"one of the most powerful instruments on Earth." "we can spot the smallest detail in the widest view." "But what the eye sees is not the full picture." "Alongside the world we see is a very different world." "An invisible world of hidden forces and powers." "That shapes every aspect of life on Earth. revealing its mysteries and showing us the true wonder of the world we live in." "Sunday morning in the heart of town." "but it's not." "it's teeming with activity." "Our world stops there." "The eye of a needle held at arm's length is pretty much the limit of human vision." "Anything smaller is invisible." "But that doesn't mean it isn't there." "Beyond the limits of our eyes there's an amazing microworld." "it shapes our whole planet." "microchips." "These days they're inside half the stuff we own they're being made smaller and smaller. we can manufacture on a mind-bogglingly tiny scale." "Engineering is going molecular." "Everything that exists is made up of atoms." "Its properties depend upon how those atoms are arranged." "you get diamond." "But manufacturing is very crude at the atomic level." "but with gloves on." "Nanotechnology is finally allowing us to take the gloves off and it's going to revolutionise our world." "This is a factory of the future." "It operates at a scale so miniscule that even the smallest speck of dirt could ruin everything." "Which is why I've got to dress up like a cartoon sperm." "I'm all for cleanliness." "I might wipe my feet before walking in." "But here through those doors is a world where cleanliness takes on a whole new meaning." "I'd be as popular as if I'd walked a pig farm into someone's brand new carpet." "The machines in here allow engineering on a barely imaginable scale." "they need Britain's most powerful microscope it really is that small." "how small can I go?" "Here's the plan." "What I'm going to try and do is etch the title of this series on to an area 100 times narrower than the width of a single hair." "We put a strand of my hair in the machine." "There it is." "I'm looking for a good spot." "Big enough to write 'Invisible World' onto. on one scale of a single strand of human hair." "That's a platelet of hair." "That is mind-blowing." "Type in a..." "Invisible Worlds! and yet I feel like it's a very big moment." "here we go." "my God!" "There it is." "That's astonishing." "In an instant the machine has carved away just a few hundred atoms to form the words. that's tiny on the width of a piece of hair." "It's about half a micron wide." "A hair is at least 50 microns wide." "It's incredibly tiny." "So that's the title of this series written on a tiny piece across the width of this hair." "000 atoms wide." "if I were to write every letter of every word at that scale I could fit the entire collection on the end of this pen." "very clever." "there isn't really all that much call but engineering on this tiny scale could bring medical breakthroughs and a manufacturing revolution." "And is letting us mimic some of nature's extraordinary micro-designs. we might be able to copy them. some of the incredible things you see in nature might finally be within our grasp." "You might think the massive machinery of the space programme would have little need to copy nature's miniature marvels." "But harnessing the microscopic world is helping NASA tackle one of its biggest problems." "Dust." "dust." "The first thing we did was to set up the American flag on a pole and this is a picture of me taken by Alan Shepard." "And you can see I've only been out just a few minutes and the dust is starting to already accumulate below the knee on the space suit." "the more you accumulate. further than any other astronauts. they discovered that space dust isn't like dust on Earth. but rough as sandpaper. clogs up machinery and even punctures air seals." "Which is bad." "It was causing problems for breathing and clogging up vent systems and air conditioning systems." "It was impossible to get off." "NASA has spent years searching for a solution to this dusty problem and now they think they've found one." "Here back on Earth." "riverbanks and forests. it's deep in the invisible microworld of a lotus leaf. we said the best place to start is nature." "So what we started doing was looking at the lotus leaf." "Dr Wanda Peters leads a team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center looking into a special property of this amazing leaf. it just looks like any other leaf." "it looks like a waxy exterior." "this leaf is unique." "The lotus leaf just doesn't get dirty." "Nothing can stick to its surface." "Water just rolls off and it takes any dirt with it." "The secret of its astonishing self-cleaning act lies far beyond our normal vision. that's one of the veins in the leaf." "You can see that with your naked eye. you have spots that you see actually protruding out of the surface of the leaf." "so that's about this wide." "Keep zooming in on the leaf and you can see just how intricate nature's design really is." "The peaks and valleys are themselves covered in tiny hairs. you would never believe that you would see a surface looking that smooth that can actually be that rough." "The hairs of a lotus leaf's surface keep water and dirt suspended above it." "Less than 1% of this water droplet actually touches the leaf." "Its natural self-cleaning ability has inspired NASA's team to try to replicate it." "Wanda has put on some special NASA gloves." "And they're about to test them." "She's treated one of these tiles with a coating based on the microscopic rough texture of the lotus leaf." "there's really no difference between the coated surface and uncoated surface." "to the dust test." "The untreated tile." "And look at that." "The treated tile just shrugs off dust." "'Three." "Two." "One.'" "Now NASA is developing a stay-clean solution that could be applied to everything from the astronauts' suits to the shuttle itself." "And the lotus leaf secret isn't just for space." "Teflon - have eventually made their way from space back down here where they've revolutionised our world." "The lotus leaf coating looks set to be no exception." "Watch this." "It absolutely flies off." "Look." "That's astonishing." "I should be soaked." "look at that! it makes no difference." "But it gets better. but also from bacteria." "The lotus leaf is just one example of nature's microscopic marvels." "All around us nature has harnessed this invisible world to do truly remarkable things." "We're all used to keeping our feet on the ground." "But wouldn't it be great if we could defy gravity?" "What I'm doing right now is pretty amazing." "It wouldn't be possible without an army of helpers." "Wouldn't it be great if we could do this for real with absolutely no outside assistance?" "there is an animal who can." "The gecko." "It can run up vertical surfaces and across ceilings and the secret to how it can do that is hidden in the microworld of the invisible." "So just how does the gecko defy gravity?" "He may look like your average lizard - all the usual lizard staff." "But there's nothing ordinary about his ability to cling tightly to any surface. his toes are splayed out to give maximum grip." "Each of them is no bigger than a fingernail." "But what exactly is it that's holding them on?" "Could it be the claws?" "It's puzzled scientists for years." "But it turns out scientists weren't looking closely enough. each with a soft velvet-like surface." "Microscopic photography reveals that the surface transforms into hundreds of thousands of tiny hairs. and they reveal a quite astonishing phenomenon. suddenly you can see that each of these half-million hairs which create even finer hairs." "10 million could fit on a pinhead." "And that's the secret." "The gecko has created a vast area in contact with the surface of the glass." "It's all to do with something called van der Waals force. a bit like magnets." "the greater the attraction. but multiplied by 10 million or more and it's incredibly strong." "So strong it can take 10 times the gecko's body weight to prise the animal off a surface." "the gecko has had to develop a unique toe-curling method to unstick himself time and time again." "We all know small is beautiful." "It turns out it can be really rather clever as well and it's only when we drop into the world of the invisible that we realise just how awesome some of the things we take for granted really are. it's one of the longest single span suspension bridges in the world. then up here you'll find an engineering miracle. and one of nature's most successful designs." "I don't particularly like spiders and therefore by association spider's webs either." "But get past that and speed things up and suddenly we're watching a master architect at work." "First he uses one type of silk to spin a cross creating the spokes." "That's what gives the structure strength. to spin the lethal trap for any insect that touches it." "a free zone is left at the hub and now he sits and waits." "Researchers the world over are trying to discover the microscopic secrets of a spider's web. really not because I want to." "first you've got to catch one.'" "OK." "Urgh!" "good." "I like it." "So..." "Ohh..." "Right." "This is a nightmare." "I'm in a greenhouse full of spiders' webs." "Ohhh!" "OK." "She's moving." "She's definitely moving." "Ah!" "Ah!" "She's moved!" "catch." "What's the best holiday you've ever been on?" "going in." "Let's not make a big thing about it." "Tom." "This is actually the tough role in this job." "God!" "Oh!" "I could have done that." "I could have done that." "We've got her and I bet you were glad I was here to help." "Let's go out now." "Do you want to open the door?" "go." "the next step is to... milk it apparently." "I'm just going to pin one down next to her." "You're not harming her?" "Absolutely not." "Then I just pin the other one to constrain her." "funnily enough." "always a first time. which is extending out of the back of her abdomen and pull." "Simple as that." "And out comes a seemingly endless thread being made in the tiny silk factory at the back of the spider." "This spider could produce 700 metres of silk in one continuous strand. we need to have a closer look at the spider itself." "000 times' magnification." "Here on the abdomen are four organs known as spinnerets." "Each of them is dotted with lots of mobile finger-like spigots." "They squirt out liquid protein." "As the liquid leaves the spider... forming a super-strong thread." "And twisting several strands together gives the thread even more strength." "Each spider can produce several different types of silk from their spinnerets." "From sticky sheets used to wrap the victim... ..to an incredibly strong single thread." "You're kind of aware of the toughness of this stuff that's just disproportionate to its scale." "It's so fine." "That's a thirtieth the thickness of human hair. you can feel the bounce in it. it could tow an ocean liner with ease. but in how it's used." "And that secret lies in the water droplets at every junction." "strands of web are tightly curled." "Scientists believe that when a fly slams into it... allowing the web to flex and stretch." "Without breaking." "We've already learnt from some of the spider's tricks. harnessing the microscopic secrets of the natural world man-made structures..." "..Capable of withstanding the most powerful forces... ..As I'm about to demonstrate with a large piece of fruit." "That is a watermelon." "a 9mm semi-automatic pistol." "It can fire rounds at up to 300 metres a second." "It really is no match." "that was hardly a surprise. it's going to need some serious protection. a very strong but lightweight material military and now watermelons." "The bullet is travelling at over 600 miles an hour. the thin fibres in the jacket they spread the energy." "Good news for Mr Melon." "It stopped the bullet." "I can feel it." "Ah." "Yeah." "Still not a good day for the melon." "even more protection wouldn't go amiss." "And the microscopic world might have the answer." "this puff of smoke." "Except this isn't really smoke." "It's actually minute strands of the strongest fibre on Earth." "This man-made carbon thread is five times thinner than a human hair." "But ten times stronger than steel." "Each tiny thread is made up of thousands of even finer strands." "And each of those is made of thousands of yet smaller strands." "every single fibre just one atom thick." "And it's unbelievably strong. pitted against the world's current strength champion in a special testing machine." "Subjected to a massive force... ..The aramid finally gives out." "But the carbon nanotube goes on and on." "It's more than three time stronger than the aramid. but it promises to revolutionise our world." "we are blissfully unaware but invisible." "Take this chap." "About to cook a romantic dinner." "A dinner just for two." "that's what they think." "Mmm!" "Move past our human scale into the microworld... ..And this date is actually pretty crowded." "you've got company." "A universe of other creatures that we never see." "Like the tardigrade." "They're the size of a small grain of sand." "Completely transparent." "And they're everywhere." "Massively outnumbering the entire human population." "too." "BOTH:" "Cheers." "for example." "Drizzled with vinegar dressing." "Complete with a dash of... ..the free swimming vinegar eel. but it's probably best not to think about it too much." "And then we come to the cheese course." "Dusted with a coating of cheese mites." "You know that fine grade dust you can make out on older cheese?" "That's the bits the mites leave behind when they're done." "These mites are often deliberately added to give cheese its fine flavour." "But it's not just our food that hosts a thriving micro-life." "we're totally surrounded." "By creatures who share our most intimate moments." "If not necessarily our love of Barry White." "These are dust mites." "000 of them." "But we need them." "they help to break down debris. but in fact we are part of a massive ecosystem..." "..Teeming with useful life." "put her down now. but also what might kill us." "The difference between stability and chaos can pivot on changes to the tiniest structures." "Even the microscopic can release the most powerful forces on earth. know all about the danger of getting caught in an avalanche." "The avalanche came just out of nothing." "They came over a cliff and was just falling on me." "It's super quick." "The snow brings you in." "And then it starts a whole washing machine." "bam!" "Bam!" "Bam!" "You're covered and you've got no idea what's going on." "The avalanche stops." "You're like in concrete." "And you're not able to move one finger." "Nothing." "But where does the power of an avalanche really come from? way beyond what we can normally see. scientists are only now beginning to understand the potentially lethal power... of a snowflake." "We all know the classic snowflake shape. losing their delicate arms and bonding together." "It's far too small for us to see normally. locking the snow crystals together." "This creates a secure snow pack." "microscopic change deep below the surface... ..to turn this snow pack into a white time bomb. but important changes in the pack." "then resolidify." "more angular shape." "Their bond is now weak and traps air between the crystals." "lattice structure. but enough to make the slope treacherously unstable." "you can't see the risk." "You can't see the instability of the snow layer." "big sleeping monster." "microscopic changes. the signal decreases and there might be a weak layer down there." "it could give at any time. or something as simple as just the right amount of snow." "it will crack and the whole face will start to slide." "They are absolutely invisible." "the weak layer fails." "The bonds holding it to the layer above break." "And an avalanche starts." "000 tons of snow is thundering down the hillside." "it reaches 200km an hour." "destructive power is triggered by a microscopic change in a tiny snow crystal." "But it's not only nature that can generate huge forces at the microscopic level." "there's a miracle of engineering on display." "It's got thousands of moving parts and it's fast." "more than 100 miles an hour." "I'm not going to start talking about trains." "It's something else." "just as powerful." "It's the common cold." "Mankind's most universal infectious disease." "what it can trigger is an every day miracle." "human hurricane." "'A sneeze.'" "co-ordinating most of the muscles of our upper body in a split-second reflex.' propulsive force." "we can finally see the powerful air currents it creates." "The source of this hurricane is the compression of hundreds of muscles in the body." "the stuff 000 separate droplets." "that would be gruesome enough." "But each of those droplets contains a payload of bacteria and viruses." "which raises an important question - maybe?" "Five or six? it's possible to find out how far they can travel." "We can now measure the infectious range of a sneeze." "and this is what they found." "the biggest droplets are starting to fall." "But they're still small enough that they can be picked up again by an air current." "These droplets are just about visible." "They're around the width of a human hair." "they become smaller and smaller." "The smaller particles travel much further." "Some might even remain airborne for the rest of your journey and these smaller particles begin to divide and split further until they're too small to be seen by the naked eye." "yes." "agar dishes placed 10 metres from a sneeze were infected." "They showed that the average sneeze contains millions of micro-organisms." "how many people here are within striking distance of getting splashed with these micro-organisms?" "40 metres." "we're all going to get it and those particles can survive from several hours to several days." "This is genuine bacteria growth from a hand print left for just two days." "So there you have it." "The sneeze." "Quite simply one of the world's most efficient methods of transmitting disease." "Good job it's usually just spreading the common cold." "The hidden power of this invisible world is not just on Earth." "are invisible forces that can affect the entire planet." "The sun." "It's essential to life on Earth." "provider of warmth and light. erupting with solar storms. with the potential to wipe out every single electrical and telecommunications system worldwide. to understand how and why." "this gang of terribly clever scientists are hoping to launch the world's most powerful solar telescope." "And they're doing it to get a glimpse of something that's normally invisible... ..a tiny patch of the sun that's 93 million miles away." "The gondola that we're going to lift up with this balloon is taking us to a new frontier in science - looking at the fine structures on the solar surface." "invisible to our instruments." "They've waited years for this moment." "launch conditions are perfect." "The balloon is filled with pressurised helium." "85 million dollars of equipment and only one shot at the launch." "then." "The angle of launch needs to be exactly right." "APPLAUSE" "000 ft per minute." "all right!" "I think he's pleased." "The balloon has to withstand temperatures as low as minus 90 as it travels through the Earth's outer atmosphere and into the edge of space." "The pointing system is very high precision pointing accuracy and it amounts to taking the telescope several hundred metres away and being able to focus on one pine needle." "It was thought that the sun's most intense areas of magnetism..." "..were in sunspots - these dark areas here." "But the telescope shows something unexpected. but hidden in the crevices between the bubbling plasma of the sun." "bright white specks have a higher magnetic field than any other place on the sun." "And it's only now that they've been able to see them." "scientists are closer to understanding the destructive power of solar storms. the microscopic has the same power." "it supports it." "sometimes you really do have to brave the elements to enjoy the delights of the British coastline." "when we're beside the sea?" "Let's take a look." "it looks to be pretty empty." "a dominant force an essential for our planet and our own survival." "Plankton." "are an entire universe of astonishing life forms." "And all life on the planet depends on them." "Plankton provide 50% of the oxygen we breathe." "And we're now realising that they may play an even more important role." "fish are disappearing from our seas." "The cod and haddock we scoff with chips are plummeting." "new techniques and cameras are allowing us to solve one part of the mystery." "swimming through the sea is like wading through treacle." "they leave a wake behind them..." "..like footprints in the snow." "Larger fish use these wakes to home in on their dinner." "the seas appear to be getting warmer and a change of even one degree has an effect on these plankton." "The warmer water is thinner and the trails don't last as long." "That makes it harder for the fish to catch their prey." "we've discovered something else." "a different type of plankton is thriving." "much faster. 000 miles an hour." "Which is bad news for the fish that feed on them." "Fish like the cod and haddock that are plummeting." "Looking into the vital microscopic world has discovered one answer to the mystery and shown us how important it is never to lose sight of the smaller picture. but their existence is vital to the existence of life on this planet." "vivid and all around us." "The hidden power of a snowflake." "Nature's hidden designs." "Seeing the invisible renews our sense of wonder." "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd" "E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk"