A distant planet’s atmosphere

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

A dip in global cocoa prices got the Unexpected Elements team wondering about chocolate science. First, we look at how the microbial communities in cocoa beans fine tune the taste of chocolate. Also, could table sugar help us detect the missing bits of the universe? We look at ho ...  Show more

Nasa's JWST space telescope has unpicked the chemical contents and state of the atmosphere of planet WASP-39b 700 light years away. Astronomer Hannah Wakeford explains. Meteorologist Laura Wilcox warns that atmospheric haze over China and South Asia is masking some of the effects ...  Show more

Marnie Chesterton and guests mull over the saga of an AI engineer who believes his chatbot is sentient. Also, climate scientists propose a major leap in earth system modelling, that might cost £250m a year but would bring our predictive power from 100 km to 1km. And the story of ...  Show more

Adam Rutherford talks to Chris Lintott about the citizen science platform he set up ten years ago. Zooniverse is a place where the public can help scientists analyse huge swathes of data. Projects such as spotting distant galaxies, counting penguins and tagging WW2 diaries have a ...  Show more

Following yesterday's US House Committee on Science,Space,and Technology's controversial hearing on scientific method and climate change, Adam Rutherford meets atmospheric scientist Professor Michael Mann after he emerged from the heated debate and who's just published a new pape ...  Show more