for the many ways you showed us love, for the many times you challenged us, for the many times you comforted us. now on bbc news, review 2021, the year in science. it was a year shaped by the global fight against the coronavirus pandemic, but with significant of relevant to climate change and space expiration. —— expiration. 0urscience expiration. 0ur science correspondent gives expiration. 0urscience correspondent gives his analysis of the year. 2021 was the year that world leaders agreed on a new plan to save the planet. hearing no objections, it is so decided. scientists warned that it was now or never to stop damaging climate change. the difference between 1.5 and 2.4 it's really survival of millions and millions of people and species on the planet. environmentalists chop down trees to save the planet. nasa's perseverance rover landed on mars. and there was a discovery of what might be another fundamental force of nature. welcome to the year in science. the earth's climate dominated this year in science. for a long time, scientists have warned that our current way of life will lead to dangerous and possibly irreversible damage to the earth's ecosystems. world leaders gathered at the un climate change conference — we're told now is the time to act. ready to start. world leaders gathered in glasgow in november to hammer out a deal to reduce carbon dioxide levels to stop dangerous global warming. and one of the biggest disputes was over the future of coal. for a while, it looked like negotiators couldn't reach a deal. then, the man at the centre of the talks, alok sharma, had to appeal to all the parties to cooperate. this is the moment of truth for our planet. and it's a moment of truth for our children and our grandchildren. it did the trick — an agreement was reached. by the end of 2022, countries will have to update their climate pledges at a faster pace than before. by 2024, a package of long—term financial aid for the poorest nations has to be agreed. and then, by 2030, to avoid the worst of global warming, carbon emissions should be halved. but that will be made harder by china and india's insistence that coal should be phased down rather than phased out. so, as things stand, polar ice will still melt faster than ever, raising sea levels and together, with heavier rain, threatening millions of people with flooding. we have already warmed by 1.1 degrees since preindustrial times and world leaders say that by limiting the rise to 1.5 was still possible, but projections they were headed for 1.8 and that's only if every promise is kept. more realistically we are on course for 2.4 degrees a really dangerous level. the difference between 1.5 and 2.4 is really the survival of millions and millions of people and species on the planet. this is what is particularly true for the islands. but according to a government adviser at the heart of the talks, the worst outcomes can be averted. we have kept 1.5 alive, but on the basis of delivering on those commitments and that'll be our next task, not just for the presidency, but for all the countries and it is on us to make sure that this is real. and sir david attenborough said the richest nations had a moral responsibility to help the most vulnerable. it would be really catastrophic if the developed nations of the world, the more powerful nations of the world, simply ignored these, these problems. do we say, "oh, it is nothing to do with us," and cross ourarms? we caused it. thousands of men, women and children who have lost everything, lost everything, can we just say it is no business of ours? an assessment by the environment agency said that the uk was not yet ready for the impact of climate change. in october, a street in cardiff became a dangerous river after a massive downpour. there was a similar scene in newcastle after torrential rain there. in america, europe, south america and siberia, there were raging wildfires. the biggest shock came in germany, injuly. a surge of water tore through communities. 200 people were killed. the weather events that we saw in europe this summer could happen here in england and we need to be ready to save lives. we need to recognise that it is adapt or die. young people were involved in protests across the world as they have the most to lose if we fail to get the impact of climate change under control. they're also the ones who can fix the problem. 5,000 of them were involved in a scheme to understand and help solve the environmental crisis. we wa nt we want to know how clean the air is in our school. we are measuring plans to see how they're growing outside. we have been learning about worms. this is mustard powder. you're going to mix the mustard powder into the water. this one is about learning the role of worms. these are babies. 0k? baby worms! these are the scientists of tomorrow and they've got to think about their future and their children's future and it is a long—term game. this is not something for a single generation, we have all got to play our part. other projects involve growing nature—friendly food. it is so important is a matter of our lives now and i think it should be important to everyone and this is why we've started the outdoor learning area so that we can protect the environment and try and combat climate change. the young researchers took what they are discovered and presented their work to the politicians at cop26. there was a new award for those trying to save the planet called the earthshot prize. its name is a reference to america's moonshot. an ambitious programme to get an astronaut on the lunar surface. but more than 50 years on, prince william told the bbc, saving the earth was an even bigger challenge. we need some of the words greatest brains and minds fixed on trying to repair this planet, not trying to find the next place to go and live. but many scientists are the choice between earth space is a false one. the science museum gallery celebrates the heyday of space travel, in the 1960s and 70s when humans went to the moon. and it was that effort, they say, that helped draw attention to the planet's environmental plight. but, for many, it's the beautiful images from space that most inspires. no more so than the pictures from the hubble space telescope. for more than 30 years, it's captured distant galaxies, stars being born and dying. images that have been as uplifting to the soul as they have been to the mind. hubble�*s successor is nasa's james webb telescope. unlike hubble, the £7.5 billion spacecraft will go beyond earth's orbit. 930 miles into deep space. once in space, it unfurls its giant mirror and delpoys its instruments. the space telescope is much more powerful than hubble and it will be able to analyse the atmospheres of worlds orbiting distant stars to see if there are signs of life. it will also be able to witness the birth of the very first stars. this is a simulation of that critical moment. the purple areas are clouds of hydrogen gas becoming ever denser until they form stars, blazing like fireworks. james webb is expected to capture images of this really happening. i'm so excited! why are you so excited? isn't it just fantastic that a humanity, a tiny little civilisation on planet earth, that we can create a telescope that begins and up into space and peer back to the universe as it was just a couple of hundred millions after years after the big bang. and some incredible views from space were obtained from these aerials planted in a small field in hampshire. these pick up radio waves from distant galaxies. they may not look like much, but astronomers have connected 52 sites just like this one spread all across europe. together, they've captured some of the most detailed pictures from space ever taken. in this image, the galaxy�*s in the middle and shooting out either side are jets of material across the expanse of space. it's because of a gigantic black hole inside of it. astronomers can now see things they've never been able to see before. this is a picture of a galaxy seen through a normal telescope. and here is a standard radio image of it. though it is a lot brighter, a lot of the detail has been lost. compare it with one of the new high definition images which is much sharper, showing features inside, in unprecedented detail. the brightest area at the bottom shows the location of a gigantic black hole inside this galaxy. it's bright because of the energy released as it's sucking in material around it. meanwhile, in the deserts of chile, a telescope was able to see the universe as it really is. filled with the mysterious substance called dark matter. it can't be seen, but this instrument detected dark matter by the way it distorts style light. this is a map of matter in the universe. astronomers produced this map of how it spread across the cosmos. permeating space, accounting for most of the mass of the universe. the brighter areas where dark matter is most clump together. it is here that galaxies form. it is our reality shining like gems on an unseen tangled cosmic web. but the map is not what astronomers expected. according to einstein's theories the matter should be slightly more clumped together and instead, it's smoother and more spread out. building on the work of einstein, carlos frank was among the scientists who developed the current theory of cosmology. hearing now that there may be something not quite right with the theory is very disconcerting, it is very alarming. and, in a way, frightening. to see that maybe my whole life's work might crumble in front of me. but at the same time, it is immensely exciting. back in our own solar system, nasa's perseverance rover landed on mars. a first look at the surface. these pictures are the spacecraft during the final few minutes of its descent, and as it nears the surface, clouds of dust and grit are thrown around as its thrusters are fired on from another camera angle we can see the vehicle lowered to the ground. safely on the surface of mars! these were the scenes from mission control. shortly after, a tweet from the rover. it has been drilling into the surface and storing some of the rocks for a future mission to bring back. some of the samples may contain fossilised evidence of life. i'm not talking about martian little green man. probably not even fish! we are looking for microbial life or microbes or slime that you might find at the bottom of a pond. there is a type of things that are likely to, well, they did exist on earth 3.5 billion years ago. the question is, did they exist on mars at the bottom of the lakes? 0n—board is a small helicopter, ingenuity. it carried out the first powered flight on another planet. back on earth and boldly going where hundreds of people have gone before... star trek�*s captain kirk, william shatner, blasted off from a launch site in texas. it was a ten minute flight to 60 miles above the earth, enough time to float in zero gravity. waiting for him on his return, amazon founder return, amazon founderjeff bezos, whose company developed the rocket system. what you have given me is the most profound experience i can imagine. i am so filled with emotion about whatjust happened, ijust... it's extraordinary. at the age of 90, william shatner finally reached the final frontier. in physics, there was what could be one of the biggest steps forward for a generation. scientists believe that there are four fundamental forces of nature. one for gravity, another for electricity, and two nuclear forces which control the behaviour of atoms. together, they explain the way the world works, but in recent years, astronomers began noticing things in space that cannot be explained by the four forces, such as galaxies spinning faster than they should and they can't explain why the stars and planets and everything on them, including ours, exist at all. the new results suggest there might be a fifth force which could explain some of these mysteries. the result was from thermilab, a particle accelerator from just outside chicago. scientists accelerated particles inside this giant ring close to the speed of light. and they found something that cannot be explained by the current theory of physics at the subatomic level. i think it's quite mind—boggling and it has the potential to turn physics on its head. and we have a number of mysteries that remain unsolved and this could give us the key answers to solve those mysteries. you have heard of electrons, well, there are similar particles called neuons which are much happier and spend like tops. in the experiment, they were made to rotate using magnets. the current theory states that they should rotate at a certain rate. instead, they rotated faster. this might be caused by a mystery force, a fifth force, which is created by another yet to be discovered particle. in february, a meteorite blazed across the night sky, over the rooftops across the uk. a large chunk of it landed in the driveway of this family home in winchcombe, gloucestershire. we came out and we looked at this pile of what looked like crushed coal. and so i started even then thinking that perhaps it has come down from space. security camera footage captured the flight of the meteorite as it flew over nuneaton, somerset, wigan, before it ended up at the natural history museum for a study. winchcombe is one of the most pristine materials that we have on earth to study anything that is really good about this particular case is that we saw it fall and so we can use that to track back the trajectory and work out where in the solar system it came from. a study from the natural history museum found that the uk is losing biodiversity so quickly that it is now one of the most nature depleted places in the world. that's important because there are rare, long—lost species that could be better suited to the extreme conditions caused by global warming. many of the crops we depend on such as this coffee plant won't thrive under the increased temperatures predicted by climate change. but these beans from 1873 could provide an answer. they were found in the collection at kew gardens here. not only are they more heat resistant, but they make an excellent through with tones of honey and blackcurrant, apparently. it is one example of many of how science, rather than taking us away from the natural world, is bringing us closer to solutions for some of humanity's greatest problems. millions of tonnes of sand were shifted to a stretch of coastline in north norfolk to see if a natural barrier could hold back rising sea levels. it seems to have worked. the homes and businesses are on the front line of rising sea levels. the sand barrier idea is cheaper than building a concrete seawall. this more natural solution could be used to protect more coastal communities. we are making space for water to allow natural processes to come back in places where we can do this, i think that is the attitude we need to have and that we're not going to be able to keep building sea walls. in 2021, nearly 60 acres of trees were cut down in northumberland. to reduce carbon emissions! it sounds strange, but it was done to save an ancient peat bog which traps far more carbon than trees ever could. the building blocks of the peatland are the stagnant masses— which themselves, like this one, are absolutely full of water. - they're about 90% water. and that water is why blogs are better at slowing climate change than trees. when plants die in a bog, they don't release all their carbon into the atmosphere because they don't rot completely. which is why this... is good for the environment. there is greater diversity among science students than ever before. but an analysis in march by the royal society shows that there was an unacceptably low number of black people among academic staff. 6.3% drop out of their postgraduate studies which compares to 3.8% of students. black people account forjust 1.7% of research staff in the uk whereas they make up 3.5% of the population. and out of 22,745 professors in academia, 155 are black. it's that culture that can be quite toxic. it is due to racism, all the statistics show that it is not due to class, or what school they went to, and that environment and that culture is carried on all the way through for student life cycle and into careers as well. in an effort to attract more ethnic minorities, a series of projects were launched across england to encourage them to phds and to support them throughout their research careers. there was a surprising discovery at canterbury cathedral. inside, its stunning windows depict symbolic religious scenes. this series was thought to have been made on the 13th century. but researchers discovered that some of the panels including this one of the prophet nathan, were made much earlier. it has only come to light now because of this device, called a window lizer. it may not look like much, but it was developed by scientists to be used on location without damaging the glass. it shines a beam onto the surface and causes material inside to radiate. this radiation contains a chemical fingerprint to allow researchers to work out their age. we have been working on this detective story for some time, putting all the pieces in place, and then we finally get an answer, something new that brings together science and art into one story. it is fantastic. these are all that were recorded at the time they happened here. the discovery astonished leone selger who looks the stained glass windows here. she believes the related panels could go back to the mid—1100s and were replaced during the great historical events at the cathedral including the assassination of the then archbishop thomas becket who features in many of the windows. they would have witnessed the murder of thomas becket. henry ii come on his knees begging for forgiveness. they would have witnessed the conflagration of the fire that devoured the cathedral in 1174. and then they would have witnessed all of british history. there's a lot more in store next year in science. the large hadron collider will restart at its highest will restart at its highest power ever. the james webb telescope will send back its first data which may include pictures of starlight in the universe. europe and russia will send a rover surface to search for signs of life. but it is the earth we will need to focus on. its changing climate means that the planet's fate hangs in the balance but science can provide of the solutions. and give us hope for the future. good afternoon. the new year has started just as the old one ended with some exceptional my air across the uk. this afternoon, it stays mild, windy in places, and rainfor some but not for all. some rain pushes across the south—east, some showery rain in northern ireland and scotland and for westerns, particularly, we'll see wind gusts of 60-70 particularly, we'll see wind gusts of 60—70 mph, maybe even a bit strong in the most exposed places. top temperatures, 13—16 , white extreme for the first day of january. tonight, some of that rain clings in the south—east, some more showery rain pushes in from the west overnight, some of that could be on the heavy side, a little bit cooler than last night across the northern half of the uk, but temperatures still above where we would expect them to be. summer wet weather clearing eastwards tomorrow, then some sunshine and then more showers along the spells of rain racing in from the west. it will be windy, not quite as windy as today in the far north—west, and a bit cooler as well, highs of nine to 13. this is bbc news — these are the headlines: new year honours for leading figures in the battle against covid. professors chris whitty and jonathan van tam are knighted. drjenny harries and drjune raine are both made dames. no, darling, you don't need those. how do i look? fabulous. it's absolutely fabulous forjoanna lumley who is made a dame. whilst the outgoing james bond — daniel craig — is made a cmg. in sport, husband and wife jason and laura kenny are made a knight and a dame for services to cycling. further covid restrictions in england must be an "absolute last resort", according to health secretary, sajid javid. the president of south africa pays tribute to desmond tutu as "the spiritual father of our new nation".

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