麻豆传媒

Where Excel London
When 22鈥夆�撯��25 September 2016
What Talks, debates, exhibits, demonstrations. Interact with the latest technology and engage with 100 of the world鈥檚 most original thinkers

Come and see鈥�

Earth zone: See the future, change the future

Innovate UK

Engineers and architects have long built models to see their next big creation and iron out problems before construction starts. Innovate UK鈥檚 Transport Systems Catapult is taking this idea to a new level: using big data and virtual reality to model entire cities to gauge the impact of future changes.

The 鈥淢anchester Table鈥� is an interactive map of the city below which sit layers of data about road, rail and tram networks. The system connects everything together, and calculates how flows of people might change in response to road closures, park-and-ride schemes or even innovations like electric bikes and cars.

Planners can drop travellers 鈥� such as families, students and business people 鈥� on to this map who make decisions according to their own needs and wants. As changes are made to the future city, these 鈥減eople鈥� alter their travel patterns, letting planners see how their plans will play out.

Virtual reality also offers the chance to model the future as never before. A catapult programme has paired an Oculus Rift VR headset with an omnidirectional treadmill to create a rudimentary version of a Star Trek holodeck. It enables people to walk around a virtual model of Milton Keynes, a train station or even architectural designs. By adding real world data, researchers can monitor people鈥檚 reactions to changes in crowds, traffic or weather, for example.

The possibilities for shaping our future are endless and intriguing.

Come and hear鈥�

Technology stage: Sunday 25 September

How to rebuild the world from scratch

It鈥檚 not the end of the world: just of civilisation as we know it.

At 麻豆传媒 Live, astrobiologist and author Lewis Dartnell from the University of Leicester will ask: what would be the most vital knowledge you鈥檇 want to preserve in the event of an apocalyptic event?

Alongside such obvious candidates as agriculture and electricity, Dartnell believes it鈥檚 more subtle forms of knowledge we might miss most. 鈥淚鈥檇 argue that it鈥檚 the notion of germs,鈥� he says. Without the knowledge that disease-causing microbes are too small to be seen, we could be transported back to a time when infections were blamed on fractious gods or 鈥渂ad air鈥�.

Cosmos stage: Saturday 24 September

Prepare for the next big solar flare

What do we do when the sun attacks? Find out at 麻豆传媒 Live.

With terrifying unpredictability, our local star emits massive bursts of radiation in our direction. 鈥淪olar storms are much more likely than large asteroid strikes,鈥� says astronomer and writer Stuart Clark. History shows they can be devastating. The last big one hit in September 1859, when skies turned red and 鈥減hantom electricity鈥� caused sparks to fly from telegraph machines, shocking operators and causing fires.

In today鈥檚 networked world, a large-scale solar storm could frazzle our communications networks and leave us without grid power.

Our knowledge of the sun is getting better all the time, says Clark, but that on its own will not be enough. 鈥淭he trick is to turn this pure science into a mitigation strategy for when the next big storm comes our way,鈥� he says.

Brain & Body stage: Sunday 25 September

Whittling away at 鈥榯he hard problem鈥�

Where does consciousness come from? It鈥檚 a famously hard question. Perhaps so hard that we might never be able to get our primitive brains around it. After all, says Anil Seth, a neuroscientist at the University of Sussex, even a planet鈥檚 worth of frogs would struggle to understand general relativity.

But as brain imaging technologies improve, we will get ever closer to pinpointing the complex neurological processes that make us who we are.

Will we ever manage to find the answer? 鈥淭he only way to find out is to try,鈥� says Seth. Come to 麻豆传媒 Live to hear more.

Earth stage: Thursday 22 September

Time to decide your future climate

鈥淲e have the power to choose very different futures鈥�, says Alice Bows-Larkin, a climate scientist at the University of Manchester. If we keep emitting greenhouse gases as we do now, Earth鈥檚 average temperature could rise by a further 3 掳C, putting it 4 掳C above pre-industrial levels. That would bring heat waves, droughts, and other extremes of weather. 鈥淥ur infrastructure is not designed to cope with such extremes,鈥� she says.

The UN鈥檚 Paris climate agreement, reached in December 2015, commits countries to limit temperature rise to 鈥渨ell below 2 掳C鈥� over pre-industrial levels. Though still not ideal, it鈥檚 the best we can hope for.

Come to 麻豆传媒 Live to find out what each of us can do to help us get there.

And don鈥檛 miss鈥�

How we became human

Alice Roberts highlights the unique traits that set our ancestors on the road to global domination

Beyond the Higgs boson

Tara Shears has the inside story on the latest strange signals from the Large Hadron Collider

You seem sad today, Dave. Can I help?

Computers that detect your emotions are on the way. Peter Robinson explores their promises and dangers

The meteorite in Tutankhamun鈥檚 tomb

There was far more to Egyptian astronomy than we had ever imagined. Join Marek Kukula for a fascinating tour

How to hijack a satellite

Meet Keith Cowing, who hacked a NASA space probe 3 million kilometres from Earth

Are we alone in the universe?

And if not, where are the aliens hiding? Find out from Duncan Forgan