Help to produce submarines , and tell us about Climate Change. Dr shini somara is a mechanical engineer, from land slides to crystals in space. Well show you some of the most Exciting Research conducted in the caltech labs. What is it about the environment is recreating what happens in nature. It may help us solve some of the most complex problems. Im phil torres. Im an intoe meteorologist. Our trees thats right trees responsible for smog. Thats our team. Lets go some science. We are in the Historic Town of pasadena, at the California Institute of technology, known as caltech. It ranks amongst the top universities in the world for science and engineering. N. A. S. A. s jpl was founded at caltech in the 30s and leads the way for robotic space exploration. In this edition of techknow on the road we take you inside caltech to show you the future of the scientific discovery. Im phil torres and joined by dr shini somara, and dr crystal dilworth. Crystal, you got your ph. D. , that caltech is a hot bed of scientific discoveries, happening every day. And today we are lucky enough to meet the scientists. Absolutely, theres wonderful work. And we are caltech nerds. We have a reputation. We are featured a certain way on sit comes, the Big Bang Theory tv show. Exactly. Ill show you some of my favourite people doing incredible science. The m. E. R. S. Is mcarthur first person is mcarthur prize winner, taking an approach to energy, global conservation. Climate change is not a faroff problem in the future. Its happening now, causing hardship now. Climate change is real. We have to act now. The debate about whether Climate Change existed at all is falling to the background. I think people accept its a reality. Its here. Now its a question of what do we do to combat it. On the front lines of combatting Climate Change is caltech aeronaughtic professor dr john deberiy. Hes taking cues from animal. The name of the game is how to take energy and consume it. Whether its fish in the ocean, a flock of birds or a plant in a field, they have come across ways to generate energy and consume it. Our goal is to use physics to extract how they do it and provide it to systems like wind energy and underwater vehicles. Common wind tur beans are the large 3bladed propeller type. This doctor is rethinking size, shape and effectiveness. The challenge you see is an individual wind turbine may be efficient but creates schopy air choppy air. One of the challenges is how to arrange them to deal with it. Dr debery is looking under water and taking a lesson from fish. It occurs to us its a different solution. So as each one flaps its heel its creating a choppy weight. They swim together, but they arrange themselves in a way that they are able to be more efficient in the youp than they are by themselves. Thats what we wanted to get after, a design for a wind farm where the turbines were more effective in the youp than they are by themselves. Believe it or not this is a research lab. Here in the dusty hot and windy analogue valley that scientists are able to test the latest hypothesis about the best way to harness energy, from all the wind. Is to this windy out here . This is not a windy day. Cal terk post doc trait scholar spends much of his time out here studying vertical wind tur bins. I see two Wind Turbines behind one. The smaller is a 1 kiloway. The bigger is a 2. 5 kilowatt turbine. The smaller one is more beneficial for smaller applications, the bigger one produces more power but needs more wind. So its a bit of a trade off what wind you have, how many turbines you want to supply at that position. Reporter what are some the vangs to the vrt call advantages to the vertical access turbine. We can space them closer. Reporter back in his lab he is studying a sea create our for clues on improving realworld energy efficiencies. Jelly fish. They are simple. They are the first animals to figure out how to swim in the o. They are 500 million years old and efficient in how to use energy. We are interested in stealing the ideas and using them for different technologies allowing us to use less fuel in an underwater vehicle. Reporter why are they so special of. Its a vortex ring they create. Not unlike a smoke ring. Each time they contract and relax the body they create a vortex ring and push off to move through the water than we do with our steady jet propulsion that we use. Reporter who is interested in the research . The u. S. Navy has been particularly interested in this technology for developing underwater vehicles that use less energy, reducing the costs of missions that they support. But it also enables new missions that they cant do currently. Reporter the small not so simple organisms are connected to two major issues Climate Change, sustainability and energy conservation. Thats right, its a unique situation in which they tell us about the problem in terms of increasing population as the o chance in climate and providing clues to the solution in terms of new technologies that can be energy. Thank you crystal. That was fascinating stuff. Any time. From research in the oceans to miles above the earth aring caltech earth, caltech scientists works on new discovers. Gwen owens, a ph. D. Stupid has an experiment on the International Space station above us. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me tell me about the disease you are studying. The disease my lab is studying is hunting don. It affect the brain and protein build up stopping the brain functioning. 10 years after symptoms start some patients die. Theres no treatment or cure. How does the space ranch go into your own research. Theres a crystallography lab. To study the threedimensional structure the best way is to get a crystal of a protein. We havent been able to get a crystal of this particular protein causing hunting tonnes. Is that why you are going into micro gravity. Theres good evidence that christals grow differently in micro gravity. You shot your research on a rocket and it rarfeed at the disagrees arrived at the International Space station. How did it get there . It arrived on spacex. There was a mission carrying our experiments but a number of others up to the International Space station in late april. What does your experiment look like . This is an example of a device, similar to one we sent up. This is the apparatus that our proteins are loaded into for the crystalisation experiment. Once we have a series of these devices we put them in a large metal box and they are put into an insulated protective container keeping it at a where was temperature. What are you waiting for . When do you get the results . When space x four comes back. Do you have any idea what to back. The best Case Scenario is if we get a crystal of the profeep mutated. So we can see how the structure changes when a person has hunting tonnes. What do you do with the information when you get it . When we get a threedimensional image its updated to the protein data bank, openly accessible to anyone in the world so they can see the changes. We hope to collaborate with drugs. Medicine. Yes. When this comes back and visits us here op arth, we are going on earth, we are going results. I would love to come after the black, well meet for students and see how their research is changing the future of science here at techknow on the road at cal it can. We want to caltech. We want to hear what you think. Join the conversation on twitter and aljazeera. Com. Welcome back to techknow on the road. We are here at caltech. Im phil torres, and joined by dr shini somara, and dr crystal dilworth. We had the opportunity to meet the grad students who are doing amazing work. I met two guys trying to understand how water can landscape. I got the opportunity to meet with a student and is studying how smog forms, its a lot more complexing than what i thought. Being in l. A. , smog is kind of an issue. Lets look. Reporter air pollution in china could be described as a nuclear winter. Health risks are severe, with the smog blocking sunlight, plant seedlings struggle to grow. In los angeles, smog is controlled because of reg u laces, because of Research Done in labs like this. Im cal vin baits. Reporter what is your field of study and what are you working on . How does smog form. Reporter part of the answer includes trees, yes trees. Dont blame them yet. Trees given out a bunch of chemicals, obviously oxigep. Reporter including isopreen. We know that iceo preen is a main chemical emitted by trees and is responsible for a lot of smog we see. Here is how it works. When iceo preen mixes with car and power plant exhaust, that forms ozones and other particles responsible for smog. Getting to the bottom of how the process works is what kelvin is referencing. We dont know what chemical rehabilitations take place that onvert isopreens to substances that are sticky enough, essentially, to form the particles. Those are the chemical rehabilitations that im trying to figure out. The conversion from isopreen from plants to sticky stuff into smog, thats what you are working on . Exactly. What i try to do in the Synthetic Lab is make the chemicals pure so we can see which chemicals are responsible for the smog. A lot of the chemicals have not been maid in the lab before. We are trying a lot. Reporter ever. Ever. We are trying new things. Reporter once the chemical is created under the hood its tested across campus in a different caltech lab. We are in the atmospheric labs, we bring the chemicals, synthesise them and put them in the atmospheric chambers and see what happens in the environment. This is the environmental chamber. Reporter wow. Two big teflon bags where we mick im what happens mimic what happens in the atmosphere, we put in the chemicals that you find in a forest or city. We use instruments that we developed here in the lab to see what happens to them in the atmosphere. You can see its surrounded by banks of uv lights, and thats the mimicked sun light. We let the rehabilitations in the as moss fear happen in here. Only they happen faster. This is basically the laboratory version of the air over los angeles. Over los angeles, over the great smokey mountains, whatever we want to replicate we can do it in a controlled fashion than we would get than if we were to test outside. Reporter theres a lot going on inside the chamber. Much. Exactly. This is the data from last nights experiments. The concentrations of chemicals that are important contributors to smog. Like ogown and nirt ozone and produce. Reporter what does it take way from the experiment . The chemical and the rehabilitation pathway is not responsible for forming the ozone in smog. Reporter when you finish future . Im not sure. I have a good three years to go. It would be great to stay in the academic realm and do the research that im doing now. I think it would be interesting to bring what i have learnt about the scenes back into helping shape policies that can improve air quality in the u. S. And around the world. So just to clarify, we should not cut down trees, right absolutely, he just showed how trees were part of this, and when human pollutants gets in the air, mixes with the trees and we get smog. It was fascinating. We used to do a through the of theoretical research. What is next for kelvin . Im convinced hell run the e. P. A. What god to meet some interesting people. I met two guys trying to understand the power of water that shapes the landscape. Lab. Reporter at cal terk jess studies how rocks and gravel cause grain in lab experiments, interacting with water and gravity and nature. Can you talk me through the major components of this sperms. We draw water from the tank using a pump to the top of the test section, and the water runs over the gravel and we recirculate the water and we adjust the speed of the pump to adjust the discharge. We are trying to identify the condition at which things will move. Well increase the discharge more, and that will be enough to overcome the existing stress derived from the for example of the grains and initiate a failure and the grains will move down the slopes. Reporter what is most exciting about the experiment is nature. Thats the beauty of laboratory experiments, we can simplify things going on in the Natural World and observe them and with the possibility of plying what we learn to the catastrophic matters that may lives. Its fascinating to simplify how water flows over sediment to under the science of mann slides. What happens when you make the experiment bigger and more powerful . Reporter this is a post doc trait scholar at caltech studying river dynamics. What is your experiments similar to in the real world . Its about the same size as rivers in the real world. We have the same grain types and discharges that we can reach. We pretty much are in the same configuration as in the field. Except for one high tech edition. Smart rocks. I find these cool, smart rocks. Yes, it records the acceleration of the grain, so we can tell when a grain impacts the other grape, we can tell the impact. Points. Yes, they are labs and rocks. What speed is this . Its about 4 metres, im thinking. Wow. Data recorded helps to understand how the size, number and speeds of other grains erode the lands. What is the ultimate goal of your research . Is to find a way to describe appropriately the physics that controls the erosion in the multirange environment. Reporter and to help scientists better understand how landscapes were formed and how to build around the forces of nature. Great stuff. I love being able to meet the young reachers here who are going to do amazing thing, not just now, but in the future. After the break well meet one of the rock stars of science. Hes an esteemed professor, known as the man who killed pluto. As techknow on the road continues. The only way to get better is to challenge yourself, and thats what were doing at xfinity. We are challenging ourselves to improve every aspect of your experience. And this includes our commitment to being on time. Every time. Thats why if were ever late for an appointment, well credit your account 20. Its our promise to you. Were doing everything we can to give you the best experience possible. Because we should fit into your life. Not the other way around. When youre on hold, your business is on hold. Thats why comcast business doesnt leave you there. When you call, a Small Business expert will answer you in about 30 seconds. No annoying hold music. Just a real person, real fast. Whenever you need them. So your business can get back to business. Sounds like my rides ready. Dont get stuck on hold. Reach an expert fast. Comcast business. Built for business. Hey, welcome back to a special episode of techknow on the road here at caltech. Im phil torres here with dr shini somara, and dr crystal dilworth. Joining us is special guest dr mike brown. Dr brown is a professor of planetary astronomy. He made many significant scientific discoveries, hes probably best known as the man who killed pluto. Welcome to techknow dr brown, why did you do it . The obvious answer is did it have it coming. If it wasnt me someone else would do it. Tell me the story. Pluto never should have been called a planet. It was a mistake, just because everyone thought it was big when it was discovered, as big as june it ter and realised it was smaller and smaller. It is smaller than our moon. And there are thousands of other things out there just like it. If pluto is not a planet, what is it . The official definition is work planet. Which i like to think about things that look like planets. I love the story of the declassification of pluto. Its a great example of how new information can change the idea that a group of scientists have about something they take for time. You came up with an announcement about pluto, did you face much feedback . I had hate mail for many years, from young children. Young children think its funny that they know pluto is not a planet but their parents dont. I get late night phone calls, im certain its children that i get the hate mail, and they are now at college and they think its fun to ring up and yell at me. I save them. They are hilarious. Theres a small number of scientists that dont like the idea, because they studied pluto, and saying that its not a planet means its less important. They are looking at it the wrong way. Its better to classify correctly, sensibly and explain why pluto is important. You found the largest object in the solar system in the last 150 years. What was it . This is aeris, an object leading to the debate and demotion of pluto. Its one of these objects out there in the khyber belt. Its far away, three times further away than pluto, tilted at 45 degrees, compared to the planets in the solar system. It has a moon and surface covered in methane, nitrogen in the atmosphere. Most was frozen on the surface because its so far away. Its a fascinating world. I dont think the fact that its a dwarf planet makes it interesting. Its impossible to imagine that we are the only life form on earth. Do you ever think about it . I think about the question a lot. Yoth the right question i dont think the right question is are there other life forms, the answer has to be yes. Theres no way the universe can exist that we are the only intelligent life form. Thats crazy. The important question is is it common or rare. Are there intelligent life form at every star that we look at. Where we look up in the sky, we are the only ones and we have to go to the next galaxy and the next galaxy, thats a question we have no idea what the answer is. Those are profoundly interesting questions to ask. Places like uropa. If you find microbes under the ice or titan, things living in a weird exotic seas on titan, that answers that question. That tells you life is easy to form if you give it the right conditions, you cant stop it forming. That will be fascinating. Once we no that, we can answer the question in a sensible way. And that there are life forms around every 100 stars or 10 stars that we know. Thank you for joining us, thank you for killing pluto. I think we know that it deserved it. That now wraps up a special enseed of techknow on the road here at caltech. Be sure to join us next time dive deep into these stories and go behind the scenes. Follow our expert contributors on google, facebook and more. From london. News hour live coming up, rebels battle to stop Government Forces taking control of a key town in syria. Fighting to save yemens children, doctors warned that lives will be lost, without more medical supplies. We will build missiles irans president is defiant after a new u. S. Threat of sanctions