KaBULL

Jim Al-Khalili: I know that of all the things wrong in the world, such trivialities shouldn't bug me, but who's told all TV journalists to start mispronouncing Kābul (long a) as KaBULL? Gah!

John Simpson: What about Northern Island (a favourite of weather forecasters)? Or RE-search? Just about everyone pronounces the ‘j’ in ‘Beijing’ like the ‘s’ in ‘pleasure’. It ought to be like the ‘j’ in ‘just’. Good luck persuading anyone of that, though.

Jim's not wrong, and if you tune into Today or watch BBC reporters you'll hear many manglings of words like 'Taliban', and even 'Pakistan'.

Place cells, dark matter and BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4's bias towards the arts and the humanities is deeply engrained. However, there are certain exceptions: the jokey Infinite Monkey Cage and the Guardian Science-like magazine programme Inside Science. The occasional series Frontiers looks deeper, but is an infrequent part of the Radio 4 schedule. 

Still, Radio 4 does offer listeners The Life Scientific. 

However much it may (from time to time) infuriate those BBC bias watchers who hate the BBC's unabashed bias in favour of a belief in anthropomorphic global warming, it remains a wonderful series - and a credit to the BBC. It offers in-depth, insightful interviews with world-class scientists by a brilliantly communicative scientist (Jim Al-Khalili). 

This week's interview was with Nobel Prize-winning cognitive neuroscientist John O'Keefe - the man who described the idea of 'place cells' in the brain back in 1971. It's well worth a listen. His enthusiasm for the sound of brain cells "singing" (thanks to the minuscule electrodes that monitor their activity) was touching. He misses not hearing them. 

The other beacon of light for science lovers is Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time, which (every few weeks) boldly goes where no Radio 4 programme has gone before.

This week's edition discussed dark matter - that mysterious thing which appears to make up most of the universe. Thank to Melvyn and his guests - Carolin Crawford from Cambridge Uni, Carlos Frenk at the University of Durham and Anne Green at the University of Nottingham - I think I understand the matter now (if, somewhat, through a glass darkly). 

Besides the facts, part of the fascination of In Our Time is the excitement of hearing the academics face Melvyn Bragg. Will they be WIMPs or MACHOs? Will they do themselves justice? Will any of them make Melvyn laugh? Will Melvyn get annoyed with them?  

In the latest addition, Carolyn Crawford communicated fluently. Melvyn seemed relaxed about her contribution. He understood her (as did I). 

Carlos Frenk was, as ever, a superlative communicator. Melvyn seemed awe-struck by him (as was I), and understood him (as did I). 

Anne Green, in contrast, was magnificently scientific but seemed to lack the knack of easily speaking in a 'popular science' manner. She flummoxed Melvyn at times (and me). He struggled to understand her (as did I), but he persevered (as did I), and everyone (Anne, Melvyn and me) was a winner in the end.

Is there anything like In Our Time anywhere else in the world?

Chris Lintott on 'The Life Scientific'

The Sky at Night's Dr Chris Lintott was Jim Al Khalili's guest on The Life Scientific this morning.

I remember his first appearances on The Sky at Night. He struck me as being very young but highly knowledgeable. I've liked him ever since. 

He was very much in the right place at the right time as regards the school he was sent to - namely Torquay Boys' Grammar School. Two members of staff there had already "put themselves through the hell of running teenage discos in the school hall" to raise enough money to build an observatory at the school - a full-blown observatory with a rotating, opening dome and a 19.2-inch reflecting telescope which was "swung across the sky by a BBC micro-computer, which worked brilliantly," said Chris [bloody BBC!], "except for the number 4. So you couldn't go to anywhere with 4 in the coordinates". Then they gave 12 year-old Chris the keys. As a result he was "nocturnal for most of that summer holiday", practising being a scientific, learning that science is an ongoing pursuit.

The school, of course, had an astronomy club. And it gets even better...The school had an occasional visitor while Chris Lintott was a pupil there - one Patrick Moore. 

One of the things Sir Patrick told the astronomy club was that there was still much that wasn't known about the outer planets of our solar system and that, hopefully, ten years hence we might actually know more. That inspired Chris with the idea that there's a lot still to discover in astronomy. "I remember sitting there thinking very clearly, 'I want to do that'", he recalled. 

Chris, still aged 12, then began writing to Patrick Moore and Sir Patrick eventually replied to each and every one of them. Chris still has some of his postcards, including one addressed to "Chris Damn Can't Remember Your Surname Esq" and one that simply read "Chris. Yes. Haste. Patrick." (He couldn't remember what that was about!)

During his time in the sixth form he spend some time doing research (running computer programmes to study how light moves through the dust around young stars) and on the back of it won a competition to go to America, aged 17. He then went to Cambridge University to study Natural Science, working mainly in the area of theoretical physics, before doing his PhD in Astronomy at University College, London.

It was in his undergraduate days that he made his first appearance on The Sky at Night discussing the the basics of astronomy with Patrick Moore. He'd got to know Sir Patrick even better through the British Astronomical Association, sometimes going to his house to use his telescopes. Eventually, after "a gin or tonic or two", Patrick Moore suggested that he might appear on The Sky at Night. So appear on The Sky at Night he did - as did lots of other "confused-looking eighteen or nineteen year olds" over the years when Patrick Moore was in full charge of the show. Soon he became a regular feature, in time co-presenting the programme with Sir Patrick. They also wrote books today with Queen guitarist Brian May. 

In the meantime he's been working as a peer-reviewed astrochemist, and helped 'crowdsource' hundreds of thousands of amateur astronomers to help curate a 'Galaxy zoo'. 

All of which provoked the thought: I wish I'd gone to Torquay Boys' Grammar School.

Talking with Dinosaurs

Talking of the BBC's science coverage, one scientific lamp glowing in the dark of Radio 4 is The Life Scientific, hosted by theoretical physicist Jim Al-Khalili (whose name sounds like the word 'alkaline'.)

I listened to the latest edition live last night, but was reminded of it today by a post from Alan at Biased BBC, cleverly entitled A Warming From History. [I wish I'd thought of that. I suppose I could be cheeky and steal it for the title of this post, but as I've now admitted to thinking about doing that it probably wouldn't reflect well on me, would it? So I'd better not then. Note to self: Use it in a few months time.] 

Alan notes the way the issue of global warming managed to be shoe-horned into last night's discussion with guest Professor Mike Benton, Professor of Vertebrate Palaeontology (whose name sounds like 'Michael Bentine'), and observes that this is par for the course. 

Indeed. You're settling down with a nice cup of Horlicks, listening to a pleasant discussion about Dino, Posh Paws, Godzilla and Barney [as the humanities graduates at the BBC no doubt like to think of dinosaurs], when in crashes some reference to runaway, man-made climate change which will destroy us all, mwahahaha. It's enough to make you want to pour your malted milk drink over the radio.

Still, it was an interesting programme nonetheless, tackling (among many other things) the question of why so many of us get hooked on science when young because of dinosaurs (or astronomy, or both.) Prof Benton suspects that this may originate in children's love of stories about mythical beasts, such as dragons. Children then learn that these dragons actually existed, once upon a time. Their parents can even take them to a museum to see them. 

Britain was the birthplace of most of geology and palaeontology, but Western Europe isn't of great interest to geologists. Why? Well, said, Prof Benton, the Ice Ages meant that ice sheets covered most of Northern Europe and concealed or removed older geology. Plus our temperate climate and heavy population means that most of the surface is covered in soil. Geologists, naturally, prefer to see rocks rather than soil. It's places like Russia and China which appeal to Prof Benton, though their rules on exporting make life a little harder for geologists on expedition.  

He's presently working on a project which seeks to learn more about the feathers of early birds and dinosaurs, particularly their colour. How can they tell? Because certain pigments in feathers (and human hair) can be preserved. Melanin is one such pigment. It can come in two types, one leading to brown or black colouring, the other to ginger colouring. Both types leave a physical trace within the structure of the feather, thanks to the plastic-like consistency of keratin - the protein found in feathers. To get into the feather melanin has to be contained within captures inside the structure - the black-brown melanin within sausage-shaped capsules and the ginger melanin within spherical captures. So for those colours you can look at the fossils and, if you know where the feathers came from in the body, you can map out the extinct bird or dinosaur's colour pattern. So now you know.

Professor Benton's other main area of interest is mass extinctions. He said that species last on average some 1-2 million years (i.e. not long, in geological terms). There may be 10,000,000 species around today but that's a small fraction of the species that have existed. Species comes and go. A mass extinction is a time when more species than you would expect go extinct at a rapid rate. How rapid? Well, surprisingly, some can occur within just a few years. The most devastating one was the end-Permian mass extinction, some 250 million years ago, before the dinosaurs, when over 90% of species were wiped out. Life recovered, though it could have gone the other way - to the total extinction of life. What caused it? Siberian volcanic eruptions - possibly in two pulses or more  - seem to have been the culprit. Gases - including carbon dioxide - raised the temperature (possibly by 10-12 degrees in some areas) and increased dangerous acid rain, reducing the landscape pretty much to a rocky wasteland. And which point...in came the current global warming question. (It was soon passed over though).

Mike Benton, who worked on the BBC's Walking with Dinosaurs (before they knew about feathers), remains an enthusiast for communicating science - and he certainly communicated it well here.