Discovery

Can the heroic age of Antarctic exploration help to show us the way back to the Moon?One hundred years ago, Scott reached the South Pole. However, more than four decades passed before people went back there. On the Moon, Neil Armstrong took his leap for mankind in 1969 and it has been forty years since the last astronaut left the lunar surface. Presenter Kevin Fong talks to space scientists and historians to find out if Robert Scott's Antarctic exploits provide a road map for future human exploration of the Moon and the planet Mars.Imperial and geopolitical motivations lay behind both South Polar exploration and the effort which took humans briefly to the lunar surface. But what would get us back to the Moon - would it be geopolitical rivalry or science?In times of economic austerity (in the West at least), what scientific questions are important enough to justify exploration of the Moon? The six short Apollo visits to the lunar surface were enough to crack the mystery of how the Moon itself formed - namely t

Kevin Fong looks beyond the failure of Robert Falcon Scott's expedition to be the first to reach the South Pole and focuses instead on the scientific legacy of Scott's explorations of Antarctica between 1901 and 1912.In recent years, much has been written about Scott the polar loser and bungler. But that personalised focus ignores the pioneering scientific research and discoveries. The revelations transformed Antarctica from an unknown quantity on the map into a profoundly important continent in the Earth's past and present. Before Scott and Shackleton trekked across the vast ice sheets in the early 1900s, no-one was sure whether there was even a continent there. Some geographers had suggested Antarctica was merely a vast raft of ice anchored to a scattering of islands. The science teams on Scott's expeditions made fundamental discoveries about Antarctic weather and began to realise the frozen continent's fundamental role in global climate and ocean circulation. They discovered rocks and fossils which showed

To mark the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, the BBC's Sean Coughlan narrates one of the most authentic versions of events in existence. Using voice synthesis to re-create the strange, twitter-like, mechanical brevity of the original Morse code, this programme brings to life the tragedy through the ears of the wireless operators in the area that night.On the night of the disaster, the network of young Marconi wireless operators on different ships and land stations frantically communicated with each other across the cold expanses of the North Atlantic in an effort to mount a rescue for the doomed vessel. All these messages were recorded at the time in copper-plate handwriting, now scattered across the world in different collections, but together forming a unique archive. Conceived and created by Susanne Weber.Producer: Alex Mansfield

In the last of the Global Body series, Lynne Malcolm is joined by a panel of experts to discuss the future of the health of the human body.Lynne is joined by, Tony McMichael – Professor of Population Health at the Australian National University in Canberra; Professor Maxine Whittaker, form the Australian centre for International and Tropical Health at the University of Queensland and Professor Robyn Norton, Director of the George Institute and Professor of public health at the University of Sydney and Professor of Global Health and James Martin Professorial Fellow, University of Oxford.(Image: Computer artwork of the blood circulation system in a human figure. Credit: Science Photo Library)

As part of the BBC World Service's Human Race season, ABC in Australia's Lynne Malcolm explores how Homo sapiens have adapted to changes in their environment, economy and social structures; how health is affected by new environments and lifestyles; and what might happen to the human race in the future? Is the 'Hollywood Dream' of a city of beautiful, fit, wealthy people anything near the truth for this huge city? It's a city with a long history of immigrants settling from all over the world. Lynne Malcolm explores how some of these inhabitants have adapted biologically to their new environment over time, and what the impact is on their health and bodies. BBC Correspondent, Valeria Perasso, discovers however, that it's not all good news, with obesity on the rise in the city and there are also massive discrepancies in the standards of health, and quality of life amongst its inhabitants.(Image: a female face surrounded by a distorted DNA autoradiogram. Credit: Science Photo Library)

As part of the BBC World Service's Human Race season, ABC in Australia's Lynne Malcolm explores how Homo sapiens have adapted to changes in their environment, economy and social structures; how health is affected by new environments and lifestyles; and what might happen to the human race in the future? Lured by the bright lights, or driven from the countryside by political and economic turmoil, population pressures, and environmental vulnerability, billions of people have been migrating to the cities in the developing world. The BBC's correspondent in Manila Kate McGeown, discovers what happens to our human bodies when we leave the fields and shorelines and head into the big city. She reports back to Lynne, how traffic, pollution, smoking, overcrowding and lack of affordable fresh food is sparking an epidemic of diabetes, heart disease, hypertension and cancers. Often outweighing the benefits of higher wages, better access to healthcare and education.

As part of the Human Race season on the BBC, Discovery starts its exploration into the Global Body. Over the next 4 weeks, Lynne Malcolm finds out how the modern world is affecting our biology. The series starts in Sri Lanka, where it asks whether the predominantly rural lifestyle of fishermen and farmers is well suited to the human body. BBC Correspondent Charles Haviland takes us to the shores of Sri Lanka to see what life is like for fishermen and to the mountains where people live off the variety of crops they grow for themselves. These populations are pretty healthy. But he also discovers that some of the rural inhabitants – the tea pickers – have a much harder time. There’s a report on how an inherited disease, thalassaemia, that makes people debilitated, and is quite common amongst Asian people is treated in Sri Lanka. And the programme discovers that thalassaemia survives because it confers resistance to malaria.(Image: Conceptual computer artwork of a male figure seen against autoradiograms of geneti

It's nearly a year (11 March 2011) since Japan was struck by a huge earthquake and Tsunami. Clouds of radioactive fall out from damaged nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power station spread across heavily populated areas - many kilometres from the plant. The government and power company TEPCO have been heavily criticised for not telling the local population soon enough about what was going on - in many cases people evacuated to areas with higher radiation levels than those they fled. As a result, deep mistrust developed towards government or TEPCO pronouncements on the nuclear incident. In this special one hour edition of Discovery Mariko Oi, visits the Fukushima prefecture to find out what has happened since. She meets scientists working to piece together an accurate picture of the effects of the radioactive fall out, both on the environment and human health. She hears from local community grassroots organisations, many people living in fear of radiation, they argue for a mass clean up operation

Located in the western pacific, the Mariana Trench is the deepest part of the ocean, plunging down 11km. Down there it's pitch black, icy cold and the pressure is immense. Now explorers with funding from the private sector are planning to return to the bottom of the Trench, for the first time for over 50 years. Rebecca Morelle meets Jim Gardner, who works for the US Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping, and has just completed the most detailed survey ever of the Mariana Trench, using sonar.Alan Jamieson, an ecologist at Oceanlab at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, uses remote controlled submersibles to study the animals and plants that live at extreme pressure in the deepest parts of the oceans. He tells Rebecca why he believes it is preferable to deploy robots rather than humans to do this research. Legendary marine biologist and underwater explorer, Sylvia Earle, argues that it is essential for us to visit the depths of the ocean and see the extraordinary environment with our own eyes. As the forme

Located in the western pacific, the Mariana Trench is the deepest part of the ocean, plunging down 11km.Down there it's pitch black, icy cold and the pressure is immense. The only time it was visited, was over 50 years ago by US naval lieutenant Don Walsh and Swiss engineer Jacques Picard. Now four teams of explorers are risking their lives in a new race to the deep. Rebecca Morelle travels to California to meet former property developer Chris Welsh who is hoping to travel by himself to the bottom of the trench in a five metre long torpedo like submarine equipped with wings and a tail fin. Her next stop is with the Triton team, who take her for a ride under the Caribbean sea in one of their submersibles, a prototype for the vessel that will be able to travel to the Mariana Trench. Rebecca also reports on a project being lead by James Cameron, the director of the film Titanic. And her final visit is to DOER Marine, where Liz Taylor tells her about the company’s plans to build a reusable submarine.

It sometimes seems to rule our lives and yet some scientists think it is an illusion. From birth to death we seem to be swept up in a relentless and inescapable journey through time, but what is this strange place we call the present moment? Why does the past seem fixed and the future so uncertain. Was the universe born into time or did time arise with the universe? Will time continue forever or will it fade like the stars? These are some of the questions that were discussed at a recent conference in Bergen and Copenhagen and on a ship between the two. In Discovery this week, science writer Zeeya Merali joins some of the leading physicists and cosmologists discussing the nature of time and its place in our lives and the Universe.Producer: Martin Redfern

Angela Saini explores the revolution taking place in the streets beneath our feet as she reveals the story behind a new urban design movement called shared space. She travels to The Netherlands where shared space was born, inspired by the radical traffic planner, Hans Monderman, who envisaged a world without barriers, signs, pavement and traffic lights. But not everyone is taken with this revolution, in particular the blind and visually impaired who say that shared space is fundamentally flawed and makes their lives less safe.

Geoff Watts meets researchers trying to find a new way to fight depression by studying those who never get it. In the second of two programmes Geoff meets scientists at the University of Manchester, studying the brains of people who have undergone traumatic life events without becoming seriously depressed and comparing them to the brains of those people who do. The hope is that new psychological therapies or even preventative medications might be developed to treat the one in five people who will at some point in their lives, become clinically depressed.(Image: MRI scan of the head and brain. Credit: Corbis Royalty Free)

Geoff Watts meets researchers looking for clues to the origins of depression as a way of finding new solutions to treating it. In the first of two programmes Geoff talks to the father of evolutionary medicine, Randolph Nesse and asks why hasn't natural selection made us less vulnerable to psychological diseases? Could it be that depression is in some way useful to our lives?(Image: A depressed young boy. Credit: Science Photo Library)

Jason Palmer explores the past, present and future of Seti. In the second programme he looks at what sort of signal might ET send us, and how might we respond?Jason talks to Seti's co-founder Frank Drake as well as its current active researchers, including Seth Shostak, Jill Tartar and Doug Vakoch.

In the first of two programmes, the BBC's science reporter Jason Palmer, meets the researchers behind Seti, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence and looks at the prospects for success in the face of funding issues and the sheer size of the task. He talks to Seti's co-founder Frank Drake as well as its current active researchers, including Seth Shostak, Jill Tartar and Doug Vakoch.(Image: Computer artwork of our solar system. Credit: Science Photo Library)

For more than half a century aeronautical engineers have been working on the dream of hypersonic passenger flight. London to Sydney in four hours is an often cited goal. In Discovery Gareth Mitchell looks not at the past history of hypersonics, but at current developments. He meets engineers working on the propulsion systems and developing new materials specifically for hypersonic flight. Technologies which could be one applied to space craft as well as aeroplanes.

Folk tales are full of fleeting phenomena like will o' the wisps, faint glows that must have spooked our ancestors. But these days, it's just about impossible to escape the omnipresent illumination of modern life, and these evocative spooklights have vanished like ghosts. Chemist Andrea Sella explores the science of lights so dim, they can be witnessed only in complete darkness. From the spontaneous combustion of marsh gas to the lightning sparks emitted by crushed sugar, Professor Sella finds there's more to light than ever meets the eye.

The Higgs particle is the final cornerstone of scientists’ model of the material universe. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN was built so researchers could discover it. Last week, they announced a partial sighting – the ghost of a Higgs particle hoving into view in their plethora of data. But it could be just a phantom, and may start to fade with more data next year. Roland Pease meets the scientists who are chasing this legendary particle, and gets exclusive access to the preparations for next year’s experiments.

An increasing understanding of genetics has uncovered new targets for antiviral drug treatments. Although still in the very early stages, scientists say they may be able to develop drug treatments which can be used against a range of viruses. At present antiviral drugs are very specific, usually attacking just one virus. However the research which Kevin Fong examines in this edition of Discovery suggests 'broad spectrum antivirals', drugs capable of curing all viral infections from the common cold to HIV, may be with us in a few years time. Such drugs could revolutionise medicine dealing a blow to viruses in much the same way as the invention of antibiotics did to bacterial infections over the last century.