Penulis: Agus S

Listen to Esme read this article

Donald Trump’s return to the White House is a “major blow to global climate action”. So said Christiana Figueres, the former UN climate chief, after he was elected in November.

Since taking office, Trump has withdrawn the US from what is considered the most important global climate pact, the Paris Climate Agreement. He has also reportedly prevented US scientists from participating in international climate research and removed national electric vehicle targets.

Plus, he derided his predecessor’s attempts to develop new green technology a “green new scam”.

And yet despite his history on the issue of climate, Trump has been eager to make a deal with the Ukrainian president on critical minerals. He has also taken a strong interest in Greenland and Canada – both nations rich in critical minerals.

Critical mineral procurement has been a major focus for Trump since he took office. These minerals are crucial in industries including aerospace and defence, but intriguingly, they have another major use too – to manufacture green technology.

So, could Trump’s focus on obtaining these minerals have a knock-on effect, and help unlock the US’s potential in the green technology sector?

Trump’s right-hand man understands more than most the importance of critical minerals in the green transition. Space X and Tesla – the companies Elon Musk leads – rely heavily on critical minerals like graphite (in electric vehicles), lithium (in batteries) and nickel (in rockets).

Elizabeth Holley, an associate professor of mining engineering at Colorado School of Mines, explains that each nation has its own list of critical minerals, but they are generally made up of rare earths and other metals like lithium.

She says demand is booming – in 2023, demand for lithium grew by 30%. This is being driven mostly by the rapid growth in the clean energy and electric vehicle sectors.

Within two decades, they will make up almost 90% of the demand for lithium, 70% of the demand for cobalt, and 40% for rare earths, according to the International Energy Agency.

Such has been Musk’s concern with getting hold of some of these minerals that three years ago he tweeted: “Price of lithium has gone to insane levels! Tesla might actually have to get into the mining & refining directly at scale, unless costs improve.”

He went on to write that there is no shortage of the element, but the pace of extraction is slow.

The weakness of the US position in rare earths and critical minerals (such as cobalt and nickel) was addressed in a report published by a US Government Select Committee in December 2023. It said: “The United States must rethink its policy approach to critical mineral and rare earth element supply chains because of the risks posed by our current dependence on the People’s Republic of China.”

Failure to do so, it warned, could cause “defense production to grind to a halt and choke off manufacturing of other advanced technologies”.

China’s dominance in the market has come from its early recognition of the economic opportunities that green technology offers.

“China made a decision about 10 years ago about where the trend was going and has strategically pursued the development of not just renewables but also electric vehicles and now dominates the market,” says Bob Ward, policy director at The London School of Economics (LSE) Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.

Daisy Jennings-Gray, head of prices at price reporting agency Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, explains that they are critical minerals because they are geologically restricted. “You cannot guarantee you will have economically recoverable reserves in every country.”

Some minerals like lithium are abundant on Earth, but often they are located in difficult to reach places, so the logistics of a mining project can be very expensive. In other cases, there is dependency on one country that produces a large share of global supply – like cobalt from the the Democratic Republic of Congo. This means that if there is a natural disaster or political unrest it has an impact on the price, says Ms Jennings-Gray.

China has managed to shore up supply by investing heavily in Africa and South America, but where it really has a stronghold on the market is in processing (or the separation of the mineral from other elements in the rock).

“China accounts for 60% of global rare earth production but processes nearly 90% – [it] is dominant on this stage,” says Gracelin Baskaran, director of the critical minerals security program at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC.

She says the country understands how important this is in economic trade – a few days after Trump introduced tariffs on China its government hit back by imposing export controls on more than 20 critical minerals including graphite and tungsten.

What is motivating Trump is a fear of being at a disadvantage, argues Christopher Knittel, a professor of applied economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

“I think what is driving this is because China is the dominant player on the processing side,” he says. “It is that processing stage, which is the high-margin stage of the business, so China is making a lot of money.”

As he puts it, it is a “happy coincidence” that this could end up supporting green technology.

The key question, though, is whether the US is too late to fully capitalise on the sector.

In the early days, the green transition was “framed as a burden” for countries, according to LSE’s Bob Ward.

The Biden administration was highly supportive of green technology industries through its introduction of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in August 2022, which offers tax credits, loans and other incentives to technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, from battery technologies for electric vehicles to solar panels.

By August 2024, it was estimated to have brought $493bn (£382bn) of investment to US green industry, according to the think tank Clean Investment Monitor.

And yet little work was done to support upstream processes like obtaining critical minerals, says Ms Gray from Benchmark Intelligence. Instead, the Biden administration focused heavily on downstream manufacturing – the process of getting products from the manufacturer to the end consumer.

But Trump’s recent moves to procure these critical minerals suggest a focus on the upstream process may now be happening.

“The IRA put a lot of legislation in places to limit trade and supply only from friendly nations,” explains Ms Gray.

“Trump is changing tack and looking at securing critical minerals agreements that owes something to the US.”

There could be further moves from Trump coming down the line. Those working in the sector say whispers in the corridors of the White House suggest that he may be about to pass a “Critical Minerals Executive Order”, which could funnel further investment into this objective.

The exact details that may be included in the executive order remain unclear, but experts knowledgeable with the issue have said it may include measures to accelerate mining in the US, including fast tracking permits and investment to construct processing plants.

Although work may now be under way to secure these minerals, Prof Willy Shih of Harvard Business School thinks that the US administration lacks understanding of the technical complexity of establishing mineral supply chains, and emphasises the time commitment required. “If you want to build a new mine and processing facility, it might take you 10 years.”

As a policy of his predecessor, and one that is so obviously pro-climate action, Trump has been vocally opposed to maintaining the IRA. But its success in red states mean that many Republican senators have been trying to convince him to keep it in some form in his proposed “big, beautiful bill” – the plan to pile all of Trump’s main policy goals into one mega-bill – due to be revealed later this month.

Analysis by the Clean Investment Monitor shows in the last 18 months Republican-held states had received 77% of the investment.

MIT’s Dr Knittel says for states like Georgia, which has become part of what is now known as the “battery belt” following a boom in battery production following IRA support, these tax credits are crucial for these industries to survive.

He adds that failure to do so poses a real political threat for US representatives who are up for re-election in less than two years.

If Trump loses even just one seat to the Democrats in the 2026 mid-terms, then he loses the house majority – limiting his ability to pass key pieces of legislation.

Carl Fleming was an advisor to former President Biden’s Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Advisory Committee and is a partner at law firm McDermott, Will & Emery, advising clients in the clean tech and energy space. He says that despite the uncertainty, investors remain confident. “In the last month, my practice has been busier than ever, and this is since quadrupling last year following the IRA.”

He also believes that there is a recognition of the need to maintain parts of the IRA – although this may be alongside expansion of some fossil fuels. “If you are really trying to be ‘America First’ and energy secure, you want to pull on all your levers. Keep solar and keep battery storage going and add more natural gas to release America’s energy prowess.”

But the uncertainty of the US position is little consolation for its absence on the international climate stage, says LSE’s Bob Ward. “When the Americans are on the ball it helps to move people in the right direction and that’s how we got the Paris Climate Agreement.”

For those in the climate space, Trump is certainly not an environmentalist. What’s clear is he is not concerned with making his legacy an environmental one but an economic one – though he could achieve the former if he can be convinced it will boost the economy.

Top picture credit: Getty Images

BBC InDepth is the home on the website and app for the best analysis, with fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions and deep reporting on the biggest issues of the day. And we showcase thought-provoking content from across BBC Sounds and iPlayer too. You can send us your feedback on the InDepth section by clicking on the button below.

People from Haiti, Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela who had temporary permission to stay in the country are receiving emails telling them to go.

California senator Alex Padilla was pushed out of the news conference by authorities after he interrupted Noem.

US President Donald Trump will oversee a huge military parade in Washington DC on the same day as nationwide protests are planned.

Drivers of more polluting cars may be forced to pay more to park in Reading under the plans.

LA Mayor Karen Bass has accused federal authorities of “provoking” residents and spreading “chaos” with immigration raids.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

Listen to this article on BBC Sounds

There are some scientific discoveries that do much more than advance our knowledge: they create a shift in our psyche as they show us the scale of the Universe and our place in it.

One such moment was when space craft sent back images of the Earth for the first time. Another is the discovery of life on another world, a moment that has inched a little closer today with the news that signs of a gas, which on Earth is produced by simple marine organisms, has been found on a planet called K2-18b.

Now, the prospect of really finding alien life – meaning we are not alone in the Universe – is not far away, according to the scientist leading the team that made the detection.

“This is basically as big as it gets in terms of fundamental questions, and we may be on the verge of answering that question,” says Prof Nikku Madhusudhan of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University.

But all of this prompts even more questions, including, if they do find life on another world, how will this change us as a species?

Our ancestors have long created stories of beings that might dwell in the skies. In the early 20th Century, astronomers thought they could see straight line features on the Martian surface, raising speculation that one of our nearest planets might be home to an advanced civilisation: an idea that spawned a wealth of pulp science fiction culture involving flying saucers and little green aliens.

It was during an era when western governments generated fear of the spread of communism, so visitors from outer space were more often than not portrayed as menaces, bringing peril rather than hope.

But decades on, what has been described as “the strongest evidence yet” of life on another world has come, not from Mars or Venus, but from a planet hundreds of trillions of miles away orbiting a distant star.

Part of the challenge when it comes to researching the existence of alien life is knowing where to look.

Until relatively recently, the focus for Nasa’s search for life was Mars, but that began to change in 1992 with the discovery of the first planet orbiting another star outside of our solar system.

Although astronomers had suspected that there were other worlds around distant stars there had been no proof until that point. Since then, nearly 6,000 planets outside our solar system have been discovered.

Many are so-called gas giants, like Jupiter and Saturn in our solar system. Others are either too hot or too cold to support liquid water, thought to be essential for life.

But many are in what astronomers call “The Goldilocks Zone” where the distance is “just right” to support life. Prof Madhusudhan believes there could be thousands in our galaxy.

As these so-called exoplanets were being discovered, scientists began to develop instruments to analyse the chemical composition of their atmospheres. Their ambition was breathtaking, some would say audacious.

The idea was to capture the tiny amount of starlight glancing through the atmospheres of these faraway worlds and study them for chemical fingerprints of molecules, which on Earth can only be produced by living organisms, so-called biosignatures.

And they succeeded in developing such instruments for ground and space-based telescopes.

Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which detected the gas on the planet called K2-18b in this week’s discovery, is the most powerful space telescope ever built and its launch in 2021 generated excitement that the search for life was at long last within humanity’s grasp.

But JWST has its limits – it can’t detect faraway planets as small as ours or as close to their parent stars, because of the glare. So, Nasa is planning the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), scheduled for the 2030s, which will be able to spot and sample the atmospheres of planets similar to our own. (This is possible using what is effectively a high-tech sunshield that minimises light from the star which a planet orbits.)

Also coming online later this decade is the European Southern Observatory (ESO)’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), which will be on the ground, looking up at the crystal-clear skies of the Chilean desert.

It has the largest mirror of any instrument built, 39-metres in diameter, and so can see vastly more detail at planetary atmospheres than its predecessors.

Prof Madhusudan, however, hopes to have enough data within two years to demonstrate categorically that he really has discovered the biosignatures around K2-18b. But even if he does achieve his aim, this won’t lead to mass celebrations about the discovery of life on another world.

Instead, it will be the start of another robust scientific debate about whether the biosignature could be produced by non-living means.

Eventually though, as more data is gathered from more atmospheres and as chemists fail in finding alternative explanations for biosignatures, the scientific consensus will slowly and gradually shift towards the probability that life does exist on other worlds, according to Prof Catherine Heymans, from Edinburgh University, who is Scotland’s Astronomer Royal.

“With more time on telescopes, astronomers will get a clearer vision of the chemical compositions of these atmospheres. You won’t know that it’s definitely life. But I think the more data that’s built up, and that if you see this in multiple different systems, not just this one particular planet, it gives us more confidence”.

The world wide web emerged in a series of incremental technological breakthroughs that didn’t necessarily feel of enormous consequence at the time.

In similar fashion, it may dawn on people that possibly the most enormous scientific, cultural and social transformation in the whole of human history has happened, but that the moment the balance was tipped in terms of there being other life out there was not fully recognised at the time.

A much more definitive discovery would be to discover life in our own solar system using robotic space craft containing portable laboratories. Any off-world bug could be analysed, possibly even brought back to Earth, providing prima facie evidence to at least significantly limit any scientific push back that may ensue.

The scientific case for the possibility of life or past life in our own solar system has increased in recent years following data sent back by various spacecraft, so several missions to search for signs of it are on their way.

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) ExoMars rover, planned for launch in 2028, will drill below the surface of Mars to search for signs of past and possibly present life. Given the extreme conditions on Mars, however, the discovery of fossilised past life is the more likely outcome.

China’s Tianwen-3 mission, also planned for launch in 2028 is designed to collect samples and bring them back to Earth by 2031. Nasa and ESA each have spacecraft on their way to the icy moons of Jupiter to see if there may be water, possibly vast oceans, under their icy surfaces.

But the spacecraft are not designed to find life itself. Instead, these missions lay the ground for future missions which will, according to Prof Michele Dougherty of Imperial College, London.

“It is a long, slow process,” she says. “The next decision to make would be a lander, which moon it goes to, and where we should be landing.

“You don’t want to land where the ice crust is so thick that there is no way you can get underneath the surface. And so, it’s a long, slow burn, but it’s pretty exciting en route”.

Nasa is also sending a spacecraft called Dragonfly to land on one of the moons of Saturn, Titan in 2034. It is an exotic world with what are thought to be lakes and clouds made from carbon-rich chemicals which give the planet an eerie orange haze, bringing The Beatles‘ song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds to mind: a world with “marmalade skies”.

Along with water these chemicals are thought to be a necessary ingredient for life.

Prof Dougherty is one of the leading planetary scientists in her field. Does she think there is life on one of the icy Moons of Jupiter or Saturn?

“I’d be very surprised if there wasn’t,” she says, beaming with delight.

“Three things are required: a heat source, liquid water and organic (carbon-based) chemicals. If we have those three ingredients, the chances that life is able to form rises really steeply.

If simple life forms are found to exist that is no guarantee that more complex life forms are out there.

Prof Madhusudhan believes that, if confirmed, simple life should be “pretty common” in the galaxy. “But going from that simple life to complex life is a big step, and that is an open question. How that step happens? What are the conditions that govern that? We don’t know that. And then going from there to intelligent life is another big step.”

Dr Robert Massey, who is the deputy executive director of the Royal Astronomical Society, agrees that the emergence of intelligent life on another world is much less likely than simple life.

“When we see the emergence of life on Earth, it was so complex. It took such a long time for multi-cellular life to emerge and then evolve into diverse life forms.

“The big question is whether there was something about the Earth that made that evolution possible. Do we need exactly the same conditions, our size, our oceans and land masses for that to happen on other worlds or will that happen regardless?”

He believes that the discovery of even simple alien life would be the latest chapter in the diminution of humanity’s place in the cosmos.

As he puts it, centuries ago, we believed we were at the centre of the Universe and with each discovery in astronomy we have found ourselves “more displaced” from that point. “I think the discovery of life elsewhere it would further reduce our specialness,” he says.

Prof Dougherty, on the other hand, believes that such a discovery in our own solar system would be good for science, and good for the soul.

“The discovery of even simple life will allow us a better understanding about how we might have evolved way back those millions of aeons ago when we first evolved. And so, for me, it’s helping us find our place in the Universe.

“If we know there is life, elsewhere in our solar system and potentially beyond, [this] would somehow be comforting to me, knowing that we’re a fabric of something larger will make us bigger”.

Never before have scientists searched so hard for life on other worlds and never before have they had such incredible tools to do this with. And many working in the field believe that it is a matter of when, rather than if, they discover life on other worlds. And rather than bringing fear, the discovery of alien life will bring hope, according to Prof Madhusudhan.

“When we would look at the sky, we would see not just physical objects, stars and planets, we would see a living sky. The societal ramifications of that are immense. It will be a huge transformational change in the way we look at ourselves in the cosmic scene.

“It will fundamentally change the human psyche in how we view ourselves and each other, and any barriers, linguistic, political, geographical, will dissolve, as we realise we are all one. And that will bring us closer,” he continues.

“It will be another step in our evolution”.

Top picture credit: Getty Images

BBC InDepth is the home on the website and app for the best analysis, with fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions and deep reporting on the biggest issues of the day. And we showcase thought-provoking content from across BBC Sounds and iPlayer too. You can send us your feedback on the InDepth section by clicking on the button below.

Shubhanshu Shukla will be only the second Indian to travel to space and the first-ever to visit ISS.

Nasa pair Butch and Suni tell the BBC they feared being unable to get home when they failed to dock on the ISS.

The museum is opening its first exhibition dedicated to space exploration, with many items on show.

The BBC meets astronaut Rosemary Coogan who is training at Nasa’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas.

Giant tyre firms are testing tyres that can survive conditions on the Moon and Mars.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

Listen to Justin read this article

Just Stop Oil (JSO) activists are dusting down their placards, digging out their infamous fluorescent orange vests, and charging up their loud hailers — a routine they have gone through many a time before.

It has taken just three years of throwing soup, spraying corn-starch paint and blocking roads – lots and lots of roads – for the troop of climate activists to become one of the country’s most reviled campaigning organisations.

They expect hundreds of activists to turn out on Saturday in Central London.

However, despite appearances, this JSO gathering is going to be very different from what has gone before. For a start, its existence is no secret. And secondly, there is unlikely to be any of the mass disruption that has been seen previously.

In fact, this is their last ever protest. JSO are, in their own words, “hanging up the hi-viz” and ending their campaign of civil disobedience.

The group’s official line is that they’ve won their battle because their demand that there should be no new oil and gas licences is now government policy. But privately members of JSO admit tough new powers brought in to police disruptive protests have made it almost impossible for groups like it to operate.

Sarah Lunnon, co-founder of JSO, says Saturday’s gathering will be a “joyful celebration”.

“We’ve done incredible things together, trusted each other with so much,” she says.

The group aren’t the only ones who’ll be celebrating. Many of the thousands of motorists who’ve been delayed, art lovers appalled by the attacks on great paintings, or the sports fans and theatre goers whose events were interrupted, will be glad to see the back of them. So too the police. Policing JSO protests has soaked up thousands of hours of officer time and cost millions. In 2023 the Met Police said the group’s protests cost almost £20m.

But the end of JSO also raises some big questions, including if this is really the end of disruptive climate protest in the UK or whether being forced underground could spawn new, even more disruptive or chaotic climate action. And there’s a bigger strategic question. Despite widespread public concern about the future of the planet, much of the public ended up hostile to JSO. How can the climate movement avoid a repeat of that?

JSO’s model involved small groups of committed activists undertaking targeted actions designed to cause maximum disruption or public outrage. But it had strict internal rules. The actions had to be non-violent, and activists had to be held accountable – they had to wait around to get arrested.

For leaders like Roger Hallam, who was originally jailed for five years for plotting to disrupt traffic on the M25, being seen to be punished was a key part of the publicity.

The police, roused by public anger and hostile media coverage, demanded more powers to stop the “eco-loons”, as the Sun newspaper dubbed them, and other protesters. And politicians heeded the call.

The biggest change came with the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act in 2022. It made “intentionally or recklessly causing public nuisance” a statutory offence. A list of loosely defined actions including causing “serious distress, serious annoyance, serious inconvenience or serious loss of amenity” were now potentially serious crimes. And that opened up another legal route for the authorities: the charge of conspiracy to intentionally cause public nuisance. Now even planning a potentially disruptive action could bring substantial jail time.

The Public Order Act the following year broadened the police’s powers to manage protests and brought in new criminal offences including “locking on” to objects, causing serious disruption by tunnelling, and interfering with major infrastructure.

At the same time judges, backed by the higher courts, have blocked the right of protesters to claim they had a “lawful excuse” for their actions in the vast majority of protest cases. The Court of Appeal has accepted that the “beliefs and motivation” of a defendant are too remote to constitute lawful excuse for causing damage to a property. It means they can no longer argue to juries that their right to splash paint on buildings, sit in the road, or undertake other disruptive activities, is justified by the bigger threat posed by climate change. In most trials the only question for the court now is whether the defendants did what they are accused of, not why they did it.

“We’ve seen people being found guilty and sent to prison for years,” says JSO’s Sarah Lunnon.

David Spencer, a former police officer who now is head of crime and justice at the think tank Policy Exchange, says too often the law had previously “favoured those involved in disruptive protests at the expense of the legitimate interests of other people.”

The human rights organisation Liberty sees things very differently, believing the changes amount to an attack on democracy.

Ruth Ehrlich, head of policy and campaigns at the organisation argues the legal changes have “had a chilling effect on the ways all of us are able to speak out for what we believe”.

In this context, some climate activists have concluded that it is time to drop the movement’s long-standing commitment to accountability – they will undertake disruptive actions but won’t stick around to be arrested any more.

Over the past year a group called Shut the System (STS) has carried out a series of criminal attacks on the offices of finance and insurance companies: smashing windows, daubing paint, supergluing locks, and in January this year they targeted fibre optic communication cables.

I spoke to one of the organisers on a messaging app. They argue the legal changes mean the traditional forms of accountable protest aren’t viable anymore.

“It would be impossible for people to sustain an effective campaign with people going to prison for years after a single action,” the spokesperson told me. “Activists are forced into a position where we have to go underground.”

I asked the group what they would say to people who criticise them for breaking the law. They said that in their view the stakes are such that they have to do what they think works.

This is not the first time protesters in the UK have taken clandestine action on climate issues. Over the past few years a group calling itself the Tyre Extinguishers has deflated tyres on sports utility vehicles (SUVs) in several locations, while this year another group drilled holes in the tyres of cars at a Land Rover dealership in Cornwall.

The idea of protesters causing JSO levels of disruption – but unlike JSO, avoiding justice – may send a chill down the spine of many motorists. But Dr Graeme Hayes, reader in Political Sociology at Aston University, thinks only a tiny minority of climate campaigners are likely to get involved in such actions.

He has studied environmental protest groups in the UK for decades and says the more radical groups are finding it increasingly hard to recruit people.

“There is a very strong, profound ethical commitment to being non-violent within the climate movement so I think whatever it does will be based on those principles,” he says.

Others have found legal ways to make their protests heard. A group called the Citizen’s Arrest Network (CAN) is attempting to flip the script by using the law of public nuisance – implemented so effectively against the disruptive protests of JSO – against the bosses of fossil fuel and other polluting companies.

The group exploits the right, dating back to medieval England, that allows citizens to arrest people they think have committed a crime. CAN put together alleged criminal cases against those company bosses they argue are causing public nuisance by damaging the environment. Then they “arrest” them in public, which involves handing them documents detailing the alleged crimes they are responsible for.

The group claims to have “arrested” a number of executives from fossil fuel and water companies and last month served indictments against Shell and BP to the Crown Prosecution Service. Gail Lynch, one of the organisers, says the group was born out of frustration, “disgruntled people find each other, and they need a mechanism to have their voice heard,” she says.

These days very few elected politicians speak out in favour of JSO’s actions. Yet as recently as April 2019 Extinction Rebellion (XR) staged 10 days of protests across the UK that caused widespread disruption and included blocking Oxford Circus in central London with a large pink boat. Instead of lengthy prison sentences for those involved, the protest leaders were instead rewarded with a meeting with Conservative government ministers.

Within two months the UK parliament had passed a law committing the country to bringing all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. Robert Jenrick, then a Treasury minister, was one of the ministers who met XR and was still in post when the Net Zero laws were passed.

But things are different now and Jenrick, who is now shadow Justice Secretary, is very critical of JSO’s actions.

“It was completely unacceptable that ambulances were being blocked and millions of commuters were being subjected to hours of delays and misery,” he tells me.

“Just Stop Oil’s zealotry has probably set back their cause by alienating the law-abiding majority.”

Polling evidence suggests there is still strong support for climate action amongst the public.

Ahead of the general election last year, the polling organisation More in Common, along with climate think tank ESG, found around 80% of Britons thought it was important that the government cares about tackling climate change. This broad sentiment was echoed across the political board – nearly four out of five Conservative voters and two thirds of Reform voters felt this way.

But despite this, JSO is not well regarded by the public. A 2023 YouGov poll of almost 4,000 people found just 17% had a favourable view of the group.

According to Dr Hayes, what happened with JSO has prompted deep reflection within the climate movement about its future strategy.

There are some within the green movement who will be pleased to see the end of JSO.

Rupert Read, a former spokesperson for XR is one of many who believes JSO’s message on the urgency of action on climate change got lost in the outrage caused by their disruptive campaigning.

“Just Stop Oil has been effective at getting attention,” says Read, “but that’s not the same thing as getting real change.” They generated a lot of headlines: “[but] sometimes people give you coverage precisely because they think that coverage will be bad for you and your cause.”

John Gummer, now Lord Deben, was an environment minister under Margaret Thatcher and chaired the government’s watchdog on climate change for a decade. He has been very critical of successive governments’ lack of action on climate change.

But Lord Deben believes the disruptive actions of groups like JSO are counterproductive. “I think it annoys people more than it encourages people to think seriously about the issue,” he says.

His advice to people who want to see more action on climate change is to use the democratic system more effectively, for example by telling MPs and local councillors about concerns.

XR’s former spokesperson, Mr Read, believes campaigners should now focus on building a mass movement. “If we are going to actually win on this, we need to do something that will bring most people with us because there is no way one gets to win on climate without bringing most people with one,” he says.

He’s working with the former head of the Green Party, Caroline Lucas, on a new organisation, the Climate Majority Project. It lists prominent Conservatives including Lord Deben among its supporters and aims to use non-disruptive methods. The focus will be building support for climate action by focusing on tackling the impacts of extreme weather in local communities.

“The end game is that we get a situation where the political parties are racing to compete for votes on climate and nature, rather than running away from them,” explains Read.

Naturalist and presenter Chris Packham believes “empowering” voters should be the focus. “We need a larger number, a larger percentage of our populace, on board when it comes to being able to talk […] truth to power.”

But he argues there are real dangers for governments that stifle the voices of those who have legitimate concerns. “If a government is arrogant enough not to listen to people protesting and they have good grounds for protest […] there are bound to be those people who say we are going to escalate the protest.”

He helped organise last year’s Restore Nature Now march which brought tens of thousands of people onto the streets and was supported by a whole range of nature focused organisations including big charities like the National Trust and RSPB, as well as campaign groups like JSO.

Packham was hoping that by getting a whole range of activists together on a single stage “they would all see the bigger picture and recognise that there are far more commonalities between them than differences.”

But peaceful climate action does not get the same attention as non-peaceful action. “We put between 70,000 and 80,000 people on the streets of London, but because it was a peaceful demonstration made up of kids in fancy dress we didn’t get any coverage,” says Packham.

It is in this context that Ms Lunnon of JSO believes new forms of disruptive protest will emerge in time. “The movement is there and will find new ways to confront the government,” she says. “Nobody is shutting up shop and calling it a day. We know morally that we have to continue.”

However it is clear that, for now at least, the model that made JSO so notorious is dead.

Top picture credit: Getty Images

BBC InDepth is the home on the website and app for the best analysis, with fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions and deep reporting on the biggest issues of the day. And we showcase thought-provoking content from across BBC Sounds and iPlayer too. You can send us your feedback on the InDepth section by clicking on the button below.

Sign up for our Future Earth newsletter to keep up with the latest climate and environment stories with the BBC’s Justin Rowlatt. Outside the UK? Sign up to our international newsletter here.

The innovative collection created by Blackburn College students will be auctioned off for charity.

The BBC looks at the latest innovation and technology as workboats try to decarbonise.

Customers need stronger protections against scammers capitalising on green energy schemes, says Scotland’s consumer body.

Gloucester City Council is exploring ways to tackle climate change and extreme weather.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

Listen to this article.

I step into the booth with some trepidation. I am about to be subjected to strobe lighting while music plays – as part of a research project trying to understand what makes us truly human.

It’s an experience that brings to mind the test in the science fiction film Bladerunner, designed to distinguish humans from artificially created beings posing as humans.

Could I be a robot from the future and not know it? Would I pass the test?

The researchers assure me that this is not actually what this experiment is about. The device that they call the “Dreamachine”, after the public programme of the same name, is designed to study how the human brain generates our conscious experiences of the world.

As the strobing begins, and even though my eyes are closed, I see swirling two-dimensional geometric patterns. It’s like jumping into a kaleidoscope, with constantly shifting triangles, pentagons and octagons. The colours are vivid, intense and ever-changing: pinks, magentas and turquoise hues, glowing like neon lights.

The “Dreamachine” brings the brain’s inner activity to the surface with flashing lights, aiming to explore how our thought processes work.

The images I’m seeing are unique to my own inner world and unique to myself, according to the researchers. They believe these patterns can shed light on consciousness itself.

They hear me whisper: “It’s lovely, absolutely lovely. It’s like flying through my own mind!”

The “Dreamachine”, at Sussex University’s Centre for Consciousness Science, is just one of many new research projects across the world investigating human consciousness: the part of our minds that enables us to be self-aware, to think and feel and make independent decisions about the world.

By learning the nature of consciousness, researchers hope to better understand what’s happening within the silicon brains of artificial intelligence. Some believe that AI systems will soon become independently conscious, if they haven’t already.

But what really is consciousness, and how close is AI to gaining it? And could the belief that AI might be conscious itself fundamentally change humans in the next few decades?

The idea of machines with their own minds has long been explored in science fiction. Worries about AI stretch back nearly a hundred years to the film Metropolis, in which a robot impersonates a real woman.

A fear of machines becoming conscious and posing a threat to humans is explored in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, when the HAL 9000 computer attacks astronauts onboard its spaceship. And in the final Mission Impossible film, which has just been released, the world is threatened by a powerful rogue AI, described by one character as a “self-aware, self-learning, truth-eating digital parasite”.

But quite recently, in the real world there has been a rapid tipping point in thinking on machine consciousness, where credible voices have become concerned that this is no longer the stuff of science fiction.

The sudden shift has been prompted by the success of so-called large language models (LLMs), which can be accessed through apps on our phones such as Gemini and Chat GPT. The ability of the latest generation of LLMs to have plausible, free-flowing conversations has surprised even their designers and some of the leading experts in the field.

There is a growing view among some thinkers that as AI becomes even more intelligent, the lights will suddenly turn on inside the machines and they will become conscious.

Others, such as Prof Anil Seth who leads the Sussex University team, disagree, describing the view as “blindly optimistic and driven by human exceptionalism”.

“We associate consciousness with intelligence and language because they go together in humans. But just because they go together in us, it doesn’t mean they go together in general, for example in animals.”

So what actually is consciousness?

The short answer is that no-one knows. That’s clear from the good-natured but robust arguments among Prof Seth’s own team of young AI specialists, computing experts, neuroscientists and philosophers, who are trying to answer one of the biggest questions in science and philosophy.

While there are many differing views at the consciousness research centre, the scientists are unified in their method: to break this big problem down into lots of smaller ones in a series of research projects, which includes the Dreamachine.

Just as the search to find the “spark of life” that made inanimate objects come alive was abandoned in the 19th Century in favour of identifying how individual parts of living systems worked, the Sussex team is now adopting the same approach to consciousness.

They hope to identify patterns of brain activity that explain various properties of conscious experiences, such as changes in electrical signals or blood flow to different regions. The goal is to go beyond looking for mere correlations between brain activity and consciousness, and try to come up with explanations for its individual components.

Prof Seth, the author of a book on consciousness, Being You, worries that we may be rushing headlong into a society that is being rapidly reshaped by the sheer pace of technological change without sufficient knowledge about the science, or thought about the consequences.

“We take it as if the future has already been written; that there is an inevitable march to a superhuman replacement,” he says.

“We did not have these conversations enough with the rise of social media, much to our collective detriment. But with AI, it is not too late. We can decide what we want.”

But there are some in the tech sector who believe that the AI in our computers and phones may already be conscious, and we should treat them as such.

Google suspended software engineer Blake Lemoine in 2022, after he argued that AI chatbots could feel things and potentially suffer.

In November 2024, an AI welfare officer for Anthropic, Kyle Fish, co-authored a report suggesting that AI consciousness was a realistic possibility in the near future. He recently told The New York Times that he also believed that there was a small (15%) chance that chatbots are already conscious.

One reason he thinks it possible is that no-one, not even the people who developed these systems, knows exactly how they work. That’s worrying, says Prof Murray Shanahan, principal scientist at Google DeepMind and emeritus professor in AI at Imperial College, London.

“We don’t actually understand very well the way in which LLMs work internally, and that is some cause for concern,” he tells the BBC.

According to Prof Shanahan, it’s important for tech firms to get a proper understanding of the systems they’re building – and researchers are looking at that as a matter of urgency.

“We are in a strange position of building these extremely complex things, where we don’t have a good theory of exactly how they achieve the remarkable things they are achieving,” he says. “So having a better understanding of how they work will enable us to steer them in the direction we want and to ensure that they are safe.”

The prevailing view in the tech sector is that LLMs are not currently conscious in the way we experience the world, and probably not in any way at all. But that is something that the married couple Profs Lenore and Manuel Blum, both emeritus professors at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, believe will change, possibly quite soon.

According to the Blums, that could happen as AI and LLMs have more live sensory inputs from the real world, such as vision and touch, by connecting cameras and haptic sensors (related to touch) to AI systems. They are developing a computer model that constructs its own internal language called Brainish to enable this additional sensory data to be processed, attempting to replicate the processes that go on in the brain.

“We think Brainish can solve the problem of consciousness as we know it,” Lenore tells the BBC. “AI consciousness is inevitable.”

Manuel chips in enthusiastically with an impish grin, saying that the new systems that he too firmly believes will emerge will be the “next stage in humanity’s evolution”.

Conscious robots, he believes, “are our progeny. Down the road, machines like these will be entities that will be on Earth and maybe on other planets when we are no longer around”.

David Chalmers – Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science at New York University – defined the distinction between real and apparent consciousness at a conference in Tucson, Arizona in 1994. He laid out the “hard problem” of working out how and why any of the complex operations of brains give rise to conscious experience, such as our emotional response when we hear a nightingale sing.

Prof Chalmers says that he is open to the possibility of the hard problem being solved.

“The ideal outcome would be one where humanity shares in this new intelligence bonanza,” he tells the BBC. “Maybe our brains are augmented by AI systems.”

On the sci-fi implications of that, he wryly observes: “In my profession, there is a fine line between science fiction and philosophy”.

Prof Seth, however, is exploring the idea that true consciousness can only be realised by living systems.

“A strong case can be made that it isn’t computation that is sufficient for consciousness but being alive,” he says.

“In brains, unlike computers, it’s hard to separate what they do from what they are.” Without this separation, he argues, it’s difficult to believe that brains “are simply meat-based computers”.

And if Prof Seth’s intuition about life being important is on the right track, the most likely technology will not be made of silicon run on computer code, but will rather consist of tiny collections of nerve cells the size of lentil grains that are currently being grown in labs.

Called “mini-brains” in media reports, they are referred to as “cerebral organoids” by the scientific community, which uses them to research how the brain works, and for drug testing.

One Australian firm, Cortical Labs, in Melbourne, has even developed a system of nerve cells in a dish that can play the 1972 sports video game Pong. Although it is a far cry from a conscious system, the so-called “brain in a dish” is spooky as it moves a paddle up and down a screen to bat back a pixelated ball.

Some experts feel that if consciousness is to emerge, it is most likely to be from larger, more advanced versions of these living tissue systems.

Cortical Labs monitors their electrical activity for any signals that could conceivably be anything like the emergence of consciousness.

The firm’s chief scientific and operating officer, Dr Brett Kagan is mindful that any emerging uncontrollable intelligence might have priorities that “are not aligned with ours”. In which case, he says, half-jokingly, that possible organoid overlords would be easier to defeat because “there is always bleach” to pour over the fragile neurons.

Returning to a more solemn tone, he says the small but significant threat of artificial consciousness is something he’d like the big players in the field to focus on more as part of serious attempts to advance our scientific understanding – but says that “unfortunately, we don’t see any earnest efforts in this space”.

The more immediate problem, though, could be how the illusion of machines being conscious affects us.

In just a few years, we may well be living in a world populated by humanoid robots and deepfakes that seem conscious, according to Prof Seth. He worries that we won’t be able to resist believing that the AI has feelings and empathy, which could lead to new dangers.

“It will mean that we trust these things more, share more data with them and be more open to persuasion.”

But the greater risk from the illusion of consciousness is a “moral corrosion”, he says.

“It will distort our moral priorities by making us devote more of our resources to caring for these systems at the expense of the real things in our lives” – meaning that we might have compassion for robots, but care less for other humans.

And that could fundamentally alter us, according to Prof Shanahan.

“Increasingly human relationships are going to be replicated in AI relationships, they will be used as teachers, friends, adversaries in computer games and even romantic partners. Whether that is a good or bad thing, I don’t know, but it is going to happen, and we are not going to be able to prevent it”.

Top picture credit: Getty Images

BBC InDepth is the home on the website and app for the best analysis, with fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions and deep reporting on the biggest issues of the day. And we showcase thought-provoking content from across BBC Sounds and iPlayer too. You can send us your feedback on the InDepth section by clicking on the button below.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

As a Ryanair flight from London approached Vilnius, Lithuania, on 17 January, its descent was suddenly aborted. Just minutes from touching down, the aircraft’s essential Global Positioning System (GPS) suffered an unexplained interference, triggering an emergency diversion.

The Boeing 737 MAX 8-200 had already descended to around 850ft (259m) when the disruption occurred. Instead of landing, the plane was forced to climb back into the sky and divert nearly 400km (250 miles) south to Warsaw, Poland. Lithuanian air authorities later confirmed the aircraft had been affected by “GPS signal interference”.

This was not an isolated incident. Over the last three months of 2024, more than 800 cases of GPS interference were recorded in Lithuanian airspace. Estonia and Finland have also raised concerns, accusing Russia of deploying technology to jam satellite navigation signals near Nato’s eastern flank – though the country has denied that. Last March the then Defence Secretary, Grant Shapps, was on a plane that had its GPS signal jammed while flying close to Russian territory.

The threat of GPS jamming extends beyond aviation. Without GPS, our lives would grind to a halt: in 2017, a government report stated that systematic GPS jamming could bring the UK’s financial, electricity and communications systems to a standstill.

To pinpoint our exact location, we need to know the exact time. GPS works by users receiving signals from multiple satellites. The length of time it takes each signal to reach a device is used to determine exactly where on Earth we are.

Very large atomic clocks communicate directly with the satellites, allowing them to know the time to within 100 billionths of a second, and this precision timing is key to a variety of economic activities around the world, including communication systems, electrical power grids, and financial networks.

The potential cost of losing GPS has been put at £1.4bn each day – no wonder GPS jamming is on the government’s national risk register as one of the UK’s greatest threats.

With this in mind, a group of British scientists – dubbed the “Time Lords” – has been asked to come up with a solution.

The plan is simple: to develop a more secure alternative to GPS by enabling the portable use of new atomic clocks, rather than relying on signals from satellites in space that can be jammed. But its execution is fiendishly difficult: to harness the power of the atom, develop a new type of clock, and even change the way we measure time itself – all within a few years.

In recent months, the UK government has set up research initiatives to tackle the threat of GPS jamming. But turning prototypes into robust devices that could one day be incorporated into our phones is an enormous undertaking – and the need for the new technology is getting ever more urgent.

The challenge can be compared to the invention of a portable clock for marine navigation by John Harrison in the 18th Century, which solved the so-called longitude problem, allowing a new era of trade and a golden age of exploration.

Three hundred years on, researchers are once again racing to perfect a new clock to solve the GPS problem – and the impact could be at least as transformative.

“History shows that each time we have an improvement in the ability to measure time, new applications follow to make things possible that people didn’t dream of before,” says Dr Helen Margolis, head scientist (time and frequency) of the UK’s timing laboratories at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in south-west London.

In 1967, the world’s timekeepers, an intergovernmental body called the General Conference on Weights and Measures, agreed to define time using atomic clocks, rather than by the Earth’s rotation.

The switch transformed our world just as radically as Harrison’s clock, laying the foundation for GPS and similar space-based systems. These provided precise timekeeping from atomic clocks on satellites, which allowed rapid and huge volumes of communications, computation, and transactions to be carried out everywhere in the world near instantaneously, as well as more precise navigation.

The search for a new portable alternative to GPS involves a field called quantum technologies, finding ways to manipulate atoms. Much of the buzz around the subject in recent years has been about the development of powerful quantum computers which, the narrative goes, will make our fastest supercomputers seem like abacuses by comparison.

But a quieter revolution to improve navigation and measurement of time has flown under the radar, and it is in this field that quantum technology is set to make its earliest impact, according to Prof Douglas Paul of the UK Hub for Quantum Enabled Position Navigation and Timing (QEPNT), which was set up last December by the government to develop these new devices.

“We are expecting to see some sort of navigation system within two to five years in the marketplace,” he says. “So, some of these technologies are already quite advanced.”

Prof Paul and his quantum scientists are working with Dr Margolis and her fellow researchers at NPL, who have been given the “Time Lords” nickname by other horologists. In 1955, the NPL invented the first atomic clock of the sort that is used today, based on the frequency of radiation from an atom of the element caesium.

GPS and other satellite navigation systems reset their own clocks by touching base with these more accurate clocks on the ground. For the alternative to GPS, the scientists will need a new type of atomic clock that can eventually be miniaturised and robust enough to work in everyday situations, rather than the carefully controlled conditions inside a lab.

The NPL researchers are perfecting a so-called optical clock to achieve this, which is 100 times more accurate than the most accurate caesium clocks used today. It looks as if it might be part of Dr Who’s Tardis and is stimulated with laser light rather than microwaves.

When optical clocks take over from caesium ones as the timepieces that determine Universal Coordinated Time (UTC), the way the passage of time is defined will also have to change, according to Dr Margolis.

“The international community has drawn up a road map for the redefinition of the second,” she tells BBC News.

The NPL’s immediate hope is to have a national network by 2030, connecting four atomic clocks across the UK that businesses can plug into for secure accurate timekeeping and for developing new innovative applications that harness ultra-fast time.

Eventually, critical systems in the UK in finance, telecommunications, energy, utilities and national security could switch over – though that would take longer. “To convert everything is at least a decade away, and probably significantly longer,” says Prof Paul.

Yet the stakes are high, and the alternative this new technology offers is significant. “The US Department of Defence might decide to stop supporting GPS, it could be taken out in a conflict or by an accident,” he says. “There is no guarantee GPS … will always be available. With all the jamming and spoofing [where a criminal gives a false signal with an incorrect time and location], you cannot always guarantee you have an assured signal, so if you cannot get or trust the information then people will stop using it.”

While this type of research is taking place around the world, it’s being led by the UK. When an aircraft with the technology on board carried out a test flight in May 2024, the then science minister Andrew Griffith described it as “further proof of the UK as one of the world leaders on quantum”. According to the government, it was the first test of this type of technology in the UK on an aircraft in flight, and “the first such flight worldwide that has been publicly acknowledged”.

By carrying a group of atoms cooled to -273C on the plane itself, rather than relying on an external signal, the technology can’t be interfered with by jamming.

But the problem is that the equipment is still too large to be used routinely on planes.

Henry White, part of the team from BAE Systems that worked on the test flight, told BBC News that he thought the first application could be aboard ships, “where there’s a bit more space”.

Quantum clocks, gyroscopes and accelerometers are large, bulky and incredibly expensive, with an accurate quantum clock costing around £100,000. Yet military research is allowing the creation of smaller, better and cheaper systems.

GPS jamming is causing problems for the British military in conflict zones such as Ukraine. One of the main challenges faced by scientists at the government’s Defence, Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) is making the sensitive technology work not just in the real world, which in the Navy’s case is often in very choppy seas, but also in the harshest of environments; the battlefield, according to a lead researcher at the DSTL, who has to remain anonymous for security reasons.

“We are harnessing atoms,” she points out.

“You have vibrations, you have pressure changes, you have temperature changes, and you have environments which have all of these different variables going on while you are trying to manipulate the properties of light. So, it’s precision that is needed”.

The ultimate aim for some of those working on this new technology is for each of us to have the equivalent of our own personal GPS system incorporated into our phones.

This would comprise a miniaturised optical clock as well as a tiny gyroscope, so we know which direction we are going in, and a device called an accelerometer, which will tell us how fast we are going.

QEPNT has been set up by the government to shrink the devices on to a chip, making them robust enough for everyday life and affordable for everyone.

That process isn’t going to happen soon, though. “This is many decades away from happening for all critical national infrastructure across the UK,” says Prof Paul.

Quantum clock researchers are facing exactly the same problems experienced by John Harrison when he was developing his portable marine clock in the 18th Century. Mr Harrison had to build a clock whose timekeeping was not affected by changes in temperature, pressure or humidity, and was able to function in a constantly moving ship – his greatest difficulty was to make it small.

But it turned out that his difficulty was also the path to his solution. The smaller he made his clocks, the more robust he found they were at sea.

“Harrison found that it was it easier to isolate them from all those external influences,” says another DSTL scientist.

“As was the case 300 years ago, as we make these systems smaller, it will become easier to control the environment around them and isolate them from the effects of vibration, temperature, pressure, and humidity.”

Prominent 18th-Century scientists, including Sir Isaac Newton, thought that navigation with marine clocks was impossible. But eventually Mr Harrison, a simple clockmaker and carpenter, proved his more illustrious colleagues wrong.

Bringing prototype optical clocks first into the battlefield and then eventually into everyday life is just as challenging. Will the scientists working on the problem be able to find solutions fast enough?

One day we might have them in our pockets, but the more urgent aim is to get them in a state where we can safely fly, as incidents of GPS jamming on planes and critical computer systems increase. The Time Lords and quantum scientists hope to continue the humble clockmaker’s legacy – transforming the measurement of time, and protecting the UK’s critical systems from GPS attack.

Top image credit: Getty Images

BBC InDepth is the home on the website and app for the best analysis, with fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions and deep reporting on the biggest issues of the day. And we showcase thought-provoking content from across BBC Sounds and iPlayer too. You can send us your feedback on the InDepth section by clicking on the button below.

Nearly all of the surgeries are already developing expansion plans.

A council says two to four fall into the water in a city centre during grazing season each year.

Routine appointments are suspended across all 14 of the Isle of Man GP surgeries for five hours.

Police say there has been “a significant increase” in GPS thefts over recent weeks.

Tom Davies completed his “big nugget of adventure” up and down mountains and through forests.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

A detailed analysis of a full-sized digital scan of the Titanic has revealed new insight into the doomed liner’s final hours.

The exact 3D replica shows the violence of how the ship ripped in two as it sank after hitting an iceberg in 1912 – 1,500 people lost their lives in the disaster.

The scan provides a new view of a boiler room, confirming eye-witness accounts that engineers worked right to the end to keep the ship’s lights on.

And a computer simulation also suggests that punctures in the hull the size of A4 pieces of paper led to the ship’s demise.

“Titanic is the last surviving eyewitness to the disaster, and she still has stories to tell,” said Parks Stephenson, a Titanic analyst.

The scan has been studied for a new documentary by National Geographic and Atlantic Productions called Titanic: The Digital Resurrection.

The wreck, which lies 3,800m down in the icy waters of the Atlantic, was mapped using underwater robots.

More than 700,000 images, taken from every angle, were used to create the “digital twin”, which was revealed exclusively to the world by BBC News in 2023.

Because the wreck is so large and lies in the gloom of the deep, exploring it with submersibles only shows tantalising snapshots. The scan, however, provides the first full view of the Titanic.

The immense bow lies upright on the seafloor, almost as if the ship were continuing its voyage.

But sitting 600m away, the stern is a heap of mangled metal. The damage was caused as it slammed into the sea floor after the ship broke in half.

The new mapping technology is providing a different way to study the ship.

“It’s like a crime scene: you need to see what the evidence is, in the context of where it is,” said Parks Stephenson.

“And having a comprehensive view of the entirety of the wreck site is key to understanding what happened here.”

The scan shows new close-up details, including a porthole that was most likely smashed by the iceberg. It tallies with the eye-witness reports of survivors that ice came into some people’s cabins during the collision.

Experts have been studying one of the Titanic’s huge boiler rooms – it’s easy to see on the scan because it sits at the rear of the bow section at the point where the ship broke in two.

Passengers said that the lights were still on as the ship plunged beneath the waves.

The digital replica shows that some of the boilers are concave, which suggests they were still operating as they were plunged into the water.

Lying on the deck of the stern, a valve has also been discovered in an open position, indicating that steam was still flowing into the electricity generating system.

This would have been thanks to a team of engineers led by Joseph Bell who stayed behind to shovel coal into the furnaces to keep the lights on.

All died in the disaster but their heroic actions saved many lives, said Parks Stephenson.

“They kept the lights and the power working to the end, to give the crew time to launch the lifeboats safely with some light instead of in absolute darkness,” he told the BBC.

“They held the chaos at bay as long as possible, and all of that was kind of symbolised by this open steam valve just sitting there on the stern.”

A new simulation has also provided further insights into the sinking.

It takes a detailed structural model of the ship, created from Titanic’s blueprints, and also information about its speed, direction and position, to predict the damage that was caused as it hit the iceberg.

“We used advanced numerical algorithms, computational modelling and supercomputing capabilities to reconstruct the Titanic sinking,” said Prof Jeom-Kee Paik, from University College London, who led the research.

The simulation shows that as the ship made only a glancing blow against the iceberg it was left with a series of punctures running in a line along a narrow section of the hull.

Titanic was supposed to be unsinkable, designed to stay afloat even if four of its watertight compartments flooded.

But the simulation calculates the iceberg’s damage was spread across six compartments.

“The difference between Titanic sinking and not sinking are down to the fine margins of holes about the size of a piece of paper,” said Simon Benson, an associate lecturer in naval architecture at the University of Newcastle.

“But the problem is that those small holes are across a long length of the ship, so the flood water comes in slowly but surely into all of those holes, and then eventually the compartments are flooded over the top and the Titanic sinks.”

Unfortunately the damage cannot be seen on the scan as the lower section of the bow is hidden beneath the sediment.

The human tragedy of the Titanic is still very much visible.

Personal possessions from the ship’s passengers are scattered across the sea floor.

The scan is providing new clues about that cold night in 1912, but it will take experts years to fully scrutinise every detail of the 3D replica.

“She’s only giving her stories to us a little bit at a time,” said Parks Stephenson.

“Every time, she leaves us wanting for more.”

The Hollywood studios allege Midjourney’s image generator is a “bottomless pit of plagiarism”.

BBC Verify explains why AI chatbots are wrong about photos emerging from the LA protests

New technology at St Andrews University helps librarians detect when old books are bad for readers’ health

Why do flying fears persist despite falling accident rates? Learn tips to conquer your anxiety.

It comes during a Trump crackdown on top universities, which he accuses of failing to combat antisemitism.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.