0:00

Hello and welcome to this podcast

0:02

from the BBC World Service. Please

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let us know what you think and tell

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other people of Isis on social media. Podcasts

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from the BBC World Service. are

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supported by advertising. Welcome to

0:14

Science in Action from the BBC World

0:16

Service, I'm Roland Peason. I've been talking

0:19

to the scientist who's just won a

0:21

major libel case against his climate critics.

0:24

Maybe some of my fellow scientists now will

0:26

feel a little bit more comfortable coming out

0:28

of the laboratory and speaking out to

0:31

the public knowing that there is this

0:33

recourse should they need to take it.

0:35

Also what polar bears get up to

0:37

in the summer as captured on video

0:40

cameras strapped around their necks. This

0:42

is a bear that swam out

0:44

into Hudson Bay. Some

0:46

of the bears did long distance swims

0:48

over 100 kilometers. And you can see

0:51

this bear came across a dead seal

0:53

out in the bay and

0:55

is trying to swim with it. There

0:58

are lessons for what may happen as

1:00

the Arctic warms in the future. Also

1:02

using trees in astrophysics really you do

1:05

have to stay for that one. And

1:07

power cuts, load shedding as they call

1:09

it in South Africa. Well they were

1:11

a nuisance when we were in Cape

1:13

Town but for the scientists there it

1:15

foreshadows potential real problems. If all of

1:18

these people need antibiotics or medications but

1:20

they power out for four days how

1:22

do you have infrastructure, how are you

1:24

making medicine. So we've had to figure

1:27

out ways to continue doing science in

1:29

and among those challenges. I've met the

1:32

chemist looking for a solar

1:34

way around. Let's start

1:36

with science in the court and

1:38

a one million dollar defamation victory

1:40

for one of the highest

1:43

profile climate scientists just last week.

1:45

One of the icons of

1:48

climate science is the so-called

1:50

hockey stick graph highlighting the

1:52

recent rapid rise in global

1:54

temperature compared to the relative

1:56

stability of past millennia. It

1:58

was first derived a quarter. a century

2:01

ago, though since extended and

2:03

corroborated many times. Nevertheless, the

2:06

original has been a constant target

2:08

for groups who deny global warming,

2:10

as has been one of its

2:12

authors, Michael Mann, who last week

2:14

won the million dollar lawsuit against

2:17

two of his critics, not because

2:19

of their technical complaints, but

2:21

because of the libelous language they used.

2:24

It crossed a line. Skepticism is a good

2:26

thing in science when it's done in good

2:28

faith, but when you're

2:30

subject to ideologically driven

2:32

efforts to discredit you

2:35

based on defamatory allegations

2:37

of fraud, that clearly

2:39

crosses the line. And

2:41

in the end, the

2:44

jury agreed with us. But

2:46

it's taken a long time. I think the original words

2:49

were said or written in 2012, you started an

2:53

action pretty quickly, but you

2:55

could have let it lie. I'm interested

2:57

in the thought process with you that

2:59

said, right, I'm going to deal with

3:01

this. Yeah. Well, because the stakes, in

3:04

my view, were too great to just

3:06

let this go. If these authors

3:11

were to prevail,

3:13

it would sort of say

3:16

to the scientific community that, hey,

3:18

look out. It's OK for people

3:20

to libel you and there's nothing

3:22

you can do about it. That's

3:25

really chilling, in my view, to

3:27

the discourse. There

3:30

is this huge chorus of

3:33

anti-scientific rhetoric that

3:35

scientists find themselves subject to

3:37

when they venture out into

3:39

the public sphere. And

3:42

I think to some extent that has

3:44

led many scientists to sort of withdraw.

3:46

And if they do, then

3:48

the forces of anti-science win. And this

3:50

is, I think, what's interesting is a

3:52

lot of scientists I speak to would

3:54

actually just rather get on with their

3:57

science, getting the data, doing experiments, publishing

3:59

and doing that. The how much

4:01

of your time, How much strain?

4:04

Does. Pursuing a court case like this

4:06

type? Yeah, you know, I didn't double

4:08

major in applied math and Physics at

4:10

U C Berkeley and going to graduate

4:12

school in Theoretical Physics so that I

4:15

could spend my time in a fractious

4:17

political debate. It's That's not what I

4:19

thought I was signing up for, but

4:21

it is where I found myself when

4:23

we published this now iconic graph. The

4:25

Hockey Stick Curve is more than the

4:28

oh, twenty five years ago. Now it's

4:30

and you know, it's not what I

4:32

signed up for, but I ultimately embraced.

4:34

That as an opportunity to

4:37

inform. The. Public conversation about the

4:39

greatest challenge we face as a civilization.

4:41

The feel privileged to be in a

4:43

position to do that, so I have

4:46

no regrets that I follow that path.

4:48

but it means that I have had

4:50

less time for all of the other

4:52

things that I'm passionate about doing, which

4:55

is teaching new generations of students and

4:57

in scientists doing scientific research, supervising scientific

4:59

research in I am looking forward to

5:02

some extent and getting back to be

5:04

able to spend much more of my

5:06

time on all those other. Things but

5:08

again there no regrets because you know it

5:10

gave me a platform that I would otherwise

5:13

have had and have tried to use that

5:15

platform for good This other thing curious about.

5:18

We. Describe this is a million dollar

5:20

victory for you in the court.

5:22

What I find interesting is in

5:24

fact in terms of actual damages,

5:27

each of the respondents was awarded

5:29

just one dollar against you. But

5:31

one of them famous is aggravated

5:33

damages element which is this million

5:35

dollar didn't have any sense of

5:37

wine. It came out that way.

5:40

Yeah, we do think that they

5:42

did suffer damages as emotional damage

5:44

for certain that my family and

5:46

I suffered and even some. damage

5:48

to my reputation for example i think

5:51

was expressed in a reduced ability to

5:53

win grant funding but there's no question

5:55

you know i've done a case in

5:57

terms of my career i'm in the

5:59

national Academy of Sciences, I've won various

6:01

prizes and awards. And so in the

6:03

end, I think the jury maybe thought,

6:06

well, you know, he's actually done pretty

6:08

well. So it's hard to really argue

6:10

for, you know, direct damage.

6:12

But the more important thing

6:15

in my view that they did,

6:17

they recognized that whether or not

6:19

there was monetary damage, there's

6:22

just no place in our

6:24

public discourse for these inflammatory,

6:27

frankly, disgusting, allegations that were

6:29

made against me. And that's

6:31

where the punitive damages came

6:33

in. And to send a

6:35

message to other would-be attackers. And I

6:37

think that's where this

6:39

decision maybe has some wider reverberations, because

6:42

maybe some of my fellow scientists now

6:44

will feel a little bit more comfortable

6:46

in coming out of the laboratory and

6:48

speaking out to the public,

6:51

knowing that there is this recourse

6:53

should they need to take it.

6:55

I think that's important. It's interesting, the

6:57

last time, or one of the last times we

7:00

spoke, we were comparing the progress of

7:03

the SARS COVID pandemic

7:05

as a shortened version

7:07

of the threats we

7:09

face with climate change. There's

7:11

this other parallel, it seems to me, but

7:13

tell me what you think in the nature

7:15

of the attacks on some of the scientists

7:17

involved in SARS-CoV-2 to the

7:19

kinds of attacks you've had. Yeah,

7:22

absolutely. Public health scientists like Anthony

7:24

Fauci and Peter Hotez, who

7:27

have been outspoken about the need for taking

7:29

measures dictated by the best available

7:31

public health science to deal with

7:33

COVID-19. There

7:35

is now this ideological opposition in

7:38

the same way that climate action

7:41

is opposed. And often with quite

7:43

inflammatory language. Absolutely, the same sort

7:45

of vitriol, the same caustic attacks

7:48

on scientists. There are

7:50

these remarkable parallels. And so I've actually

7:52

become good friends with Peter and he

7:54

and I are now working on a

7:56

book, Science Under Siege, which sort of

7:59

draws on our... perspective experiences

8:01

on the front lines of these two Wars

8:05

on science if you will to

8:07

synthesize what lessons can we draw

8:09

from this? And where do we

8:11

go from here because the stakes

8:13

couldn't be greater We're literally talking

8:15

about the future of our health

8:17

as a species in the future

8:20

of the health of our entire planet

8:22

Climate scientist Michael Mann and he mentioned

8:25

Verogis Peter Hotez who we spoke to

8:27

last year about his experience of anti-scientist

8:29

attacks We've put a link to that

8:31

interview on the science in action webpage

8:34

at BBC World service.com So

8:37

the hockey stick is one emblem of

8:40

global warming Another iconic

8:42

image is that of polar bears

8:44

perched atop a slab of floating

8:46

Arctic ice the rapidly

8:48

declining area of sea ice Particularly

8:51

during the high summer is perceived

8:53

as a threat to their survival

8:56

The full story is of course

8:58

more complicated in part because different

9:00

bear populations in different Arctic regions

9:02

are impacted in different

9:05

ways There isn't one story

9:08

But after several summers of closely

9:10

tracking handfuls of bears and their

9:12

feeding patterns on the shores of

9:14

Hudson Bay in Canada The

9:16

largest carrying road and colleagues are concerned

9:19

that future generations will struggle to last

9:21

through to the next winter First

9:24

getting the instruments onto the uncooperative

9:26

animals Capturing polar bears

9:28

is the only way to get health information

9:32

To put out transmitters that can tell us where

9:34

they go to help us identify that they have

9:37

19 different areas that they occupy So

9:40

since we can capture them we can sit

9:42

date them and immobilize them They

9:45

put out these video cameras just for

9:47

a temporary period so it's for three

9:49

week period So that we could actually

9:51

see what they're doing and what they're

9:53

eating when they're on land And

9:55

these cameras have got GPS as well. So

9:57

you're tracking them. Correct. Yes accelerometers

10:00

you're actually measuring the movement.

10:02

Yeah so part of the study was to also

10:04

estimate energetic costs. The videos you've got

10:07

from these cameras I mean they are

10:09

pretty remarkable just talk me through this

10:11

one. This is a bear that swam

10:14

out into Hudson Bay some

10:16

of the bears did long-distance swim over

10:18

a hundred kilometers and you can see

10:20

this bear came across a dead seal

10:23

out in the bay and

10:25

is trying to swim with it. So this

10:29

is a bear that came across a

10:31

bird carcass so a number of bears

10:33

would feed on birds that they found

10:35

or some would actively try to hunt

10:38

birds as well but those were

10:41

no match for what they obtained

10:43

out on the sea ice which is

10:45

a really high fat high

10:47

caloric diet of ice seals.

10:50

So if I've understood your paper right

10:52

the staple diet for polar bears

10:55

would be seals which they would catch off

10:57

the ice but that's what they

10:59

can't do because there is no ice in Hudson

11:01

Bay. Yeah so I think it's important

11:03

to note that in Hudson Bay the

11:05

summer has always been ice-free so bears

11:07

in this particular part of the Arctic

11:10

have always summered on land. What's different

11:12

is how long they're spending on land

11:14

now they're spending a lot longer on

11:16

land than they have in the past

11:18

and so the question was can

11:20

they change anything behaviorally or energetically that will allow

11:22

them to spend more time on land in this

11:24

part of the Arctic than they have in the

11:27

past. I mean I'm wondering what you

11:29

found then. Well it was interesting that bears

11:31

had a really wide range

11:33

of behaviors and energetic strategies when

11:35

they're on land. They're

11:37

eating berries and birds they

11:40

chewed on caribou antlers but

11:42

19 of the 20 bears in our study

11:44

still lost weight and the amount of weight they

11:47

lost is pretty similar when a big bear like

11:49

a polar bear is feeding on berries you know

11:51

they're having to move around to get that and

11:53

so you know what we found is that it

11:56

barely kind of offsets the energy it takes for

11:58

them to acquire it. don't have

12:00

a lot of options for

12:03

preventing weight loss when they're

12:05

summering on land. I mean do

12:07

you think this is what would have been

12:09

happening you know decades ago as well but

12:12

the summer was shorter? Correct yeah we

12:14

know that they lost weight in the past

12:16

they were getting fat out on the sea

12:18

ice and then they'd come off when the

12:20

ice melted they lose weight and

12:23

then they'd go back out when the ice

12:25

returned it's just that that period is getting

12:27

longer than what it has been in the

12:29

past so the longer they're on land

12:31

most likely the more weight they're going

12:33

to lose. I suppose what I'm wondering is

12:35

how this particular study

12:38

plays into the larger scale studies that

12:40

I think you're doing looking at other

12:42

populations in other parts of the Arctic

12:44

and the question of the changing sea

12:46

ice and the

12:48

general story that polar bears are a

12:51

threat because of global warming. So I

12:54

also work in other parts of

12:56

the Arctic including two populations whose

12:59

range occurs in Alaska and both

13:01

of those populations are also exhibiting

13:03

more time onshore in the summer

13:05

and those areas less than half

13:07

the bears are actually coming on

13:09

land but those bears are coming

13:11

on land are spending longer onshore.

13:13

What's happening in Hudson Bay is

13:16

similar to some parts of the

13:18

polar bears range where they're also

13:20

coming onshore they also have limited

13:22

food resources and so we expect

13:25

that kind of what we're seeing there is

13:27

very likely to be similar to many of

13:29

the other populations. I mean to what

13:31

extent are the changes you're seeing affecting the

13:33

health of the animals? Well there's been

13:35

at least two polar bear populations that

13:38

have shown declines in population numbers and

13:40

those have typically been

13:42

a result of either really low

13:44

cub survival or declines in sub-adult

13:46

survival that's been associated with sea

13:49

ice loss. I guess maybe it's

13:51

sort of 10 years, 15 years ago we

13:53

talked I think a lot more about polar

13:56

bears their vulnerability to global warming and there

13:58

had been some years of pretty

14:00

dramatic ice loss back

14:02

then. I just don't know whether

14:04

the fears then were overplayed or

14:07

whether there's sort of more

14:09

complicated dynamics going on and that

14:11

we should still be very worried. It

14:13

does play out differently in different parts

14:15

of the Arctic and maybe that's you

14:17

know some of the reason that it

14:19

can get confusing but I think the

14:21

general pattern is that polar

14:23

bears have to have sea ice to

14:26

access their primary prey and I think

14:28

what our study shows is that terrestrial

14:30

environments are really no match for that.

14:32

There's nothing comparable to the seals that

14:34

they're eating so that particular transition that's

14:36

going to be hard for bears in

14:38

those populations. I suppose one

14:41

reason I was wondering about your paper

14:43

is whether a single bad

14:45

year could actually change things

14:47

quite a bit for polar bears certainly in

14:49

some populations. Your question is really a good

14:52

one because one thing that we have

14:54

seen in a number of polar bear populations

14:56

is cumulative effects of several bad years. You

14:59

can have you know two to three years

15:01

where for example in one

15:03

population off the north coast of Alaska we saw

15:05

very very low cub survival and that was

15:08

linked to a pretty substantial population decline

15:10

because of your repeated years of

15:12

bad conditions and really low recruitment

15:15

into the population. Karen wrote

15:17

of the US Geological Survey on

15:19

future struggles for polar bears. Details

15:21

of a study were published this

15:23

week in Nature Communications. And

15:26

from problems to celebration this

15:28

time for South African chemist

15:30

Wade Peterson who's won the

15:33

Royal Society's Rising Star Africa

15:35

prize. As a photo

15:37

chemist someone who studies how light can

15:39

accelerate and change chemical reactions he speaks

15:41

my kind of language but

15:44

the Royal Society's prize also recognizes

15:46

his efforts in a country afflicted

15:48

by regular power cuts to find

15:50

a way to keep his experiments

15:52

going when the grid is

15:55

down. Affectionately in South Africa It's called

15:57

load shearing and it's essentially a systematic

15:59

cutting of. Power. To various

16:01

parts of the country at a schedule in

16:03

order to reduce the load in the system

16:05

so that I can avoid an entire blackouts.

16:08

Traffic is not unique to the sites of

16:10

Africa as sort of had the spotlight. About.

16:13

Low cheating in this energy crisis because

16:15

we special of the news but other

16:17

African countries and setting other developing nations

16:19

don't have a schedule with a a

16:21

power goes out. This simply just it

16:23

just goes out. And because I for

16:25

days so that you think you've all

16:27

of these people need antibiotics and medications

16:29

by the power's off for four days

16:31

are you have insisted she are you

16:33

making medicine So we've had to. Figure.

16:36

Out ways to continue doing science in in

16:38

among those those challenges. but you a chemist

16:40

you know you're not a biologist, you don't

16:42

have bacteria or flies on. Get guys to

16:45

keep ally of a that you could just

16:47

put the suffering of itself or of yeah

16:49

sometimes it's sticky though because it's not so

16:51

much only they're actually the actions basically cooking

16:54

in the lab but as on the supporting

16:56

into such any cop and that we need

16:58

to do the analysis. So when you get

17:00

complete blackouts and good failures and really and

17:02

as to think about how eating to stay

17:05

productive is to father's. Ah for twelve

17:07

hours in a day for example. So

17:09

I suppose when I am Dailies a

17:11

synthetic chemist so we tied to make

17:13

molecules and one of the way they

17:15

do that is with light he cited.

17:17

Either way that was done. He would

17:19

sort of just welcome messes hi you

17:22

the powered lights. The hundred watts, five

17:24

and and what thousand watts which is

17:26

extremely power consuming the was a fantastic

17:28

about the see surged into this hills

17:30

photo. Get Dallas's using light to help

17:32

catalyze chemical transformations is that you can

17:34

use visible light. And because you

17:37

can use of as of unlike you can start

17:39

using daily low powered lights like alley. The technology.

17:41

I mean I guess that's A for people not

17:43

familiar with chemistry. They will have that idea that

17:46

you put stuff into a golf ball and he

17:48

boy that's all up for energy into the chemicals

17:50

that way. but site a chemistry putting entity in

17:52

a much more clever way. I guess using lights

17:54

and it just I say yes some us I

17:57

photosynthesis anything about in that type of a sense.

18:00

Wants to at all the time so it's

18:02

really not new and old games that be

18:04

doing instead of borrowing from the mice the

18:06

game as nature you know that does this

18:08

you t leave the single day thanks and

18:10

and when of uva light not supervision by

18:13

the make some really complex molecules that he

18:15

simply really benign he says that type of

18:17

inspiration a daily that I think this is

18:19

cool but as I understand your. Working

18:22

on i don't know you've done this yet

18:24

basically putting a portable lab as it were

18:26

inside a shipping container with both sides i

18:28

cells above and yup that's the deemed a

18:31

lead the way I see it. Easy to

18:33

see a massive infrastructure one lab that's making

18:35

all these wonderful molecule that we need for

18:37

human life at Consuming Love Indian lot of

18:40

power by did you can have some be

18:42

like a shipping container and just a couple

18:44

of solar cells given that you can simply

18:46

use of them stand and how some ideas

18:49

and a light bulb and you can in

18:51

principle gift. Exactly the same type of

18:53

chemical efficiency that you might get out

18:55

music eating which is really an intense

18:57

than yeah why not just put it

18:59

in tiny contain any basically chains the

19:01

chemical industry who insists success I mean

19:03

when we were in Cape Town be

19:05

was sunny every day you haven't thought

19:07

of tough getting a magnifying glass and

19:09

some colored lights, filters and using the

19:11

sun directly rather than converted into electricity

19:13

then backed into like that's one of

19:15

things that we were looking at in

19:17

a lab so you've he liked as

19:19

video on console because such a massive

19:21

amount. Of injury to putting into the actions

19:23

of monocles. do a where they went to

19:26

do but having a mocha told way to

19:28

get more predictable chemical translations. Really what we

19:30

often But yeah yeah that's a one of

19:32

these we were looking at was simply as

19:35

that there were digital yakamoz Tim speeding Valonia

19:37

was simply putting it on. Somebody.

19:39

Excesses outside on the top of the do

19:41

for the building and works as it is.

19:43

Obviously that's. Difficult.

19:46

to console and at absolute scale given that

19:48

these considerations about the time of the day

19:50

you do idea what the cloud of his

19:52

life of he also time to work and

19:54

on some of those challenges of of so

19:56

this a jackhammer chinatown who's an italian faster

19:58

hundred years ago and it's l and people

20:00

call him the first green chemist because he

20:02

was doing this kind of chemistry and there

20:04

was a lot of rooftop in Italy. Do

20:07

you see yourself continuing that tradition in a

20:09

sense of using light, using the creativity of

20:11

light so chemistry? So I think it's an

20:13

interesting question because before this idea of load

20:15

shading started during my PhD, so this would

20:17

have been about 2011, and

20:20

at the time we were sort of panicking,

20:22

freaking out because there was no electricity for like one

20:24

to two hours of the day because it was new

20:26

to us, but fast forward 10

20:28

years later we were out 12 hours

20:30

a day and it was really because

20:33

of that shift in our

20:35

energy availability that actually got us starting

20:37

to think about how, but hang on,

20:39

what if there's no power

20:41

ever? I sometimes think about this

20:43

like would I still be in this field if I never

20:45

had some of these challenges that I had today? Because I

20:47

think we do take it for granted that the power is

20:49

always going to be on, we're always going to have some

20:51

of these resources available to us all the time. So

20:54

I'd like to say that yes, I always have this

20:56

in my mind to be this, you know, following

20:58

on that tradition and to use light energy, but

21:00

I think challenges that the

21:02

dyes allow you to at least think, well

21:05

hang on, what is it I'm actually trying

21:07

to achieve? What is it that I'm actually

21:09

trying to do? So in a sense you're

21:11

saying that you've got this fantastic confluence of

21:13

things like LEDs, solar cells, very modern kind

21:15

of semiconductor stuff that gives you this control

21:18

and capture of light, but

21:20

also you're doing the chemistry in

21:22

a much smarter way. Yes, yeah.

21:25

That's exactly what it is. Wade

21:28

Peterson, who was in London last week

21:30

to give his Rising Star Africa prize

21:32

lecture at the Royal Society. Next time

21:34

I'm in Cape Town I'll check how

21:37

things are going. Finally,

21:39

forestry meets particle physics,

21:41

a combination of words that was

21:44

never on my science, journalism, bingo

21:46

card. The particles are

21:48

neutrinos, wakeless, chargeless, dimensionless

21:50

dots produced in nuclear

21:53

reactions and in cosmic

21:55

explosions. The forests? Well,

21:57

I just learned about a proof a hundred

21:59

years ago. you don't need a

22:01

metal aerial to pick up radio waves.

22:03

Trees can be as substitute as you're

22:05

about to hear. Astrophysicist

22:07

Steven Proheora was the one who

22:10

wondered whether a forest of trees

22:12

might nail his problem in detecting

22:14

the most energetic events in the

22:16

universe. Neutrinos at very

22:18

high energies can tell us

22:20

things that nothing else can tell us, because

22:23

if I'm able to detect a neutrino at

22:25

Earth, it should point back to

22:27

its source, like directly to

22:29

where it came from. That's the main

22:32

astrophysical motivation to try to detect these

22:34

high-energy neutrinos. So that's why you want

22:36

to see them. I mean, they do

22:38

very occasionally hit an atom,

22:40

and if they hit an atom, let's say,

22:42

high in the atmosphere, that's when you have

22:45

a chance to detect one. So neutrinos need

22:47

to interact in a dense

22:49

material because their interaction

22:52

potentially is so small. So

22:54

there are neutrino detectors like

22:56

the ice cube detector, which is

22:59

like thousands of little optical detectors

23:01

buried in a cubic kilometer of

23:03

ice beneath the South Pole, which

23:06

sounds like science fiction, but it's real. And

23:09

those extremely high-energy neutrinos

23:12

will interact inside of that big

23:14

volume. So what are the interactions

23:16

in this new idea? What are

23:19

the interactions you're hoping to see?

23:21

So certain neutrino interactions will produce

23:24

radio waves. If these

23:26

radio waves are produced in

23:28

the air, then you can

23:30

use radio antennas to detect those

23:32

radio waves and by extension reconstruct

23:35

the primary neutrino interaction. This is where

23:37

it becomes, for me, quite bizarre. So

23:40

this is where you've dug up

23:42

some old literature from

23:44

100 years ago saying that you can actually

23:46

use trees as

23:49

antennas. That's right. So these

23:51

instruments that detect these radio

23:53

waves from neutrinos rely

23:55

on deploying many radio

23:58

frequency antennas to do this. It'd

24:00

be nice if the antennas were

24:02

already deployed. So I thought

24:04

about trees. It turns out there's a lot of

24:06

research on this from the early

24:09

1900s through the middle 1900s. And

24:12

it turns out the trees are

24:14

fairly efficient radio antennas. I mean,

24:16

I guess an antenna needs to

24:18

be essentially tall and electrically conducting.

24:21

And is it the sap, the water that's in

24:23

the trees that sort of is

24:25

just enough to react to the

24:27

radio waves? That's a great

24:29

question. And I don't know the answer.

24:31

It's something I'm interested in figuring out.

24:34

Everything in the literature seems to be empirical. So

24:37

in the early 1900s, I believe it

24:40

was George Squire, essentially just hammered

24:43

a nail into a tree, connected it to

24:45

a wire, and noticed that

24:47

it was better than any human-made antenna. They

24:50

did find that it had to be living

24:52

trees. My guess is it has something to

24:54

do with water and minerals. So

24:57

I think it's definitely promising and worth a

24:59

little bit more experimentation. And you hinted at

25:01

this earlier that the advantage is that you

25:03

need to have quite a lot of antennas

25:07

to, I guess, to discriminate

25:09

and detect these events efficiently

25:11

in a forest. The

25:14

trees are already standing there. You don't

25:16

have to spend the money of building

25:18

them. That's right. That'd be the big

25:20

payoff if they turn out to be

25:22

good antennas, is that you already have

25:25

a fully built array in place. It

25:27

opens up avenues for you to instrument,

25:29

basically, a large number

25:32

of trees. Because the interactions that

25:34

we're talking about, Roland, are really,

25:36

really rare. So

25:38

these instruments need to cover

25:40

large, large volumes just to

25:42

increase the likelihood that they'll

25:45

see one of these neutrino events. It sounds like

25:47

you haven't actually sort of gone out and hammered

25:50

some nails into some trees, just given the

25:52

idea of a quick try. Well,

25:54

so I did actually go out and hammer in the

25:56

hand of the tree. I did. And

25:58

I'm working on a follow-up. of study to sort

26:01

of try to demonstrate the viability of this

26:03

myself. It does sound like a mad

26:05

idea, but equally, it's not so mad

26:08

that it's not worth giving a try.

26:10

I think that's about right. There's several

26:12

reasons why it may not work, but

26:15

I think given the studies that

26:17

already exist, we kind of have to give it a

26:19

shot and just see if it's something that could work.

26:22

Stephen Prohear of Kansas University at

26:24

Payne's to underline this is a

26:26

speculative longshot shared as

26:28

an unrefereed preprint so far, but I've

26:31

learned so much just by listening to

26:33

him. Do join me, Roland

26:35

Pease and producer Ella Hubber for Science in

26:37

Action from the BBC World Service, same time

26:39

next week and see what you learn.