Cells in the panel. Welcome to tomorrow today the science show on the d. W. Stuff how do solar cells actually was so hisself are mainly composed of silicon. Silicon atoms have full electrons in their outer shell and are stable but then the city come a split into 2 layers. Last christmas mixed into one like it has 5 electrons in its outer shell one too many which can orbit free. The 2nd layer is mixed with boron which has only 3 outer electrons one to feel. That means the layer has gaps which attract the excess phosphorus electrons this creates a flow of negatively charged electrons from one layer to the other one layer loses. Electrons and becomes positive the other gains electrons and becomes negative creating 2 poles eventually all the gaps on the surface of the layers are occupied the whole and the electrons are now too far apart to migrate with the sun comes in when some light hits the surface layer splits off one electron making a hold on to so close electron. The electron is attracted to the positive and the whole pulls another electron from another down to replace the one last which in turn is split off and so on. The electrons which of arrived at the positive pole return via wire to the negative call thats an electric current. And it flows as long as the sun shines. If solar energy is to enable commercial aviation and satisfy our electricity needs in the future then theres still a lot of work to be done. Research is forging ahead. Florian galushas come up with a new method of extracting even more power from sunlight. But. What weve done instead of using normal silicon solar cells which have a maximum Laboratory Efficiency of 26 to 27 percent is to use somewhat more exotic cells their maximum Lab Efficiency is over 47 percent but theyre expensive and above his expensive solar super cells a panel of lenses each of which focuses sunlight on an individual cell throughout the day that boosts efficiency to 29 percent in real life conditions. The main challenge is making sure the light actually hits the cell if it doesnt it wont produce any energy at all. And then it you know. We get an idea of how it works he uses a model to show how the lenses function each lens in the top panel focuses the sunlight on an exactly defined radius covering a super cell. Because those cells are tiny barely one millimeter across. We use about 10000 cells. Each has to have a high degree of tolerance. But now its time for the engineers to put the lab behind them. Right now were still almost sticking everything together by hand but now the important step is going from the lab to mass production how can i produce a module every couple of minutes using machinery thats the really huge leap were about to take that will fit in the of mafia. The European Union is giving insulate almost 3000000. 00 euros from its advent solar cell fund expensive science but worth it because including installation ourselves are about 20 percent more expensive but they produce 50 percent more energy. Improve utilization of solar energy is one thing but its also highly dependent on the weather it only makes sense when electricity Storage Facilities have been improved. Lithium ion batteries are the standard today but scientists at switzerlands Materials Testing and Research Institute show us how dangerous they can be if the lithium ion cells insulation is compromised and the terminals come into contact with metallic objects such as coins the result can be disastrous. Thank. Our approach to stabilizing the electrolytes involves a highly concentrated salt solution. The swiss researchers have developed a highly soluble salt that only needs a few drops of water here seen in fast motion to function as a more conductive but much safer electrolyte in lithium ion batteries. That kind of storage battery would be enormously useful for storing solar energy in people cellars or in other very large batteries. To bridge the nighttime gap as well as bad weather. In the batteries or the ideal solution for delaying Energy Consumption for a few minutes or even days. Solar energy for foggy days or the night time in future we could be storing it in less volatile batteries and we have today. Its energy that could become abundantly available thanks to a new generation of panels to collect it. Ideally we wouldnt use any energy at all thats the idea behind the ancient dream of the cultural motion a machine that moves without any Energy Source but the laws of physics teach us that its not possible i cant eat everything up and simply hope the biscuit tin full itself. If i use energy i have to replace it on the other hand and arrived with that in. My to. Phoenix looks like. But its actually an airplane or to be precise and unmanned aerial vehicle. The prototype the wings and tail will be added shortly we joined the team amid preparations for the 1st test flight. The researchers have chosen a huge building for their 1st attempt to get phoenix into the air a tense moment for its inventors. Scientists from various universities and companies in britain spent 3 years working on phoenix. Aerodynamics professor andrew rank and supped the teen. Says. The goal was to build an aircraft that could propel itself without the need for an engine. Has been around for a long time ive 150 years and it used underwater for remotely operated vehicles so there are various things are used underwater for surviving but nobodys made it work in our before because there is a 1000 times less dense in water that the physical process is more complicated phoenix is filled with helium the material for the outer hull had to be developed specially it needed to be lightweight but dense enough to prevent the tiny helium molecules from seeping through. The wings are made of lightweight carbon fiber both the wings and tail carry solar panels to provide the plane with power some is stored in batteries meaning phoenix can also fly at night. This is phoenix and its fully assembled stating the aircraft will likely be used as an atmospheric satellite or pseudo satellite either for telecommunications or for things like land surveillance after natural disasters to see where help is most needed one of the possibilities is as a suit our satellites are being able to do surveillance and monitoring and for that it would fly at 20000 meters and 20000 meters because thats where the weather is most benign the. Much lower than the surface phoenixs 15 meters long and weighs just 120. 00 kilos without the helium. That means it requires very little power. Its a huge advantage is that because it has no engine it doesnt need to carry any fuel that means it can remain airborne for weeks or months at a time. The mix is also relatively cheap to manufacture. Its propelled by whats known as variable buoyancy propulsion this is how it works. And is lighter than air and therefore pulls the aircraft upwards the underside is equipped with 2 compressors which draw in air from outside and compress it filling a bag inside the aircraft. That makes the plane heavier causing it to sink again. The air is then pumped out making the aircraft lighter and causing it to rise again this ability to believe as it were moving up and down combines with the lift generated on its wings to move it forward. Half the time phoenix is heavier than air like an airplane. The other half its lighter than air like a balloon. The model has been through countless tests in wind tunnels. Andrew ray is responsible for the aerodynamics and element hes keen to improve further tests. Using lasers and smoke his team is able to show how the air flows around the model. They needed to establish the most efficient design to allow the aircraft to maximize the use of its Kinetic Energy efficiency. After 3 years of development the prototype was ready for its 1st test flight. And it was a success phoenix flew in waves down the 120 metre long hangar exactly as it was designed to do. We were all presently surprised if it worked as well as it did. We initially had hoped to. Do one series of tests where was like the narran one had to navigate for solo to begin with that we were able to do multiple transitions between the 2 when it flew forward repeatedly during the flights or strange work is now underway to build the next prototype its said to be 4 times as known this phoenix and capable of flying at the target altitude of 20000 meters. The earth is by night covered by in a rate of tiny luminous dots it could be beautiful in another context electric light does make modern life possible independent from the 24 hour a day night rhythm would have freedom but also what a catastrophe it confuses the environment and least spend too much time in us official ice and also enough in the sensual sunlight time for an experiment. These 3 people are exposed to Different Levels of light during their day. Boss john works in an office which means spending long hours in artificial light. Thomas is a go to herd and is mostly outdoors. Then there is 19. A doctor who works as a surgeon in a hospital and she works at night when her body is telling her its dark and time to go to bed. We equip our test subjects with a special device that measures the brightness and composition of the like theyre exposed to. And then we track them around the clock for a week. We want to know how much and what type of light our test subjects are exposed to and when. Sleep researcher alfred riata and light expert because it analyze the results. What will they show how much light to our subjects receive at what time of day. Tomas the go to earth tends to be out in the open with natural like the lord even in gloomy weather hes subject to several 1000 locks per day. After sundown he manages without a television or mobile phone which both emit a lot of blue light and are disruptive. This shows the amount of Natural Light thomas is exposed to over the course of several days in the. Mall going on the meter side theres a very high a luminance in the morning and around noon up to 7000. 00 lux dollars and looks on and in the afternoon it drops significantly. Around 100. 00 lux or lowered looks on immediately. And at night the light exposure is reduced to an absolute minimum of absolute minimum that would see it in accordance with the natural j. J. Night rhythm effect the stock knocked over at most and splashed. Bastions case the day takes place almost exclusively indoors despite having large windows he always turns on the light but artificial light is usually very weak whereas goat her dramas can reach 7000 lux bus johns level is just 220 bus journey also spends most of his evenings in front of a t. V. Or computer screen in addition to being low light they emit primarily blue light this lowers the wake sleep regulating hormone melatonin and reverses his inner rhythm essentially turning back his biological clock and the result for us john is this modest hour by hour exposure to light on a typical working day very cutting but while working in the office we have 2 100. 00 to 220. 00 lux which is far short of daylight bite and found that. What we notice is that he still has a relatively high illuminance after work until he goes to bed. At this so and that he definitely has a negative effect on his sleep wake behavior. And you got the 5. Now deem is a doctor who likewise works with little light most of it artificial. And sometimes with practically none. And you come right out im just a ripe for a night shift saturday night which no one likes to see but im not properly rested even after. We finish. But she needs to be wide awake not least when stitching up the wound at 1 am. The surgery room light is particularly strong which helps right now but for her biological clock its unnatural outside of course its dark. If shes lucky and its a quiet night nadine will be able to take a break and catch up on her sleep. But its only a matter of time until shes called to the next patient which means getting up again pronto. The rude enough to. Even so my night shift is over and my colleague is now taking over for the daytime shift as a bitch to spy on cafe but you cant really look forward to going home when you know youll be back again this evening mad with the food and this is what her light exposure chart looks like. In. Common for the 1st 3 days you can see a relatively good day night rhythm after that her night shifts begin. And then theres no dana rhythm at all as far as light exposure is concerned the least exposed its. When shes more or less exposed to continuous lighting. And that constant light is anything but natural. Her biological clock has no means of orientation. In order to reset her clock back to normal she needs daylight in the morning between 8 and noon the time of day where our 3 subjects differ substantially in exposure. Look blue line shows the light on a typical morning for Office Worker boss john read whos that of dr 19 and green goat herd tomas whose exposure is 10 times higher in those crucial morning hours. So how come no Office Worker and doctor get more like. Well have the solution for you in a moment but 1st of all we are asked how much you have to resign an artificial light and if you have strategies for avoiding too much of it its. Brown says they dont have too much artificial light in nigeria so they dont really depend on its. Rising from columbia mo said tells us it really makes the set that Light Pollution means she can see the greatest show on earth the milky way its like a cascade of diamonds spotted in the sky. And factor tells us that pakistans rule areas have barely any artificial light at night if people there are healthier than city people theyre also very strong emotional they stay calm laurie lettuce and mostly smile thanks for writing in. Even if in some regions night time still looks like night time the world as a whole has been getting brighter which simply. Many professions are rescheduling glad to have and i have a nice song only work at night but how can you stay healthy despite that. But still a day light experiment. Toma spends most of his days outdoors so he gets plenty of Natural Light in the evenings he tends to avoid screens with their blue spectrum output hes just fine but Bastions Office job means he has a serious light deficit problem and not just because his office is too dark. An Office Worker circadian rhythms are completely disrupted and we should try to adjust his biological clock. So hell be more capable and alert in the morning with the highest for bastiaan that means 1st thing in the morning its out into the fresh air and natural jay light not exactly a grueling task skipping one stop on the subway into work is all it takes. To install a standard daylight lamp on his desk for him to use during the morning that way hes getting 2000 lux even in the office. And in the evening a book is always better than a screen. Measurements show just how even a smartphone can influence our sleep patterns normal display light is dominated by the blue spectrum that suppresses melatonin the hormone that steers our weak sleep rhythm however many smartphones now feature a filter called night shift it cuts down the blue spectrum component sharply damage come on all it lets you use your smartphone at night an equal amount feeling guilty about disrupting your sleep the stuff they start out. But others do this is the time the system will stop but with the daylight lamp i mean walking in broad daylight i got the feeling that i get tired very much earlier at night and want to go to sleep. Im trying to give it it gets on my nerves a bit because i like to stay up late. What i dont feel like im struggling to get through the day like i used to before this whole experiment publishing issue would be just. Instead im quite often much more alert. And cop to. Hospital doctor 19 really gets much daylight and her night shifts go counter to her biological clock adrenalin is what keeps her we markedly a week at work. To feel shes doing a lot right shes limited by her night shifts of course what is important is that she at least grabs whatever sleep she can when on shift. The sleep experts offer her another suggestion after a night shift should try specially colored glasses which filter out that studies are melatonin level and shell sleep easier when she gets home the experiments outcome is that the most important thing is to get a lot of natural daylight preferably in the morning that way the biological clock settles into its natural rhythm and also to try to go without screens in the evening and if night shifts are a must then only a few of them at a time grouped together a well maintained biological clock never needs reminding. So some lies is just that much we know it also helps us to produce this mundane essential for both development and also said to boost the immune system but getting the right amount of sunlight is important too much u. V. Light is unhealthy the world long ago that apted to the sun is 24 hour over them its regulated human life for thousands of years but how did it come about amos from zambia wanted to know. How was the sun created. Its been burning away for over 4 and a half 1000000000 years and its not even high. Or through his projected life span. One in which Human History is just the blink of an eye. But while we may be just a transitory moment in cosmic terms we are at least able to study the life cycle of the sun. Our galaxy is home to billions of other stars like it. Space telescopes have given astronomers a closer look at how stars evolve. Our own son was born from a cloud of gas and dust over the course of millions of years. Its a magical process reproduced here on a computer. This cloud of dust contains regions of denser gas like pearls on a necklace. The astral embryos that emerge there continue growing until they have sufficient must to ignite the sun spire. If outlet is red why of it but only think of it. Do you have a science question that youve always wanted on thing that were happy to help out send it to us as a video text ovoid smell if we answer it on the show well send you a little surprise as a thank you can i just ask. You to like to see more science stories then visit albert size or follow us on twitter on facebook. Thats all from tamara today for this week next time google looking at the power of thought well be able to operate machines just by thinking the 1st models tested more on that next week. Good shape i dont have time for this now i have to work we never really have enough time to get stressed is not good for you its not good for you. Sure but how can we escape a hamster wheel. And other time Management Help us lead healthier lives. Good. Is never satisfied i always have doubts something can only achieve artistic quality if you question it. The recipe for his International Suc