Discovery

The COP30 climate summit is taking place in the Brazilian city of Belém, a gateway to the Amazon rainforest, which continues to face widespread deforestation. We all know that our climate is changing and that we are largely responsible for this, but we can’t tackle the problem unless we understand what’s going on.
One scientist who’s done more than most to rectify this is Professor Pierre Friedlingstein. He’s a prominent climate scientist and Chair in Mathematical Modelling of the Climate System at Exeter University. His models have transformed our understanding of climate change, revealing a complex dynamical system with carbon at its centre, cycling between the atmosphere, oceans and land, to directly influence the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Pierre is actively involved in assessing the state of our climate through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and, as director of the Global Carbon Budget, estimates the remaining amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted before we breach our global climate targets. It’s the ultimate test of effective climate action and the latest annual update will be released at COP.
Pierre explains how we can all play our part to reduce carbon emissions, and he practises what he preaches - he won’t be flying to COP this year so as to minimise his own carbon footprint.

Imagine if you were listening to an opera or a Taylor Swift concert, and as the lights in the auditorium dimmed, the music was accompanied by a rainbow of colours only you could see. Perhaps while listening to your friends talking, you simultaneously experience a smorgasbord of tastes, with different words evoking different flavours, maybe a delicious ice cream, or something as disgusting as ear wax...
This merging of the senses is known as synaesthesia, and it’s the rich research world of neuropsychologist Professor Julia Simner. Julia runs the Multisense lab at the University of Sussex and has pioneered research into understanding how special brains process our sensory world in special ways. In the studio she tests Jim to see if he might be a synaesthete or have aphantasia, which is the inability to view images in the mind’s eye. The results are surprising.
Julia’s discovered links to autism, and to different personality types, as well as a number of previously unknown sensory differences.
She describes her career and her life as a series of swerves, or sliding door moments, that have led her to study the subject and the people she’s passionate about. She says that the more she looks for these unusual traits in us the more she finds.

Caroline Smith is passionate about space rocks, whether they’re samples collected from the surface of asteroids and the Moon and hopefully Mars one day soon, or meteorites, those alien rock fragments that have survived their fiery descents through our atmosphere to land here on Earth. She is Head of Collections and Principal Curator of Meteorites at the Natural History Museum, home to one of the finest meteorite collections in the world. Her interest in rocks began while wandering the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, as a child, picking up the ones that caught her eye and bashing them with a hammer, hoping to find treasure inside, whether it’s gold, diamonds or dinosaur fossils. Her work today, studying rocks that have landed here on Earth or those still out there in space, is no less ambitious. She analyses their chemical composition looking for tantalising clues that might reveal how our Solar System formed, and potentially the presence of the chemical building blocks necessary for life itself.

From humble beginnings in his native Sri Lanka, to a more than 40 year academic career at Queen’s University Belfast, Prof. AP (Amilra Prasanna) De Silva’s research into molecular photosensors has led to a pioneering career in that’s evolved from chemistry to medical diagnostics on one hand, to information processing on the other. Prof. De Silva challenged cultural expectations and overcame the lack of opportunities in chemistry that were available in Sri Lanka in the early 1970s. He first moved to Belfast to pursue research in photochemistry at Queen’s University. Inspired by his grandmother’s struggle with high blood pressure he engineered a unique sodium photosensor by marrying fluorescent molecules with chemical receptors. As a result of his international collaborations, a commercial, portable sensor was developed to detect salts and minerals in the blood. Its speed of analysis has since saved countless lives and improved healthcare around the world. AP talks to Jim Al-Khalili about his passion for engineering molecules and how his photochemical innovations have since crossed into computer science. They’ve been developed to perform molecular computations far inside the human body - where silicon microchips fear to tread. A new deeper understanding of life inside our tissues and cells beckons.

In July 1545, King Henry VIII watched from Southsea Castle on England's south coast as his fleet sailed out to face the French - only to witness his prized warship, the Mary Rose, sink before his eyes. Raised from the Solent in 1982, the ship is now the centrepiece of the Mary Rose Museum, along with thousands more artefacts that were recovered from the seabed. But keeping the 500-year-old ship and its associated Tudor relics in good condition is no small task, which is where Dr Eleanor Schofield comes in. As Director of Collections at the Mary Rose Trust and a materials engineer by training, Eleanor has spent years tackling the unique scientific challenges of conserving centuries-old wood and metal. From the United States to Portsmouth, Eleanor's research is helping ensure this iconic vessel remains 'ship-shape' for generations to come. In a special edition of The Life Scientific, recorded in front of an audience at the museum in Portsmouth's Historic Dockyards, Professor Jim Al-Khalili discovers how cutting-edge science is keeping history afloat.