N1HRV — broadcast
20260926 223000 UTC
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[00:00:11] in
[00:00:16] Behind Wales songs lie huge, powerful brains, the
[00:00:20] biggest on the planet, in fact, and studies reveal
[00:00:23] a close link between these and their highly developed social
[00:00:27] behavior. Wales live in tight neck group. groups pass on
[00:00:30] knowledge each other and display cooperative behavior when
[00:00:34] they're hunting, for
[00:00:35] example, from the
[00:00:39] of oceans to space, this time on DW's science
[00:00:43] show, welcome to tomorrow
[00:00:45] today.
[00:00:48] Humpbat whales often hunt in teams using a very special
[00:00:53] of technique, the key element of which are those circles of bubbles on the water
[00:00:58] of surface. The whales deep below their prey (skuols
[00:01:01] of fish), once in the right position, they swim in
[00:01:05] circles while releasing bursts of air. in the process
[00:01:09] of they create rising and disorientating net of
[00:01:12] of bubbles. for the
[00:01:16] fish, visual and physical barrier.
[00:01:19] as the predators circle inward, so does the cylindrical
[00:01:23] net, and their prey cluster closer and closer together until the
[00:01:27] decisive
[00:01:27] in moment when the whales shoot up vertic. open their mouths
[00:01:31] and scoop up masses of
[00:01:33] fish. Bubble
[00:01:37] net feeding is not innate, but in acquired skill passed down
[00:01:41] through generations. A 2026 study indicates that this
[00:01:45] knowledge is also transferred between different
[00:01:47] populations. When Wales from Alaska
[00:01:51] entered Canadian waters, they brought the technique with them, passing it
[00:01:55] to other huntbacks in British Colombia that either did not know the practice
[00:01:59] or who had gotten it over
[00:02:03] of
[00:02:05] in time, but if wales are so smart, why do we hear regular reports
[00:02:10] of of them getting stranded? studies suggest that this actually has something to do with the
[00:02:13] sun. like migratory birds, whales use the earth's
[00:02:17] magnetic field to navigate, and the strength of that field can
[00:02:21] fluctuate when exposed to high levels of radiation, like from
[00:02:25] solar storms, for example. a European Chinese
[00:02:28] space mission is currently. looking into that, investigating the
[00:02:32] interaction between solar storms and the earth's magnetic
[00:02:39] in in of field. These rays from the sun could knock out power grids in minutes, but a mysterious
[00:02:43] invisible barrier protects earth. Scientists
[00:02:46] from China and Europe are a mission to find out how that shield
[00:02:50] really works. It's called
[00:02:51] of Smile, rare cooperation in today's geopolitical
[00:02:55] landscape. Smile is very interesting mission. That's Joseph
[00:02:58] Ashbacher,
[00:02:59] the head. the European space agency, it really measures the
[00:03:03] interaction
[00:03:04] of of the sun with the earth magnetosphere, the
[00:03:07] of small scientific consortium has 200 scientists from across Europe
[00:03:11] and across China, and this is Carol Mundell, ESA's
[00:03:14] science director, working together to ask ask
[00:03:18] these big questions for which we need new answers. The sun bathes
[00:03:22] our planet in warmth and light, but its surface can also
[00:03:25] erupt, sending waves of dangerously charged
[00:03:29] particles. rushing towards earth at hundreds of kilometers per
[00:03:32] second, without our protective magnetosphere, which diverts most
[00:03:36] of them, we wouldn't survive. the coupling between the sun and the earth is
[00:03:40] critically important for life on earth. smile, the solar
[00:03:43] wind, magnetosphere ionosphere link explorer is to
[00:03:47] gather data on this critically important process. from a
[00:03:51] highly elliptical orbit, the four instruments on board the research
[00:03:55] in satellite will provide a global bird's eye view of how the
[00:03:59] charged particles interact with our planet's protective magnetic
[00:04:03] shield, understanding that is crucial in the modern
[00:04:06] era. we have astronauts living on the international space
[00:04:10] in station, we have much of modern society now is evolving
[00:04:14] to have its infrastructure in space, our satellites,
[00:04:16] telecommunications, much of our infrastructure and also our ground-based
[00:04:20] infrastructure in terms of electrical subsystems. all are
[00:04:24] vulnerable after
[00:04:26] of in flares explode on the sun's surface with the energy of millions. of
[00:04:30] nuclear bombs, improving our
[00:04:32] of ability to predict the space weather they cause is another goal
[00:04:36] of the milestone sino European mission, but it
[00:04:40] might be the last such milestone we see for a
[00:04:42] while. space missions allow nations to
[00:04:46] make powerful statements, though agencies often cooperate to
[00:04:50] realize them. that spreads the significant costs, risks
[00:04:54] and expertise required to launch them. ESA and
[00:04:58] China's space agency have... worked together in the past,
[00:05:02] around decade ago, there were joint training exercises
[00:05:05] involving Chinese and European astronauts.
[00:05:09] Other projects included the dragon program for earth
[00:05:12] observation and the change lunar missions, but then
[00:05:16] back in 2023, ECA's director general said his
[00:05:20] agency was no longer planning to send astronauts to China's
[00:05:24] Tiangong space station, and rising
[00:05:27] geopolitical tensions make more such exchanges seem unlikely
[00:05:31] anyt soon. At the moment
[00:05:34] it is not planned to resume this cooperation, yes it was discussed
[00:05:37] in the past, but we are discussing cooperation
[00:05:41] of astronaut. flights in particular uh with our friends and
[00:05:45] partners in the United States. In the geopolitical landscape,
[00:05:49] divisions have grown wider and deeper over the last
[00:05:52] decade. We've seen a
[00:05:55] fundamental transition into way that we perceive
[00:05:59] China. Dennis Simon is an expert on international
[00:06:02] science and technology issues. China is a
[00:06:06] strategic threat to the well-being or future well-being
[00:06:10] the United States and President Trump is
[00:06:14] trying to convince the Europeans the same thing that they want to look at
[00:06:18] China with much more skepticism. In
[00:06:21] 2025, the EU announced it would be borring
[00:06:25] Chinese participation in its critical tech programs
[00:06:28] including AI, semiconductors and
[00:06:32] space. Funded cooperation with China will only remain
[00:06:36] possible in less crucial areas like climate and
[00:06:39] agriculture. ts worry that
[00:06:43] could fragment the global research landscape even more,
[00:06:47] placing further limits on European access to Chinese talent
[00:06:51] and innovation, and vice versa. what we could end up
[00:06:55] with is bifurcation of international science and
[00:06:58] technology affairs, which means that there'll be a system
[00:07:02] dominated by China and a bunch of countries like the bricks
[00:07:05] countries and belt and road countries etc.
[00:07:09] and then we have the other side with the United States, Europe and Japan
[00:07:13] and those two systems would coexist, but they would
[00:07:17] exist a tension that would not benefit either
[00:07:20] side, but at least for now, European and Chinese
[00:07:24] space scientists will have reason to smile as they continue to
[00:07:28] work together a unique joint
[00:07:31] mission.
[00:07:35] For a long time, teamwork was everything in space
[00:07:38] exploration, with the ISS the ultimate
[00:07:41] example. Neither China nor India are
[00:07:44] involved, but both, along with Russia, want to reach the moon,
[00:07:48] though not as part the US-led Artemis mission. Exit
[00:07:52] teamwork, enter an all-out high-stakes race. It could
[00:07:56] soon get quite crowded on the lunar surface, but then who wants to
[00:08:00] be all alone up
[00:08:01] there? At
[00:08:05] Tollouse University Hospital's simulation center, the French
[00:08:08] space agency, Kness, is conducting experiments in
[00:08:43] I spent year in Antarctica carrying out biomedical experiments on living
[00:08:47] in extreme isolation, looking at what we need and the stress factors
[00:08:51] involved, what could we measure and what have been my personal
[00:08:54] experiences? Jessica spent year living in
[00:08:58] Antarctica with 12 other researchers, under conditions
[00:09:02] similar to those in space, extreme cold and total
[00:09:05] isolation, an experience that for the rest of
[00:09:09] us can be hard to imagine.
[00:09:13] Absolutely, spending an entire year together with 12 other people, you
[00:09:17] barely know, really feeling the isolation and knowing that you can't
[00:09:21] leave or be evacuated, even a medical emergency,
[00:09:24] and yet at the same time also experiencing the beauty in that
[00:09:28] feeling of isolation, that's something I hadn't
[00:09:31] expected. Living conditions
[00:09:35] there were harsh. The research station is located a valley at an
[00:09:39] elevation of 3,200 meters. temperatures can be
[00:09:43] as low as min 80 degrees celsius and oxygen levels
[00:09:47] in the air are low too, and then there's the darkness, the
[00:09:51] months long polar night completely throws the body off
[00:09:54] balance. Jessica Studer is now
[00:09:58] continuing her research here into lose. here too, she's interested
[00:10:02] in how the body and mind react in extreme
[00:10:04] situations. sensors measure data like heart rate and
[00:10:08] oxygen supply to the brain and
[00:10:12] Even a one day mission can provide valuable
[00:10:15] insights.
[00:10:19] Here we're focusing on multi-sensory stress factors, the
[00:10:22] wind, visual and acoustic input. etc.
[00:10:26] we've observed that people can rapidly display a stress response when they're
[00:10:30] outside their usual environment. we want to
[00:10:34] simulate and measure that here a shorter, more intense
[00:10:38] way. the experiment
[00:10:41] begins. the scenario, the crew is a research
[00:10:45] station on Mars entirely cut off from the outside
[00:10:48] world. adhearing strictly to protocol, the
[00:10:51] participants complete various tasks. in one, they're have to carry
[00:10:55] box very carefully through the narrow station, slight jolt and they
[00:10:59] have to start over. It's all about
[00:11:01] teamwork. Jessica Schuder
[00:11:05] records the participants's data in real-time. She wants to find out
[00:11:09] whether their bodily functions a similar or even synchronized.
[00:11:13] In other words, whether the group enters a shared flow,
[00:11:17] like musicians in an
[00:11:18] orchestra. We've
[00:11:22] seen from studies with drummers, for example, Performance
[00:11:25] improves when these parameters synchronize, and that's
[00:11:29] what we're interested in today. Now it's time for
[00:11:33] two the participants to go a field mission. It takes an hour to
[00:11:37] get dressed and ready, and then they head out to collect rock
[00:11:41] samples. They're guided by the team leader at
[00:11:45] the station. When you find one, hold it
[00:11:49] up to the camera so that I can validate
[00:11:51] it.
[00:12:26] as well as cognitive tests and later at the end the day,
[00:12:29] questionaires. On
[00:12:33] Mars a storm is brewing, this makes their task harder to
[00:12:36] complete, and then the station loses
[00:12:40] contact with the field
[00:12:41] team.
[00:12:46] The team leader uses the standard protocols eventually get
[00:12:50] connected again, but no sooner is that
[00:12:54] done. then the worst
[00:12:58] case scenario
[00:12:59] unfolds.
[00:13:05] We have a meteorite alert: return to base
[00:13:08] immediately.
[00:13:11] Explosions rock the Martian's surface, sending heart
[00:13:15] rates soaring. The field team makes it safely
[00:13:19] into the airlock and immediately undergoes tests,
[00:13:22] including incognitive performance. The
[00:13:26] initial results show that the field mission triggered severe stress
[00:13:30] reactions. During the explosion, the participants' heart rates
[00:13:33] rose from 80 to over 130 beats per minute
[00:13:37] and cognitive performance plummeted. It
[00:13:41] felt surprisingly
[00:13:42] real.
[00:13:46] It was both interesting and tough. There were lot of
[00:13:50] unknowns. I plunged in without much
[00:13:54] prior. The most important thing was learning how to
[00:13:58] deal with those unknown factors and
[00:14:02] then to practice coping with challenging
[00:14:05] situations.
[00:14:11] A different team is tested each day for a week. The plan is to repeat the
[00:14:15] process every year, refining and expanding the experiments each
[00:14:19] time, ready to one day head to Mars. Something Jessica
[00:14:23] would consider. unbedingt, absolutely. I've already done
[00:14:26] a year of isolation and would gladly do it again. I'd be open to taking on the
[00:14:30] challenge of mission to
[00:14:31] Mars. But it will
[00:14:35] be sometime before such mission actually takes place. After
[00:14:39] all, there's still the artemis mission to complete, an exciting
[00:14:43] challenge in
[00:14:44] itself. It takes
[00:14:48] about seven months to get to Mars. Could those be spent
[00:14:51] asleep? Research is ongoing. After all, many
[00:14:55] animals hibernate all winter, something of Viwer Ali
[00:14:59] from Yemen was curious about.
[00:15:03] Why does some animals
[00:15:04] hibernate? Hibernation
[00:15:08] is a survival strategy used primarily by smaller creatures due
[00:15:12] to their higher energy consumption, coupled with their greater
[00:15:15] sensitivity to the cold and food shortages during the
[00:15:18] winter. It affects hedgehogs to ground hogs
[00:15:22] and other marmets and bats. These are the
[00:15:26] factors involved: first, the
[00:15:29] cold: when temperatures drop in winter, it takes a
[00:15:33] lot of energy to keep the body warm, which is why hibernating animals
[00:15:37] drastically reduce their metabolic rate as well as their surface
[00:15:40] area, their body temperature, heart
[00:15:44] rate and breathing all plummet to a minimum, as the animals
[00:15:48] go into low power mode. a hedgehog's breathing rate is normally
[00:15:52] 40 to 50 times a minute, but during hibernation it's just one or
[00:15:56] two, and their pulse also drops from 200 beats
[00:16:00] per minute to just
[00:16:01] five. another strategy to
[00:16:05] combat the cold is settling in sheltered places such as caves,
[00:16:09] crevices and burrows. the insulation these provide reduces
[00:16:13] heat loss, helping the animals to survive on minimal
[00:16:16] energy. factor number two is
[00:16:20] food scarcity. with food in short supply during
[00:16:24] winter, hibernators build up substantial fat reserves
[00:16:28] beforehand. these serve as both a source of energy and again
[00:16:31] as insulation. during hibernation, the animals can live off
[00:16:35] these fat stores for many. months,
[00:16:39] forraging for food would consume more energy than the food itself
[00:16:43] provides. And third,
[00:16:47] the animal's biorhythms. Hibernation follows an
[00:16:50] internal body clock that's aligned with the changing
[00:16:53] seasons. Hormones and the amount of daylight determine when
[00:16:57] an animal begins and ends its winter dormancy.
[00:17:01] Milder winters can disrupt that rhythm and lead to hibernation ending
[00:17:05] prematurely, which can have serious consec'. if there's not enough food
[00:17:08] available yet. hibernating animals do not sleep
[00:17:12] continuously during this period, however, and wake up briefly at regular
[00:17:16] intervals. badgers and bears are light hibernators
[00:17:20] where the bodily functions are only partially wound down, and
[00:17:23] squirrels wake up every now
[00:17:25] and then to have a munch. cold
[00:17:29] blooded animals, such as insects, reptiles and amphibians enter what
[00:17:33] is called brahmation, where their bodies produce a kind of natural
[00:17:36] anti- to keep their blood flowing, once things get
[00:17:40] warmer again, they come back to
[00:17:42] life. what are
[00:17:46] stars made of? how many colors can butterflies
[00:17:50] see? could robots have babies one
[00:17:53] day? do you have science question? then
[00:17:56] send it to us as a video, text or voice message. if
[00:18:00] we answer it in the show then we'll send you a little gift as a thank
[00:18:04] you, so just ask.
[00:18:11] How do we sense time? Right now, our perception of time
[00:18:15] seems to be a process of radical redefinition. When
[00:18:19] we scroll through TikTok, for example, we can feel like time is
[00:18:22] flying, but afterwards, we too often sense that we've done nothing
[00:18:26] but waste
[00:18:27] it. Time
[00:18:30] is a relative concept, and now more than ever, digitalization
[00:18:34] and constant connectivity via the use of... multiple devices at once
[00:18:38] means that people around the world spend a considerable part their day in front of a
[00:18:42] screen, average 6 hours and 40 minutes per
[00:18:46] day. so what impact does this have on our
[00:18:49] sense of time? does time perhaps pass
[00:18:52] faster or
[00:18:55] slower? here at Munich's Ludvig
[00:18:59] Maximilian University, Professor Zashi is
[00:19:03] investigating precisely those
[00:19:04] questions. "we human don't
[00:19:08] have any sensor organs of time, not like vision,
[00:19:12] see the lights or or ear, hear the the the
[00:19:16] voice, and our brain simply
[00:19:19] reconstruct time based on the surrounding events and also
[00:19:23] internal states. so what is the difference
[00:19:27] between the perception of time in the real world and in the
[00:19:31] virtual one? a natural environment, our brain
[00:19:35] can follow naturally in its own pace." but digital
[00:19:38] environment are complete differently, each
[00:19:42] events are separate, discrete, and emotional
[00:19:46] loaded, and there's a less attention to our own or tracking
[00:19:50] time. to get direct insights into how digital media
[00:19:54] influence our perception of time, we join zinchenko in the
[00:19:58] multi-sensory perception lab. the researcher is setting up a test that
[00:20:02] involves eye tracking and an electroencephalogram, cap
[00:20:06] fitted with electrodes to measure. brain activity: the
[00:20:09] goal the experiment is to try to see whether people perceive
[00:20:13] time differently when they observe certain social
[00:20:17] images and they are in control of situation like simulating social
[00:20:21] media use versus when they're not in control of situation where just
[00:20:25] presented with pictures and they are not managing
[00:20:29] or they do not decide when to continue door. before the experiment
[00:20:33] begins, the participants head is fixed in position so that their pupils can
[00:20:36] be monitor. the eyetracker uses infrared light and
[00:20:40] camera, light reflects off the eyes
[00:20:44] and those reflections are picked up by the
[00:20:47] camera.
[00:20:51] This enables the system to work out where exactly on the screen the
[00:20:55] person is looking and for how long. So we could look
[00:20:59] at your eye movements, fixation numbers, um, how spread the eye
[00:21:02] movements are, and make some inferences or make some conclusions about what
[00:21:06] happens in the brain. The data produced will later provide
[00:21:10] information on participants's attention span. The aim is
[00:21:14] to see how long they focus on an image and how the intensity of brain
[00:21:18] activity varies from one moment to the
[00:21:20] next, so yeah, now it starts and we'll need to
[00:21:24] wait for uh, maybe 40 minutes till the experiment
[00:21:27] finishes. In the first part the experiment, the participant
[00:21:31] clicks her way through series of screens at her own pace, and is
[00:21:34] then asked to estimate how much time has passed. Next, she
[00:21:38] views the same images again and at the exact same speed, except with
[00:21:42] the computer dictating the rhythm, so this time she's a passive
[00:21:45] participant.
[00:21:50] Afterwards, she's again asked
[00:21:52] to estimate the time that's elapsed. We
[00:21:56] also spoke to Philip Stab, professor of sociology at Berlin's
[00:22:00] Humbalt University. What does he say are the main reasons behind our
[00:22:04] growing dependence on the digital world in our everyday
[00:22:11] wirklich auch. I think one reason is that people are looking for time in order
[00:22:14] escape from the real world. We're living a time where
[00:22:18] people feel the future is... looking extremely grim as we get bombarded
[00:22:22] with various crisis, and with time seeming to
[00:22:26] accelerate, what people actually want is escape to a
[00:22:30] place where time stands
[00:22:31] still. a
[00:22:35] form of escapism that is further intensified by the daily flood of
[00:22:39] digital content. back in
[00:22:43] Munich, the experimentsory perception lab is now
[00:22:47] over, assesses the d we ask the
[00:22:50] participant about her
[00:22:52] impressions, it felt longer
[00:22:56] and more boring when i couldn't click through the images myself, clicking
[00:22:59] conter, why is
[00:23:01] that? so quite interestingly we looked at
[00:23:05] the data so far, the underestimation was larger relative
[00:23:09] to passive viewing, so one example here would be in
[00:23:13] this specific case, the duration was the actual duration was about
[00:23:16] 42 seconds and the participant thought it was about
[00:23:20] 18 seconds right, so once you are in this social
[00:23:23] media state, you feel the time goes
[00:23:27] faster basically, and you do not realize how much time you
[00:23:31] actually spent. in the active social media like
[00:23:35] setting, the perceived time was almost 60% shorter than
[00:23:39] was actually the case. when participants watched
[00:23:42] passively, time also felt shorter than it actually was, but
[00:23:46] the effect was weaker what
[00:23:49] you can see. The electroencephalogram provides an
[00:23:52] explanation. Just 1/10 of second after an image
[00:23:56] appears, the part the brain responsible for vision changes how it
[00:23:59] processes information. When
[00:24:03] participants actively click through the sequence, the brain
[00:24:06] evaluates the relevant image as more
[00:24:09] interesting. This could explain why
[00:24:12] fast-paced interactive digital media exert a stronger hold on
[00:24:16] our attention. and
[00:24:20] what does that mean for our memories of
[00:24:22] events? so our brand doesn't
[00:24:26] really store every single detail of events, but
[00:24:30] rather we our brain simply averages similar things
[00:24:34] together to have a one representation, we call that as
[00:24:37] a ensemble representation, so when you see a basket of
[00:24:41] apples, you don't remember individual apples, but
[00:24:45] rather apples
[00:24:46] a summary, but now come to the digital media, and
[00:24:50] it's quite complete different when you scroll down a lot of
[00:24:54] funny videos, all videos are quite
[00:24:57] different and our brain still use our old tradition
[00:25:01] to average everything together, and that's when you le
[00:25:04] back, there's nothing to remember, nothing to
[00:25:08] recall, and that's why we also feel shorter, did
[00:25:12] nothing, and what does the sociologist think about the
[00:25:21] that's essentially what this experiment shows, which basically means
[00:25:25] people are losing time, in broader terms, it means a real loss
[00:25:29] of time from our lives, and the thing is, when people start
[00:25:32] scrolling, they're actually hoping to gain some peace and time, so it's
[00:25:36] a bit of a paradox
[00:25:39] situation, a paradoxical situation that could
[00:25:43] be amplified in the future if we failed to keep that digital overload
[00:25:47] at bay, taking more breaks and reducing to
[00:25:50] simultaneous stimuli could
[00:25:52] help to wrestle back control over our time and to actually
[00:25:56] delight in doing nothing at
[00:25:57] all and
[00:26:01] that's got time for on this edition of tomorrow today,
[00:26:05] we're back soon, see you then, take
[00:26:08] care.