Old faces and big spaces in small places
From Science In Action by BBC World Service
October 9, 2025 · 32 min
About this episode
The episode discusses the 2025 Nobel prize predictions, wildlife tracking innovations, a new blood atlas for disease detection, and revisiting data from the Cassini mission.
The 2025 Nobel prizes are announced this week – how did Science in Action’s predictions fare? Science author and thinker Philip Ball judges. The Whitley Fund for Nature this week hosted a “People for Planet” summit, exploring possible solutions to save nature. Amongst the speakers was Prof Martin Wikelski, of ICARUS, who has spent many years tracking wildlife around the world using tiny radio sensors. As he describes to Roland, he shortly hopes to launch a network of satellites to enable a global system to help us learn how hundreds of species are faring. Also, a new “Human Disease Blood Atlas” gets a boost, as described by Mathias Uhlén of SciLifeLab. Could an annual blood sample become a standard primary healthcare routine, mapping key proteins and their concentrations to provide early warning of hundreds of diseases? Meanwhile Nozair Khawaja of Free University of Berlin has been revisiting data from the Cassini mission to Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, back in 2008. His new analysis increases the prospects of habitable conditions deep on the ocean floor beneath the icy crust. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production Coordinator: Jana Bennet-Holesworth…
People in this episode
Host: Roland Pease
Guests: Philip Ball, Prof Martin Wikelski, Mathias Uhlén, Nozair Khawaja
Topics covered
- Nobel prizes
- wildlife tracking
- satellite networks
- healthcare
- blood analysis
- habitable conditions
Keywords
- Nobel prizes
- wildlife tracking
- satellite network
- blood atlas
- disease detection
- Cassini mission
- Enceladus
- habitable conditions
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Whitley Fund for Nature, ICARUS, SciLifeLab, Free University of Berlin
Places: Enceladus, Saturn
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