CrowdScience

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Will I get hit by a meteor?

July 31, 2026

Stare up at the night sky, and if you’re lucky, you might see a shooting star. Some people might make a wish, but CrowdScience listener Scott in California in the USA, thinks differently. He’s wondering how dangerous they might be. Shooting stars are actually meteors, ending their incredible journey whizzing through the depths of space by burning through our atmosphere, and crashing down to earth. And Scott’s not wrong to worry about them! In May 2026, an enormous meteor exploded off the coas...

Is anything truly random?

July 24, 2026

We’re delving into the CrowdScience archive to give you another chance to hear an award-winning show from 2025. CrowdScience listener Dorit has a problem. She wants the tiles in her new bathroom to be arranged randomly but, no matter what she does, it still looks like they form some kind of pattern. This has got Dorit thinking about randomness – what is it, how do you create it, why do we find it so hard to recognise, and is anything really random at all? And if nothing is truly random, does ...

Are there diseases in space?

July 17, 2026

Space missions are searching for evidence of extra-terrestrial life. CrowdScience listener George in Kenya wants to know what could be up there, and if there’s a risk it could harm humanity. With rovers currently analysing samples on Mars, missions searching for the building blocks of life on Jupiter’s icy moons, George’s concern that there could be diseases in space is timely. Presenter Anand Jagatia sets out to try and find an answer while keeping his feet on the Earth. He meets astrobiolog...