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With Sir Keir Starmer's Labour Party enjoying a honeymoon period thanks to its supermajority in the House of Commons, what does the future hold for the environment?
We asked Simon Lewis, professor of global change science at University College London, about the new government's priorities for tackling the climate crisis, the transition to renewable energy and the environmental report of the Conservative government after 14 years in power.
Meanwhile, four test astronauts will complete 378 days living in a simulation of a Martian habitat.
The space agency's Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog mission involved four volunteers locked down in an environment designed to look and feel like the Red Planet, called Mars Dune Alpha.
The habitat was 3D printed at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, and the team engaged in mission activities such as “Mars walking” and farming, communicating with the outside world only via external ground control.
The tests, which are due to finish this weekend, are aimed at calculating diet, exercise and health needs for future Mars missions.
Additionally, space scientists at Edinburgh's Heriot-Watt University are working on a new major project to search for planets outside our solar system.
We spoke to Associate Professor and laser expert Richard McCracken about the development of the Astrocomb, which is supporting the South African Large Telescope Project.
And the rest
He talks about Japan saying goodbye to floppy disks, the giant-fanged swamp beasts that were the apex predators of the pre-dinosaur era, and why song melodies have “become simpler since the 1950s.”
Listen on the player above, Spotfy, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream.
Here's an automated recording of today's episode:
Hi, I'm Mark Branden, and this is The Standard's Tech and Science Daily podcast.
Next up is the space laser comb, which will search for unusual exoplanets.
But first, with Sir Keir Starmer's Labour party enjoying a honeymoon period thanks to its supermajority, what are the environmental challenges ahead?
We asked Simon Lewis, professor of global change science at University College London, about the new government's priorities for tackling the climate crisis.
So yeah, I think that's going to be one of the big issues, but it's not just climate change.
That means stimulating the economy and addressing the cost of living crisis at the same time while working to reduce carbon emissions.
They are trying to bring these three elements together to create real impact.
Specifically, we plan to stop awarding new oil and gas rights in the North Sea.
This is hugely important from a climate perspective and it combines with major investment in onshore wind, solar and offshore wind through this new Great British Energy Company.
It just raised $8 billion.
And we wanted to know about Labour's plans for transitioning away from fossil fuel reliance and towards renewable energy.
Labour's manifesto includes careful transitional provisions for North Sea workers.
But of course, they have the skills necessary to make the transition.
And I think for ordinary people, the impact of that will be a reduction in bills, because, of course, the gas and oil that comes out of the North Sea is sold on the international market.
So what we actually need is cheaper energy from renewable sources, and that's how we can reduce our electricity bills.
Then there is the significant issue of holding water companies accountable.
And we asked Simon what he knew about the terrible sewage spills into rivers and coastlines.
The Labour manifesto states that dumping untreated sewage into our rivers and coasts is outrageous and is very unclear about how it intends to tackle this issue which has attracted national attention.
They say that water companies will be subject to special measures, but they have not said what those measures will be.
So it's really unclear what they plan to actually do about this issue.
So I think this is a piece that really deserves attention.
Finally, we wanted to hear his assessment of the Conservative Party's environmental record after 14 years and five prime ministers.
I think they've done an incredibly bad job with the environment.
And I think one thing stands out.
Nationally, Rishi Sunak has in some ways broken the long-standing bipartisan consensus on tackling climate change.
So he resurrected the policy and used some pretty divisive rhetoric to try to destroy the unity that existed and make it just another tide in the culture wars.
And that was really harmful.
And this won't just hurt the UK – it will lead to developing coherent policies to tackle climate change whilst improving people's lives.
But internationally it was a disaster too.
I'm a climate change scientist.
I've sat with Rishi Sunak on the international stage and his speeches were hugely unpopular.
And we lacked credibility on the international stage.
Next, a four-strong team of NASA test astronauts will complete more than a year of living in an immersive Mars habitation simulation.
Volunteers live in an environment designed to look like the Red Planet in an analog mission exploring the health and performance of the space agency's crew, called Mars June Alpha.
The habitat was 3D printed at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, and the team engaged in mission activities such as Mars walking and farming, communicating with the outside world only via external ground control.
The tests, which are due to finish this weekend, are aimed at calculating current diet, exercise and health requirements for a future Mars mission.
Returning to the topic of space, scientists at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh have embarked on a major new project to search for exoplanets outside our solar system.
Exoplanets are planets that orbit stars other than the Sun, and the research team is using very large telescopes that can peer deep into space.
The South African Large Telescope (SALT) is the largest telescope in the Southern Hemisphere.
It has a mirror with a diameter of 9.2 metres.
It is made up of 91 hexagonal segments and is located about a four-hour drive north of Cape Town.
We started collaborating with them in 2016 when we tested a prototype laser frequency comb on their telescope.
Explaining what they're looking for is Richard McCracken, an associate professor and laser expert at Heriot-Watt University.
Astronomers want to measure the light of stars, and the different colors they give off as accurately as possible.
What they want to do further is look for changes in the spectrum we get from the star over time, because those changes could mean that there's probably another planet, an exoplanet, orbiting that distant star.
And how it works.
They use a spectroscope.
It is a device that allows you to visualize the rainbow colors emanating from stars.
If you zoom in on these colors, you'll see they are in very high resolution.
And if we want to measure changes in the spectrum over time, we need some kind of local ruler, an absolute standard, to which we can compare the starlight.
This is what we have been developing at Heriot-Watt University.
This is thanks to key technology developed in Edinburgh.
We have constructed a laser frequency comb.
Essentially it's an optical ruler, a ruler of light that works in conjunction with the starlight and projects it onto the spectroscope, allowing us to measure these tiny spectral changes with great precision.
Next, Japan has finally said goodbye to the humble floppy disk, which until last month was surprisingly still used as a medium for submitting official documents.
As part of a campaign to digitize the bureaucracy, 3.5-inch disks, unable to store even 1.5 megabytes of data, are about to disappear into history.
The Japanese government's Digital Agency has abolished all 1,034 regulations governing the use of digital technology, except for one environmental regulation on automobile recycling.
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Stay tuned for more news from the world of technology and science, and about pre-dinosaur apex predators.
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Welcome back! Research from the National Science Foundation at the Field Museum in Chicago and the University of Buenos Aires suggests that a giant salamander-like creature was an apex predator in the Ice Age that preceded the dinosaurs.
Gaiasia geniae, a swamp creature with a toilet seat-shaped head, had articulated jaws that it used to bite down on prey while swimming.
Its fossils were discovered in the Gaius Formation of Namibia, and the first part of its name comes from Gaius, while the second part is named after the late British palaeontologist Professor Jenny Clack, an expert on the evolution of early tetrapods.
They are four-limbed vertebrates that evolved from thin, leaf-like fish.
Gaiasia geniae had a skull more than two feet long and is thought to have lived in swamps 40 million years before dinosaurs first evolved.
And finally, computer scientists at Queen Mary, University of London have found that popular song melodies have simplified considerably since the 1950s.
They analyzed hundreds of chart hits from the past 70 years and found that there has been a significant decline in the rhythmic and pitch complexity of song melodies.
They say the biggest transition, or perhaps an explosion of change, occurred between 1975 and 2000. Music genres such as new wave, disco and stadium rock began to gain popularity in the mid-1970s, while hip hop became more prominent in the early 2000s.
The team also found moderate evidence of what has been called a melodic revolution in 1966, when major music studios began to adopt new technologies, such as software applications for recording, editing and producing music.
That's it for the latest updates. Join us at 4pm for the latest general election news, interviews and analysis from the Standard's Westminster team. We'll be back on Monday at 1pm so see you then.
