The Solar Show Wild & Weird

# Wormy fish-killers Convoys of caterpillars

# Super-clever, brainless slime! # Yuk!

# Bunny rabbit swarms Whizzing storms

# And pigs that swim at dinner-time

# Tornadoes of fire Starfish going haywire

# Algae balls from space! # What?!

# Prairie dogs that chat Birds going splat

# And fish slapping in your face

# They're wild and weird, wild and weird

# Really, really wild and really, really weird

# They're wild and weird, wild and weird

# They're really, really wild

# They're really, really wild and weird. #

On today's show -

strange explosions in the sky.

How the sun changed the course of musical history.

And we reveal a shocking new discovery -

spider goats!

They're territorial, they're cannibalistic.

So if you put a lot of them together, they'd kill each other.

Ah, Naomi - come and make the most of this heat wave!

Whoo!

Ah!

This is the life!

Sun's out, guns out... Mwah! Mwah!

Yeah, you might need to work on those a little bit.

What are you talking about?

Oi, oi, oi - you're in my rays, man!

Did you bring the ice that I wanted?

-Certainly did...

-Yes!

-..Your Lordship!

He-he-he.

What was that for?

Oh, sorry. Are you worried it's going to wash off your fake tan?

Er, this is not fake tan.

Besides, why are you dressed like it's the middle of winter?

Er, do I really need to point out the dangers of the sun?

What are you talking about?

That pretty little yellow thing in the sky isn't dangerous!

Oh, really?

So, if I were to tell you

it was exterminating life all over the desert,

blowing things up left, right and centre, that wouldn't concern you?

Close the roof! Close the roof!

GRATING NOISE

Let me explain.

Nevada, 2013, and Norman Rogers, a local photographer,

captured these strange explosions.

Fireworks - bet it's fireworks.

What, in the middle of the day?

I saw these objects going across the frame of the video.

Sometimes, they would change direction.

Sometimes they'd go up, sometimes they'd go down.

I didn't know at first what they were.

I examined the videos closely,

and I was able to see a little flapping motion, which was...

Their little wings were flapping.

-Flapping? As in...birdies?

-Yep.

Oh, strap yourself in -

it's going to get a bit gruesome from this point on.

Oh, really? Oh, hang on, then.

Thanks for the heads-up. OK, I'm ready.

Wildlife officials found the bodies of birds -

birds that had fallen to their death from clear skies.

Now, mass bird deaths, although shocking, are not that unusual.

Poisoning and collisions like this plane strike,

can bring down flocks of birds.

Whoa!

But the reports from Nevada were different.

A bizarre collection of different species,

but with one thing in common.

The feathers were sort of melted.

They were in fragments.

The birds were all burned alive.

Sorry - did you say burned alive?

I know, shocking, isn't it?

Shocking? It's downright gruesome, is what it is.

-Told you!

-And this has got something to do with the sun?

It does. Here's a clue from somewhere a little closer to home.

Remember this?

September 2013, central London.

We've had temperatures of up to 50 degrees Celsius

in the last few minutes.

If I just look at the current temperature, well,

it's still 42 degrees.

People have been trying to cook eggs.

My colleague realised there was a smell coming out - he smelled it.

We looked - the carpet was on fire.

Melted bicycles, burned cars...

We realised it was from the big building.

# It's gettin' hot in here... #

And all fingers pointed at the building above

that was burning a hot spot on the pavement below it.

Let me demonstrate with this magnifying glass and an old bus.

By channelling the sun's rays through it, you can burn an object.

Hey, hey, hey, hey, what are you doing?

Sorry! I was just trying to prove it is hot enough

to damage stationary objects.

Not with my miniature London double-decker bus, it's not.

Besides, stationary objects are one thing -

surely it can't set fire to birds in flight?

You say that, but imagine the magnifying glass effect

on an industrial scale...

Damaged now.

This is Ivanpah, a power plant with a difference.

300,000 mirrors reflect the desert sun onto a central tower,

boiling water to create steam, which then generates energy.

Turns out, though, this engineering masterpiece

had an unexpected, deadly side-effect.

Allow me to demonstrate.

Just need some tape, a piece of wood...

Oh, and my lab coat.

Just turn the light on, have a stretch.

OK, let's start. Just stick that there.

Ivanpah in miniature.

The mirrors are perfectly angled.

It's a parabolic curve, focusing the light onto a centre point.

Now, where did I put that stick?

Oh, there it is.

Now, let's turbo-charge that light.

Whoa! That's impressive!

Now it's hot enough to roast wood, even melt lead.

Feathers? Well, they simply don't stand a chance.

-Enjoy yourself?

-Yeah.

-Great fun!

-Where did you go?

-The lab.

-The lab?

-Yeah.

-Didn't realise we had a lab.

-Yeah, it's just out there.

-Cool!

-Can I carry on?

-Oh, yeah, please do. Yeah.

As the desert sun hits Ivanpah's 300,000 mirrors,

the light is reflected towards the towers,

creating temperatures of up to 1,000 degrees Centigrade.

The experiment in green energy had created

a solar death ray!

A solar death ray - brilliant!

Maybe not for the birds.

Yeah, good point.

You know, as cool as a solar death ray is,

it's not the only thing the sun is responsible for, you know.

-No?

-No. You see,

that bad boy up there also changed

the course of musical history, my friend.

OUT-OF-TUNE SQUEAKING

Which is more than you ever will.

Just rude!

In the 1600s, Antonio Stradivari, a famous violin maker,

took a piece of spruce and made a violin.

Stradivari's instruments are the most famous on the planet.

Every musical collector wants to own one,

and every dealer wants to get their hands on one.

When I pick up one of these instruments,

there's always something a bit special and magic about it.

And rise...

..and rise...

-..and rise...!

-OK, great stuff. Yep.

-No, that's not really what he meant by magic.

-Oh.

An instrument from the golden period,

which this instrument is from,

could be worth from a few million dollars to 12 million dollars,

or 15 million dollars.

Ah!

15 million dollars?!

-I know!

-My one at school only cost 15 quid!

Why so expensive?

I've no idea. But I know a man that does.

-Do you want some water?

-Yes, please.

It was a thrilling moment for me when they took it out of the case,

and I have gloves on, and they put it in my hands and said,

"Here's a musical instrument worth millions of dollars,

"Grissino-Mayer, do what you want with it!"

Henri and his team studied the unique rings

from the wood used on one of

Stradivarius's most famous violins.

We use pattern matching in the tree ring sciences,

to determine when these tree rings were formed.

Now, each ring represents a year in a tree's life,

and Henri discovered the tree used to make the violin

had very thin rings.

That meant it grew slowly.

Why would a tree grow slowly?

Not enough sunlight.

And guess what? Slow-growing trees produce dense wood,

which in turn creates an exceptional sound.

OUT-OF-TUNE RASPING

A sound people would pay big money for.

Maybe not in your case.

Anyway, why wasn't there enough sunlight?

Ah...

You see, when Stradivari was making violins in the Italian Alps,

the sun was behaving very strangely.

Between 1300 and the late 1800s, its power was reduced.

The lakes froze, the days darkened - it was a little ice age.

Henri's theory was that the sun - or the lack of it -

created super-dense,

super-musical spruce.

Ah, so solar starvation could be the secret to Stradivarius's beautiful

and unique sound?

-Absolutely.

-Mmm.

-Gives me an idea.

'Mmm, if I starve this violin of light, I might sound better.'

Naomi - turn out the light.

Certainly.

Wait, turn it back on.

-I just need to get into position first.

-Oh, OK.

VIRTUOSO VIOLIN PLAYING

Ah, yes!

Violins really do sound better when they're starved of light.

Er, wait a minute.

SHE GASPS

You know, the world's finest violin wouldn't be any good without the

world's finest violin strings.

And you might just be surprised where those come from.

In 2012, a Japanese medical researcher, Dr Osaki,

made a violin string using 300 orb-web spiders.

No way!

Way! Their silk fibres, combined together,

are tough enough to be played.

But with 15,000 strands of silk in every single string,

it's unlikely they're ever going to hit the mass market.

But one extraordinary scientist has discovered

the secret of spider silk manufacturing.

Spider silk is the strongest fibre that's found in nature.

It has a tensile strength greater than Kevlar, and has an elasticity,

or elongation, greater than nylon.

So it means we can use it for different medical products,

like artificial ligaments, artificial tendons, car body parts,

for airplane parts...

-What are you doing?

-Just cancelling my Silky Jet airline ticket to

Phoenix, Arizona.

-There is no way I'm getting on that plane.

-Silky Jet?

-Yeah.

You are spinning me a line(!)

No, for real - I got them on the web.

Yes, I'll continue to hold.

So, the problem with using spider silk from spiders themselves is,

spiders can't be farmed.

They're territorial, they're cannibalistic,

so if you put a lot of them together,

they kill each other until everybody has enough room.

So you've got to come up with another manufacture method.

Randy, it turns out, is a goat farmer.

And whilst they might look normal, these goats are anything but.

The majority of these goats have

a gene in them that came from a spider.

-He's kidding.

-He's not!

We took the DNA for the spider silk gene,

that DNA was then injected into an embryo,

and we take the embryos and we implant them

into an acceptor female, and five months later,

she has a baby goat for us.

So, spiders have baby goats?

No! A goat has a baby goat that has spider genes.

Spiders wear jeans?!

-No!

-Oh, I give up.

Look, the point is, these real-life spider kids grow up

to produce spider silk in their milk.

Ah, OK. So, the question is, how do you get the silk out of the goats?

Over to Randy.

So, we take the milk from the goats here,

and we purify the spider silk protein out of it.

And then we try to mimic what the spider does,

in terms of actually making a fibre.

So, we try to spin it, so that we pull it, instead of pushing it out.

And then we stretch it,

which is exactly the same thing that a spider does.

This year's crop of kids look cute now, but soon,

they'll be spider goat silk-making machines.

Spider goats! Brilliant!

THUNDER RUMBLES

BOTH: Ah!

That's summer over, then.

No sun for another year.

My tan was starting to look so good as well!

Look at that! The weather in this country is so unpredictable!

Where's my brolly?

# Why does it always rain on me? #

See you next time! Bye!

# They're wild and weird, wild and weird

# Really, really wild and really, really weird

# They're wild and weird, wild and weird

# They're really, really wild

# They're really, really wild and weird. #

Wild and Weird!