Later Nancy Pelosi has been elected speaker of the u.s. House of Representatives as her party takes charge of the chamber ushering in a new era of divided government under President Trump It's the 2nd time as Pelosi has held the position and she is still the only woman in u.s. History to do so addressing Congress she said she was looking forward to working with Republicans in a bipartisan way but added that the lower house would work as a check on other parts of government and nation is a stark moment 2 months ago the American people spoke and demanded a new dawn they called upon the beauty of our Constitution our system of checks and balances that protects our democracy Russian news agencies say a former u.s. Marine arrested in Moscow last week has been charged with spying the authorities said Paul Whelan was caught carrying out an act of espionage unconfirmed Russian reports say he is accused of receiving a data stick containing the names of Russian agents James Landale reports Paul Whelan was arrested by Russian state security officers last Friday and now faces more than 10 years in prison if convicted of espionage Mr Whelan's defense lawyer blood images that a bank of told the state run news agency here Novosti that he had appealed for bail Mr Whelan who's 48 was born in Canada to British parents he served 14 years in the Us Marine Corps doing 2 tours in Iraq before being discharged for bad conduct in 2008 he's currently head of global security for an American company supplying vehicle parts Pope Francis has said the credibility of the Catholic Church in the United States has been severely damaged by the ongoing child sexual abuse scandal there in a letter to u.s. Bishops on a retreat in Chicago the pope said that efforts to cover up the crimes are caused even greater harm he urged the bishops to end internal bickering and show unity as they try to tackle the crisis the pope's comments on child abuse have got. Stronger over time in late December priests who defended to surrender to the law in preparation for divine justice the Catholic Church in the Democratic Republic of Congo said that based on results as seen from Sunday's elections there was a clear winner among the $21.00 presidential candidates Louie's the us has the details a group of Catholic Bishops who deployed more than $40000.00 election observers said that the data be compiled from polling station ballots reveal a clear winner but did not name the presumed Victor nearly half of the country is Catholic and the group of bishops hold powerful influence they have on the Election Commission to reflect will be referred to as the truth and justice and the vote provisional results are meant to be published by Neil actual commission on January 6th Louise to us there you're listening to the world news from the b.b.c. The United Nations special envoy to Somalia Nicholas hasten has briefed the Security Council for the 1st time since the Somali foreign ministry ordered his expulsion from the country this week Mr Haye some told the council that a government decision to arrest a political candidate who wants to be and been an al-Shabaab leader could deter others from choosing politics over violence American Scientists say they've genetically engineer tobacco plants that can grow up to 40 percent larger than normal they say the method developed could eventually be used to boost Yildiz in other important crops such as rice and wheat. Archaeologists in Mexico have discovered the earliest known temple and sacrifice altar dedicated to the pre as tech God she paid Toltec or flayed Lord the site in the southeastern state of Puebla is believed to about be about a 1000 years old America's editor Leonardo Russia reports sheep are thought it was one of the most revered gods in the region until Spanish colonize ation began in the 16th century but until now Mexican archaeologists hadn't been able to find a temple dedicated directly to his adoration which dates to pre Aztec times priests used to make human sacrifices at their site and where the skin of the victims to worship their flayed Lord they believed he would help renew the cycles of fertility culture and war and further questions have been raised about a start up ferry company awarded a British government contract to provide extra freight capacity if there's no deal breaks it one of the terms and conditions initially listed on the seaborne freight company's website was apparently cut and pasted from a takeaway restaurant business is vice customers to check the goods before paying for any meal the governments of the area have been corrected and highlighted the independent expert checks on seaborne freights financial technical and legal underpinning before it was given the $17500000.00 contract. B.b.c. News. You're listening to the inquiry on the b.b.c. World Service I mean the result. Started as a pinprick of light just another star in the firmament over months it grew brighter becoming more and more distinct. And it grew a tail like a comet and then it grew larger and brighter still. It could be seen by day. Finally it lit up the sky in a brilliant molten moment. And then darkness. Life on Earth would never be the same. That happened 66000000 years ago and asteroid more than 10 kilometers wide slammed into earth starting a mass extinction wiped out the dinosaurs. Some see the same thing happening now but this time the asteroid is us. So today we're asking are we heading for another mass extinction. Hocked one back might get done. A lot of people find them creepy our 1st expert witness loves bugs but I think as soon as you feel a little bit more intensively with them and study them more in detail you'll start to fall in love because they behave very much like other animals do the. Axle Hawk Kirsch is Professor of biogeography at Trigger university in Germany so if you start just sitting in front of a grasshopper and watch him displaying in front of the female for example and waving its antenna and its hind legs making a small dance and then you see the female not interested in all and just kicking in the way then you have a different feeling for insects however much sympathy we may have for the jilted grasshopper many of us will never want to bugs it's not just because they're creepy some of them are nasty too when we think about bucks we think about the best buck when we think about roaches we think about the cockroach so we usually just consider the pest species and these are a minority the majority are pretty useful essential even. If we use insects without even knowing it because of the part of nation service because a lot of foods would not be a way to build without insects and of course they also. We provide some other services like decomposition they are recycling nutrients remove the dung and the carrion which is on our fields otherwise we would be completely swamped with these . Estimates that 90 percent of all species are bugs we don't even have names for most of them yet we know so little about life on our planet and we are searching for a life out of space somewhere in trying to find aliens but we don't have not even found all the species on our planet and this means that we really need to intensify also the research on the species because we only can preserve what we know take the mystery of the Rocky Mountain locust. It's produced very very large swarms which are described as a largest Ekuban lay sions of insects ever seen on our planet so these row billions and trillions of in the video and even covering surface larger than France during one of our Get France Yeah that was at the beginning of the 20th century and in 1000 of the species became extinct we don't know exactly why we assume that these breeding places were destroyed by the transformation of the natural habitats into eco cultural farmland there are pleasure ways to get at the health of today's bug population hock Kirsch leads teens which tracked grasshoppers Well my favorite one is the Crow plain grasshopper which is endemic to step in southern France it behaves like a stone it looks like a stone it doesn't really jump if you come closer so we found that when we want to monitor the species that it was very very difficult so what we did is now to use detection dogs which are much better in finding these insects dollars that yeah dogs so you can actually train dogs very well for finding everything and they're even good in finding. A single insect species so they are maybe 50 different the grasshopper species in this area but it only finds this one species we research for there's a picture of one of the dogs on our website Her name's Hera and there's a crow playing grasshopper sitting on her nose the team's work has helped establish that that species is now critically endangered. There are other ways to get at the health of the bug population Researchers in Germany have been setting traps in nature reserves and weighing the bugs caught they found that actually the biomass dropped in the warmest least since they started this study in 1809 so it was a 75 percent decrease of biomass from 189 to 2016 that's a big number that's a really big number yeah this means that if you hadn't had a really large jar full of insects a couple of years ago and now you only have a very small number of insects. Doesn't loss of biomass necessarily mean species are going extinct so I think that this reduction in biomass is actually shows that there's a global trend of decrease in all insect populations and this means for common species they become rarer and for rest pieces they become extinct. The German study isn't the only one showing that bugs are in trouble there's I'm only touring projects in the Netherlands which look for butterflies and they show exactly the same trend in the crease and there was a recent study also from Puerto Rico where they found that there's even a 90 percent reduction in biomass So this appears to be something which is happening across our planet in very different parts of our planet the main reason is driving us are thought to be a loss of habitat and pesticide use actual hawkers estimates that one species goes extinct every hour most he says are bugs. Part 2 goodbye Chumba. Yes Yes I'm very close to the lake at the moment you. Meet force Wira like malaria is called Lake of stars way when you sit on the beach your beer boat to see like when the winds are blowing when they went to the lake you are able to see some stars so it's a very beautiful lake. Very beautiful and very big one of the biggest It's in southeastern Africa with Mozambique in Tanzania on the eastern shore and allowing on the western one it's reckoned to have more fish species than any other link that's the way of bone and glowing of grown up with and that's where I have a big job our lake is looking like. I'm coming from a fishing family where my father when I was young he used to tell my mom that preparing lines come bugs or drill bring things that we can use for lunch his father would paddle his canoe no more than shouting distance from shore and catch big fish My father used to catch a lot if I can remember very well he was able to catch up to fish he was able to catch a tumble he was able to catch or does. Has about 1000 feet speeches and all those of his vision where the variable in those days when I was young but at the moment you know we struggling just to find some other this officials I used to see them on when I was I was young. People pressure is driving the change I was born in 973 and the population of my was about 5 media and I need to have grown now up to about 20 media so the publisher and I will hate it going to Butte did 2 degrees of the scene make money because the window Brisson grows you have more fisherman and again when you have more fish or many more pressure on things. Resource how many people rely on Lake Malawi for food it's Isn't the whole country's they want country because it's not just along the lake if you go to a distinct like Museum which is a very far from Lake you go to their market so they are also using the same fish they are selling fish in these markets right so this is this is the key protein for people in Malawi and yes yes the lakes Maine fish is the silvery chambre Oh a staple of Malawi's national diet but you know this fish you get even it in the bones in the head then you enjoy that's where you like most the appetite for like Malawi's fish forced fisherman further and deeper into the lake the canoes of his father's generation were no longer enough that to ours alone the 8 days when people started now using Indian bought the ones you know fish was depleted in leg. Bigger boats meant bigger nets and there was a cheap ready and surprising supply. Well as a country this is the only we have received about it mainly media and mosquito nets and what is happening at the moment instead of these mosquito has to be used for malaria prevention mostly they're used for fishing and the they can make very big fishing nets of from these mostly tornadoes which can catch any size of fish that average the size of mosquito right so even baby fish then presumably Oh yes that can catch any sort of fish including the bed the fish. Malawi's government estimates that the Lakes fish population has declined by 90 percent in the last 20 years. The chambre and other species are listed as critically endangered. Today forcing we're a country director for a charity called ripple which helps communities better manage natural resources because the prob. Arms for fish start on land when Noah was a brewery their order was green because you know we had a lot of trees in it in the Maori but now because you know there is a big soil erosion because of deforestation in the country that is affecting our Lord and in Iran it says on when you go along the leg you'll find that the order of Jane the guy into Blount from blue to Brown. 2 2 2 2 2 like Malawi is not an isolated case 2 we could have as easily talked about extinctions in Lake Geneva or Lake Victoria or China's like. Or the Caspian Sea or the Mekong River I could go on freshwater habitats are some of the most endangered in the world it means freshwater fish declining even faster than bugs are. Parked very red meat. We've established that conservation work can take you to some pretty beautiful places but they can also be dangerous. Now we're in the virgin forests of southern Mexico it's near the end of the day and professor a dolphin tears of suddenly realizes he's been watching. We were in the shadows of the jail were individual was actually checking us up the story of a what of a jogger right this gigantic cat that we have in the nootropics the Jaguar Jaguars are top predators they can chew you up like a pretzel. With awful gears as response I felt an incredible emotion affairs so excited about the fact that there are still places on a planet where we have those and most ill that is a very exciting feeling this might explain why he became a conservation biologist in the 1st place but it's excitement was changed with sadness to think that not every. He has this wonderful opportunity this motion and that perhaps our children and grandchildren will not have the support and it is read often deers attracts the decline of mammals and says they follow the same pattern is that a fish and bugs he published a paper which calls it biological and Nial ation with used a very very large sample of animals from databases and we found that a great proportion of the animals had evidence of reduction in the geographic range meaning in a number of locations animal is not present anymore meaning that you loosing populations were dolphins says losing local populations is a prelude to extinction He looked at $180.00 mammal species and found half occupy 80 percent less territory than they did just a century ago is a terrible situation hence the term biological and I lay Jand right but saying if an animal is actually extinct is harder than it might seem How would you say that a species is going extinct when you have not seen the last animal in the last 20 years or when the last couple if is an animal that has you know 2 genders when the last couple is seen or when the last 20 animals have been seen so it is a little bit tricky to find the global extension from the face of the earth the reasons for the decline are more straightforward and by this point in the program familiar habitat loss and hunting in other words human activity is wiping them out but Rudolf and there's 0 says dwindling mammal populations are creating opportunities and risks for those that survive. You reduce or eliminate species such as elephant 00 Volos those big animals there then obviously the vegetation in this case the savannah so going to change shrubs are going to be much more abundant more lush grasses are not going to be grazed upon interests are going to be growing in exuberance you know you're creating a paradise ecologically speaking for animals who are just rodents rats mice chipmunks they carry please take those kinds of things and those animals can carry a borne of these eases nasty ones including plague or the Black Death. So for him the pattern is clear a mass extinction is not only underway it's gathering pace $340.00 species of vertebrates went extinct says you know 1560 percent of those went to the last 100 years so those rates are really really high. This issue that we've seen in the last 100 years should've taken even 10000 years under normal circumstances so that gives the perception of the money 2 of the rate of extinction. So far we've heard from people studying the living and looking for the vanishing. But the Earth has already seen 5 mass extinctions does today's situation really compare. Heart Full blast from the past most pet intelligence think of it as a given that we are currently going through a mass extinction. Jennifer both of brink is a paleontologist and expert in mass extinctions because of the number of species that are disappearing and how quickly it's happening it is marrying what we have seen in the fossil record. She's based in South Africa's Carew Basin which is a world renowned cites for preserving fossils that date from around 260 to 190000000 years ago and it preserves an almost complete record of the ancestors of mammals the evidence of extinction is all around her I will look around to find pieces of bone or fossils sticking out of the ground around these hilly our crops and then excavate the religion they just poking out of the ground they are really any part of the animal can stick out and you might see a tiny piece of bone perhaps it's looks like a white object against the on dirt and it may only be a few centimeters wide and when you dig it out it's a 3 metre long animal and in these bones she sees species come and go we have background extinctions all the time that have occurred throughout his history where numerous species often go extinct but when we see a spike in the number of species and a significant spike where at least 40 to 50 percent of the species are disappearing we can that a mass extinction and we've had about 5 mass extinctions in Earth history no 2 are the same but they are characterized by incredible change Jennifer both the brink focuses on one about 250000000 years ago called the permanent Triassic mass extinction which she says holds up the best mirror for today gases has suffered oxide and carbon dioxide were released into the atmosphere and these different gases and chemical cause a change in the atmosphere there is acid rain there is global warming and many plants for example counts of Ivo's and then you have a chain reaction where the animals that need to survive on these plants also go extinct. After the. Attention it became extremely dry so we go from a lush seasonally weight environment to a drought stricken environment such as what you might find in the interior of a straight Leah and when it did rain attended to rain and these flash floods so it was a very unpredictable environment and if you have this kind of unpredictability you find it very difficult to survive and to adapt how summers that situation to what we're seeing today Well we're definitely seeing rapid climate change and this is what we see in past mass extinctions and the quicker the climate change the less likely the organisms are able to adapt climate change has not been a major factor in the extinctions we've heard about so far but the fear is it could accelerate the current rate of extinction. If all this is getting you down consider the survivors a generalist an animal that eats many different prawns for example is more likely to survive then a specialist predator that only eats one kind of animal many animals that borrowed for example had a higher survival rate they were able to borrow during very hot conditions or to perhaps hibernate from long periods of drought and I've looked at the bottom of the species as well and found that those that were able to breed younger tended to survive and what kinds of animals were there I mostly look at an animal called Lister Saurus what it looked like perhaps the size of a sheep and it had Smee skin it had a beak like a turtle Baek with tusks So it is very strange looking animal with a very short stumpy legs so it was sort of quite fact looking at the kind of endearing to you there are less resources My favorite is my baby. She thinks creatures like squirrels are good candidates to survive today's mass extinction people might do Ok to some of us at least. You describe the specialist species being the most vulnerable in the generalists as being the most likely to survive humans surely are the paragon of a generalist generalistic and we have an extremely high population so it's entirely possible that a few might survive. We may go through what we call a bottle make with millions may die but a small part of our population may survive so some comfort there for humans and we're not there yet how long might we have I think hundreds to thousands of years it may sound like a long time to people living today but if we look at it geologically it's extremely rapid and we've already begun so and they said concerted if it is made to preserve what we have on this planet I think it's going to be a runaway effect. If we lose what we call keystone species which are species they keep a particular environment going and that are crucial to a food weight for example it has a cascade effect and so you lose even more species. So are we heading for another mass extinction the experts we've spoken to agree we're not heading for one in one and you mass extinction has begun and it's being driven by humans we may be able to survive though life would be very different and less rich than today. The result of fears of says we need not be resigned to the inevitable of the species their final fate evolutionary fate is to Extinct Living that would be the case of humans as well but hopefully we can still have the wisdom and capacity to modify things such a way that if we extend which of course. That can be delayed as much as possible. Next time on the inquiry we'll be asking can we stop a mass extinction. This inquiry was presented by me Neal Rozelle and produced by Josephine Casserly and. If you want to listen to more episodes to download our podcast there are hundreds of other editions their search b.b.c. The Inquirer. This is the b.b.c. World Service keeping you up to date with world events throughout the day from the heart of the b.b.c. This is the newsroom our team of journalists bring you the top stories of the moment Hello I'm Jackie learned I mean do something with all of the Conway and Alex rich with on the spot reports this guy is a clear the saddest orders of business is. Shutting Out out out residents hundreds of thousands of people displaced many of them have been through a terrifying time perspective on changing situation and an eyewitness account of at least 13 experience really your relations with Russia have been strained over Um I had the problem of the 3 levels of government trying to work together your 30 minute window on the well let's get more from our correspondent in Istanbul our science reporter is Davison has been studying the research Jonathan separate reports for the newsroom the news room every day on the b.b.c. World Service. You're with the b.b.c. World Service on today stocks and action we feel latest from the NASA rendezvous with ultimate food lay in the darkness of space beyond Pluto just finding it was a feat it's $100.00 times more than Pluto 10000 times fainter and we were traveling at 32000 miles an hour with no 2nd chance all of those things conspired to make it a very difficult intercept but we did it and that's just the start as you can hear after the news. B.b.c. News with Mick Kelly the veteran Democratic Party legislator Nancy Pelosi has been elected speaker of the u.s. House of Representatives for a historic 2nd time as a party takes charge of the chamber the Democrats are vowed to pass bills designed to end a partial government shutdown caused by around over funding for Mr Trump's border wall Russia news agency say a former u.s. Marine arrested in Moscow last week has been charged with spying Paul Whalen was detained 6 days ago by Russia's security service the f.s.b. Pope Francis has said the credibility of the u.s. Catholic Church is been severely damaged by the sexual abuse scandal and efforts to cover it up in a letter to a meeting of u.s. Bishops the Pope called for unity u.s. Stocks of fall and hit by hit by bad news from the technology John Apple and weak manufacturing figures at one point the Dow Jones Index was 2.4 percent down shares fell more than 9 percent at the start of trading after the company cut its revenue forecast sharply for the final quarter of 2018 the United States is want Iran not to go ahead of the series of plans space rocket launches saying they would violate a u.n. Resolution intended to curb to Iran's missile development program the u.s. Secretary of state Mike Pompei o. Said the launches would be provocative the American Pharmaceutical giant Bristol Myers Squibb has announced plans to acquire the cancer drugs prestigious group Celgene in a $74000000000.00 deal if the merger goes ahead it will be one of the largest in the sectors history creating a biotech giant producing drugs for cancer immune disorders and cardiovascular disease and archeologists in Mexico have discovered the earliest known temple and sacrifice alter dedicated to the pretty Aztec God she paid Totec or flayed Lord priests worshiped him by wearing the skin of human sacrifices the site is believed to about a 1000 years old b.b.c. News. Welcome to Science in action from the b.b.c. World Service with me Roland piece where we're celebrating the 150 year development of the periodic table that charts of the $180.00 known elements that maps out their chemical properties gallium element number 31 particularly beautiful if you hold it in your hand and squeeze it will melt so it has a very very low melting point and that gives it a kind of magical property we're also looking into the details behind the deadly tsunami triggered when the some of crackers how collapsed in Indonesia 2 weeks ago out of the work you know it into the water creating huge waves different cities often Sumatra and Java before that vote triumph in space 1st a triangle for the Chinese lander that touched down on the far side of the moon John Amos b.b.c. Science correspondent is here John it's all landed in a special place I presume Yeah the far side nobody's done this before we've crashed into the far side but nobody's touchdown softly and the Chinese mission has gone into Carmen crater they call it but that is within a structure called South Pole can base and so this is one of the biggest calamities in solar system history a massive impact on the far side of the moon that very clearly dug out a very very large area probably punched all the way through to the mantle of the moon and so scientifically it's a cool place to go so it's going to give completely different kinds of results then where a color back from the Apollo from the Apollo so we got rocks from the near side which is a great and they told us an awful lot but they're not as interesting perhaps as a some of the rocks that are in this particular basin the I was speaking to Jack Schmitt the famous Apollo 17 astronaut course a geologist and I asked him you know if you would go back where would you. Boots on the moon and he says I go to South Pole again basin because that's where the rocks the sexy rocks are that we would like to examine and bring back to Earth but they've only just touched down so the results really yet to come aren't they John Yeah they've got all sorts of instruments on board they've got a little biased sphere as well so you know they've got their adoption plan that famous model that they use in the bar of trees and they've you know they've got wanted to animal species as well you know very simple life forms so it's kind of a start for the Chinese on the far side but their next step is a sample return mission they won't do it from the far side they'll do that from the near side but it's all part of this depth wise process of extending their ambition in space and it's very impressive one for us to watch to act on thanks very much our next destination though is ultimately the lay the small icy body a 1000000000 kilometers beyond Pluto just visited by masses New Horizons mission when I say visited I mean the craft flew past it at 60000 kilometers per hour taking a host of pictures and measurements of this slow moving clump of ice and dust is quite caught the world's attention with its 1st images Alan Stern head of the mission has been emphasizing just how difficult it was even to make that deep space wrong Dave who is object was not even known it was summer of 2014 we sure its orbit accurately. And then from a distance of over a 1000000000 miles chase it down and accurately intercept it it's $100.00 times smaller than Pluto $10000.00 times fainter and we were traveling at 32000 miles an hour with no 2nd chance all of those things conspired to make it very difficult intercept but we did it the data and now trickling back but as I understand it the transmitter you have is not much more powerful than a mobile phone and so you're sending this back on the weakest of possible title links the entire spacecraft runs on about 180 watts which is about 3 light bulbs here in the United States that's our guidance system our computers are communications thermal control and many more things and they all share that small power budget our transmitters are only 15 watts each and were transmitting from 6000000000 kilometers away that technology is very Vance but also it corresponds to having relatively slow data rates rich make the occasions difficult in the intercept even more difficult when you've got those 1st images from the close up as it was approaching ultimately like they must have been I mean a fantastic relief because they said look stunningly clear to me. Well thank you very much our feeling was that we were going to get it but you know actually seeing it in the frame in the middle of the frame within a few pixels of where it was predicted was just incredible you know. What are the lessons you're getting already I think a lot of people would have seen what looks like 2 large snowball sort of stuck together that tells us something very important instead of one more or less monolithic body the way to this thing was built was through something planetary science calls a theory a couple formation which has been recently the subject of a lot of computer modeling in which we think we have proved to be actually the case they were originally separate were they and they came together yes the pair were created from a very large number of even smaller objects which were in the area where Ultimate was formed as the smaller bodies created 2 lobes each grew larger but their gravity also allowed them to eject many of the small objects near them which drew the pair closer closer until they gently touched and emerged as they are they now appear that sort of dark patches and lots of patches and I don't know if that's a to do with the compositional to do with shadows. Those is a consequence you're going to try and look into Are they right the dark unlike patches are actually markings on the surface we're quite sure of that and so that would be something about the the can the composition of the surface even the composition of the way that the grain sizes are sorted on the surface these are the 1st pictures to come down you're getting I think some more analytical data coming down at the moment but it's going to take 2 years before you get all the pictures I don't know how many pictures Atabay but we have about 50 gigabits of data does to transmit to the ground it's going to take about 20 months to do it so it'll be August or September of 2020 and that's for all the spectra for all of the cars. McCrae date for the solar wind 8 of the thermal data for the dust impacted the ultraviolet spectroscopy infrared spectroscopy and hundreds of images that will send what is the importance of objects like. Its original relic of the early sos it's incredibly valuable sample because it's completely pristine it is not of a thermally or due to a geologic engine and so that is as close as we can get to what bits of the solar system would have been like for a half 1000000000 years ago yes Alan Stern. The tsunami that struck Java Sumatra and other small islands in Indonesia on the 22nd of December has claimed over 400 lives and many more were injured or made homeless It quickly became clear the trigger was the volcano and crack a town that's been growing since the 1920 s. Inside the crater left by the famous 883 Krakatoa eruption Thomas Jacquet he was on a team of geologists who had already been worried about the strength of the growing edifice and 6 years ago they modeled the tsunami that might follow a catastrophic collapse he told me that the events of the 22nd of December did mirror some of what they calculated part of the cone is unstable in this just collapsing into the water and as you would jump in the pool you would create a wave and that's what happened fortunately part of the hurricane or slid into the water creating a huge wave different cities often Sumatra and Java and this was actually quite similar to the kind of event that you actually modeled scientifically in a paper a few years ago yes exactly about 6 years ago I was working father of America which is the kind of which repeated in 80831 of the largest derision in human history the economic. I was basically Paul after. I was that in the car because it also created a lot of tsunamis that killed 35000 people at the time so much higher tsunami but also more difficult to understand in terms of the source the unexpected the case was in a way easier to tackle the question we ask ourselves is what it is fucking it was collapsing into the sea because it's built on something very steep and a very steep cliff and so when we look at the top of it kind of seemed evident to us that one day a piece could collapse at this partly into the sea and so we decided to to investigate what kind of waves this is even would create and how fast it would provide gate into the cinder Strait and when it would hit the coast of Sumatra and other which kind of waiting terms of the amplitude was the collapse that actually happened at all similar to what you modeled we had absolutely no idea it would actually happen and that's when it's you know where is it more than it's much harder to predict if and when this type of event would occur and then in our case you have to make some assumption terms of what is the volume of the volcano that we collapse what is the shape of the collapse would it collapse in one big go in several times because of course the types of waves you would produce would be different for this study we decided to go we've kind of a wast case and now you know we decided to move the 0.3 to be kilometers of collapse so that would correspond roughly to $270.00 times the volume of the Empire State Building in New York for example it seems that the volume that actually collapse was more than 3 times less than our scenario in a sense it was not us. Varies you modeled but among some things it's not just the amount of rocks that the amount of water that pushes but you were also able to calculate how fast it would travel so how long it took to reach the next island yes yes modeling the wave propagation itself is not that difficult except when the wave is reaching the coast because then you've got so many little topographic here and there that can modify a lot the wave and predicting the actual height of the wave at the cause is sometimes a lynching but in terms of the source McCann isms of the legislated south that's where you have to make a lot of assumption and of course different types of rock means different type of movements so if you've got a landslide of Blues rocks volcanic rocks that may be porous you may have a different types of landslide compared to a landslide in a few odd for example or a different type of rock Thomas to catch you on a line from his office in the University of Oregon one scientist who knows what those rock conditions are like is Oxford University's Amber Madden and though she was collecting samples from an a cracker a year and a half ago for a study on the island's Geo chemistry mostly and a crack at our ups lovers it kind of uses out of the volcano sometimes a little bit of 5 fountain ing and then this will solidify to form very dense sharp rock. But it also can erupt more explosively where we've got ash clouds and this is much softer material when I see the pictures of it and the way you describe it it sounds like it's so solidly built the idea of this kind of a collapse to me sounds a bit surprising if it's made of both lots of crumbly stuff that's be a different story if you think of how a volcano has built up it's built up gradually over time with each option so the material itself the flows are actually that well consolidated together and that's where you get your weaknesses do you think the extra material that's being loaded onto the edges of the onto the flanks of the volcano might be part of the story that's exactly right so volcanoes essentially like I said growing layer by layer and when you would get eruptions and their deposits more and more material you eventually get over steepening of the volcano and it makes the flanks unstable and at this point a flank may collapse and this material will then fall to the base of the volcano which in this case is under water and go toward stabilizing the base so each time we get a flank collapse the volcano essentially becomes more stable one of the things that Thomas said was that it's on a steep edge I don't quite understand what that means and cracker Tower has been built on the very edge of the crater or Caldera that the old volcano that formed after it collapsed into the ocean just on the inner lip Exactly and that is that she makes it more unstable the fact that it has collapsed isn't going to change the way it wraps in the future I mean will for example the lava come out in different places you know then you cracks there that's quite possible and well we'll have to see the changes we've seen since its collapse there's mainly been the fact that now the magma that's coming up can interact with water and it produces a lot more steam and it can also make the eruption slightly more explosive as well what are conditions like on the island or on the other islands just around it I'm just wondering if there's ways that it could be monitored in case there is another collapse which I guess is quite possible even in the near future. They're completely uninhabited the islands the surrounding islands are very vegetated whereas an AK itself is quite barren in terms of monitoring they have boys in the ocean that a space to detect seismic waves but because this wasn't an earthquake it wasn't detected it creates more of a kind of low frequency rumble when it collapsed into the sea which just simply wasn't picked up I sort of wondering whether I had no cameras permanently watching the flanks now or whether maybe using microphones to hear the sound what would these things be different ways of approaching it the size moment of I suppose a similar to microphones and then maybe a way of trying to detect that but we need more resources to try to translate that into a practical solution I'm unsure about the cameras to be honest because you need people to maintain them. And it kind of just depends on there is or says in the country I mean Indonesia has the most volcanoes per square kilometer of anywhere in the world so they're having to spread their monitoring resources across the century 70 over 70 volcanoes doubtless more will be learned once researches can safely reach those remnants of and cricket's now are stalking their 2 Amber. But now it's party time chemists are celebrating the creation of the periodic table that orderly arrangement of all the chemical elements which the dorms the walls of classrooms around the world and is the bases of all chemical research festivities aplenty are planned in honor of the Russian Dimitri Mendel left who 1st conceived the table in $869.00 at University College London and wrestler is developing a war of clear plastic bricks which will house as many of the 118 known elements as he can lay his hands on the radio. City. And so the large drill bit started to dig. Into the block of clear plastic and it's no. Big Thing secret like yeah I actually know it's going to a little bit for a polite effect right a combination of hydrogen carbon and oxygen elements 112 and 16 chemistry is never far away when you're in the labs or workshops with Andrea Sella re something I think people in therapeutic it's not normal chemistry through no no no one thinks that I've always thought it was just that sense of the front doing chemistry though this was more mechanics drilling holes into blocks of plexiglass to house traces of the 92 elements of concrete shall we say celebration of the map of chemistry 1st devised 150 years ago. By the treatment delay at that period in time was a big period of exploration like Miriam from sort of bring more college is busy thinking of celebrating Mandalay of charts of the elements think about the Arctic and Antarctic that conquer the poles find the ends of the Earth so this is finding the limits of chemistry but I also think it's this kind of mastery of things that plays are all of this and are wanting to put our stamp on it. Ok so I think we're we're kind of done to stop them sickly you sort of Krueger test you into this piece of plastic Exactly that's what we've got here and of course it's the perfect metaphor for a chemical project like this. Which point the inevitable musical tribute from Tom Lehrer with all the right elements but this isn't really in the right order there's an amount of arsenic aluminum selenium and I mention oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium and only oh dear me I'm not turning into me I'm an Iron Hammer the scene with any of your any of your own was a county I'm a d.c. And an a.b.m. Land phenomenons me I'm asking and revealing the whole project to me I'm an Indian guy good moment for Andre it's about him and so here are a few of the completed blocks and this is the one that I suppose is one of the most important and that's gallium element number 31 if you hold it in your hand and squeeze it will melt so it has a very very low melting point and that gives it a kind of magical property but it's real magic was it was the 1st test of Mandalay of the arrangement elements laid out by increasing mass but grouped by chemical similarity Mandela boldly left gaps where he thought elements had yet to be discovered at the time into their who's working but the elements you know not all of them had been found and when mental it put together his periodic table he suddenly realized that there must be gaps there must be elements missing otherwise his scheme really did. It fit together even though he had no idea of what the rules were or what the underpinnings were but this idea that the elements kind of fell in these columns elements with related properties like the how urgent so Korean bromine no idea you know must go together those things were enough for him on the one hand to say there's an element below element and that was the element gallium called gallium because the man who discovered it was a Frenchman his name was look the bubble gong Now look up means rooster What name did he choose for his element being very patriotic he named it after goal Galatea France so calling it gallium was fine but in Latin the word gallows means rooster and so everyone accused him of having snuck his own name into the name of the element which he strenuously denied and so Paula Cook from France is the person who figured it out that meant a layer of wanted to take credit for the discovery because he's like I predicted this would be there I predicted what properties a cigar to have and by the way you screwed up when you had the density of the new element because it's not right and look Ok had a fit about this but he went back and measured it and mentally it was right but it was a really nasty fight. Bragging rights as well as the joy of discovery seems to have been very important which led to some over ambitious crane as the table is built the remains of people's reputations and all of these elements that they thought were elements oftentimes because there were experimental difficulties and of course the name game was a lot of it people wanted to honor their country they wanted to honor themselves they wanted to honor you know famous scientists and so the name was almost a way to get yourself into a table to get yourself into the sort of permanent. Memorial there is a way to go for address Ellis plastic chemical display but he has high hopes for Watts it will achieve where this came from was really thinking about the international year the period table but also I want people to actually see these things we've recently made an infantry of everything in our department all of our chemicals and as I went through our catalog I suddenly realized we had all these goodies and then people said to me actually I've got a little bit of a rhenium wire which I don't have any use for it worth a fortune and so you know let's just use it for this and it's true that there are some elements that we just can't get our hands on at the moment but one of the things is we want to leave this periodic table as a kind of a living object and so there are any benefactors out there who want to contribute this then they get in touch. Mendel left himself was immortalized by the naming of the element men the levy number 101 created in a nuclear accelerator in 1955 by the late physicist Glen Seabrook Seeburg in turn was honored with the Element $106.00 game which is so radioactive it lasts only 40 minutes but there is only one living person with an element named after him he's a Yuri organisation and he created his element organised on just 5 atoms of it and it's the last on the periodic table at the moment they identify the atoms he told me not from their chemistry but from the fragments each mother nucleus broke up into who actually there was a new clues to what. The ground. We could be heard if Everly for each additional remote. Time daughter energy Graham Hill interview ground groundwater until you spontaneous fusion come when you lose your generation. You firing these nuclei together. What being they're shaking they spitting off Alpha particles as they move down these Generation Yes and you don't have to analyze all that information to try and understand the starting only you have to be sure that all these transition is a member of the same family to actually your vision not only to energy and time but also position have to come from the same old culprit the same causation for a huge transition here a position energy of the Mitchell particle. For example who eliminate $115.00 to have a 5 transition before it became if the pennies Be sure to actually view bashed for each event but over time surely 15. But I meant this even this possibility to extract the seed there for each of my own. Or us reaction and wanted to reaction project. Say no it is not random it is truly correlation we show that something new new clues or something new elements he's in me and in the case of the element they've named after you how long does this disintegration process take. Mother new clues are very short less than one millisecond we can but the longer the 3 basically 35 seconds. So in your experiment you will suddenly see an alpha particle this registered by part of your Elektra mix and then you have to watch very carefully and capture everything that happens after and in 3 or 5 seconds you have all the information to identify an element that's never been seen before yes there is a different kind of approach to chemistry you look at the chemical properties here or you'll also look at least about it so I would for infertile couple conclusion who don't like number. Do me the day before you go because he is or you say you've made 5 atoms 5 nuclei of organise on it's a right if you do you intend to make more. Yes No he's under construction new laboratory for all the hope your jewelry you put you know if you're a shipping Jane to the heel and we hope to have a 100 times more that will have to be 500 items not even a 1000th of a billionth of a billionth of a gram of the stuff that's what I call dedication I was speaking to your Eoghan e.c.n. On a recent visit he made to London and that brings us to the end of Samson action for today I'm right in piece the producer is Julian Segal there's more on the programme web page at b.b.c. World Service dot com Now I won the b.b.c. World Service Time for some music. From abroad like the way station you know into the center. To the banks of the from the control these in India but I. Got it all memorable that's going to evolve it just keeps rolling the story of Old Man River at b.b.c. World Service dot com. And it b.b.c. World Service dot com our history program witness with me Robert Nicholson we tell the story behind Romanian dictator Mikel rescues palace of the people who world's 2nd largest building now a lasting monument to the excesses of totalitarian rule at b.b.c. World Service dot com face is the b.b.c. World Service the world's radio station. Welcome to News Hour It's live from the b.b.c. World Service in London I'm Tim Franks Democrats are taking control of the u.s. House of Representatives with a promise to pass legislation and to end the federal government shutdown. Targeting President Trump if Democrats. Get things done and focus all their attention 1st the investigation of the president I think that we'll see more of this as opposed to a real change also the Catholic Church in the Democratic Republic of Congo says it's clear who's won the election but it's not saying how deep the changes in Ethiopia polls and like if not millions of people paid to see this kind of change in this country to see the stopping and China has become the 1st country to land a space probe on the far side of the moon we'll hear from one of the u.s. Scientists who hope to get there 1st after the news. Hello this is Nick Kelly with the b.b.c. News the veteran Democratic Party legislator Nancy Pelosi has been elected speaker of the u.s. House of Representatives as our party takes charge of the chamber are sharing in a new era of divided government under President Trump from Washington Barbara Plante after reports this marks Nancy Pelosi 2nd stint as speaker and she's still the 1st ever woman to hold the job but the veteran politician will be presiding over the most diverse Congress in history with more than 100 women representatives she took office calling on Republicans to cooperate across the political aisle but her party expects her to lead the attempt to put brakes on President Trump after 2 years during which Republicans largely gave him a free pass her 1st task will be to help end a partial government shutdown She will also be putting forward a Democratic legislative agenda and overseeing in-depth investigations of Mr Trump and his administration officials Russian news agencies say a former u.s. Marine arrested in Moscow last week has been charged with spying the authorities said Paul Whalen was caught carrying out an act of espionage our diplomatic correspondent James Landale reports Paul Whelan was arrested by Russian state security officers last Friday and now faces more than 10 years in prison if convicted of espionage his family say he's innocent and was in Moscow to attend the wedding of a fellow former Marine Mr Whelan's defense lawyer told the state run news agency where university that he had appealed for bail there has been speculation that Mr Whelan was arrested so he could be exchanged with Maria between a Russian gun rights activist who was jailed in the u.s. Last month Pope Francis has said the credibility of the Catholic Church in the United States has been severely damaged by the ongoing child sexual abuse scandal there in a letter to u.s. Special ops on or a treat in Chicago the pope said that efforts to cover up the crimes are caused even greater harm he urged the bishops to end internal bickering and show unity as they tried to tackle the crisis the pope's comments on child abuse of got stronger over time. The American Pharmaceutical giant Bristol Myers Squibb has announced plans to acquire the cancer drugs Specialist Group Celgene in a $74000000000.00 deal if the merger goes ahead it will be one of the largest in the sector's history here's our business correspondent Theo Leggett Bristol Myers Squibb is paying a high price to acquire Celgene but it believes the deal will have significant benefits the combined company will be highly specialized focusing on treatments for serious conditions such as cancer immune disorders and cardiovascular disease it will often 9 products with annual sales worth more than a $1000000000.00 each including cell genes blockbuster blood cancer drug Revlimid Bristol Myers Squibb will also gain access to sell genes drugs research pipeline which include several potentially lucrative products that are close to coming to market. Well news from the b.b.c. . The Catholic Church in the Democratic Republic of Congo has said that based on results of a scene from Sunday's elections there was a clear winner among the 21 presidential candidates but the Catholic bishops as a news conference in the capital Kinshasa did not name the presumed Victor official results are due next Sunday though the election commission says they could be delayed the United States is want Iran not to go ahead with a series of plans space rocket launches saying they would violate a u.n. Resolution intended to curb to her and missile development program the u.s. Secretary of state might Pompei Oh said the launches would be provocative Iran said in November that it intended to put 3 satellites into space soon archeologists in Mexico have discovered the earliest known temple in sacrifice alter dedicated to the pre Aztec God she paid Totec or flayed Lord the site in the southeastern state of Puebla is believed to have a 1000 years old now America's editor Leonardo Russia reports Sheba thought it was one of the most revered gods in the region until Spanish colonize ation began in the 16th century but until now Mexican archaeologists haven't been able to find a temple dedicated directly to his adoration which dates to pre Aztec times priests used to make human sacrifices at the site and where the skin of the victims to worship the flayed lot they believed he would help renew the cycles of fertility agriculture and war and further questions are being raised about a start up ferry company awarded a British government contract to provide extra freight capacity if there's no deal breaks it one of the terms and conditions initially listed on the seaborne freight company's website was apparently cut and pasted from a takeaway restaurant business is advise customers to check the goods before paying for any meal governments of the area have been current corrected and highlighted the independent expert checks on seaborne freights legal underpinning the a.b.c. News. Hello and welcome to News or it's coming to you live from the b.b.c. World Service studios in London.