We’re all going on a geeky holiday

We’re all going on a geeky holiday

Up next

Chernobyl at 40: physics, politics and the nuclear debate today

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

Cosmic time capsules: the search for pristine comets

In this episode of Physics World Stories, host Andrew Glester explores the fascinating hunt for pristine comets – icy bodies that preserve material from the solar system’s beginnings and even earlier. Unlike more familiar comets that repeatedly swing close to the Sun and transfor ...  Show more

Recommended Episodes

NBN Classic: Kate Brown, "Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future" (Norton, 2019)
New Books in Environmental Studies

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

Life beyond Earth
BBC Inside Science

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

Neurons that restore walking in paralysed patients
Unexpected Elements

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

Early Alzheimer's Alert
BBC Inside Science

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