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00:00:11in
00:00:16Behind Wales songs lie huge, powerful brains, the
00:00:20biggest on the planet, in fact, and studies reveal
00:00:23a close link between these and their highly developed social
00:00:27behavior. Wales live in tight neck group. groups pass on
00:00:30knowledge each other and display cooperative behavior when
00:00:34they're hunting, for
00:00:35example, from the
00:00:39of oceans to space, this time on DW's science
00:00:43show, welcome to tomorrow
00:00:45today.
00:00:48Humpbat whales often hunt in teams using a very special
00:00:53of technique, the key element of which are those circles of bubbles on the water
00:00:58of surface. The whales deep below their prey (skuols
00:01:01of fish), once in the right position, they swim in
00:01:05circles while releasing bursts of air. in the process
00:01:09of they create rising and disorientating net of
00:01:12of bubbles. for the
00:01:16fish, visual and physical barrier.
00:01:19as the predators circle inward, so does the cylindrical
00:01:23net, and their prey cluster closer and closer together until the
00:01:27decisive
00:01:27in moment when the whales shoot up vertic. open their mouths
00:01:31and scoop up masses of
00:01:33fish. Bubble
00:01:37net feeding is not innate, but in acquired skill passed down
00:01:41through generations. A 2026 study indicates that this
00:01:45knowledge is also transferred between different
00:01:47populations. When Wales from Alaska
00:01:51entered Canadian waters, they brought the technique with them, passing it
00:01:55to other huntbacks in British Colombia that either did not know the practice
00:01:59or who had gotten it over
00:02:03of
00:02:05in time, but if wales are so smart, why do we hear regular reports
00:02:10of of them getting stranded? studies suggest that this actually has something to do with the
00:02:13sun. like migratory birds, whales use the earth's
00:02:17magnetic field to navigate, and the strength of that field can
00:02:21fluctuate when exposed to high levels of radiation, like from
00:02:25solar storms, for example. a European Chinese
00:02:28space mission is currently. looking into that, investigating the
00:02:32interaction between solar storms and the earth's magnetic
00:02:39in in of field. These rays from the sun could knock out power grids in minutes, but a mysterious
00:02:43invisible barrier protects earth. Scientists
00:02:46from China and Europe are a mission to find out how that shield
00:02:50really works. It's called
00:02:51of Smile, rare cooperation in today's geopolitical
00:02:55landscape. Smile is very interesting mission. That's Joseph
00:02:58Ashbacher,
00:02:59the head. the European space agency, it really measures the
00:03:03interaction
00:03:04of of the sun with the earth magnetosphere, the
00:03:07of small scientific consortium has 200 scientists from across Europe
00:03:11and across China, and this is Carol Mundell, ESA's
00:03:14science director, working together to ask ask
00:03:18these big questions for which we need new answers. The sun bathes
00:03:22our planet in warmth and light, but its surface can also
00:03:25erupt, sending waves of dangerously charged
00:03:29particles. rushing towards earth at hundreds of kilometers per
00:03:32second, without our protective magnetosphere, which diverts most
00:03:36of them, we wouldn't survive. the coupling between the sun and the earth is
00:03:40critically important for life on earth. smile, the solar
00:03:43wind, magnetosphere ionosphere link explorer is to
00:03:47gather data on this critically important process. from a
00:03:51highly elliptical orbit, the four instruments on board the research
00:03:55in satellite will provide a global bird's eye view of how the
00:03:59charged particles interact with our planet's protective magnetic
00:04:03shield, understanding that is crucial in the modern
00:04:06era. we have astronauts living on the international space
00:04:10in station, we have much of modern society now is evolving
00:04:14to have its infrastructure in space, our satellites,
00:04:16telecommunications, much of our infrastructure and also our ground-based
00:04:20infrastructure in terms of electrical subsystems. all are
00:04:24vulnerable after
00:04:26of in flares explode on the sun's surface with the energy of millions. of
00:04:30nuclear bombs, improving our
00:04:32of ability to predict the space weather they cause is another goal
00:04:36of the milestone sino European mission, but it
00:04:40might be the last such milestone we see for a
00:04:42while. space missions allow nations to
00:04:46make powerful statements, though agencies often cooperate to
00:04:50realize them. that spreads the significant costs, risks
00:04:54and expertise required to launch them. ESA and
00:04:58China's space agency have... worked together in the past,
00:05:02around decade ago, there were joint training exercises
00:05:05involving Chinese and European astronauts.
00:05:09Other projects included the dragon program for earth
00:05:12observation and the change lunar missions, but then
00:05:16back in 2023, ECA's director general said his
00:05:20agency was no longer planning to send astronauts to China's
00:05:24Tiangong space station, and rising
00:05:27geopolitical tensions make more such exchanges seem unlikely
00:05:31anyt soon. At the moment
00:05:34it is not planned to resume this cooperation, yes it was discussed
00:05:37in the past, but we are discussing cooperation
00:05:41of astronaut. flights in particular uh with our friends and
00:05:45partners in the United States. In the geopolitical landscape,
00:05:49divisions have grown wider and deeper over the last
00:05:52decade. We've seen a
00:05:55fundamental transition into way that we perceive
00:05:59China. Dennis Simon is an expert on international
00:06:02science and technology issues. China is a
00:06:06strategic threat to the well-being or future well-being
00:06:10the United States and President Trump is
00:06:14trying to convince the Europeans the same thing that they want to look at
00:06:18China with much more skepticism. In
00:06:212025, the EU announced it would be borring
00:06:25Chinese participation in its critical tech programs
00:06:28including AI, semiconductors and
00:06:32space. Funded cooperation with China will only remain
00:06:36possible in less crucial areas like climate and
00:06:39agriculture. ts worry that
00:06:43could fragment the global research landscape even more,
00:06:47placing further limits on European access to Chinese talent
00:06:51and innovation, and vice versa. what we could end up
00:06:55with is bifurcation of international science and
00:06:58technology affairs, which means that there'll be a system
00:07:02dominated by China and a bunch of countries like the bricks
00:07:05countries and belt and road countries etc.
00:07:09and then we have the other side with the United States, Europe and Japan
00:07:13and those two systems would coexist, but they would
00:07:17exist a tension that would not benefit either
00:07:20side, but at least for now, European and Chinese
00:07:24space scientists will have reason to smile as they continue to
00:07:28work together a unique joint
00:07:31mission.
00:07:35For a long time, teamwork was everything in space
00:07:38exploration, with the ISS the ultimate
00:07:41example. Neither China nor India are
00:07:44involved, but both, along with Russia, want to reach the moon,
00:07:48though not as part the US-led Artemis mission. Exit
00:07:52teamwork, enter an all-out high-stakes race. It could
00:07:56soon get quite crowded on the lunar surface, but then who wants to
00:08:00be all alone up
00:08:01there? At
00:08:05Tollouse University Hospital's simulation center, the French
00:08:08space agency, Kness, is conducting experiments in
00:08:43I spent year in Antarctica carrying out biomedical experiments on living
00:08:47in extreme isolation, looking at what we need and the stress factors
00:08:51involved, what could we measure and what have been my personal
00:08:54experiences? Jessica spent year living in
00:08:58Antarctica with 12 other researchers, under conditions
00:09:02similar to those in space, extreme cold and total
00:09:05isolation, an experience that for the rest of
00:09:09us can be hard to imagine.
00:09:13Absolutely, spending an entire year together with 12 other people, you
00:09:17barely know, really feeling the isolation and knowing that you can't
00:09:21leave or be evacuated, even a medical emergency,
00:09:24and yet at the same time also experiencing the beauty in that
00:09:28feeling of isolation, that's something I hadn't
00:09:31expected. Living conditions
00:09:35there were harsh. The research station is located a valley at an
00:09:39elevation of 3,200 meters. temperatures can be
00:09:43as low as min 80 degrees celsius and oxygen levels
00:09:47in the air are low too, and then there's the darkness, the
00:09:51months long polar night completely throws the body off
00:09:54balance. Jessica Studer is now
00:09:58continuing her research here into lose. here too, she's interested
00:10:02in how the body and mind react in extreme
00:10:04situations. sensors measure data like heart rate and
00:10:08oxygen supply to the brain and
00:10:12Even a one day mission can provide valuable
00:10:15insights.
00:10:19Here we're focusing on multi-sensory stress factors, the
00:10:22wind, visual and acoustic input. etc.
00:10:26we've observed that people can rapidly display a stress response when they're
00:10:30outside their usual environment. we want to
00:10:34simulate and measure that here a shorter, more intense
00:10:38way. the experiment
00:10:41begins. the scenario, the crew is a research
00:10:45station on Mars entirely cut off from the outside
00:10:48world. adhearing strictly to protocol, the
00:10:51participants complete various tasks. in one, they're have to carry
00:10:55box very carefully through the narrow station, slight jolt and they
00:10:59have to start over. It's all about
00:11:01teamwork. Jessica Schuder
00:11:05records the participants's data in real-time. She wants to find out
00:11:09whether their bodily functions a similar or even synchronized.
00:11:13In other words, whether the group enters a shared flow,
00:11:17like musicians in an
00:11:18orchestra. We've
00:11:22seen from studies with drummers, for example, Performance
00:11:25improves when these parameters synchronize, and that's
00:11:29what we're interested in today. Now it's time for
00:11:33two the participants to go a field mission. It takes an hour to
00:11:37get dressed and ready, and then they head out to collect rock
00:11:41samples. They're guided by the team leader at
00:11:45the station. When you find one, hold it
00:11:49up to the camera so that I can validate
00:11:51it.
00:12:26as well as cognitive tests and later at the end the day,
00:12:29questionaires. On
00:12:33Mars a storm is brewing, this makes their task harder to
00:12:36complete, and then the station loses
00:12:40contact with the field
00:12:41team.
00:12:46The team leader uses the standard protocols eventually get
00:12:50connected again, but no sooner is that
00:12:54done. then the worst
00:12:58case scenario
00:12:59unfolds.
00:13:05We have a meteorite alert: return to base
00:13:08immediately.
00:13:11Explosions rock the Martian's surface, sending heart
00:13:15rates soaring. The field team makes it safely
00:13:19into the airlock and immediately undergoes tests,
00:13:22including incognitive performance. The
00:13:26initial results show that the field mission triggered severe stress
00:13:30reactions. During the explosion, the participants' heart rates
00:13:33rose from 80 to over 130 beats per minute
00:13:37and cognitive performance plummeted. It
00:13:41felt surprisingly
00:13:42real.
00:13:46It was both interesting and tough. There were lot of
00:13:50unknowns. I plunged in without much
00:13:54prior. The most important thing was learning how to
00:13:58deal with those unknown factors and
00:14:02then to practice coping with challenging
00:14:05situations.
00:14:11A different team is tested each day for a week. The plan is to repeat the
00:14:15process every year, refining and expanding the experiments each
00:14:19time, ready to one day head to Mars. Something Jessica
00:14:23would consider. unbedingt, absolutely. I've already done
00:14:26a year of isolation and would gladly do it again. I'd be open to taking on the
00:14:30challenge of mission to
00:14:31Mars. But it will
00:14:35be sometime before such mission actually takes place. After
00:14:39all, there's still the artemis mission to complete, an exciting
00:14:43challenge in
00:14:44itself. It takes
00:14:48about seven months to get to Mars. Could those be spent
00:14:51asleep? Research is ongoing. After all, many
00:14:55animals hibernate all winter, something of Viwer Ali
00:14:59from Yemen was curious about.
00:15:03Why does some animals
00:15:04hibernate? Hibernation
00:15:08is a survival strategy used primarily by smaller creatures due
00:15:12to their higher energy consumption, coupled with their greater
00:15:15sensitivity to the cold and food shortages during the
00:15:18winter. It affects hedgehogs to ground hogs
00:15:22and other marmets and bats. These are the
00:15:26factors involved: first, the
00:15:29cold: when temperatures drop in winter, it takes a
00:15:33lot of energy to keep the body warm, which is why hibernating animals
00:15:37drastically reduce their metabolic rate as well as their surface
00:15:40area, their body temperature, heart
00:15:44rate and breathing all plummet to a minimum, as the animals
00:15:48go into low power mode. a hedgehog's breathing rate is normally
00:15:5240 to 50 times a minute, but during hibernation it's just one or
00:15:56two, and their pulse also drops from 200 beats
00:16:00per minute to just
00:16:01five. another strategy to
00:16:05combat the cold is settling in sheltered places such as caves,
00:16:09crevices and burrows. the insulation these provide reduces
00:16:13heat loss, helping the animals to survive on minimal
00:16:16energy. factor number two is
00:16:20food scarcity. with food in short supply during
00:16:24winter, hibernators build up substantial fat reserves
00:16:28beforehand. these serve as both a source of energy and again
00:16:31as insulation. during hibernation, the animals can live off
00:16:35these fat stores for many. months,
00:16:39forraging for food would consume more energy than the food itself
00:16:43provides. And third,
00:16:47the animal's biorhythms. Hibernation follows an
00:16:50internal body clock that's aligned with the changing
00:16:53seasons. Hormones and the amount of daylight determine when
00:16:57an animal begins and ends its winter dormancy.
00:17:01Milder winters can disrupt that rhythm and lead to hibernation ending
00:17:05prematurely, which can have serious consec'. if there's not enough food
00:17:08available yet. hibernating animals do not sleep
00:17:12continuously during this period, however, and wake up briefly at regular
00:17:16intervals. badgers and bears are light hibernators
00:17:20where the bodily functions are only partially wound down, and
00:17:23squirrels wake up every now
00:17:25and then to have a munch. cold
00:17:29blooded animals, such as insects, reptiles and amphibians enter what
00:17:33is called brahmation, where their bodies produce a kind of natural
00:17:36anti- to keep their blood flowing, once things get
00:17:40warmer again, they come back to
00:17:42life. what are
00:17:46stars made of? how many colors can butterflies
00:17:50see? could robots have babies one
00:17:53day? do you have science question? then
00:17:56send it to us as a video, text or voice message. if
00:18:00we answer it in the show then we'll send you a little gift as a thank
00:18:04you, so just ask.
00:18:11How do we sense time? Right now, our perception of time
00:18:15seems to be a process of radical redefinition. When
00:18:19we scroll through TikTok, for example, we can feel like time is
00:18:22flying, but afterwards, we too often sense that we've done nothing
00:18:26but waste
00:18:27it. Time
00:18:30is a relative concept, and now more than ever, digitalization
00:18:34and constant connectivity via the use of... multiple devices at once
00:18:38means that people around the world spend a considerable part their day in front of a
00:18:42screen, average 6 hours and 40 minutes per
00:18:46day. so what impact does this have on our
00:18:49sense of time? does time perhaps pass
00:18:52faster or
00:18:55slower? here at Munich's Ludvig
00:18:59Maximilian University, Professor Zashi is
00:19:03investigating precisely those
00:19:04questions. "we human don't
00:19:08have any sensor organs of time, not like vision,
00:19:12see the lights or or ear, hear the the the
00:19:16voice, and our brain simply
00:19:19reconstruct time based on the surrounding events and also
00:19:23internal states. so what is the difference
00:19:27between the perception of time in the real world and in the
00:19:31virtual one? a natural environment, our brain
00:19:35can follow naturally in its own pace." but digital
00:19:38environment are complete differently, each
00:19:42events are separate, discrete, and emotional
00:19:46loaded, and there's a less attention to our own or tracking
00:19:50time. to get direct insights into how digital media
00:19:54influence our perception of time, we join zinchenko in the
00:19:58multi-sensory perception lab. the researcher is setting up a test that
00:20:02involves eye tracking and an electroencephalogram, cap
00:20:06fitted with electrodes to measure. brain activity: the
00:20:09goal the experiment is to try to see whether people perceive
00:20:13time differently when they observe certain social
00:20:17images and they are in control of situation like simulating social
00:20:21media use versus when they're not in control of situation where just
00:20:25presented with pictures and they are not managing
00:20:29or they do not decide when to continue door. before the experiment
00:20:33begins, the participants head is fixed in position so that their pupils can
00:20:36be monitor. the eyetracker uses infrared light and
00:20:40camera, light reflects off the eyes
00:20:44and those reflections are picked up by the
00:20:47camera.
00:20:51This enables the system to work out where exactly on the screen the
00:20:55person is looking and for how long. So we could look
00:20:59at your eye movements, fixation numbers, um, how spread the eye
00:21:02movements are, and make some inferences or make some conclusions about what
00:21:06happens in the brain. The data produced will later provide
00:21:10information on participants's attention span. The aim is
00:21:14to see how long they focus on an image and how the intensity of brain
00:21:18activity varies from one moment to the
00:21:20next, so yeah, now it starts and we'll need to
00:21:24wait for uh, maybe 40 minutes till the experiment
00:21:27finishes. In the first part the experiment, the participant
00:21:31clicks her way through series of screens at her own pace, and is
00:21:34then asked to estimate how much time has passed. Next, she
00:21:38views the same images again and at the exact same speed, except with
00:21:42the computer dictating the rhythm, so this time she's a passive
00:21:45participant.
00:21:50Afterwards, she's again asked
00:21:52to estimate the time that's elapsed. We
00:21:56also spoke to Philip Stab, professor of sociology at Berlin's
00:22:00Humbalt University. What does he say are the main reasons behind our
00:22:04growing dependence on the digital world in our everyday
00:22:11wirklich auch. I think one reason is that people are looking for time in order
00:22:14escape from the real world. We're living a time where
00:22:18people feel the future is... looking extremely grim as we get bombarded
00:22:22with various crisis, and with time seeming to
00:22:26accelerate, what people actually want is escape to a
00:22:30place where time stands
00:22:31still. a
00:22:35form of escapism that is further intensified by the daily flood of
00:22:39digital content. back in
00:22:43Munich, the experimentsory perception lab is now
00:22:47over, assesses the d we ask the
00:22:50participant about her
00:22:52impressions, it felt longer
00:22:56and more boring when i couldn't click through the images myself, clicking
00:22:59conter, why is
00:23:01that? so quite interestingly we looked at
00:23:05the data so far, the underestimation was larger relative
00:23:09to passive viewing, so one example here would be in
00:23:13this specific case, the duration was the actual duration was about
00:23:1642 seconds and the participant thought it was about
00:23:2018 seconds right, so once you are in this social
00:23:23media state, you feel the time goes
00:23:27faster basically, and you do not realize how much time you
00:23:31actually spent. in the active social media like
00:23:35setting, the perceived time was almost 60% shorter than
00:23:39was actually the case. when participants watched
00:23:42passively, time also felt shorter than it actually was, but
00:23:46the effect was weaker what
00:23:49you can see. The electroencephalogram provides an
00:23:52explanation. Just 1/10 of second after an image
00:23:56appears, the part the brain responsible for vision changes how it
00:23:59processes information. When
00:24:03participants actively click through the sequence, the brain
00:24:06evaluates the relevant image as more
00:24:09interesting. This could explain why
00:24:12fast-paced interactive digital media exert a stronger hold on
00:24:16our attention. and
00:24:20what does that mean for our memories of
00:24:22events? so our brand doesn't
00:24:26really store every single detail of events, but
00:24:30rather we our brain simply averages similar things
00:24:34together to have a one representation, we call that as
00:24:37a ensemble representation, so when you see a basket of
00:24:41apples, you don't remember individual apples, but
00:24:45rather apples
00:24:46a summary, but now come to the digital media, and
00:24:50it's quite complete different when you scroll down a lot of
00:24:54funny videos, all videos are quite
00:24:57different and our brain still use our old tradition
00:25:01to average everything together, and that's when you le
00:25:04back, there's nothing to remember, nothing to
00:25:08recall, and that's why we also feel shorter, did
00:25:12nothing, and what does the sociologist think about the
00:25:21that's essentially what this experiment shows, which basically means
00:25:25people are losing time, in broader terms, it means a real loss
00:25:29of time from our lives, and the thing is, when people start
00:25:32scrolling, they're actually hoping to gain some peace and time, so it's
00:25:36a bit of a paradox
00:25:39situation, a paradoxical situation that could
00:25:43be amplified in the future if we failed to keep that digital overload
00:25:47at bay, taking more breaks and reducing to
00:25:50simultaneous stimuli could
00:25:52help to wrestle back control over our time and to actually
00:25:56delight in doing nothing at
00:25:57all and
00:26:01that's got time for on this edition of tomorrow today,
00:26:05we're back soon, see you then, take
00:26:08care.