Science In Action

The BBC brings you all the week's science news.

World Service,1472 episodes

Episodes

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Earthquakes and the first breath of life on Earth
How Myanmar’s tragic earthquake left a 500km scar on earth's surface in just 90 seconds.
03 Apr 2025,31 mins
Breakthrough antivirals and fresh US grant cancellations
As the US halts all Covid related research, what is the impact on pandemic preparedness?
27 Mar 2025,28 mins
Columbia cuts and "transgender mice"
Individual stories of those affected by the Trump administration's upheaval of science
20 Mar 2025,28 mins
New warnings, familiar faces, and radio pulses
WHO pandemic call, an H5N1 call to arms from global health leaders.
13 Mar 2025,44 mins
An uncertain forecast for meteorology
As US government cuts imperil weather data, meteorologists worldwide forecast trouble.
06 Mar 2025,44 mins
Asteroid 2024 YR4 crisis averted?
How astronomers minimised our asteroid angst, despite a threat to our darkest skies
27 Feb 2025,36 mins
Who runs science?
A call from European flu experts to create a more sustainable research network.
20 Feb 2025,36 mins
Hits from space
Astronomers track asteroid 2024 YR4 to decide if it will miss us in 2032.
13 Feb 2025,36 mins
Earthquakes swarms and whale chart toppers
The mystery swarm of small earthquakes near the island of Santorini beg for more data
06 Feb 2025,32 mins
Make science great again
Asteroid Bennu yields a watery pool of history
30 Jan 2025,40 mins
Arctic carbon starting to flip
Thirty per cent of the Arctic is switching from carbon sink to carbon source.
23 Jan 2025,26 mins
AI antivenoms and vegetarian hominids
New types of snake-bite anti-venoms are designed by AI.
16 Jan 2025,34 mins
First US avian flu fatality
H5N1 bird flu is still spreading across farms in the US and claims its first human life
09 Jan 2025,30 mins
Five years of Covid: Part two
Five years on from the emergence of Sars CoV-2, what have we learned?
02 Jan 2025,27 mins
Five years of Covid: Part one
Five years on from the emergence of Sars CoV-2, what have we learned?
26 Dec 2024,28 mins
Sun Grazing
The future of vaccinations, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, and the dawn of complex life.
19 Dec 2024,26 mins
Warming oceans kill millions of birds
4 million sea birds died in Alaska as a result of a warming pacific.
12 Dec 2024,33 mins
Bovine H5N1 gets a sniff of humans
How a single mutation in bovine H5N1 flu can make it prefer human cells.
05 Dec 2024,33 mins
Fifty years of Charm
Why November 1974 became known as the “November Revolution” in particle physics
28 Nov 2024,39 mins
Faster, wetter, worse tropical storms
Every 2024 Atlantic hurricane was intensified by warming climate, with categories raised.
21 Nov 2024,34 mins
Drastic plastic reductions
Machine learning models suggest pathways to reduce global plastic waste by 91% by 2050.
14 Nov 2024,31 mins
New ways to study coronaviruses
Scientists in Wuhan and the US unveil a new way to design virus receptors on human cells.
07 Nov 2024,29 mins
Global warming strikes again
The devastating floods around Valencia are easily attributable to climate change.
31 Oct 2024,33 mins
Betelbuddy and Silk Road Cities
Does the famous Betelgeuse have an orbiting companion, hidden in plain sight?
24 Oct 2024,35 mins
Marvels of life and death
As fish farming impacts grow, a look at some clever life-hacks at the extremes.
17 Oct 2024,36 mins
Nobel convergence
A look at the stories behind the Nobel science prizes announced this week.
10 Oct 2024,38 mins
Excesses of rain
How much did climate change drive storm Helene?
03 Oct 2024,34 mins
Historic weather extremes revealed using tree-rings
The jet stream has shaped extreme weather, influencing harvests, wildfires and epidemics
26 Sep 2024,26 mins
Flash floods in the Sahara
The Sahara has been experiencing unusually heavy rainfall due to an extratropical cyclone
19 Sep 2024,26 mins
A landslide-induced megatsunami in Greenland
The 200-metre-high tsunami sloshed between the cliffs of Dickson Fjord for nine days
12 Sep 2024,29 mins