so we made that bet and eventually to my surprise Steven conceded that about 6 years later and he offered to kip in me as payment t. Shirts with with what he called a concessionary message but the t. Shirt actually had a. Image of nakedness which I was a little bit too embarrassed to wear and Stephen thought that was very hilarious that I was reluctant to wear it and then we made a later bet which is became even better known which was about what happens to information that falls inside of black all this is a big controversy in theoretical physics black holes are supposed to be objects from which nothing can ever escape so it raises the question if you have say a secret diary and you wanted to disappear from the universe for all time is it safe to throw it into a flat call and no one who remains outside where it's safe will ever be able to read it. And Stephen believe that was the case that information once inside a black hole can never come back and be read by anyone again and to join Stephen on that side of the argument but I argued that it is possible for the diary to eventually escape from the black hole in some very scrambled form that you could read in principle all go along with great difficulty and again to my surprise Stephen changed his mind about that and conceded that in 2004 on a very public occasion where there was a scientific meeting with 700 scientists and because the terms of the bet war that the loser was supposed to pay off the winner with an encyclopedia and a new one was a baseball fan he got me a baseball encyclopedia but we were in Ireland and Dublin and there's no way to get a baseball encyclopedia in Ireland so we had to have it ordered overnight so you could presented to me and not knowing what else to do I took the encyclopedia and held it over my head as though I had won some great triumph I must have felt it must have felt like a sort of triumph but least I suppose well yes but you know of course we do the bets for fun but the scientific issues at stake are very serious and things that we care deeply about but the reason I was surprised by Stephen's concession is I think even now there is not. A completely conclusive argument to settle the question of whether information can escape from a black call or not it's something we're still working on it's still one of the great challenges in physics and that challenge goes back to Stephen's greatest discovery the discovery that although we call them black holes because nothing can escape from them they can actually. Leak or radiation what we call Hawking radiation and then the question becomes is information somehow encoded in that Hawking radiation in some very subtle way and we still don't really know the answer for sure after over 40 years of arguing about it this is one of the lasting legacies I suppose of Stephen Hawking isn't it the fact that he did he was he was able to put out a least incredible theories which we will probably be looking at referring to for hundreds of years to come when I would there's no question he was an extraordinary scientist and all the more so because of the. Physical challenges he had to overcome which really made him sometimes seem superhuman I mean he had a power of visualisation he couldn't work on problems in physics the way most of us do by scribbling equations on paper and. He did it all in his head and he developed through you know many years of experience the ability to settle these very subtle mathematical questions just through being able to visualize things was really quite extraordinary but you're right about his ideas being very far reaching and we will continue to. Pursue those ideas and extend them for some time to come his his legacy as a scientist the contributions he made to science will will last for eternity they are really great and of course in addition to that he became a wild place successful popularizer of science and the most famous scientist in the world he really was an extraordinary man in many ways and we're going to miss him terribly I've been speaking to quite a few people tonight about about Stephen Hawking and off up and asking a few of them whether they could make head or tail of his book a brief history of time could you well I'm a physicist so I knew what he was talking about but the ideas in the book are extremely deep and I think to someone who doesn't have a training in physics. May be very hard to fully appreciate but Stephen believe that even if you can't understand all of the details which are highly mathematical that anyone should be able to appreciate it least in broad principle the pursuit of these questions about the universe and space time and he believed in that very deeply and that's what drove him to write a brief history of time which. Of course became one of the bestselling popular science books ever written don't press school the man who wants one a bet against Stephen Hawking he's the Richard p. Fineman professor of theoretical physics at Cal Tech and spoke to me earlier with his tributes to the Great Man I'm just looking at some of the quotations here online this is really nice it would just in advance breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star but we can understand the universe that makes a something very special or that one this $12.00 links in a sit on next item remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet to try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist be curious and have a difficult life may seem there's always something you can do and succeed at it matters that you just don't give up well looking upwards for the next few minutes in the company of Alexander from the University of Manchester over the week in astronomy I began by asking her earlier on about the passing away of Stephen Hawking and his influence in the world of astronomy I mean he will definitely leave a lasting legacy one of his most important contributions was that all Hawking radiation named after himself this theoretical discovery started with the question of whether or not black holes and heat and Hawking had shown had previously shown mathematically that black holes a baby 2nd door of thermodynamics Now this basically means that the or the amount of disorder in an isolated system so called entropy must increase over time and for mystics this physics Hawking showed that black holes can actually shrink in size which is something that previously hadn't been thought possible and I guess when you think of black holes you think of them pulling in all a matter that they can then just increasing increasing in size but yes but black holes can shrink through this mechanism over Hawking radiation. That was one of his obvious the contributions to the world of cosmology and mathematical proof of the Big Bang as well of course and yes so he has his peers proof of this actually leans on a very kind of old and tested method of proving a mathematical theory that proof by conscious contradiction so you. Basically say that the thing that you are trying to prove isn't true and then show that the conclusions that you get from last fall so kind of Hawking try to mathematically determine that the Big Bang theory wasn't possible and he came to the conclusion that it is possible for space time to have begun as a singularity so that space and time in the universe were once where this single point and the big bang than most of the cards to kickstart the universe It's tremendously sad isn't a minute anyone who has any passing interest in science at all will fell to a real pang the announcement of his death Of course yes yes and yeah the reaction amongst my my colleagues you know the people working within within astronomy and science in general definitely saddened by by the loss today. In other news in the world of astronomy we have the birth of a symbol x. Ray binary What on earth might that be. So yes so this is talking about a couple of stars and the stars are really it's like the sun and those kind of a new discovery of a pairing a neutron star and red giant so red giant. Basically a look into the future of what. Will Become so the sun has been around for about 5000000000 yes. And it will be well remain about the same for another 5000000000 years or so more on something that we call the main sequence and this is its kind of made hydrogen fusion and phase where it's energy is coming from from fusing hydrogen it's coal and however over time that stock of hydrogen will deplete and means that the. So that the power from the fusion will no longer balance the gravitational pull of the sun has on itself so the core of the sun will collapse and the envelope of the sun will kind of increase in size and will get cool cool surface and it's red giant star and you also have a switch for when. A little bit much more massive than the Sun die and they can go supernova have this explosion and leave behind this this neutron star. And it's not unusual to find multiple Stoss and any particular system that the sun is actually they have an outlier in this regard being on a siren or makes you look into the night sky all the points of light that we see in full 50 of them are actually. Getting together and what is right is to have a pair of stars the beast this red giant. A neutron star and like that these are called a sim symbiotic x. Ray binary on the quite rational no more than 10 that would be observed extol. And what has been observed recently is there was a powerful flash of x. Ray light last August coming from the direction of the Milky Way skull and researches think that this was in essence the birth of distance x. Ray a mission which comes from. A creek saying off of the this larger red giant and on to the neutral star and this transfer of matter gives off energy in the form of the powerful x. Rays. How do you have a neutron star in the same system as a red giant So this is actually a really interesting question and something that the us the study that I was mentioning studying taking the system was never looking at so one thing that you can do to determine the age of an e. Tron stuff is looking at it's my kinetic field so that the stronger the field generally the younger the new trends to. Buy in red giant are. The the end of a star's life so they would expect the red giant to be much older than the neutron star as a neutron star has has this very strong magnetic field. So it is a bit of a puzzle actually to if they either the neutron star magnetic field is indicating a fast as it would be expected to or the neutron star actually formed later in the history of this is in this binary system so that's something that they don't actually know. How significant do you think. I was with anything it's quite a nice field within astronomy but it's I think it's exciting in itself because like I said no more than 10 have of these have been observed before and. This is this is notable as it's the 1st time that kind of the the birth of this kind of system the 1st time that they have. In flux of energy on the neutral. And it's released in the form x. Rays has has been. So why I think is happening is that. The system is going to be monitored in x. Rays to to see how the x. Rays kind of evolve over time if you also will be seeing that the evolution of the system from its very beginning let's talk about the night sky Venus Mercury on a very thin crescent moon this week yes on March 19th just after sunset if you look over to the western horizon and you do need a very low western horizon for this so ideally you know buildings in the way trees anything like that you will be able to see Venus much. And they'll be joined by a very young so about 2 days old crescent moon. So that nice try and go towards the the western horizon and so my curious still close to the max know me from the sun's not the basically. The point at which pays for that away from the sun. In the sky relative to 2 and so I was actually Elliot tonight. And so I have yet to view this triangle of the Moon Venus and you might need binoculars but you don't want to be using these before the sun has set and this will be quite a tough challenge to open but these kind of condoms I think are all it was worth having a look out for how do you know when you've you've actually seen them and so my carry on Venus will be relatively bright and they will a pair well that they will be drowned out a little bit by the remaining sunlight but they will be brighter than the stars around the specially Venus will be particular bright particularly bright and that you'll be able to see the distinctive crescent of the moon. Well it's the vernal equinox to this week or maybe early next week and yes so on the 20th of March so I'm on around for 415 in the afternoon u.k. Time the sun will cross the celestial equator so this is the spring economics and this is the this era points our side aerial time and the how the sky coordinates are right ascension is defined in terms of what we see from this days and nights will now be of equal length and the days after that will be getting longer as we move into summer and on On Tuesday the sun will rise kind of exactly in the east and say exactly in the West and Alexander from the University of Manchester with all things in the world of astronomy let's keep it scientific and see what stories of caught the eye of science journalist Bianca McGrady this week Hello there hello Richard hi a warm arctics Arctic spells are increasing the likelihood of extreme cold in the eastern u.s. I understand they are and this is kind of time legs I think Donald Trump had a tweet recently about how cold it was in the u.s. And and how we could do with a little bit of global warming here which is you know I don't know what to start with that but it turns out that it's actually kind of he is getting a little bit of global warming because the extreme cold snaps that are affecting have been affecting parts of the United States a do appear to be a symptom of global warming and more specifically these could actually be a flow on effect of the warmer much warmer optic region so in this particular study they did that they looked at observations across 12 u.s. Cities and looked at the correlation between temperatures in those cities sorry this is across the northern United States temperatures in those cities and temperatures in the Arctic and they looked at these records going back to 950 so a lot of data here and they found a quite a strong current. Between unusually high arctic temperatures and these extreme cold snaps but interestingly it's this relationship only seems to exist for the east of the United States not the west so in fact the West either doesn't have any effect or it actually correlates with the woman way to so warm up act it needs a woman which when the West states so it's kind of a tricky one because what they think is going on is that when you've got these strong amount of Arctic warming it's triggered a Sudden Stratospheric Warming So this is a layer of the atmosphere it's the 2nd major layer of our atmosphere it's about 20 percent of the earth's atmosphere is in the stratosphere and what happens is that when that warms it actually weakens what's called the stratospheric polar vortex so when this vortex is strong around the Arctic the arctic air is well contained it's all where it's supposed to be above the Arctic around the Arctic Circle but when it's weak they actually get the flow of this super cold Actiq air becomes a lot more disorganized and so you actually get masses of this cold air that pushed down towards the equator and so that's what they're suggesting we've been saying lately with some of these you know the snow Ziller And snowmageddon and all of the various titles that we keep coming all the Americans keep coming up with for these extreme cold snap events and I think they're actually having some of the moment of this certainly a lot of snow going on so it suggests that if the and if the Arctic is significantly warmer than the chance of these extreme cold events in the eastern u.s. Actually more than doubles so you get 2 to 4 times the chance of these and these massive big freezes and is there any evidence that the same amasses a coming down to to Europe because we've had a very very cold winter here. Yes Well they talk about it being a kind of a Eurasian phenomenon so it could also be impacting it could also be impacting Europe and Northern Europe and obviously the you know the u.k. You're a little bit more protective because various ocean currents around that area like the u.k. Warmer than it would otherwise be a but yet they I mean there is certainly the possibility if they're coming down they're not just going to come down and tickle the United States there's every chance that they're going to come down and impact northern Europe and even have central Europe as well I'm not sure but but that sort of that study is that remains to be done so yes if it does it's definitely related to climate change I mean we've got you know and the Arctic winter ice has actually reached record levels and I believe the temperatures that the North Pole recently was 60 degrees Fahrenheit above normal which is just insane so it's the suggestion is we're going to see more of these sorts of weather events I understand there's a new type of winged dinosaur which we now know could actually fly. Well this is this is actually of it's an old very old type of wind out of sorts perhaps one of the most famous weaned unfed fossils ever found which is Archaeopteryx and when it was discovered which had come from and what it was quite a long time ago it really helped to kind of a stablished that link between dinosaurs and modern birds so it lived in the light year Essex period is still to be one of the earliest birds but one of the longstanding mysteries with Archaeopteryx was how it actually used its wings because obviously it's very difficult to work these things out when you've got a squashed fossil so we don't know until recently we didn't know whether it was a flightless bird like an ostrich still did it since flap around like chickens and a little bit off the ground did it glide or did it actually really probably fly and flat like a lot of modern birds and such to answer this question paleontologists used a very delicate imaging technology because you can't cut open a fossil you need to be able to look inside it without damaging it so it's called phase contrast synchrotron micro tomography which does not really roll off the doesn't know. It's essentially it's similar technology to it to a c.t. Scan computer tomography cité scan so this enables them to actually look inside the bones of these accurate tricks fossils and look at the structure and that structure can tell us a lot about the stresses that were actually placed on those vines by muscles and tension of and tendons and that in turn tell gives us some idea of how these bones moved so what they did was they actually compared the structure inside the accu up tricks binds with the bone structure of a whole range of other birds and flying species so this range from extinct pterosaurs all the way to modern birds and what this suggested was that yes Archaeopteryx did fly by at it wasn't really like a superb flyer it wasn't really up there with eagles and albatrosses all those sorts of it was probably a bit more close to a pheasant so it probably flew flaps flapped to fly over short distances and in short bursts of flights. Actually just while I'm on that there was a there was a recent discovery around pterosaurs which these huge giant flying reptiles if you ever watched Jurassic Park I think they featured failand prominently and do a lot of a lot of damage so Terry dactyl is were long thought to have actually been in decline before the mass extinction event of the asteroids 66000000 years ago but they've actually now found 6 more species of these pterosaurs in North America which suggests that these were actually really in the pain of their own ascendancy when when the asteroid wiped the map so I thought well the skies would have been very interesting at that time possibly much more dangerous than we thought as well yeah absolutely and another thing that could be a little dangerous is smokeless tobacco products Yes So smokeless cigarettes have been marketed as supposedly being a safer alternative to conventional cigarettes but this research suggests that they may not in fact be as safe as the manufacturers claim so the idea behind these these devices in this one it's a battery operated electronic device so it hates a plug of tobacco but it hates it to lower temperatures then in a cigarette so it doesn't burn the tobacco not supposed to and the idea is that and it delivers the nicotine the this tobacco infused vapor rather than a smoke but a group of us researchers actually tested its performance under a whole range of conditions and after a whole pile of different methods of cleaning and I found that it does in fact there is charring that goes on that increases the temperature so you are still being exposed potentially to some of the same chemicals including with the pest is a plastic film in there as well and they found that that was hated to quite high temperatures which could release some some toxic chemicals so really you're better off quitting entirely quitting entirely blank you know Grady thanks very much indeed that's the stories which of making the news in Science this week we're going to stay with science for the next hour it's quite a scientific show tonight isn't it don't to calm.

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