the western coast of south america would later be named after un exeunt often on board although it was known centuries before his expedition to the region. in the course of his climate studies rumbled noticed that at the coast of peru the pacific was around 7 degrees celsius colder than in the open ocean. as the cool masses of water flow up from the antarctic current north along south america they bring large quantities of oxygen with them. but that was. one of the most important features of the cold currents is that they generate an extremely rich ecosystem in the region here we find extraordinarily high concentrations of marine life that are typical for these waters compared with other latitudes these waters boast of a far higher degree of biodiversity which makes them very important. that we know they've got to get from point one but at the.

truth flown bastar works for peru's in marbury marine institute. here in new product as national reserve he examines the influence of the rumbold current on plant and animal life divers need to don think with suits to go exploring underwater here and his work is not made easier by the strong current. the upwellings zones in their own boat current bring an abundance of nutrients to the surface in the process supplying food for fish and marine mammals the current is an ideal environment for algae. farm about a bit and for most of the algae growing in this region it has adapted extremely well to the cold environment let me think. that the what should be algae constitute a very. important own enjoyment of the overall biological cycle and that. a lot of

organisms feed off that. so where you find a healthy algae population you also find a high diversity of other species. but biodiversity in and along the i'm bored current has made peru's coastal waters one of the world's richest sources of fish. for centuries the country offered hugely lucrative grounds for fishers but more recently they've noticed a significant reduction in their catches and it's the operators of smaller fishing boats like captain mario decreases by about who are struggling the most. just look. we've been out here for over 2 hours and we haven't got a single fish. step in the. oh you know i thought the faces

they used to be so much more to catch in this region until the big boats arrived a lot of them got a consonance i. don't know yet what i would and they tell all the smaller species that fish with their trawler gnats. there's nothing left for us here on earth because because we have to go further out to sea. to ruses and you will fishing all amounts to $7000000.00 tons that's over 10 percent of the global catch overfishing by high tech commercial fleets from all over the world is a threat to the ecosystem and it's already making an impact on people's livelihoods . in the once prosperous port city of biter many boats have been left stranded by developments with unemployment rising

one of the few options for making a living as a job on one of the foreign trawlers. how much longer can local fishermen survive. in the peruvian company lima the country's national marine institute is projecting the future development of the ecosystem in the homeworld current. in addition to keeping count of fish stocks but scientists here also monitor the quality of the sea water and how it has been declining due to climate change. among their observations but humble its current know it contains less oxygen and is becoming increasingly acidified due to the. i level is of carbon dioxide.

one object of their research is only visible under the microscope a drop of water can contain up to a 1000 plankton organisms seen here during the metamorphosis of lava into juveniles plankton provides food for many marine creatures and is indispensable for the well being of the sea. let me stop it but i'm willing to enter organisms that benefit production and propagation in other food chains and they're also very sensitive to change as a result of the low oxygen content the acidification of the oceans and the growing pollution of our coasts organisms that are unable to adapt quickly enough are dying and we're seeing this right now with plankton. it's a picture far removed from the paradise of biodiversity that under xander for and on boarding card on the peruvian goes on much more human intervention going

overseas cope with. it got me aside and i thought the future is definitely in our hands it ought to be obvious to us humans as intelligent beings that if we want to have a flourishing ecosystem it's up to us to start keeping it healthy. which i don't like the. saying a lot of people still don't seem to realize that the contamination we subject our coasts and oceans to is being further exhilarated by climate change. at the court. but we still hope to be able to reverse it or that they will have better from. that i mean at the. ecosystems are just dreamy diverse and

dynamic. so maybe we will manage to see a major recuperating with a guy like despite all the interference. and adapt to those changes that in the field i was fucked up. the humbugs current home to boundless life is a cool. of the sterile desert on the land beside it it seems like a paradox but the current cools the coast and keeps it dry while generating fog that passes overhead that's now proving to be a fantastic resource we meet the cloud catches of through. thick fog makes apple crease happy. that the fog passes this way and then that catches at. them then we know you're in the

air through the tiny drops of water remain behind begad or at the bottom and pass down the tube to the tank. over so that all this water means life with this system we're solving the water shortage problem in many places and much of look at this he came up with the idea almost 2 decades ago he was studying engineering in lima at the time. there was a fence of plastic netting around his home one for the evening he noticed this phenomenon and realised it could be put to good use. but there were lots of drops gathered at the bottom of the net especially when the wind came from the east so i collected them in a trough on to the nets and fed the water into tanks the next morning the tanks were full of crystal clear water. color supporter grows oranges avocados and grapes

. he's delighted to be able to do so in a region where there's no rain talking in southern peru. the area gates's cross with water captured from the clouds. and then you look at it it's foggy most of the time up on the mountain if we had 2 or $300.00 cloud catcher nets up there my neighbors and i would have a lot more water we would all benefit. almost the entire length of perris 2400 kilometer coast is doesn't. about 10000000 people a 3rd of the country's population don't have access to a secure supply of drinking water. or cloud catches has been set out in the desert near the town of. more than $100.00 families have said. and they need affordable clean water. if the thought up on the

cloud catches the model we use here cost the equivalent of $70.00 to $90.00 euros each. of us the sauna. a 20 square meter nets can yield as much as 200 liters of water a day. it makes watering the vegetable patch a fun job today. when mr goose put up the mess i decided to stay. i had wanted to leave because my olive trees were all dried out then i saw the water and i changed my mind him again. now can read various proud of his olive harvest given that no burger was not abuse of the 1st we're going to eat them ourselves for when we have more we'll sell them i mean you know. it's poverty and the dream of having one's own plots of land that

drive people to move into the does it. during the focus to have access to water but what happens in summer from december to march when there's almost no fall the settlers a planning a reservoir for folk water so they won't have to buy so much. that you can talk no one call us apart as plot. about chris and colleagues from the peruvians without water project checking the direction of the wind to ensure the nets are in the right position. cruz has given lectures at universities and won awards around the world for his pioneering work he's determined to help more poor communities in dry regions look at their most what do plants need to grow is arid enough they need water and we get it from the clouds and it's free the families here don't even have enough to eat they can't afford to buy water feeling insecure

but our. crew says satter over a 1000 fold catches in peru with more planned until everyone who needs to capture clout. consider a standard drop of water like the one used in metz and 500 other 1000000 gram. it contains 56 trillion asked him that 5 with 210 s. there were 2 hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom in every borson molecule our viewer khalifah keys has a question about all this. what is an atom. everything around us everything we can see feel smell or taste is made up of atoms and of course we are 2. terms are the building blocks of matter. the terms and their special arrangement give matter

its properties such as consistency and color. the way we think about atoms today is largely influenced by physicists niels bohr's model according to which electrons orbit the atoms nucleus. a bit like planets orbiting the sun. was better can't be seen with the naked eye the fitness of a human hair. that is $500000.00 times the diameter of a carbon atom. in the center of the atom is a tiny nucleus containing neutrons which have no electric charge and protons which have a positive charge. 2 the electrons orbiting outside it are negatively charged the only out of not to have any neutrons is hydrogen it

consists of one proton and one electron. just as stars have different numbers of planets orbiting the atomic nuclei have different numbers of electrons in orbit. in the neutrally charged atom the number of electrons equals the number of protons. and the number of protons determines the chemical elements so far we know of 118 and many of their properties are displayed in what's known as the periodic table of the elements. if outlet is red white platinum even if you. do you have a science question that you've always wanted answered we're happy to help you out send it to us as a video text ovoid smell if we answer it on the show we'll send you a little surprise as a thank you can i just ask. to find as i did have you dot

com slash science or drop us a line at d w underscore site tech on facebook d w dot science. if you put a specific extremely large number of silicon atoms together to create a sphere of a certain size it will weigh exactly one kilogram scientists have succeeded in doing that and why to define what a kilogram is in terms of a natural constant in this case the avodart are a constant. it's a way to check the accuracy of another new definition in terms of the planck constant this has really. simply been adopted as the official definition of world wide difficult stuff but it is important anyway to take the measure of things. it's a weighty matter welcomed the new kilogram we now take a look at a project based on that new official definition. since 2017 thomas and his team at the technical university. have been working on

a new set of scales together with germany's national maturity institute they've developed 2 prototypes based on the new definition of the kilogram. for 130 years a metal cylinder in paris was the world's benchmark of the kilogram but not anymore to skew common. the kilogram was the last remaining unit based on a physical object a piece of metal and all other units are based on constants of nature. and beauty not of me and that's which because of this redefinition weights are no longer derived from the international prototype kilogram stored in a safe in paris. of use. instead they're derived from a fundamental constant constant but 1st things 1st.

in the past all weights used to calibrate scales worldwide whether it was in pharmaceutical companies biotech labs or supermarkets all derived from a platinum iridium cylinder located just outside paris stored securely under 3 glance bell jars the extremely precious object was kept in the safe of the international bureau of whites and measures from $889.00 until this year it was the defining unit of mass worldwide but for some unknown reason the paris kilogram decreased in weight by 15000000. of a gram so scientists decided to take action in a historic move they redefined the kilogram. this time they're not using a metal object but a constant of nature the planck constant denoted by a small age described for the 1st time by max planck around one.