Classic images of marine life in the waters around Orkney mark the 60th anniversary of Heriot-Watt University’s Scientific Diving Team, with stories of some of their underwater surveys in Scapa Flow and further afield – from horse mussel reefs and flame shell beds to seagrass meadows and kelp forests. Prof. Joanne Porter from their Stromness base is joined by Prof. Bill Sanderson and Prof. Hamish Mair.

It was washed up on the rocks below the cliffs of Rothiesholm in 1808 and if it was a basking shark then it was fifteen feet longer than anything ever recorded. And you can see a small piece of it in the summer exhibition, Sea Stories, in the Stromness Museum. Dr Howie Firth tells the story of the sea creature and the work of Dr Yvonne Simpson in opening up clues to the mystery – and the possible literary consequences for literature as well as science – and of an even deeper mystery that may remain.

Why are the world’s problems so insoluble, dragging on from one year to the next, with no sign of any fresh ideas to resolve them? It’s because of their very nature, says Prof. Susan Krumdieck: our increasingly complex society is producing highly complex problems that have no straightforward solution – but approaches are being found.

Driftwood gathers barnacles, piers develop seaweed, slipways attract limpets – the life of the sea ensures that everything within it becomes part of the activity of the underwater world. And so, wondered artist Jenny Pope, could a tiny mini-island cast out to float in Stromness harbour become an image for each of us today, of somehow staying afloat in uncertain times and finding links to the natural world through a web of life that is also looking for a home and a way ahead through stormy waters? Joined by others in the project, she tells the story of the little Shoogly Holm, due to be lifted on Sunday, and of the community involvement and how life has built up around it, with help and underwater images from partners in the project.

Populations are changing, and the various forms of media affect us all. Does this mean that dialect is fated to go the way of the great auk and the cruisie lamp? Can social media help? Could it even become a language – as has happened in Shetland? Dr Tom Rendall and Dr Sarah Jane Gibbon look at views and examples to open up the debate.

R. V. Jones was a practical joker in peacetime – and a master of the arts of wartime deception, in a continuing battle of technology with technique and counter-technique. In the post-war world he became Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen – where one of his students in the mid-1960s was Dr Tom Stevenson from Orkney, who tells the story of Prof. Jones’s secret war and his teaching methods – and some of his remarkable measurement techniques.

When Britain found itself at war with Japan, it was desperately short of fluent Japanese speakers to help with the many translation tasks – including codebreaking. Young men and women with a language talent were urgently recruited and given crash courses in Japanese and sent overseas with their new skills. Prof. Peter Kornicki tells the story of linguists at war – and how the Brisbane decrypting and translating team included a young man from Orkney, David Eunson, who would eventually teach Latin at Stromness Academy.

Light can be used to measure temperature in many settings, says Prof. Graham Machin of the National Physical Laboratory – from healthcare to manufacturing processes for iron and steel, glass and paper. He describes research under way at the Universities of Strathclyde and Glasgow that aims to revolutionise the practice of thermometry – including measuring microchip temperatures with sensors smaller than the diameter of a human hair.

From distant stars to tiny cells, cameras open up new worlds – and now they have entered the quantum domain. At the University of California, Berkeley, a team of physicists and biologists use individual electrons to image proteins inside cells. One of the team, Dr Eric Cooper, shares the latest images and explains how quantum mechanics holds the key to building ever more powerful quantum cameras.

Too often, says Prof. Stephen Friend, patients coping with mental illness feel isolated and neglected, and that applies to their families as well. A new project uses a smart ring on the finger to gather detailed data to follow mood transitions and their triggers, using health apps and wearables co-designed by patients themselves.

Everyone has heard of endorphins, the “feel good” chemicals; but less is told about their discovery, just over fifty years ago – in Aberdeen. It was made by a small group led by Prof. Hans Kosterlitz, who had come to Aberdeen from his native Germany in 1934 to work with JJR Macleod, the insulin pioneer and Nobel laureate. “It was a very competitive international race,” says Dr Alistair Corbett, who joined Kosterlitz’s group later, “and Aberdeen took on the world – and won!”

The old Norn language of Orkney and Shetland is long gone, but far from forgotten – and now Shaetlan is gaining recognition as a language in its own right. Shetland-based linguist Prof. Viveka Vellupillai tells us why. Ragnhild Ljosland of UHI Orkney shows from Norwegian comparisons where it might go next. Musician Barry Nisbet from Yell performs his reconstruction of the old Hildina Ballad, long preserved in Foula.

Online AIs are very accessible, and free; but there can sometimes be unintended consequences, for instance when they start to name real people – which can be us. They can make up a fake quote, saying something that you wouldn’t normally do on a site you wouldn’t normally visit. They can confuse you with someone else of the same name – who may have committed a crime. Prof. Lilian Edwards, a leading academic in the field of internet law, sets out some of the situations that can arise – and what can or can’t work to try to cope with them.

When the last of the islanders became too old to stay on, they had to leave the cattle behind. Fifty years on, the animals have flourished on pasture and seaweed, managing themselves as a herd. Alexander Annal outlines their story, with livestock expert John Copland, and William Annal as host; Penny Martin describes the plant life; and Prof. Stephen Hall tells how the herd have reverted to some ancient behaviour patterns.

Three years ago the European Space Agency launched the Euclid space telescope – to amass precise data from billions of galaxies, seeking clues from their motion to effects from an unseen universe. Prof. Andy Taylor’s team at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh have a lead role in the data analysis; and they have been seeing many spectacular images.

Tom Muir welcomes you in one of Orkney’s most historic buildings to hear of stories from a distant past. Shonaleigh Cumbers grew up in a family tradition which has passed on a series of 4,000 mythological stories gathered together in the Netherlands several centuries ago and not written down anywhere. Dr Simon Heywood speaks on the Arthurian legend and references to Orkney contained in it.

We are so familiar with gravity – but there are extreme situations where the current theory simply breaks down. Researchers on the frontiers of physics want to rethink it, and some of the most groundbreaking ideas are coming from Prof. Claudia de Rham of Imperial College London. If we navigate through its foundations, she says, we may show how it underpins the universe’s origin and fate – and also explain its accelerated expansion, without the need for the concept of dark energy.

Born in Pakistan 100 years ago, Abdus Salam shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for bringing together the myriad of subatomic physics into a common framework, called today the Standard Model. Prof. Claudia de Rham explores his life and work, and how he saw science as a unifying force in its own right. “Scientific thought and its creation,” he said, “is the common and shared heritage of mankind.”

It's one of the greatest sea stories of all time, composed over 2,800 years ago, and now a film – Odysseus’s ten-year journey home after the fall of Troy. And beyond the myths of gods and monsters, says Dr Vassilios Spathopoulos, the story contains something far more practical: a remarkably precise record of the ancient Greek sky. Join him as he decodes the hidden astronomical information in Homer's epic tale.

After the showing last night of the new film on climate change, one of the speakers in it goes deeper into his reasons for taking up the issue. Lieutenant General Richard Nugee warns that climate change is now a core national security threat. He explains in conversation with Howie Firth why defence planners are now so concerned and describes the background geopolitical issues to which climate risks are adding.

Prof. Tim Lang calls for urgent action to tackle the UK's dependence on imported food and the supermarket 'just-in-time' distribution system. Increasing risks from climate, inflation, and international conflict require national and local action on stockpiling, he says, and to rapidly expand our food production at all levels, with communities playing a vital part.

Not long ago Orkney could feed itself: today weather delays mean gaps on supermarket shelves. But, says gardener Ed Bollom, with land and now polycrubs, it's possible for us all to grow more for ourselves, and for communities to come together to develop allotments and market gardens. Rebecca Ford joins him to give news of community food-growing initiatives in Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles.

Researchers are working to develop crops with greater climate resilience and also improved nutrition. That means, says Prof. Wendy Russell of the University of Aberdeen’s Rowett Institute, improving existing crops such as barley and brassica species, introducing new alternatives like hemp and buckwheat, and also looking at ways to harvest wild plants like wild garlic and sorrel. In such ways, she says, we can improve diet, utilise less favourable land, and expand overall local food production.

Could ammonia be the fuel of the future? Yes, says Dr Angela Kruth of Germany’s start-up CAMPFIRE AG, who leads an international alliance working on its development. Ammonia is formed of nitrogen and hydrogen. The hydrogen can come from renewable energy sources – and thereby provides a way to store energy from wind or solar. It’s simpler to handle and transport than hydrogen, and it’s also cost-effective. In fact, she says, “Ammonia is a game-changer for the energy future.”

A life-changing mountain accident left Karen Darke paralysed from the chest down. But as an explorer at heart, she has navigated the challenge of paralysis in extreme ways, including a Paralympic gold in hand-cycling in Rio in 2016. She has cycled across seven continents, become a triple Guinness World Record holder for land speed by arm power, climbed El Capitan with her arms, and skied in Antarctica to create the Pole of Possibility. She shares stories of innovation, collaboration and mindset to show thinking differently can make surprising things possible.

The story of what the outdoors can do for our mental health. “It’s part personal story, part science,” says Ross Cunningham, “and rooted in my own journey of climbing all 282 Munros, the highest mountains in Scotland. Hillwalking found me when I was in the grip of severe depression and anxiety – it saved my life, and it changed it. This is the story of discovering a Scotland I never knew existed, told through photographs, film, and my own words.”

On 30 August NASA will launch its newest space telescope. Its name honours Dr Nancy Grace Roman who became the first chief of astronomy at NASA and the ‘Mother of the Hubble Space Telescope’.” Dr Karina Cooper, who works in the institution housing Dr Roman’s archive, draws on photos, stories and documents to build a picture of how the barriers facing women in early 20th-century astronomy were brilliantly overcome.

Prof. Ingrid Mainland of UHI’s Archaeology Institute describes the picture emerging from analysis of the vast number of bone fragments found at the Ness of Brodgar – of cattle and their diet and origins, of sheep, pigs and red deer, and dogs as well. And among the bird bones were – a white-tailed eagle. She brings the latest news of insights into the relationships of people and animals emerging from the finds.

The many charred seeds found at the Ness of Brodgar have survived for 5000 years. The cereals are mainly naked barley, also a little emmer wheat. Peat-connected weed seeds include crowberry and cinquefoils. There are signs of fruit trees too, with crab apple pips and wild hazel nuts. From the charred plant remains, says Scott Timpany, Associate Professor at UHI’s Archaeological Institute, we can understand how plants were used as food, fuel, and part of the fabric of life at the Ness.

It's not only the scale of the Ness of Brodgar that stands out – it’s the sheer quality of the building work. There are piers at intervals in the walls and evidence of flagstone roofs, and cleanly-faced, close-fitting stones that look as fresh as if they had been built today. The craft of building at the Ness, along with what's being learned from detailed study of individual tools, is described by Mark Edmonds, Emeritus Professor at the University of York and Visiting Professor at UHI’s Archaeology Institute.

It was Samuel Morse who suggested a transatlantic submarine telegraph link. When the first cable was completed in 1858 flags flew in New York streets and church bells rang. But it soon failed and it was eight years before a new attempt succeeded – using the iron-hulled Great Eastern, the largest ship the world had seen, and a great improvement in cable design masterminded by the physicist William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin. Dr Alan Walker tells a tale of cables, ships and human determination.

Two years ago the Ness of Brodgar excavations had closed, with the long haul of studying the finds continuing. Then a Ground Penetrating Radar survey of the site showed something totally unexpected – so much so that a small team went back in July to investigate, supported by the Time Team. Site director Nick Card has now had time to take stock of the findings and provide the latest update.

After the remarkable achievements of John Rae in the harsh Arctic terrain, his return to the world of Victorian Britain was hard. He had tackled the two great Arctic challenges of the time – the fate of the Franklin expedition and the final link for a Northwest Passage – but his information about the fate of Franklin had led to Lady Franklin destroying his reputation, helped by Charles Dickens. Then Iceberg, the ship he built with a plan to return to the Arctic, foundered in a storm and sank with the loss of all hands. His great-great-grandniece, Alice Jane Hamilton, has written a novel about this time in John Rae’s life, based on the actual events, reconstructing some of the family conversations, and this evening she tells the story of the chain of events that caused his life to fall apart, and how the pieces eventually came back together.

Imagination, says Prof. Adam Zeman, is something that we all use constantly – “whenever we reminisce about the past or anticipate the future, whenever we plan or daydream, whenever we enter the worlds created by art or science.” He draws on research to show that the human brain is “above all else a creative, imaginative organ – and that we have evolved to share what we imagine.”

We all talk, and we all hear much background sound through the day – but how often do we actually listen? All too seldom, says Julian Treasure. His five TED talks on the art of speaking and listening have been viewed more than 160 million times. Hearing is something that just happens to us, he says, but listening – that is the most fundamental skill of all, and yet scarcely ever taught.

The first transatlantic telegraph cable, via Ireland and Newfoundland, was laid in 1858 – and after a month broke down. It would be seven years before the next attempt, and in the meantime another option was suggested, part overland and part by sea – going via Shetland, Faroe, Iceland and Greenland. The telegraph company commissioned the ideal man for the work – the Orcadian Arctic explorer Dr John Rae. Dr Fleur Ward describes his account of the terrain and the various indigenous communities along the way.

We hear from time to time of DNA sequencing of the genetic blueprints of living creatures – their genomes. The Darwin Tree of Life Project is taking the work to a whole new level of complete ecosystems and beyond – it's reading the genomes of all findable plants, animals, fungi, and single-celled organisms in Britain, Ireland and surrounding seas. Dr Thomas Mathers of the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge describes how the project works, what's been done so far and what's been learned.