BBC Knowledge Asia Edition

The science that matters

DAVID SHUKMAN

Why scientists need to

be collecting dust

DAVID SHUKMAN is the BBC’s Science

Editor. @davidshukmanbbc

WHO’S IN

THE NEWS?

Humai

Who are they?

An artificial intelligence company

based in Los Angeles that claims to

be working on technology to bring

the dead back to life. They hope to

succeed by 2030.

Are they for real?

There’s not much to go on other than

a website and a few interviews. At

this stage, it is difficult to say if they

are conducting genuine research, or

if the whole thing is a hoax or simply

a marketing campaign.

So how do they plan to introduce

resurrection?

They say they are going to use

nanotechnology to store data that

relates to a person’s behaviour, thought

processes and bodily functions, and

load this into the brain of a deceased

human. This brain will then be placed

into an artificial body and treated with

various therapies to repair the cells. PHOTO: PRESS ASSOCIATION, ICMCS 2015

Back in school, many of us were
taught about the Gulf Stream, that
great river of warm water crossing
the Atlantic. But liquid isn’t the
only state a stream can flow in. Up
in the atmosphere, streams of dust
carry vast plumes of tiny particles
over thousands of miles.
A few years ago people in
England were surprised to find
their cars covered in dust that had
blown from the Sahara desert.
Sometimes entire regions of
the Middle East are engulfed in
storms of dust. And air currents
take dust to the oceans where it
fertilises plankton.
But dust plays a more
fundamental role too: affecting the
climate. Clouds of particles can
either reflect incoming radiation
from the Sun – and therefore
cool the planet – or act as a
blanket trapping heat closer to the
surface, thereby adding to rising
temperatures.
With that in mind, the
question on a lot of experts’ lips
is: will global warming make the
atmosphere dustier? Scientists
have been puzzling over this for
years. So a team led by Oxford
University travelled to one of
the largest sources of dust on
the planet, the vast salt pan in
Namibia’s Etosha National Park,
in southwest Africa.
In the ferocious midday heat,
with the sunlight glinting on

the array of instruments, we

filmed the researchers collecting

their data. They had devices for

measuring how much dust is

carried at different heights above

the ground and for assessing

the size of the dust streams leaving

the surface.

The surface itself was brittle.

With every step I took, my

boots broke through a salty crust,

exposing what felt like superfine

talcum powder beneath. This

superfine dust is what gets picked

up by the wind and there’s so

much of it that it forms plumes

large enough to be visible from

space.

The results of this study will

be fed into computer simulations

of the climate to help improve

the projections for future change.

None of us likes dust on our

hands or on the surfaces in our

homes but it’s something we need

to know more about.

Could global warming lead to more dust storms like

the one that hit the Middle East in September 2015?