Instant Genius - What happened at Bluedot festival 2019? – Libby Jackson, Tom Shakespeare and Danielle George

Episode Date: July 31, 2019

In mid-July this year, science and music lovers alike donned their Wellington boots and rain ponchos and made the journey to Jodrell Bank Observatory for the fourth annual Bluedot festival. The star-studded line-up included Helen Sharman; the first British astronaut, Jim Al-Khalili; science writer and author, an incredible 3-D concert experience from Kraftwerk and the post-punk sounds of New Order. We sent BBC Science Focus’ new editorial assistant Amy Barrett to the festival, where she chatted to a few of the speakers at the event. Not bad for your first week in a new job, eh? First up was, Libby Jackson, Human Exploration Programme Manager at the UK Space Agency, who took to the Mission Control stage to talk about the future of space exploration and the UK’s role in that future. While some looked back across the fifty years since the Apollo Moon Landings, she talked to Amy about advances in the space industry, human exploration and the Bluedot experience. Also in attendance at the festival was Tom Shakespeare, professor of disability research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Tom was involved in three events over the weekend, talking assistive technology, the ethics of genetics and being an activist. Finally, back at Jodrell Bank where she began her career, Danielle George brought the invisible Universe to light. She spoke to us about the Lovell Radio Telescope based at Jodrell, new endeavours such as the SKA (Square Kilometre Array telescope project) and what we can learn from looking at our skies. Listen to more episodes of the Science Focus Podcast which we think you will find interesting: Why is the Moon landing still relevant 50 years on? – Kevin Fong What asteroids can tell us about our Solar System – Natalie Starkey Is there anybody out there? – Mike Garrett Could these gloves be the future of music? – Imogen Heap Everything that’s wrong with the human body – Nathan Lents Inside the mind of a comedian – Robin Ince Follow Science Focus on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Flipboard Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit name audio.com to learn more. The data that the SK will generate in one day, if you could download it as a song and play the song, the song would last for two million years. So it's huge amounts of data this thing will generate. You're listening to the Science Focus podcast from the BBC Science Focus magazine team. With the UK's best-selling science and technology monthly, available in print and in several digital formats throughout the world. Find out more at sciencefocus.com or look out for us in your app store. Hello, I'm Alexander McNamara, online editor at BBC Science Focus magazine. In mid-July this year, science and music lovers alike donned their Wellington boots and rain ponchos

and made the journey to Joddle Bank Observatory for the fourth annual Blue Dot Festival. The star-studded lineup included Helen Sharman, the first British astronaut, Jim Al-Khalili, science writer and author, an incredible 3D concert experience from craftwork and the post-punk sounds of new order. We sent BBC Science Focuses new editorial assistant Amy Barrett to the festival, where she chatted to a few of the speakers at the event. Not bad for your first week on the job, eh? First up was Libby Jackson,

human exploration program manager at the UK Space Agency, who took to the mission control stage to talk about the future of space exploration and the UK's role in that future. While some looked back across the 50 years since the Apollo moon landings, she talked to Amy about advances in the space industry, human exploration and the blue dot experience. So Libby, tell us what your talk is going to be about today. I'm talking on the mission control stage at 1 o'clock today,

and it's called UK Goes to the Moon. And what the talk is looking at is really what the UK has been doing in all the lunar missions. So back to Apollo, which everybody thinks of, as an American endeavour, the flag was there. What happened after the Apollo missions, there was a big gap for some time and then in the 1990s we started going back to the moon

and the UK had scientific instruments on those and looking forward to what we're going to do in the future and what the UK is doing there. So we really have been involved in the different parts of lunar exploration right through and people don't know what we're up to so sharing those stories and shining a light on all of it. And so why are you telling this story?

What brings you to tell this to the people at Blue Dot? My job at the UK Space Agency is the Human Exploration Program Manager. So I look after everything that the UK does in the field of human exploration, which involves astronauts and Tim Peek. It also includes all the science that we do on the International Space Station and on lots of facilities on Earth that mimic different parts of gravity. So we've got things like parabolic flights, but you can go and be weightless for 30 seconds at a time.

So I do all of that. I look after the science, the industry, I work with the academics and industry to make sure the UK can get the most benefit out of our activities in that area and that we've got the facilities that scientists need to go and do this kind of research. So my day job is all about astronauts

and human spaceflight, and it's also been a lifelong passion of mine, and I've been working in the field for over a decade. I worked in mission control for a number of years, and I grew up devouring the stories of Apollo. So it's a personal interest too, but so all of that sort of comes together and I'm bringing that

that view of human space flight to it and the history and yeah just say shining a light on what's going on. So you're going to be talking on the mission control stage later today. Yesterday on that stage was Helen Sharman. She was.

She was talking about how, you know, she first heard that advert and wasn't sure whether to apply or not because she didn't think space was for her. Is that likely to ever happen again? Is there ever going to be a chance for someone with no prior experience to go and be sort of what Helen did all that time again.

Yeah, definitely. And it's coming, and there'll be two different ways. So Helen had no prior experience, but no astronaut who gets selected has experience of being an astronaut. It's one of the reasons the training takes so long. When you're selected, it takes two years just to pass your basic training. It can be five years before you ever go in space.

So Helen was selected and went through, she was selected by going through a full medical, physiological selection process. That was done back then in the early 90s. She flew in 1991 in a private process, but the UK since has joined the European Space Agency's human space flight programs. That was how Tim Peake came to be selected as an astronaut back in 2007 and 2008, and he also just applied to an advert.

And we're expecting the European Space Agency to put out another call for astronauts again in the coming years, because their astronaut core is growing. We're looking ahead to these new human missions that are going to be going out into low Earth orbit. We need astronauts for the future. And the UK is a member of the European Space Agency, and we now, unlike back in the days of Helen,

contribute to those human spaceflight programs, so British citizens are eligible for that process. And also, there's this new exciting thing that's coming on the horizon, which is commercial spaceflight. We are seeing it here in the UK, possibly. We've got space ports that are being developed up in Scotland and down in Cornwall and indeed possibly in other places too.

And down in Cornwall, they're looking at horizontal access to space. And that's how Virgin Galactic are going to take paying passengers up onto suborbital space rides. So you can go and spend six minutes in waitlessness. I don't know if Virgin's plans are to come down to Cornwall. I should make it very clear. but we are seeing spaceflight developing in the UK. And certainly around the world, you're having these companies which are selling tickets to people.

So also on the International Space Station now, we are using commercial companies, or we'll be very soon, using commercial companies to take astronauts to and from the International Space Station. You've got SpaceX and Boeing. And you can buy a seat on that. So it's not for everyone yet, but I say this to children,

and I really mean it, if they start saving in the future, going into space, not as a career astronaut for six months, but as an experience, I think it would be like what Concord used to be like. When I was young, I would see Concord fly over the house every day. I lived in Southeast London.

And it was a dream that one day I might be able to buy a ticket to go on Concord. And it would have been a once-and-a-lifetime experience, but it was a sort of an achievable thing that if you work hard and you save hard and you decide that's your priority you could do. So there absolutely will be opportunities for people either to apply to be an astronaut one day

or to save some money and go into space. So it's 50 years since the Apollo landing. What is going on 50 years later that wasn't then? 50 years, what a thing, that the moon landings were, are, will be, Such an iconic part of history. And so the UK Space Agency's been working with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to capture people's memories of those time, the inspiration.

And we've had some wonderful responses. We've published an e-book that you can see on moonlandingmemories.com, where there's 50thies. And it's brilliant to see people who have watched those moon landings and then were inspired to follow a career in space. some people just remember them because they got engaged or one lady I think delayed going to the hospital to give birth because she wanted to see that

and another one I really remember was that one family got their children who worked for like one and three up and they said you won't remember this but we want to be able to say that you watched it and that people had that understanding then of how iconic it was going to be I still find amazing and those memories really have been one wonderful. But it's also been great to see and hear how the moon landings inspired people who

weren't there. And I'm one of those. The reason I ended up getting so interested in space, dreaming of working in mission control, and now still don't get to believe that my job is human spaceflight, is because I just devoured stories of those Apollo missions when I was young, and I would read about what was going on in mission control and the problem solving and the engineering and how they did it all. And when I was young, in the 80s, the 1970s, when it was really happening, 69, 70, 71, was a distant memory. So it was a real iconic time.

But what I get really excited about, and you said, what are we doing now, is that what we are doing now is getting ready to send humans back to the moon. So there are our missions being planned now, being built now, the UK is involved in those, where we will see humans go back towards the moon. We're going to build something called the Lunar Gateway,

which is going to be this small space station out near the moon. It's going to be visited by the Orion spacecraft that NASA is building with the European Space Agency. And there's a big meeting at the end of this year with the European Space Agency where the decisions get made and the funding gets made and we hope that Europe will commit to being a part of this, that the UK will be a part of it.

And so we're going to send humans back to the moon. And we're going to do it all with modern technology, with 4K color TV, live streaming, Twitter, you name it. And I get really excited when I think, what is that going to do for today's young people? And we're all going to have our moon memories and our moon landing moment. And of course, we do it, not for the inspiration. I have to write the business cases that explain the good science and the good economic reasons. And we get so much technology from this spins out.

The UK is great at telecommunications. And we're going to use that, hopefully, for our contributions. So all of that comes together. but one of the reasons we all, I think, connect with exploration and going to the moon is because we're humans and we all like to explore and we all wonder what's over the hill around the corner or up the next mountain. And whilst no business case will ever stack up for us to go to the moon just because we should and because we'd like to, I still think the inspirational parts of that are there and the memories that we will see through what we're about to do are to me as exciting as what we've seen. seen from Apollo 50 years ago. Why do you think experiences like Blue Dot and other science festivals, why is that a good way of communicating the message and telling people about what is coming up for the UK in terms of spaceflight and space industry? It's really important that everybody

does understand what we're doing. The UK is really very good at doing things in space and they don't always remember that. It's sad. You see it around Blue Dot. Actually, lots of people have got NASA T-shirts on. Some people. will know that the European Space Agency is there. And then we like to say, hey, we're the UK Space Agency. We are your representation. UK taxpayers' money comes to us, and it's your investments as the public that go into these things.

And so it's very important to communicate that for people to understand what's going on. And somewhere like Blue Dot is a great place because it brings people together from all sorts of different backgrounds. They come, some come from the music. We've got great headliners here that people are coming to. and they'll, you know, wander into these talks about space or science and all the great things that are going on and discover things they weren't expecting.

Other people come for the science, and wherever say, hey, you know, you know about science, but did you know about space and what's going on? So it's a really great platform to do all of that. And indeed, because Blue Dot then share all of that science content, it's a really great platform for science communication and for spreading the word and just telling people what we get doing. Also in attendance at the festival was Tom Shakespeare,

Professor of Disability Research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Tom was involved in three events over the weekend, talking assistive technology, the ethics of genetics and being an activist. So Tom, tell us what you're here at Blue Doctor Do. So my name's Tom Shakespeare and I'm Professor of Disability Research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. And I'm here to do three talks. I've done two of them so far.

And the first was a panel, and it was really about what's happening to disable bodies in the future, which sounds pretty technical. But what we're interested in in that talk was the fact that a lot of the assistive technology developed for disabled people has become commonplace for everybody. So, for example, many people use audiobooks. Those started as talking books for the blind. They're really useful. Almost everybody benefits from doors that open automatically.

Those are for disabled people too. A lot of the things that we take for granted developed to help people who have impairments. And so as we think of the future, as we think of brain implants for people with spinal cord injury or stroke, if we think of exoskeletons, if we think of, you could call them bionic hands, and communication devices. It's true that one thing drives this is the military space, things like that. But another thing is disability. And one of our speakers, Professor Andy Meir from Salford,

was talking about, are we going to be transhuman? Are we going to eliminate disease? Others of us were more skeptical. So that was one debate. And then I later did a talk about non-invasive prenatal testing. and it was called Canaries in the Coal Mine? And really it was about can we ensure that women and men have real choice in prenatal diagnosis? And talking about a new technology, which the industry is called non-invasive prenatal testing,

but is actually better known as cell-free DNA, where DNA from the developing fetus is detected in the mother's blood. And the advantage of this is that there is no risk. that's why the proponents of it call it non-invasive. But it can tell you a lot. And I was trying to argue in terms of choice. And true choice depends on information. So we need to know all about what the disability is.

I told the audience I had a G2A transposition at 380 by FGFR3 gene, which left them cold. But when they get to know me, they realize that that genetic description, although accurate, doesn't tell you the whole story. And it's the same with Down syndrome or anything else. I went to see the dance syndrome. actress Sarah Gordy on Tuesday at the Royal National Theatre. Fantastic performance and jellyfish, very funny.

She shows what somebody with Down syndrome can now achieve. So not saying that anybody has to test or has to terminate, but saying people have the right not to test, not to terminate if that's right for them. And then later today, I'm part of a panel on protest. And I think because the Disability Rights Movement has protested a lot over the years. and it's achieved a lot of changes. For example, I live in London.

I can go on any bus in London. I take the bus every day to work, and that's liberating. But it didn't used to be like that. It's like that, because disabled people chained themselves to buses, brought city centres to a halt like extinction rebellion are now doing,

and saying this has got to change. So there's a sort of symbolic thing. And when you see all of the young people leaving school on a Friday for the climate strike, it's a similar thing. It's saying there is a generation here who's going to live with this mess, you, people in power, should do something about it, should listen to us. So I'm talking about that sort of protest.

I'm really interested in about your first sort of panel that you were saying. So these accessibility measures that have become commonplace, I think a lot of the problem is that those ones that we, or abled people take for granted, now are being attacked by maybe climate change, like plastic straws, for instance. So that's something that a lot of disabled people like myself rely on. but I think people don't quite understand the implications of what they're doing. So how do you balance that as someone who wants to be an activist and protest, but also have your own...

Sure. Well, I mean, you know, you only have to look around this room at crisp packets and plasticated cups and all the rest of it to know that, sadly, unnecessary single-use plastics are everywhere. So the issue is, where do you start? and I don't think you start with straws. You start with packaging, and you start with lots of things that nobody needs.

If you go around a supermarket, you can see all the extraordinary wastage of cling film and things. Start with those, and then let's come back and have a chat about straws. We know that there are vegetable-based alternatives to non-degradable plastics. So there are solutions. What disabled people are, I think,

protesting about is the idea that we start with something that they rely on. I mean, I use silicon in medical products every day. And you say, oh, well, that's a waste of plastics. Tom, you shouldn't have that. Then I die. So it is a matter of life and death for disabled people. We saw recently a lady, very sadly, who impaled herself on a metal straw. So, you know, some of the alternatives are not appropriate, not safe. And I think we should start with plastics, and not life-preserving, and then move on maybe to think of alternatives. It's interesting, one of our colleagues who's challenging us at the session on activism is saying, you know, what are academics doing about this?

And I was stung by that, and I thought, well, I'm not an expert on sustainability. I'm an expert on social relations and disability rights and so forth. What can I do? I can't give you an expert view on. environmental crisis and global warming. However, any of us who are public figures can do something, and all of us who are academics can think, well, is your flight really necessary?

We get invited to a lot of conferences. I don't go to conferences anymore that I don't have to go to. I send a video, and I think that a lot of, not just academics, but UN people, including the head of the UN Climate Agency, travel far too much. and in the 21st century we've got all sorts of video conferencing, present software and all rest of it. We should invest a lot more in enabling people to communicate with each other across time and space without flying. And I think academics can do their bit with that.

And how does coming to Blue Dot and talking at places like Blue Dot, how does that help communicate sort of your message and the wider message of the science industry? Well, it's very interesting because the woman who runs this wonderful centre at Dodger, Bank, is named Theresa Anderson. And she's been the real core of this festival over the years. She's a wonderful person. She used to work for me, and

my friend Duncan Dallas, because we set up a network called Caféciontefique. And this is the idea that ordinary citizens can meet in cafes, pubs, bars, theatres, art centres, anywhere and talk to a scientist, learn from them, explore with

them, debate with them. And Teresa was our first, um, um, employee. So she went around the UK setting up cafes and feats. And now there are more, and you call them science cafes if you want, there are more than 100 science cafes in the UK. Worldwide, there are well over a thousand. They've really taken off. Now, that's not just because Teresa worked hard, it's because it's a damn good idea. And what it's doing is making science part of culture and it's making science more democratic because you can be a Nobel Prize winner or fellow of the Royal Society, but you're still going to put your face and your voice and your mind on the line

talking to ordinary people in a pub. And, you know, people like Jim Alcalee, who it's lovely to see here, does that. And rightly, because we fund this science and we have a right to hear from these scientists, and they're not opposed to it. They enjoy it. And by making the public more scientifically literate, we have better debates. I think vital is to have more debates, either could be online, but often face-to-face. And the trouble is in a culture based on Twitter, based on Facebook, both on social media, we don't have debates.

We are out of the habit of reading long-form articles and books which explore a crisis or explore anything. And that's really wrong. And I think the more debates, the fewer slogans, the more thought that we have, the better likely we are to deal with a lot of the prices, environmental, social, political that we face. Listening, talking, exploring is what it should be about. And it's two-way as well here, I believe it, isn't it?

So after your talks, you get some amazing questions. Is there anything that's come out? I think absolutely two-way, because, I mean, in the old days there was this model that the public were, it's called a deficit model. Scientists knew stuff. Public didn't know stuff. Scientists told public, public happier. I'm not trying to say that. I'm obviously, everybody has got expertise. In my community, the disability community, we talk about experts by experience. That's people with lived experience,

maybe of disability or other issues. And scientists and academics have expertise by research. They've read stuff, they understand stuff at a very deep level. But you need both, and you need dialogue, and you need scientists to learn from the public. One of the things that I've really excited about, about science cafes, is that often the speakers come away and say,

I never knew people were concerned about that. Or that's a really interesting question. I'm going to do some research about that. And they come away as excited as the members of the audience who've heard them and debated with them. And you're absolutely right. It's about two-way dialogue. It's about explaining.

It's about listening on both sides. Speaking in the Star Pavilion at Joddwell Bank, where she began her career, Danielle George brought the invisible universe to light. She spoke to us about the Lovell Radio Telescope based at Joddrell, new endeavours such as the SKA Square Kilometer Array telescope project, and what we can learn from looking at our skies. Hi, Dan, welcome to Blodat.

Can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and what you're talking to us about today? Yes, so I'm a professor of electronic engineering at the University of Manchester. My research is actually, so I started out life at Choddle Bank Observatory as a junior engineer at the time. working on amazing projects here at Doddrell. And then in 2006, I then got my first lectureship position in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. So moved there. But my research is still for instrumentation

for radio telescopes around the world. So today I'm talking about one of sort of the forefathers of radio astronomy, which people tend not to think about as one of the forefathers. He is Marconi, the Italian engineer, who we know for. radio communication and of course without his inventions we wouldn't be able to communicate in the way we do today so I'm talking about him and the invisible universe and his his sort of

profound effect on radio astronomy and the radio telescopes that we we know today what do you mean by the invisible universe so within the the radio spectrum the it just looks invisible so if you looked at something in the optical so with an optical telescope let's say a galaxy or a set of galaxies, there's a set of galaxies called M-81. And if you look at them, you can get lots of information about what they look like in the optical, but it's not until you observe them with a radio telescope

that you see much more detail, and it's absolutely invisible to us in the optical. You have to use radio to be able to see a lot of this more detail of the galaxies and how they actually interact with each other. You'd miss that completely in the optical. And so you mentioned here at Jodrell, we've obviously got the LaValle Telescope. Is that something you've worked on? Is that?

Yeah? The Lovell Telescope, yes, yeah, lots of times. I got stuck in the several times in the focus box when a thunder and lightning storm came. And we were in the focus box. And, of course, it swings a lot in the wind. And so we got stuck in there. We were changing one of the receivers and got stuck in there for a while. So, yes, been up at many times.

Amazing. And so the kind of, you know, information that it can take. tell us, what can we then do with that? What practical applications does it have here on us? So, I mean, it's changing the way we understand the universe and where it's going, where it came from. We can understand with radio telescopes, not just a level, but with, you know, some of the major facilities that you see around the world now, where the universe is sort of going where it's come from. But also, working out, you know, if there are other planets out there, that or other systems out there

that have the same sort of organic chemistry than we do. And so by sort of observing all of these other things, we can actually get to know quite a lot about our own system as well, our own solar system. So what it was in the early years and perhaps where it's going as well. So you can almost use it to predict the future of the earth and our solar system? Indeed, yes, yeah, yeah, by observing other things and seeing that the chemistry of what's happening in those systems is the same as ours, either in the past or potentially in the future. And so what is it about Blue Dot and the festival experience that allows you to kind of communicate this? Why is this a really good venue for it, aside from being right next to the level?

Oh, it's great. I mean, it's, the venue itself obviously is. It's iconic, so, you know, I think it inspires everyone. But this is, you just get people who probably wouldn't go to a science festival or a science talk. And they come and generally they love it. You know, they love hearing a bit more about the science, a bit more about the technology, the engineering. And it's just not something that they'd normally go to. And I'm a big believer of taking the science, the engineering out to people rather than sort of saying, come and listen, you know, come to the science. talks or come to the science festival, let's get it out there to where people are.

And I think Blue Dot does that really well. Are there any other ways you can take the telescope? I mean, the level telescope is massive. How can you take that and communicate it to people that maybe can't come to Manchester to see it? Well, they do a lot of online things. There's actually a blow-up planetarium. So an inflatable planetarium. And, you know, people take that around to different areas.

and especially maybe people who couldn't get to either to Manchester or who just don't sort of engage with science. Like I say, take it out there, take it to the sort of low participation neighborhoods, take it to maybe schools where they don't have those sort of luxuries, those benefits. And I love doing that. I love going out to schools and seeing the children's faces, you know, when you're talking about things and they're like, wow, that's amazing.

And seeing that sort of spark of interest, I think is great. And sort of space and the great unknown is like a really good topic to introduce, you know, young, the next generation to STEM in general. It's a very accessible way, I think, of communicating that, isn't it? I wonder if you could talk about the projects that are lined up. So SKA, can you tell us about that? And what's that going to look like for the future of the UK in the wider global picture? Yeah, so the SKA, the square kilometer array, is an amazing set of telescopes.

I mean, this will be the largest facility mankind has ever built. So it's what they call the cern of the skies, really. So it will be 50 times more sensitive than any other radio instrument. And that will allow scientists to answer key and ambitious questions in astrophysics, cosmology, fundamental physics. I think my favorite fact about it is it will be so sensitive, it will be able to detect an airport radar, signal on a planet 10 light years away. And the amount of data the SK will generate is enormous. So it's estimated that the, so it's made up of different types of antennas. So you have sort of the low frequency dipole, you know, the old sort of aerials that we had on our houses and also

some dishes, so much more like the level telescope, but smaller. And there will be potentially millions of these low frequency dipoles and thousands of these dishes. and it's all made, and that's spread across Western Australia and in remote area in South Africa, so they'll all be connected. And the data that the SK will generate in one day, if you could download it as a song and play the song, the song would last for two million years. So it's a huge amount of data this thing will generate. And, I mean, what will they discover?

They just don't know, you know, it is absolutely the unknown. But because the facility, the telescope will be so big. it's going to allow scientists to really probe deep into space in a way that they've just never been able to before. That sounds amazing, and so much data to last that long. Are there enough scientists to handle that data, or is this something that the next generation is going to have to be working on? How long do you think this will last for?

Oh, yeah, there's probably not enough scientists, but also there's not enough computing power in the world at the minute. You literally wouldn't be able to keep. keep all of the raw data if the SKA was built right now because we just don't have the computing power in the world. So, but we for sure need the next generation to be working on this. There are some amazing telescopes that are observing and discovering things that they just don't know what it means.

You know, there's one of the other telescopes I work on is Alma, the Atacama, large millimeter array. and that is 66 sort of high precision antennas in Chile, so 5,000 metres above sea level in Chile. And that, earlier this year, that set of telescopes found a young star. It's about 1,500 light years away from us, but a young star, and it was glowing salt millimeter wavelength. So salt, just normal table salt, sodium chloride.

was glowing at millimeter wavelengths. And, you know, they just don't know what this means. You know, it was an amazing discovery. And it's the first time salt has been seen glowing from a young star. So it's trying to work out what does it mean? Can we find out more about the chemistry of that star and the formation of it by looking at salt? You know, it's incredible.

But, you know, the scientists at the minute need the next generation to be working on these things because we just don't know the answers to them. That was Danielle George, Tom Shakespeare and Libby Jackson talking about their experience at Blue Dot Festival 2019. You might have to wait a whole year for the next festival, but in the meantime you can still catch up on the latest science and technology news, features and interviews in this month's issue of BBC Science Focus. Pick up the summer 2019 issue to get the lowdown on plastic waste, discover the spacecraft that will visit Saturn's Moon and the incredible technology that sniffs out to Zipzig. As always, there is much, much more inside. Thank you for listening to the Science Focus podcast from the BBC Science Focus magazine team. We're the UK's best-selling science and technology monthly,

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