In Our Time: Science

• Pollination

  Since plants have to mate and produce offspring while rooted to the spot, they have to be pollinated – by wind, water, or animals – most commonly insects. They use a surprising array of tricks to attract pollinators: striking colours, iridescent light effects, and enticing scents, to name but a few. Insects, on the other hand, do not seek to pollinate plants – they are looking for food; so plants make sure it’s worth their while. Insects are also remarkably sophisticated in their ability to find, recognise and find their way inside flowers. So pollination has evolved as a complex dance between plants and pollinators that is essential for life on earth to continue. With Beverley Glover, Director of the Cambridge University Botanic GardenJane Memmott, Professor of Ecology at the University of BristolAndLars Chittka, Professor of Sensory and Behavioural Ecology at Queen Mary, University of London.Producer: Eliane GlaserReading list:Stephen L Buchmann and Gary Paul Nabhan, The Forgotten Pollinators (Island Press, 1997)Lars Chittka, The Mind of a Bee (Princeton University Press, 2023)Steven Falk, Field Guide to the Bees of Britain and Ireland (British Wildlife Publishing, 2015)Francis S. Gilbert (illustrated by Steven J. Falk), Hoverflies: Naturalists' Handbooks vol. 5 (Pelagic Publishing, 2015)Dave Goulson, A Sting in the Tale: My Adventures with Bumblebees (Vintage, 2014)Edwige Moyroud and Beverley J. Glover, ‘The evolution of diverse floral morphologies’ (Current Biology vol 11, 2017)Jeff Ollerton, Birds and Flowers: An Intimate 50 Million Year Relationship (Pelagic Publishing, 2024) Alan E. Stubbs and Steven J. Falk, British Hoverflies (‎British Entomological & Natural History Society, 2002)Timothy Walker, Pollination: The Enduring Relationship Between Plant and Pollinator (Princeton University Press, 2020)In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

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  50:10
• Slime Moulds

  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss slime mould, a basic organism that grows on logs, cowpats and compost heaps. Scientists have found difficult to categorise slime mould: in 1868, the biologist Thomas Huxley asked: ‘Is this a plant, or is it an animal? Is it both or is it neither?’ and there is a great deal scientists still don’t know about it. But despite not having a brain, slime mould can solve complex problems: it can find the most efficient way round a maze and has been used to map Tokyo’s rail network. Researchers are using it to help find treatments for cancer, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, and computer scientists have designed an algorithm based on slime mould behaviour to learn about dark matter. It’s even been sent to the international space station to help study the effects of weightlessness. WithJonathan Chubb Professor of Quantitative Cell Biology at University College, LondonElinor Thompson Reader in microbiology and plant science at the University of GreenwichAndMerlin Sheldrake Biologist and writerProducer: Eliane Glaser In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production

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  51:30
• The Habitability of Planets

  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the great unanswered questions in science: how and where did life on Earth begin, what did it need to thrive and could it be found elsewhere? Charles Darwin speculated that we might look for the cradle of life here in 'some warm little pond'; more recently the focus moved to ocean depths, while new observations in outer space and in laboratories raise fresh questions about the potential for lifeforms to develop and thrive, or 'habitability' as it is termed. What was the chemistry needed for life to begin and is it different from the chemistry we have now? With that in mind, what signs of life should we be looking for in the universe to learn if we are alone?With Jayne Birkby Associate Professor of Exoplanetary Sciences at the University of Oxford and Tutorial Fellow in Physics at Brasenose CollegeSaidul Islam Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Kings College, LondonAnd Oliver Shorttle Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Clare CollegeProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list: David Grinspoon, Venus Revealed: A New Look Below the Clouds of Our Mysterious Twin Planet (Basic Books, 1998)Lisa Kaltenegger, Alien Earths: Planet Hunting in the Cosmos (Allen Lane, 2024)Andrew H. Knoll, Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth (‎Princeton University Press, 2004)Charles H. Langmuir and Wallace Broecker, How to Build a Habitable Planet: The Story of Earth from the Big Bang to Humankind (Princeton University Press, 2012)Joshua Winn, The Little Book of Exoplanets (Princeton University Press, 2023)In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

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  52:50
• The Antikythera Mechanism

  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 2000-year-old device which transformed our understanding of astronomy in ancient Greece. In 1900 a group of sponge divers found the wreck of a ship off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera. Among the items salvaged was a corroded bronze object, the purpose of which was not at first clear. It turned out to be one of the most important discoveries in marine archaeology. Over time, researchers worked out that it was some kind of astronomical analogue computer, the only one to survive from this period as bronze objects were so often melted down for other uses. In recent decades, detailed examination of the Antikythera Mechanism using the latest scientific techniques indicates that it is a particularly intricate tool for showing the positions of planets, the sun and moon, with a complexity and precision not surpassed for over a thousand years.With Mike Edmunds Emeritus Professor of Astrophysics at Cardiff UniversityJo Marchant Science journalist and author of 'Decoding the Heavens' on the Antikythera MechanismAnd Liba Taub Professor Emerita in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and Visiting Scholar at the Deutsches Museum, MunichProducer: Simon Tillotson In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio ProductionReading list:Derek de Solla Price, Gears from the Greeks: The Antikythera Mechanism (American Philosophical Society Press, 1974)M. G. Edmunds, ‘The Antikythera mechanism and the mechanical universe’ (Contemp. Phys. 55, 2014) M.G. Edmunds, ’The Mechanical Universe’ (Astronomy & Geophysics, 64, 2023)James Evans and J. Lennart Berggren, Geminos's Introduction to the Phenomena: A Translation and Study of a Hellenistic Survey of Astronomy (Princeton University Press, 2006)T. Freeth et al., ‘Calendars with Olympiad display and eclipse prediction on the Antikythera mechanism’ (Nature 454, 2008)Alexander Jones, A Portable Cosmos: Revealing the Antikythera Mechanism, Scientific Wonder of the Ancient World (Oxford University Press, 2017)Jo Marchant, Decoding the Heavens: Solving the Mystery of the World’s First Computer (Windmill Books, 2009)J.H. Seiradakis and M.G. Edmunds, ‘Our current knowledge of the Antikythera Mechanism’ (Nature Astronomy 2, 2018)Liba Taub, Ancient Greek and Roman Science: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2022)

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  50:35
• Wormholes

  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the tantalising idea that there are shortcuts between distant galaxies, somewhere out there in the universe. The idea emerged in the context of Einstein's theories and the challenge has been not so much to prove their unlikely existence as to show why they ought to be impossible. The universe would have to folded back on itself in places, and there would have to be something to make the wormholes and then to keep them open. But is there anywhere in the vast universe like that? Could there be holes that we or more advanced civilisations might travel through, from one galaxy to another and, if not, why not? With Toby Wiseman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College LondonKaty Clough Senior Lecturer in Mathematics at Queen Mary, University of LondonAnd Andrew Pontzen Professor of Cosmology at Durham UniversityProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:Jim Al-Khalili, Black Holes, Wormholes and Time Machines (Taylor & Francis, 1999)Andrew Pontzen, The Universe in a Box: Simulations and the Quest to Code the Cosmos (Riverhead Books, 2023)Claudia de Rham, The Beauty of Falling: A Life in Pursuit of Gravity (Princeton University Press, 2024)Carl Sagan, Contact (Simon and Schuster, 1985)Kip Thorne, Black Holes & Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy (W. W. Norton & Company, 1994)Kip Thorne, Science of Interstellar (W. W. Norton & Company, 2014)Matt Visser, Lorentzian Wormholes: From Einstein to Hawking (American Institute of Physics Melville, NY, 1996) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

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