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Science In Action

The BBC brings you all the week's science news.

World Service,1472 episodes

Episodes

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How science got here, and where next
As anti-science leaves research reeling, does evidence-based policy have a future?
30 Oct 2025,31 mins
Coral extinctions and chalky unknowns
Two species of coral declared functionally extinct in Florida reefs - can plankton cope?
23 Oct 2025,37 mins
Paris agreement impacts and drought realities
Ten years on from the Paris climate agreement, has it helped at all?
16 Oct 2025,38 mins
Old faces and big spaces in small places
The 2025 Nobel prizes are announced – how did Science in Action’s predictions fare?
09 Oct 2025,31 mins
A mystery satellite has been jamming GPS in Europe
Scientists detect for the first time an unknown source of GPS interference from space.
02 Oct 2025,36 mins
Autism and the epigenetics of early brain development
Epigenetic changes during early brain development and the complexities of autism.
25 Sep 2025,36 mins
Stephen Hawking gets it right again
LIGO witnesses two black holes merge just how Hawking predicted.
18 Sep 2025,26 mins
Asteroids, comets and where to find them
A special episode from an international planetary science meeting in Helsinki
11 Sep 2025,26 mins
Why is Afghanistan so vulnerable to earthquakes?
Earthquakes in Afghanistan this week have left more than 1000 dead. Why?
04 Sep 2025,28 mins
How Fear Spreads
What can statistical physics say about the “Great Fear” epidemic of revolutionary France?
28 Aug 2025,37 mins
Not cold fusion all over again
A desktop nuclear fusion reactor that uses electrochemistry to up the ante
21 Aug 2025,30 mins
Vaccine study retraction request rejected
US Health Secretary RFK Jr’s call to retract a study on childhood vaccines is resisted.
14 Aug 2025,30 mins
An end to allergic reactions?
Scientists may have discovered the key to preventing anaphylaxis.
07 Aug 2025,29 mins
Getting ahead of tsunamis
The scientist behind the pacific tsunami warning and the decades of work before it.
31 Jul 2025,30 mins
Discovering Betelgeuse’s Betelbuddy
An astronomical mystery is solved as Betelgeuse’s stellar companion is spotted
24 Jul 2025,29 mins
Biggest black hole merger observed
Two black holes have collided and combined in the largest merger yet observed.
17 Jul 2025,27 mins
Tracking ocean circulation systems
ESA plans to use satellite gravity data to track weakening ocean circulation systems
10 Jul 2025,33 mins
Bird flu surges in Cambodia
There's a surge in human cases and deaths from H5N1 bird flu in Cambodia.
03 Jul 2025,35 mins
Vera C. Rubin Observatory first images
A spectacular new 10-year telescopic survey of the universe gets underway in Chile
26 Jun 2025,37 mins
Half a universe once lost now found
Half of the normal matter in the universe has never actually been spotted - until now
19 Jun 2025,41 mins
The first solar polar pictures
ESA’s Solar Orbiter camera probe begins raising its orbit towards the sun’s poles
12 Jun 2025,34 mins
Potential fungal 'Agroterror'?
What is Fusarium graminearum and why were scientists allegedly smuggling it into the US?
05 Jun 2025,44 mins
Thirteen months to a chip off the moon
China’s audacious Tianwen-2 asteroid sample return mission is underway
29 May 2025,35 mins
WHO Pandemic Agreement reached
124 countries have agreed on a global effort to fight future pandemic health threats.
22 May 2025,40 mins
Vaccinating rabies’ reservoir dogs
Can the WHO’s Zero by 2030 be achieved for dog-mediated rabies?
15 May 2025,38 mins
Gain-of-Function: Loss-of-Funding
Trump signs executive order restricting funding to ‘dangerous’ biological research
08 May 2025,26 mins
Scientists of the world unite
Earth science in every direction from the European Geosciences Union’s 2025 assembly
01 May 2025,29 mins
Wet market SARS CoV-2 origins revisited
Scientists find yet more data from early Covid to suggest zoonotic cross-over as origin.
24 Apr 2025,35 mins
Any more for Moore’s Law?
It's 60 years since Gordon Moore predicted computing power would double every two years
17 Apr 2025,29 mins
Researching pain, painlessly
Researchers grow a mini human pain pathway in a flask for testing pain painlessly
10 Apr 2025,43 mins