The Dunes of Pluto

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When the New Horizons space probe flew past Pluto three years ago, it revealed an expectedly exotic little world. The latest revelation from the data is that dunes creep across its surface. But as John Spencer of the South West Research Institute explains, these dunes are not made of sand grain, but tiny particles of frozen methane. Then again, it is minus 240 degrees Celsius on Pluto. A 10 kilometre wide asteroid wiped out 75% of life (including the dinosaurs) 66 million years ago. So it has been a shock to discover this week that life rapidly returned, flourished and diversified at very place where the asteroid crashed into the Earth. Sean Gulick and Chris Lowery of the University of Texas in Austin talks about their discoveries and how they relate to today’s mass extinction crisis. Bioengineer Kit Parker of Harvard University talks about the latest big step towards building an artificial cell from scratch. His work with South Korean scientists involved taking different molecules from spinach and bacteria to build a synthetic cell element to switch the activities of cells on and off. Ultimately cells made from scratch could be super-efficient drug factories. The coldest place in the universe will be created shortly on the International Space Station. This will be in a box called the Cold Atom Lab installed on the station earlier this week. Lasers and magnets will cool a strange cloud of atoms to within a few fractions of a billionth of a degree above absolute zero. The Lab’s creator is physicist Rob Thompson of Nasa’s JPL in Pasadena. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker (Photo: Pluto as seen by the New Horizons spacecraft, 14 July 2015. Credit: Nasa)