In Our Time

Original version

BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

BBC Radio 4

Radio 4

Radio 4 (FM)

Discussion & Talk

Podcasts

Factual: History

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, people and events that have shaped our world.

BBC Radio 4 LW

In Our Time: Mercury

Mercury

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Mercury

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the planet closest to our Sun.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the smallest planet in our solar system, what the Mariner 10 and Messenger missions have revealed and the hopes for the new BepiColombo mission.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the planet which is closest to our Sun.  We see it as an evening or a morning star, close to where the Sun has just set or is about to rise, and observations of Mercury helped Copernicus understand that Earth and the other planets orbit the Sun, so displacing Earth from the centre of our system.  In the 20th century, further observations of Mercury helped Einstein prove his general theory of relativity. For the last 50 years we have been sending missions there to reveal something of Mercury's secrets and how those relate to the wider universe, and he latest, BepiColombo, is out there in space now. 

With

Emma Bunce
Professor of Planetary Plasma Physics and Director of the Institute for Space at the University of Leicester

David Rothery
Professor of Planetary Geosciences at the Open University

And 

Carolin Crawford
Emeritus Fellow of Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge, and Emeritus Member of the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge

Producer: Simon Tillotson
In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production

Reading list: 

Emma Bunce, ‘All (X-ray) eyes on Mercury’ (Astronomy & Geophysics, Volume 64, Issue 4, August 2023)  

Emma Bunce et al, ‘The BepiColombo Mercury Imaging X-Ray Spectrometer: Science Goals, Instrument Performance and Operations’ (Space Science Reviews: SpringerLink, volume 216, article number 126, Nov 2020)

David A. Rothery, Planet Mercury: From Pale Pink Dot to Dynamic World (Springer, 2014)

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

In Our Time

Mercury

Genres

Brand

BBC Radio 4 FM

About BBC Radio 4