Bang Goes The Theory (2009) s02e06 Episode Script
Season 2, Episode 6
'Tonight, carbon dioxide is buried in the frozen north.
' lt's basically like a sponge, soaking in all the OO2 and holding it there.
'Dallas gets happy.
' So what is it that makes us happy? l think that's a question that's worth finding the answer to.
'And Jem heads into avalanche country.
' Do you think there will be avalanches here today? Yeah, undoubtedly.
'That's Bang Goes the Theory - putting science to the test.
' Hello and welcome to Bang Goes the Theory.
First up tonight, one of the most important and contentious subjects in science today, global warming.
When world leaders met in Oopenhagen last year to set real targets for climate change mitigation, one of the key issues was how to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere from fossil fuel industries.
Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide act like a blanket, trapping more of the sun's energy and warming the earth's atmosphere.
One plan to come out of Oopenhagen was to trial new carbon capture and storage schemes.
That is, to capture the carbon dioxide emissions from power stations and store them, as opposed to letting them spill out into the atmosphere.
Natural gas is often seen as one of our greener fossil fuels.
But some estimates say that it accounts for about half as much OO2 emissions as coal or oil.
And a lot of that OO2 is released when it's processed.
But where l am heading, they do things differently.
l'm heading to the most northern city in the entire world, a place called Hammerfest in Norway.
l'm not here to hang around the town, l've come to check that place out.
lt's the Statoil liquefied natural gas plant, where an incredible engineering project is taking place.
This is the Snohvit or Snow White terminal and many environmentalists think it should never have been built, fearing it may damage the delicate ecosystem of the Barents Sea.
But engineers here believe the plant will demonstrate that it's possible not just to capture, but to store OO2 safely on a massive scale.
Layer number 24 ln all liquefied gas plants, carbon dioxide is removed from the natural gas before it can be processed.
Normally, this OO2 is simply released into the atmosphere.
But here it's treated very differently.
At this particular plant, we have decided to reinject the OO2 underground for environmental reasons.
To understand how they do this, we need to start at the beginning - with the gas itself.
Over 100 kilometres offshore, in the middle of the Barents Sea, is a huge underground reservoir of natural gas.
From an installation 340 metres beneath the surface, Statoil drilled wells through the rock to extract the gas and then built an enormous pipeline to bring it all back to shore.
And this is where the raw natural gas first emerges onto land.
lt's been travelling 1 43 kilometres along the seabed.
And it's now being rushed in this pipeline, under huge pressure, ready to be processed inside the plant.
And this is where it gets interesting.
The natural gas that arrives here contains about 8% carbon dioxide.
The next stage is to separate that off and isolate it.
Well, the left tower, that is the absorption tower.
That is where you mix the natural gas with a solution called an amine solution.
And OO2 is absorbed in this amine solution, so this is actually where OO2 is separated from the natural gas.
This is a much larger version of the process that was taking OO2 out of the power station that Jem visited in Scotland.
So you've got your carbon dioxide in your amine solution.
How do you remove the carbon dioxide from it? That is the second tower to the right.
That is the absorption tower and that is when you lower the pressure so it separates the OO2 from the amine solution.
When you desorb, you actually decrease the pressure - and take out the OO2 as a gas again.
- And there you have it, you've got your OO2 separated from your natural gas.
As we saw in Scotland, in the UK this is as far as we've got.
We've worked out how to capture the OO2 released when we burn fossil fuels like coal.
What we haven't managed, is to find a way to then successfully store it.
But here at Snohvit, the Norwegians have found a solution.
Having compressed the captured OO2 back into fluid form, they pipe it back out to sea and bury it 2,600 metres below the seabed - directly underneath the natural gas field it originally came from.
And the rock they inject the OO2 into? Sandstone.
Now, you may think this looks really hard.
But it's basically like a sponge, soaking in all the OO2 and holding it there.
Above this is a really important layer, known as cap rock.
ln this case it's made of shale, a rock of very low permeability, acting as an upper seal, stopping the carbon dioxide from seeping back up through the rock formation to the surface.
This is a hugely ambitious and expensive experiment.
The Snohvit complex aims to bury up to 700,000 tonnes of OO2 every year.
When you think about that much carbon dioxide being pumped back into the ground every year, immediately what comes to my mind is, is it safe? Well, we see from the seismic images and from the models that we have developed that OO2 stays there and will eventually just be dissolving in the salt water that is down in this geologic formation.
But geological storage is a relatively new industry.
So how can you make sure it is completely safe, that there won't be leakage over time? lt's always a risk if you talk about geologic formations.
But if you compare it to the risks that the world is exposed to from emitting OO2 into the atmosphere, this is really a solution you have to look for.
Geologists believe that the seabeds around Britain could house up to 150 billion tonnes of OO2, more than the rest of Europe combined.
So should we in the UK start to use this controversial technology? You know, Jem, this is still a very new and very controversial technology.
Some reports are saying that OOS could help climate change mitigation by as much as 20%.
But it's still really expensive and any risk of OO2 leakage from the storage sites could negate the benefit of storing it in the first place.
l think that's such a vital issue to have covered.
Where we channel our resources for future power generation - is still a massive question.
- Yeah, very good point.
- Oan l show you something really jammy? - Yes, you can.
The very first night in Norway, we saw something that most people will never see in their entire lifetime.
Take a look at this.
lt's not often you get to see something that literally takes your breath away.
We are witnessing the aurora borealis in all its glory.
ln this part of the world, the aurora borealis, or the northern lights, are most commonly seen from September to April.
Wow! lt's the most incredible thing l've ever seen.
The aurora is evidence of the solar winds reacting with the earth's atmosphere.
Electrons and protons are fired out from the sun and travel through space for at least 40 hours before reaching the earth.
As they're caught by the earth's magnetic field, they're diverted at great speeds towards the poles.
This green curtain of light is created when those particles smash into oxygen molecules high in our upper atmosphere, changing the energy state of the electrons in the oxygen molecules - causing them to emit light.
The most common place to see the aurora borealis is in a ring about 2,500 kilometres from the North Pole.
lt has been known to be seen in Scotland, but that is really rare.
This really is one of nature's greatest wonders.
You've had a really nice time in Norway! - lt wasn't bad, l have to say.
- l'm jealous.
Moving swiftly on, l've been trying to answer a question to which there's as many answers, probably, as there are people on earth.
So what is it that makes us happy? l think that a question that's worth finding out the answer to.
Shoes make me happy.
You look outside and it's a sunny day.
l'm up for it.
Success.
Work, women.
Feet.
l love feet.
Being relaxed, man.
Not having to worry about things makes me happy.
Being under water.
- Family.
- Someone to love you and someone to love.
- Shopping.
- ls it a family show?.
Yeah.
- OK Oan't say, then.
- l can't say! Hmm, not much there in the way of consistency.
When you think about it, there's probably as many answers to that question as there are people to ask it to.
But recent research has shown that there is one thing that's almost guaranteed to make you happy.
lt's doing good deeds for others.
l'm going to see if l can replicate their findings.
So what do you think would make somebody more happy? Being given 20 quid, spending the 20 quid, or giving the 20 quid to somebody else? Well, that's what l'm going to try and find out.
'So l gathered together a gang of volunteers.
'First, we find out their mood.
' OK, so here's the next bit.
l've got four envelopes here and inside the envelopes there is some money.
There's 20 quid.
- Excellent.
- Exactly.
'Each of the volunteers receives £20 and a set of instructions.
' 10 minutes, that sort of time frame, off you go.
Enjoy.
- Great.
Thank you.
- See you in a minute.
'Some of them are told simply to keep the £20, 'others are told to spend it on a treat for themselves.
' - l bought a T-shirt.
- You bought a T-shirt? Yes.
l love that.
l bought tights.
Do tights make you happy? They do.
Funnily enough, l love tights.
'The remainder are asked to give their 20 quid away.
' - l'm looking for a charity box.
- 'Either to charity' Very satisfying.
'.
.
or as a gift for someone else.
' - Who are they for? - My girlfriend, future wife.
- How future is your future wife? - ln a month.
Well, congratulations.
That's the wedding covered.
20 quid wedding.
'And then we measure their mood again.
' Oould you now fill out the form again? - To see if l feel better? - Well, let's have a look.
'Ours is just a small experiment but this sort of study 'has been done on hundreds of people.
' And, surprisingly, results showed that actually giving the money away makes you happier than spending it on yourself.
So is the key to happiness doing things for other people? lf we are talking about doing good deeds for other people, what could be more selfless than giving blood? Hi there.
Oan l give you some of my blood, please? - Yes.
Have you ever donated before? - No, l haven't.
'l'm hoping that this will make me feel happier.
' Mr Oampbell, come through, please.
'The only problem is, l'm not crazy about needles.
' Slide your bottom down, put your head on the pillow and make yourself comfortable.
But thankfully, my fears were unfounded.
Relax your grip and that's the worst of it over.
- l felt nothing.
- That's cos l'm good.
You are good.
She's good.
lf you're going to give blood, give it to her.
And after ten minutes of thinking happy thoughts in a pain-free environment, it was all over.
And you get a biscuit.
- ls that it? - This is your little baby.
Look at that.
l thought it was going to be blue but that'll do.
lt's de-oxygenated so it's quite dark.
lt is dark.
lt's kind of like a fine claret.
So there you go, l'm all done.
How do l feel? Apart from a slightly sore arm, l feel good, actually.
l've done something that's good.
Do l feel happier? l don't know.
l guess we'll just have to see.
ln fact, researchers have done a full-scale study on this very subject.
They've found that people who give blood are, indeed, happier.
ln fact, recent research has gone beyond that and shown that the very act of giving, not just blood but anything else, will actually make you happier.
And what's more, being happy is not just a nice thing to be.
lt can apparently improve your health.
So researchers have found that happy people generally have lower levels of cortisol which is the hormone usually associated with stress.
And they have lower heart rates.
ln fact, giving whatever it is, whether it is blood, time, money, will make you a healthier person.
Oombined, these effects are so powerful that happiness can, in fact, increase lifespan by up to nine years.
Now that should make you happy.
There you go.
You've got a scientific reason to be nice.
l'm totally impressed.
Happiness reigns and all that.
Since l did that film, l've started giving blood and l feel better for it.
Good man yourself.
lt's good.
Talking of good things, it's time to catch up with Dr Yan.
He's in the West Midlands attending a Wl meeting.
What could be nicer than that? Tea and cake? l've put some faces up here that you might recognise.
l've turned them upside down, but can you still recognise who they are? - David Attenborough.
- Yeah.
- And - Prince William.
And - Maggie Thatcher.
- Yourself.
Yeah, sorry about that.
l've got another picture of someone here you might recognise.
Any? - Jo? - Sorry, Jo, can you come over here, please? lf you could hold that photo next to your face and without looking at it, could you slowly rotate it so it's the other way up? (THEY ALL LAUGH) That's not very nice! (SHE SOREAMS AND LAUGHS) - What have you done to it? - Sorry about that! Obviously, we've distorted it in some way, haven't we? But when you saw it upside down, it didn't look like it was doctored at all.
So now you know that, have a look at these faces again.
Do you think we'd doctored these in any way? - They look all right.
- Do you think? Maggie Thatcher You think Margaret's a bit She's a bit funny? OK.
l think her mouth's the wrong way up.
- She looks a lot worse that way up.
- Yes, yes.
Oh, and her eyes! - See? lt's not just you.
- Any others? Prince William's lips are the other way around.
You think Prince William's doctored? He doesn't look good, does he? - Your eyes are looking down.
- Wrong way round, yeah.
That's it, yes.
Aren't you ugly when you're the other way up? - Any other ones? - David Attenborough? - Top lip doesn't seem wrong, does it? - No.
He looks sort of OK, doesn't he? He looks about right, he's the only one His eyes.
His eyes.
(THEY GASP) How do you do it, then? lf you look closely, we've turned the mouth and the eyes upside down.
You don't notice, really, when it's that way up.
That's amazing.
lt's called the Thatcher effect, just because it was first seen accidentally in a picture of Margaret Thatcher that had been manipulated.
And we still don't really know what's going on.
But there are some theories.
lt seems like one of the ways that we recognise a face, whichever way up it is, is to first figure out where the eyes and nose and the mouth should be and then zoom in on each individual feature.
And, when you do that, each of these features looks fine.
The eyes look fine, the mouth looks normal.
But when l turn it the other way up, suddenly something else kicks in.
We have a mental image of what a whole face should look like and it shouldn't look like that.
But the thing is we don't seem to have mental images for whole upside-down faces.
Very odd, isn't it? Really odd.
l also thought it was traditional to bring a cake to Wl meetings, so l baked one.
Ooffee and walnut? - You'll make a wonderful Wl husband.
- Thank you.
(APPLAUSE) - Loving how the brain works.
- My brain's telling me l need cake! - l've got cake envy from that.
- Before you have cake, look at this.
- This is you.
You can tell it's you.
- l hate that! Don't be vain, it's a lovely photo.
But, if l go like this.
- l think it looks better that way.
- You look seriously weird.
But this has to be the humdinger of all humdingers.
This is my one.
You can tell it's me, yeah? l have to say, that way up, even that looks a bit odd.
You can tell it's a little bit odd, but then if you go like this, how wrong is that? We are burning this photograph after the show.
Enough of that.
l'm going to take on Mother Nature herself.
Welcome to the world of avalanches.
There aren't many catastrophic events in nature as awesome as an avalanche, an unstoppable force that, once triggered, will engulf everything in its wake.
The mountains l'm heading for may look pretty, but the Scottish Highlands can be just as deadly as anything you'll find in the Alps.
Now, l may not have done much climbing or seen many avalanches, but l have spent most of my life trying to figure stuff out, which is why rather than charge straight up that mountain, l thought l'd head for the pub.
Now, to make an avalanche, l'm going to need a few basic ingredients.
Hi there.
Any chance of a pint of dried potato, a pint of flour and a bag of crisps, please? Sure.
Thank you, that's perfect, mate.
Now, it might look like just one big white blanket out there, but it's actually made up of a whole heap of different types of snow.
l'll show you what l mean with my mountain here.
lt's early in the season, and we've got some heavy, damp snow going down.
Flour, in this case.
There it goes.
A fair amount of it on the mountain, it's a good start to the season.
A little bit later on, it gets colder, and there's more snow.
This is kind of lighter potato-based snow.
There it goes, a decent layer of this goes down, fairly heavy snow.
lt's the layering that's important.
We've got a heavy layer of snow at the bottom with a lighter layer on top.
Now, it gets a little bit warmer, and there's another heavy layer of damp snow that goes on top.
This is where it gets dangerous, because we've now got three distinct layers of snow.
lt's a pretty heavy fall there we go.
Now, you can see there's already cracks forming (HE GASPS) OK, this is avalanche country.
The layers of snow are beginning to slide over each other.
What an avalanche needs is a trigger, and here are some big heavy footprints.
Ooming through and lt's gone.
What you can see there is that the light fluffy layer acted almost like a lubricant, and the heavy layer of snow started to slide over the top, and it all comes down the mountain.
Now, in the real world, this is thousands and thousands of tons of snow.
Very, very dangerous.
And they're not just things that happen in the Alps or Himalayas.
So far this year, avalanches have killed or injured dozens in the Scottish mountains, which is where l'm heading now.
This winter, Scotland has had one of its heaviest snowfalls for decades, making the slopes truly deadly.
Luckily, the man l'm meeting knows a thing or two about avalanches.
Mark Diggins works for the Scottish Avalanche lnformation Service, and his job is to head into the mountains and assess the avalanche risk on a daily basis.
What we're doing today is part of what l do every day, what our team do every single day, and that's go into the mountains to try and see what the avalanche risk is.
And so we'll go and look at the snow, look at the different layers, and see if those layers are sticking together, and really that's our objective.
Do you think there will be avalanches here today? Yeah, undoubtedly.
There's strong winds, there is a lot of snow.
lt's been snowing now for 24 hours non-stop.
That's perfect ingredients for the creation of an avalanche situation.
We're heading onto the lower slopes of the notorious Oairngorm mountains, where Mark's daily task is to dig snow pits to examine how the different layers of snow are binding together.
As you get a little bit higher up the mountain, you realise that what you thought was bad conditions down there are considerably worse.
And the wind starts picking up, there's a lot of drifting snow, which then increases the size of the snow pack in some areas, which, again, increases the avalanche risk.
This may not look like a steep slope, but it doesn't have to be.
Most avalanches happen on slopes of around 30 degrees.
ls it generally like people - skiers, walkers, hikers - that trigger the avalanches, or what tends to start them off? Yeah, 99% of them are if people are involved in an avalanche, they'll have triggered it themselves.
More often than not, it's small areas of snow that catch people out and then they carry them.
You lose your footing, and they take you into bad places - over cliffs or into rocks.
Right.
So that does a lot of damage, and that often is the main problem.
Although we couldn't see them, the Oairngorm mountains were now towering above us, so here's where we began to dig a pit to analyse just how dangerous the snow pack really is.
Just like my model, the key to its stability is how the different layers of snow stick together, and that is partially determined by the change in snow temperature as we dig down.
When we're digging, we only need to go down a certain way, because the ground is usually zero, and that's cos of geothermal heat, it keeps it sort of warmish.
As it works its way to the surface, so the temperature changes quite dramatically.
And where you get a dramatic change in temperature, - and usually we measure it every 10cm.
- Yep.
lf it's a really strong difference of greater than one degree in 10cm, that is where it's at a critical place where crystals don't knit together.
One degree may not sound like much, but it's enough to create an unstable layer of little ice crystals deep below the surface.
And sure enough, we found a potential weak point.
Tell me what that looks like.
That's quite compact.
There, that's the bit, isn't it? lt just disappears in there.
Yeah, you can tell that it is really, really fragile.
The danger is so obvious when it's like that, the way that this just strips out underneath that big fat layer of new snow.
What it meant was that Mark and l were sitting in a trench beneath hundreds of tonnes of snow that was just waiting to avalanche.
All it might take was a single footstep to trigger it, as Mark was about to demonstrate.
What l'm going to do here, we'll look at this face.
l'm going to put this shovel on the top like that.
l'm going to tap it, tap here, and part of an avalanche release, you'll get a collapse in a layer first.
Right.
That's called a shear fracture.
And then when it cracks and releases, that's called a tension fracture, all right? So in an avalanche, you get two types of fracture.
So you get the shear fracture underneath - and the tension fracture across the back.
- That's right.
So we're looking at the shear fracture.
lt dropped l don't know, a centimetre, half a centimetre? And that went with one tap, so that is very weak, so thisslides, and so what that is running on is this really loose sugar, see? - lt doesn't clump at all, the stuff in there.
- Yeah.
lt does, it looks sugar under the microscope.
Yeah.
ln terms of actual human danger, how many people do get caught up in avalanches? ln the five areas, we sort of made note of how many avalanches we saw, and it came to our attention that we had 1 12.
1 12 avalanches in this area? ln the Highlands, we cover five areas.
Of those 1 12 avalanches, occurrences, - there were 22 that involved people.
- That's a lot.
Knowing that we were standing on hundreds of thousands of tonnes of unstable snow, we did the sensible thing - headed off the mountain.
Good stuff there, Jem.
- We'll see you next week.
- Bye!
' lt's basically like a sponge, soaking in all the OO2 and holding it there.
'Dallas gets happy.
' So what is it that makes us happy? l think that's a question that's worth finding the answer to.
'And Jem heads into avalanche country.
' Do you think there will be avalanches here today? Yeah, undoubtedly.
'That's Bang Goes the Theory - putting science to the test.
' Hello and welcome to Bang Goes the Theory.
First up tonight, one of the most important and contentious subjects in science today, global warming.
When world leaders met in Oopenhagen last year to set real targets for climate change mitigation, one of the key issues was how to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere from fossil fuel industries.
Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide act like a blanket, trapping more of the sun's energy and warming the earth's atmosphere.
One plan to come out of Oopenhagen was to trial new carbon capture and storage schemes.
That is, to capture the carbon dioxide emissions from power stations and store them, as opposed to letting them spill out into the atmosphere.
Natural gas is often seen as one of our greener fossil fuels.
But some estimates say that it accounts for about half as much OO2 emissions as coal or oil.
And a lot of that OO2 is released when it's processed.
But where l am heading, they do things differently.
l'm heading to the most northern city in the entire world, a place called Hammerfest in Norway.
l'm not here to hang around the town, l've come to check that place out.
lt's the Statoil liquefied natural gas plant, where an incredible engineering project is taking place.
This is the Snohvit or Snow White terminal and many environmentalists think it should never have been built, fearing it may damage the delicate ecosystem of the Barents Sea.
But engineers here believe the plant will demonstrate that it's possible not just to capture, but to store OO2 safely on a massive scale.
Layer number 24 ln all liquefied gas plants, carbon dioxide is removed from the natural gas before it can be processed.
Normally, this OO2 is simply released into the atmosphere.
But here it's treated very differently.
At this particular plant, we have decided to reinject the OO2 underground for environmental reasons.
To understand how they do this, we need to start at the beginning - with the gas itself.
Over 100 kilometres offshore, in the middle of the Barents Sea, is a huge underground reservoir of natural gas.
From an installation 340 metres beneath the surface, Statoil drilled wells through the rock to extract the gas and then built an enormous pipeline to bring it all back to shore.
And this is where the raw natural gas first emerges onto land.
lt's been travelling 1 43 kilometres along the seabed.
And it's now being rushed in this pipeline, under huge pressure, ready to be processed inside the plant.
And this is where it gets interesting.
The natural gas that arrives here contains about 8% carbon dioxide.
The next stage is to separate that off and isolate it.
Well, the left tower, that is the absorption tower.
That is where you mix the natural gas with a solution called an amine solution.
And OO2 is absorbed in this amine solution, so this is actually where OO2 is separated from the natural gas.
This is a much larger version of the process that was taking OO2 out of the power station that Jem visited in Scotland.
So you've got your carbon dioxide in your amine solution.
How do you remove the carbon dioxide from it? That is the second tower to the right.
That is the absorption tower and that is when you lower the pressure so it separates the OO2 from the amine solution.
When you desorb, you actually decrease the pressure - and take out the OO2 as a gas again.
- And there you have it, you've got your OO2 separated from your natural gas.
As we saw in Scotland, in the UK this is as far as we've got.
We've worked out how to capture the OO2 released when we burn fossil fuels like coal.
What we haven't managed, is to find a way to then successfully store it.
But here at Snohvit, the Norwegians have found a solution.
Having compressed the captured OO2 back into fluid form, they pipe it back out to sea and bury it 2,600 metres below the seabed - directly underneath the natural gas field it originally came from.
And the rock they inject the OO2 into? Sandstone.
Now, you may think this looks really hard.
But it's basically like a sponge, soaking in all the OO2 and holding it there.
Above this is a really important layer, known as cap rock.
ln this case it's made of shale, a rock of very low permeability, acting as an upper seal, stopping the carbon dioxide from seeping back up through the rock formation to the surface.
This is a hugely ambitious and expensive experiment.
The Snohvit complex aims to bury up to 700,000 tonnes of OO2 every year.
When you think about that much carbon dioxide being pumped back into the ground every year, immediately what comes to my mind is, is it safe? Well, we see from the seismic images and from the models that we have developed that OO2 stays there and will eventually just be dissolving in the salt water that is down in this geologic formation.
But geological storage is a relatively new industry.
So how can you make sure it is completely safe, that there won't be leakage over time? lt's always a risk if you talk about geologic formations.
But if you compare it to the risks that the world is exposed to from emitting OO2 into the atmosphere, this is really a solution you have to look for.
Geologists believe that the seabeds around Britain could house up to 150 billion tonnes of OO2, more than the rest of Europe combined.
So should we in the UK start to use this controversial technology? You know, Jem, this is still a very new and very controversial technology.
Some reports are saying that OOS could help climate change mitigation by as much as 20%.
But it's still really expensive and any risk of OO2 leakage from the storage sites could negate the benefit of storing it in the first place.
l think that's such a vital issue to have covered.
Where we channel our resources for future power generation - is still a massive question.
- Yeah, very good point.
- Oan l show you something really jammy? - Yes, you can.
The very first night in Norway, we saw something that most people will never see in their entire lifetime.
Take a look at this.
lt's not often you get to see something that literally takes your breath away.
We are witnessing the aurora borealis in all its glory.
ln this part of the world, the aurora borealis, or the northern lights, are most commonly seen from September to April.
Wow! lt's the most incredible thing l've ever seen.
The aurora is evidence of the solar winds reacting with the earth's atmosphere.
Electrons and protons are fired out from the sun and travel through space for at least 40 hours before reaching the earth.
As they're caught by the earth's magnetic field, they're diverted at great speeds towards the poles.
This green curtain of light is created when those particles smash into oxygen molecules high in our upper atmosphere, changing the energy state of the electrons in the oxygen molecules - causing them to emit light.
The most common place to see the aurora borealis is in a ring about 2,500 kilometres from the North Pole.
lt has been known to be seen in Scotland, but that is really rare.
This really is one of nature's greatest wonders.
You've had a really nice time in Norway! - lt wasn't bad, l have to say.
- l'm jealous.
Moving swiftly on, l've been trying to answer a question to which there's as many answers, probably, as there are people on earth.
So what is it that makes us happy? l think that a question that's worth finding out the answer to.
Shoes make me happy.
You look outside and it's a sunny day.
l'm up for it.
Success.
Work, women.
Feet.
l love feet.
Being relaxed, man.
Not having to worry about things makes me happy.
Being under water.
- Family.
- Someone to love you and someone to love.
- Shopping.
- ls it a family show?.
Yeah.
- OK Oan't say, then.
- l can't say! Hmm, not much there in the way of consistency.
When you think about it, there's probably as many answers to that question as there are people to ask it to.
But recent research has shown that there is one thing that's almost guaranteed to make you happy.
lt's doing good deeds for others.
l'm going to see if l can replicate their findings.
So what do you think would make somebody more happy? Being given 20 quid, spending the 20 quid, or giving the 20 quid to somebody else? Well, that's what l'm going to try and find out.
'So l gathered together a gang of volunteers.
'First, we find out their mood.
' OK, so here's the next bit.
l've got four envelopes here and inside the envelopes there is some money.
There's 20 quid.
- Excellent.
- Exactly.
'Each of the volunteers receives £20 and a set of instructions.
' 10 minutes, that sort of time frame, off you go.
Enjoy.
- Great.
Thank you.
- See you in a minute.
'Some of them are told simply to keep the £20, 'others are told to spend it on a treat for themselves.
' - l bought a T-shirt.
- You bought a T-shirt? Yes.
l love that.
l bought tights.
Do tights make you happy? They do.
Funnily enough, l love tights.
'The remainder are asked to give their 20 quid away.
' - l'm looking for a charity box.
- 'Either to charity' Very satisfying.
'.
.
or as a gift for someone else.
' - Who are they for? - My girlfriend, future wife.
- How future is your future wife? - ln a month.
Well, congratulations.
That's the wedding covered.
20 quid wedding.
'And then we measure their mood again.
' Oould you now fill out the form again? - To see if l feel better? - Well, let's have a look.
'Ours is just a small experiment but this sort of study 'has been done on hundreds of people.
' And, surprisingly, results showed that actually giving the money away makes you happier than spending it on yourself.
So is the key to happiness doing things for other people? lf we are talking about doing good deeds for other people, what could be more selfless than giving blood? Hi there.
Oan l give you some of my blood, please? - Yes.
Have you ever donated before? - No, l haven't.
'l'm hoping that this will make me feel happier.
' Mr Oampbell, come through, please.
'The only problem is, l'm not crazy about needles.
' Slide your bottom down, put your head on the pillow and make yourself comfortable.
But thankfully, my fears were unfounded.
Relax your grip and that's the worst of it over.
- l felt nothing.
- That's cos l'm good.
You are good.
She's good.
lf you're going to give blood, give it to her.
And after ten minutes of thinking happy thoughts in a pain-free environment, it was all over.
And you get a biscuit.
- ls that it? - This is your little baby.
Look at that.
l thought it was going to be blue but that'll do.
lt's de-oxygenated so it's quite dark.
lt is dark.
lt's kind of like a fine claret.
So there you go, l'm all done.
How do l feel? Apart from a slightly sore arm, l feel good, actually.
l've done something that's good.
Do l feel happier? l don't know.
l guess we'll just have to see.
ln fact, researchers have done a full-scale study on this very subject.
They've found that people who give blood are, indeed, happier.
ln fact, recent research has gone beyond that and shown that the very act of giving, not just blood but anything else, will actually make you happier.
And what's more, being happy is not just a nice thing to be.
lt can apparently improve your health.
So researchers have found that happy people generally have lower levels of cortisol which is the hormone usually associated with stress.
And they have lower heart rates.
ln fact, giving whatever it is, whether it is blood, time, money, will make you a healthier person.
Oombined, these effects are so powerful that happiness can, in fact, increase lifespan by up to nine years.
Now that should make you happy.
There you go.
You've got a scientific reason to be nice.
l'm totally impressed.
Happiness reigns and all that.
Since l did that film, l've started giving blood and l feel better for it.
Good man yourself.
lt's good.
Talking of good things, it's time to catch up with Dr Yan.
He's in the West Midlands attending a Wl meeting.
What could be nicer than that? Tea and cake? l've put some faces up here that you might recognise.
l've turned them upside down, but can you still recognise who they are? - David Attenborough.
- Yeah.
- And - Prince William.
And - Maggie Thatcher.
- Yourself.
Yeah, sorry about that.
l've got another picture of someone here you might recognise.
Any? - Jo? - Sorry, Jo, can you come over here, please? lf you could hold that photo next to your face and without looking at it, could you slowly rotate it so it's the other way up? (THEY ALL LAUGH) That's not very nice! (SHE SOREAMS AND LAUGHS) - What have you done to it? - Sorry about that! Obviously, we've distorted it in some way, haven't we? But when you saw it upside down, it didn't look like it was doctored at all.
So now you know that, have a look at these faces again.
Do you think we'd doctored these in any way? - They look all right.
- Do you think? Maggie Thatcher You think Margaret's a bit She's a bit funny? OK.
l think her mouth's the wrong way up.
- She looks a lot worse that way up.
- Yes, yes.
Oh, and her eyes! - See? lt's not just you.
- Any others? Prince William's lips are the other way around.
You think Prince William's doctored? He doesn't look good, does he? - Your eyes are looking down.
- Wrong way round, yeah.
That's it, yes.
Aren't you ugly when you're the other way up? - Any other ones? - David Attenborough? - Top lip doesn't seem wrong, does it? - No.
He looks sort of OK, doesn't he? He looks about right, he's the only one His eyes.
His eyes.
(THEY GASP) How do you do it, then? lf you look closely, we've turned the mouth and the eyes upside down.
You don't notice, really, when it's that way up.
That's amazing.
lt's called the Thatcher effect, just because it was first seen accidentally in a picture of Margaret Thatcher that had been manipulated.
And we still don't really know what's going on.
But there are some theories.
lt seems like one of the ways that we recognise a face, whichever way up it is, is to first figure out where the eyes and nose and the mouth should be and then zoom in on each individual feature.
And, when you do that, each of these features looks fine.
The eyes look fine, the mouth looks normal.
But when l turn it the other way up, suddenly something else kicks in.
We have a mental image of what a whole face should look like and it shouldn't look like that.
But the thing is we don't seem to have mental images for whole upside-down faces.
Very odd, isn't it? Really odd.
l also thought it was traditional to bring a cake to Wl meetings, so l baked one.
Ooffee and walnut? - You'll make a wonderful Wl husband.
- Thank you.
(APPLAUSE) - Loving how the brain works.
- My brain's telling me l need cake! - l've got cake envy from that.
- Before you have cake, look at this.
- This is you.
You can tell it's you.
- l hate that! Don't be vain, it's a lovely photo.
But, if l go like this.
- l think it looks better that way.
- You look seriously weird.
But this has to be the humdinger of all humdingers.
This is my one.
You can tell it's me, yeah? l have to say, that way up, even that looks a bit odd.
You can tell it's a little bit odd, but then if you go like this, how wrong is that? We are burning this photograph after the show.
Enough of that.
l'm going to take on Mother Nature herself.
Welcome to the world of avalanches.
There aren't many catastrophic events in nature as awesome as an avalanche, an unstoppable force that, once triggered, will engulf everything in its wake.
The mountains l'm heading for may look pretty, but the Scottish Highlands can be just as deadly as anything you'll find in the Alps.
Now, l may not have done much climbing or seen many avalanches, but l have spent most of my life trying to figure stuff out, which is why rather than charge straight up that mountain, l thought l'd head for the pub.
Now, to make an avalanche, l'm going to need a few basic ingredients.
Hi there.
Any chance of a pint of dried potato, a pint of flour and a bag of crisps, please? Sure.
Thank you, that's perfect, mate.
Now, it might look like just one big white blanket out there, but it's actually made up of a whole heap of different types of snow.
l'll show you what l mean with my mountain here.
lt's early in the season, and we've got some heavy, damp snow going down.
Flour, in this case.
There it goes.
A fair amount of it on the mountain, it's a good start to the season.
A little bit later on, it gets colder, and there's more snow.
This is kind of lighter potato-based snow.
There it goes, a decent layer of this goes down, fairly heavy snow.
lt's the layering that's important.
We've got a heavy layer of snow at the bottom with a lighter layer on top.
Now, it gets a little bit warmer, and there's another heavy layer of damp snow that goes on top.
This is where it gets dangerous, because we've now got three distinct layers of snow.
lt's a pretty heavy fall there we go.
Now, you can see there's already cracks forming (HE GASPS) OK, this is avalanche country.
The layers of snow are beginning to slide over each other.
What an avalanche needs is a trigger, and here are some big heavy footprints.
Ooming through and lt's gone.
What you can see there is that the light fluffy layer acted almost like a lubricant, and the heavy layer of snow started to slide over the top, and it all comes down the mountain.
Now, in the real world, this is thousands and thousands of tons of snow.
Very, very dangerous.
And they're not just things that happen in the Alps or Himalayas.
So far this year, avalanches have killed or injured dozens in the Scottish mountains, which is where l'm heading now.
This winter, Scotland has had one of its heaviest snowfalls for decades, making the slopes truly deadly.
Luckily, the man l'm meeting knows a thing or two about avalanches.
Mark Diggins works for the Scottish Avalanche lnformation Service, and his job is to head into the mountains and assess the avalanche risk on a daily basis.
What we're doing today is part of what l do every day, what our team do every single day, and that's go into the mountains to try and see what the avalanche risk is.
And so we'll go and look at the snow, look at the different layers, and see if those layers are sticking together, and really that's our objective.
Do you think there will be avalanches here today? Yeah, undoubtedly.
There's strong winds, there is a lot of snow.
lt's been snowing now for 24 hours non-stop.
That's perfect ingredients for the creation of an avalanche situation.
We're heading onto the lower slopes of the notorious Oairngorm mountains, where Mark's daily task is to dig snow pits to examine how the different layers of snow are binding together.
As you get a little bit higher up the mountain, you realise that what you thought was bad conditions down there are considerably worse.
And the wind starts picking up, there's a lot of drifting snow, which then increases the size of the snow pack in some areas, which, again, increases the avalanche risk.
This may not look like a steep slope, but it doesn't have to be.
Most avalanches happen on slopes of around 30 degrees.
ls it generally like people - skiers, walkers, hikers - that trigger the avalanches, or what tends to start them off? Yeah, 99% of them are if people are involved in an avalanche, they'll have triggered it themselves.
More often than not, it's small areas of snow that catch people out and then they carry them.
You lose your footing, and they take you into bad places - over cliffs or into rocks.
Right.
So that does a lot of damage, and that often is the main problem.
Although we couldn't see them, the Oairngorm mountains were now towering above us, so here's where we began to dig a pit to analyse just how dangerous the snow pack really is.
Just like my model, the key to its stability is how the different layers of snow stick together, and that is partially determined by the change in snow temperature as we dig down.
When we're digging, we only need to go down a certain way, because the ground is usually zero, and that's cos of geothermal heat, it keeps it sort of warmish.
As it works its way to the surface, so the temperature changes quite dramatically.
And where you get a dramatic change in temperature, - and usually we measure it every 10cm.
- Yep.
lf it's a really strong difference of greater than one degree in 10cm, that is where it's at a critical place where crystals don't knit together.
One degree may not sound like much, but it's enough to create an unstable layer of little ice crystals deep below the surface.
And sure enough, we found a potential weak point.
Tell me what that looks like.
That's quite compact.
There, that's the bit, isn't it? lt just disappears in there.
Yeah, you can tell that it is really, really fragile.
The danger is so obvious when it's like that, the way that this just strips out underneath that big fat layer of new snow.
What it meant was that Mark and l were sitting in a trench beneath hundreds of tonnes of snow that was just waiting to avalanche.
All it might take was a single footstep to trigger it, as Mark was about to demonstrate.
What l'm going to do here, we'll look at this face.
l'm going to put this shovel on the top like that.
l'm going to tap it, tap here, and part of an avalanche release, you'll get a collapse in a layer first.
Right.
That's called a shear fracture.
And then when it cracks and releases, that's called a tension fracture, all right? So in an avalanche, you get two types of fracture.
So you get the shear fracture underneath - and the tension fracture across the back.
- That's right.
So we're looking at the shear fracture.
lt dropped l don't know, a centimetre, half a centimetre? And that went with one tap, so that is very weak, so thisslides, and so what that is running on is this really loose sugar, see? - lt doesn't clump at all, the stuff in there.
- Yeah.
lt does, it looks sugar under the microscope.
Yeah.
ln terms of actual human danger, how many people do get caught up in avalanches? ln the five areas, we sort of made note of how many avalanches we saw, and it came to our attention that we had 1 12.
1 12 avalanches in this area? ln the Highlands, we cover five areas.
Of those 1 12 avalanches, occurrences, - there were 22 that involved people.
- That's a lot.
Knowing that we were standing on hundreds of thousands of tonnes of unstable snow, we did the sensible thing - headed off the mountain.
Good stuff there, Jem.
- We'll see you next week.
- Bye!