Click : BBCNEWS : July 28, 2024 2:30pm-3:01pm BST : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive (2024)

this week's click is hot stuff. here's a man with a plan to power the planet. we believe that sticking a needle into a huge magma chamber is not going to create an explosive effect.

does he sound sure about that? yeah, i'm sure it'll be fine. also, lara looks at the livers being kept alive in a lab. and here's a question you never though you wanted the answer to. so, if you put a cat on the moon and dropped it, it would still be able to right itself? we could try, but i guess it should work. look, trust me, it's all to do with a space bot that's jumping for joy. iceland is one of the most volcanic places on earth, sitting on top of the mid—atlantic ridge where two tectonic plates are pulling apart. that means the country has become known for its geothermal power as water is heated from the earth below. but now, at the krafla volcano, there's a more extreme plan under way. yeah, a daring scientific project to drill deep into the rock to create the world's first underground magma observatory. blimey!

adrienne murray's been there to find out more. in this part of iceland is one of the world's most active volcanic hotspots. krafla has erupted 30 times in 1,000 years and last blew in the 1980s. and though it may sound crazy, scientists are now preparing to drill into it. the idea is to learn more about how volcanoes behave so that we can better predict eruptions, and also tap into a super—hot source of energy. volcanoes can be spectacular but they're also devastating. around the world, millions of people live close to them. here in iceland, residents of grindavik have had their lives upended by a string of eruptions. but researchers here hope their work will change

that, helping to save lives and money while also pioneering a form of volcano power. we have about a0 wells spread around the geothermal field, producing a mixture of hot water and steam. this plant supplies electricity to about 30,000 homes. soon after it began operations five decades ago, krafla began to wake up again. we started to have volcanic eruption only 2km away from where we are standing now. this was a very strong indication about where the heat was coming from. using those new clues, scientists began drilling in this spot where, in 2009, they stumbled across an extraordinary discovery — a shallow pocket of magma... we were aiming to drill to 4.5km and were absolutely not expecting to hit magma at only 2.1km depth.

..much closer to the surface than scientists ever imagined. the extreme heat from this molten rock destroyed their equipment. we were able to measure the power that comes out of it. this well produces around ten times more than the average well in its location, giving us an indication of the extremely powerful resource that we may be sitting on. now, a team from kmt — the krafla magma testbed project — want to find it again. right here, 2km down, is a red—hot magma chamber and scientists are preparing to drill down into it. starting in 2026, they'll begin work on the first ever underground magma observatory. we are basically standing on the spot where we are going to drill. what we want to do is to

basically revolutionise the way we monitor volcanoes. the plan is to place sensors — temperature and pressure sensors — in the magma. this will allow us to predict with more accuracy volcanic activity, so this will change how we predict eruptions. with the second well, they'll harness that extreme heat, developing what's called near—magma geothermal. the plan is to drilljust short of the magma itself, possibly poke it a little bit, the geothermal resource which is located just above the magma body. we believe that is around 500—600 degrees celsius. just two bore holes of this kind could match the output of this entire plant. we now, today, need to feed the power plant with 22 normal wells, so there is an obvious game changer. and there's the exciting possibility of potentially limitless, cheap, clean energy.

this is a big part of how we are going to take geothermal to the next level and also, of course, a huge part in the green energy transition. but the drilling will be technically challenging. at the university of iceland, lab work is under way, testing materials to withstand extreme heat and pressure. this is carbon steel, so the typical material used in the geothermal wells. these carbon steel materials lose strength quite quickly after 200 degrees celsius and they are also not corrosion—resistant, so we have to explore new materials and more corrosion—resistant alloys. they're working with temperatures of up to 500 degrees and corrosive gases. we have been focusing on high—grade alloys, nickel alloys, and also titanium alloys. but there's still one question i need to ask. from the outside, all this sounds, you know, just a little bit risky.

is it going to be safe to do this? we believe sticking a needle into a huge magma chamber is not going to create an explosive effect. this happened in 2009 and they found out they had probably done this a few times before without even knowing it, so we believe it's safe. and the team here think this could be replicated around the world. there are indications about shallow magma bodies in east africa, in the us and in hawaii. possibly, this kind of geothermal power production can be applied in many other locations around the world where we have active volcanoes. so, this crazy—sounding plan may actually have huge potential. every year in the uk, there are over 10,000 deaths due to liver disease. high quality liver transplants

are in short supply and currently, there are no effective treatments. but one company in oxford is using al to try and change that. there are plenty of companies out there that are doing ai drug discovery but what's different here is once drugs are developed, they're then being tested on human cells and then on actual human livers that are being kept alive. they call this new york facility an icu. it is where 0chre bio tests promising treatments that have been developed by teams in taiwan and oxford. can you open me a biopsy kit? these are livers that couldn't be used for transplants, so would otherwise be discarded. they would never be routed to research facilities in lieu of transplantation. here, they're supplied with oxygenation blood, nutrients and medications while a machine performs dialysis. it's replicating the functions of a human kidney to help

filter toxins from the blood that supplies the liver. kenny was instrumental in setting up the facility. we have multiple different machines you plug the liver into. you have to integrate yourself into the all the different infrastructure out in america to obtain the organs, to put them on the machines in a short time frame, so these things often happen at night, it's quite labour intensive and an incredible dedication that the team put into this in order to put a liver on a machine and have it maintained alive for five days. it's quite incredible. it gives 0chre the chance to test treatments in almost humanlike conditions. we can't look inside you, we can't look at your liver over time and see how it is degrading and becoming diseased, so there's a lot of guesswork when we make medicines. and when we finally have a medicine that we think could work, we spend years testing them in animal models, which we know don't really predict what happens in a human being. along with data from the livers, 0chre is using a method called phenotyping,

which combines imaging, genetic and biochemical analysis. we're sequencing livers across the world in incredible detail — right down to the level of individual cells — and we use all of that data. we put that data into commuter models and that tells us we put that data into computer models and that tells us what genes we need to be thinking about for the therapies we want to develop. and once we have those therapies which we generate here, then, instead of testing in animals, we test in humans — and by that, i mean we start off in human cells, then, we move into human tissues and then, eventually, whole human livers that we would keep alive on these machines. but there is a lot of challenge out there. developing drugs is notoriously difficult and expensive. you've got past setting up the icu but there's a lot more to do. for all chronic disease — notjust for chronic liver disease — there are big bottlenecks in drug development. one is getting good data. the other is validating or testing out those ideas in humans sooner, using human data. so, we can do all of that and then still spend $100

million on a clinical trial for it to fail in a matter of months. to improve their chances, they're betting on rna technology. rna is the complex molecule that relays messages from our dna to our proteins and cells — the machinery that makes things happen. rna is something that we target to either increase expression — so, if you increase the level of rna, you can make more protein, and that's what the covid vaccines do — or you can actually create a medicine that blocks that rna, and that's what we do. we send the rna therapies to specific cells in the liver. they get inside and then, they block certain genes that we want. so, this is where the chemistry that we've been looking at and the biology come together. it's over here, is it, that you are testing on human cells? that's right. that's the key differentiator. we use primary human cells and check whether our rna has knocked down the proteins of interest. they look like fax machines. what is this actually

doing inside them? it is doing a quantitative measurement of the rna inside each of the cells. normal drugs target the 3—dimensional structure of the protein. whereas now, we are looking at the 1—dimensional genetic code of the messenger rna, so we can do it much more precise and much faster. traditionally, the preclinical phase of drug development can take 6—10 years. 0chre bio, though, is hoping to reduce it to under 60 days. while the company continues to search for that elusive molecule that will block the onset of liver disease, it recently signed a data—sharing deal with the drugs giant gsk. the aim — to better understand how the liver works. the partnership may eventually lead to the development of new effective treatments for liver disease which, for anyone suffering from it, can't come soon enough. 0k, time for a look at this week's tech news now. google has abandoned a controversial plan to fully block third—party cookies

from its browser, chrome. chrome already gives you the option to stop businesses tracking your activity and targeting you with ads. it says it's looking for solutions to support a competitive marketplace for publishers and advertisers. the uk's data privacy watchdog said it was disappointed by the decision. crowdstrike, the cyber security firm behind last week's global it crash, has blamed a bug for not spotting a fault that knocked out systems across the world, disrupting everything from flights to health appointments. the firm says a coding error slipped past its own quality control measures. crowdstrike has apologised for the impact of the outage and promised to improve how it tests and checks software. and researchers at the university of hong kong have developed a new kind of lithium metal battery which can last longer and function safely at higher temperatures than the batteries

widely used today. the researchers have been focusing on finding solid electrolytes which are safe and work with lithium metal anodes, even in extreme conditions. 0nce fully developed, the scientists say the batteries could allow electric vehicles to recharge in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee. cuba — a place now where millions of inhabitants face rationed food and limited medical supplies. there's also poor internet access and daily power cuts. yet, undeterred by the challenges of daily life or connection, these two games developers have overcome outages to achieve an international publishing deal. all my life, i want to make a video game. all my illusions, expectations have been saved for so many years to be the first to put cuba — simple — in the map of video games in the world. then, i met david,

and we start to work together. and we right away started working right away on what would become saviorless seven years later. saviorless is a classic 2d platformer. it starts like a narrative game, like, just asking the player to see the world, to enjoy everything. but it suddenly turns into a very action, fast... kind of frenetic... ..frenetic game. saviorless was an eight—year project, but the first four years were just making a demo just to try and convince an international publisher of signing with us. that was actually the hardest part of the project. if you're an international publisher and you see a pitch from a completely new game studio of two guys and, on top of that, they are in cuba, you are asking a huge trust.

out of the blue one day, dear villagers contact us directly after experiencing our game on the internet. they sign us. and that was a key point in the project — the moment where dear villagers signed with us — and then, we spent, like, three years straight on developing the game. the typical cycle of the development of saviorless is very uncommon in terms of what you expect the development of a video game of this scale should be. notjust because the internet is slow but because it's very inconsistent, it's not stable enough to sustain the loading of the files that you usually find in a game, that are huge files. we lost a whole week of work just because these tools are not built thinking that at any time, there will be a blackout.

the generator. today, the schedule says that from 2pm till 6pm, we won't have lights, so we are two hours away from the blackout. we just store the generator for important moments because there's also not enough fuel. even if you have to deal with all this stuff and all these problems, it's very difficult — i would know, like anyone, about it. but if you love video games, i definitely think you should try it. when you look back, you see a lot of obstacles but you realise that we were able to go over these obstacles but we didn't remove them. the situation in cuba right now is far difficult than when we start, but i feel pretty confident. i feel that even if our first game was not perfect, you will see a second game from me. i've got a question for you. you're in space on an asteroid.

it's a complete mess out there. what's the best way to get around? well, here's an idea i think�*s got legs — spacehopper. no, not that kind of space hopper. boing! actually... to be honest — yeah, that kind of space hopper! boing! ten students from eth university in zurich designed this prototype for extremely low gravity environments, maybe to look for different minerals that are worth mining from asteroids, and it gets from place to place by pronking about like some 3—legged space gazelle. boing. i've seen a few bouncing space robots in my time. you might think it's quite a chaotic way to get about and,

certainly, if you're on wheels and tracks, that does seem more controllable. but if you're on a really uneven surface, leaping over small boulders, big stones, it might be quite sensible. the thing that worries me is what happens if itjumps and then flips itself over? 0r lands on its side or something? but what it does to keep itself stable when it's off the ground is think like a cat. see, as a feline falls, it fffrantically ffflails its ffffur — well, actually its legs — and spacehopper keep itself upright during flight by using its limbs in the same way. basically, as if you're standing on a small rope, right, and if you're about to fall, you will swing your arms to stay upright — that is exactly what it does. so, if you put a cat on the moon and dropped that, it would still be able to right itself, even there is no air to grip against?

we can try, but i guess it should work. yeah, ok, let's not try. not with the cat. how on earth did you work out what it needs to do to get itself back in the right orientation, regardless of which way up it is? that's a great question because for a human, that's really hard to design. so, we've use this reinforcement learning — a type of ai, basically — so the robot learns that in simulation and figures out what actually works, which motions work to stay upright. so you, in theory, trained, what, hundreds or thousands of virtual robots and one of them eventually came out as getting it right? is that right? exactly. nowadays, you can simulate years of experience in just a few minutes on a pc, and that's exactly what we're doing. simulating low gravity is hard here on earth, so to test their control software, the team took spacehopper on a very special day trip. you took this on a parabolic flight — you took it on the vomit comet? laughs. exactly. how was that

for you personally? i've never done it — i want to know what it's like. it's amazing. i can highly recommend it. right. luckily for me, it wasn't the vomit comet — i was fine — and then, experiencing that weightlessness was just an amazing feeling. did you have any time to pay attention to the robot or were you just doing somersaults all the time? no, i actually had a lot of time on the robot. just for one small part, i could go and do some somersaults but otherwise, we were just operating the system. and the system performed very well indeed. and, in fact, now the team has parked the asteroid investigation plan and answered a call slightly closer to home. it's been selected by the european space agency, esa, as a contender to go to the moon. the team suggested kitting out the robot with ground—penetrating radar to probe below the lunar surface and look for lava tubes — subsurface tunnels, like the one recently discovered on a rocky plane called mare tranquillitatis — and which might one day be used as lunar bases to shelter humans from solar radiation up above.

and lo, spacehopper has become lunarleaper. our goal would be to land on the surface outside of where we think the lava tube is and then approach what is basically a big hole in the ground — it's called a lunar pit. lunar pits are these steep—walled holes that are collapsed features. so, this lava tube has collapsed in the centre or so, so we would want to approach this hole and look at this entry in a lot of detail, map it in as much detail as we can and basically also prepare for follow—up missions that might be much bigger, much more expensive and potentially lead to some longer—term stations below the surface. what concerns me... yep? ..is this thing bounces around and you want to get as close to the entrance to a great big hole as you can? i'd want to do that really carefully. and what i'm thinking

is this thing's going to bound towards it. if you get it wrong, it's just going to disappear over the edge. i think we can direct it carefully towards the edge and, obviously, in the beginning of the mission, you would be a little bit more conservative, you would be more careful because you don't want it to die right away. towards the end of the mission, if you know you won't survive the night, you might be a little more risky and a little more adventurous, and that's ok. i'm getting thelma and louise vibes here. that... did they make the jump? right. yeah, the bit about surviving the night — see, like most other moon bots, lunarleaper would be solar—powered and have just 1a earth days of sunlight to do its work before the sun went down, temperatures dropped below —130 celsius and the system died in the cold. it's for these reasons that many teams choose to end space missions by going out in style.

possibly towards the end of the mission, one could think ofjumping into that hole... nooo! however... byeeee! all i'm thinking about now is the death of lunarleaper. i've heard it won't make it through the lunar night, now i've heard that you could possiblyjump it into a pit. it's just over there. it's just over there! listen, it's fine, you're fine. and on that note, we'll leave you for this week. thanks for watching and we'll see you soon.

hello. sunny skies with temperatures well into the 20s across much of the uk, and whether you like it or not, the first half of the week will be really quite hot — particularly across southern and central areas of the uk. let me show you the satellite picture with the jet stream superimposed. here it is — this big ridge allowing the hot air to come in from the south, and the dip in thejet stream with the weather fronts there — that's the bad weather that recently affected paris and the opening ceremony. here in the uk, admittedly it is not gin—clear everywhere, the blue skies are further south. in scotland and northern ireland here, it's a little more hazy with fair weather clouds, and cooler — around 21 celsius in belfast and glasgow, but the rest of the country, typically inland, in the mid 20s. so after a warm and sunny day, it's going to be a warm and clear night, but just to the north—west this weak weather front is trying to push in, it does not make much progress. but maybe some cloudier skies and damp weather here in the far north—west.

the rest of the country — it's a dry and sunny morning. and we do it all over again on monday, with high pressure in charge and just weak weather fronts trying to move into north—western parts of the uk. so right from the word go, it is blue skies once again across many parts of england and wales. a little bit more cloud here in the north—west of the uk, and just the risk of a shower here and there. so cooler, around 20 celsius, but the bulk of england and wales again well into the 20s and the high 20s expected across the south—east and east anglia. and that heat will continue to build. as we head through the course of tuesday, we see that hot air spreading in from france, really quite oppressive for the olympics, in the south of france pushing a0 celsius, paris the mid 30s. here in the uk in the extreme case we might even get around 31 or 32 in some southern and south—eastern part of the country. now i'm going to speed up the weather forecast, tuesday into wednesday, then wednesday night with the heat, we are going to see some showers and thunderstorms developing, i think more especially by the time we get to thursday. but trying to pinpoint

where they are going to be at this stage is going to be very hard. but here is the summary then for the week ahead, this increasing cloud here on the weather apps, that's an indication of those storms starting to build by that stage. bye— bye.

live from london, this is bbc news. funerals are taking place for the victims of a rocket attack in the israeli—occupied golan heights. israel blames lebanese militant group hezbollah, which denies involvement. new video has emerged of the events leading up to a police officer kicking a man in the head — as he lay on the floor at manchester airport last week. as the deadline for the conservative leadership race looms, five candidates stand — priti patel the latest tojoin the field. i'm maryam moshiri, live from paris. it's day two of the olympics with 13 gold medals up for grabs today.

and one of the most decorated gymnasts in history, simone biles, has returned to competition to try to add to her four gold medals. welcome to this hour. the israeli air force says it's carried out strikes against the hezbollah group in lebanon, after a rocket hit a football pitch in the israeli—occupied golan heights, killing 12 young people. the rocket struck a druze arab town close to the border with lebanon. the israeli defence minister blamed hezbollah but the group has denied any involvement. today funerals have been taking place in the town of majdal shams. barbara plett usher sent this report impossible to count the losses when they are measured in the lives of your children.

villagers gathered in their thousands to mourn their unspeakable tragedy.

tv

Adrienne Murray meets the scientists aiming to drill into an active volcano in Iceland to use as a potential energy source. [S]

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