During regular business hours you can always become a member of k. Or c c by going to k. Or c c that o r g and making your financial contributions safely on line. 1 o'clock g.m.t. Welcome to the newsroom from the b.b.c. World Service I'm Jeanette jail the trumpet ministration pushes for a military space for saying it's needed to meet emerging threats on a new battlefield today other nations are seeking to disrupt our space based systems and challenge American supremacy in space as never before but will Congress approve the controversial idea for blast off and they have surveilled a wonderful journey and this golden experiment these doors that are in America remain hinged open to beautiful people as they have today Malani a transparent become u.s. Citizens under a policy Her husband wants to get rid of Israel orders its army to continue acting with force against militants in Gaza after the latest exchanges of fire between the 2 sides and. Research is investigating what apes can talk again and insight that's all coming up on the knees when Hello this is Fiona McDonald with the b.b.c. News the Israeli security cabinet has ordered the army to continue acting with force against what it calls terrorist elements following an escalation of violence in and around Gaza the un has said this is deeply alarmed at the current situation the reports even as the security cabinet met sirens sounded in Israeli communities near the border warning of incoming rockets while Israeli forces attacked targets inside Gaza a multi-story building described by Israel as a headquarters of the militant group Hamas was flattened Palestinian officials say 18 people were injured earlier 3 Palestinians including a pregnant woman and her 18 month old child were killed a number of Israelis have been injured in rocket attacks. The u.s. Vice president might Pence's outline plans to create a 6th branch of the us military a species force to counteract threats from Russia China North Korea and Iran he urged Congress to act no to establish the department by 2020 and to these are correct explains the way the Donald Trump seems to envision it and Mike Pence described it today would be consolidating variety of programs within the us military dealing with outer space security of u.s. Satellites intelligence gathering methods and possibly space based weapons and putting them all under a separate branch on an equal level to the Navy the Air Force and the army now obviously there would be some bureaucratic obstacles to this particularly from the Air Force I have the feeling that they are going to be very quick to raise objections to this the u.n. Secretary general and to a new good cherishes called for an independent investigation into an airstrike by the Saudi led coalition in Yemen which killed or wounded dozens of children they were in a school bus which was hit as it drove through a rebel held part of the country the Red Cross is at least 29 children died the coalition said its airstrikes were aimed at militants who target civilians Sylvia gulleys from the charity see the children the fact of the matter is that our children who were killed this morning and they were going on an excursion and they are not returning back home to their families because they were killed whether it's a mistake with collateral damage whether they were at the wrong place at the wrong 5 they were killed this morning and we can't turn a blind eye on that we can't let that happen. A recount of votes from Iraq's parliamentary election in me is confirmed that the alliance led by the Shia Muslim cleric. Solder was the winner the bloc led by the current prime minister hydrilla body remained in 3rd place behind a Pruitt reigning group of former paramilitaries the manual recount was ordered after widespread a regular routines were found in the original electronic count since the vote in many protests against unemployment and a lack of services have spread b.b.c. News military sources in Nigeria say at least 15 soldiers have been killed in an attack by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram an official from Nigeria's disaster agency was also killed in the ambush at a military base in the northeastern state of Borno on Wednesday is the 3rd such attack on a military target in the region in less than a month the Roman Catholic bishops of Venezuela have called on the government to stop what they see as the violent repression of citizens following an alleged assassination attempt on President Nicolas Maduro 2 drones carrying explosive through towards the president as he addressed a military parade on Saturday Candace Pierre has a story the judge's intervention follows reports of the arrest of several alleged suspects by government security forces detention orders were issued against several more including the opposition leader who your border has the crackdown follows the alleged drone attack on a military parade on Saturday watched by President Maduro the government says it believes 19 people in all are implicated the timing of the bishop's carefully worded statement indicates how far they believe Venezuela's democracy has deteriorated. A Brazilian crime watchdog says the number read hit a record of more than 7 in our last year that's nearly 64000 victims the Brazilian forum for public security said in its annual report the nearly all the victims were men or the murder of women had increased a lawyer for the Slovenian born parents of the u.s. 1st lady Melania Trump has confirmed that the couple have become u.s. Citizens he said the 2 part of the naturalization ceremony in New York on Thursday the lawyer also confirmed to The New York Times that Victor and Amalia Canucks had a teen their citizenship through chain migration a progress by which u.s. Citizens can sponsor relatives for permanent residency b.b.c. News. You were listening to the newsroom from the b.b.c. World Service with me tonight to they'll. Its President Trump boldly going where no American president has gone before oh it's his proposal for a new space false Well a waste of space and precious resources for months Mr Trump has talked about creating a new branch of the American military in space now his vice president Mike Pence has been giving details of the plan urging Congress to invest $8000000000.00 into creating a u.s. Space Force and warning that other nations were already weaponize ing space today other nations are seeking to disrupt our space based systems and challenge American supremacy in space as never before for many years nations from Russia and China to North Korea and Iran have pursued weapons to jam blind and disable our navigation and communication satellites via electronic attacks from the ground. But recently I have a series of been working to bring new weapons of war into space itself both China and Russia even conducting highly sophisticated on orbit activities they could enable them to maneuver their satellites into close proximity of ours. Let's speak to our Washington Correspondent Chris Buckley or so Chris according to Mike Pence space is not the final frontier but a battlefield you know just look at the language that has been used by the vice president and the president within recent months about the suggestion of a Space Force they've talked about turning space into a war fighting to man not the case in America they say but to do with some of America's adverse arrays and you take a look at some of those countries and they're making very clear particularly as Russia and China that they are developing technology in space which they believe camp attention to put America under threat and as a result they say it's already a battlefield and America needs to start to get ahead and to actually develop this branch of the military which of course will be the 1st new branch in 7 decades but there is one big obstacle that Mr Trump and his vice president face and that's getting approval from Congress and there are some people within Congress who are a little skeptical about this for a start there is this consideration that the Air Force already looks after a space is a new branch needed not one of those people who was suggesting that might damage will be the case might not be needed was the defense secretary James Madison only a matter of a year ago he was suggesting that you know this was just added bureaucracy it wasn't something that was needed but they have money to convince him annoy the defense secretary James Madison saying very clearly that he believes this is a White Way to go Congress but might prove more difficult to convince particularly when it comes to Democrats Mr Trump is asking people to vote on a new space for Brady even before this idea is approved for Congress is a way of firing up his supporters ahead of midterm elections I don't think there's any doubt about that if you take a look at where they're being asked to vote on this new logo and you can check the barges for the Space Force on his reelection campaign site that's where they're asking you to go to take a look at. And certainly when you've been at rallies recently he has been using that free is the Space Force as a way of firing up his supporters I think this is a campaigning technique as much as anything else Chris thank you very much Chris Buckley there in Washington and staying in the States the parents of America's 1st lady Malani a trump have become u.s. Citizens she helped Victoria and Amalia canals to stay permanently in the country America is bitterly divided on the issue of immigration after President Trump's hardline stance that has resulted in the separation of some immigrant families Daniel men reports some people prefer to be a far away as possible from their in-laws but ever since President Trump took office last year Victoria and Amalia Canal's from Slovenia have been seeing frequently in Washington staying at the White House and regularly spending time with their daughter manya and they're 12 year old grandson Barron she became a u.s. Citizen in 2006 both of our parents are in their seventy's and retired think torso cars while his wife worked in a textile factory after becoming Americans at a naturalization ceremony in New York where they took the oath of citizenship they appeared with their lawyer Michael Wildes who spoke to reporters they have surveilled a wonderful journey like most have millions have in getting citizenship in waiting the requisite period of time the application the process the interview was no different than anybody else's and this golden experiment these doors that are in America remain hinged open to beautiful people as they have today Mr Wilders told The New York Times that the 1st lady set up parents on the past American citizenship by sponsoring them for their green cards which allows foreign nationals to live and work permanently in the United States he added that this is a bedrock of our immigration process when it comes to family reunification President Trump prefers the word chain migration. And he's fiercely criticized the process by which American citizens get residency for their relatives last November he wrote on Twitter chain migration must end now exclamation mark some people come in and they bring their whole family with them who can be truly evil not acceptable the last 2 words were in block capital letters Mr Trump has called for a merit based system which favors better educated in the speaking professionals over relatives Mr Wilde said that America was having a very important dialogue and immigration and that the Canal says were an example of the process going right down your man Brazil has long suffered a high murder rate about 2017 appears to have been its deadliest year yet New figures show that nearly $64000.00 people were killed in Brazil last year that's about 7 murders every hour according to the nonprofit Brazilian forum for public security our correspondent in Rio de Janeiro Julia canary told me more of the victims are mostly men and will be mostly black mixed race men usually young men there was also a rise in violence against women. 8 percent rise in the number of rapes 6 percent rise of the number of femicide that what that's when women are specifically targeted and killed because of being a woman. Over a 1000 cases of women killed in the circumstances now the reasons for this is it has a lot of a lot to do with the problem of drug gangs acting in Brazil and how they're operating how these criminal factions are operating so baby people abroad will be used to hearing about violence in Rio and Sao Paolo those are the biggest cities in the southeast of Brazil but actually these numbers have now migrated and the worse case is that the worst scenario for homicides is in the north and northeast of Brazil which are. Which are also the poorest regions of the country but how do Brazilians feel about this appalling level of crime around them each year the number of murders is going up is affecting their daily lives I think at least now there's a lot more debate than there was in the past and people are really regarding this as a national problem so now for instance we're having presidential elections coming up this year in October and this will certainly be a big and a very necessary debate so the presidential candidate that's leading the polls they have also not a he is a hard liner guy who comes out saying that we need more weapons out there people need to be armed and we need. Police to have a hard line against criminals so he's actually someone who's saying police is allowed to kill do people blame the authorities for this rising crime people do blame the authorities but they also blame the economic crisis that Brazil is immersed in all the problems that the country is facing there's a sense of resignation of fatalism with the mountain mounting problems that Brazil's facing Giuditta canary You're listening to b.b.c. World Service Now Vienna has the headlines the United States says it plans to create a military speace forces in the next 2 years and these really army as we know ordered to continue acting with force against militants in Gaza following further exchanges of fire between the 2 sides. At least 29 children were killed and dozens wounded when their school bus was hit in an air attack by the Saudi led coalition in Yemen according to the Red Cross the coalition defended the airstrike as a legitimate response to a missile fired by the rebels Yemen has been devastated by 3 years of war in which thousands of civilians have been killed despite the suffering negotiations have got nowhere but now a fresh initiative as you just start next month in Geneva led by Martin Griffith a former British diplomat who's a UN's new envoy to Yemen he spoke to our chief international correspondent these do set about his hopes for peace I've listened to them the last 4 months very carefully both parties on to others and they both have continued to assure me they want a political solution so I take them at their word and I will find out if that's going to happen or not and it's not going to happen overnight you called the situation in Kuwait a porch and the center of gravity of the war it is the lifeline for Yemen my job is to find every opportunity to pursue it with vigor to stop the war to resolve it through politics and through negotiation now in fact all the data as you know the we were able to get was an agreement with the Hutus for a supervisory role of the United Nations in the port that had not been agreed before I think that shows that there is a willingness to engage because Saudi led coalition in particular with one of its main members United Arab Emirates believes that you can put more pressure on the who these they say the port is not enough they have to have the city are you have been very busy in the Goetia ations with her to 3 u.n. Role in the city as well as the port the Hooty leadership has confirmed to me as recently as 10 days ago that they would be willing to have a u.n. Role in the city as well as the plot is so the you know who these have told you they'd be willing to withdraw. Or you know from who the the airport and city know as I said that they would be willing to have a u.n. Role in the city as well as the un supervisory role in the port that's why last week we called on all parties to deescalate in the war not just into data but throughout the world the fronts so that there's a chance for a consultation process which could actually provide some hope for the future they're not deescalating. The attacks are continuing and with a Saudi led coalition is backed by the United States by Britain by France providing weapons providing support that's something we'll be discussing in Geneva but if they keep providing these sophisticated weaponry that carries out the bombardment that the u.n. Says is responsible for the greatest step percentage of civilian casualties you won't have a chance at peace let's see what happens with my chances of peace my job is to provide the opportunity for the people of Yemen to sit down and talk peace that's what we're here for and we're here to do it in a way that's consistent with Security Council resolutions which include the requirement for disarmament and withdrawal of forces and the return of force to the state and in that context there will be no need for a continuing war in Yemen and that's the best answer in my view to the question about armaments of either side u.n. Envoy to Yemen moshing Griffith neuroscientist researching the brains of more than 30 primate species have identified a key step in the evolution of a uniquely human trait the ability to speak the study published in The Journal frontiers in neuroscience suggests that our closest ape relatives the know bows and chimps dedicate more of their brain to the movement of the tongue than other primates Victoria Gill explains the neighbors are the chatterboxes of the ape world with the natural the tabular. But it remains a mystery as to why no ape apart from Rose has developed the ability to talk this study compared the brains of 34 different primates from the process monkey that makes just 4 different noises to the much more talkative sociable but nobody has revealed about you Bill clue research has found that more vocal had much larger parts of their brains dedicated to decision making to controlling their tones This is a. Stay say that while other apes may well be smart enough to develop complex ways of communicating that she ability to move and control what the scientists term their vocal apparatus may have rendered him speechless. Big tour a gale of the many hours of fierce polarized debate which went on late into the night Argentina Senate rejected a bill that would have legalized abortion joining the 1st 14 weeks of pregnancy currently abortion is only allowed in Argentina for rape victims and for those whose health is in danger and she abortion activists took to the streets of Bonner's Ariz to celebrate pro-choice campaign is that they would try again next year our correspondent Katie what's in reports on a debate which has divided the country. Traffic flowing once again and when his site is the city came to a standstill this week but normality has returned the newspapers are full of headlines from the debate that took place in the Senate from Wednesday evening in Thursday morning Karine at the most popular paper talks about the definition of a historic debate and passion of those say has a picture of a woman with a green anorak saying nobody can stop the winds of change that would ban those if it offered that what those on the walls about our own oil it was a long day in Congress on Wednesday nearly 17 hours locked in one room better than a at the back goes it was a project Ok that reads us out a lot that may not be monitored by ridicule. But finally a decision in the early hours of Thursday to those who'd been willing for the bill to be rejected celebration said that I live in our midst so happy I know God wouldn't allow this because he is the one who gets life and he's the one who takes it away you think Argentina is not ready for legalizing abortion yet will it cause I don't thing. Civilization is ready to get Let's mission up a Martian I think like everyone has a right to life especially that most people aren't so I don't think any country is really ready to legalize abortion. Well those who back the bill were disappointed they aren't giving up and I'm sure you will come back next year it's really important that nowadays so many people right kind of rooting for it that never did so I think it's really more than city to change run. The country is also looking at reforming its penal code among the discussions is decriminalizing abortion so women can't go to prison it's a small change but shows abortion is still very much part of the conversation. Was and it's a conversation other countries in Latin America want to be a part of his campaign and say you can't stop. Katie what's in him going as I race Fiona has some other stories for money's desk the Supreme Court in Costa Rica has ruled that the country's ban on same sex marriages is illegal judges have given lawmakers 18 months to introduce legislation to end what the court says is unconstitutional discrimination Costa Rica has a strong Catholic tradition and has also seen the growth of evangelical churches in recent years with many groups opposed to gay marriages Germany's computer games regulator says it will now consider giving age ratings to games featuring Nazi and other symbols that would normally be banned a spokeswoman for the regulator said the policy change would bring computer games into line with films. A thief impersonating the Puerto Rican rapper Daddy Yankee has reportedly stall and more than $2000000.00 worth of jewels and cash from his a tale suite in Spain according to a Spanish newspaper a man posing as the performer phone staffer does Valencia hotel and managed to convince them to open the rooms safe. A new study suggests people in the Nordic countries North America and Australia have the best navigational skills men outperformed women Imust searches think they know why James Gallagher reports on the dementia experiment that took the form other video game. I'm playing a north call Explorer my challenge is to find my way around desert islands murky swarms and treacherous seas as I play the game is analyzing my ability to navigate more than 4000000 people from 57 countries have taken part in the experiments and it's thrown up a raft of curious findings Finland Denmark and Norway are the world's best navigators which some suggest could be down to their Viking blood our ability to navigate declines year on year from the moment we turn 21 and men perform better than women but as Professor Hugo Spears from University College London explains that is not the whole story so we don't think the effects we see are nights to countries where there's high equality between men and women in the country the difference between man or woman is very small on our spatial navigation test when there's high inequality the differences between men and women are much bigger and that suggests that the culture in which people are living in has an effect on account of abilities being lost or disoriented is one of the 1st signs of dementia this study which is the world's biggest dementia experiment has now painted a detailed picture of people's navigational ability all around the world the next. Aging the research is to see if catching 7 declines in navigational penalty could be used as a test for the disease James Gallagher the chaos that followed the u.s. Led invasion of Iraq 15 years ago wasn't just a kid test to see for the people it was also a disaster for the country's heritage as priceless antiquities were looted in a security vacuum for the toppling of Saddam Hussein many may never be seen again 8 small Oh and they way back to Iraq after they turned up an Adidas show him in London what makes a finds a remarkable is that q.h. Is the British Museum were able to work out exactly where the artifacts have been stolen from Sebastian Mayes part of that team of experts he's been speaking to James Menendez objects comes from the site of tallow in southern Iraq hello was the engines are in such of half way between us on back that there are small objects you have inscribed cones apart $8.00 to $10.00 centimeters long and they were inserted in the walls of the cement temples they were voted option act dedicated to the gods the objects or to very likely after the collapse of the Saddam regime after 2000 and they were seized during a Metropolitan Police in London and they were only transferred to the prisoners there in 20. So when we looked at the objects we immediately identified them as being objects from the site of Telo and suffer heart cones there are dozens corruption and basically the inscription tells us where the objects comes from and that's the temple to the main guard at the City of Jeffs but you were also able I mean it really was literally a puzzle you're able to work out exactly where they slotted into if you like yes exactly so when I had a chance to visit the site for the 1st time in 2015 together with our colleagues we carried out the search and we identified looting most recent illicit excavations and we found close. To the site on the spoke to Scott's Adoption Act so broken cones with the exact same inscription so we could not only identify the provenance the site but also the area within the site where the objects were amazing how often does that happen in your line of work extremely rare it's extremely rare it's probably the 1st case really generally we know we have a good idea of the region and we can say for example that these objects come from stuff in Iraq enough and hot but in this case we can identify the site and the actual looted area so very very happy coincidence that of course so much was looted from Iraq after 2003 and I guess this is just a drop in the ocean isn't it most things I guess last forever yes it is I mean we're talking about large scale in this trio all the looters after 2003 however we are working together with cultural Authorities in fact out to start building a new protocol to try and track those different objects to create a database of looted sites collecting objects for example from those podiums because the looters they do not collect all the single objects so we can find traces we can find fragments of objects and then if we do have a database then we will help in the future that you like your heart your colleagues and specialist identifying those objects identifying to problems and to cope with it will help and of course will make it difficult for them to do to restore the trafficking and how important is it that they're now being returned one Friday to Iraq it's extremely important although you are talking about a topic small objects they have this important symbolic value of course it's a very good story for you like it also meant paints a very good relationship that you have the British Museum with you like stapled it on thick which is an heritage Sebastian ray of the British Museum to think about the return of looted artifacts to Iraq and that brings us to the end of this edition of the newsroom thanks for listening. Distribution of the b.b.c. World Service in the us is made possible by American Public Media with support from Exact Sciences offering Colo guard for average risk adults over 50 called 0 guard is a noninvasive colon cancer screening test that can be used at home available by prescription only information at Colo guard test dot com. There was a 2000 code I'm Sam Sanders reporter with n.p.r. It was just hand Bronstein a color I love that it was my father's truck so it hasn't got a value to me but it got very red like by the end the shocks were just horrible so it felt like horse and buggy every right to the end of its life imagine that truck becoming my favorite go to k. Or c c dot au r g for details. You're with the b.b.c. World Service on today's science in action we hear about the NASA mission that's going to touch the scorching face of the Sun The conditions are pretty brutal the actual coronal material is at about 3000000 degrees centigrade so we do have to worry about the temperatures but we have this amazing heat shield that will be needed in a few months the launch though is on Saturday we've the details of the mission the science and what it's all needed for after the news b.b.c. News is here now MacDonald The Israeli Security Cabinet his instructor the Army to continue acting with force against what it called perpetrators of terror Israel has carried out scores of periods on militant targets since Wednesday following a wave of rocket attacks launched from Gaza the United States has presented more details of a planned new branch of the military in space the vice president might pains urge Congress to invest an extra $8000000000.00 in speech security in the next 5 years. Roman Catholic bishops in Venezuela have urged the government to stop what they've described as violent repression since a legit assassination attempt against President Nicolas Maduro on Saturday they said there should be new arbitrary detention or inhumane treatment of suspects the u.n. Secretary General Antonio terror she has called for an independent inquiry into an airstrike by the Saudi led coalition in Yemen which killed dozens of children they were in a school bus which was hit in a rebel held area a manual recount of votes from Iraq's parliamentary election in May has confirmed that the bloc led by the Shia Muslim cleric Mactan to insider was the winner and alliance led by the prime minister Hydra Labadee remained in 3rd place military officials in Nigeria say at least 15 soldiers have been killed by bohu or are militants the attack took place at a military base in Borno State Zimbabwe's president Emerson men on guard were says he intervened to ensure the for an opposition politician Tendai Biti was released on bail by a court in Iraq Mr Beattie faces charges of inciting violence and falsely declaring the result of last week's poll. And a lawyer for the Slovenian born parents of the u.s. 1st lady Melania Trump has confirmed that the couple have become u.s. Citizens it part in a naturalization ceremony in New York on Thursday b.b.c. News welcome to Science in action from the b.b.c. World Service with me right now on p.b.s. And this week we go visiting some of our planetary neighbors to put it in scale of Venus where one house to the left of your home in Mars where one house to the right Ultima would be 43 houses down the street to the right so we're really exploring very far away we also celebrate the 150th anniversary of the discovery and the element that makes up a quarter of the known stuff of the universe and you'll hear about the link that physicists are going to to identify that dark matter that is even more abundant yet remains elusive let's not go closer to home on Saturday mass or is launching a space probe that will touch the face of the sun dipping into the tenuous gas above its bright surface where temperatures rice and millions of degrees eclipse watches get to see this crown like coronal region rising around the moon at totality and when we see a rural in the sky we're seeing the effects of the solar wind blown out by the corona. Traveling the 150000000 kilometers to measure its behavior has been the dream of astronomers since Eugene Parker 1st postulated the region's physics 60 years ago that the birth of the Space Age project scientist Mickey forks it's entirely appropriate the mission is named after him Gene Parker is really to me the father of the solar wind we saw a beautiful solar eclipse last year and we saw that lovely hazy atmosphere around the sun and we call that the corona and there's 2 mysteries in the Corona One is that it is about 300 times hotter than the surface of the sun which just doesn't make sense if you walk away from a heat source you should get colder not hotter so we know there's some physics that's going on in there that's causing this heating and also where we see this great heating this whole atmosphere starts to expand and it accelerates away from the sun and that was what Gene Paca actually predicted that this Corona would be continually accelerated and expand out and really bathed all of the planets in this what he called Eventually the solar wind and so getting into this region where the physics is really happening where the solar wind is born where all of this is driven is what we absolutely need to do to be able to once and for all say why is this heating and acceleration taking place in this region close to the Sun The idea is the pockets of the probe effectively is going to dip into that crowd or very near to the surface of it is it yes that's absolutely right we will do $24.00 orbits they look like the petals of the flower so we come very close to the sun on one side and then out around Venus on the other and we kind of repeat that 24 times every time we can fly past Venus and we do that 7 times where we do a gravity assist we kind of shrink the size of those petals So we actually get closer and closer to the sun and till at all final closest approach we are at 6200000 kilometers above the sun's surface. And I realize that that doesn't sound that close but the earth and the sun are a long way apart and if we put the Earth in the sun on a meta scale Pok a solar probe would be just 4 centimeters away from the some what are the conditions like that because of presume you've got to worry about all the instrumentation being fraud the conditions are pretty brutal the actual plasma or the Coronal material that you see that is at about $3000000.00 degrees centigrade so we do have to worry about the temperatures but we have this amazing heat shield and our instruments that are in the shade if you like of that heat shield they are at about a pretty nice 30 degrees centigrade so stand spacecraft ranges once you'll inside there what kinds of measurements can the machine take that will explain the physics of what's going on in the Corona we're carrying the instruments with us to Mattia changes in the sun's magnetic field and the region that we're really targeting is kind of a transition region very close to the sun the magnetic field rotates with the sun all of that Corona material is kind of stuck to those field lines and so it all sort of rotates together in this transition region where this heating is going on the material itself gets so energized that it is accelerated and it moves away from the sun and it actually carries the sun's magnetic field with it and so it's kind of this transition from where the magnetic field is dominant to where the material itself is dominating the magnetic field we also have instruments that measure the solar wind itself the bulk plasma if you think of the solar wind as a river when measuring that water that is continually flowing downstream we're measuring the temperature the density the composition and also the speed of that coronal material that makes up the solar wind and so in a sense all those measurements are going to probe into how the heat of the sun gets focused transform. Into the very high temperatures in the krona into the very strong winds that we experience out here that is a perfect way of putting it Roland how soon do you actually make that 1st approach and when we start getting data so just 6 weeks after we leave we will encounter Venus for the 1st time and 6 weeks after that we will enter the Corona for the 1st time not as close as we're going to get but well inside the Coronal region and then a few weeks after we've completed that we'll see Office data for me it's enough that this is interesting science for you and the people you're working with is it the science is it understanding better what Eugene Parker suggested 60 years ago that's important or other reasons of living better here on Earth that make this also worthwhile we live in the atmosphere of the sun so this coronal region bathed our planet and the magnetic field that it carries can interact with our own planet's magnetic field and can cause catastrophic damage we had a big event called the Carrington event in $849.00 that caused massive disruption to our planet but we didn't have that much technology at the time so it caused the telegraph system in the u.s. To go down for 4 days and you know I tell kids that now and they kind of look at me like so what and then I say Well imagine if you didn't have the internet for 4 days and panic ensues in the classroom that I'm talking to we really do rely on our technology so much more today and we don't have data in this key region where all of the business that is driving our solar wind is taking place and so now we will send packets all a probe and she will send back the data that we need to sort of put that last piece of the puzzle in the Nicky Fox of Johns Hopkins University and listing with the sun it's Corona and Eclipse is because it was 150 years ago that observations of the corona and the underlying vivid red chromosphere letter that is covering the element helium the 2nd in the periodic table it was Norman Lockyer who suggested to astronomers they should use the new fangled spectroscope so. Analyzed the wavelength composing that glowing light he also helped found the Science Museum and donated his own spectroscope to the collection there which is where Harry cliff picks up the story so the 18th of August 868 is the 1st solar eclipse where they had a chance to use spectroscope still look at the sun and people are very excited about this so in India in going to there's a French astronomer. Who is pointing his spectroscope at the edge of the sun's disk and as he's looking through the spectrum he sees this bright yellow line which doesn't appear to match any known elements at the time and a few weeks later when Locke here using his own spectroscope which is just in front of us here sees the same yellow line and eventually concludes this actually isn't caused by any known element on earth it's something new which Lockyer calls helium after the Greek titan of the sun Helios. As I pick it up you can see it's a lovely piece of what we call brass and glass is very nice example of that this kind of brass disk were to choose one which was used to bring the sunlight in from the telescope and then the sunlight bounces around the 7 prisoners actually goes around twice into the eyepiece which lucky would have looked through and by rotating the positions of the president he can scan through the solar spectrum moving from Red up to Violet and look at all these lines in really fine detail and that's what allows an ultimatum make this discovery the element remain hypothetical until 897 in the sense it can be found here on Earth after hydrogen is the lightest element and floats away into space it's colorless odorless has no chemistry Well actually there is some chemistry treat that as a challenge and it makes up just north point not north not 5 percent of the atmosphere but it is abundant elsewhere making a quarter of the known stuff of the universe also of the sun and it's plentiful on gas giants like Jupiter and it's still making waves in astronomy Only recently did astronomers manage to spot it in the atmosphere of a remote exoplanet before asking about that observation I talked to astronomer Jessica speak about the significance of Norman Locke his work it was a huge moment in history is an extremely important element for understanding of the universe as a whole and it was one of those beautiful moments where people were noticing this mysterious line and had absolutely no idea what it was if you say something that's actually about a quarter of the mass of the universe which is pretty you know missing that it's actually a bad mistake as a practicing astronomer What do you think of the techniques that Norman like here and other astronomers at the time were applying to see this because presumably it's much harder for them yet they were pioneering the beautiful glass place of all of these stars it was really revolutionary the inclusion of photography taking these photographic plates of these specter really changed photography and there was a lot of resistor. To it in the beginning and so what might seem obvious now was really something special and tell you change our understanding of the universe what I find interesting is here we are 150 years on and helium continues as your own work shows to be interesting because your doing sort of Norman Lockyer type experiments but not looking at stars but looking at the planets orbiting distant stars it's quite a joy actually to find this element in a very similar way to Norman Locke you know on very close very bright high style but in fact on a distant planet orbiting around a faint star several 100 light years away the technique remains the same is one of using a spectroscope to use his language exactly now you better tell me which planet it actually is say was born a 70 is the name of the planet the planet itself is nearly as big as Jupiter but it only has 12 percent of its masses very low density so it's very beginning ery basically very puffy planet Yes How important is it because this is the 1st to found helium around one of these distant exoplanets because presumably they were all made with the same kind of helium as the sun in the stars were made with many of these gas giant exoplanets we found we expect them to have a lot of helium in them just like the gas giant tyrants in our own solar system I mean it was great to finally have that confirmed but that's not the only importance it's now what we can do what questions we can answer with this new element that we can probe in these atmospheres in particular the helium that we found extends in a very huge cloud surrounding was when I 70 and so this is a new way to study up atmospheres effects of comets which in the process been quite difficult to do I mean it's interesting because I guess on the whole I've always been amazed by these exoplanets studies that you're looking for tiny tiny dots next were very bright star this in a sense makes the daughter of the planet bigger for you does it yes it does. Because the helium extends so far above the lower atmosphere when the planet passes in front of the star it looks a lot bigger if you look in the wavelength of the absorption line of that he him there is a good way perhaps to see additional exoplanets and possibly to study the physics of the ones we already know exactly when planets receive a lot of high energy radiation from the stock it can heat up the upper layers of the atmosphere and that makes them rapidly expand and potentially escape into space and so that's what we're seeing we think we're seeing with what's going to 70 and one of the very important questions trying to answer in Mexico and science is how long can planets hold on to the atmosphere is when they all bit active styles and this can tell us about the story of the evolution of these exits our atmosphere perhaps can tell us how long and Earth sized planet around a small stock could hold on to its atmosphere and as you say Earth has lost its original problem ordeal helium and presumably if there had been astronomers on another planet far far away for a half 1000000000 years ago they could have looked at our sun. Emission lines and looked at our escaping helium to yeah I think early on in the stages of the planet's life time when it still has that large hydrogen helium and like even for a small Earth like planets This is actually some of the work that we hope to do in the future to target very young planets and see that primordial atmosphere escaping in action Jessica spake of Exeter University now I carefully chose my words a little earlier helium makes up 25 percent of the known stuff of the universe but if you've been paying attention to science in action you'll surely know that hydrogen helium and all the other elements only make up 4 percent of all the stuff in the universe there's 6 times as much stuff that solution be called dark matter stuff that will never show up in a spectrum. No matter how well it's made instead this is this hope that one day a piece will call in by pinging on an atom as it flies through their labs that could reveal its presence but it hasn't happened yet so they keep making bigger and better experiments to improve the chances and money just to turn your here because you've been watching one of those in progress Hello Roland Yes I'm here because I want to tell you about a cry a stats which is basically just a massive flask that's going to hold this experiment a picture that I've got of coffee pot a bit like that is for metres tall and about 2 meters across and it's made of titanium that's Pavel McGee ski senior research physicist rather Fed Appleton lab and a man who has spent the past 5 years grappling with how to build a thing and transport a thing without ruining the thing now I called him because I was curious to find out how this flask even got to Decatur now and why does the journey matter because this experiment is so sensitive it can be d. Railed by radiation and as Pavel explained anything left on the surface of the Earth is too contaminated to use we have elements that are naturally radioactive and we cannot escape from them they are everywhere you're a new I'm sorry but I assume carbon radon in the air and they can spoil our experiment the main challenge in our experiment is to hide from any source of radiation so 1st of all we are deep in the ground so our laboratory in South Dakota is in old gold mining called homestay good that was the largest and deepest gold mine in North America. There we are talking about radiation that is inside of the material but this well any radiation that could potentially be on the surface of that material which can be for example dust or radon which is in the air so given that can be at how on earth do you build your christ out your flask and ship it around the world without it picking up radiation from being on the surface of the planet that's what I wanted to know and presumably that's why it took them 5 years to build this overgrown for us yeah exactly 2 years of which was spent getting hold of this stuff it's brought back you've just given me of gray a very dull gray metal if you ask me a few centimeters across it's that but it's also grade one that's grade wide grade one titanium that is Nevada's finest they found that stuff just outside Las Vegas I'm sorry I was so rude about it. And they discovered that the stuff was incredibly pure very low levels of radioactivity but the one company capable of building something out of this stuff was in Italy so they had to ship several tons of it to Italy the company in Italy the fabricator put everything together it was about 200 small pieces it's like a really puzzle and they had 2 worlds together and when really everything has been disassembled packed and sent to California for a change and clearly this next bit is clever of course the Italian factory was on the surface of the earth so all the surfaces of what they were making could become contaminated so what they did was they made all of the bit slightly too big so they could remove the outer layer of everything and still have clean surfaces to fit together it's kind of like building a car deliberately with all the components too big so once you've dipped in acid it's going to fit together so a very tiny layer of skin has been chemically removed and then clean. We requested to have 290 grams of Darst per cent meters Qward which is so small that one can only see under a microscope counting the particles and this has been already done just to reiterate they requested it to be so thoroughly cleaned that you could only count individual specks of dust under a microscope so by this stage it's so clean but it still needs to travel from California to Dakota all the way across America down to the mine where the lab is which meant on assembling everything in the really clean room triple bagging everything to ward off dust and radon and getting it to the mine and they've done that and that's where the project is currently at but I just love the idea so this is a look at the ad universe they've dug up this purest of detaining him in Nevada they shipped all the way to Italy the very fact of doing it made it so dirty they then had to actual of everything on the outside that went to California now it's gone back to South Dakota special bags not a long. And triple barge so that as they put it down the mine and it's getting to increasingly clean environments you take off the next bag which only has a little bit of dirt on and this is the 1st step of building this experiment but they've still got a way to go the next step is to build the detector inside of the craft and so the Universal is now being tested and hopefully it will be finished very soon and then my colleagues will bring their piece of equipment to insert inside of the universal So when are you going to start to act in dark matter hopefully in 2 years. Nonchalant convertors I love it Marty thanks very much and do let us know when well so I say if they make that 1st detection. We started the program with a NASA mission to this hot of the solar system to finish well catching up with another NASA mission to its very edges New Horizons which flew past Pluto 3 years ago in July 2015 sending back astonishing and surprising observations of that demoted planet but the mission is not over and at the new year it will be flying pasta much smaller object one of the 100000 in what they call the Cuyp about this week the team published that detailed ambitions of the fly by and got to see the object silhouette with clarity as it passed in front of a distant star mission principal investigator on stand told me about the target ultimate tool a means beyond the farthest from tears it's a Latin phrase and it's of quite apropos because we are now going beyond the far this worlds that have been explored in the political system another 1000000000 miles to study this much smaller object you know Pluto's approximately the size of the continental United States but ultimate is only 25 kilometers across or something like the size of London it's one of these building blocks of the outermost planets that there are of planets of our solar system like Pluto and its kindred and we're going to it because this object has always been in the deep freeze out there at almost absolute 0 and so it should be a time capsule if you will an archaeological dig into the history of our solar system and it should teach us about how these dwarf planets were made that's what New Horizons is now doing on a 5 year funded mission through 2021 in the centerpiece of which is this fly by on January 1st 29000 presumably the planning is very important because it's a very short fly by Well that's right the spacecraft is traveling very fast 14 kilometers per 2nd that's about a 1000000 kilometers per day 7 days a week $365.00 days per year and we will be able to study Ultima from the spacecraft beginning soon perhaps in as little as among. And we'll be tracking it as we approach will be homing in we'll be taking data of increasing importance as we get closer and closer particularly in December and then in just a matter of a couple of days around January 1st when we're very close our cameras and spectrometers will be able to map it to map its surface composition to search for moods and to search for rings that it may have to study in the atmosphere that it may have however unlikely really to turn this dot in the distance into a real place for all of humankind to see but also for our scientific community to understand is kind of a bedrock sample of the very early days of our solar system 4 plus 1000000000 years ago and you mentioned that spectrometer so this is more than just cameras and pictures we would talking just a short while ago about Norman Nakia and his spectroscope looking for helium in the Psalms this is a kind of similar process if chemical identification as you fly past That's right and we have to spectrometers on board that use light on is an ultraviolet spectrometer to study the composition of atmospheres and then we have an infrared spectrometer that's used to study the surface composition of the things we fly by Also we have to charge particle spectrometers that are used to study the environment out there in the quite pre-built we'll use all 4 of those instruments and the other 3 onboard new horizons as well to eke out as much information as we possibly can the other part of the preparation is just this week you have a bunch of telescopes looking at the place where some of the late is because it went in front of a star so yes looking as it were the fields of study it yeah so every now and then it's pretty rare about once or twice a year get in the way of a faint star and we can use that to our advantage here before the fly by to better understand its orbit so we can home in on it and to better understand its size and shape and even to look for hazards or debris dust structures rings other things. It might be orbiting Ultimo So both last year and now just this year we deployed several dozen small telescopes to remote location this time to Senegal in West Africa to understand all those things and that expedition was successful despite expected bad weather they managed to get the goods they spotted the star winking out due to ultimate Tooley passing in front of it and we will use that at the orbits a little better so we can home in on it with less fuel and understand its size and its reflectivity and some of its other properties in advance of the fly by to help us with the fly by planning at the end of this the complementary information we get from Pluto I'm from Ultimate Fool you think will give a much richer vision of the outset subsystem Well that's right and it already has you know I think Pluto really up ended paradigms about how complex small planets can be how active they can be geologically so long after their formation which was not expected Pluto is among the most complicated and diverse planets in the solar system and that was a surprise to almost everyone and for me it's just a surprise that here we have this mission started not so long ago and it's already visiting the most remote things we can imagine visiting you know it is amazing to me how fast our capabilities in space flight have developed back in our parents' generation in the sixty's we were just learning to fly spacecraft to the nearest planets Venus and Mars to put it in scale of Venus where one house to the left of your home and Mars were one house to the right Ultima would be 43 houses down the street to the right so we are really exploring very far away with very high tech little spacecraft that has tremendous capability and we launched in 2006 with the best technology that you could put on a interplanetary spacecraft. Fast a spacecraft there are launched across the entirety of our solar system between 06 and 2015 and now it's out exploring even farther with these high tech cameras and spectrometers and dust sensors and radio science and all of that and it's working perfectly and we're pretty excited to be able to do this next chapter of exploration and many people probably don't know there is no plan by any space agency anywhere in the world to go back out to the Quite about we are the one and only exploration currently planned for this whole vast 3rd zone of the solar system and so we want to get the most out of it and I'm sure they will Alan Stern boldly sending new horizons when those space probe has gone before if you want to know more about the mission there's a link to Alan's website on our Web page at b.b.c. Will save us dot com Or you could try his recently published accounts of his trials and triumphs chasing new horizons we'll be exploring other New Horizons next week here on science in action until then from a running piece and produce a funeral that's Thanks for listening. You're listening to the b.b.c. World news on to Southern Colorado's n.p.r. Station broadcasts on 91.5 f.m. From our studios in Colorado Springs Colorado you can also hear cares you see in the following communities 88.5 f.m. In West Cliff and Gardner 89 point one f.m. In La Hunter 89.9 f.m. In Lyman 90 point one f.m. In Manitou Springs 91.7 f.m. In Trinidad and Raton New Mexico 94 point one f.m. In Walsenburg and 95.5 f.m. In Lake George and Hartsell 95.7 f.m. In Salada Buna Vista and Villa Grove and 105.7 f.m. In Canyon City for questions or comments please call 719-473-4801 during regular business hours you can always become a member of k. Or c c by going to k. Or c c dot au r.g.p. And making your financial contributions safely on line.