Episode 1 The Secrets of Everything

Humans are an incredible species.

We've found ways

to talk to each other on opposite sides of the world.

We've discovered cures for terrible diseases,

and some of us have even left this planet to explore space.

But there's still so much left to find out.

I'm Greg Foot. Since I was a kid, I've been into science.

I've always been asking questions and taking things apart to understand how they work.

I was the kid trawling through the rock pools

and the one that tried to turn his bike into an aeroplane.

I even went on to do a science degree.

And I'm still asking questions.

-This is going to hurt, right?

-Yeah.

-'And I reckon a lot of you are too.'

And that's what this series is all about.

Getting to the bottom of all those questions that never get properly answered,

to reveal the secrets of everything.

'This time on The Secrets Of Everything...' Ohh!

'..I'll be finding out what humans taste like.'

It's pretty good.

'It's one small step for man...'

My friend Doc and I will be measuring how big

-"a giant leap for mankind" actually is.

-What about that, my dear boy?

Who said pigs can't fly, eh?

'And we'll be discovering whether or not a belly flop can kill you.'

But first, I'll be finding out if there's any truth to

one of our favourite urban legends.

Imagine in five minutes' time, everyone on the entire planet

was going to jump at exactly the same time.

From London to Sydney, Delhi to New York,

6.9 billion people leap in the air. Could they make the earth move?

# Ladies and gentlemen This is something they call

# A ground-breaker... #

Now the reason why I think that this urban legend

could hold a grain of truth

is because it is actually possible to affect the motion of the planet.

Now, if I set myself spinning, just like the Earth,

I go this fast.

But if I pull my hands in...

I go a lot, lot faster.

And it's exactly the same with the Earth.

An earthquake can change the speed that the planet rotates

by shifting rock round the Earth's crust.

'This happened recently when the Japanese earthquake

'make the world speed up, shortening the day by nearly two milliseconds.'

'So the big question is, could we affect the way the Earth spins?'

So I wanna get the crowd over there at the main stage

to all jump at the same time, and I'm hoping it's going to make a small earthquake.

With a bit of maths, I can scale that up

and see what'd happen if everyone on Earth jumped at the same time,

and whether that would change the speed of the spin of the Earth.

'Meanwhile, a kilometre and a half away,

'there's a man in a field who knows that size matters.

'He's a seismologist, here to measure the impact of our festival earthquake.'

-Can we test it?

-Yes.

-Ah, look at that!

-Nice one.

-That is brilliant.

'All I need to do now is to convince

'a crowd of 50,000 to jump at the same time.'

-You ready to do this, Greg?

-I'm ready, let's do it.

-How you feeling, Reading Festival?

-CHEERING

Right now we're going to try something that has never been done

at Reading before on the main stage.

This man is Greg Foot, can everybody wave at Greg from BBC3?

-Hello, Greg.

-Hi, everybody, how you doing?

OK, so we are going to try to make an earthquake.

What we need all you guys to do is jump and land and hit the ground

at exactly the same time. Don't do it yet,

get ready to do it, we're going to count you down.

We've got scientists who are going to measure the ground

and we're going to get Reading festival on the Richter scale.

Are you ready to do this? All right. Let's go!

Five, four, three, two, one, jump!

Yes, that'll do it.

-Because this is Reading, we'll call it the Rockter scale for now, Greg.

-The Rockter scale, nice.

Hopefully someone's going to run on in a minute. Have we managed to

make an earthquake, Reading?

Apparently it's 0.6 on the Richter scale - you successfully

made an earthquake, Reading! Good work.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you.

That was amazing! How did it look?

-Well, the jump shows up really clearly.

-So, Paul,

we've managed to detect that 1.5 kilometres away with 50,000 people.

If we had everyone in the whole world jump at the same time,

could it change the length of the day?

Er, it's a bit more complicated that that.

'The Reading earthquake measured 0.6 on the Richter scale.'

Five, four, three, two, one, jump!

'But the day-shortening Japanese quake weighed in at a colossal 8.9.

'To recreate that, you'd need seven million times more people

'than currently live on the planet.'

OK, so the urban legend is completely untrue.

You cannot shift the planet if everyone jumps at the same time.

You can't even change how fast it spins,

there's no truth in it at all.

ELECTRIC BUZZING

BEEPING

When you eat meat, you can tell from the flavour what it is,

whether that's beef, chicken, pork or lamb.

We all know what it tastes of when it's cooked.

But there's one type of meat that I've never tried.

Some say it tastes of chicken, others say pork, and some say veal.

What I want to know is, is it possible to find out what humans taste of?

-I've heard it's like pork.

-Gristly, I reckon.

You're not actually supposed to feed your dog pork - they get a taste for human flesh.

-I would give it a go.

-Apparently it tastes like pork.

-Are you cooking it or are you having it sushi-style?

-Raw?

-Yeah, in a rice roll.

I don't know, I'd be curious. That's quite sick, isn't it?

-I reckon it would be chewy.

-Probably enjoy it, I think.

-Where you going to get steak on a human, then?

-Arse?

# Now I've got everything I wanted

# There's still a bad taste in my mouth... #

'To answer this question, I'm going to try to chew my own leg.'

-Hiya, Steve.

-Hi, Greg.

-Nice to meet you.

-Nice to meet you too.

-Thanks very much for helping me out.

-No problem, welcome to Kings.

So I believe you're going to help me find out what humans taste of.

-I'll try.

-Er, by taking a muscle biopsy from my leg, is that right?

That's right. We're going to take a small piece of muscle from

-the outer part of your quadriceps muscle, your thigh today.

-OK.

'Under a local anaesthetic, Steve is going to get right into my leg muscle...'

That's big.

'..And pull out a bit of tasty thigh.'

MUSIC: "Youth Knows No Pain" by Lykke Li

-Ohh!

-And relax. Pull.

-Pull.

-Aarrggh!

-Pull.

Ohh, ohhh, I felt that.

-Would you like to have a look at what we've taken?

-I'd love to have a look, yes.

What we actually can't see but will be in there

is the connective tissue which wraps around muscle fibres.

Is that like when you gnaw on a chicken bone

-and there's the stringy bits, that's the connective tissue?

-Yes.

'We're actually a lot more like the animals we eat than you'd think.

'Analysis of my leg reveals that it's about half the same type of

'muscle found in chicken breast, but it also contains

'similar muscle fibres to those found in cuts of beef.

'To find out what that makes it taste like

'means travelling to Nottingham.'

-Hi, Avinash.

-Hello, Greg.

-How you doing?

-Not bad.

'The truth is it's illegal to eat human flesh, even your own,

'but there's still a way to nail the taste.

'Avinash is about to make scientific history

'and analyse for the first time the aromas of cooked human.'

The aroma is usually about 80%, er,

of the total composition of the flavour.

That's why when you eat a banana, if you do that with your nose

and you eat it, it doesn't taste of banana.

That's correct.

So this is it, this is my cooked leg meat.

-That's correct.

-Can I have a smell?

-Go for it, see what you think.

-Yeah?

Ugh!

-Actually, that actually smells quite nice!

-Does it really?

-It's really meaty, though.

-OK.

-Like a lot richer than pork or chicken.

-Very distinctive.

-Yeah. Oh, it's like beef and ale stew or something.

'So what does Avinash reckon I taste of?'

Trending towards sort of the red meat side and also

a bit towards the lamb and the pork, so it's a combination.

I kind of feel like I need to taste it now for myself.

You're on your own.

# You want a piece of me... #

'Even if it was legal, I wouldn't want to sacrifice

'a whole arm to make a real Greg burger,

'so I've cooked up a mixture of the meats that came up in the analysis of my cooked thigh.'

# You want a piece of me... #

So now I've just got to eat it.

It's good!

It's like really beefy, bit lamby.

Mmm. I think that's going to be the closest I'm ever going to get

to tasting human, and I'll tell you what - it's pretty good.

# You want a piece of me. #

I don't think you'll survive.

I think I'd try and run all over the place.

-Or stand next to a church, they've got lightning conductors.

-Have they?

Put on some rubber, if you've got flip-flops or anything like that.

I'd take off my silver.

-Bend over and hope for the best. Fingers crossed.

-Bend over?!

'To find out how deadly lightning really is,

'we need someone for it to strike.

'My mate Johnny is perfect for this. He's an extreme sports freak,

'has enough hair to take a bit of singeing, and frankly, he's free.'

# Outside the cafe by the cracker factory

# You were practising a magic trick... #

'To give us some volts, I've got hold of this machine,

'previously owned by an evil genius.

'It's called a Tesla Coil.

'It turns ordinary mains electricity into artificial lightning.'

# ..Crying lightning... #

'Lightning is static electricity. It builds up in rain clouds

'and escapes to earth in a blinding flash

'that's hotter than the surface of the sun.

'But just so it's not like a bolt from the blue, I'm giving Johnny

'a gentle introduction to electric shocks.'

If we touch that electric fence we're going to complete the circuit.

-Ow!

-Yeah, see, it's stronger there.

Would you lick that?

Conduct all that electricity, go on.

'It's probably not the most sensible thing ever to go lick an electric fence.

'The BBC had us and the kit thoroughly checked out. So, don't do this at home!'

Anything that has water or minerals in it conducts electricity

really well. Aaah!

'Compared to lightning,

'the voltages we're dealing with here are pretty pathetic,

'but the truth is your whole body is controlled by tiny amounts of electricity.'

These are what lazy people use to avoid exercise.

So you need to strap one on.

'These muscle stimulators take over your nervous system and send

'"must work harder" impulses to puny muscles.'

Aaggghhhh!

I can feel it in my finger now.

So that's the electricity causing Johnny's muscles

to spasm, and he has no control over it.

If he was hit by lightning,

obviously the effect would be a lot stronger,

and if it went over his heart muscle

then that could be very, very problematic.

'Right - time for Johnny to experience a real lightning strike.

'Only kidding, we've asked a plastic construction worker...'

Disaster!

'..To step in instead, because if you're an actual person,

'you really want to avoid getting hit.'

'Maybe by sheltering under a tree...

'or maybe not.'

The tree is about 20% water, whereas you are about 72.8% water,

so although the lightning has been attracted to the height of the tree

and it's travelled down the tree,

it wants to go the easiest route to ground, so it jumps out to you.

You're mainly water, you're really good for electricity

to conduct through, straight down to ground.

That is why it's a really bad idea to shelter underneath a tree.

It won't hurt.

'What you need is something more conductive than you are.

'Something made of metal, like this.'

# Holding on to black metal... #

This is really putting my trust in science.

It's going to be a million volts kind of raining down right on top of my head.

Wow, that is a lot scarier than I though it was going to be.

All I can see is a giant spark coming straight between my eyes.

Wow.

I'm in one piece. 'Unfortunately, these aren't very portable.'

But if you've got your own four-wheeled metal cage handy,

the best thing to do is to get in it.

Look at that, that's one million volts of electricity,

all over the surface of this car.

So if you want to know how to survive a lightening strike,

put yourself in a car.

Here's Professor Logic. How do you do, Professor?

Professor Logic is a busy man, so much to see, so much to learn,

so much to measure.

Today, Professor Logic is in the animal lab.

He's looking at how new animals come from old ones.

But they're from the same family. I'm not sure that's a good idea.

Oh, I say, Professor, I really think you ought to stop now.

What on earth have you done, Professor?

Important genetic experiments? And what exactly have you discovered?

I see. One set of genes from each parent

and each set of genes will have faults.

But, together, those faults will cancel themselves out.

Natures very clever, isn't it, Professor?

Ah, there's a catch. Genes from the same family have the same faults

so they don't cancel out.

I see well that certainly explains your unfortunate rabbit.

No, I'm sure it is a bit more complicated than that

but I think I see what you're getting at -

it's never a good idea to marry someone from your birth family.

Yes, I had heard that it's also illegal.

No, really, the pleasure is all mine. Goodbye.

'OK, Neil, we can see you coming down the ladder now.'

'Roger, we copy.'

'It's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.'

Whenever I watch the lunar landings

there's one question that I can't get out of my head.

Just how big is one giant leap on the moon?

If there's anyone I know who can help me get to the moon,

it's a man who is a chemist, practical engineer, meteorologist

and...Polish musician?!

He is Dr Zbigniew Szydlo. I just call him Doc.

Doc and I have come to this massive shed 50 miles north of London

to recreate the moon and hopefully achieve some epic jumping.

First things first though, I need to measure one giant Earth leap.

Three, two, one, jump!

Three, two, one, jump!

-68.

-68?

-68 centimetres.

Now, the reason that I can't jump any further than 68 centimetres up

is partly because I'm not very good at jumping

but mainly because I'm not very good at escaping the earth's gravity.

So, if you drop a hammer,

it's the Earth's gravity that pulls it down to the middle of the planet.

The moon is a much smaller mass than the Earth

and that means that the gravity actually ends up as one sixth of that here on the planet.

On the moon,

there's much less gravity keeping your feet on the ground

so you'd be far lighter than on Earth.

Giant leaping guaranteed.

To find out what that actually feels like, we need to go to the moon.

Or alter reality here on Earth.

Plenty of helium so we're all going, we're all set to go.

-I want to try some of that.

-Yeah, yeah, yeah.

-IN HIGH-PITCHED VOICE:

-I just talk like that. OK, Doc. Doc let's go to the moon.

Which is where these giant helium balloons come in.

Oh, it's a heavy day today. 85 kilograms.

The balloons are going to make me the same weight I would be

if I was leaping on the lunar landscape - about 15 kilos.

Let's see how much lift, hang on, not yet, not yet, not yet, not yet.

-Let's hope for seven.

-I've got it, I've got it. Let go.

-Let's hope for 78, my guess.

-OK, go, what's it say, what's it say?

77, 78.

-It's saying 80.

-So they've got to be bigger?

-Much bigger.

It's not the first time a balloon has been used to generate lift in this hangar

because this was once home to the British Airship R101.

Like me, R101 wasn't generating enough lift

so in 1930 they cut it in half and added more space for gas.

Shortly after that,

the ship set off for India but crashed in Northern France.

It was the end of Britain's commercial airship ambitions.

Anyway, our buoyancy issues have now been addressed.

You should now be feeling much lighter.

And it's time for my maiden flight.

Just a little jump of joy, I'll catch you as you come down.

-I hope you will.

-On my shoulders, OK. Watch out, ready, go.

Hey, not too high.

Now, how about that? What about that, what about that, my dear boy?

So we've lowered my weight to a sixth of what it is on the Earth

and this is what it feels like on the moon.

Before I became an urban spaceman,

I was only able to leap a pathetic 68 centimetres into the air.

Question is, how high can I get now?

-Jump.

-Whoa.

-OK.

Right we've got it here. That was a massive 199.

-One metre, 99 centimetres.

-Well, that's certainly a huge improvement on last time.

# I'm over the moon

# Doing my thing and I won't come down. #

My giant leap was three-times more than my earth-bound effort and I'm pretty chuffed with that.

There's no better feeling than just being able to bounce.

I mean, it's genius.

That is the best approximation that we can do

to answer the question of how big is one giant leap on the moon.

Whoo-hoo!

Hee-hee!

Now there are probably 1,001 ways to die,

none of which particularly appeal.

But there is one fairly interesting way

that's always intrigued me about whether it can happen at all.

What I want to know is, if you did a big enough belly flop,

could it kill you?

When you dive in,

all the energy from the dive is concentrated on a very small area the size of your hands.

Water has a tendency to stay put...

..but in a dive your body is streamlined

so easily moves the water out of your way and the impact is gentle.

But when you belly flop, the water still has the same inertia,

that resistance to move, but the outcome is very different.

Ow!

You couldn't be less streamlined.

Spread out, you don't stand a chance of parting the water.

You stop almost instantly on something that doesn't move.

So that's why belly flops hurt.

But to see if one can kill you,

I need to try something a bit more extreme.

I'm going to need a crane, a forensic pathologist,

a swimming pool and a dead pig.

So this is the pig.

We're going to rig him right up there, 25 metres up,

and drop him into that.

We've bought this slaughtered pig from an abattoir.

It was destined for the butchers

but, like scientists have done for centuries,

we'll use it for research

to discover exactly what damage a belly flop could cause.

Is this going to be a good model for what would happen if a human dropped?

It is. This is a 70 kilogram pig,

the average human being is 70 kilograms.

Skin is similar, bones, muscles, even the organs,

so it should be fairly representative.

First things first then, let's rig this guy up

and get ready for the drop.

Who said pigs can't fly, eh?

I really hope it doesn't break the pool open.

Right then. Any problems? Nope, all set? Arming.

Three, two, one.

Whoa! Good grief. That was nasty.

I would not want that to be me.

The pig looks undamaged

but we need to get it onto the operating table to find out what's gone on inside.

-OK, if you could hold that up for me.

-Yep.

-Then all the way down there.

So you're going round the rib cage now?

Yeah, just working our way around the ribs.

-And there we go.

-What have we got there then?

As we get in here you can feel certainly that that rib's fractured.

-So that's just snapped the rib?

-Yep.

The impact probably with this leg pushing in as it hits

has just snapped that rib quite effectively.

Because of the speed our pig belly flopped,

the water just couldn't get out of the way quick enough.

It's as if it landed on concrete.

-Oh, what's that? There's gunge there.

-Ruptured bowel.

Would that be fatal?

Er, not immediately but it's going to contaminate your abdomen

and give you peritonitis and you wouldn't last long.

So this damage is just from the belly flop.

-You've got a broken rib, a ruptured bowel.

-Yep.

-Oh, no, no.

-Oh.

Right in there, that bit of liver is torn.

That's literally just the force of the impact

pulling that bit of organ apart.

If you were alive,

your liver has an awful lot of blood going through it.

That would bleed rapidly.

That can certainly kill you very quickly.

So it looks like a belly flop CAN kill you

and pretty easily, in fact.

I knew about inertia

and the fact that it takes energy to make something move

but to see how lethal that is with water is quite something.

And still loads more secrets to come. Next time -

Why chillies burn even when they're cold...

Ah! That is... I can't even talk.

Can you survive an asteroid attack

and, just in case you don't, what really happens when you die?

The smell is just so rank that I can no longer stand it.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd