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THE MATERIAL WORLD
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PROGRAMME INFO |
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Quentin Cooper reports on developments across the sciences. Each week scientists describe their work, conveying the excitement they feel for their research projects.
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Contact Material World |
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LISTEN AGAIN Ìý30 min |
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PRESENTER |
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"For me science isn't a subject, it's a perspective. There are fascinating scientific aspects to everything from ancient history to the latest gadgets, outer space to interior decorating; and each week on The Material World we try to reflect the excitement, ideas, uncertainties, collisions and collaborations as science continues its never-ending voyage into the unknown".
Quentin Cooper |
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PLUME - team members with their cube satellite
© University of Leicester |
STUDENT SPACE PROJECTS
Space missions are multi-million – or even billion – dollar initiatives for the government agencies of rich super-powers.Ìý No longer.
With modesty and miniaturisation, plus a bit of begging and borrowing, even students can build space experiments and see them launched.
Quentin Cooper is joined by students and staff from two UK universities where this is becoming a reality.
At Leicester University, undergraduates in the Physics and Astronomy department are building their own satellite.
Called PLUME, it is based on a standardised design in the form of a small cube. It’s due for launch later this year and will study space dust, detecting nano-meteoroids in orbit around the Earth.
At the Open University, PhD students are building an experiment that will orbit the Moon.
The European Student Moon Orbiter (ESMO) is due for launch in about 3 years time and is being designed and built by students from 29 universities in 12 countries.
The OU’s contribution is BioLEx, which will test the effects of spaceflight on microorganisms.
DID THE EARTH FREEZE OVER?
Something strange was happening to the Earth around 700 million years ago.
There’s evidence of deposits left by ice on every continent, including regions that were then near the equator.
The implication that has become widely accepted over the last decade, is that the Earth froze over.
Such a ‘snowball earth’ scenario would have almost wiped out the primitive marine life of the time.
There would have been no marine algae to remove volcanic carbon dioxide from the air.
When the greenhouse gas had built up, about 635 million years ago, it caused rapid warming and a sudden thaw that plunged our planet into a hothouse.
The climate change is marked by a global layer of limestone as marine algae took advantage of the CO2 and warm seas.
Soon afterwards the first assemblage of diverse, multicellular life forms evolved.
But now, in a review article, Professor Phillip Allen of Imperial College London has called the global glaciation into doubt.
He discusses the evidence with Gabrielle Walker, author of ‘Snowball Earth’.
Next week on Material World -Ìýfusing man with machine.
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