logo
episode-header-image
Sep 2020
34m 3s

#32: Billionaire plan to geoengineer the...

NEW SCIENTIST
About this episode
If we’re not going to make the effort to cut carbon emissions, why don’t we manipulate Earth’s climate, forcing it to cool down? Obviously that’s not ideal - but geoengineering, one the most controversial proposals to combat climate change, is back in the spotlight this week. In the pod are New Scientist journalists Rowan Hooper, Valerie Jamieson and Cat de ... Show More
Up next
Sep 11
AI Just Solved One of the Hardest Problems in Mathematics
Episode 398 OpenAI says it has just solved one of the hardest problems in mathematics. The Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem has been unsolved for more than 200 years. Now AI has cracked it, some claim we’ve finally reached “AGI” - artificial general intelligence. Na ... Show More
32m 16s
Sep 10
New Discovery Reveals the Secret Lives of Denisovans
Episode 397 The first evidence has been discovered that Denisovans lived in south-west China. This ancient species of human spent over 100,000 years in the region and left behind incredible artefacts that tell us how they lived. 64,000 fragments of bone have been discovered from ... Show More
23m 54s
Sep 4
The Nepal Disaster: How Climate Change is Reshaping the World
Episode 396 A devastating climate disaster has killed at least 1,200 people in Nepal. A mass of ice and rock came crashing down off the Langtang mountain into the valley below. The climate crisis has made events like this much more likely. This is just one of many retreating glac ... Show More
23m 28s
Recommended Episodes
Apr 2025
Changing the World (Literally)
<p>Could we create an atmospheric sun shield to halt the effects of global warming? Should we? Neil deGrasse Tyson, Chuck Nice, and Gary O’Reilly are joined by climate scientist Daniele Visioni and sociologist Holly Jean Buck to explore the science and ethics of deliberately alte ... Show More
58m 27s
Mar 2023
Block the sun, save the earth?
Solar geoengineering — the idea of cooling the planet by deflecting the sun’s rays — is so risky that scientists and policy experts can’t even agree on whether to research it. This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Matt Collette and Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by L ... Show More
26m 6s
Nov 2022
Climate tech to save the planet: Out of thin air
<p>Direct air carbon capture - taking carbon dioxide straight out of the air around us - sounds like science fiction. In this episode of Tech Tonic Pilita Clark visits Iceland to meet the engineers and scientists at the forefront of this<em> </em>new<em> </em>tech. Can carbon cap ... Show More
24m 57s
Sep 2024
Is it Time for Climate Interventions? | Ep177: Kelly Wanser
<p>As climate impacts mount, pressure is building on policymakers to find ways to alleviate the crisis. One controversial option being explored is geoengineering - direct human interventions to cool the planet. But can we safely and effectively implement these large-scale climate ... Show More
1h 2m
Apr 2019
Forget Carbon Neutral, Let's Go Carbon Negative
Scientists have developed ways to suck greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere. So climate change is solved then, right? Bloomberg Environment's Abby Smith tells us why this technology isn't yet ready for widespread use and why the government's policies toward what some call "car ... Show More
10m 24s
Oct 2020
A Radical Approach to Climate Change
Could altering the Earth’s atmosphere to reflect back some of the sun’s rays be a solution to climate change? It would likely decrease global temperatures, but it might lead to climate wars. Humanity might become “addicted” to it for survival. And ultimately, would this technolog ... Show More
58m 5s
Jul 2024
Are implanted brain chips the future?
Elon Musk’s implanted brain chip, Neuralink, is coming to the UK for clinical trials. Is controlling computers with our minds a future reality or is it all hype? Neuroscientists Dean Burnett and Christina Maher weigh in.Zoologist Jules Howard ponders the strange effects drugs in ... Show More
28m 2s