CrowdScience - Can we be too clean?
To be healthy you need to be clean – or so we’ve thought throughout human history.
The dazzling array of antibacterial products that exploded onto the scene in the 20th century took things to the next level, with their promises of eliminating 99.9% of germs.
But could an obsession with cleanliness actually be bad for us? There’s a whole world of microbes out there: some make us sick, but others are essential for our health.
How do we tell the difference? Listener Younes’s question gives CrowdScience the chance to sift the good dirt from the bad, with the help of hygiene expert Professor Sally Bloomfield. Along the way we soap up our hands with schoolchildren in Mumbai, get knee deep in mud on an English farm, and find out why snuggling up to a cow might be a good idea.
Do you have a question we can turn into a programme? Email us at crowdscience@bbc.co.uk
Presenter: Marnie Chesterton Producer: Cathy Edwards and Marijke Peters
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CrowdScience - Could Humanity be Wiped out Like the Dinosaurs?
Is there a killer asteroid with Earth’s name on it? The dinosaurs ruled for many millions of years before coming to their violent end. Will humanity prevail or are we doomed to succumb like the dinosaurs? It’s a question that will keep you up at night. No wonder our listeners Zarin and Pablo wanted to know more.
To find out, Anand Jaggtia heads to Denmark to see first-hand the evidence for a giant asteroid impact, written into the rocks at Stevns Klint. And we will hear from scientists at Nasa who are keeping a careful eye out for asteroids on collision course with Earth. Also, we discover that asteroids have a lot to answer for, maybe even our own existence.
Do you have a question we can turn into a programme? Email us at crowdscience@bbc.co.uk
CrowdScience - Wave Power
Why can't we use energy from the waves of the sea to create all the electricity that we need? Listener Michael in Kingston, Jamaica wants to know. Living on a Caribbean island means he’s never far from the might of the ocean – so could it power his house?
Presenter Greg Foot heads to one of the world’s leading wave energy test locations, the coast of Cornwall in the UK, to find out. There, he witnesses the challenges of the marine environment, from metre high waves in a giant indoor test tank to being buffeted on a beach where a 25km cable runs beneath his feet to a grid-connected offshore test site. And find out if Greg’s plan to feel the power of the waves first-hand on a research boat works out – in the middle of winter, in the northern hemisphere.
Do you have a question we can turn into a programme? Email us at crowdscience@bbc.co.uk
Picture: Waves, Credit: Oli Scarff/Getty Images
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CrowdScience - Does it Pay to be Nice?
Most of us want to be nice. But is it all it's cracked up to be? It's a question that's been nagging at listener Tony in Illinois, USA, for over 25 years. While studying at university, the lecturer asked him whether competing or co-operating was the best strategy for success – essentially, does it pay to work together or should we sharpen our elbows and look after number one?
Nastaran Tavakoli-Far goes in search of answers. She talks to a local hero about why he puts his life on the line for others, and visits a neuroscientist to find out what happens in the brain when we help others. Her quest also leads her to question whether women really are the more co-operative sex and how an animal called a kudu might reveal how human co-operation evolved in the first place.
Do you have a question we can turn into a programme? Email us at crowdscience@bbc.co.uk
(Image: John Cook from Hertfordshire Fire and Rescue Service. Credit: Anna Lacey / BBC)
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CrowdScience - The Fourth Dimension
How would a fourth dimensional being appear to humans?
"It would look just weird" is one way to answer the question 'How would a fourth dimensional being appear to humans?' But it's more complicated than that - theoretical cosmologist Andrew Pontzen describes how objects are viewed from one dimension to another, and how it might affect parking spaces.
Also on the programme: our panel of experts discuss bubble experiments, a theory that the Black Death was a virus, space elevators, algae as a biomass fuel, what affects the speed of digestion in our gut, a short definition of dark energy and the question is it true our DNA has alien properties?
With Helen Czerski, department of mechanical engineering, University College London; virologist Jonathan Ball, University of Nottingham; and cosmologist Andrew Pontzen, University College London.
Do you have a question we can turn into a programme? Email us at crowdscience@bbc.co.uk.
(Image: Stripes and points of light, one guess what a 4th dimension might look like, Credit: Thinkstock)