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tv   Click  BBC News  April 20, 2024 1:30am-2:01am BST

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we travel to the remote faroe islands to look at the latest ways to harness tidal energy. it's sort of like kitesurfing, but on the water. if it moves, it's a controller — paul's en route towards more accessible games. if ijust raise my eyebrows, i'm making the carjump. and we look at how generative technology could revolutionise the moviegoing experience. it can make approximately 52 quintillion versions of the film. about 100,000 flights jet around the world every day. flying accounts for 2.5% of all carbon emissions. now, that might not sound like much, but if aviation was a country, it would be among the top ten most polluting nations in the world, and its impact is expected to rise.
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now there's a global race to get clean aviation off the ground. and some companies think they're close to cracking it. pretty soon, passengers will be flying in zero—emission aircraft. but how did we get here? archive: the new machine is called, optimistically, - the flyer. we've come a long way since the wright brothers' first flight in 1903. that day, they lifted the world into a new dimension. then we achieved bigger, faster planes. great, but that's also how we ended up with all these emissions. jet engines burn kerosene, which releases carbon dioxide, one of the main greenhouse gases causing climate change. the industry faces an enormous challenge to clean up its act, and that means coming
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up with new fuels. let's take a look at some of the options. there are biofuels, which are made out of things like plants or vegetable oils, but they still produce some harmful emissions. then there's electric. but although batteries are getting far more efficient, the size that you'd need to power a passengerjet would be way too heavy. and there's one potential solution that's getting people really excited — hydrogen. hydrogen fuel cells combine hydrogen and oxygen to create a flow of electrons around a circuit to power a motor. and as we all know, hydrogen plus oxygen equals h20. the problem is... we can't do much about the fundamental properties of hydrogen. volumetrically, we need to compress it to get sort of in the ballpark of not quite a third of the efficiency of fuels that we use. that means that we need often very large, very heavy tanks, because they need very thick walls to deal with the incredibly high
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pressures we need them at. what you end up with is an aeroplane that can't have any passengers in. this is the challenge faced by zeroavia, one of several companies working to make hydrogen—powered flight a reality. they retrofit existing planes with hydrogen engines. the company had several successful test flights with this plane last year. in the original frame, we would be able to fly about 19 passengers. it looks like a lot of kit in there. how would you fit in 19 people? yeah, so in the retrofitted configuration, it will be about a dozen people. daniela is one of the engineers working on the engine. actually, the fuel cells are this one. the power is created in these small layers. so you have to build up your layers to create the power to take off an aircraft.
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this engine could almost provide enough power to get you from london to glasgow, but not quite. if you wanted to scale it up for international flights, would you just make the same thing bigger or is it a totally different exercise? it is scalable until a certain power, but then we'll have to change technology. getting this high power density system that will allow to have a lot of power but minimal weight to be integrated on an aircraft is really a challenge. and that probably means completely redesigning the plane. everything will be shrunk. some parts of the engine, of the fuel cell, will be sitting inside of the nacelle, and also the storage tank, which is, uh, going to be probably the largest, uh, you know, piece of equipment they will actually bring outside, 0k? right. so either on the side of the fuselage, or we will hang it on the wing. making everything fit isn't the only challenge, though. you need to have the maintenance and repair organisation. the whole process
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needs to be certified. we need to provide the hydrogen infrastructure to the, uh, to the aircraft. zeroavia has a plan for that. in its vision, hydrogen would be produced on site at airports using renewable energy before being processed and transported out to the plane. but what about the cost of all this? at the moment, liquid hydrogen is significantly more expensive than conventionaljet fuel, but backers of hydrogen planes believe it will eventually become cheaper than traditional flight. zeroavia isn't the only company racing to reimagine air travel, though. aerospace giants like airbus and boeing are also developing hydrogen planes. but there are still questions over how sustainable they'll actually be. we're going to be using some fairly exotic materials that are very energy intensive to arrive at. what energy are you using to build the fuel cell? what materials are you using? how much energy are we sinking
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into this technology to get something out? zeroavia has the backing of the uk government and big investors and has over 2,000 pre—orders from airlines. so there seems to be significant belief in hydrogen despite all of the challenges. but what i really want to know is... are we going to be able to jet off to spain anytime soon in a hydrogen plane? history shows that you need to start small and grow big. and that growth would take a while. but if this could be scaled to the largest of planes, then the difference to emissions would be jumbo. you know, it sounds like, if they can get it right, hydrogen planes could be a massive deal. yeah. it's as much about the infrastructure, though. they've got a lot to do. right, 0k, noted. 0k, we're going from the air to the sea now. you might not think of the world's oceans as a great source of green
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energy, but when you think about it, the tides move an enormous amount of water around the globe every single day, and we are discovering new ways to harness this tidal power. and adrienne murray has been to the remote faroe islands, which are between scotland and norway, to see what they're doing to help harness renewable energy. rugged and remote, the faroe islands are an isolated archipelago found in the north atlantic. powerful currents flow around its 18 islands, and in this sea channel called the vestmannasund, mechanical creatures lurk beneath the water's surface, called dragons. designed by swedish marine energy firm minesto, it's among a wave of new technology that hopes to revolutionise tidal power. this huge yellow thing
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behind me is a tidal kite. it looks a bit like a glider because it's designed to fly through the water, and once it's installed on the seabed, it will be generating electricity using the current that flows through this stretch of water. weighing 28 tonnes and with a 12—metre wingspan, the newest dragon can deliver 1.2 megawatts of power. it's sort of like kitesurfing, but underwater. so we tether it off to the sea floor, foundation on the sea floor, and then it flies in a figure of eight. as underwater currents flow by, the kite's wings generate a hydrodynamic lift force, spinning the turbine and generating electricity. this design�*s very different to other types of tidal technology. so what's the advantage of a design like this one? we can install and operate and produce power in low flow currents with lightweight machines. although it looks big to the eye, this is actually a very small tidal turbine. we've designed the system
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as such to be maintenance friendly — you simplyjust tow them in, replace modules and then put them back in. we've also, over the years, removed more and more components from the system and fit them onshore instead. the less old components you have that could become damaged, it's easier to access it and it's much cheaper also. it's the gravitational pull of the moon, and to some extent the sun, which gives the tides their rhythm. and unlike wind, solar or hydro, tidal power isn't reliant on weather. while tidal barrages have been around for decades, their cost and the ecological impact has been a barrier. now, from the scottish islands through to canada, a new generation of tech firms have introduced tidal stream turbines. 0cean energy is still largely untapped, so what are the barriers that have prevented it from taking off?
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it's a relatively small and new industry, so very few machines in the water, and then you have to compete with wind farms and solar pv, etc. we're now addressing a resource that's so much larger, so we're opening up a market that didn't even exist before. if all goes to plan, there could be arrays of subsea kites around the faroe islands, installed in groups similar to wind farms. so this machine here, that's the first utility, or the array device. there will be many of these in parks, orarrays, as you call them, uh, around the world. the faroes aren't connected to any other country's power grid, so it has to be self—sufficient. and in the past, it relied heavily on oil imports. now, though, it's going fully green, and this battery station helps to regulate electricity supply. we have the biggest battery, i think, in the danish kingdom. we don't have any subsea cables to neighbouring countries. so we need to maintain
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the stability of the power system at all points in time on a millisecond level. much of the country's power will come from wind, hydro and solar, but that's also where its experiment with tidal energy comes in. it's predictable. we know exactly when it's there, 100 years ahead. if we install tidal turbines in different spots, we will have a baseload generation from tides, and that is extremely valuable. if we can unlock the potential, it can really dramatically change the energy mix in the islands. maybe 30 to 40% of the annual usage in the islands could be provided by tides. now this dragon has begun to fly, and it's sending energy to the grid. it's just one machine, but potentially a big leap forward for harnessing energy from our seas. this is the richard cloudesley school in london...
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now for tech news. they are the largest round yet to affect firms 140,000 employees. the layoffs come weeks after tesla delivered fewer vehicles than last quarter. nasa confirmed a piece of spacejunk last quarter. nasa confirmed a piece of space junk that damaged a man's home came from the international space station. the international space station-— the international space station. ., , ., ., , station. there was a tremendous sound, it almost _ station. there was a tremendous sound, it almost hit. _ station. there was a tremendous sound, it almost hit. why - station. there was a tremendous sound, it almost hit. why was i sound, it almost hit. why was shaken. was completely in disbelief. what are the chances of something landing on my house. ., ., , ., house. nasa said it was a fragment _ house. nasa said it was a fragment of _ house. nasa said it was a fragment of discarded - house. nasa said it was a - fragment of discarded equipment from the space station. thank goodness it wasn't from the uk government is that you make the act of creating asexually as was was a deepfake a criminal offence in england and wales. people contravening the new law would face an unlimited fine or jail time. would face an unlimited fine or jailtime. fake images would face an unlimited fine or jail time. fake images made
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with a idols have recently been used to target the number of celebrities, including pop star taylor swift. and, finally, apple has lost its grant to samsung as the world's leading smartphone provider. market research company idc said a 10% dip in iphone shipments last quarter and more competition from android handsets allowed the south korean and sets to reclaim the top spots. this is the richard cloudesley school in london... right, there we go. ..although this is no ordinary lesson. not only are these pupils getting to play video games during school time, they're also helping to test some exciting new software. it's very fast. they're helping to test the latest version of a suite of programs collectively known as motioninput. developed over four years by over 200 students at university college london, motioninput allows anyone to control their computers using any part of their body they can move.
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this could be by moving the eyes, individual limbs or body parts, or even by gestures, facial movements, or speech... page down. ..giving a raft of potential new input methods to disabled people. crucially, motioninput doesn't need any additional specialised equipment. our work with the motioninput software was developed in partnership with intel, and it's focused on al for your pc, so it runs completely on your own laptops and pcs. it has its own engine internally to do the evaluation of how people can be seen to be moving, and it uses just the webcam. the ucl students have been working with the richard cloudesley pupils to help identify potential bugs or development issues with the software.
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you ready? so do the calibration again. safiya is using the eye gaze application to play different types of games using eye movements. you're a better driverthan i am. afterwards, i asked her what she thought. so what's it like, playing games this way with this new software? speaking software: it is good. it helps me to focus. and is it easy to use? yes, it is easy. it helps me experience every action of the game. and is it better than playing other ways you might have done before? yes. i've only tried the nintendo wii. this new controller helps me play better. that's the young ones suitably impressed. over at ucl, the students working on different elements of motion input were keen for someone slightly less youthful to have a go and see how it works using bodypoint. first up, everyone's favourite
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block—builder and basher, minecraft. so i'm just moving around here in minecraft by using my right arm as a mouse and my leftarm... it's kind of like a joystick. i think i've cracked it now. oh, it's so cool. go on this look button so you can look around. i was also able to play minecraft using eye tracking. this is amazing. i'm literally using my eyes and my head... ..to look around. the cow, agh! you can attack the cow. oh, i don't want to attack the cows. laughter so this is basically like a steering wheel. as well as minecraft, i was able to take rocket league for a spin. the gestures are really cool. i like that a lot. so if ijust raise my eyebrows... ..i'm making the carjump. the accessibility elements of motioninput are all available to download for free on the microsoft store.
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the future aim is to commercialise the non—accessibility applications of the software into industries such as manufacturing or healthcare. but in the short term, it's all about the games. now, many of us have a movie that we just love, that we'll watch time and time again and could recite loads of the lines from. ghost? yep. star wars? 0bviously. well, how about if the next time you press play, it had the same people in it, it was about the same topic, but there was a different storyline, different dialogue and different music? would it be the same movie? well, there is a new "generative" documentary about the musician brian eno that does just that, and ben derico has the story. applause inside theatre hey. that version of the film was just for you. that will never be seen again anywhere else in any other time.
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this is documentary filmmaker gary hustwit. if you didn't catch that, he just said that his new film about brian eno, the one we all just watched, will never be seen again. it's not an error with the file or a mix—up in the screening. this is the intended result. that's because this film is being billed as a generative documentary, a movie that, with the help of generative software, can rewrite itself before every screening. like, we're so locked into this concept of, film and television always has to be the same. it's linear, it's static, it never changes. that's a technical constraint that's from 130 years ago. we don't have those constraints with digital technology any more, so why are we still sticking with them? when you create something, you're doing this thing that humans are very good at, which is imagining. for the uninitiated, brian eno is a bit of a legend, notjust for the music he's created — he's produced acts like u2 and david bowie —
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but for his philosophy, his ideas about creativity and how art can be made, particularly with the help of generative technology. a lot of the ways that brian creates music and art are also reflected in the way we created the film, because we're not making a normal documentary where we craft each scene and, you know, time it out. we're creating kind of a structure in software that will create our film. you can think of it like this. up here, we have a pool of pre—cut scenes, hundreds of hours of never before seen archival footage and exclusive interviews with eno. down here, we have an empty structure looking for pieces to fill up the slots. some parts of the film are always the same. pieces here are pinned in place, but for the rest, the software makes selections, slots them into place based on instructions from the filmmakers, and edits together a new film that it will never generate again. it can make approximately 52
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quintillion versions of the film, which is 52 with 19 zeroes after it. brendan dawes is a generative artist himself and the developer of the film's bespoke generative software. the way to think of it is kind of like a collaborator. i give it some direction, but then it's like, "actually, i've done this," and i go, "wow, ok, "let's go down that path and that route." i'm specifically looking to be surprised, surprised and delighted. i'm pleased if people are more confused than they were before, because i think the biggest problem is trying to deal with what i call the appetite for certainty. i think we normally want to have control as filmmakers of every second, so there's a little bit of surrendering that control. but the result is things that i never would have thought to connect myself.
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when i see it when our generative system does it, you know, it's like, "oh, my gosh, "i didn't even think about that connection." that could be making unusual story choices, likejumping around out of chronological order, orjuxtaposing two seemingly unrelated scenes. those choices can lead to wildly different versions of what is supposedly the same film. for example, gary says the audience reaction to the project, which premiered at this year's sundance film festival, was different every night. the mood shifted based on the choices the algorithm made. like, the first time that the film screened here at sundance, i felt it was, like, very energetic, and there were lots of laughs. but then the second time, it was more introspective and more personal. um, itjust depends on the scenes that end up getting chosen that night. and you can see those choices happening as you're watching the film. there's text that displays on screen showing the algorithm at work. these sorts of moments can make it easy to chalk this whole thing up to technology, a magic algorithm that somehow creates cinema out of thin air. but the algorithm only
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succeeds in creating moments of serendipity because of the work of human filmmakers who have worked filming, editing and mixing the material before feeding it into the software. it's not just about the tech, um, it is about the filmmaking craft, and we're using it as a tool to kind of extend what we could do. the system is trained by our intelligence as filmmakers, not some artificial intelligence. a film like this gives us an opportunity to think about what cinema actually is, and where new technology fits into the process of how we make movies. for me, i enjoyed the version of the film i saw. it had all the hallmarks of a good music documentary, although the story did seem to meander a bit from time to time. but for the man the film is about, he's happy with that ambiguity. eno spoke to the audience at sundance from his home in the uk over the theatre's speakers.
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hustwit and his crew seem to be betting on this idea. in march, he and brendan launched anamorph, a generative film company that will aim to create more films like this one. it's an idea, and there are other people who are going to have other ideas about how to use this tool that we've created, so we're super—excited to kind of keep collaborating and keep doing new projects and see what the possibilities are. i interviewed brian eno once. he was brilliant, as much a scientist as an artist, with a terrifyingly big brain. just like you. bigger. that's all we've got time for. yeah, thanks for watching. we'll see you soon. bye!
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hello there. many parts of the uk had some lengthy spells of sunshine on friday, but there were a few showers around. the remain of some of this shower cloud in wolverhampton gave this fine end to the day, a fine sunset, and the majority of the shower cloud through friday afternoon was associated with a stripe of cloud you can see right here. this was actually an old cold front. the significance of that is colder air is behind it. and as we go through the next few hours, that will be pushing in across much of the uk. milder air recirculating around our area of high pressure into northern ireland and western scotland. so it's here through the weekend that we will see the nation's highest temperatures. now on to the next few hours, we're looking at that colder air arriving, a lot of dry weather, a lot of clear skies. and that means it's a recipe for things turning pretty cold. and heading into the first part of saturday morning, we start off with a frost, even some patches of frost, i think, across rural areas of southern england. the lowest temperatures probably down to about —3
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celsius or so into rural areas of northern england and scotland. for saturday, where we get this colder air moving in, for most, it's a glorious start to the day with clear, blue, sunny skies. a bit of cloud coming in to eastern areas of norfolk and suffolk and maybe a bit of cloud developing through the day elsewhere. some splashes of rain possible for the far north of scotland, but otherwise it's dry. the highest temperatures likely in northern ireland. we could see a 17 celsius here in the very warmest spots. for sunday, generally, there's going to be a bit more cloud across parts of scotland, thick enough for some splashes of light rain, fleeting rain, really, a few showers coming in across east anglia and southeast england, where we'll continue to have quite a chilly wind. could be even warmer for northern ireland if we were to get 19 celsius, well, that would be northern ireland's highest temperature of the year. so we'll be monitoring that carefully through the weekend. 0n into next week, high pressure stays to the west of the uk, and we continue to see this feed of cloud coming down the north sea. if anything, the cloud getting a bit more extensive, a bit thicker, and that means
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there's more likelihood of seeing some patches of drizzle across northern and eastern scotland and some eastern areas of england as well. the best of the sunshine, probably parts of north west england, wales, southwest england, northern ireland might still do 0k, and western parts of scotland, where the sunshine comes out, it shouldn't feel too bad. but if you're in the east where it's going to be quite cloudy with that wind coming in off the north sea, it will probably feel quite chilly. temperatures picking up a little later next week.
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live from washington, this is bbc news. world leaders call for calm after us officials say an israeli missile hit iran. a $61 billion ukraine aid bill moves one step closer to passing in the us congress. and the us government is spending hundreds of billions of dollars to boost green manufacturing — we'll look at its impact on the economy.
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hello, i'm carl nasman. we begin in the middle east, following thursday's strike on iran, which is widely considered to have been carried out by israel in response to last weekend's attack by tehran on saturday. the white house has declined to comment on the strike. earlier, us secretary of state antony blinken repeated his calls for de—escalation in the middle east. israel has not publicly acknowledged it carried out this latest strike, and iran appears to be minimising it. now, nearly 24 hours later, the details still are not entirely clear. we do know there were explosions overnight deep inside iran, in isfahan. it's about a four—hour drive from the capital, tehran, and home to an airbase and several small nuclear sites. there are also missile factories in the vicinity. us officials told our news partner, cbs news, that there was an israeli missile strike, while iranian media said three small drones had been involved. there were also reports of
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explosions in syria and iraq. very few images have come out so far showing any damage.

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