Futureproof with Jonathan McCrea

Photography may, at a cursory glance, appear to dwell in the domain of the humanities and artistic expression but it is a vital tool to science as well. When it comes to understanding the vastness of the cosmos or the structure of a cell, we rely on imagery to help us better understand the natural world around us. But how do the technologies that give us these images actually work? How do we make the invisible visible and what developments might we expect in the years to come? Jack Challoner, an independent science writer and the author of more than 40 science books the latest of which is ‘Seeing Science: The Art of Making the Invisible Visible’. He joins Jonathan to discuss.

For most of us, the word “multiverse” probably conjures up some sort of fun sci-fi episode like the universe in which we all have hot dogs for fingers in Oscar contender ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ or the parallel universe in Star Trek where there’s an evil you with a moustache. Multiverses are just vehicles for our flights of fancy, right? Well, that’s what we thought until Professor Will Kinney casually mentioned that the majority of physicists now accept that we live in a multiverse in an interview with us earlier this year. Laura Mersini-Houghton is a Professor of Theoretical Physics and Cosmology in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of 'Before the Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe and What Lies Beyond', she is also one such physicist, and furthermore, she says she has the evidence to back it up. She joins Jonathan to discuss.

In this special insatllment of Futureproof Gold, we take a listen back to our award-winning episode 'Enemies of the State'. Among other guests, Mara Hvistendahl, Contributing Correspondent for Science, National Fellow at New America and author of the Wired article 'Inside China's Vast New Experiment in Social Ranking', joins Jonathan to explore the true potential that technology has in controlling and manipulating the behaviour of entire populations through social credit scores.

For this very special episode of Futureproof, recorded live at the TU Dublin Grangegorman Campus, Jonathan was joined by a panel of guests to explore the limits of human and artificial intelligence. Joining Jonathan is: -Dr. Benjamin Cowan, Associate Professor at UCD's School of Information & Communication Studies and Co-Principal Investigator at The ADAPT Centre. -Dr. Tomás Ryan - Associate Professor in the School of Biochemistry and Immunology and the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin.

For this very special episode of Futureproof, recorded live at the TU Dublin Grangegorman Campus, Jonathan was joined by a panel of guests to explore whether it is possible for a human being to run forever. Joining Jonathan is: - Ultra Runner, Keith Russell - Helen French, Associate Professor in the RCSI School of Physiotherapy - Dr. Oran Kennedy, Senior Lecturer in Anatomy and Regenerative Medicine at RCSI - Sinead Bradbury, Performance Nutritionist (SENr) Dr.Ruth Freeman from the SFI & Dr. Susan Kelleher, Assistant Professor of Polymer Chemistry in the School of Chemistry at UCD were also on hand to go through the top news stories from the world of science for Newsround.

Joining Jonathan to discuss how the skills needed to perform laparoscopic keyhole surgery as well as e-sports can be significantly enhanced by applying electric neurostimulation during training is Adam Toth, ESRL Research Program Manager at Lero in the University of Limerick.

When you walk out your door today, it may be sunny, it may be windy, the waves may be crashing against the shores with an awesome fierceness. Or, you know, none of those things might be happening. And therein lies one of the fundamental issues with renewable energy, its unpredictability. But one thing that won’t happen when you go out there this morning is that you won’t float off into the air. Gravity is reliably keeping your feet on the ground and it will continue to do so ad infinitum. So couldn’t we use this persistent force in some way to solve our energy woes? Jill MacPherson is Senior Test & Simulation Engineer with Gravitricity - she joins Jonathan to discuss.

Jonathan is joined by Karen Bakker, Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies and author of 'The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants' to explore the sounds in nature that we cannot hear. Andrea Maier, Oon Chiew Seng Professor in Medicine, Healthy Ageing and Dementia Research, Co-Director at the Centre for Healthy Longevity, National University of Singapore, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam joins Jonathan to discuss what we can take to help us live longer. Dr. Shane Bergin & Dr. Lara Dungan also joined Jonathan to run through the week's science news for Newsround.

As well as trying to sell you products you’ve just been talking about but don’t want, and beating humans at chess or Go or Mario cart, AI can actually do some real good in the world. One field in which AI could really have a profound effect is medical diagnostics for instance. Dr. Nikolas Pontikos is the Principal Investigator and Group Leader of the Pontikos Lab at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and Moorfields Eye Hospital - he joins Jonathan to discuss.

Physics, while absolutely fascinating, can be impenetrable. And it isn't just cutting-edge ideas that can melt our brains, often we accept basic principles and ideas without really knowing how they work or even what they are. This week, Jonathan is joined by Sean Carroll, physicist, and author of 'The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time, and Motion', to explain some of the fundamental aspects of science we thought we knew.