(whimsical music)
Did you know that a surprising number of objects
that you use every day are thanks to accidents?
(bike crashing)
(glass shattering)
Let me show you what I mean.
On this episode, we discover how a failed super glue
leads to a more organized world.
In a sense, it was really one of the first
truly viral successes.
Find out how a scheme to trademark wine
has brought relief to millions.
Break constipation, or it will break you.
And learn about the dumpster dive
that's shaping our future.
Literally, in this case,
one man's trash was another man's treasure.
(explosion)
Oops, I changed the world.
Okay, am I famous?
Yes.
Okay.
Am I dead?
This won't age well.
No, you're not dead right now.
Am I Elvis Presley?
No!
You do know Elvis is dead, right?
Is he though?
That's not really the story here, Natasha.
This is about the tale of the humble Post-it Note
and how it took two men and 12 years
to change the way we prank our friends
and organize our lives.
So I'm not Elvis then.
Who am I?
I thought you said I was somebody famous.
Unbelievable.
This story begins
with the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company.
It's a bit of a mouthful, isn't it?
You'd think they'd come up with something snappier,
like MMM, M Cubed, Three Cube.
Oh, 3M.
We got there in the end.
3M starts out as a mining company back in 1902.
But after the rocks they mine
turn out to contain nothing at all of value,
they ditch digging around in the dirt and decide to focus
solely on the manufacturing side of things.
The industrial revolution
has got a full head of steam behind it.
Mass production is finding its feet, and we scientists
finally understand enough about how the natural world works
to start messing around and making entirely new materials.
And that's where the fabulously named
Spencer Ferguson Silver III comes in.
What a name, what a guy.
So Silver started working for 3M when he was just 25,
right after earning his first doctorate
in organic chemistry.
In 1968, just two years after he joined the company,
he was working as a senior scientist
tasked with developing new kinds of adhesives.
In 1968, Spencer Silver is working on
a pressure-sensitive, super-strong adhesive
to hold airline parts together.
We've all seen things that are glued together come apart.
And I think if you're going to glue an airplane together,
you'd better make sure it's pretty strong.
Spencer mixes together a cocktail of chemicals
in what he believes will be a winning combination.
Now, this isn't your usual kitchen chemistry.
The cocktail is pressurized with nitrogen
just to get it to combine.
Then he puts this new glue to the test.
It's a complete disaster.
It's weaker even than a child's school glue.
That's definitely not something that you would want
to assemble planes with.
(airplane crumpling)
(horn playing disappointed sound)
But before he returns to the drawing board,
Silver decides to look at his failed creation
under the microscope to try and figure out
what's gone wrong.
Normal glues are what's called a viscoelastic liquids.
They're basically a rubbery, part-solid, part-liquid
that can flow into the bumps and cracks
of an irregular surface and then set hard,
holding itself in place like pieces of a jigsaw.
But Silver saw something completely different.
Instead of an amorphous mass of stuff,
he sees these tiny spheres.
He describes them as beautifully bright crystalline spheres,
like little glass balls.
They're not like solid glass,
but rather soft and rubbery.
Hmm, so a bit like bubble in bubble tea.
(Natasha slurping)
Silver had inadvertently made a collection
of acrylate-copolymer microspheres.
We've all done it.
The name is a bit of a mouthful,
but their behavior is fascinating.
When they're spread on a surface,
the microspheres form a single layer
on top of that surface.
So you end up with this bumpy, pebbley surface,
kind of like a rubbery skin on a basketball.
With millions of these tiny contacts,
the microspheres in Silver's glue
can stick onto a surface well enough,
but just a little force is enough to break the contact
and unstick the glue.
Silver finds that these microspheres
mean that his failed super glue has an interesting property.
The glue can be stuck and unstuck countless times.
The only thing that reduces stickiness is the glue surface
getting clogged up with dust and dirt.
Spencer Silver has never seen
anything like this before.
He gets a sense that it could be useful.
He just doesn't know how.
For five years Silver goes around promoting this glue,
his solution without a problem.
He talks about it at industry seminars.
He chats about it to colleagues at 3M,
but nobody can think of a use for this glue.
I mean, it's not hard to see
why people had a hard time with it.
Here was Spencer.
He's in the business of creating adhesives
which are designed to stick.
And this is an adhesive that doesn't really stick at all.
Silver somehow manages to patent the adhesive
in 1972, despite not having a valid use for it.
This patent bit's a bit dull, isn't it?
Let's get rid of that.
(whooshing)
Ooh, who's this guy?
Art Fry is a new product developer at 3M.
And he's always had something of a flair
for inventing things.
I mean, even as a kid in his Minnesota home,
he put together toboggans from bits of wood lying around.
But Art is also a regular attendant
at his local choir practice.
Wednesday night was church choir practice night
for Art Fry, and he'd have various bookmarks
in his hymn book to mark out
the songs they'd have to sing in a few days' time.
The problem was the bookmarks would fall out,
and he'd forget which page
he was supposed to be singing from.
(dinging)
And he has a sudden Eureka light bulb moment.
What if I had a temporary bookmark
that would stick to the page I need,
but then could be moved week by week,
sticking to the next page?
Having heard Spencer Silver
tout his not-very-gluey glue around 3M,
Art Fry suddenly has the problem
for which this could be the solution.
Back at the 3M labs,
Fry wastes no time in testing out his idea,
and gets hold of some of Spencer's low-tack glue.
Fry applied a strip of glue across the top of the paper
and then stuck it into a book,
and experimented with tipping it this way and that,
and it didn't fall out.
And he was able to remove it, and repeat it again.
Hey, presto, he'd invented what he needed.
(dinging)
At last, Spencer's non-gluey glue
has a purpose in life.
You know, something to live for.
But don't go anywhere just yet.
This story doesn't end here.
When they're developing the sticky notes,
they beg the lab next door
for whatever scrap paper they could spare.
Like Coldplay, all they have is yellow.
So yellow it is.
These sticky bits of paper were immediately popular
with colleagues, and as they were used,
people realized that they really extended way beyond
just being bookmarks.
Colleagues would leave notes for each other
and annotations without actually changing the document.
With these notes, the 3M employees
had discovered a new way to organize and communicate.
People love them.
But further up the chain, senior management just can't get
what this trivial little item is all about,
and how it can be commercially viable.
They went for a limited launch in four cities,
calling them Press 'n Peel, but for whatever reason,
the public just didn't warm to them
and sales were negligible.
So they try a new marketing strategy.
The new plan is to simply give the sticky notes away
to the businesses of Boise, Idaho.
They call it the Boise Blitz.
This ended up being extremely effective.
Among companies that were given samples,
90% ended up reordering them.
Finally, they have proof that there is demand
for Art and Spencer's creation.
In 1980, after a roller coaster ride of development,
the sticky notes are finally released to the world.
They called them Post-its
because you could literally post them anywhere.
I mean, you'd think that after 12 years
they'd come up with something a bit more creative,
but hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
They're even using the same yellow-colored paper
that they borrowed from the lab on the first day.
In its first year, the product earned 3M
more than $2 million.
That left the sales and marketing department gasping.
In a sense, it was really one of the first,
truly viral successes.
They were self advertising.
People would put the notes on documents,
and the recipients would see this little slip of paper,
peel it off, play with it, stick it back down,
and then go out and buy some for themselves.
Post-its were the kind of product
you didn't know you needed until you had it.
You think you know how to run an office?
Wrong.
You need Post-its in your life.
As a bookmark, as a reminder, an annotation, a label.
Whatever you can think of, Post-its can help.
Not an ad.
This message was not paid for or endorsed
by 3M Corporation.
It's meant for educational purposes.
Batteries on included.
Not for human consumption.
One side fits all.
Colors may fade over time.
We just think Post-its are great, seriously.
They're so useful.
By 1998, the little yellow notes
are worth about a billion dollars annually.
These days, I defy you to find a work environment
that doesn't have Post-it Notes.
They're sold in over 150 countries.
It's one of the top five
best-selling office products of all time.
Of course you can now get Post-its
to serve every conceivable need.
They come in a range of colors, sizes, and shapes.
There are stickier versions, and waterproof versions
that stay attached in some of the most extreme conditions.
And this is still not an ad.
I don't have to read the disclaimer again, do I?
They've become so iconic to the office environment
that you can even get digital versions
that hang around on your desktop.
In the year 2000, 3M ran a charity auction
to celebrate 20 years of the Post-it Note.
And they encouraged artists to create a three-inch square
artwork on a Post-it Note, which they then sold off.
One pastel and charcoal piece by artist RB Kitaj
entitled "After Rembrandt"
sells for a record-breaking 640 pounds.
(gavel rapping)
That's more than $900.
I myself have also created an artwork on a Post-it,
which I intend to auction for a huge amount of money
if there's any interest parties out there.
(crickets chirping)
Well, this is awkward.
Even in the digital age, Post-it Note sales
have shown no signs of slowing.
The market for Post-it Notes
was worth about 2.1 billion U.S. dollars in 2019.
Now it's estimated that it will rise to about $2.3 billion
by the year 2024.
And it will grow by about 1% a year.
That's not bad for a product
that senior management didn't believe in at the start.
(musical flourish)
Still to come,
How messing around in the lab
gives rise to a futuristic wonder material.
His next experiment was to put a frog
in the center of the magnet, and that also levitated.
And the walk in the snow
that almost ends the world.
(bomb exploding)
We are living in the nuclear age.
In fact, you can pinpoint it down to the very second.
This is the University of Nebraska.
Scientists here are studying the mummified remains of a man
buried in a shallow rock shelter over a thousand years ago.
And they've just made a shocking discovery.
This poor guy has suffered a terrible, miserable death.
Scientists determine his guts stopped functioning properly
months before his death.
He's died from an extreme case of constipation.
It's what's called a megacolon.
Not being able to go is a, well,
that's a pretty terrible way to go.
This is the story about the discovery of something
that will keep things moving: ex-lax.
Doctors throughout history have always stressed
the importance of a good bowel movement.
Now you might think about the worst job you could have
in Tudor England would be to be the groom of the stool
to Henry VIII.
The groom of the stool's job
was to help Henry basically go to the toilet.
Courtiers tripped over themselves to have this role.
Why?
Because they wanted to be close to the king,
to wipe the King's bottom.
That was the best way to get to his ear.
I wonder if the groom had a deputy?
His number two?
(spoon slapping)
These grooms relied on the old tried and tested methods
for easing the royal passage to the throne.
It turns out King Henry VIII is also prescribed enemas
infused with dock leaves to help get that bowel moving.
Get that wrong, and you'd be the enema of the state.
(bulb squeaking)
Unfortunately, not all kings have an ass-istant.
Sorry about that.
Down at Graceland in 1977,
a hugely overweight Elvis Presley was reaching the end,
and also reaching for the toilet paper.
Rock and roll?
Doctors find that he's suffered chronic constipation,
likely brought on from the cocktail of drugs
he's been prescribed.
I take vitamin E.
(audience laughing)
He's already in a bad state.
He's overweight, he's taking painkillers,
but straining to push one out on a toilet
might have been what triggered a fatal heart attack.
He'll live on forever.
Even though he's passed on, the memory is still here.
From Cleopatra's asp to Elvis's pelvis,
plugged up people throughout history
have been crying out for relief.
(woman groaning)
To rid the world of catastrophic constipation,
we need a potent poop producer,
something that will really get things moving.
Luckily, there's a solution
that comes from the most unlikely of places.
Buckle up, as we head to 1900s Europe.
Hungary produces a wine that's the toast of Europe,
the Tokaji white wine of Hungary.
It's like a sweet dessert wine.
Absolutely beautiful.
It may well be delicious, Tony,
but it's also threatened.
A disease called grape phylloxera
is devastating European vineyards.
It's caused by a small mite that attacks the roots.
Hungary's wine output is severely impacted,
and merchants have to import inferior wine
from other places.
With the country awash with substandard plonk,
the producers of Tokaji want to demonstrate
that their wine is the real thing.
So they're looking to a way of marking the wine,
of guaranteeing that people know that's Tokaji wine.
Chemists think that a special
color-changing indicator will do the trick.
It's a compound called phenolphthalein
invented in 1871 by German chemist, Adolf von Baeyer.
The clever thing about phenolphthalein
is that it's a pH indicator.
In acidic environments, it's colorless, it's transparent.
Whereas if it's in alkaline or basic environments,
it turns pink.
To test the authenticity of your wine sample, then,
you add an alkaline to it,
which would turn the phenolphthalein pink.
The details on exactly what happened next vary.
Hungarian chemist, Zoltan Vamossy,
is testing phenolphthalein on animals
to see if it's safe to use.
And it seems to be, so what's the natural next step?
Use it on himself.
Of course he does.
Phenolphthalein interacts with the wall of the colon
causing the muscles to contract.
And additionally also gets more water into the colon.
Muscle movement plus water
equals some explosive results.
So, as he dashes to the bowl, he declares to the world
that he's found a laxative of great merit.
(farting, groaning)
(explosion)
Very much what you'd call
a win-some, lose-some situation there.
Now all this may well be true,
but there is an alternative theory to be considered.
There's another version of this story
where they actually skip at this round of testing
and put it straight into the wine,
which leads to a mass outbreak of the runs.
(farting)
Whichever story is right,
an effective laxative has been accidentally discovered,
(bell dinging)
and the timing couldn't be any better.
A new ghastly medical science
is stirring the public's concern and driving laxative sales.
A bowel movement, if you like.
It becomes very fashionable in the late 19th century
among doctors to believe that all diseases
are linked to the gut.
Scientists call this theory autointoxication,
which is basically the idea that your own festering waste
is poisoning you from the inside.
Doctors use it as a catchall
to diagnose all kinds of sicknesses like headaches,
indigestion, impotence, and even heart disease and cancer.
And there's only one surefire way
to clean out the bowel
and banish the demon of autointoxication.
Laxatives.
(exciting music)
The world goes potty for laxatives.
The science of autointoxication reaches America.
Suddenly, everyone's worrying about their bowel movements.
It's considered the mother of all diseases.
By the 1930s, the nation is whipped up
into a constipation craze with slogans like-
Constipation: the monarch of all diseases.
A clean colon is more important than a clean face.
Break constipation, or it will break you.
Do I have to have a bowel movement every day?
Not necessarily, though most people normally do.
According to the experts at the time,
the cure for civilization is civilized laxatives.
For doting mothers, it's a major obstruction.
Moms are completely fed up
with trying to feed castor oil to their children.
Phenolphthalein is tasteless.
That puts it at a distinct advantage to castor oil.
In 1906 news of phenolphthalein's success in Europe
reaches a Hungarian pharmacist living in New York City.
His name is Max Kiss.
Kiss teams up with this Lithuanian named Israel Matz.
They experiment with phenolphthalein and figure out a way
to make it appealing to children.
(table scraping)
Chocolate!
(liquid tinkling)
Now all they need is a killer name,
something that'll stand out
against all the other laxative brands on the market.
(man groaning)
The product is originally called Bobo's,
but then Kiss becomes inspired by the Hungarian term ex-lax,
which is short for when the government reaches a stalemate
and no longer functions.
Political blockage, biological blockage.
It also sounds a bit like excellent laxative.
A colon-conquering legend is born.
In 1906 Kiss and Matz found Ex-Lax Co
right in the heart of Brooklyn,
and go to work cornering the market.
It's not going to be easy.
The choice of laxatives is overwhelming.
There's Lax Cracks, Naturalax, Nature's Law Lax, Gerolax.
But ex-lax's success comes from how it's presented.
It's now a common practice to give children laxatives daily.
In fact, it's become so common
that one physician observes that it's rare to find a child
with bowels that function normally.
Oh no, not soup.
A great big frown, too?
Sure, but that was yesterday.
Today, she's fine.
The smile is back.
Phenolphthalein proves to be a huge hit
with the colon-conscious consumer.
And it all feeds into ex-lax's success.
They lead on ex-lax's lovely, chocolatey taste.
As the adverts claim, kids can't get enough of it.
So in 1933, half a million pounds of phenolphthalein
is consumed by the American public.
I mean, they are literally
the most purged people on the planet.
(door clanks)
But all this craze for colon cleaning
is raising concern with some medical experts.
Ironically, overuse of laxatives
actually weakens the bowel, leading to constipation.
And it's a vicious cycle.
You end up with colonic cripples
who are lifelong slaves to these pills.
And targeting children with medicine
presented as candy bars is particularly troubling.
It was a disaster waiting to happen.
(siren wailing)
And in 1932, it did.
In California, a 10-year-old boy
eats an entire box of ex-lax candy, and he dies.
He experienced violent diarrhea, raised temperature,
and rapid pulse followed by skin eruptions,
delirium, and coma.
The American Medical Association warned physicians
and the general public about the potential
of phenolphthalein poison.
While the overwhelming evidence of the time
indicates that phenolphthalein is safe,
it doesn't stop questions persisting.
(stamper clicks)
Gordon, you tell your father not to take this all at once
like he did before.
Then, after 60 years of ex-lax lining the shelves
of pharmacies, in 1997, the proverbial poop hits the fan.
At a cost of about $10 million,
most ex-lax products have been pulled off shelves
at the urging of the Food and Drug Administration.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration
released the findings of a new animal study
on phenolphthalein.
Mice were given 30 times the recommended dose for six months
and developed cancer.
It doesn't seem like a real world comparison,
but given the habitual use of laxatives,
the risk from long-term exposure cannot be ignored.
But the loss of phenolphthalein
is a blow to the industry.
It still works better than any other laxative ingredient.
Ex-lax turned to an alternative natural laxative
as their active ingredient, and phenolphthalein's golden era
as the king of the throne is over.
And the science of the bowel moves on as well.
We now know that there are good bacteria in the gut
and that contributes to health in all kinds of ways,
from digestion, to cardiac health, even mental health.
So poo's actually good for you.
But that doesn't mean there isn't still a need
for a trusty laxative.
City living gives rise to sedentary lifestyles.
People are eating poorer, less well-balanced diets
with more processed foods.
And you combine that with the anxiety of modern life
and being too busy to go to the toilet when you need to,
it all leads to more and more cases of constipation.
So the global laxative market keeps growing and growing
and it's expected to hit over $10 billion by 2030.
So phenolphthalein's unexpected story
at the center of America's laxative lunacy
is all thanks to some dodgy wine,
entrepreneurial immigrants,
and an advertising-fueled constipation craze.
It may not have phenolphthalein in it today,
but ex-lax is still with us, carrying on its valuable work.
(musical flourish)
Still to come, how a Jewish refugee
unwittingly inspired a brand new weapon
and saved the free world.
It was, of course, the Manhattan Project.
(explosion)
But first,
(whooshing)
science can often feel like a slow, painstaking process
with minute advances made over many years.
But it wasn't like that
back in the good old days of the 17th century.
Now called the scientific revolution,
this was basically a time when there were
a lot of gentleman scholars,
they weren't called scientists yet,
would apply what we would now call the scientific method.
Back then, it was very much a time of, well,
messing around and finding out.
And because this was relatively early
in the history of science, there was a lot to find out.
Now in the 20th century,
we've been at it for a few hundred years.
And if we hope to make any breakthroughs,
it takes a careful, experimental approach
and many years of really intensive study
if we hope to discover anything new.
Even then, when you have made a breakthrough,
it's often so specialized and so technical
that most people will not understand what you have done
or why you have done it.
And believe me, I know.
I've done a PhD.
But for a Russian-born physicist, Andre Geim,
the wild west of scientific revolution
is still very much alive to this day.
It's Geim's dedication to experimentation
that will lead us to the accidental discovery
of a new material that could change the world: graphene.
And if you don't know what that is,
then this story's just for you.
And if you do know what that is, great.
This story's for you, too.
Geim is pretty much your typical Russian genius.
The Russians set a lot of store by hard subjects
like maths and physics, which is why
they're such formidable chess opponents.
And Geim excelled at pretty much
everything he set his mind to.
Geim is working as a university professor
in Manchester, England.
One day he and student Kostya Novoselov start performing
regular experimental science sessions
that they name The Friday Night Experiments.
The Friday night experiments were a chance
to ask a question and try to answer it
with the minimum effort.
When the week's work was done,
these highly-qualified physicists would tap into
their scientific revolution roots and mess around
until they discovered something new.
Wrench.
File.
Calipers.
The things they'd try were random, simple, unorthodox,
and sometimes plain ridiculous.
Over the years, Geim's unorthodox research
has led to some surprising discoveries and innovations.
One of these was Gecko Tape inspired by the feet of geckos
and how they allow the animals to stick to surfaces.
Another Friday night experiment
teaches a frog to fly, sort of.
Geim has access to some incredibly strong,
donut-shaped magnets.
One Friday night, he pours water down
through the center of the ring
just to see what would happen.
And he was amazed to see that it stayed there
rather than spill all over the floor.
Geim must have had a flair for the theatric,
because his next experiment was to put a frog,
mostly made of water, in the center of the magnet.
And that also levitated.
Technically we can do it with you without any problems.
Uh, no thanks, Andre.
It's these Friday night experiments
that would change the field of materials science forever.
And no, I'm not talking about levitating a platypus,
although that would be cool.
In the lab is a special high-tech instrument
called a scanning tunneling microscope.
To use this microscope, you first have to calibrate it.
And the way you do that is by putting a piece of graphite
underneath with a fresh surface.
The way the lab technicians would achieve this
was by putting a piece of sticky tape on the top of graphite
and then ripping it off.
You remove the top layer
and you're left with a fresh bit of graphite.
Then the piece of tape's just thrown in the bin.
But for this particular Friday night experiment,
Novoselov turns his back on the microscope
and heads for the dust bin.
He picks the tape out of the trash
and he sees there's a very fine layer of graphite.
Suddenly a spark of realization hits him.
This could be the answer to making ultra-thin carbon layers.
"What's so great about ultra-thin carbon layers?"
I hear you say.
Well, we're gonna tell you.
Just wait a bit.
When he puts it under the microscope,
he sees that it's incredibly thin.
He estimates it to be around
10 to 20 nanometers in thickness.
Literally in this case,
one man's trash was another man's treasure.
So Novoselov and Geim begin working
to make the graphite layers as thin as possible.
They took a piece of graphite and then applied tape to it,
adhering it, and then pulling it back to reveal a fresh,
really thin layer of graphite.
Then what they did was take another piece of tape
and adhere that to your initial piece of tape.
And then separated these two.
Doing this, they were left with an even thinner
piece of graphite.
So far, this advanced physics
doesn't look that hard.
Repeat this process several times and you're able to get
some incredibly thin layers of graphite.
Putting it under the microscope, they estimated some of them
to be just a few nanometers thick.
(tape ripping)
Ow!
These microscopic flakes of graphite
begin to show some surprising properties.
Graphite is one of the few non-metals
that will conduct electricity because its unique structure
allows electrons to move, to carry the charge.
But these ultra-thin layers were giving off electrons
like there was no tomorrow.
That's something you just don't see in other materials.
At this, Novoselov and Geim realized that they'd achieved
something that most people wouldn't have thought possible:
a way to make a material that was just a single atom thick.
The single, one atom thick honeycomb layers
of graphite become known as graphene.
And the way to make graphene had been right there
under their noses all along,
just sitting discarded in the bin.
Okay, now we're gonna tell you
what's so special about ultra-thin layers of carbon.
Not only is graphene the thinnest material ever made,
it's also one of the strongest.
It's more than 200 times stronger than steel
when you try to pull it apart.
That is quite tricky to imagine.
Have you got a simple everyday example?
A square meter made into a hammock
would be strong enough to support a four kilogram cat,
but would weigh less than one of its whiskers.
(cat purring)
Thanks.
Unlike steel, graphene is also elastic.
It's not rigid.
So that means that it can absorb a great deal of force
before it eventually breaks.
Graphene is also an incredible conductor
of both heat and electricity.
Electrons are able to move through graphene
hundreds of times faster than in most metals.
But at the same time, it's an incredibly effective barrier
to all physical substances.
The honeycomb structure is so dense
that it stops even the smallest atoms from passing through.
Strong, light, bendy and conductive.
These wondrous properties have opened up a whole new world
of possibilities for materials science.
For the past 15 years now,
researchers have been investigating these unique properties
and trying to find uses for graphene
in basically every application you can think of,
There's basically no area of materials
or engineering science that hasn't tried to use
this new wonder material.
Using graphene in the composite materials
we make planes with dramatically reduces their weight.
That increases fuel efficiency and range.
Within the wing there is currently a layer of copper mesh.
So if lightning strikes your aircraft,
you need to dissipate that energy around the aircraft.
If I had graphene in there,
I could potentially could dissipate that energy.
So again, the plane could be stronger, lighter,
and be able to fly much further than it can today.
In the future, it could even be used
for ambitious massive engineering projects
like space elevators.
This is a proposed mega structure that directly connects
the Earth's surface to low earth orbit,
where you have a ribbon or a tower that will take a vehicle
or a carriage away from the surface and up to orbit
where you could have a waiting space station,
or you could use it as a jumping-off point
to getting things further out of the Earth's system.
And back on earth,
incorporating graphene particles and flakes into coatings
and paints helps objects to repel reactive gases and water.
These coatings would be impermeable to anything
that would cause a substance underneath to rust or decay.
So rusting ships would be a thing of the past,
as would rotting house fronts.
Some of the most exciting applications
for graphene technologies are in the medical industry
where engineers are tapping into the material's unique
electrical and thermal conductivity.
The researchers here imagine
painting onto a wall
to produce invisible low power radiators.
They're already in discussions with leading car makers
about using their material to remove heat from engines,
or warm seats without adding weight or using more power.
Graphene's remarkable unreactivity
also makes it compatible with biological systems.
So it makes sense to start building things
like implants out of it.
Because it conducts electricity so well,
scientists are also thinking of using graphene
to replace damaged nerve cells.
And in combination with rubber,
replacing damaged muscle tissue.
It can even be used to help treat cancer.
The idea is that you inject graphene particles
near the cancer cells.
These are especially good at absorbing infrared radiation.
So radiotherapy can be more targeted
into the malignant cells,
making the treatment more effective.
Electrons in graphene are more mobile
than in any other material in the world
offering exciting opportunities for electronics.
The first device that the team made using graphene
was a transistor, the electrical component
that is basically how all of our computers work,
and the limiting factor
of how fast our computers currently are is
how many transistors you can fit onto a chip.
But with graphene, researchers think that they can make
smaller, more efficient transistors that are stronger
and can handle higher voltages.
Eventually graphene electronics could completely replace
all existing technology for computer chips
and other electronic components.
The flexibility and strength of this stuff
could allow for flexible touch screens,
and tablets that you can just roll up like a newspaper.
Although it's early days for this wonder material,
the future looks bright.
The global market for graphene was valued
at $87.5 million in 2019, but that's predicted to rise
to $870 million by 2027.
Right now we're still looking
at the dirty and first applications
that just scratching the surface of graphene's potential.
This Friday night discovery has not only
paved the way for a whole new generation
of materials science.
Physicists have now discovered
other two-dimensional materials.
You can think of them kind of as graphene's
brothers and sisters.
Making them and combining them is breathing new life
into synthetic materials science.
Given how useful all this could be,
perhaps it's no surprise that it's earned Geim and Novoselov
the Nobel prize in physics, a knighthood,
and the Freedom of the City of Manchester.
Hmm, I wonder which they're more proud of.
Winning Nobel prize is not an achievement.
The achievement is doing proper experiment.
I think it says a lot about the importance
of curiosity and playfulness in modern science.
Too often we get bogged down in the minute details
of some obscure corner of lofty research,
But by letting our minds wander aimlessly,
or throwing water in an expensive magnet.
Yeah, probably don't do that.
Or pulling something out of the bin
and who knows what you'll find, but you can be pretty sure
that you're gonna learn something.
And you may get lucky
and end up winning the Nobel Prize lottery.
(musical flourish)
What do you think of when you hear the words
nuclear fission?
It's the splitting apart of a large
and potentially unstable nucleus
into two smaller daughter nuclei
also emitting several hundred megaelectron volts of energy
and several thermal neutrons that cause further reaction.
Well, obviously.
But apart from that?
Kaboom!
Yes!
(explosion booming)
Kaboom indeed.
Bombs.
For most of us, the word nuclear can be a little bit scary.
But that is what we're talking about today:
the accident that led to the first nuclear bomb.
We are living in the nuclear age.
In fact, you can pinpoint it down to the very second.
And that second is at 05:29 and 45 seconds
on July the 16th, 1945.
(explosion booming)
A flash of blinding light and a mushroom cloud
herald the arrival of the nuclear age.
This was the first-ever detonation of a nuclear weapon.
Now known as the Trinity Test,
the scientists detonated a prototype nuclear bomb
whilst they watched from a safe, five-mile distance.
Some scientists considered the possibility
that the explosion would ignite the entire atmosphere,
but they went ahead with it anyway.
Atmosphere still intact,
the desert was not so lucky.
As the dust settled, sand was found melted to glass
from the intense heat of an explosion so powerful
it could be felt over a hundred miles away.
The test is considered a success.
From that moment on, the raw potential of nuclear devices
has been apparent to us all.
(alarming music)
A large-scale nuclear attack
on the United States could produce a patchwork pattern
of fallout covering two thirds of the nation.
More than 2 million square miles in a single day.
The nuclear revelation has transformed our world for good
and bad, and it may seem incredible,
but we can trace the origins of this back
to the oppressive regime of Nazi Germany.
Actually, Tony,
to tell the story of nuclear fission properly,
we need to go back slightly further than that
to the late 19th century when scientists begin to hone in
on the true structure of the atom.
The question of what is the indivisible fundamental
structure of matter is something that's occupied scientists
and natural philosophers for millennia.
If you take anything and grind it to dust,
and then grind the dust into even finer dust,
what is the fundamental building block
that you cannot break down?
Ancient Greek philosophers named these fundamental particles
atoms after atomos, meaning uncuttable.
By the late 1800s, scientists discover these atoms
are in fact made up of other particles.
Those white dots orbiting the red nucleus,
they're electrons.
Then in the nucleus, you've got protons and neutrons.
They're the yellow ones.
And those neutrons hanging out in the middle
have some very interesting properties.
Because the neutron has no electric charge,
it isn't repelled by the positively-charged protons
in the nucleus.
So scientists seize on this fact
and start bombarding atomic nuclei with neutrons
just to see what happens.
And that is where the hero of our story,
Lise Meitner comes in.
Lise Meitner was a gifted young woman.
She was born to an intellectual family in Vienna,
in Austria, and she in particular
was very interested in physics.
She earns her doctorate in physics from the university there
in 1906, but the only position available to her in Vienna
then was as a school teacher.
Oh, this old story.
So she moves to Prussia,
which we all know is Germany these days,
in the hopes of finding better academic prospects.
Lise Meitner meets a German chemist called Otto Hahn,
but there's still a problem.
Hahn's facility, the Chemical Institute of Berlin,
doesn't admit women.
Apparently the director was worried
that women's hair would catch fire.
The same director had a very impressive beard,
which was presumably non-flammable.
Oh, good grief.
Hahn appeals,
and the director eventually lets Meitner in.
She makes the most of it and pursues her research goals
and ultimately becomes one of the foremost known researchers
in Germany in nuclear physics.
(record scratching)
(Hitler speaking foreign language)
It's now March, 1938.
While Meitner's working away in Berlin,
the Nazis annex Austria.
And Hitler rode in triumph into Vienna.
As an Austrian Jew,
Meitner's very presence in Germany becomes perilous.
It's a really ugly period of history.
We see Jews being intimidated, beaten in the streets,
turned out of their homes, robbed, murdered,
and of course there are Nazi sympathizers
spying on you everywhere.
Hahn, who lobbied so hard for Meitner to be admitted
to university now wants her fired.
Under this political pressure,
Otto Hahn eventually asks Meitner to leave the university.
She takes this really hard.
In fact, it feels like as if he just completely
turned his back on her, someone she had trusted.
And it's written in her diary
that this is the essence of her being thrown out.
Meitner flees Berlin and Germany.
She's lucky to find a new position in the relative safety
of the University of Stockholm.
She's isolated and alone with few resources to work with.
It's a massive fall from grace.
Back in Berlin, Otto Hahn's team
continues to experiment with neutrons.
So they're using neutrons to bombard nuclei of uranium,
which is a naturally occurring, very heavy element.
Has an atomic mass of 238.
I don't really know what that means,
but here's Athena with the important bit.
During this experimentation,
they're expecting to maybe make a heavier uranium atom,
but instead they end up finding traces of barium,
which has anatomic mass of 137.
Hahn is confused.
How can adding neutrons to an element make it lighter?
Hahn decides to write to Meitner,
hoping that she can come up with an answer.
It arrives at Christmas.
Meitner is visited by her nephew, a scientist called Frisch.
Together they take a walk in the snow.
It's an idyllic scene.
Frisch on skis, Meitner following behind on foot,
both deep in conversation about the kind of physics
that would melt our brains.
As they walk, they talk about Hahn's problems
and run a thought experiment.
Maybe the nucleus of the atom
is more like a water droplet.
And what happens is, as it comes in contact,
or a neutron collides with it,
it starts to become pinched in the middle
where eventually, as it becomes more and more elongated,
eventually that center part will break,
separating into two pieces.
So then you have two nuclei,
each with a lower atomic weight that confused Hahn.
But since they're both positively charged,
they violently repulse each other.
Small amounts of mass
are converted into huge amounts of energy.
Right there in the snow, Meitner and Frisch,
with nothing but each other as a sounding board,
had cracked what Otto Hahn had failed to achieve
with an entire laboratory to his disposal.
Meitner and Frisch
call this process nuclear fission.
Meitner lets Hahn know that they've solved his problem,
(explosion booming)
which is probably an error.
Otto Hahn goes and publishes his own experimental results
on nuclear fission.
And this results in him getting the Nobel Prize
for chemistry for nuclear fission, and meanwhile,
Lise gets absolutely nothing.
(horn playing disappointed sound)
World War II breaks out
less than a year after Meitner's Christmastime discovery.
Many of the world's best brains join together
to produce an atomic bomb.
Meitner wants no part in the work.
Scientists are quick to realize
the devastating potential of nuclear fission.
President Roosevelt authorizes
a top secret project
to develop a weapon based on nuclear fission.
It was, of course, the Manhattan Project.
(explosion booming)
Just three weeks after the Trinity Test
turned sand to glass in the New Mexico desert,
the U.S. Army unleashed that weapon on the Japanese cities
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
turning people and buildings to ash.
On August 6th, 1945, the first atomic bomb
dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima
on the southwest coast of the island of Honshu,
virtually ending the conflict in the Pacific.
The devastation these bombs unleashed
is just unimaginable.
To think that all of this carnage came from a single bomb.
World War II was over,
but the horror of nuclear war hangs as a shadow
over international relations to this day.
This government, as promised, has maintained
the closest surveillance of the Soviet military buildup
on the island of Cuba.
Nuclear fission has brought mutually distrustful nations
to the brink of nuclear destruction
on more than one occasion.
And we've spent the last 60 years trying to figure out
how not to destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons.
While Meitner was greatly saddened by the fact
that her discovery led to such destructive weapons,
she carried on with her research,
searching for a peaceful application for fission.
It wasn't long in coming.
Since the Industrial Revolution,
the world has pretty much relied on fossil fuels
for its power.
We now know, however, that the use of these fossil fuels
is pretty much bad news all around.
Burning them emits greenhouse gases
that alter our planet's climate.
Burning them also produces particulates
that cause a huge number of respiratory illnesses,
and the extraction of these substances from the earth
causes a huge amount of environmental devastation
and political unrest.
All in all, a bad thing.
But maybe nuclear power offers a solution.
Meitner helps to construct Sweden's first nuclear reactor
using her same discovery, but with some subtle tweaks.
That's a very delicate process that happens
at nuclear power plants.
You're basically wanting to split uranium,
but allow for it to have a chain reaction.
Just not all at once, because in technical terms,
that could be very bad.
The heat given off by the fission reaction
is absorbed by nearby water,
which heats up and turns into steam.
That steam turns turbines,
turbines are attached to generators, and boom.
Boom.
Only, hopefully not boom.
Exactly, Natasha.
Nuclear power plants don't burn their fuel,
so no damaging gases are released into the atmosphere.
While you still have to mine for uranium,
nuclear reactors use about 200 tons of uranium per year
compared to coal plants that require 14,000 tons of fuel
every single day.
But while a lot better than fossil fuels,
they aren't perfect.
The downside of this is it produces quite a lot
of uranium decay waste.
So even though it's a great way to produce energy and heat,
we still don't really have a way of disposing of this waste.
And of course accidents can happen.
And they've happened on several occasions.
A wrecked nuclear plant
that continues to leak contamination.
For Japan, Fukushima is the curse that won't go away.
Each of these incidents has eroded public trust
in nuclear power, but nuclear energy
is one of the safest forms of energy generation.
And modern nuclear power plants can even reuse
some of that old nuclear waste.
Today between 10 and 15% of the world's energy
is provided by nuclear power plants.
In Meitner's adopted Sweden, that figure's 40%.
It's the second largest source of low carbon electricity
after hydro power from 440 reactors in 32 countries.
And nuclear fission is finding uses
in smaller applications.
We're splitting atoms for all kinds of tasks these days,
such as, for example, creating mildly radioactive isotopes
for use in medical imaging.
There's even nuclear fission taking place
on the surface of Mars right now.
The last two rovers that NASA sent to the red planet
have been equipped with nuclear thermal reactors.
As we look to a more permanent presence on Mars,
space agencies consider nuclear as the most obvious source
of energy for human colonies.
(optimistic music)
(inquisitive music)