stuff. from politics to flash some. good stuff this is where. welcome to the seventy seven percent. or fifty six g.w. . hello and welcome to tomorrow today the science show on t.w. coming up. we'll find out how to chicken feathers can be turned into bio plastic. investigate the fruits of an alliance between plants and robots. and explore hydrogen's potential as a sustainable energy carrier up tomorrow. but

first we'll head to the final frontier. in the hollywood movie gravity exploding satellite daybreak collides with a space ship with disastrous results. an accident that dramatic hasn't happened in real life but waste all this in the earth is a growing problem since the first satellite was launched in one nine hundred fifty seven thousands more have followed many are now derelict but still circling the earth along with other space junk that poses a danger also for the international space station. march twenty twelve four hundred kilometers above the earth's surface the crew aboard the i.s.f. suddenly received an alert a red late conjunction. something is on

a possible collision course with flight controllers damaged by fire and difficulty shot into goalie's separate from an old satellite is bearing down on the station. mission control orders the crew to evacuate to a capsule that serves as an escape croft but then there are plenty stuff there. part of that sort of. the danger has passed this time a piece of the old cosmos two two five one a russian satellite missed the i assess by a few kilometers but the space station's crews are strangers to close calls like this its windows and exterior walls bear the scars of less life threatening encounters space might be vast and largely empty but in our cosmic neighborhood it's clogging up with little that rather than harm a million pieces of potentially dangerous space junk orbiting the planet. they

include decommissioned satellites and even larger objects like components from spent rockets british sound designer nick ryan has developed an audio based system that identifies and localizes space junk most of the debris is tiny but the speed at which is traveling makes it a force to be reckoned with. even the size of a flock of paint its. satellites or the international space station called for birds. it can cause. catastrophic damage it threatens our infrastructure on us because we rely on geostationary satellites and weather satellites and. the space debris is currently threatening all of our storage. and each impact has the potential to unleash a cascade as the amount of deadly grows so does the frequency of collisions between

bits of junk this could eventually produce a nearly impenetrable cloud of it enveloping our planet if we want to continue sending up new rockets we need to start cleaning up this one has supplies for the i s s on board and also a small satellite called simply remove debris once it arrives the station's crew. repair the satellite for a special mission the first attempted clean up operation in outer space profess a good game or a yeti and his team at the summary space center in england are tracking the mission they designed the space junk sweeper. in order to be you to be able to space in the future we really have to start the new clean up the i s s releases the removed debora a satellite that contains a suite of instruments that will be deployed to grab space junk.

back on earth its systems worked well but things might go very differently here. the first test begins the satellite releases the small box into space then seeks to recapture it the live video feed shows how the space dredger casts its nets. and they scenarios the mother deborah is captured in one fell swoop. the thing that struck me was i have been a fan of space for so many years but i've never seen anything like that i'm incredibly proud of this actually and you say realize this is a world first you know it's never ever been done before to be involved with something like that is really incredible. remove debris is set to test a number of clean up techniques in the months to come it's other equipment includes a retractable harpoon but what happens next will the satellite itself turn into

a drifting chunk of space junk. too could be a bit strange with a mission that this testing technology for removing debris at the end the produces some good results we're going to clean everything after this mission. the final experimental be for this week a satellite to destroy itself that involves deploying a large. drag sail that should cause its orbit to decay until it enters the atmosphere the satellite and its junk will burn up on re-entry. but i think when you want to do this mission and for example remove some of the old satellites that are no longer working and they wait you know a few dogs that you know really big the missions are going to be more expensive in clearly you have to convince all the various the calders to fund these kind of missions i think is a similar thing like with the ocean everybody agrees yes it's a good idea to try to please but who's going to be free. and when the little little pika does come to

a fiery demise it'll look like any of the shooting star as it takes its final plunge into the atmosphere. of your screen goes dark no more tomorrow today your cell phones and sat nav don't work either without satellites every day life would be very different. there'd be no where the full costs with repercussions for fun is one way or another we need satellites pretty good at zero five yet i had a question about that. what's the usual distance between satellites. artificial satellites have been launched for more than sixty years and there are currently around two thousand of them orbiting the globe at different altitudes depending on the job they do. most are in low earth orbit or elio at altitudes of up to two thousand kilometers in the lower part of this region are

satellites that monitor the earth the international space station also orbits and. medium earth orbit or amnio accommodate satellites at distances of two thousand to thirty five thousand kilometers from mars this region of space is frequented by navigation satellites. but in. next level at just under thirty six thousand kilometers is for satellites in geostationary orbit satellites here follow the direction of the earth's rotation they're typically used for telecommunications including global television broadcasts each geostationary satellite is assigned to a box around a hundred kilometers wide the distance to the next box is around five hundred kilometers. geostationary satellites have a habit of drifting out of orbit due to factors such as the earth's uneven gravity distribution. geostationary satellite reaches the end of

its mission or has become redundant it can end up in a graveyard orbit this is located two to three hundred kilometers above its operational altitude. nonetheless the space junk that has accumulated over the decades remains a problem that is red white and. so you have a science question that you've always wanted answered it we're happy to help out send it to us as a video text over smell if we answer it on the show we'll send you a little surprise as a thank you can i just ask. you find as you dot com slash science or drop us a line at d. w. undisclosed site tech on facebook d w dot science. here on earth we also have a waste problem and plastics make up a big part of it. biodegradable plastic made from renewable resources could be

a sustainable i'll turn it off but that would also gobble up our natural resources a team of scientists might have found a solution. to my chicken. this fall my prairie in the swiss town. has been repurposed and now houses the plastics innovation competent center. director. has a ph d. in chemistry he worked in industry making plastics for more than thirty years now he wants to develop eco friendly tips. the new materials should be recyclable and bio based but they should not use corn or other food stuffs as a starting material. need to have. resources we can just continue to use up what is there. so this is not sustainable.

something that's widely available and usually just thrown away could prove to be part of the solution. chicken feathers eight million dollars. forty five million dollars locally that's the crowbar to make new plastics large volumes easy to achieve renewable biodegradable product for a circular called. colleagues have already come up with some potential products made from chicken feathers. we've made our first films out of the material and some of them are very flexible let's look at one. it's really like plastic film if you can pull and stretch. well now we want to see how we can

do it better and optimize the manufacturing process. of. the. chicken feathers are made up mainly of the protein keratin the rest is very. character and is also found in hair. nails. hormones and let's provide structural stability. keratin has both water repellent and water attracting properties making it ideal for use in all sorts of polymers. the feathers a ground up the fat is extracted in several steps using bio based chemicals. from feathers to carry ten pound. to plastic granular to a product that's not yet quite ready to market.

we can certainly use it as an as an ice cream but it will function also at very low temperature but at the moment this product is very flexible as you can see so it will not work perfectly so we need to optimize these properties and that's what we do research for. and if that works out then the humble chicken feather could end up helping to solve the world's plastic problem. let's hope it works we produce a staggering three hundred million tons of plastic every year. to give you an idea of how much that is if you loaded it all into a truck convoy that circled the planet three times over. we asked our facebook followers what do you do to reduce plastic waste. romeo doesn't use plastic bags or straws he takes bags with them when he goes shopping and tries to use paper or

other natural materials. such as dimitri avoids plastic water bottles and uses refillable and a million bottles instead it's a start at least. caution our c.d.o. feels that individuals can't make much of a difference and that it's up to governments to phase out the use of plastic. gladys chavez says that casting manufacturers should be regulated to reduce plastic production thanks for your comments. plastic is controversial but of course it's extremely versatile and no one scientists are hard at work developing bioplastics. architecture to do is looking for more sustainable raw material what if we could build our homes not with bricks or concrete but as of living growing plants.

would is one of the oldest building materials in the world. trees and certain other plants have a property that distinguishes them as a source of building materials they grow. in humid forests in northeast india tree roots have been trained intended sometimes over a period of centuries to form bridges they are living structures that. if you build a steel bridge in that climate it would soon rust and become unstable for its load capacity would decrease. but with the living roots you get the opposite effect it grows steadier bigger stronger and anywhere and ted is repaired by the new roots that grow. with. the idea of a living structure fascinates high kohan he's not a gardener but robotics expert and he heads

a project called flora robotic and. his team in lubec studies and develops symbiotic relationship between robots and plants here red and blue lights are set up to steer plants. the robotic sensing and control elements help produce living architectural structures. we're building. an autonomous system distributed robotic system that can independently change the direction plants grow and. no one had tried this before so we had to do a lot of the basics. to find out what kinds of sensors really work and how bright the ele delight's need to be. the assailant is sign we have to do a lot of technical engineering well to get it up and running. sensors measure distance to a plant its growth if it's supposed to change direction the light source moves.

blue light attracts the plant. by dosing the color the robotic elements control the direction in which a climbing plant grows. these braided structures are the basis for more complex architectural forms. the brains are created by robots as lightweight scaffolding on which the plants will later grow and take over. a special grading technique was developed for the project to enable plants to be deployed flexibly. india has lots of the idea is to make architecture with such a braided structures we can actually simulate anything we can build a classical rectangular house but we can also make roof structures. we can also change the properties of the material by getting the plants to grow through here to stiffen it. and that makes it interesting for architecture. and sun

for it to. develop sensors for floor robotics. they measure all the data that indicate how a plant is doing and what it needs carbon dioxide nutrients light. one surprising result of the research has been how sensitive plants are. they sense not only physical contact but even the wife in the room. and plants are surprisingly smart if they're exposed to moderately bright light and the sensor is connected to a kind of dema they will control their light supply on their own at. first nothing much happens the average value is fairly steady then after a certain time two or three days this average value starts to oscillate up and down . and the light varies between bright and the plant create its

own day night rhythm. one thing we discovered working on this project is that plants are capable of learning from experience. in lubec data from the sensors is fed into robots the more precisely the scientists can gauge of plants needs the more precisely they can control its growth. this swarm of tiny robots learns how much life is needed and look for places where the plants can get it. eventually they will act as guides for the plants showing them the way other robots will break climbing frames for them. on duncanson and they could interact with the plants leading them along a particular pathway of blue light. or giving them red light to keep them away from

darker place is simple to understand them and. the researchers have already developed concrete procedures using plant machine interactions but their green architecture remains a distant dream. i think it will take a couple of decades for us to get that far first we have to do the basics that's where we are now. we've done that the next step is to gradually develop a product and that'll take some time. when the time comes all the plants will need to do is grow. solar and wind energy is sustainable but not always available it needs to be stored what it tighter to and could help it's plentiful in water and in combine form in all living things now a team of researchers has found

a way to use it for energy storage. in much of the world when the lights go on at night the electricity that powers them comes from coal fired power plants but burning fossil fuels produces c o two which contributes to global warming. so why don't we get power from sunlight and wind there's lots of it and that's better for the climate. but there is a drawback it's dark when we turn the light on the sun has gone down and it might be windy but it might not be and. so we need to be able to store solar and wind energy and that can be a tricky business. these researchers are working on solutions.

basically there is enough energy in the world the sun supplies us with more energy than we even need for this energy isn't necessarily available at the right time and in the right place that means we need an efficient energy storage and transport solution and we found one that you. are losing from. but haven't the solutions been around for ages what about storage batteries well they don't have a lot of capacity even though they're big. a six hundred kilo battery intellectual vehicle can only store the energy equivalent of ten beaters of gasoline so what alternative energy carriers are there. is hydrogen is an excellent carrier because it can be regenerative lee obtained from water because it can then react with oxygen to form water so there's no carbon dioxide production and no damaging emissions miss on. the advantage of hydrogen is that it's clean

hydrogen gas produces only water vapor when it burns even so it hasn't been used for energy storage all that much because it takes up a lot of space. and. getting a hydrogen balloon down to a manageable size requires either enormous pressure or very low temperatures. that makes hydrogen a problematic potential energy carrier especially for use in cars. last. twenty. or. more in terms of mobility the future is liquid. all the fuels used in the field of mobility are liquid so we convert hydrogen into a liquid fuel. but the trick is to chemically react the hydrogen with another compound to make a liquid then it can be transported and stored as easily as gasoline or diesel. fuel. canisters tanks pipes tanker trucks rail wagons and ships.

sounds good but how do the three researches do it. they take hydrogen gas and use a chemical catalyst to help it react with a compound called dad bends all tunnelling for d.p.t. . isn't nontoxic liquid that binds large amounts of hydrogen. the hydrogen rich form of d.d.t. can be transported and pumped like gasoline but while gasoline is a hazardous material bands will tolerate is non-flammable. really extracting hydrogen in order to use it as fuel requires another catalyst a lot of research went into this the process was first tested on a small scale in the lab. the hydrogen was bound to the dive bands or tolerating them split off and channeled into a fuel cell to make electricity. now the process works on

a large scale in this outdoor container it can be deployed anywhere where there's excess energy to be stored as hydrogen hydrogen fuel is needed. the d.p.t. functions like a deposit bottle it can be filled up with hydrogen in places where there's lots of solar and wind energy available to make the hydrogen then it can be transported to wherever energy is needed the d.p.t. releases. hydrogen and is then available for another filling back where the sun is shining. and about sort of follows i'm confident that in future hydrogen will play a major role in our energy system and we will see global trade in renewable energy equivalents there will be hydrogen mobility i'm also confident the pound hydrogen which is what we are working on will also play a major role by nick was abolished. hydrogen tomorrow's energy carrier using today's infrastructure. that's it for

today next time we take a look at what's going on in the brain when you're having a lucid dream so when you're aware that you dream it it's a technique you can actually know with the help of virtual reality for example. that i'm more on the next edition of tomorrow today. from.

cigarettes are the latest trend but the long term health of facts are still unknown . you could call it the biggest field study that's taking place in the health care world babying at your own risk we asked the expert. on d w.

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. cots. snapping recipes for success strategy that made a difference. baking bread on d.w. . when the worst merchandising people fight for survival the money case i'll buy gifts for you but the budget when there's a flood of water comes up to our waste on your clothes fast that everyone needs to but. the lack of water is equally dangerous plays junk you can see people move south so they can plant crops and find food the same salmon. floods and droughts with climate change become the main driver of mass migration you can write any kind of peace not if you want and probably most of them will come from. the climate exodus starts in full thirty years on t w.

this is d w news live from the e.u. and brush and flow their ideas to rival cracks it extensions use donald tusk is proposing a flexible twelve month delay for the u.k. to leave the blog entries and maybe once a junior thirtieth deadline we will be weighing up the possibility as with our london and brussels correspondents also coming up fears of qana.