BBC Knowledge Asia Edition

“THIS SUMMER WILL SEE A 2KM

PLASTIC-CATCHING STRUCTURE

DEPLOYED NEAR TSUSHIMA”

A NEW ERA FOR HYDROGEN CARS SPRING

Due to hit showrooms in spring 2016, the Honda Clarity will become the third

car available in the UK that uses hydrogen fuel cells. Like competitors from

Toyota and Hyundai, the Clarity burns hydrogen to produce electricity, but Honda

reckons it will run about 45 per cent further on a full tank than Toyota’s and 18 per

cent further than Hyundai’s. The issue is the lack of hydrogen fuelling stations –

only a handful are open to the public.

THE WINTER TO END ALL WINTERS

JANUARY/FEBRUARY

Despite mild beginnings, temperatures could drop dramatically

during winter 2015/2016, as the British weather falls foul of a

stronger-than-usual El Niño event. Originating as a temperature

increase in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, El Niño influences

weather patterns worldwide through changes in wind direction.

UK meteorologists are already predicting gale-force winds and

temperatures similar to those of ‘The Big Freeze’ in 2009-10,

when the average December temperature was lower than for any

other year on record.

JUPITER UNCOVERED

JULY

In 1973, Pioneer 10 became the first
spacecraft to perform a flyby of Jupiter,
snapping pictures of the planet from
130,000km away. This year, NASA’s
Juno spacecraft will get much closer to
the gas giant as it performs a dizzying
series of manoeuvres just 5,000km
away. Charged with uncovering the
secrets of Jupiter’s origins, Juno will
make 32 spinning circuits, using its
instruments to probe the planet’s
gravitational and magnetic fields and
investigate whether or not it has a
rocky core.

BIGGEST EVER

TELESCOPE

SEPTEMBER

The world’s biggest and most

sensitive radio telescope may be

called FAST (the Five-hundred-metre

Aperture Spherical Telescope) but

it has taken over 20 years to come

to fruition. The project was first

proposed in 1994, and is being built

in a remote location in the mountains

of southern China. When complete, it

will cover an area larger than Beijing’s

Forbidden City palace complex. The

enormous structure will then begin

searching for signs of life among the

radio signals from outer space.

THE GREAT OCEAN CLEAN-UP SUMMER

You expect students to be distracted by Netflix, but cleaning up the entire

ocean? Boyan Slat quit his course at Delft University in the Netherlands

after he became hooked on the idea of building floating platforms to collect

marine waste. By 2014, he had raised over $2m to help trial the system.

This summer will see a 2km-long plastic-catching structure deployed near

the Japanese island of Tsushima.

WOMB TRANSPLANT TRIALS SPRING

Following the births of four babies in Sweden to mothers who had successful

womb transplants, the UK and US are planning new trials. UK surgeons

will transplant wombs from braindead patients into 10 women born without

wombs or who had them removed due to cancer. The women will have to

take drugs to stop their bodies rejecting the organs but, all being well, should

give birth to the first British babies born from womb transplants by 2018.