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Unexpected Elements

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The news you know, the science you don’t.

The news you know, the science you don’t. Unexpected Elements looks beyond everyday narratives to discover a goldmine of scientific stories and connections from around the globe. From Afronauts, to why we argue, to a deep dive on animal lifespans: see the world in a new way.

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Unexpected Elements: Nepal Earthquake Explained

Discussion & Talk

Villagers standing on their destroyed house in the village of Barpak in north central Nepal

16/01/2016 GMT

Nepal Earthquake Explained

BBC World Service - Unexpected Elements, Nepal Earthquake Explained

Nepal earthquake – what happened beneath the surface?

Nepal earthquake; The 100,000 Genome Project; Video game music; Gene editing embryos; Super Supernova; Societies without numbers; What makes a healthy breakfast?

An international team of scientists has discovered what caused the Nepal Earthquake of 2015, which killed almost 9000 people.  The study, published in Nature Geoscience, also explains why the highest mountains in the Himalayas appear to grow between quakes.  Using satellite data the scientists have determined that quake activity was spread across what they term a "hinge point" (a kink in the fault lines), where the main fault in the region transitions from being fairly straight to being sharply angled into the Earth.  This, they say, explains why the ground around Kathmandu rose up about 1m during the quake, yet dropped by about 60cm in the northern mountains.  Jack Stewart talks to Dr John Elliott from the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford.

The 100,000 Genome Project
The 100,000 Genome Project aims to sequence the DNA of 100,000 patients. One of those patients is four-year-old Georgia Walburn-Green.  Her symptoms did not fit into any known disease category.  Professor Maria Bitner-Glindzicz at University College London used early results from the 100,000 Genome project to diagnose Georgia’s condition.  

Video Game Music: the Young People’s Soundtrack
Gareth Mitchell talks to the composer, Grant Kirkhope, one of the leading composers of music for video games, about how and why such music is often more sophisticated than the music produced for films scores for Hollywood blockbusters.

Scientist Makes Case to Edit Embryos
A scientist has been making her case to be the first in the UK to be allowed to genetically modify human embryos.  Dr Kathy Niakan said the experiments would provide a deeper understanding of the earliest moments of human life and could reduce miscarriages.  The regulator, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), will consider her application on Thursday.  If Dr Niakan is given approval then the first such embryos could be created by the summer.

Super Supernova
Astronomers have seen what could possibly be the most powerful supernova ever seen.  The ball of hot gas, billions of light years away, is radiating the energy of hundreds of billions of our sun.  Estimated to be ten miles across it is found in a very unusually active galaxy and it outshines all other supernovae currently published in the literature by at least a factor of two. The object could be a very rare type of star called a Magnetar – but if it is, it pushes the energy limits allowed by physics to the extreme.  Professor Christopher Kochanek of the Ohio State University explains to Jack Stewart how they found it and how time using the Hubble Space Telescope next month should help determine exactly what this object may be.  

Societies Without Numbers
Mathematics is one of the most extraordinary things humans can do with their brains but where do our numerical abilities come from?  Maths writer Alex Bellos looks for answers from a tribe in the Brazilian Amazon which has no words for numbers in its language. 

What Makes a Healthy Breakfast?
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day – it is a great start and good for you.  It stops you snacking, boosts metabolism and keeps you thin.  Well, that is what we have been all been told.  But some scientists argue this is all a myth - and that just because we keep repeating it does not make it true.  So should we bother with breakfast?  The biggest clinical trial, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, told 300 overweight or obese people to skip or eat breakfast for four months.  James Gallagher talks to Professor David Allison, who conducted that trial at the University of Alabama.  He also talks to nutrition scientist Professor Susan Jebb, from the University of Oxford, about what you should eat if you are going to eat breakfast and want it to be as healthy as possible.


(Photo caption: Villagers standing on their destroyed house in the village of Barpak in north central Nepal, nine days after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck the Himalayan nation © Nicolas Asfouri/AFP/Getty Images)


The Science Hour was presented by Roland Pease with comments from James Gallagher, the BBC’s Health editor, News online


Editor: Deborah Cohen

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