Discovery

Geoff Watts meets researchers looking for clues to the origins of depression as a way of finding new solutions to treating it. In the first of two programmes Geoff talks to the father of evolutionary medicine, Randolph Nesse and asks why hasn't natural selection made us less vulnerable to psychological diseases? Could it be that depression is in some way useful to our lives? (Image: A depressed yo...

Jason Palmer explores the past, present and future of Seti. In the second programme he looks at what sort of signal might ET send us, and how might we respond? Jason talks to Seti's co-founder Frank Drake as well as its current active researchers, including Seth Shostak, Jill Tartar and Doug Vakoch.

In the first of two programmes, the BBC's science reporter Jason Palmer, meets the researchers behind Seti, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence and looks at the prospects for success in the face of funding issues and the sheer size of the task. He talks to Seti's co-founder Frank Drake as well as its current active researchers, including Seth Shostak, Jill Tartar and Doug Vakoch. (Image:...

For more than half a century aeronautical engineers have been working on the dream of hypersonic passenger flight. London to Sydney in four hours is an often cited goal. In Discovery Gareth Mitchell looks not at the past history of hypersonics, but at current developments. He meets engineers working on the propulsion systems and developing new materials specifically for hypersonic flight. Technolo...

Folk tales are full of fleeting phenomena like will o' the wisps, faint glows that must have spooked our ancestors. But these days, it's just about impossible to escape the omnipresent illumination of modern life, and these evocative spooklights have vanished like ghosts. Chemist Andrea Sella explores the science of lights so dim, they can be witnessed only in complete darkness. From the spontaneo...

The Higgs particle is the final cornerstone of scientists’ model of the material universe. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN was built so researchers could discover it. Last week, they announced a partial sighting – the ghost of a Higgs particle hoving into view in their plethora of data. But it could be just a phantom, and may start to fade with more data next year. Roland Pease meets the scienti...

An increasing understanding of genetics has uncovered new targets for antiviral drug treatments. Although still in the very early stages, scientists say they may be able to develop drug treatments which can be used against a range of viruses. At present antiviral drugs are very specific, usually attacking just one virus. However the research which Kevin Fong examines in this edition of Discovery s...

When leptin failed to be a wonder solution to obesity, this hormone produced by fat cells, disappeared from the headlines. Twenty years on scientists now believe leptin is critical to how the body works, regulating appetite, the immune response, inflammation and depression. Vivienne Parry investigates.

One hundred years since humans first ventured to the South Pole, we are on the verge of a new era in Antarctic exploration. In Discovery, Andrew Luck-Baker talks to scientists who'll soon be entering the last untouched realms on the planet. They are poised to drill into ancient lakes trapped beneath thousands of metres of polar ice. British, Russian and United states scientists all have ambitious...

For six months, CERN scientists guarded the best kept secret in science - that they'd seen tiny subatomic particles called neutrinos breaking the universal speed limit. The measurements were at the boundaries of scientific techniques - the discrepancy was just 10s of nanoseconds; parts of their apparatus barely ran at that speed. For six months they checked and then re- checked again every step of...

In the second of a two-part Discovery series, Robots that Care, Jon Stewart visits research institutes in the USA and UK to explore the brave new ideas about how robots may be able to help humans on a one-to-one basis. He talks to key roboticists in Japan, Europe and the USA, their collaborators and volunteers about the practicalities and ethics of using robots to help people. A number of studies...

In the first of a two-part series, Jon Stewart charts the advances in robotics that are increasingly leading to direct one-to-one contact between humans and robots. Jon visits robotocists and their collaborators in the US and UK and asks how the robots will be used in the future. He examines the way cinema has shaped our ideas of robots and investigates the gulf between our expectations of what ro...

Angela Saini reports from India on the country’s vast e-governance project aimed at driving out corruption, reducing bureaucracy and getting the nation’s 1.2 billion people online. Everything from a country-wide unique ID scheme (based on the iris system – Biometrics), to a roll out of service kiosks where everything from a parking fine to a death certificate can be issued. One of the main drivers...

Explorations in the world of science.

Explorations in the world of science.

Explorations in the world of science.

Explorations in the world of science.

Explorations in the world of science.

Explorations in the world of science.

Explorations in the world of science.

Explorations in the world of science.

Explorations in the world of science.

Explorations in the world of science.

Explorations in the world of science.

Explorations in the world of science.