It's the ultimate energy challenge – to replicate the nuclear fusion process that powers the Sun. With big breakthroughs in 2022 and private companies making rapid progress, what does this mean for fusion’s prospects - and clean energy for a brighter future? Plasma physicist Dr Melanie Windridge describes the latest progress.
The dust from Mount Hekla’s 1845 eruption is said to have given Orkney its best-tasting tatties ever. Could rock dust improve the soil and help today’s crop? Several growers in Orkney and Moray have been testing this, and Hospitality students at the college will prepare and serve the mystery tatties for tasting.
Join artist Lin Chau and horticulturist Elizabeth Woodcock for a wellbeing workshop on Scapa beach where each participant will bring their own art materials. We’ll seek to enjoy the world of the shore, listening to the wind and the waves and the seabirds, and creating through drawing and poetry. All abilities welcome.
Taking our temperature to check health has a long tradition but the Covid pandemic brought it right to the fore, and also raised the question of its accuracy. And indeed, says Prof. Graham Machin of the National Physical Laboratory, it turns out that fever screening during the pandemic was not very effective in preventing its spread; but the difficulties are now better understood, along with ways to fix them – essential information to help us cope with whatever such challenge the future may bring.
Meet friends old or new and enjoy the best of Orkney cheese, meat, fish and baking. The One O’Clock Toast today is in memory of Kathleen Scott of North Ronaldsay, teacher in Dundee and Community Association secretary in the island, who laid the foundations for North Ronaldsay’s successful bid for international dark-sky status. It is given by Islands Councillor Heather Woodbridge.
It used bronze gears to predict the position of sun, moon and planets – and eclipses as well. It was recovered from an ancient shipwreck, and over decades researchers have applied techniques to reveal its original form. Dr Vassilios Spathopoulos tells the story of the 2,000-year-old Antikythera mechanism and shows a working model of a machine that was in action at the time of Caesar and Cleopatra.
In the making of fish fillets, various parts are discarded. And thereby, says Prof. Giovanna Bermano of Robert Gordon University, we are losing out on the potential for nutrition and for a range of other products that can be developed for industry; and the same can be said for seaweed. She includes some samples for you to taste.
Settlement in Slovenia from early times has been in lowland areas – but a big shift seems to have happened in the 4th-6th centuries AD, with archaeological evidence showing a move to higher ground. But why? Archaeologist Dr Tina Milavec shows images from various sites and explores possible explanations.
Explore the fossilised remains of Lake Orcadie’s ancient fish and work together with artist Mary Grieve to help create a shoal of shadows, designing and building a shadow puppet fish to recreate the water world of Devonian times, in an era before life came ashore leading to reptiles, birds, mammals and us.
Smart clothes and new uses for traditional textiles, digital skins and virtual clothes to wear online …. Dr Karen Cross, Josie Steed, and Dr Yang Jiang from Robert Gordon University describe the new horizons afforded by the application of digital technologies to clothing, fashion and fabrics, featuring designs by Kirsteen Stewart and music by Brian Cromarty.
Take the 6 pm ferry from Stromness for an islands evening, with John Goodlad’s story of the 19th-century Shetland cod fishing boats that sailed to Rockall and Faroe, and a look with Elaine Stewart and Monica MacLeod at the island of Barra, with its own fishing tradition.
Tombstone, Arizona, famous for the gunfight at the OK Corral, also had a … Microscopical Scientific Society. The town was born in the same year as Albert Einstein and faded away in 1887, the year which laid the foundations for his theory of relativity. Howie Firth tells the story, with songs from Riders in the Sky.
Slovenia lies on the crossing point of four great routes across Europe, including the ancient Amber Route from the Baltic to Italy and Greece. What has that crossroads position meant for trade and culture over the centuries? Archaeologist Dr Tina Milavec of the University of Ljubljana gives a picture of a central European land of mountains and forests between the Alps and the Mediterranean.
They’re Western music legends, with songs of the early days of cowboys on the rolling prairies, pioneer wagons heading west, campfires at night beneath the stars. They’ve performed the songs and stories of Texas and Tennessee, Bear Creek and the Brazos River, Cimarron and Santa Fe. They’ve appeared at the Hollywood Bowl and Carnegie Hall, Grand Ole Opry and Austin City Limits, Nashville and Louisville, Wabash and Woodstown, with awards along the way including two GRAMMYs.
High in the south of Slovenia, near Italy and the Adriatic Sea, rises the great plateau of the Karst, a mass of limestone shaped by water. Join Dr Edvard Kobal to see images and find out about the landscape itself and the food it produces in the loamy terra rossa soil, including the red wine known as teran and the air-dried ham pršut.
Friday night is astronomy night for Eric Walker and several guests who'll be dropping in. He's hoping that you'll be able to join him online, wherever you are, to find out what to see tonight and how to see it, with the naked eye or a telescope.
A science festival has a radical role in developing a creative climate for a region. Here is the story of how it began, and how Orkney was involved from an early stage in the concept.
