What is it about video games that makes them so addictive? Do we play these things not because they are easy but because they are hard? How hard are they? We asked MIT mathetmaticians Erik Demaine and Alan Guo.

Big Science: What's the Big Idea? From Resonance FM

Big Science FM: The Mathematics of Donkey Kong

Can racism be treated with heart drugs? A recent study suggests so. Does this mean that we can alter a person's moral values with drugs? And what other possibilities are there for engineering the human condition? We ask Julian Savulescu.

Big Science FM: Medicating morality

Dogs were the first sentient beings to venture into space. Yet, they know surprisingly little about physics. Chad Orzel, professor of physics at Union College in upstate New York, hopes to redress this.

Big Science FM: Teaching relativity to your dog

There are several ways that the public can contribute to the world of scientific exploration. We talk to David Baker and Chris Eibens how the networked computer game 'Foldit' is contributing to the development of new medical drugs.

Big Science FM: Drug discovery crowdsourced

US Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich declared that if he were elected president, he would build a manned base on the Moon by 2020. Does this make him a visionary or a fantasist? We ask space guru and Royal Society Fellow, Mike Lockwood.

Big Science FM: Newt's in space?

The Large Hadron Collider is working better than expected. And it's collected oodles of data. But have they found the Higgs, yet? We ask Davide Castelvecchi, who flew to Geneva to find out.

Big Science FM: Have we found the Higgs, yet?

Within ten years of the first synthesis of LSD in 1938, it was being used to treat a range of psychiatric conditions, including addiction, anxiety and even headaches. It fell out of favour in the 60s. But the therapeutic use of LSD and other psychoactive drugs could be making a comeback.

Big Science FM: Neuroscience in the sky with diamonds

In September, physicists announced results suggesting that beams of neutrinos were travelling from Switzerland to Italy at faster than the speed of light, in flagrant violation Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity. Was Einstein wrong? And what the hell is a neutrino anyway? We ask neutrino guru Dr Ryan Nichol.

Big Science FM: The trouble with neutrinos

IBM's BlueGene supercomputer can carry out a similar number of operations per second as the brain of a rat. But while a rat's brain takes up a half a cubic centimetre and uses 50 milliwatts of power, BlueGene covers around 600 square feet and uses 400 kilowatts of power. We ask neuroscientist Richard Wingate what we're doing wrong.

Big Science FM: How to build a brain

In 1929, Frigyes Karinthy wrote a short story suggesting that everyone is connected to everyone else by six or seven degrees of separation. In 1967, Stanley Milgrim did an experiment proving it. And twenty years later, Duncan Watts & Steve Strogatz build the mathematics to describe it. We talk to Samuel Hansen about why this means our friends are more popular than we are.

Big Science FM: It's a Small World after all

How did the Universe begin? What made it expand from the size of a grapefruit to billions of lightyears across in a fraction of a second after the Big Bang? And why did it stop? And is ours the only Universe? We ask cosmologists Hiranya Peiris and Matt Johnson.

Big Science FM: Multiverses and the Big Bang

2011 Nobel Prize in Physics Special. In this show, we talk supernovae, cosmic acceleration, dark energy and the history and implications of this year's physics award to Perlmutter, Schmidt, and Riess, with Professor Ofer Lahav.

Big Science FM: Understanding the Cosmos, Part 1

Geological evidence suggests that around 650 million years ago, the Earth was covered in ice. It was believed only single-celled organisms could have survived 'Snowball Earth'. Until Adam Maloof found a fossilized sponge predating this by millions of years.

Big Science FM: History of an Ancient Sponge

In this episode we discuss the intriguing results hot off the press from Cern's Large Hadron Collider with particle physicist Professor Jonathan Butterworth. Have we found the Higgs particle, yet? And if we had, what would that mean for the future of particle physics?

Big Science FM: Higgs update

We assume that modern medicine can distinguish between life and death. But when it comes to ‘brain death’, things aren't so clear cut. In this episode we explore unconsciousness, coma, and the bits in between with neuroscience writer, Mo Costandi.

Big Science FM: Probing unconsciousness

Big Science FM began as an experiment borne of a belief that the laws that govern the Universe are simple. Fantastical, astonishing, often unbelievable, but ultimately comprehensible to anyone who wants to understand. For an hour each week, Dr Ed Gerstner and guests explore the ideas that make the Universe tick.

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Big Science: What's the Big Idea? From Resonance FM

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