oh, what's it state for the world when americans elect a new congress as us democracy faces, yet another stress test? we're here to renew the latest or the fear of violence translate into action. and what the div, mid terms mean for the next presidential race in 2024. let us bring the back story across all platforms. this week on d. w. with in the 1950s farmers and the u. s. worked the land so intensively that the soil eroded years of drought resulted in millions of tons of it being blown away. the affected regions were dubbed the dust bowl. farming methods have changed

over time, but soil degradation is a worldwide problem. how can soil be restored to full health? ah, that's a topic in this edition of dw science magazine. welcome to tomorrow to day. soil not only provides us with food. it's also a natural habitat, as well as the water and carbon reservoir. it consists of different layers. there is hardly any life in the bedrock and the weather stone fragments above it. apart from a few isolated routes, water is filtered and stored in the sub soil. the top soil is full of nutrients and forms a habitat for numerous microbes. the human layer it provides the material that plants need to grow. fertile soil doesn't come out of nowhere. it's formed from rocks that are with it by the sun, wind, and rain. and it's decomposed by organisms and plug. it takes 2000 years to create

10 centimeters of fertile soil. mm. for soil to remain fatal and healthy microbes need to be present. but that can be problem. what we are doing basically is destroying the soil date. is it and now and not renewable resource? christina cruise specializes in the interactions between plants, soil, and microbes. what we as been doing so far during the last good to id is navy ease genius soils as an exit strategy growth plan. we've been under valuing them and expecting them to stay healthy, but tilling over using chemicals and climate change are harming our soils. this is a problem for growing food, as well as resources for clothing in construction. soil is also key to storing

carbon and filtering water. to make sales healthy again, we need to start seeing them as what they are. entire ecosystems teeming with hidden life. all run by my groups. a healthy soil will have a diversity of my groups. the most common ones are bacteria and fungi. one of their most important jobs is transforming nutrients. every single neutral cycle on the planet is mostly driven by my jennifer wood has a background in soil microbial ecology and studies how microbes affect ecosystems. none of these cycles really exist in a vacuum. they all into linked one of those new chant cycles is with carbon. plants and animals are made mostly of carbon. and when they die, they're broken down by micros. no microbes, no decomposition. the microbes use some of the carbon to reproduce, storing it in the soil, and breathe the rest of it out, sending it back to the atmosphere, another nutrient cycle. athens of nitrogen,

which makes them most of the air around us. and as one of the main new transplants used to grow, plants can't get it from the air by themselves. so they partner with microbes, microbes, specifically fungi, also exchange other nutrients of plants. they very fine routes called hifi. the intertwined themselves with the roots of the plant a fungus is really good at releasing things like phosphorus was fight from. so the plastic. so it does that. an exchange is that with the plan in return for things like sugars which the plaque and make 3 photosynthesis. there's also some evidence . this relationship makes the plant more able to withstand drought and disease in a degraded soil. these new chant cycles aren't working as well as they could be. climate change is one cause of degrading soils with drought and extreme weather, causing them to dry out and a road intensive. agriculture can be another cause as pesticides, and irv asides kill off beneficial microbes and reduce their activity. the more

degraded soil is the more chemicals are needed to grow stuff degrading this while even further. and when you start digging, it's amazing what you find down there. this is benny france. he's an electro engineer, turned farmer and has been on this land for 4 years. tons of a records returned this route. so i would feel the running mother into well, most lisa. now, even though different parts of the world have very different soils, one thing all degraded agricultural souls have been comment is that they're susceptible to disease. now we don't want those soils to contain many pathogens. so the pathogen might, might be an indicator oh, a degrading sla pathogens the worst the soil is degraded, soils also lose their ability to hold in filter water are more susceptible to erosion and have less of those beneficial microbes. meaning plants don't grow as well. but soil health is about more than just our food security foil communities.

and so health is actually the foundation of all ecosystems but natural and man, hey, if the foundation of something crumbles, everything else comes tumbling down. no till agriculture. leave soil undisturbed, which allows the microbes living inside the clamps to thrive. specifically those fund guy, high feet, which are important for soil structures. there can be a kilometer of them and a gram of soil and cover crops planted to leave in the ground. provide microbes of carbon to chow down on, as well as reduce erosion and nutrient loss well and encourages those fungal microbes to grow. it can also be made into a liquid fertilizer. first of all, we're gonna massage it in and then we're gonna feed it on. so the bacteria and from that will multiply a lot. this compost, he concentrates microbes into form that can be sprayed on fields. unfortunately, this kind of farming just isn't possible everywhere. you can do it. that's

fantastic, heeds what we want. but the problem is, did vast the mountain areas where the soil is so degraded that these techniques are multi. now, you can recover the soil in you time. here's room. microbes come in. our larger scale the most common use is, is bio fertilizers. they're used like chemical base fertilizer, except they contain fungi, or bacteria. soil degradation is a big enough threat that bear a company known for selling i would cultural chemicals is also interested. they're gonna be already knows a lot more countries. frank terrorist is the executive vice president for the crop science division with a background and business economy. bio chose is we're certainly be a lead, a health jewel with kerry because the company is also investing in

seeds that have been infused with microsoft because delivering microbes along with seeds is the most targeted way to apply them. seats can also be planted with a coating of microbes, conservation organizations are using this approach to restore ecosystems. a problem with commercial microbial products is that the microbes are not specifically adapted to environment. non native microbes could find it hard to survive, rendering the process useless. and because these are living organisms, they could cause an imbalance in the micro biome. we sees something we need me in the afternoon to taking class to duration specially we found john lucas, the these grad faster and they are more easy. she sank even bare agrees. oh, it doesn't necessarily need a automatic oh, since soils are different around the world. we would ideally develop microbial

products for specific regions, but that will take time and more research. unfortunately, our soil health is an emergency. we are going to need it because we actually covers foils in the sees the cheapest way to do recovery because we are covering them while we are maintaining the dvd to for large farms. bio fertilizers are a step above chemicals and where possible agriculture that relies on helping native my groups like on this farm is the way to go. our soul is becoming more and more depleted from intensive agriculture. where do you see opportunities to better protect the soil ecosystem? that's what we asked on d. w. social media channels. vander, gomez writes, infrastructure integration and investment on needed to digitize agriculture. that's crucial for developing countries or as command

takes a very practical approach, we can use organic fertilizer it reminds roberta to to alarcon of the old testament, which describes working the land for 70 and letting it rest for 7 years. maybe if you try it, it will work. he says, thanks for your comments. intensive agriculture not only can see in soil, but also a lot of water methods such as drip irrigation can help to reduce consumption. this is important because almost 70 percent of the world's available fresh water ends up on arable land. yet less than one percent of the earth water supply is accessible, renewable fresh water. the vast majority is salt water. water is also the subject

of a question sent to us by brown with no, by the way from nigeria. is there any liquid water in outer space? more than 2 thirds of the earth's surface is covered with liquid water. that's why it's called the blue planet. liquid water is the most important prerequisite for the creation of life. we believe that life began in hydrothermal, vince at the bottom of the deep ocean, simple organisms which have evolved over billions of years into the animals plants and microbes that populate our planet. to die with our earth is the only planet in the solar system that has liquid water on its surface. liquid water can also be found on the i see moons of the gaseous giants, jupiter and saturn. but it's buried under ice sheets more than

a kilometer. thick water can also be found under the surface of mas on the red planet surface. though water is only present as ice or as vapor in the atmosphere. as far as we know, how universe has been around for about 14000000000 years, water has been present for 12000000000 years. astronomers have calculated that from the light of a quasar. water is present everywhere in the universe as vapor or as microscopic crystals clinging to dust grains in the frozen waists about a space on earth. there's liquid water because we orbit the sun at a certain distance. that means the earth surface is at precisely the right temperature, so that water isn't locked up in ice sheets or evaporated into the atmosphere. this all the distance where the earth travels is nicknamed the goldilocks sown. every

star has a similar habitable zone. not only our son, another rocky planet, similar to the earth orbiting. a star in a similar goldilocks own, could also have liquid water on its surface. and so could also support life if our blood is red, why i gave you, do you have a science class to send it to us as a video tags, a voicemail? if we answer it on the show, we'll send you a little surprise as the thank you. come on. just does plan. it's beyond the solar system. that's what scientists, laura cry bag is looking for. so far, she's done this with the help of the hubble telescope. but for several months now, hubble success in the james webb telescope has been on the move in space. it

provides fascinating images from the cosmic neighborhood like the planet jupiter, and is so light sensitive that it can see even very distant galaxy. the near telescope is also expected to be helpful in the search for exec level. there are about a 100000000000 stars in the milky way galaxy. we think almost every star has at least one planet. so there are hundreds of billions of planets likely in our own galaxy, and hundreds of billions of galaxies out there. ah, i would be shocked if there is no extra terrestrial wife out there. ah

i i think it's so lonely if humans are the only living things the only intelligent beings in the universe. there is such a strong human desire to know who we are and where we come from and why. every time i see a star in the night sky, i asked myself what kind of planets around it? oh, planets are really places we can imagine them as some where you could visit. maybe you wouldn't want to. maybe it's too high. it may be the atmosphere is made out of toxic gases that would kill us. but nevertheless, it truly is a place that you could imagine going to. and for me,

that's one of the biggest fascinations of when it says that it feel so personal in a way that a star galaxy or black hole doesn't. ah, some planets are so hot. they even rocky material rock iron silicate glass is vaporized in their atmosphere. and when this rock gas moves into cooler regions, it can condense into clouds and potentially rain out. and so you could think of it as having glass rain on an echo planet. ah, this is sophia testicle and we never, this is an example of the type of spectacular discovery that i never could have been address. there is much, much more variety out there than we ever could have imagined from our own planet.

ah, we do know already that rocky planets extremely common there. tens of billions of those planets in our galaxy alone. we still do not exactly know how come in 1st and a la carte. just knowing the size of the planet and the temperature of the planet is not the story. when is the biggest goals is to take the next step and measure the atmospheres of these planets directly. and that's the information we need to. whether it's true we earth like or not than yours pointed that we know of is called proximate centauri. be it is the planet perhaps not so different from earth. so similar size, similar temperature is the earth. it is about 4 light years away from us,

which in the whole scheme of the galaxy is right next door. it is so close the even if we tried to get there with normal rocket propulsion, it would take tens of thousands of years to reach it. oh, the 1st x planet was discovered in 1995. over 5000 planets have been confirmed around other stars. and we've learned a lot about their sizes or temperatures. there were bit and now for my work were just beginning to scratch the surface of what their

atmosphere or like, ah, atmosphere is what makes the planet place. it is responsible for whether it's that's the climate or an earthquake. it determines whether it could possibly be habitable still also tells us a lot about how the planet formed and how it evolved over time. i 2 of the primary techniques we use to characterize the planets are called transit when the planet passes in front of the star. and also eclipses when the planet passes behind the star. they give us different, but very complimentary information. and so by combining these types of measurements,

we can really get a very complete picture of what the planet is like o . one of the most famous potentially habitable planets has called trappist when this is a very special planetary system, it's nearby, it's easy for us to study and this star has 7 rocky planets orbiting it, all of them transiting so we can see them. ah, and one of the planets planet is in the habitable zone of the stars. so could potentially have liquid water. and it could even have life the school and i think he was the next 10 years will

truly be a golden age. upon an atmosphere characterization, there's so much to come and there's this incredible deed, a pace of discovery. it's really incredible. ah, so trappist wind is one of the most popular systems to be observed with the new james. but the telescope, which launched on christmas day of 2021 and every single planet in the system will be observed, ah, the customer has a much bigger collecting area than hubble has. and that allows us to push to think,

observations, planet, they're not so hot actually. and so it broadens the number of planets we can look at. and so it just opened up so many doors to learning about new and different planet. and we've ever studied before. j w s t is only the beginning later on and the decade will see 1st by it for the next generation of ground based telescope systems. the european extremely large telescope, which is the biggest telescope ever constructed. and that will also provide us with a leap forward and what we can learn about the, the planets as to what i expect. the only thing i can say with certainty is that there will be surprises.

ah, every time we look at actual planets we see something we were not expecting to put on my good scientists. tat, i have to say, i'm coming in with no expectations. i will let the data guide me see what we see. the company that it takes is very expert. i to look at our data and interpret what that means for the planet. sometimes i talk to my husband who's a data scientist and he looks at my plots and he says you, you learned what about the planet from those squiggly lines. but i've been working on this now for over a decade. and to me those quigley, lines are beautiful and filled with information. it's like, you know, as if you walked down the street and you, you see someone with bright red hair or black hair, you can so easily tell the difference. and for me,

that's what the specter of the planets look like. oh, there is such a vast possibility of what these atmospheres and what these planets could be like. i want to know how often rocky planets have atmospheres under what conditions would you expect a planet to be hospitable for life and eventually eventually my big dream is to find evidence for life on a rocky x upon it. i . and yet the information we have about them, even with our most advanced newest telescope, still never get every piece of information that we would find me. i am grateful for this because it means they have a great and interesting job for many years as we work to figure this out. i do feel

very strongly that we're just at the beginning of a long journey to know for sure that there is another inhabited planet out there completely changes our perspective about our place in the universe. and so even if we can talk to them, even if we can visit them, it's still so important to know. i think it would fascinate people. all of the searching for life on other planets makes me appreciate life here on earth, even more. it makes me appreciate all of the things that are special about very a little flower or a bird flying it. it seems even more miraculous to me knowing the vast possibilities that are out there. and here we are on comfortable, cozy earth is our home.

it also makes me very, very conscious of the fact that we need to take care of because it is so special and there is no planet be me and that's all we have time for today. thank you for joining us. see you next time on tomorrow. today, until then, bye bye. ah, ah, with

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thanks to music. fetch the cello playoff. well i was the only one i you super lucky user under the swastika starts november 19th on d w. ah, ah ah, this is dw news live from berlin high stakes in the u. s. s. polls open for midterm elections. president joe biden says a win for the republicans would threaten democracy, form of president donald trump. hence he is preparing for a comeback, tulsa.