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tv   Faith Matters  Deutsche Welle  May 3, 2021 9:30am-10:01am CEST

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don't look to me. to be a good. discovery go. subscribe to documentary. running on hydrogen it's not science fiction but real. fuel cells can power vehicles and he tones without emitting any c o 2 greenhouse gas at point of use. could this help solve the climate crisis. we'll take a closer look on today's program. hello
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and welcome to tomorrow today the science show on d w. $766.00 of the discovery of the elements. in 838 the idea of the hydrogen oxygen fuel cell was formulated sine 5 writer jules verne's speculated water will be the coal of the future. but progress was slow fuel cells as a source of electric energy just didn't catch on. but they were used in the apollo missions to the moon many saw the technology as too dangerous and too expensive. but over the past decade interest in the energy source has sought. and germany wants to lead the way in the world of high.
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hydrogen is ever present in our daily lives it's a basic building block of plastics chemical fertilizers and paints it's an ingredient in laundry detergent even chewing gum contains hydrogen. and it's found in skincare products and alcohol. like hydrogen is the lightest element and the most abundant it's very important for the chemical industry and for industry in general. on earth hydrogen is mainly in pound form h 2 o. our water for example consists of 2 hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom in its pure form h 2 hydrogen is an invisible non toxic gas. and
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it has a lot of potential a liter of hydrogen contains 3 times as much energy as a meter of gasoline. and hydrogen does not pollute when it's burnt. fine there is a catch. the bus will go to get pure age to a huge amount of energy is required to produce the necessary chemical reaction here wolf will be working. currently extracting pure hydrogen creates a lot of environmental pollution as it requires the use of natural gas in a process called steam reforming. natural gas c h 4 this mixed with steam and separates at $500.00 degrees celsius and to water c o 2 and h 2. this process uses energy derived from fossil fuels.
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hydrogen extracted this way is called grain hydrogen because it releases a lot of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. because of this mud with $60000000.00 tons of hydrogen are extracted each year that means $600000000.00 tons of c o 2 more than one percent of anthropogenic c o 2 in the atmosphere comes from extracting hydrogen. bill. gray hydrogen is no miracle weapon in the fight against climate change caused by human activity energy expert. explains why the industry still uses the natural gas method of extracting hydrogen. hydrogen is needed for industrial processes manufacturers want to cheap so natural gas is used. cheap but dirty that's why german chemicals group b.s.f. is researching how to extract hydrogen from natural gas without creating any greenhouse
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gas as a byproduct the project is financed by the german government. me thing pyrolysis works instead of c o 2 pure carbon is produced during hydrogen extraction. but it actually comes out like this as little grains that are very pure ordinary carbon in the form of coal here there's nothing mixed in that we wouldn't want like sulfur goes with you know . this carbon can be used in batteries or in the steel industry the process works on a small scale but there's a long road ahead until it can be used in large scale industrial production. so alternatives are needed but there's also blue and green hydrogen. the german government is counting on them but what are they. blue hydrogen is produced just like hydrogen but the polluting c o 2 doesn't end up in the atmosphere instead it's sequestered underground but such
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storage facilities don't exist in germany. green hydrogen offers the cleanest solution no natural gas is needed to produce it instead water is used. energy is used to split water into its components oxygen and hydrogen. the method is called electrolysis. the german government has high hopes for green hydrogen it could be used in hydrogen powered trucks in a clean heavy industry that runs on hydrogen thanks to wind and solar parks and ships that sail and airplanes that fly without emissions but green hydrogen has a drawback. about as good if there's one really inherent disadvantage a huge amount of energy needs to be expended to extract the hydrogen $56.00 times
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as much energy it has to be sustainable and that's the challenge with electrolysis because these are more sustainable energy for use and hydrogen extraction could be generated if there were a massive expansion of wind parks but forgot fashioning says that alone won't do. ya my business we've already gone some way and shifting to renewables but the share of renewables in the energy mix is just 15 percent in germany at the current rate we need another 100 to 200 years we have to quadruple or quintuple what we're doing now and we know that solar and wind energy production rates vary. if germany were to massively expand renewables it could produce enough green hydrogen but that would probably mean lots of wind turbines near residential areas the government wants to import green hydrogen from sunny continents such as africa or australia but that too would be problematic. to for each individual stage and each kilometer of transport causes losses if you transport hydrogen by
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ship the ship would need fuel so again you'd lose some of the energy that we also know that importing is expensive so it's unrealistic it would be $3.00 to $4.00 times as expensive as if we were to make it efficiently here in germany. so only if there is a massive expansion of renewable energy production will the world one day be able to run on green hydrogen. switching to renewables and slashing c o 2 emissions is crucial. the effects of climate change are already being felt in many parts of the world. for example in india the region of logic is a high tech toad in the himalayas it's one of the driest places on earth as dry as the sahara. the mountains keep monsoon rains away and climate change
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is making the situation even worse an indian engineer has come up with a clever way to make more water available to local people. this is not a remnant of a melted plain c.-a it's an artificial reservoir shaped like a buddhist sanctuary a stupor may devise the idea was conceived by so now i'm one chuck an engineer from ludacris in northwestern india. is our ships which have a minimal surface area for the you so the sun cannot melted as quickly as it does it is under flat ice and therefore it melts slowly as the summer approaches and as it melts it gives its water to the farmers. let's back is famous for the world's highest altitude cold deficit in a region which gets only between 50 and 100 millimeters of rainfall annually the glaziers have been a life source for ages. they provide water for the cities.
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and for the farmers as well. but due to climate change almost 20 percent of the glaciers in the area have been lost in the last 50 years although the clay sea is a melting in summer there is still water scarcity cheering certain months. what many people don't understand for farmers the challenge of water is only in springtime if tell me which is when they need water and which is when the glaciers are still not warm enough there so they don't melt. a wooden scaffold serves as a skeleton for the ice stupor in winter scarce melt water from the mountains is transported in underground pipes to lower regions due to the difference in pressure
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it shoots up all by itself. and the minus the air will extract the heat in the water and then it falls down and freezes in the ship and the beauty is that you don't need machines are pumps or electricity or fuse or pollution none of that it's all gravity simple pipes. it's summer now this stupor is 5 months old built by the inhabitants of a nearby village originally it held over 15000000 liters of water. about 50000 liters melt daily. with the water flowing from the ice stupor the village in the valley has enough water available for the tiny irrigation of the fields. so now i'm one church is co-founder of the students educational and cultural movement sect model because
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the young people will one day have a say in the fate of the region they need to know how the stupors help the farmers however in the long run artificial glaciers are only a makeshift solution. i stupors are not just method of making water but it is also a message from the mountain people to the people in big cities of the world it is equally important that you in the big sea. everything to get climate change and. my message is that. simply in the big cities off the word so that we in the mountains can live. there and now about 25 i stoop is in the region to create them needed just a leap of the imagination what's needed now is change on a global scale. and
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animals grow bigger and bigger. and then they just stop but why is that. that is going past one of our view is. growing once they're adults why do people reach a certain size and stop growing. it's about 50 centimeters in length. girls tend to stop growing by 15 and reach an average height of 1.63 meters. grow until they're 17 and then average 1.74 meters. those bones grow in length people. you can estimate the. bones and will eventually be.
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at birth. $300.00 bones most of which are songs. that many grow together. just 206 bones and they're hard. and hard.
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it's. very. measured. if outlet is red white rather than anything. do you have a science question you'd like us to answer. then send it in. if we featured on the show will even send you a little surprise as a thank you you can send us a video text ovoid smell come on just us. you can find more
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interesting science stories at d.w. dot com slash science and another 20 feet. fluids moore said we all need a steady supply. without most said we wouldn't survive more than 3 or 4 days. if we get dehydrated say by running around the bodies things us a warning message we get thirsty we need to drink more said. but what's the big deal about water anyway. it's abundant on our planet a molecule made up of 2 hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom h 2 o. water most of which is in the earth's oceans. but on land just as it travels along rivers and streams that flows through our veins here everything
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appears dry but thousands of liters of water are hidden inside of people. though it can't be seen with the naked eye each human being is comprised on average of 65 percent water. babies are closer to 80 percent water as we age the share of water in us declines dipping to as low as about 50 percent among the most elderly. still that's a lot of water. we each carry on average 45 liters of the stuff. water gives shape to our body. blow. cells are full of it too. without it they would shrivel. still the same is true of our muscles. they trink 70 percent without water. as for the brain it's made of up to 70 percent water as well.
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it's hard to imagine how humans would look without water. the water in our bodies fulfills a whole range of functions. it's a transport medium for other substances. we're riddled with a network of channels the blood vessels. blood to is more than 80 percent water with all kinds of stuff swimming in it such as immune cells and red blood cells which transport vital oxygen and reach every last corner of the body. water also helps clear out things the body no longer needs access your area for example. the kidneys filter waste products there flushed out in water. it makes up the bulk of urine. which gathers in the bladder then we eliminated about a leader and a half
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a day. so we need regular refills of water. we tend to drink fluids several times a day. water also functions in many chemical reactions and as a solvent. important substances such as salts are only available to the body when dissolved in water. many of them derive from the food we eat. all around the body h 2 o. is integrated or transformed into other substances. countless reactions occur every 2nd. our entire metabolism depends on water. and it has at least one more important function especially but not only when it's hot as a coolant. when we get too hot sweat emerges from pores in the skin.
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the water in it evaporates the transition from fluid to vapor takes a lot of energy and that energy is in the form of excess body heat. perspiration is a key regulator of body temperature. we would be nothing without water. all the other creatures we share the planet with needed to. there are more than 300 downs in germany. there used for hydroelectric plants to prevent flooding and to store that can be filtered and delivered as drinking water into our homes. but dams can cause problems downstream such as in the river dune in western germany where the fish are none too happy. the water of the dune is clean but colds biologist money and even skin don't have
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colleagues here to check on the fish how are they doing any better than the year before. the researches countermeasure fish they 1st briefly stung with an electric current from a battery in their sampling. thank you over 323 grayling 253. head 65. thank. you. if. they want to they didn't want to be measured. a specimen of another species makes an appearance to the delight of doc to leave and a young age. did not mark in normal bodies of water you find hundreds it's nothing special but here it's unusual because they've gone missing i
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think. that holds true for other species as well in the dewan the reason is to be found up stream at the dam and in the huge reservoir behind it the 2nd biggest in germany. one problem is that migrate to re fish can't get past the 63 metre told barrier. another goes somewhat deeper water is continuously released from the down into feed the river downstream for decades it was drawn from the bottom of the reservoir where it is between $4.00 and $6.00 degrees celsius all year long so the river downstream was also always chilly given the uncertainty all the animals and plants in the water are cold blooded that means they're the same temperature as the water but there are fish that can thrive in cold water they just don't grow they might lay eggs but that's it nothing happens. so all the creatures that like some of warmth have disappeared here.
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barbells and shabbes loaches and minnows which should by rights all be here. to find the rights. to make the din more hospitable to fish the regional water also richie the book of a band launched a project that is the only one of its kind in europe thorsten look is an engineer who works for the also writing and. we measure the temperature of the water entering the reservoir. devices on the water extraction tower also measure the temperature at various depths in the reservoir so we can determine at what depth the temperature is the same as that of the water flowing into the reservoir fruitful for us. say water enters it 18 degrees in summer then the water discharge downstream should also be 18 degrees but the debt set which the water in the reservoir is at that temperature keeps changing as the water level rises and
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falls so the engineers devise to pivoting pipe and detached it to the tower it extracts water at just the right level it's 9 meters long and went into operation in 2015. thorsten not to make sure the mouth of the pipe is always at the right depth so the temperature of the water discharge downstream matches that of the intake into the reservoir. has this actually been good for fish leave a skinned and her team regularly review video and data from a device called a river what shift fish counter they installed downstream from the dam fish heading in either direction have to pass through this channel. for the please me most was to spot a seal lamprey because they're very rare they're big 2 and you hardly ever see any . but of course i'm happy about any plump salmon who comes up here.
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salmon are definitely something special they represent our greatest success so far after we installed the fish counter we had one salmon the 1st year and 51114 and last year 24 i'm quite sure it's thanks to the pipe in the reservoir salmon are happiest in water the 16 degrees the water discharge from the reservoir used to be just 8 degrees in the summer so obviously that wouldn't go well. to go. things may certainly be looking up but there's more to be done. they've done some damage leave all the animals that like it warm vanish from the system over a quarter of a century if you might say it's an arduous task to get them to come back up the river from its mouth they have to get the message oh here's an ecological niche for us and it's not occupied and it's cozy and warm let's go and settle there. the country solvency to. leave
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a skin says it could take another decade till the din is once again home to all its rightful residents. that's all for now from tomorrow today. with forward to seeing you next week for another fascinating additional bassline show until then good bye.
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the. suicide right germs to get into domestic violence and racism. question to beheadings to come the rape of a babysitter i think angela. was. playing a western way consume
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and you public service media are supporting the world's press freedom day. media and an initiative of being broadcast. the fight against the corona virus pandemic. has the rate of infection been developing . measures are being taken. what does the latest research say. information and context. the coronavirus of the code special monday to friday john w. .
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this is live from berlin and scientists in india accuse the government of ignoring warnings over deadly new coronavirus parents and visors blame politicians failure for the devastating 2nd wave of coated 19th now overwhelming the health system. also coming up giving a voice to the voiceless.