Bang Goes The Theory (2009) s04e08 Episode Script
Season 4, Episode 8
On this week's show, Jem visits the future of recycling They've installed this device.
lt's like an electronic eye that's linked up to a compressed-air shooting gallery.
- Dr Yan gets all theatrical - Look at this.
'Good, isn't it?' .
.
and Dallas gets very excited about GPS.
This device can tell you the range - within, you know, three or four millimetres.
- That's unbelievable.
That's Bang Goes The Theory, revealing your world with a bang.
Hi there, and welcome to the show.
First up, this! 'Turn around as soon as possible.
' Not the Sat nav lady, but the amazing technology behind the sat nav lady, GPS.
Up there.
About 8,000 times a year, volunteer lifeboat crews like this one get sent out all around the waters of the UK and the Republic of lreland to perform rescues.
But each time they go out, they rely on one fact - that 12,000 miles thataway, in what's called a mid-orbit, are 27 global positioning satellites.
OK.
How much more difficult would your job be if you didn't have GPS? With the GPS, you get a casualty call up, you've got their position, you put it into the satellite system, it gives us range, bearing, distance to run, gets you to where you need to be, straightaway.
Time is lives.
Absolutely vital to our saving work.
The American GPS satellites work alongside another Russian system called GLONASS.
And to explain all, l'm meeting a GPS expert at a satellite tracking station in East Sussex.
How does it work? When l punch in an address and press Go, what's going on? First thing it's doing is measuring the distance from here, from the receiver, out to those satellites.
Then it's tracking these signals broadcast by the satellite, which is telling the box where the satellites are up in space.
So this is just like a radio receiver, if you like, picking up radio signals, but these radio signals have data in them coming from satellites.
Exactly.
That's right.
So the satellite spits out a little blob of electromagnetic energy, and on that is a time mark.
lt says, ''OK, l transmitted this signal at this time.
'' And then, as well as transmitting the time, it says, ''Roughly, this is where l was when l transmitted the signal.
'' - So you've got a very accurate clock in there.
- Yeah.
And the receiver down here has also got a clock in it.
Let's just take the phone here, for example.
So, there's a clock in here, a clock in here.
When the signal leaves the satellite, eventually, later on, about 77 milliseconds later on, in fact, this picks it up.
The receiver takes a reading off its clock when the signal arrives.
Yeah.
So the receiver knows when the signal got there, and it knew when it was transmitted.
So l now know where that satellite is.
You know two things - where the satellite is and how far away it is.
- That's basically it.
- Wow.
You know what's just struck me? There's this fantastic infrastructure behind this in terms of satellites, ranging stations, in terms of big physics, in terms of big mathematics, and every time l turn one of these on in the car, l get a bit cross because it doesn't work instantly.
lt's amazing.
So why 27 satellites in orbit? Well, actually, it takes more than one to give an accurate location.
'ln fact, it takes four.
' lmagine these are three satellites, a pink satellite, a blue satellite and a green satellite.
And we know the co-ordinates of where they are out in space.
- The ropes represent the ranges.
- We know the co-ordinates in space because they've got very accurate clocks.
We can measure the time it takes to beam the signal back to Earth.
- That's right.
So the rope represents the range.
- OK.
So let's see what would happen if we had just one satellite.
Oareful of your nice shoes! Ah, OK.
So with one satellite, we could be anywhere on this line.
- Exactly.
- Which is not much good.
So l know my receiver could be here or it could be here.
That's using one range from one satellite.
Let's bring in another satellite, then.
Because we've got two satellites, where these points intersect, there, that's where we are.
So in two dimensions, that's going to be your position fix.
Yeah.
ln reality, in space, we're trying to fix our three co-ordinates, so maybe so much along X, along Y, along Z, or eastings, northings and height.
So we need to make a measurement to a third satellite.
Let's do that.
So, suddenly we have, where these points all intersect, this is our location in three dimensions.
That's right.
'OK, that seems pretty convincing.
'But where does the fourth satellite come in?' You use the fourth satellite to synchronise your little clock with the space clocks.
The problem is to do with the quality of the clocks.
The clocks up on the spacecraft cost about $2 million each and they're really good, really stable.
The clock in your little GPS receiver only cost about 15 cents, so it really doesn't keep time as well as the space clocks.
So the fourth satellite is just there to get rid of those margins of error, get rid of those problems.
'And to make sure the satellites really are where they say they are, 'tracking stations like this one constantly fire lasers at them 'as they pass overhead.
' Dallas, fire that laser.
OK, l'm going to fire the laser.
Ready? So, really, what we've got here, we've got a giant laser pointer.
On the satellite, they've got reflectors like cat's-eyes.
You ping the laser at the cat's-eyes and it bounces the laser back.
We know the speed of light, so we know where it is.
This device can tell you the range within, you know, three or four millimetres.
- That's unbelievable.
Yeah.
- lt's pretty cool.
lt really is.
The question is, what now for the next generation of satellite navigation? Well, it's about to get even better.
The European Space Agency is launching its very own answer to GPS, Galileo, which will see 30 new navigation satellites in orbit over the next five years.
l'm quite nervous.
We're in quite a privileged position.
We're one of very few crews allowed in here.
Behind that door is a top-secret room where they're building Galileo.
We all use the American system at the moment, GPS, and that's 30 years old, and Galileo is the new generation.
lt proves to be more reliable, more accurate, to cope with the demands of the future.
'Dr Mike Hughes is leading the development of the system 'and shows me the inside of one of the new satellites.
' Let's start at the beginning.
Why Galileo? Why do we need this? We've got a GPS system up there already.
There are limitations to the accuracy of GPS.
Limitations to its availability.
The European Union decided that we were becoming too dependent on a system we didn't control.
- GPS is a monopoly system.
- And it's an American system.
And it's an American system.
And even being a trusted partner lt's pretty useful to have your own, just in case.
- ls there one thing that makes this really accurate? - The thing that really stands out, is the precision of the clock technology.
We have actually four clocks here.
There's two masers, the big, shiny, silver boxes, - and two rubidium clocks.
- Right.
And these are atomic clocks, super-super-accurate clocks.
Yes.
So, the maser, for instance, - it takes three million years to lose one second.
- That's pretty accurate.
The clocks that are up there now, the ones on the GPS system, just by way of comparison They're about ten times worse.
So they're still pretty good.
That's the rubidium clocks, about ten nanoseconds per day.
- Better time, better accuracy.
- Yeah.
lt's funny to think that GPS, once designed as a military application, has changed our lives to the point that we just take it for granted.
But what l find exciting are the future applications, the things that nobody's yet thought of that Galileo could be making a reality.
Officially, my absolutely favourite outfit you've ever worn on Bang.
Oan we see that shower cap again? - lt's a thing of beauty.
lt's not great.
- Love it! Hardly a conventional jacket you're wearing yourself, Liz! Shut up! l'm not going to pass comment.
All those Galileo satellites are blasting off October this year from French Guyana, l believe.
So when can we use them? When will they become fully operational? Probably round about 201 4.
Does it mean the sat navs in our cars will be more accurate or get a better signal? l don't think it's even to do with the sat navs in our car.
They're pretty accurate, or as good as they need to be.
They could be more accurate.
lt's more to do with things like plate tectonic activity, things that need much more accuracy, things like measuring the Earth's sea level, things like measuring electronic financial transactions that you need a really important time stamp on, things like that.
More importantly, things no-one's thought of will be made possible, facilitated by the Galileo constellation.
See, it's all about all of science, our infrastructure, economics, - relying on this technology.
- Absolutely.
So if there's one thing better than knowing where you are, it's knowing EXAOTLY where you are.
The other good thing about the Galileo system is it's got an in-built search and rescue feature designed into it, so if you're lost at sea, not only can you beam up a distress signal, you'll also get a reply straightaway that your signal's got there.
Something that those RNLl boys will be putting to good use, l'm sure.
Now, we know satellite technology has revolutionised the world.
We thought it might be fun to have a look at other technology that might do the same in the future.
Which is why l didn't want to ask! .
.
l'm wearing this.
Like it? My new favourite jacket.
This is part of a new host of wearable computers that are going to become part of our lives in a very real way, very soon.
Now, this particular one is designed to help me play the violin better.
l don't know how to play it in the first place, so it's got its work cut out! lt's been developed by the people at the Open University, and it's a combination of motion capture and ''vibrotactile technology'' - oh, yes! lt's full of sensors and the same vibrators you use in mobile phones.
So if l have the position of the violin or the bow wrong, it goes off.
OK, so if we turn on the machine and l start playing lt's already gone off! lt vibrates in the arm that's wrongly positioned, and it vibrates around my waist as well.
And if l try and play, but don't have the bow in the right place, it goes off.
Or if l lower the violin, it goes off as well.
l've had enough of that.
Turn that off.
lt's like music and dance! lt's a bit uncomfortable.
Why is there smoke coming from your hair? l thought you were being serious! The applications for it are endless.
For sports, they're using it in snowboarding.
lmagine for golfing, the perfection of the golfing swing.
- And for physiotherapy.
Genius.
- Really good.
Not sure about What's it called? Vibro .
.
tactile.
lt's genius! What do you mean? Look at it! Wearable computers are big news, as is Al, artificial intelligence, computers, robots, thinking, behaving like humans.
Look at this.
This is called AlKON, and it's been developed at Goldsmiths in London by a team of both artists and computer developers.
And that's really important.
The idea is, it can mimic the way that a human being can sketch a human face.
Have a look at this.
lt's doing a little sketch of me.
So what you've got is a robot arm controlled by these little servo motors, and a just a regular pen.
Here's a camera to take a picture, all hooked up to regular old PO, which has got a face-detection system in here.
And it's doing a pretty good likeness.
The idea is not to do a photographic representation of my face.
lt wants to think like the artist thinks.
lt wants to draw like the artist draws.
Now, you may think this looks very simple, but getting a computer and a robot to see like a human, to think like a human, to draw like a human, is an incredibly complex activity.
l think this is really, really exciting.
That's amazing, but l'd like to go from drawing stuff to making stuff.
This is effectively a three-dimensional printer.
Whereas a normal printer just draws a line, this draws a line in a very thin layer of melted plastic.
And then, as it's setting, it draws another line on top until it can build it up to produce just about any shape.
lt's like it's icing a cake.
You can see that layer of melted plastic being dropped down on there.
l'm slightly affecting the process, so l'll drop that back.
Now, these are relatively simple objects compared with this.
This was printed by a printer.
And imagine trying to make that any other way.
lt's so complicated.
Now, this machine generally works in plastic and clay, but there are machines that take on the really difficult materials like stainless steel and titanium, and that opens up a whole world of manufacture.
Now, look at this.
This is very cool.
lt's called a sensium platform, and it's the latest in the new wave of wireless medical monitoring devices.
Now, it's attached to me using a regular EOG electrode.
lt's monitoring everything - my heart rate, body temperature, movement, breathing, and transmitting all of that information in real time to wherever that needs to be, in this case, this computer right here.
But you can transmit the information much further distances.
For example, these devices were used in an expedition to the Antarctic, and they beamed the information straight back to the UK using satellites.
And something very similar to this was used in the Ohilean miners' disaster.
Now, the future of this technology is very exciting, because the next generation of these little fellas will be disposable.
So you could have a plaster on a patient monitoring all of their vital signs, and it would require so little energy it could work five days straight and be so cheap that you could just chuck it out afterwards or, better yet, recycle it.
Very good.
Those are going to be brilliant.
Now, look at this.
Lots of us have got bits of exercise equipment gathering dust in our basements, under our beds, but l guarantee you, nobody has got anything like this - - a Dr Yan under their beds! - Hello, Dallas! - Hello.
How are you? - l'm fine, actually! - Now, this is clearly a swim simulator.
- lt is indeed.
- What does it feel like? - Well, it doesn't feel exactly like swimming, but remember those rowing machines that we used - when we were doing that calorie item? - Yeah.
l've got one of those attached to each limb.
So it's the same principal, rotating fans that give you resistance.
And you can tell how much power l'm putting in for each limb.
So for an elite swimmer, l guess, who wants to know how much power and how much energy they're kicking out, you can use this.
Now, would this be good for somebody like a novice, practising, learning stroke technique? Well, the researchers at Oanterbury Ohrist Ohurch University reckon it's for elite athletes, the Olympics, where they really want to work out where they're putting the energy in so that they can improve their strokes.
So it's hooked up to computers so we can read all about it.
l can set myself targets.
- l'm going to let you carry on.
Fantastic.
- You do that! OK, then, moving swiftly on, rather surreally, from Dr Yan, as if by magic, to Dr Yan.
Take a look at this.
Good, isn't it? But l can tell you, it doesn't always work so well.
There's a technique to making that work.
But behind that is a lot of science, and it's to do with friction, the force that makes it difficult to slide one surface past another.
We all know friction.
lt's why the soles of my shoes grip the floor.
But how exactly does it work? Well, it's all to do with surfaces.
You see, even a relatively smooth surface like the bottom of this vase is covered in microscopic irregularities like bumps and so on, and that means that when any two surfaces meet, then those bumps can interlock, a bit like these egg cartons, and it's really hard to slide one past the other, because those bumps obstruct one another.
And that's one of the ways in which friction can come about.
Different materials have different numbers and sizes of bumps, so when l use this rough wool felt Well, let's see what happens.
Whoops! Not so good.
Now, that's because the surface of this felt is covered in tiny little bumps, and when they're pulled over the bumps on the glass, you get obstruction and lots of friction.
This means the vase stays stuck to the cloth and as the cloth's pulled, it drags the vase along until it falls.
But watch what happens if l try using something a lot more slippery, silk.
(DRUM ROLL) (HE LAUGHS) Now, although it may feel like silk is bump-free, it does have microscopic bumps.
But they're smaller than those on the felt, and so there's less of a physical obstruction for the bumps on the glass to push against.
The vase does move a tiny bit, because it's impossible to get rid of all the friction.
But the cloth is gone before it falls over, and then the friction of the table just stops it dead.
So slippery is best.
But that's not all.
The yank is critical.
Too slow and Well, l'll show you what happens.
Woah! Even with low-friction silk, a slow pull gives the friction long enough to get the vase moving, and eventually, it gets pulled over.
But by pulling fast, the whole thing is over quicker.
The cloth is cleared before the vase builds up speed, and it just stops on the table.
But what's really interesting is that bumps and obstruction are not the only thing involved.
There's new stuff we're only just finding out, and in fact, it's a really hot area of research.
Excellent film there from Yan, but as an enthusiastic amateur magician, l thought l'd better have a go at that to test it out.
But l'm going to up the ante.
Yan - single vase of flowers.
l'm going for the whole tea set.
- Are you serious? You're going to do that now?.
- That's the point! We've got to test things out.
l'm going to see if it works.
l'm mildly incredulous.
There is a small chance this may go wrong.
Have you practised? No.
l don't want to contaminate my purity by practising.
Let's just have a go.
Are you ready for this? Yeah! OK, ready? Drum roll, please.
ln 3, 2, 1 Yeah! Oome on! The legend! Dallas Oampbell! l want to see that again.
That was sweet! - Oampbell, that's amazing.
- That was good.
You must have incredible, intuitive understanding of friction, inertia, and centres of gravity.
- lt's magic, what are you talking about? - lt's not magic.
- Not only did we do that, they didn't move.
- They didn't.
- Motionless.
That was very good.
- l'm really impressed.
Well done.
Now, recycling.
We all know it's important, yet it seems every local council has a different policy as to how it should be done.
For me, l've got to put a bunch of stuff in one box, glass in another and batteries in a little bag.
What about you guys? We've got one box for everything, but it's annoying, because there's limits to what you can and can't recycle.
But most things in my house certainly are recyclable, but our box is only about yea big, so this is not enough space.
Same for me.
l've only got one box, not enough room in it.
The bottom of the plastic container can be recycled, but the film can't.
Tetrapaks can't - no, they can now, there's plastic in them.
lt's annoying, really.
lt is.
And there's two schools of thought in it.
One is, if householders themselves are responsible for recycling, then you get a better quality of recycled product, whereas if they're not responsible, if they chuck it all in one box, at least more people will do it.
So they kind of balance each other out.
That's interesting.
But, if you watch this, there might be a solution to that conundrum.
Trillions of tins, a plethora of plastic, piles of paper to reach the moon.
l'm not talking about recycling stacked up in my kitchen.
As a nation, we're recycling more household waste than ever, and government targets are demanding that by 2020, we recycle half of all our waste.
One way to persuade people to recycle more is to make it easier by asking them to chuck it all in one big box, instead of sorting it into separate containers.
But there's a price to pay, because, somewhere, further down the line, someone has had to sort it all out.
Until now.
Hidden within this thundering mass of blue steel are all manner of cunning devices to convert millions of tons of rubbish into millions of tons of very valuable raw materials.
With the right kit, that pile over there is like having a veritable goldmine.
This state-of-the-art depot in West Sussex is one of the new generation where technology does the sorting for us, producing vast bales of single materials worth up to £450 each.
First port of call is the trommel, a revolving sieve that skims off the large sheets of paper.
Everything else goes on to a sort of gold panning machine.
All the flat stuff gets rocked up to the top and the rounder stuff rolls to the bottom.
The torrent of trash then has the metal removed.
lt looks really magical there, but all it is is a very powerful magnetic field that plucks out anything with iron or steel in it.
The metal left behind is mainly aluminium, which then encounters a much stranger magnetic effect.
Now, magnets don't normally attract aluminium, but they do affect it another way.
As a magnet moves past a conducting metal like aluminium, it produces an electric current in there and that electric current produces its own magnetic field, which interacts with the magnet's magnetic field, causing movement.
That's what they're doing up there - creating magnetic fields in the aluminium, making the aluminium Pfft! .
.
jump off to somewhere they can catch it and separate it.
There we go.
Just a little lid from a yoghurt pot, but it's aluminium, a very valuable resource.
Difficult and expensive to extract, worth quite a lot of money.
Though it may be just 1% by weight of a household recycling box, aluminium could make up a quarter of its value.
The bulk of most people's recycling is another material - plastic.
But that has always proved the hardest the resource to sort.
To cope with an increasing amount of recycling, they've installed this ingenious device.
lt's like an electronic eye linked up to a compressed air shooting gallery.
Sorting plastics used to be a manual job, and it's very difficult to spot the differences between them.
Whereas this machine here uses infra-red light.
lt shines it down on all the rubbish going underneath, then what's reflected is analysed, and if it's the kind of reflection that would come off the right kind of plastic, a signal sends some compressed air jets that then fire it to a different conveyor belt.
lt does an amazing job at a quite astonishing speed.
But as advanced as this machine may be, it's not working at its full potential.
Ourrently, this place only sorts plastic bottles from mixed waste.
What happens to things like yoghurt pots? l've not seen any of those make it through.
Unfortunately, there's no secure, sustainable market for them to go off to be recycled.
They're often made of a mixture of plastics, two or three different types in a single yoghurt pot, which makes it very hard to recycle them into new products.
So, all that recycling is kind of pointless unless there's an end user for what you've sorted out? Exactly.
We are set up, ready to go.
We can separate individual types of plastic.
But very few people will accept them for recycling at this point in time.
But recycling fans shouldn't fret.
Gradually, that market for mixed plastic is growing, so some councils are starting to take your yoghurt pots and takeaway trays.
So if you don't recycle them at the moment, you should be able to soon.
lf plants like this continue to prove the viability of mechanised sorting, then domestic recycling could become a whole load easier for all of us in the future.
That looks like a success story.
But l can't help thinking how much money you'd save if you didn't have to build those plants, and we all separated our recyclables at source, you know, at home.
l agree with you, but it's a bit of a recycling utopia.
The reality is that, where they've implemented those schemes, people aren't recycling as much.
Got to change attitudes.
lt's interesting that if there isn't a clear financial market for particular products, it's just not going to be recycled.
lt's going to end up in landfill.
And ultimately, it kind of sounds corny, but it's up to consumers to decide what they buy in terms of packaging.
Very good point.
But also the providers, the suppliers as well.
That is the crux of the matter.
lt's the finance that really governs all of this and there are solid markets for aluminium, glass, steel, paper, but there are just certain types of plastic that nobody wants.
lt's the plastics that are a problem.
Ok well that's it from us.
.
Time to say goodbye, boys.
Bye-bye, see you soon.
- Right, l'm gonna do this.
- You can do it, it's easy.
OK.
l think l might just do it.
One, two, three.
Ohhhhhhhh.
- Ha ha ha ha.
Genius.
- Yours l believe.
lt's like an electronic eye that's linked up to a compressed-air shooting gallery.
- Dr Yan gets all theatrical - Look at this.
'Good, isn't it?' .
.
and Dallas gets very excited about GPS.
This device can tell you the range - within, you know, three or four millimetres.
- That's unbelievable.
That's Bang Goes The Theory, revealing your world with a bang.
Hi there, and welcome to the show.
First up, this! 'Turn around as soon as possible.
' Not the Sat nav lady, but the amazing technology behind the sat nav lady, GPS.
Up there.
About 8,000 times a year, volunteer lifeboat crews like this one get sent out all around the waters of the UK and the Republic of lreland to perform rescues.
But each time they go out, they rely on one fact - that 12,000 miles thataway, in what's called a mid-orbit, are 27 global positioning satellites.
OK.
How much more difficult would your job be if you didn't have GPS? With the GPS, you get a casualty call up, you've got their position, you put it into the satellite system, it gives us range, bearing, distance to run, gets you to where you need to be, straightaway.
Time is lives.
Absolutely vital to our saving work.
The American GPS satellites work alongside another Russian system called GLONASS.
And to explain all, l'm meeting a GPS expert at a satellite tracking station in East Sussex.
How does it work? When l punch in an address and press Go, what's going on? First thing it's doing is measuring the distance from here, from the receiver, out to those satellites.
Then it's tracking these signals broadcast by the satellite, which is telling the box where the satellites are up in space.
So this is just like a radio receiver, if you like, picking up radio signals, but these radio signals have data in them coming from satellites.
Exactly.
That's right.
So the satellite spits out a little blob of electromagnetic energy, and on that is a time mark.
lt says, ''OK, l transmitted this signal at this time.
'' And then, as well as transmitting the time, it says, ''Roughly, this is where l was when l transmitted the signal.
'' - So you've got a very accurate clock in there.
- Yeah.
And the receiver down here has also got a clock in it.
Let's just take the phone here, for example.
So, there's a clock in here, a clock in here.
When the signal leaves the satellite, eventually, later on, about 77 milliseconds later on, in fact, this picks it up.
The receiver takes a reading off its clock when the signal arrives.
Yeah.
So the receiver knows when the signal got there, and it knew when it was transmitted.
So l now know where that satellite is.
You know two things - where the satellite is and how far away it is.
- That's basically it.
- Wow.
You know what's just struck me? There's this fantastic infrastructure behind this in terms of satellites, ranging stations, in terms of big physics, in terms of big mathematics, and every time l turn one of these on in the car, l get a bit cross because it doesn't work instantly.
lt's amazing.
So why 27 satellites in orbit? Well, actually, it takes more than one to give an accurate location.
'ln fact, it takes four.
' lmagine these are three satellites, a pink satellite, a blue satellite and a green satellite.
And we know the co-ordinates of where they are out in space.
- The ropes represent the ranges.
- We know the co-ordinates in space because they've got very accurate clocks.
We can measure the time it takes to beam the signal back to Earth.
- That's right.
So the rope represents the range.
- OK.
So let's see what would happen if we had just one satellite.
Oareful of your nice shoes! Ah, OK.
So with one satellite, we could be anywhere on this line.
- Exactly.
- Which is not much good.
So l know my receiver could be here or it could be here.
That's using one range from one satellite.
Let's bring in another satellite, then.
Because we've got two satellites, where these points intersect, there, that's where we are.
So in two dimensions, that's going to be your position fix.
Yeah.
ln reality, in space, we're trying to fix our three co-ordinates, so maybe so much along X, along Y, along Z, or eastings, northings and height.
So we need to make a measurement to a third satellite.
Let's do that.
So, suddenly we have, where these points all intersect, this is our location in three dimensions.
That's right.
'OK, that seems pretty convincing.
'But where does the fourth satellite come in?' You use the fourth satellite to synchronise your little clock with the space clocks.
The problem is to do with the quality of the clocks.
The clocks up on the spacecraft cost about $2 million each and they're really good, really stable.
The clock in your little GPS receiver only cost about 15 cents, so it really doesn't keep time as well as the space clocks.
So the fourth satellite is just there to get rid of those margins of error, get rid of those problems.
'And to make sure the satellites really are where they say they are, 'tracking stations like this one constantly fire lasers at them 'as they pass overhead.
' Dallas, fire that laser.
OK, l'm going to fire the laser.
Ready? So, really, what we've got here, we've got a giant laser pointer.
On the satellite, they've got reflectors like cat's-eyes.
You ping the laser at the cat's-eyes and it bounces the laser back.
We know the speed of light, so we know where it is.
This device can tell you the range within, you know, three or four millimetres.
- That's unbelievable.
Yeah.
- lt's pretty cool.
lt really is.
The question is, what now for the next generation of satellite navigation? Well, it's about to get even better.
The European Space Agency is launching its very own answer to GPS, Galileo, which will see 30 new navigation satellites in orbit over the next five years.
l'm quite nervous.
We're in quite a privileged position.
We're one of very few crews allowed in here.
Behind that door is a top-secret room where they're building Galileo.
We all use the American system at the moment, GPS, and that's 30 years old, and Galileo is the new generation.
lt proves to be more reliable, more accurate, to cope with the demands of the future.
'Dr Mike Hughes is leading the development of the system 'and shows me the inside of one of the new satellites.
' Let's start at the beginning.
Why Galileo? Why do we need this? We've got a GPS system up there already.
There are limitations to the accuracy of GPS.
Limitations to its availability.
The European Union decided that we were becoming too dependent on a system we didn't control.
- GPS is a monopoly system.
- And it's an American system.
And it's an American system.
And even being a trusted partner lt's pretty useful to have your own, just in case.
- ls there one thing that makes this really accurate? - The thing that really stands out, is the precision of the clock technology.
We have actually four clocks here.
There's two masers, the big, shiny, silver boxes, - and two rubidium clocks.
- Right.
And these are atomic clocks, super-super-accurate clocks.
Yes.
So, the maser, for instance, - it takes three million years to lose one second.
- That's pretty accurate.
The clocks that are up there now, the ones on the GPS system, just by way of comparison They're about ten times worse.
So they're still pretty good.
That's the rubidium clocks, about ten nanoseconds per day.
- Better time, better accuracy.
- Yeah.
lt's funny to think that GPS, once designed as a military application, has changed our lives to the point that we just take it for granted.
But what l find exciting are the future applications, the things that nobody's yet thought of that Galileo could be making a reality.
Officially, my absolutely favourite outfit you've ever worn on Bang.
Oan we see that shower cap again? - lt's a thing of beauty.
lt's not great.
- Love it! Hardly a conventional jacket you're wearing yourself, Liz! Shut up! l'm not going to pass comment.
All those Galileo satellites are blasting off October this year from French Guyana, l believe.
So when can we use them? When will they become fully operational? Probably round about 201 4.
Does it mean the sat navs in our cars will be more accurate or get a better signal? l don't think it's even to do with the sat navs in our car.
They're pretty accurate, or as good as they need to be.
They could be more accurate.
lt's more to do with things like plate tectonic activity, things that need much more accuracy, things like measuring the Earth's sea level, things like measuring electronic financial transactions that you need a really important time stamp on, things like that.
More importantly, things no-one's thought of will be made possible, facilitated by the Galileo constellation.
See, it's all about all of science, our infrastructure, economics, - relying on this technology.
- Absolutely.
So if there's one thing better than knowing where you are, it's knowing EXAOTLY where you are.
The other good thing about the Galileo system is it's got an in-built search and rescue feature designed into it, so if you're lost at sea, not only can you beam up a distress signal, you'll also get a reply straightaway that your signal's got there.
Something that those RNLl boys will be putting to good use, l'm sure.
Now, we know satellite technology has revolutionised the world.
We thought it might be fun to have a look at other technology that might do the same in the future.
Which is why l didn't want to ask! .
.
l'm wearing this.
Like it? My new favourite jacket.
This is part of a new host of wearable computers that are going to become part of our lives in a very real way, very soon.
Now, this particular one is designed to help me play the violin better.
l don't know how to play it in the first place, so it's got its work cut out! lt's been developed by the people at the Open University, and it's a combination of motion capture and ''vibrotactile technology'' - oh, yes! lt's full of sensors and the same vibrators you use in mobile phones.
So if l have the position of the violin or the bow wrong, it goes off.
OK, so if we turn on the machine and l start playing lt's already gone off! lt vibrates in the arm that's wrongly positioned, and it vibrates around my waist as well.
And if l try and play, but don't have the bow in the right place, it goes off.
Or if l lower the violin, it goes off as well.
l've had enough of that.
Turn that off.
lt's like music and dance! lt's a bit uncomfortable.
Why is there smoke coming from your hair? l thought you were being serious! The applications for it are endless.
For sports, they're using it in snowboarding.
lmagine for golfing, the perfection of the golfing swing.
- And for physiotherapy.
Genius.
- Really good.
Not sure about What's it called? Vibro .
.
tactile.
lt's genius! What do you mean? Look at it! Wearable computers are big news, as is Al, artificial intelligence, computers, robots, thinking, behaving like humans.
Look at this.
This is called AlKON, and it's been developed at Goldsmiths in London by a team of both artists and computer developers.
And that's really important.
The idea is, it can mimic the way that a human being can sketch a human face.
Have a look at this.
lt's doing a little sketch of me.
So what you've got is a robot arm controlled by these little servo motors, and a just a regular pen.
Here's a camera to take a picture, all hooked up to regular old PO, which has got a face-detection system in here.
And it's doing a pretty good likeness.
The idea is not to do a photographic representation of my face.
lt wants to think like the artist thinks.
lt wants to draw like the artist draws.
Now, you may think this looks very simple, but getting a computer and a robot to see like a human, to think like a human, to draw like a human, is an incredibly complex activity.
l think this is really, really exciting.
That's amazing, but l'd like to go from drawing stuff to making stuff.
This is effectively a three-dimensional printer.
Whereas a normal printer just draws a line, this draws a line in a very thin layer of melted plastic.
And then, as it's setting, it draws another line on top until it can build it up to produce just about any shape.
lt's like it's icing a cake.
You can see that layer of melted plastic being dropped down on there.
l'm slightly affecting the process, so l'll drop that back.
Now, these are relatively simple objects compared with this.
This was printed by a printer.
And imagine trying to make that any other way.
lt's so complicated.
Now, this machine generally works in plastic and clay, but there are machines that take on the really difficult materials like stainless steel and titanium, and that opens up a whole world of manufacture.
Now, look at this.
This is very cool.
lt's called a sensium platform, and it's the latest in the new wave of wireless medical monitoring devices.
Now, it's attached to me using a regular EOG electrode.
lt's monitoring everything - my heart rate, body temperature, movement, breathing, and transmitting all of that information in real time to wherever that needs to be, in this case, this computer right here.
But you can transmit the information much further distances.
For example, these devices were used in an expedition to the Antarctic, and they beamed the information straight back to the UK using satellites.
And something very similar to this was used in the Ohilean miners' disaster.
Now, the future of this technology is very exciting, because the next generation of these little fellas will be disposable.
So you could have a plaster on a patient monitoring all of their vital signs, and it would require so little energy it could work five days straight and be so cheap that you could just chuck it out afterwards or, better yet, recycle it.
Very good.
Those are going to be brilliant.
Now, look at this.
Lots of us have got bits of exercise equipment gathering dust in our basements, under our beds, but l guarantee you, nobody has got anything like this - - a Dr Yan under their beds! - Hello, Dallas! - Hello.
How are you? - l'm fine, actually! - Now, this is clearly a swim simulator.
- lt is indeed.
- What does it feel like? - Well, it doesn't feel exactly like swimming, but remember those rowing machines that we used - when we were doing that calorie item? - Yeah.
l've got one of those attached to each limb.
So it's the same principal, rotating fans that give you resistance.
And you can tell how much power l'm putting in for each limb.
So for an elite swimmer, l guess, who wants to know how much power and how much energy they're kicking out, you can use this.
Now, would this be good for somebody like a novice, practising, learning stroke technique? Well, the researchers at Oanterbury Ohrist Ohurch University reckon it's for elite athletes, the Olympics, where they really want to work out where they're putting the energy in so that they can improve their strokes.
So it's hooked up to computers so we can read all about it.
l can set myself targets.
- l'm going to let you carry on.
Fantastic.
- You do that! OK, then, moving swiftly on, rather surreally, from Dr Yan, as if by magic, to Dr Yan.
Take a look at this.
Good, isn't it? But l can tell you, it doesn't always work so well.
There's a technique to making that work.
But behind that is a lot of science, and it's to do with friction, the force that makes it difficult to slide one surface past another.
We all know friction.
lt's why the soles of my shoes grip the floor.
But how exactly does it work? Well, it's all to do with surfaces.
You see, even a relatively smooth surface like the bottom of this vase is covered in microscopic irregularities like bumps and so on, and that means that when any two surfaces meet, then those bumps can interlock, a bit like these egg cartons, and it's really hard to slide one past the other, because those bumps obstruct one another.
And that's one of the ways in which friction can come about.
Different materials have different numbers and sizes of bumps, so when l use this rough wool felt Well, let's see what happens.
Whoops! Not so good.
Now, that's because the surface of this felt is covered in tiny little bumps, and when they're pulled over the bumps on the glass, you get obstruction and lots of friction.
This means the vase stays stuck to the cloth and as the cloth's pulled, it drags the vase along until it falls.
But watch what happens if l try using something a lot more slippery, silk.
(DRUM ROLL) (HE LAUGHS) Now, although it may feel like silk is bump-free, it does have microscopic bumps.
But they're smaller than those on the felt, and so there's less of a physical obstruction for the bumps on the glass to push against.
The vase does move a tiny bit, because it's impossible to get rid of all the friction.
But the cloth is gone before it falls over, and then the friction of the table just stops it dead.
So slippery is best.
But that's not all.
The yank is critical.
Too slow and Well, l'll show you what happens.
Woah! Even with low-friction silk, a slow pull gives the friction long enough to get the vase moving, and eventually, it gets pulled over.
But by pulling fast, the whole thing is over quicker.
The cloth is cleared before the vase builds up speed, and it just stops on the table.
But what's really interesting is that bumps and obstruction are not the only thing involved.
There's new stuff we're only just finding out, and in fact, it's a really hot area of research.
Excellent film there from Yan, but as an enthusiastic amateur magician, l thought l'd better have a go at that to test it out.
But l'm going to up the ante.
Yan - single vase of flowers.
l'm going for the whole tea set.
- Are you serious? You're going to do that now?.
- That's the point! We've got to test things out.
l'm going to see if it works.
l'm mildly incredulous.
There is a small chance this may go wrong.
Have you practised? No.
l don't want to contaminate my purity by practising.
Let's just have a go.
Are you ready for this? Yeah! OK, ready? Drum roll, please.
ln 3, 2, 1 Yeah! Oome on! The legend! Dallas Oampbell! l want to see that again.
That was sweet! - Oampbell, that's amazing.
- That was good.
You must have incredible, intuitive understanding of friction, inertia, and centres of gravity.
- lt's magic, what are you talking about? - lt's not magic.
- Not only did we do that, they didn't move.
- They didn't.
- Motionless.
That was very good.
- l'm really impressed.
Well done.
Now, recycling.
We all know it's important, yet it seems every local council has a different policy as to how it should be done.
For me, l've got to put a bunch of stuff in one box, glass in another and batteries in a little bag.
What about you guys? We've got one box for everything, but it's annoying, because there's limits to what you can and can't recycle.
But most things in my house certainly are recyclable, but our box is only about yea big, so this is not enough space.
Same for me.
l've only got one box, not enough room in it.
The bottom of the plastic container can be recycled, but the film can't.
Tetrapaks can't - no, they can now, there's plastic in them.
lt's annoying, really.
lt is.
And there's two schools of thought in it.
One is, if householders themselves are responsible for recycling, then you get a better quality of recycled product, whereas if they're not responsible, if they chuck it all in one box, at least more people will do it.
So they kind of balance each other out.
That's interesting.
But, if you watch this, there might be a solution to that conundrum.
Trillions of tins, a plethora of plastic, piles of paper to reach the moon.
l'm not talking about recycling stacked up in my kitchen.
As a nation, we're recycling more household waste than ever, and government targets are demanding that by 2020, we recycle half of all our waste.
One way to persuade people to recycle more is to make it easier by asking them to chuck it all in one big box, instead of sorting it into separate containers.
But there's a price to pay, because, somewhere, further down the line, someone has had to sort it all out.
Until now.
Hidden within this thundering mass of blue steel are all manner of cunning devices to convert millions of tons of rubbish into millions of tons of very valuable raw materials.
With the right kit, that pile over there is like having a veritable goldmine.
This state-of-the-art depot in West Sussex is one of the new generation where technology does the sorting for us, producing vast bales of single materials worth up to £450 each.
First port of call is the trommel, a revolving sieve that skims off the large sheets of paper.
Everything else goes on to a sort of gold panning machine.
All the flat stuff gets rocked up to the top and the rounder stuff rolls to the bottom.
The torrent of trash then has the metal removed.
lt looks really magical there, but all it is is a very powerful magnetic field that plucks out anything with iron or steel in it.
The metal left behind is mainly aluminium, which then encounters a much stranger magnetic effect.
Now, magnets don't normally attract aluminium, but they do affect it another way.
As a magnet moves past a conducting metal like aluminium, it produces an electric current in there and that electric current produces its own magnetic field, which interacts with the magnet's magnetic field, causing movement.
That's what they're doing up there - creating magnetic fields in the aluminium, making the aluminium Pfft! .
.
jump off to somewhere they can catch it and separate it.
There we go.
Just a little lid from a yoghurt pot, but it's aluminium, a very valuable resource.
Difficult and expensive to extract, worth quite a lot of money.
Though it may be just 1% by weight of a household recycling box, aluminium could make up a quarter of its value.
The bulk of most people's recycling is another material - plastic.
But that has always proved the hardest the resource to sort.
To cope with an increasing amount of recycling, they've installed this ingenious device.
lt's like an electronic eye linked up to a compressed air shooting gallery.
Sorting plastics used to be a manual job, and it's very difficult to spot the differences between them.
Whereas this machine here uses infra-red light.
lt shines it down on all the rubbish going underneath, then what's reflected is analysed, and if it's the kind of reflection that would come off the right kind of plastic, a signal sends some compressed air jets that then fire it to a different conveyor belt.
lt does an amazing job at a quite astonishing speed.
But as advanced as this machine may be, it's not working at its full potential.
Ourrently, this place only sorts plastic bottles from mixed waste.
What happens to things like yoghurt pots? l've not seen any of those make it through.
Unfortunately, there's no secure, sustainable market for them to go off to be recycled.
They're often made of a mixture of plastics, two or three different types in a single yoghurt pot, which makes it very hard to recycle them into new products.
So, all that recycling is kind of pointless unless there's an end user for what you've sorted out? Exactly.
We are set up, ready to go.
We can separate individual types of plastic.
But very few people will accept them for recycling at this point in time.
But recycling fans shouldn't fret.
Gradually, that market for mixed plastic is growing, so some councils are starting to take your yoghurt pots and takeaway trays.
So if you don't recycle them at the moment, you should be able to soon.
lf plants like this continue to prove the viability of mechanised sorting, then domestic recycling could become a whole load easier for all of us in the future.
That looks like a success story.
But l can't help thinking how much money you'd save if you didn't have to build those plants, and we all separated our recyclables at source, you know, at home.
l agree with you, but it's a bit of a recycling utopia.
The reality is that, where they've implemented those schemes, people aren't recycling as much.
Got to change attitudes.
lt's interesting that if there isn't a clear financial market for particular products, it's just not going to be recycled.
lt's going to end up in landfill.
And ultimately, it kind of sounds corny, but it's up to consumers to decide what they buy in terms of packaging.
Very good point.
But also the providers, the suppliers as well.
That is the crux of the matter.
lt's the finance that really governs all of this and there are solid markets for aluminium, glass, steel, paper, but there are just certain types of plastic that nobody wants.
lt's the plastics that are a problem.
Ok well that's it from us.
.
Time to say goodbye, boys.
Bye-bye, see you soon.
- Right, l'm gonna do this.
- You can do it, it's easy.
OK.
l think l might just do it.
One, two, three.
Ohhhhhhhh.
- Ha ha ha ha.
Genius.
- Yours l believe.