IFLScience - The Big Questions IFLScience

The climate crisis is affecting glaciers across the world in myriad ways. Dramatic melting, steep declines, and overall reduction in mass are some of the changes seen in both polar glaciers and the mountainous peaks of every continent. Understanding these changes requires understanding how we monitor these enormous ice masses. The health of glaciers affects the well-being of the populations living near them, but they have far-reaching consequences, such as global sea level rise. 
Host Dr Alfredo Carpineti spoke with Dr Peter Davis from the British Antarctic Survey about Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica, otherwise known as the "Doomsday Glacier". Thwaites is Antarctica's most endangered glacier and studying it is of global importance. 

As much as everyone enjoys flying abroad for their holidays, the cost of the climate impact might be making people think twice. So what can we do? Aside from paying to offset the carbon, the emergence of a new industry is hoping to change the way we fly. Sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) or e-fuels are looking to replace traditional fuels as a much greener alternative, but there’s still a long way to go.
Host Eleanor Higgs spoke with Sophie Zienkiewicz and Alasdair Lumsden, co-founders of Carbon Neutral Fuels, to find out if it might be possible to replace the fuel in our airplanes, capture carbon from the world around us, and provide a carbon-neutral alternative when we take to the sky.

There are many methods that allow us to look back into Earth’s past and study its climate, including the collection of ice cores. Extracting ancient ice from deep inside some of the most remote glaciers can reveal how our planet has changed over millions of years. But it’s not just about the past: what is ancient ice telling us about the future?
Host Dr Alfredo Carpineti spoke with Dr Liz Thomas of the Ice Core Research Group at the British Antarctic Survey to discuss how understanding Earth’s changing climate helps refine our models for the future and how the natural world is responding to the unfolding climate crisis.

The Sun shapes what goes on in space around our planet. Plasma from our star is continuously thrown at Earth in the form of solar winds or coronal mass ejections, changing the shape of the magnetic field, and affecting the atmosphere and anything in it, like the satellites that we depend on. These changes are part of what we call space weather.
Host Dr Alfredo Carpineti spoke to Dr Nigel Meredith of the British Antarctic Survey about what space weather actually is and how it affects us. We even have some incredible recordings of what these space weather events sound like! 

The path beyond the limits of regular computers, even the most powerful supercomputer, lies with the theory of quantum mechanics. Quantum computing promises to change the world, but how do quantum computers work, and how close are we to this fabled new approach to computation?
Host Dr Alfredo Carpineti spoke with Professor Winfried Hensinger, Professor of Quantum Technology at the University of Sussex, to discuss why we need quantum computers, what they would be used for, and why it's taking so long to get them.   

In this age of climate change, habitat loss, and destruction of the natural world, we take an in-depth look at one endangered species in particular: the northern white rhino. Just two females remain in the world and neither are capable of carrying a pregnancy. With such constraints in place, we ask the experts if it's possible to save a species on the very brink of extinction.
Host Eleanor Higgs spoke with Dr Susanne Holtze from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research to discuss if and how it might be possible to use genetics research to save the northern white rhino from extinction and whether we should even try.