Icelandic volcano erupts again

With this year’s Oscars on the horizon, and vampire film Sinners nominated for a record-breaking 16 awards, the Unexpected Elements team sinks their teeth into some blood-sucking science.First, we discover that Vlad the Impaler, the Romanian prince who inspired Dracula, may have ...  Show more

The Hindu festival of Holi has the Unexpected Elements team delving into the science of colour. First up, forget chicken and egg, we bring you a whole new controversy of which came first: colour or colour vision? Then, we learn how a new development in infrared contact lenses cou ...  Show more

Imagine waking up to the smell of freshly baked bread. Doesn’t it make your mouth water? Now imagine the smell of a fish market on a warm day… still feeling hungry? CrowdScience listener Thanh from Vietnam is intrigued by the effects of smell on our appetite, and wants to know ...

We talk to volcano scientist Ed Marshall in Iceland about working at the volcano which has burst into life spectacularly again after a year of quiet. Also in the programme, we'll be following migrating moths across Europe in light aircraft to discover the remarkable secrets of th ...  Show more

The recent Rosetta mission to image and land a probe on a comet was an astounding achievement. Rosetta took thousands of photos mapping the entire surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko , as it dramatically changed over 2 years. This week analysis of 18000 67P pictures are ou ...  Show more

Many of us enjoy cooking – but when did we switch from eating our food raw, to heating it? Listener Logan enjoys his beef burgers rare, but wants to know why he still feels compelled to grill them? Presenter Anand Jagatia travels to a remote South African cave where our ancestors ...  Show more