Material World - 09/04/2009

Quentin Cooper talks to Professor Robert Holdsworth about the Italian earthquake, an earth scientist at Durham University. One of his colleagues, Ken McCaffery, has gone to L'Aquila with a laser scanning device called a LiDAR. Similar to radar, but using laser light instead of radio waves, Ken plans to deploy the device on the ground near the earthquake site to survey with millimetre accuracy the new scarps of rock. The Apennine area of Italy has long been interesting to geologists for the bed of limestone very close to the surface. New rock protruding from the surface allows scientists to see and measure recent faulting and shifting as the mountains continue to settle. It is generally believed that the L'Aquila earthquake produced a shift of about 25 centimetres. If Ken can find the new scarp, he can make a series of accurate measurements over a period of weeks. He hopes that these measurements will help him to build an accurate picture of how the earthquake has affected the local rock structure. It might also help answer questions about what has been going on under Italy for the last 30 million years, and what might happen in the future. On the 9th April 1969, people in the west of England saw the first British Concorde on its maiden flight from Filton, near Bristol. At the time it seemed to herald a new age of faster-than-a-bullet travel for all. But, as history shows, Concorde remained a luxury for the rich and famous. The planes were decommissioned in 2003. Quentin speaks to Peter G Coen, Principal Investigator in Supersonic Aeronautics at NASA's Langley Research Centre. He asks what happened to the supersonic dream and whether supersonic passenger travel might one day take to the sky again, with or without its tell-tale sonic boom. Also, Quentin discusses brain scans with Geraint Rees from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, and with Daniel Glaser, Head of Special Projects at the Wellcome Trust. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) have become essential tools for investigating the brain. Thanks to brain scanning, our knowledge of core physical processes - memory, sight, muscle control - has been hugely improved. But are researchers justified in using these tools to delve into more complex and subjective areas such as emotions, aesthetics and morality?