Why We Search for the Origins of Life
Why do humans need to understand the infinite and the infinitesimal?
Mike Williams visits the ultimate cathedral of science, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, where researchers from around the world have built the largest single machine on earth to discover some of the most extreme elements of nature, from the heart of an atom to the origins of the universe.
But what drives the human need to know how the universe began and our desire to keep searching for what our world is really made of – down to the smallest particles on earth?
(Photo: A worker walks past a giant photograph of a Large Hadron Collider at an exhibition in Berlin, Germany. Credit to Getty Images)
Last on
More episodes
Clip
Broadcasts
- Fri 26 Feb 2016 20:32GMT³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World Service Online, Americas and the Caribbean, Europe and the Middle East & UK DAB/Freeview only
- Fri 26 Feb 2016 21:32GMT³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World Service East Asia, South Asia, West and Central Africa & Australasia only
- Mon 29 Feb 2016 02:32GMT³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World Service Americas and the Caribbean
- Mon 29 Feb 2016 03:32GMT³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World Service Online, Europe and the Middle East, UK DAB/Freeview & East Asia only
- Mon 29 Feb 2016 04:32GMT³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World Service South Asia
- Mon 29 Feb 2016 05:32GMT³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World Service Australasia
- Mon 29 Feb 2016 07:32GMT³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World Service East and Southern Africa & Europe and the Middle East only
- Mon 29 Feb 2016 13:32GMT³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World Service Online & UK DAB/Freeview only
- Mon 29 Feb 2016 14:32GMT³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World Service East Asia, East and Southern Africa, Europe and the Middle East, South Asia & West and Central Africa only
Get the podcast
Subscribe or download individual episodes for free
Why do we look the way we do?
Tattoos, trainers, jeans, hair, ties ... why?
Podcast
-
The Why Factor
The extraordinary and hidden histories behind everyday objects and actions