We’re all going on a geeky holiday

What happens when hard science fiction collides with big-budget cinema? The latest episode of Physics World Stories delves into the ideas within Project Hail Mary – a new film about a science teacher (portrayed by Ryan Gosling) who finds himself alone on a spacecraft with the job ...  Show more

On 26 April 2026, it will be 40 years since the explosion at Unit 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant – the worst nuclear accident the world has known. In the early hours of 26 April 1986, a badly designed reactor, operated under intense pressure during a safety test, ran out ...  Show more

This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time. We cannot learn from disasters we do not yet understand. That conviction motivated historian Kate Brown to conduct groundbreaking research into nuclear energy’s ...  Show more

Under the mighty radio Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank, Victoria Gill brings together some of the UK’s leading experts who were visiting the recent ‘bluedot’ science and music festival. They discussed the ongoing hunt for extraterrestrial life. We hear from Karen Olsson-Francis, ...  Show more

Researchers have identified which neurons, when electrically stimulated, can restore the ability to walk in paralysed patients. Professor Jocelyne Bloch, Associate Professor at the Université de Lausanne, tells Roland how the technology works.Astronomers have discovered the close ...  Show more

Marnie Chesterton hears of a simple test for the earliest signs of Alzheimer's disease. She finds out about UK scientists using robots to map radiation at Chernobyl, and talks to Merlin Sheldrake about fungi.Roland Pease travels to Bath University to meet scientists who may have ...  Show more