On ABC Channel , this Thursday at 8:00PM.....very interesting.....
Uranium, Farming, Pandas & Black holes Thursday, 17 May 2007
Beverley Uranium Mine
Australia's uranium reserves are the largest in the world. Some of our most common uranium deposits are crusted around sandstone, often beneath the water table.
If the ore deposits are sandwiched between impermeable layers, and porous enough to allow water to flow through, then the uranium can be removed using a technique called In-Situ Leaching (ISL).
While mine operators say it is a safer way to recover uranium because it needs no big holes in the ground and no toxic tailings dams, opponents of uranium mining claim it turns underground water into nuclear waste dumps.
Currently the Beverley uranium mine near the Flinders Ranges in South Australia is the only one in the country using ISL technology. With at least another eight ISL mines on the drawing board, Catalyst examines the pros and cons.
Natural Sequence Farming
Farmer and horse-breeder Peter Andrews has been described as everything from a crackpot to a visionary. His theory of land management called Natural Sequence Farming is an attempt to rebuild what Peter sees as the natural systems that originally operated within the Australian landscape. But it's one thing to have an idea that you think is going to save the planet, something else entirely if that idea stacks up against the scrutiny of science. Paul Willis heads for the Hunter Valley in New South Wales to see if the ideas and plans of an environmental maverick get the tick of approval from the scientists.
Panda Granny
Jaye Allan is an Australian volunteer passionate about the conservation of pandas in China.
Since researching the captive management of wild animals for her Masters degree, Jaye and her husband moved to Chengdu in western China to help improve the living conditions of pandas in zoos.
For the last decade they have financially supported the breeding program at the Chengdu Panda Research Base by adopting five pandas.
"I'm a panda granny", she says proudly. "And we're going to be great-grandparents this season!"
Black holes
Black holes have always been the great mystery objects of our universe, but lately they've got even more mysterious. It's always been thought that black holes were the dead bodies of the cosmos. When a star dies, for example, it can turn into a black hole when a galaxy grows older a big black holes builds up at the centre, but new observations suggest that black holes might be the birth-givers of our cosmos.
Discoveries made from a new way of doing astronomy (Deep Field Survey Astronomy) have revealed that giant black holes were already present at the centres of the very first galaxies when they were being born.
http://abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/promo.htm
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