2024-12-07
32 分钟Hello and welcome to the latest dose of science news from New Scientist.
I'm Penny Sarchet and I'm joined today by Rowan Hooper.
Hello.
This week we've got quite an amazing story of a new kind of brain implant that's made out of brain cells, which, you know, to use the journalistic cliche, it might sound like science fiction.
It's not.
But we will also be talking about actual science fiction as we're going to be hearing from our resident culture criticism, Bethan Akeley, on the best science fiction TV and film of the year.
We're going to start, though, with a special report on Antarctica.
Sometimes climate change news, it can all be a bit drip, drip blurs into one, just overwhelming and depressing.
And it can be hard to tease out those stories that really, you know, you have to sit up and listen to, really.
But this is one of those.
Our Australia reporter, James Woodford, he's been in Hobart, Tasmania with nearly 500 researchers for a conference that was billed as an emergency summit for the future of the Antarctic.
Rowan caught up with him to hear all about him.
James, I want to hear about the general vibe at the meeting, but first, there was one statistic that really captured everyone's attention there.
And for you, you were saying this captured the seriousness of the entire climate crisis.
Yeah, thanks, Rowan.
Look, Deb, the mood at the conference at the summit was definitely somber and at times just everybody just trying to make sense of the enormous changes that are taking place down in the Antarctic.
And normally statistics can make people feel pretty sleepy.
So bear with me on this one.
As many listeners will be aware, there was a precipitous drop off in the extent of the winter sea ice around Antarctica in 2023 and again in 2024.
2024 was nearly as bad as 2023, and in 2023, there was 1.55 millions below the expected average extent of sea ice, which was the lowest recorded since satellite data.