CERN’s Supercollider Plan

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Technology, Science

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 22 August 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

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Summary

CERN’s plans to build a bigger, faster particle collider, with a hefty 17 billion Euro price tag, are in question. Physicists Andrew Pontzen and Harry Cliff discuss if the new machine is really worth it.

A place on the podium or disappointment in the Olympics can come down to the precise position of a foot or angle of the hips. Science reporter Ella Hubber visits the University of Bath to check out the motion capture tech that makes these measurements. New research suggests our close cousins, the chimpanzees, chat just as fast as humans. Professor Cat Hobaiter from the University of St Andrews tells us what chimp chats can teach us about the evolution of language.

75 years after making a groundbreaking discovery, Rosemary Fowler has finally been awarded with an honorary doctorate. University of Bristol chancellor, Sir Paul Nurse, shares how important it is to celebrate and recognise Rosemary’s achievements.

Presenter: Victoria Gill Producers: Ella Hubber and Sophie Ormiston Editor: Martin Smith Production Co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Rory Stewart and I want to talk about ignorance. I will die without having read
0:08.2	everything that was written in classical Latin. Because ignorance isn't simply the opposite of knowledge.
0:14.7	It's part of what it means to be human.
0:17.5	Just about every game I can think of involves ignorance.
0:22.1	There's no adventure without ignorance. There's no there's no narrative.
0:25.0	The long history of ignorance from Confucius to Kianan
0:29.0	with me Rory Stewart,
0:31.0	listen on BBC Sounds.
0:35.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:39.0	Hello lovely curious-minded listeners, this is BBC Inside Science and I'm Victoria Gill.
0:44.6	This week I will be learning about the art of quick-fire conversation by observing some intense
0:49.4	exchanges between wild chimpanzees.
0:52.4	And on the eve of the Paris Olympics our own elite
0:55.2	science reporter Ella Hubba submits herself to the riggers of the latest
0:59.1	performance-enhancing technology. But first what's more than 50 miles long will span the border of two
1:05.8	countries and cost an estimated 17 billion euros? Any guesses? Well this is the
1:11.8	troubled story of Europe's next massive particle accelerator
1:15.8	at the European Center for Nuclear Research, CERN. CERN's already home to the Large Hadron Collider,
1:21.7	which right now is the biggest particle accelerator on Earth
1:24.6	and it wants to go even bigger but should it we're going to examine the case
1:29.2	for this vast very expensive machine so let's start with the basics. What is a
1:34.4	particle collider? It might help if first of all we say what a particle is. So
	...

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