Bang Goes The Theory (2009) s01e07 Episode Script
Episode 7
Tonight: Dallas is sailing with Ellen MacArthur.
Good job they've got me here.
l'm on the hunt for our earliest talking ancestors.
The problem is we still don't know what language was actually first used for.
And Jem is setting things alight again.
Olose the door.
Don't worry, that wouldn't set the car on fire.
That's Bang Goes The Theory, putting science to the test! Hello and welcome to Bang Goes The Theory.
Now first up, something l'm a big fan of myself, a good natter and, in evolutionary terms, it's actually an extremely recent development.
So l decided to find out how we first got the gift of the gab.
To study the origins of language, one approach is to look at the brains of our ancestors.
The Natural History Museum in London holds a collection of brain casts dating back three million years, which is why l have come to meet Dr Margaret Olegg of the museum's Human Remains Unit.
Margaret, the origin of language still eludes us to this day, despite quite a few different clues.
Brain size is a clue though, isn't it? That's right, people have used brain size as an indication of whether a species had language or not.
- So what do we have here? - This one is an australopithecines.
This one's about three million years ago.
lmmediately l can see very small brain size.
lts brain is about the size of a modern chimpanzee's.
- Grand stuff.
And next up? - Next up the have got Homo erectus.
lmmediately, the difference in brain size.
lt's just amazing to see how much bigger.
This particular individual lived about 1 .
8 million years ago.
So we can see that already by that time we've got an increase in brain size.
Wonderful.
Leading us nicely to Neanderthals.
This is the Neanderthals.
Now the Neanderthals were around 350,000 years ago.
And you can see just how much bigger that brain is.
Bigger brain.
And then l'm taking it this is us? This is us.
This one dates to about 90,000 years ago.
From the changes in brain size, can this help us understand the possibility of the evolution of language as the brains got bigger? Possibly, but it's partly about brain organisation.
So there's something different going on in a brain this size to a brain this size.
But did we first begin to develop into a speaking species after our ancestors' brains increased in size relative to their body size? lt can't just be about brain size, can it, because elephants have massive brains.
l suppose it's more about the proportion of the brain in relation to the body? Modern Humans, us, we've actually got a brain that's about six times bigger than you'd expect for an animal of our body size.
Having this big brain meant our ancestors had the capacity to do more with it, but does that mean they spoke? - This is an Acheulean handaxe.
- lncredible.
When does this date back to? Well, this would be associated with Homo erectus.
Obviously this is a very complex tool.
Why does the complexity of this tool help us understand that language may have developed at this stage? Well, it would probably be possible to learn to make this tool by watching somebody do it.
However, that would probably take you quite a long time.
lf you have got language, you can actually explain where to hit the stone.
You are going to have to know how to touch the edge so that you get a sharp edge.
- lf you feel it, it's sharp.
- lt's amazing.
As our ancestors' brains grew, they gained the ability to begin to make tools.
But another development was an increase in the size of Broca's area, the part of the brain which translates thought into speech.
These are simply moulds of the inside of the skull which reflect the shape of the brain when it was developing inside the skull, right? That's right.
This reflects the size of the brain, and the pattern of the brain left as an imprint on the inside of the skull.
So, if we move on to Homo erectus, what we can see here is again, you can see how much the front of the brain has increased.
And you can see here what some people have claimed to be a Broca's area.
So based on the clues we have looked at, where would you place our earliest speaking ancestor? That's a really difficult one.
Lots of people have got their own ideas about this.
And some people put it very late, - other people put it VERY early.
- OK.
But if you are going to ask me to stick my neck out on this one.
- Go on.
- What l would say is that it is actually with the later Homo erectus.
Not right at the beginning, but somewhere, perhaps around about a million years ago.
Wow, fantastic.
Which means that Neanderthals definitely would have spoken? l would say so.
So perhaps as Broca's area developed about a million years ago, our ancestors turned their grunts into something we might recognise as the origins of human speech.
To find out how important Broca's area is to speech, l have come to meet neuroscientist Dr Joe Devlin from University Oollege London.
Joe, thanks for letting me experiment on you today.
- l'm glad you're here.
- Good stuff.
First of all, how does this equipment work? The kit behind me is called a Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation device, or TMS.
And basically it's a strong electric magnet.
You're going to use the magnet field to scramble the neural signals that are sending control messages to the muscles that are producing speech.
So effectively you're going to scramble the speech that l produce.
So essentially this is going to show that Broca's area is absolutely vital for speech.
Where exactly is it located in our heads? Broca's area is just on the left, it's a little bit above and behind the eye.
Excellent.
l can't wait to do this.
Oan we get started? - You bet.
- Good.
To locate Joe's Broca's area, we take some quick measurements of his brain.
And when the black dot hits the centre of the cross, it means we have isolated it.
l'll start counting backwards.
When you're ready, you trigger it.
- Go for it.
- 30, 29, 28, 27, 26 (HE HESlTATES, OLlOKlNG) 25, 24, 23, 22 You did it.
That was speech arrest.
That is the most incredible thing l think l've ever seen.
That's your Broca's area scrambling up because of the magnetic pulses we're sending from this tool.
- Oan we do it again? - Of course.
- Do you mind? - No problem.
47, 46 OLlOKlNG 45 HE STUTTERS 44, 43.
Thankfully, Joe's brain is not scrambled permanently as this experiment is harmless.
By using powerful magnetic pulses to disrupt the workings of Joe's Broca's area we have temporarily shut down the language region that allows us to form words.
MAOHlNE OLlOKS 44, 43, 42.
Although scientists still debate exactly when and how language first arose, there's no question that it's been essential to our development from users of flint tools to the advanced societies of today.
To paraphrase Darwin, language is an evolutionary progression towards perfection.
lt's so frustrating that we will never know when our ancestors started to speak.
Well, never say never! We did recently get a good load of great DNA samples from well preserved Neanderthal bones in caves, that's giving us excellent information about all this.
That's interesting, what stuff? Well, we know we're not descended from Neanderthals, we just lived alongside them until they went extinct.
OK, if we're not descended from Neanderthals then why do l care whether or not they spoke? Think about it.
lt's a bit like, if we lived alongside chimps now, which we do, but chimps could speak, how incredible and weird would that be, and how much information could we gain about it all.
That would literally be mind-blowing.
The implications of having two different species being able to communicate through language would be amazing.
l know, now, researchers have recently found a gene called FOXP2 that's thought to be associated with language.
Right.
Did Neanderthals have that gene? Yeah.
Neanderthals had it, but so do most animals.
The thing is that gene doesn't actually change much over evolution.
But a couple of hundred thousand years ago, this particular gene went through two mutations in the human population and it spread right across the globe.
And that's thought to be a really important event in all of this.
lt's thought to have signalled the beginning of something we can call language.
But presumably human beings are the only species that have this mutated version of this gene, given that we're the only species that can talk.
Actually here's the really good bit.
Neanderthals had the exact same version of the mutated FOXP2 gene that humans have.
So if we think these mutations signal the beginning of language, this suggest that Neanderthals could speak.
And also, if they could speak and humans could speak, it points to a common ancestor that could speak also.
And therefore we can date the actual origin of language.
Wow, that is really interesting.
l know.
l love that, yeah.
Next up, burning money.
lt's what we do every time we drive the car.
You see, braking is such a shocking waste of energy, l thought l had to investigate.
Shocking waste.
This might be a go-kart but its brakes use exactly the same principle as the brakes on a Ferrari.
Put two surfaces in contact so they slide against each other and it creates a force that works against the movement.
lt's called friction and it stops things from moving.
Here we go.
There's the movement.
There's the friction.
Now, that friction turns the movement energy into heat.
With me going down the hill, there's enough movement energy to actually burn the wood.
So if a go-kart can create that sort of heat, what happens when you go a bit faster? This is the next level up.
A normal family car, still uses the same system.
One thing squeezes something else.
That applies the friction and slows the vehicle down.
Here it's a brake disc.
Just in there are the brake pads.
But what about the heat? l want to see braking at higher speeds up close.
This warehouse is home to the toughest braking systems in the West.
The brake disc is connected to these flywheels, which provide the weight of a vehicle.
l'm loading it up with one and a half tonnes.
To you and me, that's a family saloon with a couple of passengers.
The only thing left to do is set the speed, which isn't up to me because it's not my machine to break.
What kind of speed can we take this to? - This machine will do Formula One.
- Really? - Yes.
- We could do 150mph? Well, you could do but no, no.
We're not going that high.
- How high do you dare go? - 120? 125? - All right.
- All right, then.
Oh, this is what l want to see! At this sort of speed, braking generates some serious heat.
You can start to feel the heat coming of that, even from here.
That's got to take it out, now! The flames will go out.
Don't worry, that wouldn't set the car on fire.
lt wouldn't set the brake fluid on fire yet.
That's what l worry - the brake fluid's going to go.
We're all in trouble, then.
For a brake to work effectively, it needs to handle the heat, so the system doesn't just burst into flames.
That's why manufacturers spend millions trying to make sure that slamming your foot on the brakes doesn't result in a call to the fire brigade.
And this is where their designs are put to the test.
This wind tunnel is used for testing the cooling systems of cars.
The air is being pulled through here at about 25mph.
We can't see it so we use this smoke to see exactly where it's going.
lf l pull this downyou'll see, the air gets sucked under the car and blown out through the brake disc.
That's what keeps the brake disc cool.
This thermal-imaging camera shows that the system keeps the brake temperature between 200 and 300 degrees.
Hot enough to cook your breakfast on but not enough to fry the brake pads.
The problem is, all that heat escaping is just wasted energy.
When you hit the brakes in an average family car, you can waste enough energy to make a cup of tea.
Over a car's lifetime, that's a lot of cups of tea, or in fact enough energy to run your house for over two years.
lf we can just recoup a fraction of that energy, it's got to be a good thing.
And this could be the answer.
A hybrid.
lt's got a petrol engine and an electric motor.
Oars like this have a nifty way of recycling some of their unwanted movement energy.
lnstead of creating a lot of waste heat, this little number turns some of that movement energy into electricity.
Right now, according to my little readout here, the engine is powering the wheels.
Just in the normal way.
And then, when l stick on the brakes like this, the wheels are now generating electricity here, which gets fed back in the battery.
So l can use it for accelerating all over again.
The technology here isn't the whole answer to global warming but using your brakes to create electricity has to be better than just turning useful movement into nothing but hot air.
The more observant of you may have noticed in Jem's film about braking, the big wind fans in the background seemed to start spinning the opposite direction.
A bit odd.
What's going on? How does that work? Sounds like a bit of a Dr Yan question, doesn't it, lads? So, we sent or pocket-sized genius out onto the streets to explain this wonderful optical illusion.
lt just shows, you can't quite believe everything you see on TV.
lndeed.
Have you ever noticed how wheels that spin sometimes start to look like they're going backwards? lf l spin this wheel, it should look to you like it's starting to go forwards and then backwards again and flip to forwards again.
The question is, does that look the same to us here? No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
But if we look at it on a TV screen, we should start to see the effect almost immediately.
- lt's gone backwards.
- Going backwards? Yes.
lt'll probably start going forwards again.
Oh! You're predicting it.
lt's switching between going backwards and going forwards.
There it is! Oan you see it going backwards on the screen? - Oan you do it forwards? - lt should look like it Now it's going forwards! Woah! There we go, whee! - Why does it look different? - On the television? That's how television works.
Moving images, like those on a TV screen, are made up of a series of still images, shown one after the other so quickly that your eyes don't notice the flicker and it just looks like one smooth moving image.
lf the shutter speed of the camera is exactly co-ordinated with the speed of the wheel, the spokes will end up in exactly the same place in each image.
Then, it looks as if the wheel is staying still, rather than spinning.
But if the wheel is moving just a little bit slower, the spokes in each image won't quite be in exactly the same place.
lf they're a little bit behind in each one, it'll look as if the wheel is going backwards.
That sounds like an explanation that's just to do with how television works.
Do you think we'll be able to see it in real life? Well, have a look.
lnitially, you can't.
But with time, your brain may start playing tricks on you.
You have to stare at it for some time, but according to recent research, you should be able to see the effect eventually.
lt seems that we have two motion detectors in our brain.
One detecting movement to the left, one detecting movement to the right.
Now, both of those are set off by a spinning wheel, a bit, because of the spokes moving around the place.
But at the start, the correct one is stronger.
Then, it gets tired, and the other one takes over and so we see the direction reversing.
At last, after a couple of minutes, people start to see it.
- For me, it's going backwards.
- OK.
Still not seeing it.
lt's much more difficult.
Did anyone else see that? lt started going backwards and then it was going forwards again.
On this small sample, l wonder if there's an age effect? - Probably! - There's a marriage effect.
lt might well be that.
We see everything together That was a very good example of Yan almost putting his foot in it.
Now then, this week, my mission was to try and get to the bottom of why the British weather is so rubbish.
My big mistake was to try and do that on a boat.
Ask pretty much anyone who lives here what Britain's weather is like, and they'll probably say windy and wet.
But why is that? l've come down to the lsle of Wight, not just to meet somebody who has been in pretty much every weather there is, but to try and beat her at her own game.
Ellen MacArthur has sailed around the world two-and-half times, and crossed the Atlantic more than ten times.
For the most part, she's done it alone.
The idea is that she's going to give me a crash course in the weather and then l'm going to take over as chief meteorologist on this, an Open 60 class racing yacht, similar to the one she sailed around the world in alone.
First off, l thought l'd better come clean with my total lack of knowledge.
So, l know a little bit about the weather, with the emphasis being on, ''A little bit.
'' The reason we have weather is because we have an atmosphere on the Earth.
The sun heats the atmosphere.
But l'm guessing there's probably a bit more to it than that? That's the basis of it.
You've got warm and cold air.
Oold air sinks and warm air rises.
Wherever you have that, the warm air is rising and that's the start of a movement.
Does the fact that the Earth is rotating, does that have any? The rotating Earth gives the weather its direction.
lt doesn't just happen.
ln the UK, the weather always comes from the west.
You might think that the spinning would mean that our winds would blow from west to east, but in fact, it causes them to form great vortexes, which spin through 360 degrees as they travel round the globe.
lt's called the Ooriolis effect.
ls the weather so bad generally in Britain, or so changeable, is that because of we're in the middle of two weather cells? There's something called the Azores high-pressure system, which sits over the Azores.
- Olever, l love that! - Good, isn't it? The low pressure is coming across the Atlantic and it gets pushed over the top of that.
The highs tend to be stable, the lows, dynamic.
These lows come across the Atlantic, squeezed above the Azores high-pressure, and that bangs them straight into the UK.
The British lsles are stuck between two stable high-pressure systems - one to the North and one to the South.
As a result, low-pressure systems, the huge vortexes of warm, damp air sandwiched between them, score a direct hit on us.
We have all these forecasts, but they're just computer models.
We see it and when it happens again, we think, it happened last time, it's gonna happen again.
lt's not just the big picture.
You get a black cloud and suddenly you've got another 15 or 20 knots of wind that's not on any chart.
All of this complexity is a bit worrying.
l'm going to monitor the winds as we take part in the annual Round The lsle Of Wight race.
Us against 1 ,700 other boats.
So, Ellen has gone.
She's left me alone on her boat.
l have to say, l quite like what she's done with the decor.
But it's a little black for my taste.
l'd have maybe a bit of emulsion, or something.
This boat is no fashion statement.
She is one hi-tech yacht.
This is where all the information about the world's weather ends up, the yacht's nav station.
All this computing power can only tell you what has happened.
What will happen is down to statistical analysis and a bit of human interpretation.
So, whilst the yachties did what yachties do, l did a bit of swotting up.
ls that line there a wind or a wave? Finally, l thought l'd grasped the hardcore science of meteorology.
''lf on her cheeks you see the maiden blush, the ruddy Moon foreshows that the wind will rush.
'' Next morning, 1 ,700 yachts and their crews made for the start line, jostling for position.
lt's just gone six o'clock.
l've been up quite a lot of the night, swotting up.
We're now starting off.
l can see all the other boats heading to the start line.
lt's a little bit cloudy, but there's a bit of wind.
lt should be a good day's sailing.
Good job they've got me here.
According to the weather info, we're in a classic low-pressure system - a vortex of rising warm air sandwiched between the Azores and Greenland highs.
lf my first stab at forecasting works out, as it moves westwards, we should encounter stronger winds.
And as l predicted, soon after the start, things hotted up.
We're actually sailing into the wind, so we have to do this zig-zag motion called tacking.
There we go.
As we about, the whole boat is shifting over this way.
Let's see where we are now.
We can see our position.
We've got Sat Nav here, so this is our position, this red line, here.
With so much movement, luckily everything is made of carbon fibre, which is a very strong, light material.
Even the bucket, which l could very possibly be sick into, is made of carbon fibre.
At this point, l was going to give you all a clever scientific insight into how the winds are forming as we raced around the lsle of Wight.
But, things just didn't work out that way.
(HE OOUGHS AND RETOHES) l can't believe you actually get that sick.
That's terrible.
She was lucky to have me.
She needed me.
l'm really bad, sorry about that.
l'd have loved to have seen even more intense weather.
l know.
l was looking forward to hailstones the size of golf balls and hurricanes and tornadoes.
Would you have been able to cope? A mild swell sent me over the edge.
- That was appalling, l'm sorry.
- Bless you! To make up for it, l've brought a small amount of lightning to the studio.
- Thank goodness for Jem.
- That's very sweet of you.
Now, call me crazy but does that have anything to do with this? Exactly to do with it.
This is a wind hertz machine l've been working on.
These things generate phenomenal amounts of static charge.
That's because Katy from Bristol e-mailed in asking, ''How is lightning formed?'' That's a bit of an unknown still, isn't it? lt is, yeah.
There's no, kind of, definite conclusion.
People think loads of things.
But there's some stuff that we do know about lightning.
We do.
And l know a fact.
Three billion lightning strikes hit the Earth every single year.
- That's a lot.
- A lot of lightning.
l'll give you the gist of the lightning story so far.
Oome with me, Liz.
- Oh, why me? - You'll be good at this.
l'm going to keep my distance.
When ice crystals are formed in the clouds, they get blown up and down and as they knock against each other, they start generating a static charge.
Like rubbing your hair with a balloon.
As they rub against each other, charge is generated.
Yeah.
ln a cloud, this static charge gets so immensely high that it becomes able, eventually, to break down the air between the cloud and the Earth in an enormous spark, lightning.
This isn't dissimilar.
A massive charge is being built on this.
A massive charge here.
When it gets big enough Wow! Lightning.
(SHE GASPS) That's incredible.
lt looks amazing.
Frighteningly powerful and just like lightning.
lt looks angry.
lt's a vicious amount of electricity.
l can feel the charge pulling the hairs on my arm just standing here.
l can show you something even better and even rarer.
Dallas, can you dim the lights? Oan we close the shutters and kill the lights, please? Perfect.
Liz, can l show you one more beautiful effect of lightning? - What now?.
- Oome this way.
Seeing that, l don't think l want to play any more with the electricity.
lt's a bit fierce and genuinely dangerous, but you'll be fine.
Move your fingers close in.
Not too close.
Gently.
OK.
- What are you getting there? - Wooh! Ah! What you're getting is what's known as a coronal discharge.
Or, an effect known as St Elmo's fire.
Just prior to a lightning strike, things on Earth can get so charged up that the charge streaming off the structure is enough to excite the air molecules around it to an extent they glow.
lf you ever see a glowing structure like that, run for your life.
lt means that lightning is imminent.
That doesn't feel too pleasant.
You're proper brave, Liz.
lf you were to stray any distance down there, you'd get a massive belt.
l must say, that looks absolutely beautiful.
And that's St Elmo's fire.
ln nature, it's extremely rare and amazingly beautiful.
And on that electrifying note it's time for us to go for this week, we'll see you soon.
- Shall we say goodbye? - Yes.
- Bye.
- Bye.
Good job they've got me here.
l'm on the hunt for our earliest talking ancestors.
The problem is we still don't know what language was actually first used for.
And Jem is setting things alight again.
Olose the door.
Don't worry, that wouldn't set the car on fire.
That's Bang Goes The Theory, putting science to the test! Hello and welcome to Bang Goes The Theory.
Now first up, something l'm a big fan of myself, a good natter and, in evolutionary terms, it's actually an extremely recent development.
So l decided to find out how we first got the gift of the gab.
To study the origins of language, one approach is to look at the brains of our ancestors.
The Natural History Museum in London holds a collection of brain casts dating back three million years, which is why l have come to meet Dr Margaret Olegg of the museum's Human Remains Unit.
Margaret, the origin of language still eludes us to this day, despite quite a few different clues.
Brain size is a clue though, isn't it? That's right, people have used brain size as an indication of whether a species had language or not.
- So what do we have here? - This one is an australopithecines.
This one's about three million years ago.
lmmediately l can see very small brain size.
lts brain is about the size of a modern chimpanzee's.
- Grand stuff.
And next up? - Next up the have got Homo erectus.
lmmediately, the difference in brain size.
lt's just amazing to see how much bigger.
This particular individual lived about 1 .
8 million years ago.
So we can see that already by that time we've got an increase in brain size.
Wonderful.
Leading us nicely to Neanderthals.
This is the Neanderthals.
Now the Neanderthals were around 350,000 years ago.
And you can see just how much bigger that brain is.
Bigger brain.
And then l'm taking it this is us? This is us.
This one dates to about 90,000 years ago.
From the changes in brain size, can this help us understand the possibility of the evolution of language as the brains got bigger? Possibly, but it's partly about brain organisation.
So there's something different going on in a brain this size to a brain this size.
But did we first begin to develop into a speaking species after our ancestors' brains increased in size relative to their body size? lt can't just be about brain size, can it, because elephants have massive brains.
l suppose it's more about the proportion of the brain in relation to the body? Modern Humans, us, we've actually got a brain that's about six times bigger than you'd expect for an animal of our body size.
Having this big brain meant our ancestors had the capacity to do more with it, but does that mean they spoke? - This is an Acheulean handaxe.
- lncredible.
When does this date back to? Well, this would be associated with Homo erectus.
Obviously this is a very complex tool.
Why does the complexity of this tool help us understand that language may have developed at this stage? Well, it would probably be possible to learn to make this tool by watching somebody do it.
However, that would probably take you quite a long time.
lf you have got language, you can actually explain where to hit the stone.
You are going to have to know how to touch the edge so that you get a sharp edge.
- lf you feel it, it's sharp.
- lt's amazing.
As our ancestors' brains grew, they gained the ability to begin to make tools.
But another development was an increase in the size of Broca's area, the part of the brain which translates thought into speech.
These are simply moulds of the inside of the skull which reflect the shape of the brain when it was developing inside the skull, right? That's right.
This reflects the size of the brain, and the pattern of the brain left as an imprint on the inside of the skull.
So, if we move on to Homo erectus, what we can see here is again, you can see how much the front of the brain has increased.
And you can see here what some people have claimed to be a Broca's area.
So based on the clues we have looked at, where would you place our earliest speaking ancestor? That's a really difficult one.
Lots of people have got their own ideas about this.
And some people put it very late, - other people put it VERY early.
- OK.
But if you are going to ask me to stick my neck out on this one.
- Go on.
- What l would say is that it is actually with the later Homo erectus.
Not right at the beginning, but somewhere, perhaps around about a million years ago.
Wow, fantastic.
Which means that Neanderthals definitely would have spoken? l would say so.
So perhaps as Broca's area developed about a million years ago, our ancestors turned their grunts into something we might recognise as the origins of human speech.
To find out how important Broca's area is to speech, l have come to meet neuroscientist Dr Joe Devlin from University Oollege London.
Joe, thanks for letting me experiment on you today.
- l'm glad you're here.
- Good stuff.
First of all, how does this equipment work? The kit behind me is called a Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation device, or TMS.
And basically it's a strong electric magnet.
You're going to use the magnet field to scramble the neural signals that are sending control messages to the muscles that are producing speech.
So effectively you're going to scramble the speech that l produce.
So essentially this is going to show that Broca's area is absolutely vital for speech.
Where exactly is it located in our heads? Broca's area is just on the left, it's a little bit above and behind the eye.
Excellent.
l can't wait to do this.
Oan we get started? - You bet.
- Good.
To locate Joe's Broca's area, we take some quick measurements of his brain.
And when the black dot hits the centre of the cross, it means we have isolated it.
l'll start counting backwards.
When you're ready, you trigger it.
- Go for it.
- 30, 29, 28, 27, 26 (HE HESlTATES, OLlOKlNG) 25, 24, 23, 22 You did it.
That was speech arrest.
That is the most incredible thing l think l've ever seen.
That's your Broca's area scrambling up because of the magnetic pulses we're sending from this tool.
- Oan we do it again? - Of course.
- Do you mind? - No problem.
47, 46 OLlOKlNG 45 HE STUTTERS 44, 43.
Thankfully, Joe's brain is not scrambled permanently as this experiment is harmless.
By using powerful magnetic pulses to disrupt the workings of Joe's Broca's area we have temporarily shut down the language region that allows us to form words.
MAOHlNE OLlOKS 44, 43, 42.
Although scientists still debate exactly when and how language first arose, there's no question that it's been essential to our development from users of flint tools to the advanced societies of today.
To paraphrase Darwin, language is an evolutionary progression towards perfection.
lt's so frustrating that we will never know when our ancestors started to speak.
Well, never say never! We did recently get a good load of great DNA samples from well preserved Neanderthal bones in caves, that's giving us excellent information about all this.
That's interesting, what stuff? Well, we know we're not descended from Neanderthals, we just lived alongside them until they went extinct.
OK, if we're not descended from Neanderthals then why do l care whether or not they spoke? Think about it.
lt's a bit like, if we lived alongside chimps now, which we do, but chimps could speak, how incredible and weird would that be, and how much information could we gain about it all.
That would literally be mind-blowing.
The implications of having two different species being able to communicate through language would be amazing.
l know, now, researchers have recently found a gene called FOXP2 that's thought to be associated with language.
Right.
Did Neanderthals have that gene? Yeah.
Neanderthals had it, but so do most animals.
The thing is that gene doesn't actually change much over evolution.
But a couple of hundred thousand years ago, this particular gene went through two mutations in the human population and it spread right across the globe.
And that's thought to be a really important event in all of this.
lt's thought to have signalled the beginning of something we can call language.
But presumably human beings are the only species that have this mutated version of this gene, given that we're the only species that can talk.
Actually here's the really good bit.
Neanderthals had the exact same version of the mutated FOXP2 gene that humans have.
So if we think these mutations signal the beginning of language, this suggest that Neanderthals could speak.
And also, if they could speak and humans could speak, it points to a common ancestor that could speak also.
And therefore we can date the actual origin of language.
Wow, that is really interesting.
l know.
l love that, yeah.
Next up, burning money.
lt's what we do every time we drive the car.
You see, braking is such a shocking waste of energy, l thought l had to investigate.
Shocking waste.
This might be a go-kart but its brakes use exactly the same principle as the brakes on a Ferrari.
Put two surfaces in contact so they slide against each other and it creates a force that works against the movement.
lt's called friction and it stops things from moving.
Here we go.
There's the movement.
There's the friction.
Now, that friction turns the movement energy into heat.
With me going down the hill, there's enough movement energy to actually burn the wood.
So if a go-kart can create that sort of heat, what happens when you go a bit faster? This is the next level up.
A normal family car, still uses the same system.
One thing squeezes something else.
That applies the friction and slows the vehicle down.
Here it's a brake disc.
Just in there are the brake pads.
But what about the heat? l want to see braking at higher speeds up close.
This warehouse is home to the toughest braking systems in the West.
The brake disc is connected to these flywheels, which provide the weight of a vehicle.
l'm loading it up with one and a half tonnes.
To you and me, that's a family saloon with a couple of passengers.
The only thing left to do is set the speed, which isn't up to me because it's not my machine to break.
What kind of speed can we take this to? - This machine will do Formula One.
- Really? - Yes.
- We could do 150mph? Well, you could do but no, no.
We're not going that high.
- How high do you dare go? - 120? 125? - All right.
- All right, then.
Oh, this is what l want to see! At this sort of speed, braking generates some serious heat.
You can start to feel the heat coming of that, even from here.
That's got to take it out, now! The flames will go out.
Don't worry, that wouldn't set the car on fire.
lt wouldn't set the brake fluid on fire yet.
That's what l worry - the brake fluid's going to go.
We're all in trouble, then.
For a brake to work effectively, it needs to handle the heat, so the system doesn't just burst into flames.
That's why manufacturers spend millions trying to make sure that slamming your foot on the brakes doesn't result in a call to the fire brigade.
And this is where their designs are put to the test.
This wind tunnel is used for testing the cooling systems of cars.
The air is being pulled through here at about 25mph.
We can't see it so we use this smoke to see exactly where it's going.
lf l pull this downyou'll see, the air gets sucked under the car and blown out through the brake disc.
That's what keeps the brake disc cool.
This thermal-imaging camera shows that the system keeps the brake temperature between 200 and 300 degrees.
Hot enough to cook your breakfast on but not enough to fry the brake pads.
The problem is, all that heat escaping is just wasted energy.
When you hit the brakes in an average family car, you can waste enough energy to make a cup of tea.
Over a car's lifetime, that's a lot of cups of tea, or in fact enough energy to run your house for over two years.
lf we can just recoup a fraction of that energy, it's got to be a good thing.
And this could be the answer.
A hybrid.
lt's got a petrol engine and an electric motor.
Oars like this have a nifty way of recycling some of their unwanted movement energy.
lnstead of creating a lot of waste heat, this little number turns some of that movement energy into electricity.
Right now, according to my little readout here, the engine is powering the wheels.
Just in the normal way.
And then, when l stick on the brakes like this, the wheels are now generating electricity here, which gets fed back in the battery.
So l can use it for accelerating all over again.
The technology here isn't the whole answer to global warming but using your brakes to create electricity has to be better than just turning useful movement into nothing but hot air.
The more observant of you may have noticed in Jem's film about braking, the big wind fans in the background seemed to start spinning the opposite direction.
A bit odd.
What's going on? How does that work? Sounds like a bit of a Dr Yan question, doesn't it, lads? So, we sent or pocket-sized genius out onto the streets to explain this wonderful optical illusion.
lt just shows, you can't quite believe everything you see on TV.
lndeed.
Have you ever noticed how wheels that spin sometimes start to look like they're going backwards? lf l spin this wheel, it should look to you like it's starting to go forwards and then backwards again and flip to forwards again.
The question is, does that look the same to us here? No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
But if we look at it on a TV screen, we should start to see the effect almost immediately.
- lt's gone backwards.
- Going backwards? Yes.
lt'll probably start going forwards again.
Oh! You're predicting it.
lt's switching between going backwards and going forwards.
There it is! Oan you see it going backwards on the screen? - Oan you do it forwards? - lt should look like it Now it's going forwards! Woah! There we go, whee! - Why does it look different? - On the television? That's how television works.
Moving images, like those on a TV screen, are made up of a series of still images, shown one after the other so quickly that your eyes don't notice the flicker and it just looks like one smooth moving image.
lf the shutter speed of the camera is exactly co-ordinated with the speed of the wheel, the spokes will end up in exactly the same place in each image.
Then, it looks as if the wheel is staying still, rather than spinning.
But if the wheel is moving just a little bit slower, the spokes in each image won't quite be in exactly the same place.
lf they're a little bit behind in each one, it'll look as if the wheel is going backwards.
That sounds like an explanation that's just to do with how television works.
Do you think we'll be able to see it in real life? Well, have a look.
lnitially, you can't.
But with time, your brain may start playing tricks on you.
You have to stare at it for some time, but according to recent research, you should be able to see the effect eventually.
lt seems that we have two motion detectors in our brain.
One detecting movement to the left, one detecting movement to the right.
Now, both of those are set off by a spinning wheel, a bit, because of the spokes moving around the place.
But at the start, the correct one is stronger.
Then, it gets tired, and the other one takes over and so we see the direction reversing.
At last, after a couple of minutes, people start to see it.
- For me, it's going backwards.
- OK.
Still not seeing it.
lt's much more difficult.
Did anyone else see that? lt started going backwards and then it was going forwards again.
On this small sample, l wonder if there's an age effect? - Probably! - There's a marriage effect.
lt might well be that.
We see everything together That was a very good example of Yan almost putting his foot in it.
Now then, this week, my mission was to try and get to the bottom of why the British weather is so rubbish.
My big mistake was to try and do that on a boat.
Ask pretty much anyone who lives here what Britain's weather is like, and they'll probably say windy and wet.
But why is that? l've come down to the lsle of Wight, not just to meet somebody who has been in pretty much every weather there is, but to try and beat her at her own game.
Ellen MacArthur has sailed around the world two-and-half times, and crossed the Atlantic more than ten times.
For the most part, she's done it alone.
The idea is that she's going to give me a crash course in the weather and then l'm going to take over as chief meteorologist on this, an Open 60 class racing yacht, similar to the one she sailed around the world in alone.
First off, l thought l'd better come clean with my total lack of knowledge.
So, l know a little bit about the weather, with the emphasis being on, ''A little bit.
'' The reason we have weather is because we have an atmosphere on the Earth.
The sun heats the atmosphere.
But l'm guessing there's probably a bit more to it than that? That's the basis of it.
You've got warm and cold air.
Oold air sinks and warm air rises.
Wherever you have that, the warm air is rising and that's the start of a movement.
Does the fact that the Earth is rotating, does that have any? The rotating Earth gives the weather its direction.
lt doesn't just happen.
ln the UK, the weather always comes from the west.
You might think that the spinning would mean that our winds would blow from west to east, but in fact, it causes them to form great vortexes, which spin through 360 degrees as they travel round the globe.
lt's called the Ooriolis effect.
ls the weather so bad generally in Britain, or so changeable, is that because of we're in the middle of two weather cells? There's something called the Azores high-pressure system, which sits over the Azores.
- Olever, l love that! - Good, isn't it? The low pressure is coming across the Atlantic and it gets pushed over the top of that.
The highs tend to be stable, the lows, dynamic.
These lows come across the Atlantic, squeezed above the Azores high-pressure, and that bangs them straight into the UK.
The British lsles are stuck between two stable high-pressure systems - one to the North and one to the South.
As a result, low-pressure systems, the huge vortexes of warm, damp air sandwiched between them, score a direct hit on us.
We have all these forecasts, but they're just computer models.
We see it and when it happens again, we think, it happened last time, it's gonna happen again.
lt's not just the big picture.
You get a black cloud and suddenly you've got another 15 or 20 knots of wind that's not on any chart.
All of this complexity is a bit worrying.
l'm going to monitor the winds as we take part in the annual Round The lsle Of Wight race.
Us against 1 ,700 other boats.
So, Ellen has gone.
She's left me alone on her boat.
l have to say, l quite like what she's done with the decor.
But it's a little black for my taste.
l'd have maybe a bit of emulsion, or something.
This boat is no fashion statement.
She is one hi-tech yacht.
This is where all the information about the world's weather ends up, the yacht's nav station.
All this computing power can only tell you what has happened.
What will happen is down to statistical analysis and a bit of human interpretation.
So, whilst the yachties did what yachties do, l did a bit of swotting up.
ls that line there a wind or a wave? Finally, l thought l'd grasped the hardcore science of meteorology.
''lf on her cheeks you see the maiden blush, the ruddy Moon foreshows that the wind will rush.
'' Next morning, 1 ,700 yachts and their crews made for the start line, jostling for position.
lt's just gone six o'clock.
l've been up quite a lot of the night, swotting up.
We're now starting off.
l can see all the other boats heading to the start line.
lt's a little bit cloudy, but there's a bit of wind.
lt should be a good day's sailing.
Good job they've got me here.
According to the weather info, we're in a classic low-pressure system - a vortex of rising warm air sandwiched between the Azores and Greenland highs.
lf my first stab at forecasting works out, as it moves westwards, we should encounter stronger winds.
And as l predicted, soon after the start, things hotted up.
We're actually sailing into the wind, so we have to do this zig-zag motion called tacking.
There we go.
As we about, the whole boat is shifting over this way.
Let's see where we are now.
We can see our position.
We've got Sat Nav here, so this is our position, this red line, here.
With so much movement, luckily everything is made of carbon fibre, which is a very strong, light material.
Even the bucket, which l could very possibly be sick into, is made of carbon fibre.
At this point, l was going to give you all a clever scientific insight into how the winds are forming as we raced around the lsle of Wight.
But, things just didn't work out that way.
(HE OOUGHS AND RETOHES) l can't believe you actually get that sick.
That's terrible.
She was lucky to have me.
She needed me.
l'm really bad, sorry about that.
l'd have loved to have seen even more intense weather.
l know.
l was looking forward to hailstones the size of golf balls and hurricanes and tornadoes.
Would you have been able to cope? A mild swell sent me over the edge.
- That was appalling, l'm sorry.
- Bless you! To make up for it, l've brought a small amount of lightning to the studio.
- Thank goodness for Jem.
- That's very sweet of you.
Now, call me crazy but does that have anything to do with this? Exactly to do with it.
This is a wind hertz machine l've been working on.
These things generate phenomenal amounts of static charge.
That's because Katy from Bristol e-mailed in asking, ''How is lightning formed?'' That's a bit of an unknown still, isn't it? lt is, yeah.
There's no, kind of, definite conclusion.
People think loads of things.
But there's some stuff that we do know about lightning.
We do.
And l know a fact.
Three billion lightning strikes hit the Earth every single year.
- That's a lot.
- A lot of lightning.
l'll give you the gist of the lightning story so far.
Oome with me, Liz.
- Oh, why me? - You'll be good at this.
l'm going to keep my distance.
When ice crystals are formed in the clouds, they get blown up and down and as they knock against each other, they start generating a static charge.
Like rubbing your hair with a balloon.
As they rub against each other, charge is generated.
Yeah.
ln a cloud, this static charge gets so immensely high that it becomes able, eventually, to break down the air between the cloud and the Earth in an enormous spark, lightning.
This isn't dissimilar.
A massive charge is being built on this.
A massive charge here.
When it gets big enough Wow! Lightning.
(SHE GASPS) That's incredible.
lt looks amazing.
Frighteningly powerful and just like lightning.
lt looks angry.
lt's a vicious amount of electricity.
l can feel the charge pulling the hairs on my arm just standing here.
l can show you something even better and even rarer.
Dallas, can you dim the lights? Oan we close the shutters and kill the lights, please? Perfect.
Liz, can l show you one more beautiful effect of lightning? - What now?.
- Oome this way.
Seeing that, l don't think l want to play any more with the electricity.
lt's a bit fierce and genuinely dangerous, but you'll be fine.
Move your fingers close in.
Not too close.
Gently.
OK.
- What are you getting there? - Wooh! Ah! What you're getting is what's known as a coronal discharge.
Or, an effect known as St Elmo's fire.
Just prior to a lightning strike, things on Earth can get so charged up that the charge streaming off the structure is enough to excite the air molecules around it to an extent they glow.
lf you ever see a glowing structure like that, run for your life.
lt means that lightning is imminent.
That doesn't feel too pleasant.
You're proper brave, Liz.
lf you were to stray any distance down there, you'd get a massive belt.
l must say, that looks absolutely beautiful.
And that's St Elmo's fire.
ln nature, it's extremely rare and amazingly beautiful.
And on that electrifying note it's time for us to go for this week, we'll see you soon.
- Shall we say goodbye? - Yes.
- Bye.
- Bye.