Host: Benjamin Thompson

Welcome back to the Nature Podcast. This week, it’s our festive spectacular.

Host: Nick Howe

Woo!

Host: Benjamin Thompson

Coming up in the show, we’ll be hearing about a solution to the three-body problem, and quizzing our reporters on Nature’s news from the past year.

Host: Nick Howe

Plus, we’ll talk about some of Nature’s 10, and have some seasonal science songs. I’m Nick Howe.

Host: Benjamin Thompson

And I’m Benjamin Thompson.

[Jingle]

Host: Benjamin Thompson

There’s one problem that has stumped scientists for centuries. It’s called the three-body problem and it goes all the way back to when Isaac Newton was testing his theory of gravity. If you have two bodies, for example, the Earth moving around the Sun, it’s easy to work out the orbits of the two objects, but add a third body into the system, and the movement becomes vastly more difficult to predict. This is the three-body problem – trying to mathematically describe and predict the movements of three interacting objects. Nick Stone, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, says that he and his colleague have found a solution that doesn’t rely on hours of complex computer simulations. Nick explained to reporter Izzie Clarke why some three-body systems are easier to study than others.

Interviewee: Nick Stone

You can imagine a simple three-body system, like the Earth, the Moon and the Sun. You have the Moon, which is very small compared to the Earth, and you have the Earth which is very small compared to the Sun. So, to a pretty good approximation, the orbit of the Moon around the Earth and the orbit of the Earth around the Sun are both simple elliptical curtains.

Interviewer: Izzie Clarke

Okay, so If there’s an order because they’re going up in sizes of mass, really, then we can predict their movements.

Interviewee: Nick Stone

That’s right. But if those hierarchies or orderings don’t exist, that’s when the three-body problem becomes really complicated and really intractable. So, you could imagine a system of three stars where all three stars are roughly the same mass and are all at roughly the same distance from each other, and then if you imagine those stars moving around each other in space, they’re tracing out these complicated, three-dimensional orbits that look nothing like circles or ellipses. They’re very messy, squiggly structures that you could never really hope to write down in a pen-and-paper way. With modern technology, we can figure out what’s going on by solving equations that describe this system with a computer, but if you don’t have access to a computer then the problem becomes basically intractable and unsolvable, and the reason it’s so hard to solve is because the problem is fundamentally chaotic.

Interviewer: Izzie Clarke

So, what do you mean by that – chaotic?

Interviewee: Nick Stone

Well, chaos has a sort of colloquial definition but it also has a very precise mathematical definition, and you can understand the mathematical definition in terms of the butterfly effect. So, let’s say, for example, we’ve got some sort of triple star system and it’s not hierarchical, everything is similar in mass. If you give me, say, the initial positions and velocities, I could use my computer programme to predict their motion in time. But if you gave me the same set of initial conditions, but one of the positions had just been changed the tiniest bit, the future evolution of that system would be enormously altered and that’s what chaos is, in a nutshell.

Interviewer: Izzie Clarke

So, because of small change, just because it works for one system, if you change it slightly, it doesn’t mean it will work for the rest.

Interviewee: Nick Stone

That’s exactly right. So, that kind of exponential or powerful sensitivity to very little changes or perturbations is what makes pen-and-paper techniques generically fail at producing reliable solutions.

Interviewer: Izzie Clarke

Now, it seems that you’ve cracked the code, so what have you done when it comes to solving the three-body problem?

Interviewee: Nick Stone

So, what we’ve done is to derive relatively simple pen-and-paper statistical solution. The way we’ve done that is by taking a little bit of a cop out. We’ve given up on the goal of predicting the detailed sheets of the orbits of three similar bodies around each other, and instead just gotten right to the punchline, which is what happens at the end of the lifetime of that system, and the reason we’re able to do this is because non-hierarchical three-body systems are universally unstable. Systems like this always disintegrate. There’s a single star that gets shot out to an infinite distance, it travels away and just never comes back and then the other two stars stick around in a stable binary, and the nature of our statistical solution is to tell you the probability of distributions of that kind of outcome. So, for example, what direction does the single star go in? How fast is it leaving? What does the orbit of the surviving binary look like? We can give you the probabilistic answer to questions like that.

Interviewer: Izzie Clarke

I see, so rather than saying I’ve got these initial conditions, tell me what my star system is going to look like over time, you’ve turned it into a probability of its results rather than the absolute outcome of what it definitely will be.

Interviewee: Nick Stone

That’s exactly right. So, we need to know the masses of the three stars or objects that you care about, and we need to know their constants of motion, so we need to know their energy and we need to know their angular momentum because those are things that are conserved through this messy and chaotic process of three-body evolution.

Interviewer: Izzie Clarke

Okay, so you’d have a system, so if you know your initial conditions, and you know that the energy and the momentum have to be conserved, with your statistical solution, using the probability, you can say okay, I now roughly know the probability of that third star is the one that’s going to be ejected or that second one that we were looking at.

Interviewee: Nick Stone

Exactly, and like with any kind of statistical solution, it becomes better and more useful the more systems you apply it to. So, if you just give me one system that you care about, the statistical solution we’ve derived will maybe be a little useful – it will tell you the probability of outcomes – but there are a lot of different outcomes and a lot of different possibilities. On the other hand, if you care about all of the triple stars in the galaxy, for example, and you give me millions of triple star systems, then the distribution of their outcomes will be very well described by this kind of statistical approach.

Interviewer: Izzie Clarke

How can that now be used?

Interviewee: Nick Stone

Great question. Triples are very common. I could probably spend an hour talking to you and not go through all of the different kinds of triple systems that exist in the Universe, so I’ll just focus on one in particular, which is triple systems of black holes. These have become very interesting to astronomers lately because of experiments like LIGO and VIRGO here on Earth which are detecting gravitational waves from emerging black holes. But there’s still a big astrophysical puzzle which is how does the Universe bring black holes close enough together to merge and emit gravitational waves, and one of the leading theories is that they’re the leftovers from the disintegration of unstable black hole triples, and that’s really the first kind of astrophysical problem we want to apply our solution to.

Host: Benjamin Thompson

That was Nick Stone. You can read his paper over at nature.com or you can find a link to it in the show notes over at nature.com/podcast.

Host: Nick Howe

As I’m sure many of you are already aware, we’ve launched our 2019 listener survey. So, if you’ve got just ten minutes to spare over the holidays, we’d really appreciate it if you helped us out. Head over to go.nature.com/podsurvey19 to fill out the survey and as a thanks from us, you’ll get to see a special behind-the-scenes video. Have you ever wondered what the pod team look like? Well, finish the survey and you’ll find out. Back to the show though, and it’s time for a festive song. Is it getting hot in here? Well, Frosty the Snowman has a message for us.

Frosty the Snowman lyrics:

Frosty the Snowman was a jolly, happy soul

But the smile wore off as the globe got hot

‘Cause the world used too much coal.

Frosty the Snowman is a fairy tale they say

He was made of snow

But the kids won’t know ‘cause it’s them who have to pay.

Gonna’ need some magic to

Convince the world to stop

‘Cause now we’re running out of time

And he’s feeling mighty hot.

Oh, Frosty the Snowman, is endangered as could be

And the children say they wish he’d stay,

But they don’t trust you and me.

He led them down the streets of town

Right to the climate COP.

They gathered there, and Greta stared

And together hollered “STOP”.

Frosty the Snowman, had to hurry on his way

But he said we should do all that we could

For to change our dirty ways.

Frosty the Snowman, knew the time to act was now

So the girls and boys said make some noise

And we’ll get a change somehow.

Host: Nick Howe

That was Frosty the Snowman with lyrics by Noah Baker and Anna Nagle and performed by Kim Collman. Keep an eye on our Twitter account – @NaturePodcast – for the lyrics.

Host: Benjamin Thompson

Next up on the show, it’s time for our annual quiz. Now, long-time listeners to the show will know that I love to don my sparkly quiz show host jacket and ask the questions, but this year, the torch (or maybe the jacket) has been passed on to the one, the only, Shamini Bundell. Queue the music.

Host: Shamini Bundell

Welcome to this year’s science news holiday challenge. I am your host, Shamini Bundell. On my left, we have Lizzie Gibney.

Lizzie Gibney

Hello, Shamini.

Host: Shamini Bundell

We have Flora Graham.

Flora Graham

Thanks for having me.

Host: Shamini Bundell

We have Noah Baker.

Noah Baker

I’m so nervous.

Host: Shamini Bundell

And our final contestant, Benjamin Thompson.

Benjamin Thompson

Hello there.

Laughs

Host: Shamini Bundell

That’s not the vibe we’re going for. This is dramatic, Ben.

Benjamin Thompson

Hello there.

Host: Shamini Bundell

So, please listen carefully as I explain the rules of this year’s challenge. On the table in front of you is a bag. In that bag are several pieces of paper. At the top of each one is the name of something that has been in the science news this year. Your job is to pull out a piece of paper and describe the thing at the top to the rest of the players without naming it. However, there is also written on each piece of paper a list of forbidden words that you’re not allowed to use, words I have specifically chosen to make your lives difficult.

Laughs

Host: Shamini Bundell

Now, everyone else, if you think you know the answer, just shout out and if you can, tell us why it has been in the news this year.

Benjamin Thompson

Given that the bag is closest to me, I’ll take the first one. Here we go. There was a thing that was fired out into the heavens and it was due to descend upon…

Lizzie Gibney

Beresheet crash or Chandrayaan-2 crash? It could have been either.

Flora Graham

Oh, the crashing of the Indian lander?

Benjamin Thompson

It was Chandrayaan-2.

Host: Shamini Bundell

Correct, and that was back in December when they lost contact with it just before it was due to land and earlier this month, NASA actually released some images showing what they say is the impact site and bits of debris, which is very sad.

Flora Graham

Yeah, it was pretty amazing that an amateur observer initially found that little bit of debris using publically released images. This guy, he said he spent like 4-6 hours a night combing through these images pixel by pixel, finally found a little white spot and literally tweeted NASA and said I think this is this thing.

Lizzie Gibney

That’s amazing citizen science.

Host: Shamini Bundell

Well done, pretty good. Next contestant please.

Lizzie Gibney

Okay, there is a very bad thing that is happening to our world whereby it is getting hotter…

Flora Graham

Climate change.

Lizzie Gibney

And so, people who are smaller than average are campaigning about this…

Noah Baker

School strikes! Greta Thunberg!

Laughs

Noah Baker

Smaller than average.

Lizzie Gibney

I mean, they are smaller than the average for a human, I would think.

Host: Shamini Bundell

That was excellent. Yes, that was in particular the school strikes, climate strikes, in September this year, which we reported on. Our next contestant is Flora Graham.

Flora Graham

I’m so nervous too. Okay, let me just look at the words I’m forbidden to say. Okay, help me Obi-Wan, you’re my only hope.

Noah Baker

Star Wars.

Lizzie Gibney

Star Wars 3D display.

Laughs.

Lizzie Gibney

Except it’s not Star Wars but who knows, someday. Yeah, totally cheating – my story.

Noah Baker

This is the hologram that’s not a hologram.

Lizzie Gibney

Yes, it’s totally not a hologram.

Flora Graham

What is it, Lizzie?

Lizzie Gibney

Well, instead it’s a little bead that gets moved around by soundwaves very, very fast, and if it moves quickly enough, within like 0.01 second it can draw the whole picture and then all your eye sees is this moving little actual, real line drawing in space.

Host: Shamini Bundell

Right, Noah Baker.

Noah Baker

Okay, oh, it’s a lot of things. For a long time, there are some things that would take too long and the world has been moving towards the magical future where things would take considerably less time…

Lizzie Gibney

Quantum supremacy?

Benjamin Thompson

Something to do with computing?

Noah Baker

Yeah, quantum supremacy.

Flora Graham

Wow, good job you guys.

Noah Baker

It’s quite hard to do that without the words classical computing, Google, IBM, qubit or Sycamore.

Noah Baker

Lizzie, you and I spent an awful lot of time looking at this one.

Lizzie Gibney

Yeah, quantum supremacy is a big deal.

Noah Baker

If it truly has happened.

Lizzie Gibney

Well, yeah, so IBM disputed it. So, Google said that they’d done this particular task, which I was going to say was a bit random but it was literally a bit random, trying to come up with a probability distribution of a random number generator, and they did it in 200 seconds I think, whereas they reckon it would take a classical computer 10,000 years. But IBM disputed that and said it would be two and a half days. But that’s a kind of theory paper, so they actually haven’t tried it out and either way, it’s still faster and it’s the first time that we’ve shown that it’s been faster so I think big deal either way.

Host: Shamini Bundell

I think you contestants are really getting the hang of this. Benjamin Thompson, you’re up.

Benjamin Thompson

Here we go. This is something that definitely happened.

Noah Baker

Moon landings anniversary.

Benjamin Thompson

Noah, you absolutely nailed it. It is the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Noah Baker

We did a lovely video of that where we got some scientists to talk from different generations about what the moon landing meant to them.

Lizzie Gibney

Including the amazing Wally Funk.

Noah Baker

What a name and what a person.

Flora Graham

Such a legend.

Lizzie Gibney

So, she trained to be potentially an astronaut at the time in the 60s.

Host: Shamini Bundell

You guys are really getting the hang of describing these things in a roundabout way. I’m liking it. Let’s see if we can zoom through.

Lizzie Gibney

Alright, we’re getting towards the bottom of the bag now. Okay, it’s something that I’m quite a fan of that come from the cosmos and they…

Flora Graham

Gravitational waves?

Lizzie Gibney

I was going to describe what they, if you translate them to sound, what they would look like but it’s kind of like a boo boo boo…

Benjamin Thompson

So, it sounds like a gravitational wave.

Noah Baker

Oh, fast radio bursts.

Lizzie Gibney

Yes!

Noah Baker

I was going to say of all the people that are a big fan of things, Davide would be gravitational waves and I thought, what is Lizzie’s thing?

Flora Graham

I’m sorry.

Lizzie Gibney

I’m a fast radio bursts kind of girl.

Flora Graham

I’ll know that for the next time.

Lizzie Gibney

Yes, they are little, very, very short radio blips which are still mysterious. We don’t know where they come from, but now there’s a telescope called CHIME in Canada that is finding them actually in their hundreds, but they’ve not published that yet, and loads and loads of repeating ones which mean if they repeat that makes it easier to find where they’re coming from, as in what galaxy, and that might help us figure out what is actually causing them.

Host: Shamini Bundell

Brilliant work. Right, Flora Graham, beat that!

Flora Graham

Oh, so this is a little guy that has been living far, far away somewhere red and rusty…

Benjamin Thompson

Is it Yoda?

Noah Baker

Is it Opportunity the rover?

Flora Graham

Yes, it is Opportunity the rover.

Noah Baker

Got lost?

Flora Graham

Well, it fell asleep forever. Well, until we go over and dust it off a little bit. This was in February that NASA said its final goodbye to the Opportunity rover, officially ending its 15-year mission.

Benjamin Thompson

And what’s the next lander due to land on Mars and how long is it due to be operational, do we know?

Lizzie Gibney

Oh, there are a bunch. 2020 is the year of Mars landings. ExoMars, hopefully, if they can sort out their parachute problem. China said they were going to land one but I haven’t heard more about it so I’m not sure if that’s actually happening, and there’s also a NASA lander, I think.

Host: Shamini Bundell

Right, Noah Baker, last piece of paper.

Noah Baker

There’s one more in here. There is a time in the history of us where there was more than one type of us that sometimes people refer to as the Lord of the Rings earth. This year, there is another…

Flora Graham

Another new human species.

Lizzie Gibney

Is this the thing that was in the Philippines?

Noah Baker

There we go, the new human species is exactly what’s on the card. So, I think this is Homo luzonensis, which was a new species found on Luzon, the island in the Philippines, and I think they worked this out based on a tiny fragment of a finger bone or a toe bone, perhaps a few others, and this is this mysterious, small human species.

Host: Shamini Bundell

That was a fantastic team effort and also you all remember a lot of the news stories from this year.

Lizzie Gibney

More than I thought.

Host: Shamini Bundell

On this instance, I’m going to give the prize to Benjamin Thompson for the phrase, ‘this is a thing that definitely happened.’

Laughs

Benjamin Thompson

Well, I’d just like to thank everyone. I’d like to thank my family. I’d like to thank my colleagues. I deserve this. I’ve worked so hard for it this year.

Host: Shamini Bundell

Join us again next year for more holiday challenge, thank you!

Host: Nick Howe

So, there we have it, that was our festive quiz hosted by Shamini Bundell.

Host: Benjamin Thompson

And won by me.

Host: Nick Howe

Yes, very well done. For all the news discussed and the latest science updates, head over to nature.com/news.

Host: Benjamin Thompson

Next up, time for another seasonal science song, and for all you supermassive black hole lovers out there, this is the Carol of M87.

Carol of M87 lyrics:

Hark at the sound

Photons abound

Radio waves

All seem to say

Out in the dark

This glowing spark

We find our goal

See a black hole.

(M) M Eight-se’en

(Eight) As it was then

(tee) eons ago

(se’en) See it aglow

Data from these

Observatries

Processed to give

The first image

One seems to see

With EHT

Fire in a ring

Light circling

Einstein was right,

Warped is the light,

See the lensing

Bending the ring.

Now-we see-a supermassive black hole. (M – eigh-ty- se’en)

How-we see-a supermassive black hole. (M – eigh-ty-se’en)

(M) Space time is bent

(Eight) See this event

(tee) Horizon burn

(ee) So much to learn

(se’en) Out in the dark

This glowing spark

We find our goal

See a black hole.

Host: Benjamin Thompson

That was the Carol of M87 performed by Simon Langton Boys’ School Chamber Choir and directed by Emily Renshaw-Kidd with lyrics by Shamini Bundell. Once again, head over to Twitter – @NaturePodcast – for the lyrics if you want to sing along at home, and be sure to stay tuned for one more song at the end of the podcast.

Interviewer: Nick Howe

Last up on the show, it’s the final News Chat of the year, and we’ll be doing some looking back at 2019. Here to peer back with me is Richard Van Noorden, features editor here at Nature. Richard, thanks for joining me.

Interviewee: Richard Van Noorden

Hi.

Interviewer: Nick Howe

So, as I said, we’ll be looking back at the last year and to do so we’ll be looking at Nature’s 10. Richard, for those who might not be familiar, what is Nature’s 10?

Interviewee: Richard Van Noorden

Nature’s 10 is our list of ten people who mattered in science this year. It’s not an award. It doesn’t mean that they are the ten most important people, but they’re ten people who made great discoveries, were involved in important controversies or perhaps defended science. I think when people look back at the year, these are some of the people that they’re going to pick out as being important.

Interviewer: Nick Howe

So, we don’t have time to talk about everyone, but I picked a few for us to chat about. For the first, listeners may remember pictures of parts of the Amazon burning earlier this year which has led to some criticism of the Brazilian government. One of the people on the list has also been critical of the government for similar reasons.

Interviewee: Richard Van Noorden

We picked Ricardo Galvão who was the head of the National Institute for Space Research in São Paulo, which uses satellites to look at deforestation in the Amazon. I say he was the head because in July, Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s leader, essentially accused the group of lying about the data and he said Galvão might be in cahoots with environmentalists. Galvão was pretty shocked and he took some time to think about this and the next day, he said the president was a coward. He called for a face-to-face meeting with the president. He pretty much knew that he would lose his job because of this and he strongly defended what his institute was doing and the integrity of the data. Sure enough, two weeks later he was dismissed. He’s become, I think, a bit of a national hero for just standing up for science. A woman even stopped him on the subway in São Paulo and thanked him for standing up to Bolsonaro and explaining why preserving the Amazon matters. So, Galvão now is back at his previous position – he’s at the University of São Paulo – and he was preparing to stop giving interviews and focus on his research, which is actually in fusion because he’s a physicist, but so many scientists thanked him for speaking out that he realised he’s got a responsibility to continue to advocate on behalf of science in the face of political pressure.

Interviewer: Nick Howe

Well, maybe in a similar theme then, the next person I wanted to talk about has been looking at biodiversity loss, and this person had a very stark message for the world: one million species are headed for extinction.

Interviewee: Richard Van Noorden

The rate at which species are going extinct is ten to hundreds of times faster than it’s been on average in the past 10 million years, so says Sandra Díaz. She’s an Argentinian ecologist and she was one of the three co-chairs of the IPBES panel, the Intergovernmental Science–Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, which this year produced an enormous 1500-page report essentially assessing the world’s ecosystems and biodiversity, and the stats are pretty terrible and the report said that most nations will fail to meet biodiversity targets and sustainable development targets unless they make big changes. Díaz is pretty outspoken and radical and she’s basically spent a whole scientific life collecting information on leaves, soil, biodiversity across many continents, but beyond her career in conservation science, she now has this kind of second career influencing policy, and she’s really delighted that the panel’s report has been adopted by lots of social and environmental movements like Extinction Rebellion that are pushing for stronger action on the environment.

Interviewer: Nick Howe

Well, she certainly sounds like a very tough campaigner and I think the next person we picked also is, and we’ve reported a lot about Ebola in the past year, and this person has been involved with that from the very beginning.

Interviewee: Richard Van Noorden

This is Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum and in 1976, he actually co-discovered Ebola. He went to what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo to investigate this outbreak and when he drew blood samples from people who were sick, he realised the blood wouldn’t clot, something was going on, and this turned out to be what we now call Ebola. So, now, he’s leading his tenth battle against the Ebola virus. This one, again, in the modern DRC. It’s killed more than 2,200 people since August 2018, and particularly it’s in this region that is pummelled by conflict and political instability and Ebola responders have been killed trying to deal with this crisis. But Muyembe is also important this year because last month a clinical trial led by his team showed that if you’re treated with drugs derived from antibodies shortly after you get Ebola, there’s a 90% survival rate. So, we now have Ebola vaccines that have actually been approved, so this is just of critical importance and Muyembe actually started to draw these antibodies from people back in the 1990s when he developed some of the key public health measures that are still used to contain Ebola. So, he was there at the start of mankind’s response to Ebola and he’s still there now because he is so persistent in vanquishing this virus.

Interviewer: Nick Howe

Well, sticking with the medical theme, the next person has been looking into the ethics of organ transplantation in China.

Interviewee: Richard Van Noorden

Yes, this is Wendy Rogers who’s a bioethicist, and she, this year, basically examined hundreds of research publications by Chinese transplant doctors. The reason she did this is that, for decades, people have been very worried about where the livers, hearts and kidneys used for organ transplants in China are coming from. The government first denied rumours that organs had been taken from prisoners, and then it admitted that that had happened but says it’s now banned the practice and everything comes from volunteers who give consent, but people are worried about that too. And Rogers, she has prised open this issue and she and a team of researchers and volunteers working nights and weekends found more than 400 papers that probably used organs from prisoners and they didn’t say where the organs came from. These involve more than 85,000 transplants in these papers. So, she reported it this year and some publishers have responded. There have been more than two dozen retracted papers just because the authors could not explain where the organs came from, and editors say they’re very grateful to her for flagging this because it’s really a bit of a bioethical scandal. Also, this year, Rogers is co-chair of a non-profit advocacy group in Sydney called the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China, and they asked a lawyer called Geoffrey Nice to write about what’s happening and he suggested a sort of big, international panel review. This year, that panel said that people imprisoned for their religious or political views had been killed for their organs in China and the practice probably continues. Now, China hasn’t said anything about this panel report. It hasn’t said anything about what Wendy Rogers has been doing, so Rogers is not optimistic that China is going to be fully transparent about what’s going on here, but she’s hoping that the scrutiny will at least perhaps stop any forced harvesting of organs and certainly will make it very clear to doctors and scientists that you cannot do these kinds of studies without getting fully informed consent and being very transparent about what’s going on.

Interviewer: Nick Howe

So, these are four people that have had a big influence on science in the past year. There was one thing else that I was wondering as well. Nature’s 10, it picks out individuals but science is a very collaborative thing. Why is it that we pick just individual people?

Interviewee: Richard Van Noorden

Yeah, we want to highlight the human face of science. So, we’re aware that, for example, Sandra Díaz was only one of three co-chairs of the IPBES panel and thousands of scientists worked on that report, but in order to bring across the human story of the effort, the work, the coordination that goes on into making this stuff happen, we decide to pick one person, to go into their life and career and to bring forward their emotions and why they do what they do, and that’s really the aim of Nature’s 10. So, the teams behind these individuals’ work are also incredibly important, but it’s very hard to tell a story that reveals the human face of science when you’re picking an entire team.

Interviewer: Nick Howe

Thank you so much for joining me, Richard.

Interviewee: Richard Van Noorden

Thanks, Nick. It was great to be on.

Host: Nick Howe

Listeners, for the full list and everything we discussed here, head over to nature.com/news.

Host: Benjamin Thompson

So, that’s pretty much it for this year. This is the last regular show of 2019 and I think it’s the right time to say thank you to each and every one of you who listen to the show or took time to email us on podcast@nature.com or filled in the survey. It really means so much to all of us here. We’re going to have a little bit of time off, but we’ll be back in the new year. In the meantime, if you’re in the lab trying to get some last-minute results or studying for an exam or whatever you’re up to, we’ll have a bunch of extra shows coming up to keep you company before we return in 2020.

Host: Nick Howe

To play us out, let’s have one more song. We talked about it in the quiz and it was one of the biggest science stories of the year – Google’s claims of quantum supremacy. So, here’s Rockin’ Around Supremacy. It’s performed by Phil Self with a saxophone solo by Dave Brazier and lyrics by Kerri Smith and Shamini Bundell. I’m Nick Howe.

Host: Benjamin Thompson

And I’m Benjamin Thompson. See you in the new year.

Rockin’ Around Supremacy lyrics:

Rockin’ around supremacy

With the latest quantum chip

Google says it won the race

IBM says it’s a blip.

Rockin’ around supremacy

Would a regular PC

Really take 1000 years?

There’s no time to wait and see!

You will get a futuristic feeling when you hear

Voices raised in praise of physics

Deck the halls with 54 qubits.

Rockin’ around supremacy

Is the hype just overblown?

There’s more to do but either way

It’s quantum milestone!

You will get a futuristic feeling when you hear

Voices raised in praise of physics

Deck the halls with 54 qubits.

Rockin’ around supremacy

Is the hype just overblown?

There’s more to do but either way

It’s quantum mi-le-stone!