Tom Whipple is wandering through the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition.
He’s looking for ways to pin down nature itself. How do you keep natural history alive when the thing you studied is gone? The answer involves sea urchins. Apparently. These spiny crits are helping scientists develop techniques to digitize the past. A strange bedfellows.
But Whipple isn’t just watching jelly and skeletons.
He’s also checking on our chances of getting a robot butler soon. Spoiler: you’re out of luck. He talks to Ingmar Posner, head of Oxford’s Applied Artificial Intelligence lab, who knows why the dishwasher isn’t cleaning itself yet.
Then there is lightning. Actual, raw, chaotic electricity.
Whipple heads to Cardiff University to meet Dr Daniel Mitchard, the co-lead of a place that sounds like it shouldn’t exist—a Lightning Laboratory. They don’t just watch storms; they bottle them. It sounds dangerous. Probably is.
The real work isn’t always about the shiny gadgets; sometimes it’s about capturing the intangible, whether it’s a flash of light or a digital shadow of an urchin.
It’s a quest, mostly. Whipple is building a World Cup squad out of science communicators. He needs players who know their stuff. He recruited health reporter James Gallagher. Why?
To hunt for the truth behind home advantage. Is there real proof that playing closer to home matters, or is it just superstition and noise? James Gallagher is scouting the best football science globally to find out.
He also talks to Laura Porro, an Associate Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at UCL, and Dr Alice Leavey plus Dr Fernando Alvares from Southampton. It’s a lot of experts.
The segment runs for 29 days. A limited window to ask why we don’t have robot servants yet and if we can really keep lightning in a jar.
The producers, Katie Tomsett, Kate White, and Tabby Taylor Buck, helped hold it together. Martin Smith edited the mess. Jana Bennett-Holesworth coordinated the chaos.
Who’s winning? Nobody, really. The science keeps moving. And we’re still trying to catch it. 🏉⚡
