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BBC Inside Science: Intrusive memories, Silent aircraft, Nuclear fusion, Pluto

09/07/2015

Intrusive memories, Silent aircraft, Nuclear fusion, Pluto

BBC Radio 4 - BBC Inside Science, Intrusive memories, Silent aircraft, Nuclear fusion, Pluto

Adam Rutherford investigates intrusive memories, silent aircraft, nuclear fusion and Pluto

Science news, Including how not sleeping may prevent intrusive memories after trauma, whether aircraft will ever be silent, nuclear fusion and clean energy, and the Pluto fly-by.

Adam Rutherford talks to Emily Holmes from the Medical Research Council’s Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, about two new studies on preventing intrusive memories. She discusses why stopping someone from sleeping after seeing a lab based film of traumatic events like a news reel or car crash may actually stop people from forming intrusive memories about those films. This offers an intriguing insight in to the role that sleep has in consolidating intrusive and possibly traumatic memories. She also explains how if memories of a traumatic event are laid down, why playing a computer game like Tetris could disrupt that memory and stop it from becoming intrusive. 

Silent Aircraft: The Davies report recently recommended a new, third runway should be built at Heathrow airport but as flight numbers increase how quiet can planes of the future become? Adam talks to Jeremy Astley from Southampton University and Michael Carley from Bath University about where the noise in jet engines comes from, how engineering can make them quieter and will the silent aircraft initiative ever make a truly silent aircraft.

Nuclear Fusion. For decades scientists have tried to harness the power of the Sun to smash atomic nuclei together to create a clean, limitless energy source from nuclear fusion. Marnie Chesterton talks to scientists from Tokomak energy about their new design for a Tokomak machine that has already exceeded previous records. Could it be a vital step forward in the quest for nuclear fusion on Earth?

New Horizons: On 14th July 2015 the spaceship, New Horizons will complete its 10 year mission to flyby Pluto. BBC Science correspondent Jonathan Amos gives Adam a preview and tells him why he's so excited about the mission and what they hope to discover about the darker regions of our Solar System.

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Intrusive memories, Silent aircraft, Nuclear fusion, Pluto

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