The World, the Universe and Us

Ten years since the discovery of the fabled Higgs boson, can the Large Hadron Collider ever make us that excited again? Physicists are now kind of bored by the Higgs - the hype has well and truly died down. So as the LHC kicks off its third period of operation, the team asks whether there will be anything new to get them fired up again.How do large hawks land without crashing? That’s what a team of researchers has been trying to find out. The team explains how their findings could help with future innovations in drone technology.ClientEarth is an environmental legal organisation, or “lawyers for the planet”, with the aim of holding companies and governments to account over net zero plans. The organisation has recently brought cases against the Dutch airline KLM and French oil giant Total Energies for alleged greenwashing. Rowan speaks with Chief Impact Officer and “head of greenwashing” Maria Krystyna Duval.A strange kind of time paradox called causal loops is being researched. As well as explaining what a causal loop is, the team explains how a large set of theoretical universes were studied to see whether this time-travel paradox could actually work. The UK is being hit by a fifth wave of coronavirus cases, with many people becoming reinfected multiple times. The team examines the possible risks of reinfection, and asks if there’s an end in sight.On the pod are Rowan Hooper, Penny Sarchet, Jacob Aron, Karmela Padavic-Callaghan and Corryn Wetzel. To read about these stories and much more, subscribe at newscientist.com/podcasts.Events and discount codes:InsideTracker: insidetracker.com/NewScientistOnline event: www.newscientist.com/universeorigin20% Discount: newscientist.com/pod20 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The world’s first CRISPR babies are now toddlers. Now, nearly four years since the super-controversial experiment was announced, scientists in China want to set up a healthcare institute specifically to look after the three children. The team examines the ethics of it all.Humans thrive at particular temperatures, and that’s why we live where we live. But these areas of optimal climate are shrinking because of climate change. As we’re on course to hit 2.7 degrees of warming by the end of the century, the team finds out what will happen to future populations. And with the UN Ocean Conference taking place, we hear a clip of Sounds of the Ocean by composer Joshua Sam Miller, a piece where the lead singer is a whale!Poo transplants are being used to cure irritable bowel syndrome. The team discusses the success of a new trial which used the poop of a single, healthy athletic man - a super-pooer, basically - to introduce a healthy mix of gut microbes into those with the condition.Rogue planets, roaming through space without a star of their own, may still be able to host life. Even without the heat of their own Sun, the team explains how there is still a way that life could thrive.We’re in the middle of the biggest outbreak of monkeypox ever. With cases spreading fast, the team asks why the disease isn’t killing anyone yet, and they find out how big this outbreak could become.On the pod are Rowan Hooper, Penny Sarchet, Michael Le Page, Alice Klein, Leah Crane and James Dinneen. To read about these stories and much more, subscribe at newscientist.com/podcasts.Events and discount codes:InsideTracker: insidetracker.com/NewScientistNew Scientist Live Events: newscientist.com/childhoodnewscientist.com/whisky20% Discount: newscientist.com/pod20 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you like things orderly, we have bad news for you - our universe is lopsided. Based on everything we know about gravity and the early universe, we’d expect galaxies to be distributed symmetrically - but they’re not. Something spooky’s going on, and the team searches for answers.The activity of the Sun may be affecting our heart health. Sometimes the weather on the Sun gets a little chaotic, and the team discusses new research that suggests these solar storms are messing with our heart rhythms, raising the risk of heart attacks.African pouched rats are being trained as heroes. Donning special little backpacks, they will use their keen sense of smell to go on search and rescue missions. The team explains why they’ve been chosen for the task.Last September El Salvador became the first country to make cryptocurrency legal tender. But with the value of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies plummeting, the team examines what the future holds.Covid-19 is proving resilient, and as new variants of omicron emerge, infection rates still remain high. As omicron is milder than its predecessors, the team asks whether we should still be worried about the disease, and they find out how it may continue to evolve.On the pod are Rowan Hooper, Penny Sarchet, Michael Le Page, Corryn Wetzel, Leah Crane, Jacob Aron and Alice Klein. To read about these stories and much more, subscribe at newscientist.com/podcasts.Events and discount codes:InsideTracker: insidetracker.com/NewScientistNew Scientist Live Event: newscientist.com/childhood20% Discount: newscientist.com/pod20 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How will we know when we’ve made a truly sentient artificial intelligence? Well, one Google engineer believes we’re already there. The team discusses the story of Google’s very clever AI called LaMDA, and ask another chatbot, GPT3, what it would think if LaMDA was destroyed.Did you know stars have ‘earthquakes’ too? These starquakes have been spotted by the Gaia space observatory, which aims to build a 3D map of all the stars in our galaxy. It’s been collecting a phenomenal amount of data, and the team explores its findings.Net Zero pledges are becoming more popular - which is great - but a lot of them aren’t being acted on. According to a new consortium Net Zero Tracker, a worrying number of these pledges aren’t credible. The team finds out how the group aims to hold companies to account.Our brains are hotter than we realised - 2.5 degrees celsius hotter in fact. The team asks why we’re only just finding this out in 2022, and how the discovery may improve care for people undergoing brain surgery.Steve Brusatte is best known as a dinosaur palaeontologist, but he has turned his attention now to our own class, the mammals. Rowan chats with him, and amongst other things finds out how enslaved Africans in South Carolina were instrumental in the development of palaeontology. On the pod are Rowan Hooper, Penny Sarchet, Clare Wilson,Matt Sparkes and James Dinneen. To read about these stories and much more, subscribe at newscientist.com/podcasts.Events and discount codes:InsideTracker: insidetracker.com/NewScientistFree giveaway: newscientist.com/4weeksfree20% Discount: newscientist.com/pod20 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

While it may be technically possible to keep global heating to 1.5°C it’s really not very likely - at all. So why are we clinging to it? The team asks, when do we admit that 1.5°C is dead, and what will it mean when we do?NASA is about to launch its CAPSTONE spacecraft into lunar orbit, paving the way for its lunar space station. As a precursor to the Artemis mission to put people back on the moon, CAPSTONE is basically a test run, and the team explains its goals.Rowan’s been to see Top Gun: Maverick, and he’s found a way of making it about science - or technology, at least. In the film we see many new applications of technology and artificial intelligence in warfare, so we chat with AI and drone expert Arthur Holland Michel to discuss the future of combat and what Top Gun 3 might look like in another thirty years.The team brings you an incredibly exotic life form of the week… chickens! It turns out that chickens were domesticated a lot more recently than we thought. Hear some of the humorous archaeological blunders that have led to this confusion.In recent months doctors around the world have been reporting mysterious cases of children suddenly developing liver failure. While we don’t know what’s happening, the team explores some possible explanations. On the pod are Rowan Hooper, Penny Sarchet, Michael Le Page and Adam Vaughan. To read about these stories and much more, subscribe at newscientist.com/podcasts.Events and discount codes:Free giveaway: newscientist.com/4weeksfree20% Discount: newscientist.com/pod20Blue Dot Festival: discoverthebluedot.comUnderstanding the AI revolution: newscientist.com/aievent Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Synthetic cell membranes have been fused with protein machinery from living cells to create an artificial membrane. Could this be a precursor to the creation of artificial life? The team discusses its potential and limitations.Babies with severe genetic conditions are being cured by new gene replacement therapies, allowing them to overcome fatal diseases. There are a number of different treatments which have seen success, and the team finds out how they work. The DNA of two people who were killed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Pompeii has been sequenced. The team finds out how the DNA from 79 AD managed to survive the heat of the volcano, and what the findings tell us about the lives of these two people.Solar sails - a method of harnessing the sun’s light for space travel - are usually quite clumsy, so a NASA-funded team is developing a new more agile type of solar sail. The team finds out how they’re overcoming the problem.Haider Warraich, a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, discusses his new book ‘The Song of Our Scars: The Untold Story of Pain’, which addresses “modern medicine’s failure to understand pain”.On the pod are Rowan Hooper, Penny Sarchet, Chelsea Whyte, Leah Crane, Alice Klein, Anna Demming and Alex Wilkins. To read about these stories and much more, subscribe at newscientist.com/podcasts.Events and discount codes:Free giveaway: newscientist.com/4weeksfree20% Discount: newscientist.com/pod20Blue Dot Festival: discoverthebluedot.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

DeepMind’s new artificial intelligence, Gato, is a step beyond anything we’ve seen before. But how close has it brought us to the coveted goal of creating ‘artificial general intelligence’? The team unpacks just how powerful this technology really is, and what it means for the future of machine consciousness.You can learn a lot from poop. In an archaeological detective story, 4500-year-old fossil excrement belonging to the people who built Stonehenge has been examined, and the team explains what it tells us about their eating habits.CRISPR gene editing has been used to make supercharged tomatoes, rich in vitamin D. The team finds out how they managed to do it, and explains why this breakthrough is particularly good news for vegans.Ever wondered what it’s like to explore another planet? We hear from Sanjeev Gupta from Imperial College London, one of the scientists with the breathtaking job of helping Nasa's Perseverance rover navigate Mars, as it starts sampling an ancient river delta to look for ancient life.We’re in the midst of the largest known outbreak of monkeypox. The virus is endemic to Central and West Africa, but has begun to spread to the rest of the world, with 170 cases now confirmed. The team examines the likelihood of this virus becoming the next global pandemic.On the pod are Rowan Hooper, Penny Sarchet, Jacob Aron and Corryn Wetzel. To read about these stories and much more, subscribe at newscientist.com/podcasts.Events and discount codes:Free giveaway: newscientist.com/4weeksfree20% Discount: newscientist.com/pod20 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’re in the middle of a global food crisis, brought on by a combination of the coronavirus pandemic, climate change and the war in Ukraine. As food prices rise and the world faces “hunger on an unprecedented scale”, the team looks for solutions.The health of an ecosystem can be measured through sound alone. The team discusses a new field of study called ecoacoustics which is being used to assess biodiversity, sharing sounds of an ‘animal orchestra’ recorded in the Brazilian rainforest.Rosie the Rocketeer (a dummy, not a real human!) is heading to the International Space Station in Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. The test flight is part of NASA’s commercial spacecraft programme, and the team examines its goals.Farming is the most destructive human activity ever to have blighted the Earth according to the writer and environmental activist George Monbiot. His new book Regenesis explores his thinking, and explains why we should all be eating microbes instead of animals.Read these out loud… “Funk fungus”, “gnome bone”, “spam scrotum”. If you have a smirk across your face, you’re not alone. The team finds out why some word pairings are more funny than others.On the pod are Rowan Hooper, Penny Sarchet, Jacob Aron and Michael Le Page. To read about these stories and much more, subscribe at newscientist.com/podcasts.Events and discount codes:Calm History: www.silkpodcasts.comUS Offer: newscientist.com/unlimited 20% Discount: newscientist.com/pod20 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It feels like temperature records are being broken almost daily. We’ve seen heatwaves already this year in Texas and Mexico, with forecast highs of 50oC set to hit Pakistan and India. As we edge closer to breaking 1.5 degrees of global warming in the next 5 years, Rowan speaks to climate scientist Vikki Thompson from the University of Bristol, to find out how heatwaves are pushing at the limits of what humans can cope with.Chemical computers have taken a step up. Lee Cronin and his colleagues at the University of Glasgow have upgraded their 2019 machine, and it’s now fully programmable. The team discusses the project’s ultimate goal, to make a chemical brain and even explain consciousness.Ants have the power to heal. The team explains how Matabele ants, large ants found in sub-Saharan Africa, have evolved the ability to diagnose infected wounds in their nestmates using an antimicrobial medicine that they produce themselves.It’s estimated that covid-19 has now killed close to 15 million people. And with reports of rapid reinfections and new omicron sublineages emerging, the team finds out how worried we should be about getting covid multiple times, and what we can expect from future mutations of the virus.The composer Jon Hopkins has been working with a team involving neuroscientist Anil Seth to create a hallucinogenic immersive experience called Dream Machine. New Scientist’s Carissa Wong has been in it, and shares her wild experience. We also treat you to the music from Dream Machine throughout this episode.On the pod are Rowan Hooper, Penny Sarchet, Alice Klein, Karmela Padavic-Callaghan and Carissa Wong. To read about these stories and much more, subscribe at newscientist.com/podcasts.Events and discount codes:newscientist.com/pod20newscientist.com/unlimited newscientist.com/nslivenewscientist.com/tours Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Women’s abortion rights are under threat in the US. Leaked documents suggest the Supreme Court is on the verge of overturning the landmark Roe v Wade decision that protects the right to abortion. The team discusses the dramatic impact this move could have on women’s health.Eating microbes could save the world. The team examines a new study which found that substituting just a fifth of the meat in our diets with microbial proteins would more than halve global deforestation rates and related carbon emissions.While we fight to protect the environment on Earth, a lot less is done to safeguard space. Professor of astronomy at the University of Edinburgh, Andy Lawrence, hopes that is about to change. He tells Rowan why space needs to be a protected ecosystem, subject to the same sort of regulations as the oceans and the atmosphere.The earthworm invasion is upon us. Large parts of North America have been without earthworms for 12,000 years, but in the last 200 years they’ve begun their slow and undramatic takeover. The team discusses a new study which looks at the effect this is having on plant and aboveground arthropod communities.And primatologist Frans de Waal joins the pod to discuss the under-studied topic of sexuality, gender and biological sex differences in our closest relatives, chimps and bonobos.On the pod are Rowan Hooper, Penny Sarchet and Tiffany O’Callaghan. To read about these stories and much more, subscribe at newscientist.com/podcasts.Events and discount codes:newscientist.com/pod20newscientist.com/nslivewinnewscientist.com/azores Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices