The Infinite Monkey Cage - A History of Rock

Episode Date: February 15, 2021

A History of RockBrian Cox and Robin Ince are joined by rock enthusiasts Ross Noble, Paleontologist Susie Maidment and Geologist Chris Jackson to look at the history of rock. Unfortunately for Ross, this turns out to mean actual rolling stones, rather than THE Rolling Stones. We hear what secrets the study of rock reveals about the very birth of our planet, to the incredible creatures that walked the Earth many millions of years ago, preserved in our ancient stones.Producer: Alexandra Feachem

In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet, we are traveling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the front lines of climate change. We will share stories of how they are thriving using lessons learned from nature. And good news, it is working. Learn more by listening to Nature Answers wherever you get your podcasts. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey gooey and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Tax is extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. BBC Sounds.

Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Brian Cox. And I'm Robin Ince, and this is Rock. I can't forget the things that you said to me. Something inside my heart

that can't break free. I can see I suddenly have an overwhelming desire to wear a stronger aftershave and I have no idea why. Obviously, I accept what we've basically done is a pun. We're not going to be talking about the music genre of rock. We are going to be talking about rock from a geological perspective. But that was nevertheless a great excuse to play Abandon by Dare, one of the great 80s rock tunes. And I have to admit, I know the keyboardist and we're quite friendly.

I wouldn't go that far, Robin. Our relationship is merely professional. I know people think that we're like Morecambe and Wise or Ant and Dec and sleep in the same bed with our pyjamas on and stuff, but I don't really like him very much. So, no. I'm not your mate. I wasn't talking about you. Did you play keyboards on that?

It's me. It is me. I presumed you were only in the magazine shoot. I presumed that Gary, my mate, played keyboards, but because he's a bit lumpy-looking, that you were the one that they put in when it was in Smash Hits magazine, much in the same way that you do physics. Jim Alclilly writes it, you present it. That's how it works.

Actually, let's have a listen again, just because I know people would like to hear more of it as well. One more bit of Dare. Now, I'm just fascinated in one of the lines there, because I wondered how much of an influence you had on it. If you abandon me, tonight will last forever. And I wondered if that was a specific Einsteinian take, really, on the nature

of the block universe. No, it's a scientifically dubious lyric. That's what it is. Scientifically dubious. Along the lines of things are going to get better. It should have read, if you abandon me at the velocity of light, then tonight will last forever in your reference frame.

We were trying to be the old and Bon Jovi, so we sacrificed accuracy. Today, we're looking at geology. What can the landscape tell us about our deep past? If you pick up a stone in your garden, what stories can it tell? Today's ologists are a geologist, a paleontologist and a drivelologist. She's just a drivel. And they are... Hello, I'm Susie Maidment, and I'm a dinosaur researcher at the Natural History Museum, and my favourite rock is a garnet mica schist. That is the ologist equivalent of a mic drop on the rock table. Hello, everybody.

My name is Christopher Jackson. I'm at Imperial College in London and my favourite rock is Haylight, which is rock salt. Hello, my name is Ross Noble. I used to be a stand-up comedian before all that stopped and my favourite rock is Dwayne Johnson.

And this is our panel! Sorry, we've got to ask you, Susie, because you got a wonderful kind of ooh from the audience, which was definitely a noo, which said, I have no idea what that is, but I'm going to ooh for the idea that I had some understanding. Can you tell us about that before we get properly started, what that rock is that you've just mentioned?

Yeah, it's basically a really, really sparkly, spangly, shiny rock. It's a very pretty rock. So that's why it's my favourite. It's just bling. Where would we find such a rock? You know, like a gift shop scenario, you know, because I like a pyrite. I love a pyrite i love a pyrite oh pyrite's nice yeah because i'm i'm partial if i'm ever in a you know if i'm ever in a regional

gift shop and i see with a pirate i think i'm not i'm not digging that up myself i'll buy that where would i get some of your stuff you could get some from you could get some from outside where i'm sitting now actually i'm surrounded by it so i'll bring you some back but that's the problem with the sparklier rocks, you know. If you're ever in a situation where, you know, you feel like, because we all like throwing rocks at people we don't like, but the sparkly rocks, oh, you lose something as you throw. And I think that's how we all come together as a community, you know.

Can I ask a serious question? Susie, I wanted to ask you, so you're a paleontologist. That's your profession. So how important is geology to paleontology and the study of dinosaurs? It's really, really important, actually. So my degree is in geology. My first degree is in geology. And it's super important because obviously the dinosaurs and the fossils are found in rock.

And in order, you know, we're not just interested in the dinosaurs for the sake of the fact that they're big and they're impressive and everybody goes, ooh, when you find one. You know, we're actually interested in understanding what they can tell us about life in the past and past environments and past climates. And in order to be able to do that, we have to be able to understand the rocks that they're in. We have to look at the rocks that tell us the context

of where these animals were living. So geology is absolutely fundamental to everything that we do as paleontologists. It's interesting, actually, I didn't know your original degree was in geology. And I wanted to ask Chris as well. I'll ask you both. What was it that first drew you to geology? Because I suppose in a sense, it's like astronomy. And I get asked this question all the time. It's a science that you can go outside and see it. So it's one of the most sort of obvious of sciences. But what was it that made you take up geology as a profession? I mean, I would just say, I know me and Susie have completely different answers to this.

I was, I never really wanted to get into geology. It wasn't something that kind of, you know, was attracted to me as a small child. And I eventually found it by being really hopeless at lots of other things. by being really hopeless at lots of other things. And then whatever will have you, whatever will have you at the end of that journey of disappointment and anxiety, you hold it tight at night. You're a professor, partly at least,

at my institution, aren't you? Yeah, I know. You're a university of Manchester as well, so you can't say this. No, it's true, though. It's true because I think it's really important as scientists or anybody who finds something which they feel passionate about now, it's not that you were passionate about it when you were growing up. I think it's a completely permissible route into enjoyment of any kind,

is it can grow on you by the interactions with people, the things you learn as you go through. So I found it quite late. What is your history? Because it's interesting, because I know a lot of children listen to this show and they think that by the age of 14 or 15 or 12 even, you need to know what you're going to do if you're going to be successful. So what was your route to becoming a professor? So I grew up in Derbyshire and spent time in the Peak District surrounded by you know great natural beauty and landscapes and geomorphology and you know spectacular rivers and valleys. There's a chair there I heard, well done. So and I guess there

was bits in that experience which then made me start to question the natural world but I was you know I wasn't particularly good at science growing up. It was my second worst GCSE grade, just ahead of French. And it was just one of the things that eventually I kind of stumbled into. And I think even as adults, as professors of whatever, at whichever institution, you can still love what you do now and still question why you're doing it. You know, it is an absolutely fascinating subject. I've done it for 23 years.

Of course I love it, right? But it was something which grew on me and is still growing on me now. I'm still finding new and exciting things every day. And I think that's the important thing, isn't it? Can you imagine if you'd been amazed by your subject by the age of 30 or by the age of 25? I think continual excitement every day you go in

and being re-attracted to what you're doing is, I think it's an absolute privilege. Can I ask just a quick question, seeing as we have the rock experts here, the question that everyone's thinking at home, right, is obviously the most famous rock lover has got to be, of course, Andy Loughran, you know, who in the Shawshank Redemption,

he got his little rock hammer. That's how he pulled the whole thing off. From a rock expert's point of view, is he considered to be, like, when you watch that, did he get it right? Is he a hack? Where's Andy Green in the whole... Just as a...

I have a strong suspicion you want civil engineers on the show, Rob, and geologists answer that question. No, no, no, because he got the tiny rock hammer and he was picking up the rocks and that was the cover in order to go into engineering. It's a classic educational through-line. Oh, fuck. I don't think I've watched Shawshank Redemption since I was about 16.

I don't know whether I studied geology last time I watched it. That is a classic Ross thing there. How did you get into geology? Well, I used to be a fictional character in a Stephen King short story and one thing led to another. Now I'm at the University of Manchester. All I'll say is I wouldn't go back to it because I fear the inaccuracies of his hammering

would just ruin the whole thing. It would ruin it for me. You might be right. Susie, to bring this back to science. So we talk about the story of geology, the story of a rock. Let's say you go outside, pick up a rock. How do you begin to characterise it?

How do you begin to tell its story? How do we know how old it is, how it was formed? So how do you tell that story? Well, geology is a discipline in which you kind of use all of your senses. So obviously looking really closely at a rock is really important. But one of the things that we often teach our students and we try and encourage them to do quite a lot and they often don't believe us is to bite a little bit off it

to chew the rock that tells us how uh that doesn't work for any children watching i don't think you should do that no you definitely should definitely should chew the rock probably probably think a little bit about where the rock is before you chew it. Like if it's on the side of a road, maybe don't chew it. Don't chew the rock. This helps us to determine how coarse the grains are that make up the rock, which allow us to tell about the energy of the environment that's transported it. So was it transported by a really rapidly flowing river, for example? That would allow it to transport larger grains, or if it was a very, very slow moving

river or a lake, then you'd have finer grains being deposited. So we've been looking at things like the grain size of the rock, we've been looking at the colour of the rock, all sorts of different attributes of it. But to get into things like dating, that's a little bit more complicated. We can't do that just from looking at it um but we can get an idea about the age of the rock from looking at whether it's got any fossils in of course and that's why fossils are really important um to geology as well and chris in terms of dating the rock yeah sorry i was going to say that's all legitimate everybody was giggling about the taste in the rock stuff but um yeah the piece of rock you've got is from a spoil heap in central utah and it's radioactive

don't go around licking it. But, like, lots of other rocks are all fair game to chew on. Sorry, I just need to, just for my research, is it a chew or a lick? Can we just nail that down? Oh, it's a chew. It's a chew. I mean, if you've got a hay light like salt rock, you can legitimately lick that and not draw strange stares from your friends. So, no, I just... You're making geology sound really strange.

So is that the first thing that you do? You go through a rock formation. You lick it. You lick the rock formation. It is one of the tools available to us to determine some aspect of the texture of the rock. Yeah, it's all about the texture. So sometimes, unless you've got a little hand lens,

a little microscope, to look at what the grain size of the rock is it's very hard to tell and actually if you just bite a little bit off if it's a bit grainy then it's you'd say it's a sandstone if it's got a little bit of texture to it it's a silt stone and if it just turns into mush in your mouth it's mudstone so they are legitimate stop laughing these are all see all i've got me my... Me and Susie have trained for years and years and years. I must just say that I've got this idea

now in my head. All I can see is like a mighty rock like Uluru and then just like lots of people just licking it, licking it and then like, and then it's Stonehenge. They've made Stonehenge. If this was the 1960s, you would just be about to make a million pounds from writing that book.

That would be any Eric von Daniken. A lot of people haven't realised how important licking was in the formation of stone here there's no ufos involved but brian's brian's question about the age the dating of rocks or the aging of rocks is is that's then often where you take the rock samples back into the laboratory and you extract then individual minerals to then look more in more detail at the chemistry of the rock and chemical analysis is harder to do in the field. In situ is the term we use when you're actually out in the wild looking at rocks than it is in the laboratory. So you have to cross the rocks down and then subject them to some sort of analysis.

And one of those analyses you'd be doing is looking at the radioactive decay of the elements within the different minerals. And then by looking at the composition of those minerals, you can actually work out how old those rocks are. So that's the more accurate way of trying to work out the age of a rock. This is sounding so dubious. I like the idea that you get caught licking a rock and somebody goes, are you licking that rock?

And you turn around and go, it's all right, we're dating. Come on, come on. Thanks very much, that's all from me. Good night. Sorry, I know you're trying to get back to the science, but this is really going to help me out. Do you reckon, and it's just a new game show I'm working on, if I was to blindfold you and line up a load of rocks,

do you reckon you could identify the rock just with your tongue? How long do we have? How long are you going to leave us with the rocks for? You know what? We can fix it in the edit and you're playing for a car. I think some of them, Susie, do you think we could... I mean, if it was hay light, you'd nail that one straight away, right? Yeah, totally, totally.

It tastes like you're licking a salty chip, right? I think it depends what level of accuracy you want, really. We could get you down to sandstone, you know, straight away, couldn't we? Really. Yeah. And if you licked one of the garnet micaceous that Susie talked about at the start, and if your tongue passed over a nice bit of garnet, it'd be nice and smooth.

Yeah, that'd be nice and smooth across your tongue. And then as you lick some of the mycaceous minerals, they might come off. I've genuinely not thought about this that much. I'm Rob now, and you've won a holiday! If I can just be in this bed, I'll try one more time. Can I just say, Brian, you've never seemed more like Sid Little than you do now.

I just want to do Miss Science. Hang on a minute, I want to tell you what the taste of rocks are. Oh. Actually, Robin, you ask the question. I've never seen you actually just give up. I like it when it's equations. The probabilistic universe has been an issue, but I've dealt with that. But then up. I like it when it's equations. The probabilistic universe has been an issue,

but I've dealt with that. But then it got to chemistry and now it's biology and the whole thing's a mess. Anyway, the... I'm just going to read one of my own books. I'm going to answer the question. Yeah, you ask any questions you like. Brian, it's the last episode of the series.

It's free time for you. You do what you want, OK? You can do drawings or what you want. It's all fine. But I was kind of intrigued again almost going back to that time when we talk about the inspiration to be a geologist which I was thinking that when I was growing up I remember very little geology in school and yet I grew up in kind of well basically midsummer murder country right in the Chilterns and you walk around and there's chalk everywhere and once you start finding out what chalk is you know this this this is the remains of an you know of of sea life this is telling us that the whole landscape that I'm viewing was an entirely different landscape

and what are the way I mean that to me is one of the most exciting things about geology yeah you know I totally agree with you Robin I don't I you know I live in the south down so similar sort of scenery to you uh in the Chilterns and I don't understand how people go for walks and don't look around them and think you know how is this valley here how is that outcrop there why why are these rocks this colour you know how why is there this massive hill here and this big valley here having learned about geology has totally changed the way that I view the world. And I'm married to a geologist as well. So we are completely unable to go on holiday without researching the geologic history of an area first

and then having arguments about it while we're there. So, you know, it does. It totally changes everything, I think, the way that you perceive everything. I think the other thing as well is not just the natural history of the planet, it's then our land use and how we relate to it. You know, why do we have coal fields where we have coal fields? Why do we have politics geographically kind of petitioned as we do in the UK?

A lot of that is related to the underlying geology. They're related to events 300-plus million years ago that have endowed a certain region of the uk with a certain resource and from that as certain industries sprung up and from that becomes a culture you know and a political belief system is or beliefs by a certain group so i just it's it goes beyond just how it gets to look like that it's then how we relate to it and how it drives everything about you know humanity and human interactions really i mean that's fascinating when you were just mentioning

there's i remember reading a book recently which was talking about why there's a a strip of democrat voters in the american south in a very kind of hardcore but but it is actually geology as you were saying geology is why that is there i recall it's to do with the where the soil is um appropriate for growing cotton and the soil that is which is um what would you say rich enough to sustain those types of crops only form above a certain rock type they don't form above i guess in that case organic rocks that are pouring organic material like some of the metamorphic rocks that suzy talked about but they may form above sedimentary rocks which in organic material like some of the metamorphic rocks that suzy talked about but they may form above sedimentary rocks which have organic material in therefore the soils are

rich in organic material and therefore can sustain crop growth of so cotton so yeah that i think that that story about the democrat democrat sort of strip of voting is related entirely to the geology so it's related to cotton plantation yes yes yeah and yes, yeah, and it's to do with, it's to do with, you know, all the things that arise after the end of slavery and all the things you'd want to crave are all underpinned by the geology beneath your feet and the jobs you are doing as a function of employment, quote-unquote. We mentioned earlier about dating rocks and dating rock formations and it seems to me there's a kind of a it's almost circular in a sense in some ways we we date the rocks from the

fossils that are there so we do it through the animals in other sense we do it chemically or radioactively what's the basic you know in astronomy we have a distance ladder and so we measure the distance to stars and we know about variable stars and so on and we build out a picture of the universe but in terms of of rocks, what is the basic anchor point from which we build this geological history of the Earth? Four and a half billion years, how is it done? I'd say radioactive dating is the anchor point. So if you have a layer, imagine you have a sequence of rocks, right?

And they're sedimentary rocks, sandstones and mudstones, and they've got a bunch of dinosaur bones in. What really need in those layers of rocks they are a lava flow right some kind of lava deposit and from that you might be able to extract a sample use these radioactive dating methods to get an absolute age for that lava flow and maybe one above and one of them might be 60 million years old and the other one might be 61 million years old and then you go and collect the fossils through the same sequence of rocks and you might see a change in the dinosaur types or you know Susie probably won't expect undoubtedly won't explain this better than me but you'll see a change in the dinosaur types through those layers but the anchor points are the 60 and 61 million years old right so then when you see those fossils

somewhere else without those lava flows in that a different sequence of rocks you'll know from the fossils alone you're looking at a sequence of rocks which are approximately 60 to 61 million years old. Susie we have rocks going back well pretty much to the the origin of the solar system right four four and a half billion years old what are the oldest fossils that we find? I think the earliest really clear evidence that people are kind of happy to agree on is around about 3 billion years old for life. But I guess we're not totally, totally happy until we start to see oxygen really increasing in the atmosphere. And that's when we know life had really got going on Earth.

Because, of course, the only reason we have oxygen in the atmosphere is because of life. And that was about, I think, about 1.6 billion years, something like that. Yeah, sponges and cyanobacteria and the stuff that actually took all of the waste, the nasty stuff, carbon dioxide, water, and then managed to produce oxygen. But Susie's right. I mean, when you go back that far to 3 billion years old, and then somebody says 3 billion, somebody says 3.2, it doesn't sound like that much to a geologist because of the kind of temporal reference frame we operate in but that is a huge level of uncertainty but we're kind of comfortable pushing the numbers around like that so that's why those arguments are it's just like any bit

of science people quarrel as new data comes in and rightly so and these are we're talking about single cell fossilized single cells, those traces of bacteria. When most people, I think, think about fossils, you tend to think about things like trilobites and larger animals or plants. When do we first see those appearing in the fossil record? They first appear at a time called the Cambrian Explosion, which was 541 million years ago. Something happened. We're not quite sure what it was. It could have been another increase in oxygen in the atmosphere. It's not totally clear, but something happened 541 million years ago that led to suddenly the evolution of hard parts. And then, of course,

we see loads and loads of fossils because it's the hard parts that preserve. We don't normally get the soft parts of organisms preserved in the fossil record. So as soon as we start to get things with shells, then we suddenly have this fabulous fossil record. So as soon as we start to get things with shells, then we suddenly have this fabulous fossil record. I do just find that that image of the Cambrian explosion is so beautiful because when you hear it, you don't imagine it over a long period of time. You do actually just imagine that it was kind of, you closed the curtains and there were just trilobites around

and then you opened the curtains. It was like watching a Muppet movie, you know. Oh my God, it's such a... What are all these things? I mean, Ross, you must be... Because I always think you have such an incredible collection of... I don't want to call it tat, I mean, in many ways it's... I would say an importantly curated...

How dare you? Amongst all the things you collect, I know you have a fascination with dinosaurs. Are those the kind of things that you're drawn to as well, is just seeing those beautiful fossils? Oh, 100%. I mean, i got very jealous when nicholas cage bought dinosaur skull of leonardo dicaprio and it turned out that it was a stolen dinosaur skull and he had to uh he had to return it and i've often you know there's and that got me excited because yes i'd like to

own a dinosaur skull but at the same time is there a big market out there for knock-offs, you know? That's the question, you know? I'll tell you what I have always wanted to own, which I should look into. Again, I'd love to know what the expert opinion is on possibly Britain's greatest rock-based tourist attraction, Old Mother Shipton's Cave. Oh, come on. I've always wanted a top hat, or maybe it's a teddy bear.

Used to be owned by Paul Daniels for a while. What do the experts say about Old Mother Shipton's Cave? I mean, I think Old Motherhipton's Cave? I mean, I think Old Mothershipton's Cave is obviously remarkable, but possibly not the most remarkable rock formation we have in the UK. Come on, come on. I don't, I mean, we could turn this into Top Trumps. Go on. Imagine, all I'm saying is imagine i know nothing right

hard to believe right but if if i present to you all mother shipton's cave what do you come back what when i'm on my rock when i'm on my rock tour what do i do what do i go to above mother shipton's cave then giant's causeway oh yeah that, that's the... Oh, come on. I love the fact you've found a new format. You've found a new way of doing You Bet and now you're doing a new geological version of Play Your Cards right. This is extremely...

No. I've got to say though... Look, your Giant's Causeway Giant's Causeway, that's like Shakespeare on Desert Island Discs. You can't have that. Hit me with one. I've got one, I've got one. How about, so the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall is actually a bit of the Earth's mantle,

a bit of the Earth's mantle exposed at the surface of the Earth. That is remarkably impressive. Susie, run us through that, Susie. Tell us more, because that is remarkably impressive. Susie, run us through that, Susie. Tell us more, because that is so fascinating. So what was the situation that led to that happening? Well, so where tectonic plates come together, usually you have a situation where you have a subduction zone where one tectonic plate is forced underneath the other.

But sometimes, rather than one of the plates being forced underneath the other one, a bit is forced on top. And the lower part of a tectonic plate is actually the top of the mantle. So it's the bottom of the lithosphere, it's the top of the mantle. And so at the lizard, this happened. And part of the mantle was actually forced up onto the surface of the Earth. So we have mantle rock exposed in the UK. Rock which is tens of kilometres beneath our feet where we're all sitting now

is then exposed at the Earth's surface by the seaside is completely incredible. I did also want to ask you about Giant's Causeway because I know that it's a really very recognisable rock formation. It's hexagonal which is extremely strange and I always find it remarkable that regular shapes like that particularly hexagons can form in nature do we know why those rocks are hexagonal oh it's something to do with the cooling isn't it and the and the and the kind of the energy being spent on minimizing the surface area that's forming between the crystals and then eventually as you yeah isn't it yeah brian is it i mean i i feel like you should you you should know this better than us actually isn't it to do with um you do

know but it's not for me to say is it But it's not for me to say, is it? Can I put forward why I think it's like that? I heard that it was chiselled out by Bob Wholeness when he was doing blockbusters. That's what I heard. I mean, strictly speaking, blockbusters, I don't think they were hexagons, were they?

But anyway, let's not get dragged down on the detail before one of you scientists picks me up on it. I think there's a point here, though, that the amazing thing about geology is it's such a multidisciplinary science. It has everything in it from physics, chemistry, biology, you know, all other parts of science kind of feed into geology. And it's just incredibly multidisciplinary. And, you know, that's that's really a physics question about why convection cells form in the shape of convection cells. But, yeah, it just shows, you know, that people come into geology from all different backgrounds and disciplines and have something to bring, I think. Are there big questions that you would

love to know the answer to? Like, you know, in cosmology, we talk about the origin of the universe and inflation and things like that, and did the universe have a beginning in time? In geology, are there big outstanding questions that you think, well, in my lifetime, I'd like to know the answer to that? Yeah, I mean, from a kind of scientific point of view, but also from a society point of view, you know, the kind of science behind forecasting volcanic eruptions and things which impact people's lives. And I think, you know, there's lots of esoterica bits of geology

which I'm fascinated by, but, you know, the bits which really make people's lives better are just deeply fascinating. So if we could come up with a way of bringing together our understanding of volcanic chemistry, the gases that come out of volcanoes, our understanding of seismicity, they're the earthquakes that happen when magma ascends with inside a volcano. If we could improve satellite resolution, so when satellites look at the earth and they're scanning it to see how the earth's shape is changing, if we could improve

the resolution so we could detect smaller amounts of ground deformation around volcanoes and we could bring let's just say those three things together and actually be able to predict more accurately the size of volcanic eruption and you know almost like when of course i think that would be just a such a triumph of just the nerdy tech bit to make all of those things work and then with this huge relevance to people's lives i think that's the important thing about science it's not just like what do i want to see done for me it's about like you know how can we make science work for the society in general and we're all living through that at the moment right and and it's just a very exciting thing to think about can i ask you suzy's also about how has has the technology changed in terms of in the

21st century what are you now able to discover and understand about a piece of rock that you would not have had the tools to in the 20th century yeah technology is really i mean even for or particularly for what i do i think although chris might disagree um with this but for particularly with paleontology it's made a huge difference to our understanding of life on earth and past life um the technology that we have available to us things like ct scanning has just totally revolutionized the field for us so now um rather than um finding a small fossil and having to painstakingly prepare it for months and months and months to get the bones out the rock we can just slap it in a CT scanner. And in a matter of hours, we'll know whether there's

a really, really beautiful fossil in that rock or nothing at all, and know whether it's worth preparing it out. But we can also reconstruct it three dimensionally. We can digitally, of course, we can take these digital models, we can retro deform them. So we can get rid of the squishing that's occurred from being in the in the earth. and then we can we can do all sorts of cool modeling with them so we can for example people always speculate you know one of the questions i always get asked you know how how fast can certain animals run how fast could t-rex run how fast could diplodocus run how fast could stegosaurus run we we really had no idea that was you know basically it was complete speculation in the past but we can

now model that so we can use evolutionary robotics and evolutionary learning algorithms to to model how fast animals moved that are long extinct and we can look at all sorts of things to do with bite force what you know how strong could they chew so we're going it's really technology has really allowed us and particularly this ability to have really, technology has really allowed us, and particularly this ability to have digital models of things, has allowed us to move beyond just kind of appreciating skeletons as they are, to fleshing out these animals and making them things that are, you know, really animals and are alive. I was going to say, Susie, there was the big discovery in China, wasn't there, which very high quality fossils that led us to understand, for example,

that dinosaurs have feathers and are coloured. I mean, it's not long ago when, you know, the pictures of dinosaurs I grew up with were kind of lizard-like things, green or grey. And now we have the high quality fossils that can allow us to see that they were coloured and see pigments and so on. can allow us to see that they were coloured and see pigments and so on. So what kind of geological formations are best for preserving fossils that well? Yeah, what we really need is, if you imagine that you're on the savannah, out on the Serengeti and an antelope dies, you can imagine all the things that happen to that carcass before it's buried. So it might get

scavenged, you might have some scavengers come along and start to tear the body apart. There might be a big flash flood, it might get washed into a river, the carcass could be jumbled around, the bones could be broken up. And those are real common processes that happen to skeletons after something dies. So what we need is to take the dead animal, the recently dead animal, and bury it as quickly as possible. And the best way to do this is either under something like a layer of volcanic ash or in the bottom of a lake. If you've ever jumped into a lake or a slow moving body of water, you know how the bottom of the lake is all sort of squidgy and soupy and yucky. Well, if you imagine a carcass falling into that,

it's very, very quickly going to be buried. It's probably anoxic down there, so there's not going to be any bacteria or fishes that are going to scavenge away that carcass. So it's that rapid burial that really allows this beautiful preservation and particularly the preservation of those soft parts like those beautiful feathers. Chris, I was just interested in thinking about,

we've been talking about terrestrial rock. Now that we're beginning to venture further out beyond the planet Earth, what about the geology? What are we able to understand of how geology changes as we go towards Mars and the Moon, etc? and things like Mars Rover and things which are out on, either physically on other planets collecting samples, right, and not just scooping them up with a little digger at the front. They're actually drilling down into them as well to try and minimise contamination. So if we wanted to understand the chemistry of those ronks, we want them to be as pristine as possible.

So we've got that, which is almost like fieldwork on another planet. I mean, we're doing it remotely mechanically but it's going around and picking stuff up there's also though um seismology going on on other planets as well so geophysics so we're trying to do remote sensing on other planets so not just with things that fly you know you know human-made things which are flying past other planets and looking at them they're actually actually, what should we say, surveying on those planets themselves and actually trying to look at the composition beneath those other planetary surfaces. So it is good we're doing that. And I think, you know, I always struggle in answering this question because some cynics always go,

we've got loads of unanswered questions on Earth, right? That's because it costs a lot of money to go and do this. But I think there's a more mind expanding and intellectual question there is just a desire to know you know a desire to know what's on those other planets beyond like whether we can terraform them and eventually go and live there because that's another thing people say we need to know this so we can colonize understanding what's around us and what's and when i say around us not just on our planet but on other planets that's really exciting as really exciting. Are there universal principles of geology? You know, in physics, we have the laws of nature. There are underlying principles that apply across the universe.

I suppose there must be principles of geology. Yeah, law of superposition, I would say, Susie. So the law of superposition is if you've got a rock sequence, you know, the younger rocks will be in place. If they're sediment Qualify it here. If they're sedimentary... And it's not totally universal. It's not totally universal, maybe. What have I done?

He's a geologist. He's dug a big hole. I want him to go into the hole. Can I just ask? Because I'm fascinated by, you know, obviously, you know, those samples of rocks from other planets. You know, when you get those back to Earth, when you lick them, do they taste different? You know what? You're all laughing, but there have been salts

interpreted geomorphologically, so from the shape of some other planets. There has been salts. I'm just desperate to lick that to see if it tastes salty too. Yeah, so that's... So in your expert

opinion, do you think it would be salty? I don't know if I've demonstrated I have an expert opinion so far. OK. Look, you're a few points ahead of me on this, but do you think it would be salty? I think it would be, because the chemistry, sodium chloride, I suspect it would be the same.

But everyone now like you used to be able to just go and buy salt now everyone wants Himalayan salt you know oh it's got to be sea salt I'm thinking moon salt I've sent some business idea business idea

moon salt I love the fact that ultimately if you were in charge of all these investigations, if you had all the power to control, you know, where we're examining the spectroscopy of the universe, you'd be going, what we really need to work out is the flavour of all the planets and stars. Once we've got that worked out, we can

move on. But what do they taste like? These are the questions. But that's the thing though, isn't it? It's like kind of, you know, with all of these big science questions, ultimately what's the point? I isn't it? It's like kind of, you know, with all of these big science questions, ultimately what's the point? I know this is what this show is about, but what's the point in knowing all this stuff if you can't look at it and go,

is there moon salt? Can we lick it? You know, that's how... What's the point in having knowledge if you can't play with it? That's what I was thinking. I think that's basically, that's Kennedy's speech, isn't it?

When he launched the Apollo programme. We link the moon. As we must. Why do we go? Just go, so does that mean if the moon is made of cheese, does it taste like feta? Do you know what, Ross? You have managed to take this show back 100 years

in terms of scientific advances. You've brought back the Feta question, which was last asked in 1897 at the Royal Society. I think this recording's been so long that we are literally going to have to do the shipping forecast. Dogger, sugary. Are you doing it in German? German bite, slightly saltier.

And remember, it will be a little bit like a curly-whirly at times. Anyway, as usual, we asked our audience a question, and the question we asked them was what do you hope will be discovered in this universe whilst we're off air? So, hopefully in the next five months rather than the next 20 years, but so let's find out. James West said the remote control.

I can't find it anywhere. John would like us to discover ancient fossils on Mars. It would be both a game-changer and a warning to some mentally fossilised beings on this world. Dystopia. Mark Middleton said Chesney Hawks' other amazing song. And at this point, everyone's thinking,

what was D. Ream's second hit? And at this point, everyone's thinking, what was D. Ream's second hit? The, um... Well, and with Liz, I think, a cure for willful stupidity. That's it. Ah. I'm not going to let you in on that,

because Stuart Hutchinson says that the second law of thermodynamics is round the wrong way, meaning that things can only get better. Anyway, thank you very much to our fantastic panel for joining us, Chris Jackson, Susie Mabin and Ross Noble. Normally at the end of this series we always talk about the places that we're going to be going in the interim.

Brian is normally going off somewhere exotic to go and explain the universe near some kind of tropical bird or whatever he normally does and i'm normally um getting stuck on a train going to an art center in cern abbas and uh i know where i'd rather be under a great big chalk giant they've got magical properties they They don't. Thanks for listening. Bye-bye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Turned out nice again. Hello, Robin here again. Just before Brian and I head off, Brian obviously to the cryogenic chamber,

we keep him in between series, and me to the room of typing monkeys, I wanted to let you know about another series I made recently, which you can now get as a podcast. It's about laws that aren't really laws, but should be. And guess what? It's called Laws That Aren't Laws. You can get the whole series if you subscribe to Radio 4's Scientifically podcast. Just search for Scientifically on BBC Sounds or wherever else you download this stuff.

Hello, I'm Greg Jenner, the host of the You're Dead To Me podcast, and I have some good news. Now that we're all stuck at home, again, we are bringing back Homeschool History. And if you missed out the first time, you don't know what it is, it's our fun, family-friendly and informative show about, well, you can probably guess, yeah, history. And yes, we're bringing back the obligatory sound effects, of course. This time out, get ready to learn about the Great Fire of London, ancient Egyptian religion, the Scottish Wars of Independence, Mary Seacole

and one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that you'll have to tune in to find out which one. So that's homeschool history with me, Greg Jenner, on BBC Sounds. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey gooeyey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. In our new podcast,

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