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00:00:13in
00:00:18Behind Wales songs lie huge, powerful brains, the
00:00:22biggest on the planet, in fact and studies reveal
00:00:25a close link between these and their highly developed social
00:00:28behavior. Wales live in tight-nick groups, pass on
00:00:32knowledge each other and display cooperative behavior when they're
00:00:36hunting, for
00:00:51often hunting teams using a very special
00:00:53technique, the key element of which are those circles of bubbles
00:00:57on the water
00:00:59of surface. The whales dive deep below their prey,
00:01:03schools of fish. Once in the right position, they swim in
00:01:06circles while releasing bursts of air. In the process, they
00:01:10of create rising and disorientating net of
00:01:13bubbles. For the
00:01:17fish, visual and physical barrier.
00:01:21As the predators circle inward, so does the cylindrical net,
00:01:25and their prey cluster closer and closer together until the decisive
00:01:29in moment when the... whales shoot up vertically, open their mouths
00:01:32and scoop up masses of
00:01:35fish. Bubble
00:01:39net feeding is not innate, but in acquired skill passed down
00:01:42through generations. A 2026 study indicates that this
00:01:46knowledge is also transferred between different
00:01:49populations. When Wales from Alaska
00:01:52entered Canadian Waters, they brought the technique with them,
00:01:56passing it to other huntbacks in British Columbia that either did not the
00:02:00practice or who had forgotten it over
00:02:05of
00:02:06in time, but if wales are so smart, why do we hear regular reports
00:02:10of them getting stranded? studies suggest that this actually has
00:02:14something to do with the sun, like migratory birds, whales
00:02:18use the earth's magnetic field to navigate, and the strength of
00:02:21that field can fluctuate when exposed to high levels of
00:02:24radiation, like from solar storms for
00:02:27example. a European, space mission is
00:02:31currently looking into that, investigating the interaction between
00:02:34solar storms and the earth's magnetic
00:02:39in of field. These rays from the sun could knock out power grids in minutes,
00:02:43but a mysterious invisible barrier protects earth.
00:02:47Scientists from China and Europe are a mission to find out how
00:02:50that shield really works. It's called Smile, a rare
00:02:54cooperation in today's geopolitical landscape. Smile is very
00:02:58interesting mission, that's... Josephbacher, the head
00:03:01of the European space agency, it really measures the
00:03:04interaction
00:03:05of the sun with the earth magnetosphere, the
00:03:08of small of scientific consortium has 200 scientists from across Europe
00:03:12and across China, and this is Carol Mondell, Esa's
00:03:16science director, working together to ask ask
00:03:19these big questions for which we need new answers. The sun bathes
00:03:23our planet in warmth and light, but its surface can also
00:03:27erupt, sending waves of dangerously... charged
00:03:30particles rushing towards earth at hundreds of kilometers per
00:03:34second. Without our protective magnetosphere, which diverts most
00:03:37of them, we wouldn't survive. The coupling between the sun and the earth is
00:03:41critically important for life on earth. Smile, the solar
00:03:45wind magnetosphere ionosphere Link Explorer is to gather
00:03:49data on this critically important process. From a highly
00:03:53elliptical orbit, the four instruments on board the research
00:03:57in satellite will provide a global bird's eye view. of how the
00:04:01charged particles interact with our planet's protective magnetic
00:04:04shield, understanding that is crucial in the modern
00:04:07era. we have astronauts living on the international space
00:04:12in station, we have much of modern society now is evolving
00:04:15to have its infrastructure in space, our satellites,
00:04:18telecommunications, much of our infrastructure and also our ground-based
00:04:22infrastructure in terms of electrical subsystems. all are
00:04:26vulnerable after
00:04:27of in flares explode on the sun's surface. with the energy of millions of
00:04:31nuclear bombs, improving our
00:04:34of ability to predict the space weather they cause is another goal
00:04:37of the milestone sino European mission, but it
00:04:41might be the last such milestone we see for a
00:04:44while. Space missions allow nations to
00:04:48make powerful statements, though agencies often cooperate to
00:04:52realize them. That spreads the significant costs,
00:04:55risks and expertise required to launch them. Esa
00:04:59and China's space agency have worked together in the
00:05:03past. Around decade ago, there were joint training
00:05:06exercises involving Chinese and European
00:05:09astronauts. Other projects included the
00:05:12dragon program for earth observation and the change lunar
00:05:16missions, but then back in 2023,
00:05:20ease's director general said his agency was no longer
00:05:23planning to send astronauts to China's Tiangong space
00:05:27station, and rising geopolitical tensions make
00:05:30more such exchanges seem unlikely anytime
00:05:34soon. At the moment it is not planned to resume this
00:05:37cooperation, yes it was discussed in the past, but we
00:05:41are discussing. cooperation of astronaut flights in
00:05:44particular uh with our friends and partners in the United
00:05:48States. In the geopolitical landscape, divisions
00:05:51have grown wider and deeper over the last decade. We've seen
00:05:55a fundamental transition into
00:05:59way that we perceive China. Dennis Simon is an
00:06:02expert on international science and technology issues. China
00:06:06is a strategic threat to the
00:06:09well-being or future well-being the United. united states
00:06:13and uh President Trump is trying to convince uh
00:06:17the Europeans the same thing that they want to look at China with much more
00:06:21skepticism. In 2025, the EU
00:06:25announced it would be borring Chinese participation in its
00:06:28critical tech programs, including AI,
00:06:32semiconductors and space. Funded cooperation with
00:06:36China will only remain possible in less crucial areas like
00:06:40climate and agriculture. some analysts
00:06:44worry that could fragment the global research landscape even
00:06:48more, placing further limits on European access to
00:06:51Chinese talent and innovation and vice versa. what we could
00:06:55end up with is bifurcation of international
00:06:59science and technology affairs, which means that there'll be a
00:07:03system dominated by China and a bunch of countries like the bricks
00:07:06countries and
00:07:08the belt and road countries etc. and then we have the other side with the
00:07:12United States, Europe and Japan, and those two systems
00:07:16would coexist, but they would exist a tension that
00:07:20would not benefit either side. But, at least for
00:07:24now, European and Chinese space scientists will have reason
00:07:27to smile as they continue to work together a
00:07:31unique joint
00:07:32mission.
00:07:36For a long time, teamwork was everything in space
00:07:39exploration with the ISS the ultimate.
00:07:42example: neither China nor India are
00:07:46involved, but both, along with Russia, want to reach the moon,
00:07:50though not as part the US Led Artemis mission. Exit
00:07:53teamwork, enter an all-out high-stakes race. It could
00:07:57soon get quite crowded on the lunar surface. But then, who wants to
00:08:01be all alone up
00:08:02there? At
00:08:06toloose University Hospitals simulation center, the French
00:08:10space agency, Kness, is
00:08:42simulated mars expeditions. I spent year in Antarctica
00:08:46carrying out biomedical experiments on living in extreme
00:08:49isolation, looking at what we need and the stress factors
00:08:52involved. What could we measure and what have been my personal
00:08:56experiences? Jessica spent year living in
00:09:00Antarctica with 12 other researchers, under conditions
00:09:03similar to those in space, extreme cold and total
00:09:07isolation. An experience that for the rest of
00:09:11us can be hard. to imagine,
00:09:14absolutely, spending an entire year together with 12 other people you
00:09:18barely know, really feeling the isolation and knowing that you can't
00:09:22leave or be evacuated, even a medical emergency,
00:09:26and yet at the same time also experiencing the beauty in that
00:09:30feeling of isolation, that's something I hadn't
00:09:33expected. living conditions
00:09:37there were harsh, the research station is located a valley at an
00:09:41elevation of 3 200 meters, temperatures can be as
00:09:45low as 80 degrees celsius and oxygen levels
00:09:49in the air are low too. And then there's the darkness, the
00:09:52months long polar night completely throws the body off
00:09:56balance. Jessica Schuder is now
00:09:59continuing her research here in Tolouse. Here too, she's interested
00:10:03in how the body and mind react in extreme
00:10:06situations. Sensors measure data like heart rate and oxygen
00:10:10supply to the brain. and even a one
00:10:14day mission can provide valuable
00:10:16insights.
00:10:20here we're focusing on multi-sensory stress factors: the wind,
00:10:25visual and acoustic input etc. we've observed
00:10:29that people can rapidly display a stress response when they're outside
00:10:32the usual environment. we want to
00:10:35simulate and measure that here a shorter, more intense
00:10:39way. the experiment
00:10:42begins. the scenario, the crew is a research
00:10:46station on mars entirely cut off from the outside
00:10:49world. adhearing strictly to protocol, the
00:10:53participants complete various. asks in one, they have to carry
00:10:57box very carefully through the narrow station, slight jolt and they
00:11:01have to start over. It's all about
00:11:03teamwork. Jessica Schuder
00:11:07records the participants data in real-time. She wants to find
00:11:10out whether their bodily functions are similar or even
00:11:13synchronized, in other words, whether the group enters a
00:11:17shared flow, like musicians in an
00:11:20orchestra. We've
00:11:23seen from studies with. drummers, for example, that performance
00:11:27improves when these parameters synchronize, and that's
00:11:31what we're interested in today. now it's time for
00:11:35two the participants to go a field mission. it takes an hour to
00:11:39get dressed and ready, and then they head out to collect rock
00:11:43samples. they're guided by the team leader at
00:11:47the station. when you find one, hold it up
00:11:51to the camera so that i can validate it.
00:11:55It's also an opportunity to practice the
00:11:57protocols, the task is broken down into
00:12:01steps, the
00:12:04simulation setting is fairly rudimentary, so how
00:12:08reliable will the results
00:12:09be?
00:12:14We know that humans can be easily thrown off course by additional
00:12:18visual or acustic input. RAM
00:12:22is to simulate that and measure the response using a range of
00:12:25physiological parameters as well as cognitive tests
00:12:28and later at the end the day
00:12:30questionaires. On Mars
00:12:34a storm is brewing, this makes their task harder to
00:12:38complete, and then the station loses
00:12:41contact with the field
00:12:43team.
00:12:48The team leader uses the standard protocols eventually get
00:12:52connected again, but no... sooner is that
00:12:55done, then the
00:12:59worst case scenario
00:13:00unfolds.
00:13:07We have a meteorite alert, return to base
00:13:09immediately.
00:13:13Explosions rock the martian surface, sending heart
00:13:16rates soaring. The field team makes it safely
00:13:20into the airlock and immediately undergoes tests,
00:13:24including cognitive performance. The
00:13:27initial results show that the field mission triggered severe stress
00:13:31reactions. During the explosion, the participants heart rates
00:13:35rose from 80 to over 130 beats per minute,
00:13:39and cognitive performance plumted. It
00:13:43felt surprisingly
00:13:44real.
00:13:48It was both interesting and tough. There were lot of
00:13:52unknowns.
00:13:58The most important thing was learning how to deal with those unknown
00:14:01factors.
00:14:12A different team is tested each day for a to repeat
00:14:15week. the process every year,
00:14:18is The refining plan and expanding the experiments each time, ready to one day head
00:14:22to Mars.
00:14:26unbedingt, absolutely. I've already done a year of isolation and would gladly do
00:14:30it again. I'd be open
00:14:31to taking on the challenge of mission to
00:14:33Mars. But it will
00:14:37be sometime before such mission actually takes place. After
00:14:41all, there's still the Artemis mission to complete, an exciting
00:14:44challenge in
00:14:45itself. It takes
00:14:49about seven months to get to Mars. Could those be spent
00:14:53asleep? Research is on... after all, many
00:14:56animals hibernate all winter. Something
00:15:00of Viwer Ali from Yemen was curious
00:15:02about. Why does some
00:15:05animals hibernate?
00:15:09Hibernation is a survival strategy, used primarily by smaller
00:15:13creatures due to their higher energy consumption, coupled with their greater
00:15:17sensitivity to the cold and food shortages during the
00:15:20winter. It affects hedgehogs to ground hogs and
00:15:24other marmots. and bats: these are the factors
00:15:28involved: first, the
00:15:31cold: when temperatures drop in winter, it takes a
00:15:35lot of energy to keep the body warm, which...
00:15:37is why hibernating animals drastically reduce their metabolic rate as well as
00:15:41their surface area. their body
00:15:45temperature, heart rate and breathing all plummet to a
00:15:48minimum as the animals go into low power mode. a
00:15:52hedgehog's breathing rate is normally 40 to 50 times a minute, but
00:15:56during hibernation it's just one or two, and their pulse
00:16:00also drops from 200 beats per minute to just
00:16:03five. another strategy to
00:16:07combat The cold is settling in sheltered places such as caves,
00:16:11crevices and burrows. The insulation these provide reduces
00:16:14heat loss, helping the animals to survive on minimal
00:16:18energy. Factor number two
00:16:21is food scarcity. With food in short supply
00:16:25during winter, hibernators build up substantial fat reserves
00:16:29beforehand. These serve as both a source of energy and again
00:16:33as insulation. During hibernation, the animals can live off
00:16:37fat stores for many months. Foraging for
00:16:41food would consume more energy than the food itself
00:16:44provides. And third,
00:16:48the animal's biorhythms. Hibernation follows an
00:16:52internal body clock that's aligned with the changing
00:16:55seasons. Hormones and the amount of daylight determine when
00:16:59an animal begins and ends its winter dormancy.
00:17:03Milder winters can disrupt that rhythm and lead to hibernation ending
00:17:06prematurely. which can have serious consequences if there's not enough food
00:17:10available yet; hibernating animals do not sleep
00:17:13continuously during this period, however
00:17:16and wake up briefly at regular intervals. badgers and bears
00:17:20are light hibernators where the bodily functions are only partially
00:17:24wound down and squirrels wake up every now and then to have a
00:17:27munch. cold blooded
00:17:30animals such as insects, reptiles and amphibians enter what is
00:17:34called bromatian where their bodies produce a kind of natural
00:17:38anti-freeze to keep their blood flowing. once things get
00:17:42warmer again, they come back to
00:18:12How do we sense time? Right now, our perception of time
00:18:16seems to be a process of radical redefinition.
00:18:20When we scroll through TikTok, for example, we can feel like time is
00:18:23flying, but afterwards we too often sense that we've done nothing
00:18:27but waste
00:18:28it. Time
00:18:32is a relative concept, and now more than ever.
00:18:35Digitalization and constant connection. activity via the use of multiple
00:18:39devices at once means that people around the world spend a considerable part
00:18:42their day in front of a screen, average 6 hours and 40
00:18:46minutes per day. so what impact does this have
00:18:50on our sense of time? does time perhaps pass
00:18:54faster or
00:18:57slower? here at Munex
00:19:00Ludvig Maximilion University, Professor Zashi is
00:19:04investigating precisely those questions.
00:19:09"we human don't have any sensor organs of time, not like
00:19:12vision, see the lights or or ear, hear
00:19:16the the the voice, and our brain
00:19:20simply reconstruct time based on the surrounding
00:19:24events and also internal states.
00:19:28so what is the difference between the perception of time in the real world
00:19:31and in the virtual one? a natural
00:19:35environment, our brain can follow" actually in its own paces,
00:19:39but digital environment are complete
00:19:42differently, each events are separate,
00:19:46discrete and emotional loaded, and there's a less
00:19:49attention to our own or tracking time. to
00:19:53get direct insights into how digital media influence our perception of
00:19:57time, we join zinchenko in the multi-sensory perception
00:20:01lab. the researcher is setting up a test that involves eye tracking
00:20:05and an electroencephalogram, fitted with electrodes to measure
00:20:09brain activity. The goal the experiment is to
00:20:13uh try to see whether people perceive time differently when they
00:20:17uh observe certain um social images uh and they are in control
00:20:21of situation like simulating social media use versus when
00:20:24they're not in control of situation where just presented with pictures and they are
00:20:28notum managing or they do not decide when to
00:20:32continue. Before the experiment begins, the participant's
00:20:35head is fixed in position so... their pupils can be
00:20:38monitored. The eyetracker uses infrared light and
00:20:42camera. Light reflects off the eyes
00:20:45and those reflections are picked up by the
00:20:48camera.
00:20:52This enables the system to work out where exactly on the screen the
00:20:56person is looking and for how long. So we could look
00:21:00at your eye movements, fixation numbers, um, how spread the eye
00:21:04movements are, and make some inferences or make some conclusions about what
00:21:08happens in the brain. The data produced will later provide
00:21:12information on participants's attention span. The aim is
00:21:15to see how long they focus on an image and how the intensity of brain
00:21:19activity. varies from one moment to the
00:21:22next, so yeah, now it starts and we'll need to
00:21:26wait for uh, maybe 40 minutes till the experiment
00:21:28finishes. In the first part the experiment, the participant
00:21:32clicks her way through series of screens at her own pace, and is then asked to
00:21:36estimate how much time has passed. Next, she views the
00:21:40same images again and at the exact same speed, except with the
00:21:44computer dictating the rhythm, so this time she's a passive
00:21:47participant.
00:21:52Afterwards she's again asked to estimate the time that's
00:21:55elapsed. We also spoke to Philip
00:21:59Stab, professor of sociology at Berlin's Humbalt
00:22:02University. What does he say are the main reasons behind our growing
00:22:06dependence on the digital world in our everyday
00:22:08lives? Und ich glaube ein Grund ist
00:22:12das wirklich auch. I think one reason is that people are looking for time
00:22:16in order escape from the real world. We're living a time.
00:22:20people feel the future is looking extremely grim as we get
00:22:23bombarded with various crisis, and with time
00:22:27seeming to accelerate, what people actually want is
00:22:30escape to a place where time stands still,
00:22:34situation, der
00:22:35die zeit still steht, a form of escapism that is further
00:22:38intensified by the daily flood of digital
00:22:41content. back in Munich,
00:22:45the experiment at the multi-sensory perception lab is now over,
00:22:49while arti
00:22:50Chenko assesses the data, we ask the participant about her
00:22:53impressions. Es hat sich langer und langer, it felt longer
00:22:57and more boring when I couldn't click through the images
00:23:00myself. Why is
00:23:03that? So quite interestingly we looked
00:23:07at the data so far, the underestimation was larger relative
00:23:10to passive viewing. Yeah, so one example here would be um, in this
00:23:14specific case, the duration was, the actual duration was about
00:23:1842 seconds. and the participant thought it was about
00:23:2118 seconds right, so once you are in this social media
00:23:25state, you feel the time goes um
00:23:29faster basically,
00:23:30and you
00:23:30do not um realize how much time you actually
00:23:33spent. In the active social media like setting,
00:23:37the perceived time was almost 60% shorter than was actually the
00:23:41case. When participants watched passively, time
00:23:45also felt shorter than it actually was, but the effect was
00:23:48weaker. The
00:23:51electroencephalogram provides an explanation: just
00:23:551/10 of second after an image appears, the part the brain
00:23:59responsible for vision changes how it processes
00:24:02information. When
00:24:05participants actively click through the sequence, the brain
00:24:08evaluates the relevant image as more
00:24:10interesting. This could explain why
00:24:14fast-paced interactive digital media exert a stronger hold on
00:24:18our attention. "and
00:24:22what does that mean for our memories of
00:24:24events? so our brand doesn't
00:24:28really do every single detail of events, but
00:24:31rather we our brain simply average similar things
00:24:35together to have a one representation, we call that as
00:24:39a ensemble representation, so when you see a basket of
00:24:42apples, you don't remember individual apples, but
00:24:46rather apples, a summary, but now..." come to the
00:24:50digital medias and it's quite complete different,
00:24:54when you scroll down a lots of funny videos, all videos
00:24:58are quite different and our brain still use our
00:25:02old tradition to average everything together, and that's when you
00:25:06recall back, there's nothing to remember, nothing
00:25:09to recall, and that's why we also feel shorter,
00:25:13did nothing, and what does the sociologist think about the results
00:25:17the experiment?
00:25:20geht schneller, time passes more quickly, that's essentially what this experiment
00:25:24shows, which basically means people are losing
00:25:27time, in broader terms, it means a real loss of time from our
00:25:31lives, and the thing is, when people start scrolling, they're actually
00:25:35hoping to gain some peace and time, so it's a bit of a
00:25:39paradox situation, a
00:25:42paradoxical situation that could be amplified in the future if we failed
00:25:46to keep that digital overload at bay, taking more breaks and
00:25:50reducing exposure to simultaneous stimuli could help to wrestle
00:25:54back control over our time and to actually delight in
00:25:58doing nothing at
00:25:59all.