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LEADING EDGE
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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.
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LISTEN AGAIN Ìý30 min |
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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 on Leading Edge -Ìýthe Rory Bremners of the elephant world, light from alien planets and why all mathematicians should learn to draw.Ìý
Light from an Alien Planet
Geoff Watts talks to the scientists from NASA who have been the first to detect light from a planet outside our own solar system.
They had previously only been able to detect such planets by watching the star wobble as the planet orbits around it.
But now Drake Deming and his colleagues at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center have been able to measure the infrared light coming directly from just such a planet.
The planet is larger than Jupiter and has a temperature of around 850 degrees Celsius.
Geoff discovers how the scientists were able to detect infrared light from the planet, and what implications this has for learning about other planets outside our solar system, and the possible discovery of life elsewhere in the universe.
Ìý
Pictures in Maths
Geoff Watts is joined by mathematicians Anthony Edwards and Marcus Du-Sautoy to discuss the importance of pictures in maths.
From Venn diagrams, to more artistic representations of complicated mathematical problems, a good drawing or diagram can simplify even the most difficult concepts.
Quantum Whistles
Molly Bentley reports from California on the weird whistling properties of Helium.
Scientists working in a lab at the University of California at Berkeley were playing around with a version of Helium, known as Helium 4.
What they discovered was that when super-cooled to temperatures 300 times below room temperature, Helium 4 becomes a super-fluid, and when it does, and under certain conditions it produces a whistling sound.
It sounds like a super-cool trick, but in fact may have useful applications in designing better global positioning systems and even earthquake detectors.
Imitating Elephants
Dr Joyce Poole has been working with the elephants of Kenya for nearly 30 years, studying their vocalizations and communication, and thought she knew every elephant sound there was.
Then a colleague from Tsavo National Park asked her to listen to an orphaned elephant they were looking after, which was making a very unusual sound. It turned out the elephant was mimicking trucks that passed on a road nearby his enclosure.
Dr Poole has since discovered other examples of elephants mimicking unusual sounds.
Geoff talks to Dr Poole about her extraordinary discovery and finds out what purpose these imitating skills might have in the wild.
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