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The quantities involved are astonishing. Not hundreds, not thousands, but perhaps tens of thousands of these animals that scientists collectively call “the echinoderms”. It’s a great name, derived from the Greek for “hedgehog”, or “spiny”, “skin”. What is a sea urchin, if not an “underwater hedgehog”?
Hydrogen-powered cars could be the future of Formula 1, according to F1 managing director for motorsports Ross Brawn.
He says sustainability is now a central objective for the sport, which has committed to become carbon neutral by 2030.
The engineer behind Michael Schumacher’s seven world titles ruled out a switch to fully electric vehicles.
“Maybe hydrogen is the route that Formula 1 can have where we keep the noise, we keep the emotion but we move into a different solution,” Brawn told the BBC.
Rising F1 star Lando Norris is also sceptical about introducing fully electric cars to Formula 1. You just don’t get the same buzz from electric cars, he says.
The British driver, who came third in this month’s Austrian Grand Prix, worries going electric would take much of the atmosphere away from the sport.
“Something I love about Formula 1 and the race cars we drive is the sound and feeling you get from them,” he says. “That’s what makes it so cool and special and why the fans love it.”
Formula 1 has one of the most ambitious sustainability programmes of any major sport and in 2019 it announced its plan to go net zero by 2030 with targets including:
The sport has taken steps to reduce the number of people and freight that travels between race venues, by around a third, and has slimmed down its travelling media operation.
F1 has also significantly reduced the personnel involved in the media operation abroad. The media feeds from all races are now produced and broadcast from the sport’s HQ at Biggin Hill in Kent.
But Formula 1 has been criticised by environmentalists because so much of its effort depends on offsetting – funding activities that reduce emissions elsewhere to match the greenhouse gases the sport produces.
Brawn acknowledges that as the most prestigious motorsport tournament in the world, Formula 1 can play an important role shaping fans’ attitudes to sustainability and climate change.
But he says F1 has no plans to move away from hybrid motors which combine internal combustion and electric engines during this phase of the sport’s evolution.
“If you’re lecturing to an empty chamber you’re not getting any message across,” argues Brawn. “You have to engage the fans and the reason they come is they want to see great cars, great drivers doing battle.”
Many countries, including the UK, have set deadlines in the next two decades for phasing out the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles but Formula 1 is making no such commitment.
“We have a one-and-a-half-hour race, we have 1,000 horsepower cars, we are the pinnacle of motorsport. You can’t get that bang without fossil fuels,” Brawn adds.
He points out that the high-tech turbo hybrid power units used to power Formula 1 cars since 2014 are among the most efficient ever designed in terms of the percentage of fuel energy that is converted into power – a measure known as thermal efficiency.
F1 engines have a thermal efficiency rating of about 50%, while road-car petrol engines are generally in the region of 30%.
For the moment the sport’s focus will be on developing synthetic fuels which use carbon captured from the air, farm waste or biomass.
Formula 1 rules already demand that the petrol used in F1 contains at least 10% biofuel and that proportion is likely to increase.
But environmentalists say because synthetic fuels and biofuels still produce carbon dioxide they continue to drive global warming and therefore cannot be a long-term solution.
In October Honda, which supplies engines to the Red Bull team whose driver Max Verstappen is currently leading the championship, announced it would be pulling out of F1 at the end of this year to concentrate its engineering focus on carbon-free technology.
Replacing carbon-based fuels will be a huge challenge for Formula 1, Brawn acknowledges.
He says the sport will always be about speed and acceleration across 90-minute races and does not think that electric vehicles will be capable of delivering the performance it demands for decades, if ever.
“We don’t want [drivers] looking at power conservation modes and trying to make the battery last long enough to get to the end of the race or saving the battery up so in the last five laps, they can really go for it. That doesn’t seem to engage the fans.”
That is why, Brawn concludes, “there is no electric solution today”.
However, he recognises F1 faces growing pressure to raise its game on sustainability from drivers, F1 teams, the manufacturers and fans.
“We can’t have a sport which is seen as a dinosaur and out of step. We will always be mindful of that,” says Brawn.
He says the younger drivers are far more engaged in the topic than they would have been in the past.
British seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton has spoken out on environmental issues, as has Germany’s four-time champion Sebastian Vettel.
Norris is impressed that established drivers like Hamilton and Vettel have used their platform to champion environmental and other causes.
“It is definitely something that over the coming years I’ll pay more and more attention to,” he says.
Zak Brown, chief executive of Norris’ McLaren team, confirmed there “are a lot of conversations going on right now in Formula 1” about sustainability but, like Brawn, he believes cars capable of 220mph or more are an essential part of the sport.
“We’ve always been a technology leader, whether that’s been in safety that’s come out of Formula 1 or carbon fibre materials to now how are we going to make our engines the most sustainable vehicles,” he tells the BBC.
McLaren made a commitment to go carbon neutral in 2011 and Brown says there is a lot of interest in the potential of hydrogen among Formula 1 teams.
“The challenge that we have is to make sure it is safe and can produce the amount of power that’s required to be able to do the lap times that we do, and hydrogen is very much on the table.”
Both men say they want to harness Formula 1’s proven ability to drive cutting-edge innovation to deliver sustainable solutions for the sport.
But they also point out that the emissions from the engines of the racing cars is a tiny fraction of the sport’s total emissions.
F1 estimates that 0.7% of the sport’s emissions are from the race cars themselves while almost half comes from the logistical caravan that moves equipment and personnel to the races, of which there are a record 23 planned this season.
But Brawn has categorically ruled out reducing the number of races to cut emissions.
He says bringing the races to countries around the world is part of what makes the championship great but he acknowledges there is also a financial imperative.
“At the end of the day, we’re a business,” says Brawn. “We have to generate income to make this whole thing work, and, obviously, the more races we have, the more profitable it is.”
The Royal Observatory Greenwich’s 13th Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition has announced its shortlist of extraordinary celestial scenes.
image copyrightPeter FeltotiThe shortlisted photographers captured sights from across our Solar System, galaxy and the wider Universe.
image copyrightVitaliy NovikovThe competition has received more than 4,500 entries from 75 countries.
The judges include Art Editor of BBC Sky at Night Magazine Steve Marsh, and comedian and keen amateur astronomer Jon Culshaw, alongside other experts from the worlds of art and astronomy.
The winning images will be displayed in an exhibition at the National Maritime Museum from 18 September.
Here is a selection of shortlisted images.
image copyrightYovin YahathugodaThis is one of the photographer’s favourite images and it remarkably depicts how interstellar winds and forces have created this perfect cosmic bubble in outer space.
The star responsible for creating the bubble is the bright star near the centre of the nebula and is categorised as a Wolf-Rayet star.
image copyrightStefan LiebermannThe image depicts a mesmerising panorama of the Milky Way over lavender fields in Valensole, France.
The colour tones and the lines of the fields are truly amazing, even though the light pollution is clearly visible over the whole area.
image copyrightLarryn RaeThis is a panorama of the aurora borealis in Iceland and is made up of 20 images.
The photographer came across an estuary that reflected the sky perfectly on a freezing winter’s night.
He captured the panorama first, and then took a shot of himself out on the ice.
image copyrightEd HurstThis immense face forms the entrance to Luna Park, Sydney’s harbourside theme park.
It has leered in the shadow of the Harbour Bridge since 1935 and many generations of children have skipped through its mouth for days of fun, as the world and the city have changed and grown around it.
The photographer took thousands of frames, with the stars passing by, and blended them together to show the patterns of time.
image copyrightMatt NaylorIt was the photographer’s long-held ambition to capture the Moon and the famous Lovell Telescope.
Finding a spot with a clear view, far enough away from the subject, and the Moon being in the sky at the correct time of day was all part of the puzzle.
The setting Sun lit up the clouds producing some lovely colours.
image copyrightSteven MohrThe Flame Nebula, designated as NGC 2024 and Sh2-277, is an emission nebula in the constellation Orion, lying some 900 to 1,500 light years away from Earth.
The bright star Alnitak (just outside the field of view at the top of this image), the easternmost star in the Belt of Orion, shines energetic ultraviolet light into the Flame and this knocks electrons away from the great clouds of hydrogen gas that reside there.
Much of the glow results when the electrons and ionised hydrogen recombine.
image copyrightBernard MillerNGC 3981 is a spiral galaxy about 65 million light years away in the constellation Crater.
Its windswept look is due to its outer arms being stripped away by an interaction with another galaxy.
image copyrightRemi Leblanc-MessagerThe photographer’s aim for this image was to focus on the Moon’s trajectory at the centre of the photograph, dividing the human world from the sky.
The woman standing on the roof appears to be the link between Paris and the sky.
image copyrightJashanpreet Singh DingraThis is an outstanding image of shining stars over the photographer’s region in winter.
The Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters and Messier 45, is an open star cluster containing middle-aged, hot B-type stars in the north-west of the constellation Taurus.
image copyrightDamian PeachIn this image, Saturn displays a wealth of details across the globe and ring system.
The famous polar hexagon can be seen around the pole at the bottom, while many other belts and zones are seen across the planet.
image copyrightDaning KaiThis image shows star trails over Lujiazui city in Pudong District, China, and you can even distinguish the Belt of Orion.
The photographer captured this photo on a very clear autumn night.
image copyrightYang SutieAs the photographer was driving on the mountain road late at night and turned the corner, he saw a mound on the right side of the road.
He stopped and climbed up the side of the road, set the camera to shoot automatically, and then drove back and forth in this curve.
Then he climbed up the hillside and integrated himself into the picture.
image copyrightJiajun HuaThe photo is taken 16km (10 miles) away from Lujiazui financial district in Shanghai.
Every year there are only a few weeks when photographers can capture the scene of the Sun rising in the Central Business District.
The photo is composed of four different exposures from the same perspective, recording the process of the Sun rising.
image copyrightGerald RhemannIn this photo the very gas-rich comet shows numerous structures in its ion tail.
The difficulty with comet imaging is not only to compensate for the movement of the comet in front of the stars, but also to consider the rapid changes in the structures during the exposure time.
image copyrightKush ChandariaThe Soul Nebula is one of those incredible targets that no matter where you point your telescope, there are always some incredible structures and details to be uncovered.
With 14 hours of exposure, faint details and structures deep within the nebula began to emerge.