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PROGRAMME INFO |
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Leading Edge brings you the latest news from the world of science. Geoff Watts celebrates discoveries as soon as they're being talked about - on the internet, in coffee rooms and bars; often before they're published in journals. And he gets to grips with not just the science, but with the controversies and conversation that surround it.
radioscience@bbc.co.uk |
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LISTEN AGAIN 30 min |
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PRESENTER |
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"If what interests you are new and exciting ideas, it's science you should be turning to. And whether it's the Human Genome Project or the origins of the Universe, Leading Edge is the place to hear about them."
Geoff Watts |
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This week Geoff Watts plumbs the depths of discovery and detection in the last in this series of  Leading Edge.
In Parkfield, California, seismologists are busy drilling a 2.2-km vertical hole deep into the Earth. This is part of a plan to install instruments directly within the San Andreas Fault Zone near the initiation point of previous high-magnitude earthquakes. The instruments, set in an even deeper hole, 3 to 4 km beneath the Earth's surface, will form a San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD) and will reveal directly, for the first time, the physical and chemical processes controlling earthquake generation within a seismically active fault.
Molly Bentley finds out how observing quakes "up close" marks a major advance in the pursuit of a rigorous scientific basis for assessing earthquake hazards and predicting earthquakes.
From drilling plains to laser-propelled planes. Paper ones that is. US laser scientist Claude Phipps and colleagues in Japan have used pulses from a laser on the ground to propel paper darts around a lab. They believe that one day this technology could make light work of lifting space craft into low earth orbits. Geoff Watts finds out how light could laser-out the costs and the chemicals from space-travel.
If intelligent life developed on other planets, what would it look like? This is the intriguing question tackled by delegates at the International Astronomical Union's Bioastronomy 2002 conference - "Life Among the Stars".             As Pauline Newman reports, many divergent opinions were expressed about the expected evolution of these imaginary aliens. She talked to Simon Conway-Morris of Cambridge University who believes that bipeds will always be best. Whereas Seth Shostak of SETI says that we should be searching for something more suited to the stranger side of science-fiction.
Joining Geoff to discuss these exciting developments will be Roger Highfield, Science Editor of the Daily Telegraph. Together they also discover that the secret of brain size is in our genes.
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