(soft music)
As a kid, I always dreamed of exploring space.
Even now, the thought still captivates me.
Just in that direction, over the rise,
is a Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket.
And in a few minutes,
it's going to launch to intercept the ISS,
the International Space Station.
(soft music)
5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
(rocket blasts)
There we go.
Actually, we got launched.
Over and lift off.
Second SpaceX cargo, resupply mission,
the International Space Station.
(rocket blasts)
(intense piano music)
Wow.
You know, many ways that rocket there,
represents the pinnacle of human achievement.
And essentially, this is what this show is all about.
Exploration is the lifeblood
of every living creature on earth.
Over 3.8 billion years,
evolution has shaped all walks of life.
The need to explore has propelled nature
into every corner of the globe,
to colonize even the most hostile of places.
As a biologist,
I'm convinced the key to pushing the boundaries
of our own exploration lies with mother nature.
If we can decode her secrets,
it might allow us to take the next big step into space.
(birds chirping)
My journey starts with one of the most alien
looking creatures on the planet
(intense music)
Giraffes are pretty cool.
They've got one of the strangest body plans
of any animal on the planet.
But I've got two questions I wanna try and answer.
I wanna find out why they've evolved
to have this strange body and how they've adapted to cope.
(intense music)
They can smell some of them from that direction.
On that ridge,
where the trees are? Yeah.
Yeah, wanna look at that.
Oh, there, we've got little baby one, aw.
Yeah.
Tiny giraffe.
So adorable, look at it.
Oh, wow.
This is brilliant, we finally spot the giraffes ,
actually we've gotten at least two baby giraffes.
Mattheus was like, "Oh baby, giraffes ahead."
And I was like, "No, they're pretty tall, pretty big."
But actually once you get close and you see the adults like,
"Oh wow, this is brilliant, this is good."
This tiny baby... Yeah.
Is the youngest one of all the ones we have here.
Born about a month ago. Wow.
One month old and standing at 10 feet tall.
(soft music)
We are completely surrounded by giraffe,
adult giraffes, baby giraffes.
There's one behind us, which, is kind of camouflaged.
In this position,
we can really see all of those different
parts of the anatomy.
You'd assume when you first see a giraffe
that they have more neck bones, but they don't.
Just like humans,
we've got seven. Seven
Yeah, seven neck bones, seven cervical vertebrae.
And they've got exactly the same,
only difference is...
Just that they are longer.
They're massive. Yeah.
About 11 inches long. 11 inches.
So the necks are like 6, 6.5 feet.
It's like having a ladder for your head.
Exactly.
(both laugh)
Everything about them is designed or evolved
to be the tallest animal. Yeah.
And I suspect that one of the main reasons
is so they can reach the vegetation,
which other animals can't reach.
Yeah. They don't have any other animal
that can compete with them when it comes to feeding.
The other theory is,
it's an advantage if a big male has got a longer neck,
cause then it can fight and win over all the females
and be dominant in the herd.
If I think about what makes giraffes so well adapted like,
"Hey cool, they've got this long neck,
they can reach this vegetation
that other animals can't reach."
But then that comes with its own host of problems,
because how do you regulate your blood flow?
The adaptation starts like everything else, at the heart.
(bright music)
Her 25 pound heart, 40 times bigger than ours,
creates the highest blood pressure in the animal kingdom.
Pressure that's needed to fight gravity
and push blood all the way up to her brain.
But when she lowers her head,
the heart no longer opposes gravity.
The sudden rush of blood should make her head explode.
The reason it doesn't, comes down to the clever way
her body has risen to the challenge.
As she lifts her head, 16 feet of the ground,
blood, now once the rush out.
Her neck muscles and valves
restrict and regulate blood flow,
which stops her from fainting.
In her legs,
tight skin and thick walled arteries fight physics
to ensure blood doesn't pool in her lower body,
increasing the supply to the brain.
These unique adaptations overcome gravity
to make her impossible physique, well, possible.
All of which, adds up to make the giraffe
a key piece of the puzzle in pushing our physiology.
(soft music)
When it comes to the rigors of space flight,
humans are limited by the skin we're in.
Our physiology,
just isn't adapted for the extremes of space.
In particular, the extremes of gravity.
We've evolved to deal with a constant 1 G here on earth.
That's the force gravity exerts on everything on the planet.
And it's what keeps our feet planted firmly on the ground.
We are perfectly adapted for life on earth,
but astronauts have to deal with two opposite extremes,
up to 6 Gs on takeoff and landing
and close to 0 Gs when they're in space.
And if we want to take that giant leap
to become planet hopping space explorers,
we may have to deal with even greater forces.
With really high G-forces,
your blood starts to drain from your head
and starts to pull in your lower extremities.
And this can lead to fainting.
And in the worst case, scenario, death, not good.
But today, in the name of science I'm gonna subject myself
to some of these phenomenal G-forces.
Now, of course,
I don't think I'm gonna be getting the call
to be an astronaut anytime soon,
but that is one way that I can replicate this,
and that is in a fighter jet
(dramatic music)
Hey Chip, knock knock. Patrick.
How you doing?
Doing well, welcome to Auroras Aerospace.
Let's talk about the G-suits.
I've got one right here. Okay.
The G-suit will increase your Gton by approximately 1 G.
This G-suit has inflatable bladders in it,
and this will be plugged into the aircraft
and it will blow air into the bladders, here and in here.
Give you a nice bear hug.
It actually feels good when it inflates.
It's kind of...
Kind of makes you feel secure, I can imagine.
Yeah, it does.
The purpose of that is to force blood
away from the extremities, the lower extremities,
and up to my thorax,
keeping that oxygen rich blood going to my brain.
Correct. Yeah.
How's that feel?
Yeah, good. Feels good?
Yeah.
And this is where you'll plug in here.
Right, there we go.
So that's that end of that.
We're gonna head downstairs, do our safety briefing,
and we're gonna go flying. Brilliant.
Sounds good? Yeah.
(upbeat music)
I got the need... For speed.
Oh yeah, baby.
What Gs can I expect,
that we're gonna be pulling on this L-39?
We're gonna be pulling up to 5.
5 Gs, okay, brilliant.
Try not to hit any switches.
And don't sit on the orange ejection handle...
(indistinct)
And you're slowly sitting down.
Go, you all set? Yeah.
All right, I'll do one last walk around.
The main purpose of what we're doing right now,
is to experience extreme G.
This is what it's all about.
You know, we're trying to push our bodies to the extreme.
It's inherent in our nature to want to explore,
to find out what lies above the horizon,
space, that is the final frontier.
And to get up to space,
we've gotta withstand lots of G-Force.
So we need to understand how to allow
our bodies to cope with that G-force.
All right, here comes the engine start.
All right, then.
Wow, wow, I don't believe this, this is incredible.
Albatross 72, we're ready for departure at 1-8.
Albatross 72, just curious,
what's going on today?
Oh, we're just doing a film about G-suits and G-tolerance,
so we're gonna do some flights with and without the G-suits.
Good luck without the G-suits.
Well, I'm keeping mine on. Okay.
Runway 1-8 cleared for take-off.
Albatross 72 cleared for take-off, 1-8 west-bound.
All right, here we go.
(dramatic music)
(jet engine revs)
Feeling good so far?
Yeah, beautiful views, beautiful day.
So now, just to confirm,
your G-suit is not hooked up, correct?
That is correct, my G-suit is not hooked up.
All right, you all set? Standing by.
Here we go.
You do feel it on your body.
Yeah, there we go, nice.
I'm trying to lift up my hands.
Big breaths of air.
(jet engine revs)
Going faster.
(jet engine revs)
I don't think we wanna go to much more.
It's starting to go gray.
(dramatic music)
(jet engine revs)
I was showing 4,
I started feeling a little grayout too.
I can feel that one.
I think I started to lose some of my colour vision.
Another thing you can do to increase your G-tolerance
is take some puffs of oxygen. Yeah.
I took a couple of those,
just to make sure I stay conscious.
And an aileron roll for fun.
(bright music)
Oh, yeah.
(Patrick laughs)
(soft piano music)
Okay, so we are approaching 12,000 feet,
just on the western coast of Florida,
traveling at 180 knots.
And yeah, this is a beautiful day.
Chip is putting me through my paces right now.
Without the G-suit one of the main things I noticed is,
moving your body the way,
I'm 4 times the weight of my normal mass.
My arms, I can't even keep my arms up.
Chip's gonna go again.
See how far we can push it safely, with the G-suit,
I'm gonna see what the difference is.
It's an awesome ride.
All right, go ahead and plug your G-suit in.
Okay, now I'm gonna take my G-suit inlet
and let's plug that in now.
Okay, ready to rock and roll.
Here we go.
(jet engine revs)
Oh, yeah, there we go.
We've got some light inflation.
I'll increase it a little bit.
You should be at about 3 there.
Yeah, we're at 3.
I'll see if I can sustain it a little for you.
(dramatic music)
(jet engine revs)
(Patrick laughs)
I think we hit 5 there.
(Patrick laughs)
I got a little more in me, hang on.
(jet engine revs)
(Patrick laughs)
Wow, oh, man.
Oh, yeah.
I feel like we were able to sustain
that G for a lot longer. Right.
Than without the suit, for sure.
I find that the G-suit actually feels refreshing,
like it gives you a boost of energy.
It does feel good.
I think I'm done with that.
(Patrick laughs)
Roger that.
(soft music)
Oh, awesome.
Oh, fresh air.
Cool.
Oh, kiss the ground.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. Good job, brother.
My G-suit help keep my blood in my brain,
and stopped me from passing out.
But Chip has told me about a team
developing something even more advanced,
it's aptly named the G-raffe suit.
And I think it might be the solution
to handling the extreme Gs of space travel.
Patrick, tell me,
I'm guessing from the name that it's been inspired
by an animal in the wild.
Yes, G-raffe actually, it's an acronym.
G, reliable advanced fast fighter equipment.
But the idea was based on the giraffe's
neck muscle principle,
which allows its neck muscle to tighten around the veins,
and basically limit the blood flow,
which goes out to the brain.
How did these traditional G-suits differ
from what you're trying to make with the G-raffe suits?
In our case,
we have used a fabric which tenses around the body,
which keeps the body under pressure.
The entire body is so well compressed
and the muscle are so well supported
than you can do maneuvers that you could not do,
physically without it.
One of the things I did notice
in the jet fighter was that,
even though the bladder did inflate
and it made a big difference,
there were areas like where my knees bent,
anything as like a pinch point
where it was preventing the air from inflating.
What you're saying is, you've managed to overcome that?
I'll show you briefly, I have one here.
Everything you see here, which is green.
Everything is compressed, 100%.
No way, that's interesting.
With your new G-raffe suit,
how many Gs do you think a pilot could pull?
Well, we have tested it to 11Gs.
And myself, I've been many times to 9Gs.
Now, I'm not a pilot and I'm nearly 62 years old.
I only got a little taste of that at 5Gs.
Well see, the difference is, you had G-pants on,
basically the lower portion of your body
was partially compressed.
In our case, the entire body is entirely compressed.
It sounds like coming straight out of,
you know, a future sci-fi movie.
Where do you Patrick, see this technology being applied?
Well, the principle of body compression
has many applications.
The kind of principles we have here,
could very well be applied to space travel definitely,
would be a less bulky travel suits.
(soft music)
A suit built for the extremes of space travel
would be a game changer for exploration.
Our bodies would still function
as if they were on planet earth,
whether experiencing extremely low,
or dangerously high G-forces.
All thanks to the majestic giraffe
Time for another interstate road trip,
got a few more hours on the road,
but it's got me thinking about space travel,
in particular, the vast distances
that we wanna try and cover.
Now in space, long distances equate to long time periods.
And if we want to try and find new forms of life,
we're gonna need to travel to planets
of distance star systems.
But let me just give you some facts
that will put all of this into perspective.
Our closest star system, Alpha Centauri,
is 4.4 light years away.
That's 26 trillion miles from earth.
In our fastest rocket,
it would take 10,000 years to complete the journey.
Yeah, I don't have that time.
I don't think you guys do either.
So if we wanna be alive when we get there,
we're gonna have to somehow rewrite our physiology.
And one way we can do that is by learning
from one of the most adaptable creatures on the planet.
(bright music)
For four months of the year,
this North American wood frog lives a perfectly normal life.
(bright music)
Hanging out, hopping around, and avoiding predators.
But every autumn, something miraculous happens.
(soft music)
As the temperature drops, he starts to freeze over.
(soft music)
He's heart slows down, until it completely stops.
And he takes his last breath of the year.
(soft music)
He might not look it, but even at 20 degrees Fahrenheit,
he's still alive.
Special proteins in his blood and huge quantities of glucose
allow his cells to stay perfectly protected.
(soft music)
There's no brain activity now,
he's in total suspended animation.
Cause you know what it reminds me of? A mummy.
A mummified frog, a very cold mummified frog.
Cryogenics is a science that addresses
the production and effects of very low temperatures.
The word originated from the Greek word,
cryos, meaning frost and genic, meaning to produce.
We do use cryogenics for the freezing
of sperm cells, egg cells, and embryos.
But the question is, can you freeze an entire human being?
(soft music)
If we hope to survive journeys across space
that last thousands of years.
We may need to take our lead from the wood frog
in order to safely freeze and (indistinct) our astronauts.
So that when we eventually wake up
to discover our destination,
we'll be ready for the next leg of the journey,
exploring a new world.
(soft music)
When it comes to exploring.
I think that if we're gonna find alien life,
we're gonna need to look
somewhere where there's is lots and lots of water.
The only issue with that is,
we barely know what's in our seas,
let alone, the seas of another planet.
So in order to explore those worlds,
we're gonna need to start by looking
at marine specialists on earth.
Yeah, we're here at Pelican Point
and we're gonna do a little sport of kayaking,
which is gonna be awesome.
So we got the kayaks here.
And behind me, you can see our stars of the show, the seals.
Take first, seals.
(intense music)
Ida, I am really excited to get onto the water.
I've actually been here once before.
Have you? Yeah.
But it was completely foggy.
I could hear the seals, I had one or two come up to me,
but this is pretty much like the dream ideal day.
Pristine condition. Pristine condition.
And we could see hundreds, if not thousands of seals.
This waters may look clear here on the beach,
but it's really murky.
This is very nutrient rich water.
And so with all those nutrients,
all those phytoplankton, zooplankton,
this water becomes really, really murky
and hard to see food.
How do these seals navigate?
That's what we need to find out.
(soft music)
Just kayaking up to this big colony up here.
And as I'm getting close to them,
more and more Cape fur seals are coming to check me out.
Oh, man.
Hello, hello, hi, come here.
Over here, over here.
Over here.
Oh, you're beautiful.
Oh, you're so beautiful.
Woah.
Oh, my God.
They're coming a lot closer.
Hi, hello, hi.
Whoa, that's a nice jump.
They're really curious. They're super curious.
They wanna know what's going on.
They call them the ocean dogs.
Dogs of the ocean.
I know that Namibia has 2/3 of the world's population
of Cape fur seals. Yeah.
What is it about this region
that makes it perfect for animals like these seals?
So, the open the land that we have here,
it's mostly untouched, it's completely natural.
They have their space that they need to breed, to socialize,
where they raise their young.
And that's on land? Exactly.
And they have really, really good fish, just out over there.
the Benguela Current especially,
brings up nutrients from the bottom of the ocean.
And that's basically,
the field for this entire ecosystem here.
Is there any kind of way...
Hello.
(both laugh)
Look at it. Look at him looking.
Hey, what's going on?
(Ida laughs)
So, how are they detecting the fish.
They use their whiskers,
cause they have a lot of nerve endings in this area,
where the whiskers are.
The rats and cats have about 200,
but Cape fur seals have about 1,500 nerve-endings.
So very, very specialized, very sensitive to any vibration.
Then they feel the vibrations
or they feel the wakes in the water
and they can detect what size it is, what it is.
Is it a fish?
Is it another seal?
Is it a predator?
You're telling me that just from sensing
the vibrations in the water,
they can tell the difference between objects.
Yeah, definitely.
And they can tell the difference between the species,
just by the wakes that it leaves behind.
I suppose that...
Yeah, any given object is gonna create
a slightly different wake as it moves through the water.
Right, I want to be able to see those whiskers in detail.
So I want to get back to that colony
I'll race you. Oh, yay.
(intense music)
Yeah, this is cool.
(intense music)
Keep up Ida. Whoa.
Hi, hello, hi. Wow.
(intense music)
(soft music)
(seals roaring)
Oh, look at the seals.
Holy moly.
So we wanna walk slow here. Wow.
Slower, okay, nice and slow.
They are very excited, I see so many friends.
So we don't excite them too much.
This is the biggest colony you'll find of Cape fur seal,
anywhere in the world. Oh, really?
Wow. In the entire world.
It is a lot to take in all at once.
It is.
There's about 150,000 seals here at the moment.
That's like an entire stadium worth of seals.
Yeah.
And if you just take in a nice smell into your lungs...
(Ida laughs)
It's quite a stench here.
It absolutely stinks to high heaven.
Yeah, it does.
So that's the smell of tons and tons of fish
going in one end of a seal and coming right back out.
(both laugh)
Oh, my goodness.
(seals bleating)
This is a really good opportunity
to see those whiskers in perfect detail.
Science has proven that,
even though they released a fish up to a minute ago,
the whiskers can still pick up on those vibrations.
That is really impressive... Yeah.
Up to a minute. Yeah
And these seals can still follow that wake
and figure out exactly where that fish is gone?
Yes. Let me try and find one for you.
Just go here.
Oh, cool, nice.
The pups have really dark whiskers.
So right here... Can I hold that?
Yeah, you can.
So can you feel how it doesn't even bend?
Here's an adult whisker.
So here you can see it's a lot more sturdy.
So we've got the adult whisker there.
Yeah. Oh yeah, definitely.
Yeah.
That almost feels like a fish bone.
Can you feel the vibration coming through there?
So that's exactly what happens when they're hunting.
They feel that wake that the fish leaves behind.
It's almost like they can hear underwater
with these whiskers.
(soft music)
These are just Cape fur seals.
So Cape fur seals are not known as the true seals,
the true seals, the harbour seals are slightly different,
especially in the type of whisker.
So harbour seals they have... Oh.
Do you see that? Oh yeah.
Can I hold that? Yes, of course.
Okay. So if I compare the two side by side,
this one at the bottom,
that's the Cape fur seal whisker, very straight
almost like a fish bone.
And this one is a lot softer,
but you can see that it's got this wavy pattern on it.
It's an evolutionary trait for true seals.
Do you find that the true seals
are able to find fish quicker?
Yes. Oh, really far, faster?
Way faster.
(soft music)
Our oceans are full of trails, invisible to the human eye,
but this harbour seal has the ability to detect them,
thanks to hyper sensitive whiskers.
Their uniquely wavy structure is exceptionally hydrodynamic.
As she moves through the water.
They stay almost perfectly still.
Until she encounters a trail.
Minute vibrations alert to something close by.
(soft music)
A fish.
And she's not too far behind,
Unfortunately for her prey, once she's on the trail,
dinner is all but guaranteed.
It's funny because, in many ways,
seals are the last animal you expect to see
in the middle of the desert.
And when you look at how many of them they were,
it tells us that they are really,
really successful predators.
So thinking forward to how we,
as humans are gonna explore the water worlds,
we can't even get deep enough.
So we're going to need robots,
underwater submersibles to explore these worlds.
So maybe there's something in those whiskers.
In particular, having those wavy whiskers
that we could adapt or apply to our underwater submersibles
that would help us to better get around.
I've tracked down an engineer,
who's created synthetic whiskers.
And I'm really excited to find out
how they might help us explore.
Pablo, great to be speaking to you today,
really excited to have a chat
about seal whiskers, of all things.
Yes, that sensing capability
they have is very impressive, right?
So we built a device that basically,
looks like a seal whisker,
that is essentially an oscillator.
And these is for example, the first ones we built.
All right, cool.
We 3D printed the parts.
We even reproduce the undulations of the whisker.
Yeah. I can see that. Generation after generation,
we were able to get a lot more sophisticated
in the way we were fabricating these.
We started with one whisker,
then we moved to two, three whiskers.
Now we have arrays that are 16 whiskers.
Yeah, that's fantastic.
What next?
We're gonna miniaturize them,
and we're gonna add them to several
of our underwater vehicles.
I can show you actually,
one of the vehicles that is gonna be the first one
to host these sensors. Perfect.
These is one of the ROVS.
So we can put them under water.
They can do very simple pre-programmed behaviors.
But the idea is that,
we can leverage the potential of the whisker arrays,
to give them a lot more information of their surroundings
so that they can do slightly more intelligent behaviors.
So you got these soft underwater robots.
Where would the whiskers actually sit?
Because we don't have anything
that is analogous to a stingray with whiskers.
We have various types of designs.
The most intuitive is to have the whiskers
in the front, right? Like catfish.
And that gives us very simple sensing of the incoming flow.
Can you imagine this probe
working maybe on another planet.
And if we can sense objects
and understand what they look like,
do you think this might help us discover...
I dunno, life on another planet?
Well, if life on another planet generates wakes, yes.
Hypothetically, could be one way of detecting
some sort of motion, intelligent motion in an environment.
(intense music)
This next generation of probe could completely
change the way we explore our universe.
(intense music)
In the not so distant future,
we may be launching them to explore
the solar systems watering moons.
Like in Solidus and Europa.
Maybe seal inspired tank
will be the first to encounter alien life.
Whether we're exploring with probes or with our own eyes.
The next thing we'll need,
in the darkness of space is a light source.
All these street lamps that got me thinking
about the blackness of space,
because exploration is gonna take us far,
far beyond the warmth of our sun,
whether it's gonna be very little light and heat.
So to guide us along the way,
we're gonna need a source of light
that can basically power itself.
(ocean waves)
(soft music)
These aren't special effects, these ocean waves are glowing.
It turns out that 3/4 of ocean life
can actually produce their own light.
We are most used to the hot light that's generated by heat,
but bio-luminescence is known as cold light.
It's produced by a chemical reaction.
When a molecule called luciferin reacts with oxygen,
and the enzyme luciferase, it glows.
But not all glowing creatures create their own light.
Some have worked out a way to harness the light from others.
(bright music)
The bobtail squid.
It's evolved to camouflage itself
with bioluminescent bacteria.
To a predator, looking up from the seabed,
it twinkles like the night sky.
The bacteria feed of sugars the bobtail produces,
in return, the bacteria provide a light source.
Which serves to keep them both hidden from predators.
Scientists and designers who are fascinated by this bacteria
are now creating light sources from it.
So in the future, instead of streetlamps on our roads,
we might have bio-luminescent trees that glow in the dark.
Harnessing this new technology
could reduce global CO2 emissions
by 518 million tons a year.
And our explorers of space
might be able to use bio-luminescence
to create their own everlasting light source.
(birds chirping)
If we do manage to travel further into space,
survive the long journey, and find our way around.
There'll be one last problem to solve,
one of our most basic survival needs, shelter.
I made it back to England, because believe it or not,
the secret to living on a planet like Mars
might be lying right beneath my feet.
These structures, I love these.
They're absolutely fantastic.
To the untrained eye, something like this, you know,
it could be easily mistaken as being part of the tree,
but I have a feeling that's not the case.
You're absolutely right.
This is the fruit body of a fungus.
It's equivalent, I suppose,
to the flowers or the fruit of flowering plants,
Oh, wow.
Fungi are not plants, they're not animals,
they're a kingdom of their own.
The ecosystems of our planet would not work without fungi.
In the same way, they wouldn't work without plants.
Why is that?
Plants first started to try to colonize land,
460 million years ago, prior to that, they were in water,
bathed in a nutrient solution.
So they could soak up the nutrients directly,
but a very different story when you come on to the land,
because then the nutrients are not free and covering you,
they're in rock and primordial soils,
how do you get hold of them?
Well, the answer to that was...
They teamed up. They teamed up with fungi,
because fungi have this ability
to get into places other organisms can't.
This relationship between these two great kingdoms
has powered the ecosystems of our planet
for 460 million years or so, we could not do without them.
So here we've got some more of these big brackets.
Yep.
Well, what would happen if I try and break a bit off?
Well, you can try.
This is when I transform into the Hulk.
Ah, there we go, whoa.
Lynne, what is it about these brackets
that make them so strong?
Their whole body's actually made lots of hyphae,
fine filaments.
The walls of hyphae have chitin in them,
as well as other things.
Since chitin is used by insects,
in that as part of their exoskeleton,
we know it's really hard.
So this is clearly an adaptation by this organism
to be able to survive in even the harshest of conditions.
I wanna take a closer look at some of these hyphae,
these filaments.
I know that they are invisible to the naked eye,
but there are cases where we can see them,
when they aggregate together.
That's have a look at this one.
So if we just gently push this back.
There we go. Oh, yeah, look at that.
They kind of like white roots. They do, don't they?
Is that the same stuff
that we were looking at on this bigger tree?
The fruit body was the tip of the iceberg,
this is the underneath part.
This is actually the main part of the fungus, the mycelium.
These are all the mycelial threads or the hyphae,
all bunched together. Exactly.
And these will extend in a network beneath the soil,
these tubes, which can move nutrients of water
through the network, which is interconnecting
all of these bits of wood on the forest floor.
These cold systems can survive for a very long time.
You know, hundreds of years.
It feels like this is a key to what makes fungi
so successful. Spot on.
And even just pulling on it, it's surprisingly strong.
Yeah, there's considerable tensile strength there.
In this form,
it's essentially protected from the elements.
It is. That's what I'm getting.
And that for me, seems like a really important role.
(soft music)
Fungi are so important to ecosystems here on planet earth.
After speaking with Lynne,
it's got me thinking whether or not,
there's a more practical solution for the use of fungi
in their own right, as a material.
They're cheap to grow and they're highly versatile.
And so I'm following a lead
that's brought me out here to Namibia,
and to a group of developmental researchers
that are looking into just this.
(bright music)
Gloria, I hear that you're doing something
really exciting here.
We are doing an interesting,
building experimental project using mycelium.
Well, I like the sound of experimental,
that's right up my street.
There we go.
Oh wow.
Whoa. Look at that.
They're literally coming out of the bags.
Yes. Oh wow.
I'm fascinated by these mushrooms.
Look, all the way down the entire road.
You've got like these brackets of mushrooms
that are just popping out. This one is...
Oh, cool.
Oh, this is cool right here.
Oh, this is perfect, look at this.
Look at all of this detail.
You can really see it growing.
And then, that hydrostatic pressure and force,
just pushing through the bag.
It's almost like that scene from "Aliens."
They just go.
(both laugh)
You can see almost like the hairs and the fibers.
Wow.
It feels spongy,
it's like a spongy ball. It does.
And gluey. Yeah.
So you can begin to appreciate that the mycelium,
it's got some cohesive quality about it.
So we've got a couple of things going on here.
We've obviously got the mycelium.
Yes.
Which is growing inside the bag.
And we've also got these explosions of fruiting bodies.
So are you using both the mycelium that is now in this bag
and the fruiting bodies for the same thing?
What is part of the bag
is what we're gonna use to make the bricks.
That is what is going to form each and every building block.
It's gonna be compressed and fired up.
But before then, the mushrooms are gonna be harvested,
and sold or eaten.
I wanna see these mushroom bricks in their final form,
or close to at least. Yes.
We had made a sample brick earlier.
(bright music)
Here it is. Yes.
Okay. That's, ooh.
Oh man, it's actually quite heavy.
It's unlikely that you'd be able
to pick that up if it was a concrete brick.
Well, you don't know.
(both laugh)
In comparison to a concrete brick, that's much lighter.
That's gonna be easy to transport.
How strong is this brick?
When we're measuring the strength quality of any material,
we usually use a unit that's called the megapascal.
For typical concrete support structure,
we're usually aiming for about 25 MPa.
We need to...
So this particular block is 30 megapascal.
Is this a prototype? Yes, this is a prototype.
And it's already got the same compressive
strength as bricks, which are being used now?
Yes, as the top quality concrete that one can get.
And all of this, really just from wood chips
and allowing mycelium to grow in bags in a dark room,
compress it into a brick and,
hey presto. Yes.
That's pretty special, isn't it?
Yes, it is.
It is very, very special.
I think it's time to talk with one of the project leads.
Who's working with NASA to take this concept
from Namibia to Mars.
Chris, we're talking about real futuristic,
kind of stuff here.
What would these buildings look like?
Would they look like the buildings
that we have here on planet earth?
Would they look different?
Would they look like something out of sci-fi films?
The design that we've come up with,
is actually a sealed bag
that has some organisms preceded into it,
that has circulatory systems that go to different cells.
The main benefit is actually,
that the material can grow itself.
Over time, it's actually inflated into a domed structure,
and each one of those cells are part of the dome.
We can design a shelter to be the same as the interior here.
I've always been into science fiction
and the possibility of living on other planets.
And I always thought that, you know,
we were going to have to construct buildings
out of metal and carbon fiber,
but it's so brilliant to see that we've got to the stage
where we have the potential to use biological materials,
to solve a number of different problems, including food,
which is, I think is just so critical.
Absolutely.
One of the main problems is that,
outside of the Earth's magnetic shield,
there is cosmic radiation.
That's one of the key features and one of the reasons
we are gravitating towards mycelium is,
in the same way that plants can use visible light
to turn sunlight into energy,
some fungi can actually take that high ionizing radiation
and convert that into biomass or even food storage.
So they can actually block that radiation
from harming the astronauts.
How excited are you about using mycelium
and even just any organism
to further this pursuit of humankind?
I think this is a perfect opportunity
for us to actually bring life instead of destroying life.
Most of the times,
manufacturing is really the great destructor.
You absorb resources, you turn them into something,
and then there's waste that actually goes out
and it's detrimental to life.
In this case, we're looking at ways
that we can go to a barren planet that has no life.
And then seed that with something that can grow
symbiotically and create ecosystems as time goes on.
Shelter is one of the last pieces
of the puzzle for human space exploration.
And it doesn't seem that far away.
(intense music)
Soon, astronauts could be stationed on another world,
borrowing nature's secrets to push new frontiers.
And once biomimicry has helped us
establish habitats beyond earth,
the next chapter of human kind story will have truly begun.
(intense music)
Exploration is hardwired into the natural world.
Evolution allowed life on our planet
to push forth into new environments.
Something that's perfectly encapsulated
by the humble coconut.
The survival of that species requires exploration,
and everything about adaptation
is designed to help with this journey.
Once they're in the water, an inbuilt flotation device
allows them to be carried away by the tides.
Also, their light tall husk,
allows them to harness the power of the wind,
and all the while,
the seed of the coconut Palm is protected
and closed in a nutrient rich,
water-filled protective shell.
(intense music)
Like a coconut in search of landfall,
I'm embarking on a journey across the world
Where I'll come face to face...
We have an incredible animal.
With evolution's greatest success stories.
(dog whining)
Doesn't let go.
Nice, right there? There's none of that.
Yes?
(intense music)
Nice.
And the amazing technologies that they've inspired.
(Patrick laughs)
Wow, look at that.
Oh my God, that is so cool.
(Patrick laughs)
(intense music)
Fly, my pretty, fly.
(intense music)
My mission, to discover if our future
could lie within their natural history.
(intense music)
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