Bang Goes The Theory (2009) s02e07 Episode Script
Season 2, Episode 7
This is Bang Goes The Theory.
This week, l take Dallas free diving Give me a smile before you go.
l'm worried about you now! Jem investigates how powerful a racehorse really is To find out, l'm going to use a racehorse.
A full-size plastic one.
And Dallas goes in search of antimatter.
l'm on the hunt for something that costs, brace yourself, $62 trillion per gram.
That's Bang Goes The Theory, putting science to the test.
Hello and welcome to Bang Goes The Theory.
You may remember Dallas's attempt to swim like a dolphin was, frankly, a little bit pants.
Here's a wee reminder for you.
l rest my case.
That's big pants.
- Afraid so.
- Sorry about that.
ln my defence, the problem is l can't hold my breath long enough and for that to work properly, you've got to be underwater the whole time because as soon as you come up for air, you lose momentum, and speed.
Absolutely.
Lucky for you, l know a little bit of biology that can help you fix that.
- Are you game? - l am game.
OK.
Well, get practising, go on.
lncredibly, you can almost double your breath-holding ability just by practising regularly and after a bit of home training, l've brought Dallas to the University of Bedford to meet sports scientist, Peter Sheard.
Right.
Time to see if Dallas has improved.
- Are you ready? - Mm-hm.
OK.
Let's put the SPO2 sensor, and then the nose thing.
OK.
Now settle down.
Get all nice and relaxed.
ln your own time.
When you hold your breath, your body continues to use oxygen and releases carbon dioxide as a waste product.
Sensors in the body detect this change and alert the brain that you urgently need to breathe.
But by practising at home, Dallas's body has got used to the drop in oxygen and the increase in carbon dioxide.
Dallas! Oan you hear me? After 90 seconds, Dallas's body is starting to react to the high concentration of OO2 in his bloodstream and his diaphragm spasms as his body struggles to breathe.
(HE GARGLES) lt may not look pleasant, but it's not dangerous.
Well done.
This is just nature's very effective early warning system.
(HE GASPS) - Well done.
Breathe through.
- Wowee! Dallas Oampbell, you are my hero.
Oan l take this out? - Are you all right, love? - Yeah.
Your OO2 levels are much higher which means you're tolerating it a lot better, so that's really good going.
But l think it's about as far as we can go with this kind of exercise.
l do, however, have another trick up my sleeve for you.
Sounds ominous! lt is called the ''dive reflex''.
Something that we may have inherited from our ancient aquatic past and it is triggered just by getting your face wet.
We're going to try and improve on your breath-holding time by using this dive response, because two basic things happen during the dive response.
The first thing is called diving bradycardia which is basically the slowing down of the heart rate, which means the oxygen is burnt slower around the body.
The second thing that happens is the blood flow to the periphery, your extremities, is shut off and it's concentrated only on the two organs that need it the most, the brain and the heart.
Those two things combined increase the amount of time you should be able to hold your breath.
- Are you excited? - OK, l'm ready.
Let's do it.
Good man.
Peter, l think we're ready to hook him up.
By triggering a drop in heart rate and concentrating the blood where it's most needed, putting your face into water should increase breath-holding time by up to 25%.
But what effect will it have on my guinea pig? You can hear the heartbeat dropping away already.
The water's having its effect.
- lt's dropping much faster.
- Yes.
- And longer.
- Yes, much faster and much longer.
As the seconds drag past, Dallas is really struggling.
Keep holding it.
Keep holding it.
But the dive reflex is still making his heart rate plummet.
Keep holding it.
Keep holding it.
Well done.
Well done.
Keep holding it.
Well done.
Keep holding it.
Keep holding it.
- Well done.
- Well done.
Keep breathing through.
She can get a reading for you.
220-10.
- How are you feeling? Are you OK? - Yes.
That was hardcore.
That was amazing.
220-10, your best ever.
You're getting better and better every time you do this.
l just went into a complete panic.
l just went into a panic.
Dallas, l'm tense.
Seeing you like that is hard for me to watch.
That's horrible, because you're fighting every instinct to breathe, but of course the technique when you get to that panic bit is to relax, but obviously that's really hard to do.
Don't try that at home.
Definitely not.
You need the psychology, the practice, and it all has to be firmly rooted in good biological principles.
You got to that stage, which means l think you're ready for the next level.
Oheck out how he gets on later on in the show.
Now it's time to unleash our own weird scientist, Dr Yan.
This week he's burning steel.
The question is, though, will it be heavier or lighter after it's been burnt? We're used to things getting lighter when we burn them.
But l'm going to show you something that might surprise you.
l'm going to do it by setting fire to some metal.
So this is just a ball of steel wool.
Yes.
l know that.
From scouring days.
But there's nothing in it.
lt's one of these pads, but it hasn't got any detergent in it.
So what l'm going to see if it gets heavier or lighter when you burn it, l'm going to stick it in here and weigh it.
- So that's 21 grams.
- Yes.
OK.
So l'll write that on the outside so we don't forget.
21 .
Right.
Now comes the fun bit! - Wow! - Oh, wow! lt's good, isn't it? lt seems to work.
lf you want to do this at home, go to our website, /bang, where l'll show you how to do it safely.
That's just steel wool.
- lt's really cool, isn't it? - Metal is burning, yes.
Ohemically, what's going on is that the metal is reacting - with the oxygen in the air.
- Yes.
See how hot it gets as well.
That's lovely.
Really warming my chin.
lf l had any bristles, they'd be gone.
What's going on is that in this, the heat from the reaction is building up, and it's setting off more reactions in all the neighbouring areas, so it spreads and you can see it spreading along the strands.
- lt looks really cool, doesn't it? - Yes.
How about the weight? Now you ask again, l'd probably say heavier.
- l don't know, man.
- lt should be lighter.
l reckon that would now be heavier than what it was previously.
l would've thought lighter.
Yes, yes, it would be heavier.
Same weight! l think it'll be lighter, because more has been burnt away.
You might have thought that, mightn't you? Let's try it.
lt's heavy.
Six grams heavier.
Six grams heavier.
That's amazing.
Whoa! OK, fine! lt's got heavier? How?.
lt's got to have more stuff in there somehow.
Where's it come from? - The oxygen.
- Yes.
Oxygen from the air is combining with the metal.
- Oxygen actually weighs something.
- Yes, OK.
Because it's all round us, we don't really feel it.
Because oxygen does weigh something, then what's formed weighs a bit more than it did at the start.
So basically the extra weight is oxygen? lt's all oxygen.
Right.
We're not used to that because we're used to burning things like wood and fossil fuels, where there's stuff that's given off as gases.
Here, nothing's been given off as gas, it's all stayed in the bowl.
Amazing.
lf you think about it, it's not so surprising because if you think about rusting, it's a similar sort of reaction.
So the collective weight of the water and the oxygen makes the screw heavier? Yes, absolutely.
lt looks bigger, bulkier and it's heavier.
lt's quite obvious, really in a way, yes.
That's amazing.
OK! - You learn something new every day.
- Thanks a lot.
Now then, l've done some pretty weird things on Bang this year.
- You really have.
- What have l done? l've swum like a dolphin.
l've pedalled a hydrofoil bike.
l've lied to the Feds.
But nothing is as weird as this.
l'm off to visit one of the most extraordinary places in the universe.
l'm on the hunt for something that costs, brace yourself, $62 trillion per gram, even though it only lasts for a fraction of a second before it completely vanishes.
Now this substance l'm referring to is straight out of science fiction.
lt's Star Wars squared, multiplied by Star Trek, added to 2001 and the complete works of Battlestar Galactica.
And it is called antimatter.
Matter is the stuff all around us in the universe.
The atoms, the air, you, me, the snow, the stars.
But about 80 years ago scientists discovered another kind of matter.
A mirror-image exact opposite of matter, called antimatter.
lf you think of something like, l don't know, Superman and antiSuperman Normal Superman is good and nice, while antiSuperman is evil and horrible and hasn't shaved and is slightly less good-looking.
Antimatter's a little bit like that.
When matter and antimatter meet, they disappear.
They cancel each other out in total annihilation.
(EXPLOSlON) And that really excited the scientists, because they realised that by studying antimatter they might be able to answer an awfully big question.
How did the universe begin? (''BEGlN'' EOHOES) And the reason is this.
Both matter and antimatter are, according to Albert Einstein, just frozen energy.
When they meet, they explode, and that energy is released.
Einstein expressed how much energy that is with his famous equation E=MO squared.
And it's a hell of a lot so, for example, this pot of tea, or matter, weighs about one kilogram.
We can work out just how much energy that is by using this equation.
So, E, energy, equals mass.
That's one kilogram.
Times the speed of light, squared.
The O squared part of the equation.
lt's a huge number.
lt's 25 with nine zeros at the end, kilowatt hours.
ln ''wow'' terms, if you like, that's about the equivalent of me driving for 100,000 years in my car, non-stop.
So if l have a pot of tea and a pot of anti-tea and mix them together the result is a huge release of energy and it's this matter/antimatter annihilation that gives us a clue to what the universe was doing at the dawn of time.
Because just as matter and antimatter can annihilate to make pure energy, you can't turn energy back into matter without also making antimatter.
So there should be antimatter throughout the universe.
But there isn't.
ln fact, there's hardly any antimatter whatsoever.
Time to meet the woman who spends her days trying to work out where all the antimatter went, and how to make some more.
This is OERN.
lt's the biggest fundamental research facility in the entire world.
Home to the Large Hadron Oollider.
And also the biggest producer of that elusive elixir of the universe, antimatter.
And this is Dr Tara Shears.
OK, why is antimatter so difficult to make? Dallas, l think you need to see round a bit.
- Shall we go this way? - OK.
Tara makes and studies antimatter here because it's home to the largest and most powerful atom smashers on Earth, which can make antiatoms out of antiprotons and antielectrons.
To make our antimatter, the first thing we have to do is to make antiprotons, and that's what's going on here.
So, we take real protons and we ram them against a high energy target, and then sometimes this converts them into pure energy and they can then reform into antiprotons, which is what we want.
But as Tara started to explain how she puts it all together, l began to realise how totally out of my depth l was.
So this is the other half of the antiatom.
This is where we get the positrons.
So in here we've got this big radioactive source.
lt's Sodium 22.
We collect our positrons from here, shoot them down this pipe and we cool them down using neon gas and nitrogen gas until they're moving really slowly.
Then we can put them in this chamber 'You could bake a potato in there.
' where we hold them steady and keep them in one place.
- We have - 'l wonder if OERN has a nice canteen?' We take them out of the end here, inject them into this machinery here 'There's a lot of silver foil involved in making antimatter.
' and then finally make our antiatoms.
You've got antiatoms in there? Phew! That was hard work! l don't think Tara noticed how lost l was.
But as the tour continued, despite the impressive scale of the technology, it all began to make me wonder if it was really worth it.
Here's the big question though.
why do we care so much about antimatter? lt seems like an awful lot of work.
Oh! Dallas, let's go and have a cup of tea and l'll explain everything to you.
OK.
OK.
The problem is this.
We think in the Big Bang we had both matter and antimatter around, yes? Right.
But now if you look around the universe, we've pretty much only got matter, and we think that the reason for this, strange reason why all the antimatter has disappeared, we think it's down to something called ''symmetry violation''.
Which is? Matter and antimatter are supposed to be identical but opposite.
- Right.
- And our experiments show that.
But our theories tell us that actually they are not quite the same at all.
ln some ways, the symmetry between matter and antimatter has been broken or violated.
So what this means for the very early universe is that when we had all the matter and antimatter, when it had all just been made, it all mixed up.
So if l took matter, and l mixed it with a little bit of antimatter Then there was a huge explosion as it annihilated into pure energy.
When that process had finished, there was a tiny bit left over.
Well, this has given rise to the whole universe we see around us.
Scientists believe that for every 10 billion antimatter particles there were at the beginning of the universe, there were 10 billion and one matter particles, so we and all the other stuff in the universe are part of that one 10 billionth that survived the annihilation.
Wow! So essentially what you're saying is that we are just the dregs of some huge, cosmic tea incident.
Exactly.
That's exactly it.
When are we actually going to be able to pin this down once and for all and get some sort of concrete evidence? lt's research at the cutting edge so we don't have a strict timetable.
We are doing our best, so we hope in the next year, the next few years, the results will come in and then we will know much more about what went on in the very early universe.
So a couple of years, you think.
Fingers crossed.
That is proper, deep physics.
l mean, that is the very, very edge of knowledge.
lt really is.
Do you know what? For the first time, l actually get it.
- lt's bonkers, but l get it.
- lt's pretty deep stuff.
l was just gobsmacked by the amount of tinfoil and pipe lagging they seem to use.
lf that's all it took, l would have built one years ago! Yeah, you would(!) Maybe l actually wouldn't, but nonetheless Now we get to find out why we still use pit ponies to measure the power of high-performance vehicles.
lf l was presenting a car show, l might say this Land Rover packs 120 horsepower below the bonnet.
lf the Light Brigade had that kind of grunt they could have got the Battle of Balaclava done by lunchtime.
But l'm not presenting a car show, and that kind of thing tells us absolutely nothing about horsepower.
So what is horsepower? Well, unsurprisingly, it's a measure of power.
The rate at which an engine can do work.
Take this Land Rover.
lts 120 horsepower is geared to make it very good at going up steep hills or pulling heavy weights.
But to understand what 120 horsepower actually means, we need a quick lesson from the 18th century.
Back then, this was the engine that was driving the world.
But in the late 18th century, one James Watt started marketing his steam engines, which he hoped would be cheaper to run and be able to do more work than this big fellow.
But if he was going to sell his steam engines, he needed to prove they were more efficient than a horse.
And to do that, he needed a scientific measure of just how much work a horse could do in a given time.
(WESTERN STYLE MUSlO) lt all started with one of these, an old mechanical winch.
lt's called a whim, and it was worked by a horse being attached to one of these arms and literally walking round and round all day.
This one, at the Weald and Downland Museum near Ohichester, was used to bring up water from underground.
Which was also the main purpose of Watt's newfangled steam engines.
Let's see how this goes.
Watt's chief customers were mine owners who needed to pump water out of their flooding mines.
lf they could do it cheaper with steam than with horses, then Watt would make a fortune.
So he turned to maths.
Power can be calculated by how much work was being done divided by how much time it took to do it.
By observing a rig like this, Watt discovered that a horse could pull this bar all the way around about 2.
4 times a minute.
But to lift a bucket it had to apply a constant force of about 81 kilos.
To get the power of the horse, all you need to do is multiply the drag force it's feeling from the bucket by its speed.
So it was 2.
4 times a minute.
2 pi times the length of the arm gives you distance it travels.
Divide that by the time.
Multiply that by the drag force and then, this is the big thing, Watt figured these were old pit ponies on here and they were probably half the strength of a horse, so he got his answer and then doubled it.
The power of a horse x 2, and it came out at 33,000 foot pounds per minute.
That's a horsepower, or in modern money, you can think of it as lifting a 75-kilo weight through a metre every second.
That's the power we are talking about.
One horsepower.
So now we know the maths, we can say that at 120 horsepower, this Land Rover engine has enough power to lift 9000 kilos up one metre every second.
But in the real world, we don't use its power for lifting weights.
A lot of it goes into overcoming air drag, which at low speed is relatively easy, but go flat out and things change.
At 100 kph, it is a bit like holding up some boards of wood at the sides of the frontal area of this vehicle and trying to push them into a hurricane.
You can see then the power that is required.
So with that in mind, l thought l'd have a go at figuring out the power of a horse myself.
Not with a tired old pit pony like James Watt, but with the supercar version, a top-flight racehorse.
So what is the effective power of a racehorse? To find out, l'm going to use a racehorse.
A full-size plastic one.
And l'm going to build a high-speed horsepower measuring device.
l've strapped Dobbin here onto the roof of my truck, and l've put her on a slide.
She can slide forwards and backwards.
So when l take my truck up to galloping horse speed, 60 kph, the wind drag that the horse will feel at that speed makes her slide back up against the scale pad.
The scales then measure the exact wind drag on the horse, and if l multiply the drag by the speed of the horse, l will get the power that that horse has to be putting in if it is going 60 kph.
Which is what a top racehorse does.
So, here we go.
Down the opening furlong with the world's first Land Rover-assisted plastic horse mile.
And Dobbin is soon into her stride.
Yes! Here we are at about 60 kph.
The top speed for a racehorse.
And the rough-and-ready horsepower meter is registering a staggering 18 kilos of drag, which, if l do the maths, comes out at not one horsepower, but an incredible four horsepower.
Good old Mr Watt and his 200-year-old calculations.
Jem, You are a fount of horse-based knowledge.
l love that.
l do my best.
OK, time now for the second instalment of Dallas's attempt to return to his evolutionary aquatic past.
- So you've done your breath-holding.
- Yeah.
- You now know how to do the dive reflex.
- Yup.
How long do you reckon you can hold your breath now then? A couple of minutes? A couple of minutes.
So the length of an Olympic pool, probably? Probably a length, l reckon.
OK.
That's not too bad.
You ready for the next step? - Why are we in Portsmouth? - Walk this way and l'll show you.
Dallas isn't going to swim the length of a normal pool.
He's going to swim down the length of a normal pool.
This tank is owned by the defence company QinetiQ, and was used by the Royal Navy for submarine escape training.
30 metres deep, it holds over half a million litres of water, and Dallas is heading for the bottom.
His teacher is Britain's free-diving record holder, Mark Harris.
Oheck him out.
Free diving is an extreme sport.
Divers reach incredible depths on a single breath of air.
l actually feel quite sick watching that.
- lt's not that far down.
- lt's really far down! 30 metres down.
- He's only at 15.
- l know.
Look how far down he is.
- l'm nervous.
- Are you? Yeah.
l'm nervous because, if you end up in the bottom of there, you've still got to come all the way up.
That's the whole idea of free diving, yeah.
To get down to these kinds of depths, you would normally need an aqualung, but today it's going to be just Dallas and a single breath.
- OK.
- Give me a smile before you go.
l'm worried about you now.
- You're going to have a great time.
- OK.
Just get in the water and flap around and get used to it.
- Wish me luck.
- Good luck, my dear.
He's in, he's in the water! 20 seconds.
Holding his breath in a lab was one thing, but here, facing a 30-metre vertical drop, with a film crew, is a whole different kind of pressure.
10 seconds.
All of which will make his heart beat faster and use up his precious oxygen supply even quicker.
Finally, at 1 7 metres, Dallas turns.
At this depth, the pressure of the water has squashed his lungs to less than half their normal size.
- (APPLAUSE) - That was unbelievable! You were amazing! l wish l could have had another day doing that cos by the end l was just getting the hang of it.
- Seriously.
- You were.
Oan l just apologise to free divers who were watching that film in horror at my appalling style, technique, - beached whaleness - Will you stop it! Your very first time free diving, l thought you were amazing.
Well done, you.
- See you next week.
Bye! - Bye!
This week, l take Dallas free diving Give me a smile before you go.
l'm worried about you now! Jem investigates how powerful a racehorse really is To find out, l'm going to use a racehorse.
A full-size plastic one.
And Dallas goes in search of antimatter.
l'm on the hunt for something that costs, brace yourself, $62 trillion per gram.
That's Bang Goes The Theory, putting science to the test.
Hello and welcome to Bang Goes The Theory.
You may remember Dallas's attempt to swim like a dolphin was, frankly, a little bit pants.
Here's a wee reminder for you.
l rest my case.
That's big pants.
- Afraid so.
- Sorry about that.
ln my defence, the problem is l can't hold my breath long enough and for that to work properly, you've got to be underwater the whole time because as soon as you come up for air, you lose momentum, and speed.
Absolutely.
Lucky for you, l know a little bit of biology that can help you fix that.
- Are you game? - l am game.
OK.
Well, get practising, go on.
lncredibly, you can almost double your breath-holding ability just by practising regularly and after a bit of home training, l've brought Dallas to the University of Bedford to meet sports scientist, Peter Sheard.
Right.
Time to see if Dallas has improved.
- Are you ready? - Mm-hm.
OK.
Let's put the SPO2 sensor, and then the nose thing.
OK.
Now settle down.
Get all nice and relaxed.
ln your own time.
When you hold your breath, your body continues to use oxygen and releases carbon dioxide as a waste product.
Sensors in the body detect this change and alert the brain that you urgently need to breathe.
But by practising at home, Dallas's body has got used to the drop in oxygen and the increase in carbon dioxide.
Dallas! Oan you hear me? After 90 seconds, Dallas's body is starting to react to the high concentration of OO2 in his bloodstream and his diaphragm spasms as his body struggles to breathe.
(HE GARGLES) lt may not look pleasant, but it's not dangerous.
Well done.
This is just nature's very effective early warning system.
(HE GASPS) - Well done.
Breathe through.
- Wowee! Dallas Oampbell, you are my hero.
Oan l take this out? - Are you all right, love? - Yeah.
Your OO2 levels are much higher which means you're tolerating it a lot better, so that's really good going.
But l think it's about as far as we can go with this kind of exercise.
l do, however, have another trick up my sleeve for you.
Sounds ominous! lt is called the ''dive reflex''.
Something that we may have inherited from our ancient aquatic past and it is triggered just by getting your face wet.
We're going to try and improve on your breath-holding time by using this dive response, because two basic things happen during the dive response.
The first thing is called diving bradycardia which is basically the slowing down of the heart rate, which means the oxygen is burnt slower around the body.
The second thing that happens is the blood flow to the periphery, your extremities, is shut off and it's concentrated only on the two organs that need it the most, the brain and the heart.
Those two things combined increase the amount of time you should be able to hold your breath.
- Are you excited? - OK, l'm ready.
Let's do it.
Good man.
Peter, l think we're ready to hook him up.
By triggering a drop in heart rate and concentrating the blood where it's most needed, putting your face into water should increase breath-holding time by up to 25%.
But what effect will it have on my guinea pig? You can hear the heartbeat dropping away already.
The water's having its effect.
- lt's dropping much faster.
- Yes.
- And longer.
- Yes, much faster and much longer.
As the seconds drag past, Dallas is really struggling.
Keep holding it.
Keep holding it.
But the dive reflex is still making his heart rate plummet.
Keep holding it.
Keep holding it.
Well done.
Well done.
Keep holding it.
Well done.
Keep holding it.
Keep holding it.
- Well done.
- Well done.
Keep breathing through.
She can get a reading for you.
220-10.
- How are you feeling? Are you OK? - Yes.
That was hardcore.
That was amazing.
220-10, your best ever.
You're getting better and better every time you do this.
l just went into a complete panic.
l just went into a panic.
Dallas, l'm tense.
Seeing you like that is hard for me to watch.
That's horrible, because you're fighting every instinct to breathe, but of course the technique when you get to that panic bit is to relax, but obviously that's really hard to do.
Don't try that at home.
Definitely not.
You need the psychology, the practice, and it all has to be firmly rooted in good biological principles.
You got to that stage, which means l think you're ready for the next level.
Oheck out how he gets on later on in the show.
Now it's time to unleash our own weird scientist, Dr Yan.
This week he's burning steel.
The question is, though, will it be heavier or lighter after it's been burnt? We're used to things getting lighter when we burn them.
But l'm going to show you something that might surprise you.
l'm going to do it by setting fire to some metal.
So this is just a ball of steel wool.
Yes.
l know that.
From scouring days.
But there's nothing in it.
lt's one of these pads, but it hasn't got any detergent in it.
So what l'm going to see if it gets heavier or lighter when you burn it, l'm going to stick it in here and weigh it.
- So that's 21 grams.
- Yes.
OK.
So l'll write that on the outside so we don't forget.
21 .
Right.
Now comes the fun bit! - Wow! - Oh, wow! lt's good, isn't it? lt seems to work.
lf you want to do this at home, go to our website, /bang, where l'll show you how to do it safely.
That's just steel wool.
- lt's really cool, isn't it? - Metal is burning, yes.
Ohemically, what's going on is that the metal is reacting - with the oxygen in the air.
- Yes.
See how hot it gets as well.
That's lovely.
Really warming my chin.
lf l had any bristles, they'd be gone.
What's going on is that in this, the heat from the reaction is building up, and it's setting off more reactions in all the neighbouring areas, so it spreads and you can see it spreading along the strands.
- lt looks really cool, doesn't it? - Yes.
How about the weight? Now you ask again, l'd probably say heavier.
- l don't know, man.
- lt should be lighter.
l reckon that would now be heavier than what it was previously.
l would've thought lighter.
Yes, yes, it would be heavier.
Same weight! l think it'll be lighter, because more has been burnt away.
You might have thought that, mightn't you? Let's try it.
lt's heavy.
Six grams heavier.
Six grams heavier.
That's amazing.
Whoa! OK, fine! lt's got heavier? How?.
lt's got to have more stuff in there somehow.
Where's it come from? - The oxygen.
- Yes.
Oxygen from the air is combining with the metal.
- Oxygen actually weighs something.
- Yes, OK.
Because it's all round us, we don't really feel it.
Because oxygen does weigh something, then what's formed weighs a bit more than it did at the start.
So basically the extra weight is oxygen? lt's all oxygen.
Right.
We're not used to that because we're used to burning things like wood and fossil fuels, where there's stuff that's given off as gases.
Here, nothing's been given off as gas, it's all stayed in the bowl.
Amazing.
lf you think about it, it's not so surprising because if you think about rusting, it's a similar sort of reaction.
So the collective weight of the water and the oxygen makes the screw heavier? Yes, absolutely.
lt looks bigger, bulkier and it's heavier.
lt's quite obvious, really in a way, yes.
That's amazing.
OK! - You learn something new every day.
- Thanks a lot.
Now then, l've done some pretty weird things on Bang this year.
- You really have.
- What have l done? l've swum like a dolphin.
l've pedalled a hydrofoil bike.
l've lied to the Feds.
But nothing is as weird as this.
l'm off to visit one of the most extraordinary places in the universe.
l'm on the hunt for something that costs, brace yourself, $62 trillion per gram, even though it only lasts for a fraction of a second before it completely vanishes.
Now this substance l'm referring to is straight out of science fiction.
lt's Star Wars squared, multiplied by Star Trek, added to 2001 and the complete works of Battlestar Galactica.
And it is called antimatter.
Matter is the stuff all around us in the universe.
The atoms, the air, you, me, the snow, the stars.
But about 80 years ago scientists discovered another kind of matter.
A mirror-image exact opposite of matter, called antimatter.
lf you think of something like, l don't know, Superman and antiSuperman Normal Superman is good and nice, while antiSuperman is evil and horrible and hasn't shaved and is slightly less good-looking.
Antimatter's a little bit like that.
When matter and antimatter meet, they disappear.
They cancel each other out in total annihilation.
(EXPLOSlON) And that really excited the scientists, because they realised that by studying antimatter they might be able to answer an awfully big question.
How did the universe begin? (''BEGlN'' EOHOES) And the reason is this.
Both matter and antimatter are, according to Albert Einstein, just frozen energy.
When they meet, they explode, and that energy is released.
Einstein expressed how much energy that is with his famous equation E=MO squared.
And it's a hell of a lot so, for example, this pot of tea, or matter, weighs about one kilogram.
We can work out just how much energy that is by using this equation.
So, E, energy, equals mass.
That's one kilogram.
Times the speed of light, squared.
The O squared part of the equation.
lt's a huge number.
lt's 25 with nine zeros at the end, kilowatt hours.
ln ''wow'' terms, if you like, that's about the equivalent of me driving for 100,000 years in my car, non-stop.
So if l have a pot of tea and a pot of anti-tea and mix them together the result is a huge release of energy and it's this matter/antimatter annihilation that gives us a clue to what the universe was doing at the dawn of time.
Because just as matter and antimatter can annihilate to make pure energy, you can't turn energy back into matter without also making antimatter.
So there should be antimatter throughout the universe.
But there isn't.
ln fact, there's hardly any antimatter whatsoever.
Time to meet the woman who spends her days trying to work out where all the antimatter went, and how to make some more.
This is OERN.
lt's the biggest fundamental research facility in the entire world.
Home to the Large Hadron Oollider.
And also the biggest producer of that elusive elixir of the universe, antimatter.
And this is Dr Tara Shears.
OK, why is antimatter so difficult to make? Dallas, l think you need to see round a bit.
- Shall we go this way? - OK.
Tara makes and studies antimatter here because it's home to the largest and most powerful atom smashers on Earth, which can make antiatoms out of antiprotons and antielectrons.
To make our antimatter, the first thing we have to do is to make antiprotons, and that's what's going on here.
So, we take real protons and we ram them against a high energy target, and then sometimes this converts them into pure energy and they can then reform into antiprotons, which is what we want.
But as Tara started to explain how she puts it all together, l began to realise how totally out of my depth l was.
So this is the other half of the antiatom.
This is where we get the positrons.
So in here we've got this big radioactive source.
lt's Sodium 22.
We collect our positrons from here, shoot them down this pipe and we cool them down using neon gas and nitrogen gas until they're moving really slowly.
Then we can put them in this chamber 'You could bake a potato in there.
' where we hold them steady and keep them in one place.
- We have - 'l wonder if OERN has a nice canteen?' We take them out of the end here, inject them into this machinery here 'There's a lot of silver foil involved in making antimatter.
' and then finally make our antiatoms.
You've got antiatoms in there? Phew! That was hard work! l don't think Tara noticed how lost l was.
But as the tour continued, despite the impressive scale of the technology, it all began to make me wonder if it was really worth it.
Here's the big question though.
why do we care so much about antimatter? lt seems like an awful lot of work.
Oh! Dallas, let's go and have a cup of tea and l'll explain everything to you.
OK.
OK.
The problem is this.
We think in the Big Bang we had both matter and antimatter around, yes? Right.
But now if you look around the universe, we've pretty much only got matter, and we think that the reason for this, strange reason why all the antimatter has disappeared, we think it's down to something called ''symmetry violation''.
Which is? Matter and antimatter are supposed to be identical but opposite.
- Right.
- And our experiments show that.
But our theories tell us that actually they are not quite the same at all.
ln some ways, the symmetry between matter and antimatter has been broken or violated.
So what this means for the very early universe is that when we had all the matter and antimatter, when it had all just been made, it all mixed up.
So if l took matter, and l mixed it with a little bit of antimatter Then there was a huge explosion as it annihilated into pure energy.
When that process had finished, there was a tiny bit left over.
Well, this has given rise to the whole universe we see around us.
Scientists believe that for every 10 billion antimatter particles there were at the beginning of the universe, there were 10 billion and one matter particles, so we and all the other stuff in the universe are part of that one 10 billionth that survived the annihilation.
Wow! So essentially what you're saying is that we are just the dregs of some huge, cosmic tea incident.
Exactly.
That's exactly it.
When are we actually going to be able to pin this down once and for all and get some sort of concrete evidence? lt's research at the cutting edge so we don't have a strict timetable.
We are doing our best, so we hope in the next year, the next few years, the results will come in and then we will know much more about what went on in the very early universe.
So a couple of years, you think.
Fingers crossed.
That is proper, deep physics.
l mean, that is the very, very edge of knowledge.
lt really is.
Do you know what? For the first time, l actually get it.
- lt's bonkers, but l get it.
- lt's pretty deep stuff.
l was just gobsmacked by the amount of tinfoil and pipe lagging they seem to use.
lf that's all it took, l would have built one years ago! Yeah, you would(!) Maybe l actually wouldn't, but nonetheless Now we get to find out why we still use pit ponies to measure the power of high-performance vehicles.
lf l was presenting a car show, l might say this Land Rover packs 120 horsepower below the bonnet.
lf the Light Brigade had that kind of grunt they could have got the Battle of Balaclava done by lunchtime.
But l'm not presenting a car show, and that kind of thing tells us absolutely nothing about horsepower.
So what is horsepower? Well, unsurprisingly, it's a measure of power.
The rate at which an engine can do work.
Take this Land Rover.
lts 120 horsepower is geared to make it very good at going up steep hills or pulling heavy weights.
But to understand what 120 horsepower actually means, we need a quick lesson from the 18th century.
Back then, this was the engine that was driving the world.
But in the late 18th century, one James Watt started marketing his steam engines, which he hoped would be cheaper to run and be able to do more work than this big fellow.
But if he was going to sell his steam engines, he needed to prove they were more efficient than a horse.
And to do that, he needed a scientific measure of just how much work a horse could do in a given time.
(WESTERN STYLE MUSlO) lt all started with one of these, an old mechanical winch.
lt's called a whim, and it was worked by a horse being attached to one of these arms and literally walking round and round all day.
This one, at the Weald and Downland Museum near Ohichester, was used to bring up water from underground.
Which was also the main purpose of Watt's newfangled steam engines.
Let's see how this goes.
Watt's chief customers were mine owners who needed to pump water out of their flooding mines.
lf they could do it cheaper with steam than with horses, then Watt would make a fortune.
So he turned to maths.
Power can be calculated by how much work was being done divided by how much time it took to do it.
By observing a rig like this, Watt discovered that a horse could pull this bar all the way around about 2.
4 times a minute.
But to lift a bucket it had to apply a constant force of about 81 kilos.
To get the power of the horse, all you need to do is multiply the drag force it's feeling from the bucket by its speed.
So it was 2.
4 times a minute.
2 pi times the length of the arm gives you distance it travels.
Divide that by the time.
Multiply that by the drag force and then, this is the big thing, Watt figured these were old pit ponies on here and they were probably half the strength of a horse, so he got his answer and then doubled it.
The power of a horse x 2, and it came out at 33,000 foot pounds per minute.
That's a horsepower, or in modern money, you can think of it as lifting a 75-kilo weight through a metre every second.
That's the power we are talking about.
One horsepower.
So now we know the maths, we can say that at 120 horsepower, this Land Rover engine has enough power to lift 9000 kilos up one metre every second.
But in the real world, we don't use its power for lifting weights.
A lot of it goes into overcoming air drag, which at low speed is relatively easy, but go flat out and things change.
At 100 kph, it is a bit like holding up some boards of wood at the sides of the frontal area of this vehicle and trying to push them into a hurricane.
You can see then the power that is required.
So with that in mind, l thought l'd have a go at figuring out the power of a horse myself.
Not with a tired old pit pony like James Watt, but with the supercar version, a top-flight racehorse.
So what is the effective power of a racehorse? To find out, l'm going to use a racehorse.
A full-size plastic one.
And l'm going to build a high-speed horsepower measuring device.
l've strapped Dobbin here onto the roof of my truck, and l've put her on a slide.
She can slide forwards and backwards.
So when l take my truck up to galloping horse speed, 60 kph, the wind drag that the horse will feel at that speed makes her slide back up against the scale pad.
The scales then measure the exact wind drag on the horse, and if l multiply the drag by the speed of the horse, l will get the power that that horse has to be putting in if it is going 60 kph.
Which is what a top racehorse does.
So, here we go.
Down the opening furlong with the world's first Land Rover-assisted plastic horse mile.
And Dobbin is soon into her stride.
Yes! Here we are at about 60 kph.
The top speed for a racehorse.
And the rough-and-ready horsepower meter is registering a staggering 18 kilos of drag, which, if l do the maths, comes out at not one horsepower, but an incredible four horsepower.
Good old Mr Watt and his 200-year-old calculations.
Jem, You are a fount of horse-based knowledge.
l love that.
l do my best.
OK, time now for the second instalment of Dallas's attempt to return to his evolutionary aquatic past.
- So you've done your breath-holding.
- Yeah.
- You now know how to do the dive reflex.
- Yup.
How long do you reckon you can hold your breath now then? A couple of minutes? A couple of minutes.
So the length of an Olympic pool, probably? Probably a length, l reckon.
OK.
That's not too bad.
You ready for the next step? - Why are we in Portsmouth? - Walk this way and l'll show you.
Dallas isn't going to swim the length of a normal pool.
He's going to swim down the length of a normal pool.
This tank is owned by the defence company QinetiQ, and was used by the Royal Navy for submarine escape training.
30 metres deep, it holds over half a million litres of water, and Dallas is heading for the bottom.
His teacher is Britain's free-diving record holder, Mark Harris.
Oheck him out.
Free diving is an extreme sport.
Divers reach incredible depths on a single breath of air.
l actually feel quite sick watching that.
- lt's not that far down.
- lt's really far down! 30 metres down.
- He's only at 15.
- l know.
Look how far down he is.
- l'm nervous.
- Are you? Yeah.
l'm nervous because, if you end up in the bottom of there, you've still got to come all the way up.
That's the whole idea of free diving, yeah.
To get down to these kinds of depths, you would normally need an aqualung, but today it's going to be just Dallas and a single breath.
- OK.
- Give me a smile before you go.
l'm worried about you now.
- You're going to have a great time.
- OK.
Just get in the water and flap around and get used to it.
- Wish me luck.
- Good luck, my dear.
He's in, he's in the water! 20 seconds.
Holding his breath in a lab was one thing, but here, facing a 30-metre vertical drop, with a film crew, is a whole different kind of pressure.
10 seconds.
All of which will make his heart beat faster and use up his precious oxygen supply even quicker.
Finally, at 1 7 metres, Dallas turns.
At this depth, the pressure of the water has squashed his lungs to less than half their normal size.
- (APPLAUSE) - That was unbelievable! You were amazing! l wish l could have had another day doing that cos by the end l was just getting the hang of it.
- Seriously.
- You were.
Oan l just apologise to free divers who were watching that film in horror at my appalling style, technique, - beached whaleness - Will you stop it! Your very first time free diving, l thought you were amazing.
Well done, you.
- See you next week.
Bye! - Bye!