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? Will it bring us clean energy for a brighter future? Plasma physicist Dr Melanie Windridge describes the latest progress.
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. Numbers limited to 8, booking essential: tickets £10.
The dust from Mount Hekla’s 1845 eruption of Mount Hekla 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 in their gardens, and they’ve brought a selection of tatties to Orkney College for you to taste, some grown with rock dust and some without. Hospitality students at the college will prepare and serve the mystery tatties for tasting opinions. Could there really be a difference in flavour and texture?
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 in 1901 from an ancient Greek shipwreck, greatly corroded and encrusted, but 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. She describes a new research project that’s coming up with opportunities, and provides some samples for you to taste.
Today’s settlement pattern in Slovenia is an old one going back to the 4th-6th centuries AD – living on hilltop sites. In early days they were either naturally defended or built up as forts; later many became the sites of churches we can see today. But further back in Roman times, settlement was on lower ground. Archaeologist Dr Tina Milavec of the University of Ljubljana shows images from various sites and explores possible explanations. She goes on to ask about the Orkney situation, and for any similarities or contrasts. Numbers limited to 30, booking essential.
Smart clothes and new uses for traditional textiles, digital skins and virtual clothes to wear online, projects bringing together computer skills and creative designs …. A team from Robert Gordon University describe the new horizons afforded by the application of digital technologies to clothing, fashion and fabrics. Dr Karen Cross from RGU’s School of Creative and Cultural Businesses will be joined by design researcher Josie Steed from Gray’s School of Art and Dr Yang Jiang from RGU's School of Computing – with designs by Kirsteen Stewart and music by Brian Cromarty.
Take the 6 pm ferry from Stromness for an islands evening, with the story of the 19th-century Shetland cod fishing boats that sailed to Rockall and Faroe, and a look at the island of Barra, with its own fishing tradition which today includes langoustines as well as white fish.
The town of Tombstone, Arizona, famous for Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday and the gunfight at the OK Corral, also had a library, an opera house, and … a Microscopical Scientific Society led by a geology pioneer. 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. That was the year when Heinrich Hertz discovered radio waves and confirmed James Clerk Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory of light, and Michelson and Morley found the speed of light constant for all observers. Dr Howie Firth tells the story of the town and the events of 1887, with some songs from Riders in the Sky.
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. The trickle and seep deep within has over the ages dissolved away rock and opened up massive underground networks of caves. There are rivers and lakes, sinkholes and chasms, in a world that is often beautiful and sometimes like an artist’s fantasy. Join Dr Edvard Kobal to see images of the karst 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 to discuss the night sky with him. 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. Eric, who's the chair of Highlands Astronomical Society, will also show images taken from his own back-garden observatory in Conon Bridge and from the Orkney sky this week.