innovation. but can it conquer the major issues of our society. the 3rd season of founders telling thank you petroleum modern day heroes in asia. ready to take on this challenge with their unique idea to look at those 2 problems and make them one solution. the. founders valley the june 13th on g.w. . global energy consumption rises every year many people's biological rhythms are no longer in sync with day and night but more with artificial light what does that mean for us energy demands also to keep the natural resources renewable energies could help more if they were more efficient one idea is to use lenses to focus on light more precisely on the solar cells in the panel.

welcome to tomorrow today the science show on the d.w. . stuff how do solar cells actually was so missiles are mainly composed of silicone. silicon asms have full electrons in their outer shell and unstable but then the cynical misplaced into 2 layers. los reyes is mixed into one leg it has 5 electrons in its outer shell one too many which can orbit for. the 2nd layer is mixed with go wrong which has only 3 out electrons one to feel. that means the layer has gaps which attract the excess phosphorus electrons this creates a flow of negatively charged electrons from one leg to the other one layer loses in . trans and becomes positive the other gains electrons and becomes negative

creating 2. eventually all the gaps on the surface of the layers are occupied the holes and the electrons are now too far apart to migrate them with the sun comes in when some light hits the surface layer splits off one electron making a hole under so close election. the electron is attracted to the positive and the homeschools another electron from another down to replace the one longs which in turn is split off and so on. the electrons which have the arrived at the positive pole return via wire to the negative pole that's an electric current. and it flows as long as the sun shines. if solar energy is to enable commercial aviation and satisfy our electricity needs in the future then there's still a lot of work to be done. research is

forging ahead. florian galusha's come up with a new method of extracting even more power from sunlight. but. what we've done instead of using normal silicon solar cells which have a maximum laboratory efficiency of 26 to 27 percent is to use somewhat more exotic cells their maximum lab efficiency is over 47 percent but they're expensive and above his expensive solar super cells yellowish months a panel of lenses each of which focuses sunlight on an individual cell throughout the day that boosts efficiency to 29 percent in real life conditions. the main challenge is making sure the light actually hits the cell if it doesn't and it won't produce any energy at all. in gaelic celebratory. we get

an idea of how it works he uses a model to show how the lenses function each lens in the top panel focuses the sunlight on an exactly defined radius covering a super cell. because those cells are tiny barely one millimeter across. we use about $10000.00 cells per square meter and each has to have a high degree of tolerance. but now it's time for the engineers to put the lab behind them. right now we're still almost sticking everything together by hand but now the important step is going from the lab to mass production how can i produce a month every couple of minutes using machinery that's the really huge leap we're about to take that will fit in the us now from. the european union is giving insulate almost 3000000 euros from its advent solar cell fund expensive science but

worth it. including installation ourselves or about 20 percent more expensive but they produce 50 percent more energy to. improve his asian of solar energy is one thing but it's also highly dependent on the weather it only makes sense when electricity storage facilities have been improved. lithium ion batteries are the standard today but scientists at switzerland's materials testing and research institute show us how dangerous they can be if the lithium ion cells insulation is compromised and the terminals come into contact with metallic objects such as coins the result can be disastrous. thanks. to stabilizing the electrolytes involves a highly concentrated salt solution. the swiss researchers have developed

a highly solar that only needs a few drops of water here seen in fast motion to function as a more conductive but much safer electrolyte in lithium ion batteries. that kind of storage battery would be enormously useful for storing solar energy in people cellars other very large batteries. to bridge the nighttime gap as well as bad weather. batteries are the ideal solution for delaying energy consumption for a few minutes. solar energy for days or the night time in future we could be storing it in less volatile batteries and we have today. it's energy that could become abundantly available thanks to a new generation of panels to collect it.

ideally we wouldn't use any and it's years old that's the idea behind the ancient dream of the pixel motion a machine that moves without any energy source but the lowest of physics teach us that's not possible i can't eat everything up and simply hope the biscuit tin will itself if i use energy i have to replace it on the other hand and a craft without an engine that might just wanna. leave phoenix looks like an airship but it's actually an airplane or to be precise and unmanned aerial vehicle. it's just a prototype the wings and tail will be added shortly we joined the team amid preparations for the 1st test flight. the researchers have chosen a huge building for their 1st attempt to get phoenix into the air a tense moment for its inventors. scientists from

various universities and companies in britain spent 3 years working on phoenix. aerodynamics professor andrew ray as of the team. says. the goal was to build an aircraft that could propel itself without the need for an engine. has been around for an awful long time my 150 years and it's used underwater for remotely operated vehicles so there are various things called gliders that are used underwater for surviving but nobody's made it work in air before because there is a 1000 times less dense and more so that the physical process is more complicated phoenix is filled with helium the material for the outer hull had to be developed specially it needed to be light. weight but dense enough to prevent the tiny helium molecules from seeping through. the wings are made of lightweight carbon fiber

both the wings and tail carry solar panels to provide the plane with power some is stored in batteries meaning phoenix can also fly at night. this is phoenix in its fully assembled state the aircraft will likely be used as an atmospheric satellite satellite either for telecommunications or for things like land surveillance after natural disasters to see where help is most needed one of the possibilities is as a suit our satellites are being able to do surveillance and monitoring and it would fly at 20000 meters. 20000 meters because that's where the weather is most benign the winds are much lower than they are on the surface phoenix's 15 meters long and weighs just 120 kilos without the helium. that means it requires very little power and. it's huge advantage is that because it has no engine it doesn't need to carry

any fuel that means it can remain airborne for weeks or months at a time. the mix is also relatively cheap to manufacture. it's propelled by what's known as variable buoyancy propulsion this is how it works. and is lighter than air and therefore pulls the aircraft up towards the underside is equipped with 2 compressors which draw in air from outside and compress it filling a bag inside the aircraft. that makes the plane heavier causing it to sink again. the air is then pumped out making the aircraft lighter and causing it to rise again this ability to bleed as it were moving up and down combines with them. it's generated on its wings to move it forward. half the time phoenix it's heavier than air like an airplane. the other half it's lighter than air like

a balloon. the model has been through countless tests in wind tunnels. andrew ray is responsible for the aerodynamics and elements he's keen to improve further tests. using lasers and smoke his team is able to show how the air flows around the model. they needed to establish the most efficient design to allow the aircraft to maximize the use of its kinetic energy is still here. after 3 years of development the prototype was ready for its 1st test flight. and it was a success phoenix flew in waves down the 120 metre long hangar exactly as it was

designed to do. we were all presently surprised that it worked as well as it did. we initially had hoped to. do one series of tests where was like the narrow one had to navigate through so well to begin with that we were able to do multiple transitions between the 2 when it flew forward repeatedly during the flight systems work is now underway to build the next prototype it's set to be 4 times as long this phoenix and capable of flying at the target altitude of 20000 meters. the earth is by night covered by a right of tiny luminous dots it could be beautiful in another. context electric light does make modern life possible independent from the 24 hour a day night rhythm what a freedom but also what

a catastrophe it confuses the environment and least and too much time in us official ice and not enough in essential sunlight time for an experiment. these 3 people are exposed to different levels of light during their day boss john works in an office which means spending long hours in artificial light. thomas is a goat herd and is mostly outdoors. then there is 19. a doctor who works as a surgeon in a hospital and she works at night when her body is telling her it's dark and time to go to bed. we equip our test subjects with a special device that measures the brightness and composition of the light they're

exposed to. and then we track them around the clock for a week. we want to know how much and what type of like our test subjects are exposed to and when. sleep researcher alfred riata and light expert because it analyze the results. what will they show how much like to our subjects received at what time of day. to a mouse the goat herders tends to be out in the open with natural like the lord even in gloomy weather he's subject to several 1000 locks per day. after sundown he manages without a television or mobile phone which both emit a lot of blue light and are disruptive. this shows the amount of natural light thomas is exposed to over the course of several days in the. mall going.

site there's a very high a luminance in the morning and around noon up to $7000.00 lux dollars and looks on and in the afternoon it drops significantly. around 100 lux or lowered looks on need. and at night the light exposure is reduced to an absolute minimum of absolute minimum they don't see it in accordance with their natural day jeanette rhythm effects the stock knocked over at most and pushed. bastions case the g. takes place almost exclusively indoors despite having large windows he always turns on the light but artificial light is usually very weak whereas goat heard traumas can reach 7000 lux bastions level is just 220 bus general so spends most of his evenings in front of a t.v. or computer screen in addition to being low light the emit primarily blue light

this lowers the wake sleep regulating hormone melatonin and reverses his inner rhythm essentially turning back his biological clock and the result for us john is this modest hour by hour exposure to light on a typical working day there and not have to cut in but while working in the office we have 200 to 220 lux which is far short of daylight light and found that. what we notice is that he still has a relatively high illuminance after work until he goes to bed. who are. hot this so and that he definitely has a negative effect on his sleep wake behavior and. it's they got to 5 was. not deemed as a doctor who likewise works with little light most of it artificial. and sometimes with practically none. under come i'm just arrived for

a night shift saturday night which no one likes to see but i'm not properly rested even after. we finish. but she needs to be wide awake not least when stitching up a wound at 1 am. the surgery room light is particularly strong which helps right now but for her biological clock it's unnatural outside of course it's dark. and if she's lucky and it's a quiet night nadine will be able to take a break and catch up on her sleep. but it's only a matter of time until she's called to the next patient which means getting up again pronto. soon enough to 50 even so my night shift is over and my colleague is now taking over for the daytime shift as a bitch to try i'm to feel that you can't really look forward to going home when you know you'll be back again this evening might it was. and this is what her light

exposure chart looks like. in the. tongan come on for the 1st 3 days you can see a relatively good day night rhythm after that her night shifts begin. and then there's no dana rhythm at all as far as light exposure is concerned the least exposed it's on their own and she's more or less exposed to continuous lighting. and that constant light is anything but natural. her biological clock has no means of orientation. in order to reset her clock back to normal she needs jail right in the morning between 8 and noon a time of day where our 3 subjects differ substantially in exposure. look blue line shows the light on a typical morning for office worker boss john read is that of dr 19 and green go to

her tomas whose exposure is 10 times higher in those crucial morning hours. so how can the office worker and doctor get more like. we'll have the solution for you in a moment but 1st of all we are asked how much you have to resign an artificial light and if you have strategies for avoiding too much of it. brown says they don't have too much artificial light in nigeria so they don't really depend on it. rising from columbia mo said tells us it really makes the set that light pollution means she can see the greatest show on earth the milky way it's like a cascade of diamonds spotting in the sky. and factor tells us that pakistan's rule areas have barely any artificial light at night the people there are healthier than city people they're also very strong

emotional they stay calm laurie lettuce and mostly smile thanks for writing in. even if in some regions night time still looks like night time the world as a whole has been getting brighter which simply. many professions are rescheduling work to have and i have a nice song only work at night but how can you stay healthy despite that. fact tell it daylight experiments. tomas spends most of his days outdoors so he gets plenty of natural light in the evenings he tends to avoid screens their blue spectrum output he's just fine but bastions office job means he has a serious light deficit problem and not just because his office is too dark. an office worker circadian rhythms are completely disrupted and we should try to adjust his

biological clock. so he'll be more capable and alert in the morning and the highest for boss john that means 1st thing in the morning it's out into the fresh air and natural jay light not exactly a grueling task skipping one stop on the subway into work is all it takes. we also install a standard daylight lamp on his desk for him to use during the morning that way he's getting 2000 lux even in the office. and in the evening a book is always better than a screen. measurements show just how even a smartphone can influence our sleep patterns normal displayed light is dominated by the blue spectrum that suppresses melatonin the hormone that steers our weak sleep rhythm however many smartphones now feature a filter called night shift it cuts down the blue spectrum component sharply

damage come on all it lets you use your smartphone at night an equal amount feeling guilty about disrupting your sleep the stuff they start out. but others do this is the time to say something but with the daylight lamp in the grokking in broad daylight i've got a feeling that i get tired very much earlier at night and want to go to sleep. on shuffle given it gets on my nerves a bit because i like to stay up late. you know. what i don't feel like i'm struggling to get through the day like i used to before this whole experiment hobbesian issue d. just few does it instead and quite often much more alert the. hospital doctor 19 really gets much daylight and her night shifts go counter to her biological clock adrenalin is what keeps showing markedly awake at work. to feel

she's doing a lot right she's limited by her night shifts of course what is important is that she at least grabs whatever sleep she can when on shift. the sleep experts offer her another suggestion after a night shift should try specially colored glasses which filter out that studies are melatonin level and she'll sleep easier when she gets home the experiments outcome is that the most important thing is to get a lot of natural daylight preferably in the morning that way the biological clock settles into its natural rhythm and also to try to go without screens in the evening and if night chips are a must then only a few of them at a time grouped together a well maintained biological clock never needs reminding. so some lines is best that much we know it also helps us to produce this mental essential for both development and also said to boost the immune system but getting the right

amount of sunlight is important too much heavey nice and healthy the world long ago adapted to the sun's 24 hour over that it's regulated human life for thousands of years but how did it come the balance amos from zambia wanted to know. how was the sun created. it's been burning away for over 4 and a half 1000000000 years and it's not even high. through its projected life span. one in which human history is just the blink of an eye. but while we may be just a transitory moment in cosmic terms we are at least able to study the life cycle of the sun. our galaxy is home to billions of other stars like it.

space telescopes have given astronomers a closer look at how stars evolve. our own son was born from a cloud of gas and dust over the course of millions of years. it's a magical process reproduced here on a computer. this cloud of dust contains regions of denser gas like pearls on a necklace. the astral embryos that emerge there continue growing until they have sufficient mass to ignite the sun spire. if outlet is red why of it but even if it. does you have a science question that you've always wanted on thing that we happy to help out send it to us as a video text over a smell if we answer it on the show one thing you are a little surprised as

a thank you can i just ask. you to like to see more science stories then visit albert science or one of us on twitter on facebook. that's all from tomorrow today for this week next time we'll be looking at the power of thought we'll be able to operate machines just by thinking the 1st models are being tested more on that next week see them.

the big. blue. the big. lots of homeless people come out be seen on the streets of. in tokyo love the 1000 people used to spend their nights in internet cafes. among you keep but then the cafes have to close because of the coronavirus. someone comes in how

to find a global 3000. and 30 minutes on d w. the global corona crisis you can find more information online at g.w. dot com and on t.w. social media channels on. the bus. crash in the drama. competition drive marketing numbers. by intuition hate money millionaire crime stats and. old. slow. play golf on you tube joining us.

a meal. all complicit in season on the glitz the back environment still about society it's still about our split off planet on the brink spoke to several leading experts in the face. just. a little sense. when the risers cities will sink into the sea. entire stretches of land will be abandoned. when the water. stopped it's happening faster than anticipated. and necessary are supposed to prevent flooding but they only delay the inevitable end how will we

live in the future place 66 mean sea levels starts to slip on d w. play . play. play. this is news live from berlin and another night of protests and unrest in the u.s. . her. credit. demonstrations and widespread looting in a number of american cities following the death of george floyd in police custody. in minneapolis a truck drives through a crowd of protesters was a deliberate.