Tom Whipple

Welcome to Inside Science from the BBC World Service.

I'm Tom Whipple.

This week, why is the Earth revolving too fast? Why does that mean that time is ticking for something called the leap second? And why is Bill Bryson using the word debauchery in the context of Britain's most respected scientific institution? Something that never revolves too fast is the return of the not at all debauched Kit Yates to Inside Science.

The mathematician has been searching the journals for the best of the other stories.

Kit, time is already ticking for us, so get on with it.

What have you found?

So Tom, this week I'm gonna be finding out exactly how much of a hot-blooded predator T. rex really was, and in keeping with that theme, I'll tell you about a new record temperature for the survival of complex life.

Brilliant.

[instrumental music] Welcome to Inside Science from the BBC World Service.

I'm Tom Whipple.

Now, last week, we might have left you with the impression that AI is going to kill us all.

We did that by speaking to people who said that AI is going to kill us all.

And if anything today has sparked your interest, please do search for BBC Inside Science and follow the links to The Open University to discover more.

And that's pretty much all we have time for.

You've been listening to BBC Inside Science with me, Tom Whipple.

Until next week, it's goodbye from me and goodbye from Lizzie.

Mackenzie Arnold and Stefan Larina call for a better investigation in The Guardian, a cool short video explaining the POV of the agents in the incident.

The Times' Tom Whipple says, "...hugging face shows humanity is out of its depth," and that,

"...the advantage of AI doomers is that the bonkerness of reality has caught up with the bonkerness of their predictions."

Which means the predictions were not so bonkers after all, and perhaps you shouldn't be calling them doomers.

Welcome to Inside Science from the BBC World Service.

I'm Roland Pease, standing in for Tom Whipple, who's off recording a future episode at one of my favourite places, CERN, home of the Large Hadron Collider, where they discovered the Higgs boson, and where they hope to uncover many more secrets of the stuff of the universe.

Though we've got our own mysterious stuff to talk about, dark matter, which has frustrated physicists for decades.

We've also got hope for corals, increasingly endangered in this warming planet, but hope in the form of probiotic therapy.

And that's it for this programme.

You've been listening to Inside Science on the BBC World Service with me, Roland Pease.

Tom Whipple will be back, as usual, next week.

Get more with BBC Podcasts wherever you listen.

[pensive music]

I'm Tom Whipple.

I'm a science writer, and I present Inside Science on BBC Radio 4 and the World Service.

Well, Tom Whipple, welcome to The Global Story.

It's a pleasure to have you with us.

Thanks for taking the time.

Appreciate it.

Cheers.

So, yeah, uh, I think it's just, it's, they, they need to just r- r- row back a little bit from the, from the, uh, the, the zealousness of it, and I think most people l- like you, uh, would be obviously in f- you know, in, uh, in favor of this in the, in the long run, but it ha- needs to be a longer run than, than what's envisaged at the moment.

I mean, Alice, we, uh, spoke to Tom Whipple, uh, about this on the, on the show this morning, and he made the point, which is of, which is often made, that it's the...

Of course, renewables aren't expensive, but the e- the e- the energy from them becomes expensive because it is matched to the gas price, 'cause you need to have a certain amount of gas, uh, in order to, to generate electricity when renewables aren't working, and the price of everything else for various technical reasons, which I must admit, although I've talked about a lot, I don't quite understand.

No, I'm still, I'm still struggling with that.