"Symmetry"

R.Ince: In only 4.6 billion years, the Sun will swell into a "red giant" engulfing our own planet Earth, Mercury and Venus. So let's enjoy these last few moments we have together...

Hello, on my left is the scientific advisor for the film "Sunshine", in which a group of astronauts go into space to send a bomb into the middle of the Sun to "restart" it. Yeah... and yet somehow he's a professor; I take most things he says with a pinch of salt - Brian Cox.

B.Cox: And on my right is a man who recently failed his Turing test* - Robin Ince.

Now... occasionally it's said that The Infinite Monkey Cage is unnecessarily elitist so to show that that isn't the case if you're not familiar with the Turing test it's prefigured in Descartes' great 1668 treatise Discourse on the Method so just dig your copy out and have a look.

R.Ince: So today we're going to be looking at the symmetry of the bond and visualising symmetries between the honeybees and bumblebees. "Hey honeybees like pentagonal symmetry but bumblebees like mirror symmetry - what's all that about??"

B.Cox: In other words, we'll be looking at the importance of symmetry. Why does symmetry underline everything from mating to the fundamental laws that govern the Universe? As usual, we're joined by three guests.

R.Ince: Our first guest remains our only guest who is a self-declared wizard.

Now, to the audience in the studio - which one could it be?

 Clean-shaven man number one

Clean-shaven man number two, or

The man with the enormous beard.

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* The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior, equivalent to or indistinguishable from, that of an actual human.