This week, we are going atomic at the European Organization for nuclear research, cern. We will look at the cutting edge Cancer Treatments that are foxing the physicists. I find it fascinating because it does not talk to my physics brain. So, i am curious to see whether it will bring something or not. How does science become fiction . We will meet an author looking for disaster. We want conflict. We want to see things falling apart. That is where the interesting thing is for a fiction writer. And then there is a scientist with an experiment that could change our understanding of everything. That is a completely unanticipated result new physics and probably a nobel prize for somebody who happens to be involved. Cern is one of the most Famous Centres for science in the world. On the border of switzerland and france, this place has been expanding our horizons for decades. Its High Energy Physics research has helped reveal the secrets of our existence. And i have been allowed in it to meet some of those at the cutting edge. 2500 people work here. 12,000 more pour over the results of the experiments. Here at cern it is a really unique community. It is an International Group of people, so we are from all over the world. Cern is an exciting melting pot of projects and ideas. You see people in restaurant1 having tea with their friends and they work on a myriad of different projects. You can knock on the door of a Nobel Prize Winning scientist, ask them a question, and they will say, come in. Lets talk about it and have a coffee. Any young boy or girls dream to work in science, right, is to go to a place which is like a town of science, and that is what cern really is. Its buzzing with the ideas. Its also buzzing with energy of a different kind, with giant laboratories that feel almost ramshackle. Theyre not really though. One thing i love about cern is they seem to have most of the worlds supply of tinfoil here. Most famously, cern is home to the Large Hadron Collider, the worlds biggest machine, built to examine the universes smallest particles. It smashes them together at almost the speed of light, and the last time i was here, it made me cry. Cern lets us do science that no individual country could do by itself, so we can build fantastic machines like the Large Hadron Collider big, complex International Projects where the world comes together to do it that no individual country could do by itself. The thing about this place though is that the stuff that goes on here is highly theoretical and experimental, and it kind feels really abstract and not really relevant to our everyday lives, but plenty of stuff that has been developed here has filtered down to the real world. We will look at the benefits to medicine in a few minutes, but in the early � 70s, this place already had touchscreens. And cern was also the birthplace of the world wide web. Have you heard of it . This computer was the first web server. What we are good at in science is managing data, so Science Experiments generate lots of data. What the web was to do was to share data between collaborators. That belief in Sharing Knowledge is what drives science communicators like clara nellist, who, when she is not doing straight up Particle Physics here, is spreading the word on her socials. We want to understand how our universe works on the very, very smallest scales. I went to a School Without a physics teacher, and so i know first hand what it is like to not have direct access to that information, and so part of the motivation for me is to make sure that anybody who can get online can learn about what were doing here at cern. So, what can this place do more immediately for humanity . Well, the high energy beams that are whizzing around cern are created by Particle Accelerators big ones. But there are many, many smaller ones around the world, and some of those are in hospitals, and they are being used to treat something that will affect a great many of us during our lifetimes cancer. This is the christie in manchester europes largest cancer hospital, and it is one of two places in the uk where Cancer Patients come to be treated with proton beam therapy. It is a special form of radiotherapy which usually uses radiation high energy x rays to try and kill tumours in the body, but the christie has a particle accelerator, and that means they can fire beams of protons at the cancer. When radiation goes into a patient, obviously you want to use it to kill the tumour, but it goes through normal healthy tissue, and that gives rise to the side effects. That is what makes patients ill, and if you can reduce the side effects to the normal tissue then you can improve quality of life after the treatment. Protons being particles slow down as they enter the tissue, and they stop within the tumour and do not go any further. X rays dont stop and so they damage the healthy tissue both in front and behind the tumour. And that means that this form of radiotherapy can be used in really tricky parts of the body. We can often use protons in cases which would be very difficult to use more conventional treatment where we are going very close to an organ which is radio sensitive. For example, Something Like the brainstem which we know is very sensitive to radiation. So, it is very much putting the beam precisely into the tumour and not going into the sensitive organ. All kinds of Cancer Treatments risk harming healthy tissue near the tumour and research is ongoing around the world to try and minimise this collateral damage. There has been at least one recent, ratherstrange, finding. It is to do with how quickly and how hard you deliver the dose of radiation, and it is called the flash effect. So, you deliver the radiation in a very intense burst to the tumour instead of on several seconds, for example. You condense it in milliseconds. For a physicist, this should not make any difference, but it is like when you deliver radiation like this, the tumour gets damaged, the healthy tissue does not get damaged, and of course it could be Game Changing because you could forget everything about damaging surrounding tissues, etc, and it is as if the particles would know this is a healthy cell, this is a cancer cell. Do we have any idea why it happens . We dont know the mechanisms. We dont fully understand how flash works. I find it fascinating because it does not talk to my physics brain. So, i am curious to see whether it will bring something or not. Now, we have got recent results, not published yet, that seems to indicate that we do spare the normal tissue and we might do even more damage to the tumour, so it might be even better than people say it is. Flash is tremendously exciting, and i think it is a bit watch this space. Back at cern, i am visiting a project that is looking for a different way to specifically target cancer. This robot is handling a Radioactive Material created by cerns medicis experiment which is looking at doing something really cool with it. They can attach it to specially engineered molecules that you can inject into the body and that will only stick to cancer cells. Now, when that happens, the Radioactive Material shines like a beacon, and it can be picked up on scanners, so suddenly you can see exactly where the cancer is. Then you can do something that i think sounds even better. You can attach a different type of Radioactive Material to those engineered molecules and when they stick to the cancer cells the Radioactive Material kills only the cancer cells. And they leave Everything Else around it unharmed. This combination of therapeutics and diagnostics is called theranostics and its use in the treatment of some prostate cancers was approved in the us in 2022. The Peter Maccallum Cancer Centre in australia told us that their ongoing Clinical Trials have shown it can improve the quality of life and extend life for some men with aggressive prostate cancer. Now, look, when you are dealing with high energy beams, you are going to end up with radioactive stuff and environments that you really do not want humans hanging around in for too long. So, how do you keep your equipment serviced and nice and clean in places like that . Well, you use robots, and cern has robots. I am eloise matheson. I am eight Mechatronics Engineer at cern. Welcome to the cerns robotics workshop. This is cern bot 2, one of modular robots that we use regularly for inspection, maintenance and repair tasks in the accelerator complex. It has these meccano wheels so that it can move side to side easily. So, we might send robots to an area where a human might not want to go either due to risk of some Oxygen Depletion or some gas leaks or even if there is presence of radiation. It has got lots of different sensors on it. Mostly we use cameras. This is to give what we call tele presence so the operator has a more intuitive way of controlling and interacting with the robot. So, here you are looking at the beginnings of the prototype of the fcc robot. This could be where the future of cern is going to build a new accelerator 100 kilometres in circumference, and in that accelerator environment, robots will be really important both as tools you can use for inspection, maintenance and repair, but also as first responders. This is a novel robotic system we are building that will inspect the inside of Radio Frequency cavities that give acceleration to the beam, and it is really important that the inner surface is perfectly machined, and so we built this robotic system to take thousands of close up photos using a liquid lens camera. 0k. So, here you have crane bot, and you can imagine that this robot is really useful if we need to access an area that is very cluttered, so when you drop it down from a crane you are hanging off cables, so of course you have sway and momentum from everything going around, but you have these two arms and it is like when you are a human and using your arms to balance yourself so the arms can stop the swaying motion. I am Alasdair Keane with this weeks tech news. Twitter owner elon musk has rebranded the platform as x. A new Black And White logo replaces twitters famous blue bird on the Desktop Versions of the site, with twitter signage on their San Francisco headquarters also partially removed. It is not a cute animal. It is a different| colour scheme. It is really going to have a totally different appeal, and i think they are throwing the baby out with the bathwater here. Spotify is raising the prices of its premium plans for the first time in a 12 years. In the uk individual premium plans on the Music Streaming Service will rise by £1 to £10. 99 with the dual and family plan cost also rising. Spotify says the increase will help it deliver more value for fans and artists. Video sharing Platform Tiktok has announced it will now let uses creates text based content. Users will be able to upload text only posts which they can customise with sound, stickers and locations, up to a limit of 1000 words. And University Of Sheffield researchers have developed a robot which can venture into high risk environments to perform remote medical treatment. The robotic controlled Ground Vehicle can perform a critical initial assessment of a casualty within 20 minutes while streaming Real Time Data back to operators. I know how this sounds. But take me seriously. By the time you finish reading this, you might never have existed either. He used to think, he thinks, that dark matter would be the gateway to another universe. He used to think that one day within our lifetimes we would find a way through to whatever adventures might be waiting on the other side. These are the words and voices of a Science Project with a difference. We heard earlier how important it is for cern to communicate what it does with the wider world, and part of that plan is a book of Short Stories inspired by the work going on here and written by a variety of well known authors. We paired up scientists and engineers with authors and they started to Work Together to take some of their science and make a story out of it that not only was really good fiction but also was communicating the science and what is being done at cern to the wider community. One such pairing was adam and andrea whose collaboration resulted in a story about the discovery of a hidden world and hidden parts of ourselves sitting right on top of the parts that we can see. The idea of the book if there are other realities, based on other particles that we have observed so far, they are hiding in plain sight. When i read the description of everything that we know and can feel and can interact with mightjust be 20 of what is actually there, and that 80 of reality might be completely unseen to us, i was just totally excited by that idea, and i imagined what if our bodies, our biology, was only 20 of what is actually there, and that 80 of us, of our organs, might exist in this hidden sector. How did the two of you Work Together, were you kind of the fact checker in this . I interpreted my role as being the pedantic one. I think i was. Yes, you fulfilled that, yeah. I said ok, first, check this out because it is not plausible, check this out because it is too cumbersome. And then also check this out, because it is boring. Blimey, well, there are no greater critics than those who are experts in the field i suppose. Now not all stories are purely scientific. Some rifff on ideas of connection, separation and reunification. Listen, dear. I want you to have something ive held on to for a while. She handed over a purple folder. This is your adoption file. She put her hands on mine and pulled me into her chest. My body stayed rigid as ever. Science fiction is often dystopian, though. Inspired by the times it is written in, and as adam explains, writers often look for how todays technology might take us in more fatalistic directions. I will imagine how it might go wrong, because as a fiction writer, were not advertisers, we dont want to just sell this wondrous product of the future, we want conflict, we want to see things falling apart. That is where the interesting thing is for a fiction writer. Does that mean most Science Fiction, which does feature stuff going wrong we shouldnt pay too much attention to it because the writers are naturally drawn to the dark side, and we shouldnt be so pessimistic about how technology is going to ruin the world . But, it might highlight things that we should be worried about down the line. So i like to think about Science Fiction writers as Risk Assessment officers for the future. We look at what is coming down the line and imagine, what might the bad consequences of this be, and create a piece of fiction or a film about it. And then we know, we know not to go there. Adam marek, Risk Assessment officer for the future. Bestjob title ive heard in a long time. Beyond the viewport is a fizzing, Crackling Sliver of light, reaching tendrils of lazy power that unfurll slowly as i watch. One curls upward like an organic plant seeking light, higherand higher into the vacuum of space. | millions of miles above its point of origin. And that last except was based on an experiment happening here at cern that could, very soon, change the world. Its something i am about to come face to face with. This is a lab that attracts the heaviest metal. Metallica, the pixies, arcade fire was here, my friend roger waters down here along the bottom, muse was here. All of the rock stars want to meetjeffrey hangst, whose decade long project nay, obsession could be about to make him a legend. In this building, they are making the rarest and most expensive material in the known universe. Antimatter antimatter is the stuff of Science Fiction, that turns out to be science fact. Our universe is made of tiny particles of matter, and in theory, every type of particle has an equivalent anti particle. An evil twin that is the same in almost every way. But the thing is, there is almost none of it in the known universe. Which is actually quite a good thing because antimatter and matter do not get along. So what happens when matter meets antimatter . Well, they are incompatible, they annihilate each other and release a bunch of energy or other particles, it is a microscopically nasty business. Yeah, that is an understatement, shall we say. The enormous release of energy when the two meet has inspired Science Fiction writers to imagine it being used to create the ultimate weapon, to power entire civilisations, and to provide enough fuel to explore the galaxy. One of the popular themes in Science Fiction is we use matter and antimatter, combine them to produce almost limitless energy. Is that going to be possible . Well, when you state it like that, its exactly true. If you have some antimatter and you use it to annihilate matter, you make an incredible amount of energy per kilogram. That is what antimatter does. The problem is we dont have any, we have to make it. And we kind of suck at making it, in terms of how much energy we need to put into it. So it takes much, much more energy than you would ever get out again it is a complete loser from the Science Fiction standpoint. So i cant help you out with the starship. That makes me a little bit sad. Nonetheless, here at the antimatter factory yep, thats actual name jeffrey has succeeded in creating the opposite of the simplest element in the universe. Anti hydrogen. Once the antimatter is created, it flies really, really fast around a ring that is behind all of these thick Concrete Blocks. And you know what big Concrete Blocks mean it means you really dont want to be anywhere nearer to the stuff that is on the other side of them. And by looking at how Anti Hydrogen behaves, jeffrey is hoping to answer one of the universes biggest mysteries. Why is there no Antimatter Left in the universe . Shouldnt matter and antimatter have been created in equal amounts in the big bang, and shouldnt it all have just cancelled out, leaving nothing behind . Jeffreys project is looking for an explanation, by testing to see if there is a slight imbalance if Anti Hydrogen does not in fact behave the same as normal hydrogen. Maybe gravity affects it ever so slightly differently. This is the top of the alpha g machine, Where G Stands for gravity. This is the device that we are using to try and answer the question, what happens to antimatter if you drop it in the gravitational field of the earth. If your experiment found that Anti Hydrogen falls up instead of down under gravity, what happens next . That would be super cool. That would be a complete revolution in science. Thats a completely unanticipated result and would mean new physics, and probably a nobel prize for somebody who happens to be involved. I dont want to say me, because i helped bring the news to everyone, so do i get a bit of it . I will invite you. He laughs maybe that is why the rock legends want to come here. Mature stars wanting to witness the birth of a new one. Would i be able to. Yeah, you are not technically a rockstar but you are rockstar journalist, so go ahead, do us the honour. I mean, theres not much to my signature. Its just an s and a squiggle. Im a little bit underwhelmed, ive got to admit. Im just checking, it does say permanent marker, i was wondering for a few minutes if youd given me a dry wipe so as soon as were gone. There is a chance that you at some point will make a discovery which changes science. Would that be a good thing for you personally . Obviously yeah, it is what we all dream about, is to find something completely new that kind of upturns the applecart, it is a dream we all have. Are you ready for that, emotionally . Absolutely they laugh and that is it from click at cern. What a truly mind boggling place this is. I hope youve had half as much fun watching it as ive had making it, its been amazing. Thanks so much for watching, and we will see you soon. Hello. Although storm babet is now easing away, well continue to see flooding and disruption over the next day or so. Now, lets just take a look at where the rain has fallen over the past 2a hours. Its been heavy and persistent across parts of england, wales, and particularly for northern and Eastern Scotland too. If we have a look atjust how much rain has fallen since wednesday with this storm babet, many areas have seen between 100mm and 200mm. Now, for places, thats almost twice the expected monthly rainfall. Thankfully, though, sunday is looking drier, with lighter winds too, so a window of much quieter weather on the way. For the rest of the overnight period through into the early hours of monday, still a few showers around across the far north of scotland, one or two in the west. Elsewhere, 2 9 degrees are overnight lows for most of us. Could be a touch cooler first thing in the countryside. But the low pressure thats been such a troublemaker over recent days is drifting away towards the north on sunday. The isobars become more widely spaced, showing that its not going to be as windy as it has been, the breezejust coming in from a westerly direction. So thatll bring one or two showers for north west scotland, perhaps a few for wales, the South West Of England as well. But as they drift eastwards, they tend to ease away, so much drier, thankfully, for Eastern Scotland, right down towards east anglia and the south east. A largely dry day towards northern ireland, too, and temperatures ranging between around about ten for stornoway to about 16 down towards the london region. But then, we will see the next area of low pressure just moving in later on monday. Now, this is storm bernard. Its been named by the portuguese weather service, and its going to bring the next spell of wet and windy weather on monday. So we start off monday on a dry note. Some mist and some fog patches. Could be a touch of frost. But it clouds over from the south, and during the afternoon, this area of rain will spill its way in. To the north of that, most places looking dry, around about 10 16 degrees, but the wet and the windy weather in the south Willjust Push its way a little bit further north. So, into tuesday, you can see where were expecting to see some showers around, turning a little bit breezy again towards the east coast. A bit of uncertainty exactly where this rainfall is going to be by this stage, but could be quite unwelcome for some of us. Turning a little bit milder as we see The Rain Coming in from the south after that window of drier weather for some of us sunday into monday. Things really are looking fairly autumnal and unsettled through much of the week ahead. Bye for now. Good morning. Welcome to breakfast with ben thompson and luxmy gopal. Our headlines today israel says it will ramp up its Bombing Campaign against hamas in the gaza strip, as it prepares its troops for a possible Ground Assault a group of aid agencies calls for more humanitarian supplies to be allowed into the territory, after 20 truck loads crossed from egypt yesterday. Tributes for the man labelled � englands greatest player� the world of football remembers sir Bobby Charlton whos died aged 86. Here at old trafford fans have already started leaving their own messages Manchester United will open a a book of condolence for the player who captained them to their first european cup win. The effects of storm babet continue to be felt, with warnings of dangerous flooding in parts of england and wales. Englands Rugby World Cup Campaign Ends with the narrowest of defeats against south africa. All of the Weather Warnings are lifted all of the Weather Warnings are lifted and plenty of sunshine in the wake lifted and plenty of sunshine in the wake of lifted and plenty of sunshine in the wake of storm babet. It looks like things wake of storm babet. It looks like things may turn more unsettled next week
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