First stars, Life on Mars, Climate update, Control of CRISPR, Jamestown forensic genetics

Adam Rutherford and guests discuss 2018 in space, climate science and genetics and listeners' questions. Dr Emma Chapman of Imperial College chooses the discovery by the EDGES telescope of the first stars as her highlight of the year and answers a question from Evgeniy Osievskyi about searching for life on Mars in lava tubes. Dr Tamsin Edwards of Kings College London talks about the international approach to keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees and explains the processes going on in the ocean when it absorbs carbon dioxide in response to a query from Derek McComiskey. Pete Stokes asks if the scientific community could come up with a global and hopefully binding agreement to control CRISPR gene editing on humans. Adam and Professor Turi King of Leicester University discuss this possibility. Looking back at 2018 Turi picks the role of forensic genetics in finding the Golden State killer in the US. Looking ahead to 2019, Emma is hoping for more insights into the very early universe and into dark matter and dark energy, Tamsin is getting ready to research the role of ice sheets in sea level rise and Turi is applying genetic genealogy to find out if a skeleton found at Jamestown, the first permanent British colony in America, is really that of the Governor of Virginia, Sir George Yeardley.