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marketplace.virginia.gov. Hello,

1:57

I'm Brian Cox. I'm Robert Ince. And this is

1:59

the Infinite Monkey Company. Today we ask

2:01

a big question. What if

2:04

there existed a universe that

2:06

was without Patrick Moore or

2:08

indeed Brian Cox? What

2:11

if it was a cosmos without the sky at

2:13

night? Because there was no

2:15

sky at night, just an inky

2:17

blackness. The experience of standing

2:20

alone on a clear night and looking

2:22

at the stars, of dreaming of worlds

2:24

beyond our own, worlds beyond imagination, is

2:26

not only a powerful emotional experience but

2:28

also a powerful intellectual one. The attempt

2:30

to understand the motion of those points

2:32

of light in the dark was key

2:34

to the development of modern science. And

2:37

it's something we talked about a lot when we were on

2:39

tour, that beauty that when you go

2:42

out on a clear night and you

2:44

look at those stars and you think

2:46

about those photons where basically they've been

2:48

created from hydrogen becoming helium, the photons

2:50

then travel across distances far greater than

2:53

we can currently imagine ever travelling ourselves.

2:56

And then the first thing that they

2:58

actually collide with is us, something that

3:00

is able to think of

3:02

what has happened, think about the

3:04

stars, contemplate the beauty. And

3:07

I was talking to an astronomer about

3:09

that and he said the photons I always

3:11

feel saddest for are the ones that have

3:13

travelled all that distance and just as they're

3:15

about to meet my eye I notice my

3:17

laces undone. I thought isn't that... Yay!

3:20

I'm going to be understood the... Oh, I'm

3:23

just in moss. Today

3:26

we're asking the question, what do the stars

3:28

teach us and how would we have conceived

3:30

of the universe beyond Earth if we could

3:32

never have observed them? How different would our

3:34

civilisation have been? What would we never have

3:36

known? And would Brian still

3:39

be touring with the adult orientated rock

3:41

band Dare as opposed to making all

3:43

that money from pointing at stuff? Well,

3:45

we'll find out. To

3:47

help us understand the dark sky we are

3:50

joined by a cosmologist, a space scientist and

3:52

a bishop. And they are. I'm

3:54

Roberto Trota. I'm a cosmologist at

3:56

International School for Advanced Study in Trieste, Italy

3:58

and at Imperial College London. And

4:01

the one thing in the night sky that would

4:03

miss the most if it wasn't there is

4:05

the mysterious glow of the Milky Way Hello,

4:08

I'm Dame Dr. Maggie Adair in Pocock.

4:10

I'm a space scientist and science communicator.

4:13

I have a book out The Art of

4:15

Stargazing just getting it out It's the Art of

4:18

Stargazing my essential guide to the night sky and

4:21

the thing I would really miss is the

4:23

moon because I am an absolute lunatic and

4:26

when I see the moon it makes my heart sing and

4:28

so without it I would be bereft I'm

4:30

John Bishop. I'm a comedian and

4:33

I was once in Doctor Who thank you and

4:35

I I'm like

4:37

you Maggie. I would miss the Optimism

4:40

I feel in my heart when I look

4:42

at the moon and hope I see a

4:44

young boy riding a bicycle with eating And

4:49

this is our panel I Roberto

4:54

the book you've just written star-born is Contemplating

4:57

a starless as in not

4:59

the lack of stars But inability

5:01

to be able to observe the

5:03

stars if that if that had happened So what

5:06

drew you to that idea of imagining that what

5:08

if well, I lived for 15

5:10

years in London And

5:15

that got me thinking how much the stars have

5:17

done for my own life I'm

5:19

a cosmologist my very profession wouldn't exist

5:21

without seeing the stars. I Started

5:24

thinking well, hang on a minute. Could

5:26

the same be true for humankind as

5:28

a whole perhaps What would have changed

5:30

what kind of world would we live

5:32

in if we had been fated to

5:34

live in a universe? Just like

5:36

London where you don't see the

5:38

stars where everything is covered by clouds at

5:40

all times Everywhere and nobody has ever seen

5:42

a star. Nobody has ever seen the moon

5:44

Nobody's ever even seen the disc of the

5:47

Sun and I started to

5:49

realize that all other things have Shaped

5:51

every aspect of who we are today and

5:54

our civilization would probably actually not

5:56

exist if you were not for for the

5:58

stars my Can you

6:00

paint a picture of us if we

6:03

begin right at the beginnings of astronomy

6:05

or even before astronomy? What

6:07

were our distant ancestors thinking and seeing

6:10

when they were looking at the stars?

6:13

If you go back far enough I think every

6:15

culture across the world has looked up and

6:17

wondered and Sort of yeah and

6:19

celebrated the night sky and to me

6:21

it was the ultimate box said I always think of

6:24

sort of a cave people It before they can even

6:26

speak Just

6:28

the wonder of it and then because

6:30

I think because it is such a wonder and such a draw

6:32

to the eye When you can see it on a clear night

6:34

I think they started making stories

6:36

and so religion and I think also

6:38

they wanted to understand the chaos that

6:41

happens here on earth and To

6:43

understand that they looked up at night sky and said

6:45

okay Well, you know if I'm born at this point

6:47

in time and my star sign is this and then

6:49

this planet goes through then I'm going to be more

6:52

angry because it's Mars or and so they were trying

6:54

to interpret the chaos on earth By using the stars

6:56

above them. Do you remember when you were a kid

6:58

what those kind of thoughts of looking at the sky

7:00

were? I've been fascinated by the

7:02

sky I was that kid who

7:04

would lie on a field and look at

7:06

clouds and try and make shapes and Living

7:09

on a council estate outside of Liverpool. That

7:11

wasn't really on a flight path so every

7:13

now and again, you'd see an airplane and

7:16

that was like to me a Suggestion

7:19

that this flight and his life beyond

7:21

where you're living and then you transport

7:23

that into the night Looking

7:26

at the night, you know, I'm

7:28

in me 50 So where the generation after

7:30

men had walked on the moon both sort

7:32

of also after the excitement had gone and

7:35

nobody was getting Infused about

7:38

space like they do now. I

7:41

I'm never lost for the wonderment of

7:43

it, but I was reading the basil's

7:45

book What's fascinated me because the sky

7:47

night sky that we're looking at is

7:49

not the night sky that human beings

7:51

have always looked at Absolutely because the

7:53

night sky changes over time over thousands

7:56

of years the constellations over

7:58

hundreds of thousands of years the constellations

8:00

even change shape. And so what the

8:02

primitive homo sapiens 50,000 years ago would

8:04

have looked at in the

8:06

sky and marveled at is if

8:08

not fundamentally somewhat different from what

8:10

we marvel at today. But the

8:12

fascination remains not just the science

8:15

and the puzzling about the orbits

8:17

of the planets and the stars

8:19

but also other feelings, emotional feelings

8:21

like spirituality for example. All the

8:23

big sky gods were the most

8:26

powerful gods in whatever civilization because

8:28

the sky was this unreachable place

8:30

of potency and power and divine

8:32

seat of power and influence on

8:34

our lives. Astrology for example has

8:36

dominated thought until the scientific

8:39

revolution. I don't know if anyone's

8:41

got into one of those fancy taxis. You know

8:44

you get in the cars where they've got like they

8:46

used them in hand parties where

8:49

they've got like little twinkly lights

8:51

in the people carrier. Just sitting

8:53

in the people carrier with twinkly

8:55

lights I think is a good

8:57

night ourselves. Imagine being a fierce

9:00

homo sapiens looking up and the

9:02

whole sky is like a Hindu.

9:06

It would have been more astonishing if they'd

9:08

been in a people carrier to be honest.

9:10

When do they realise you're not actually part

9:12

of the hen party? I was.

9:14

Every now and again they book a strip

9:16

of gram. That's

9:19

what I've always wanted. You've never forgotten your

9:21

roots John. It's

9:23

your business, your place. Palladium tonight, tomorrow,

9:25

whoever put me that yellow bow. Reversa,

9:28

when do we see the first evidence

9:31

of people not just looking at the

9:33

sky and making up stories and patterns

9:35

but actually beginning to measure it, beginning

9:37

to document what's happening there? Well that

9:40

depends on what you mean precisely by

9:42

evidence. In historical times

9:44

certainly the Mesopotamians and Babylonians were great

9:46

observers of the sky and they had

9:48

very sophisticated methods to look at the

9:50

stars and the planets and record their

9:52

movements with great attention. But to me

9:54

the most interesting part is when we

9:56

try to stretch our imagination

9:59

to even... further back into

10:01

the past to prehistoric times. And

10:03

there, of course, evidence becomes more

10:06

scant, because the evidence is buried at

10:08

the bottom of caves, and there

10:10

is very little to go by. But there are

10:12

certain hints, and one among them stands out for

10:14

me, and it's a piece of bone. It's

10:17

a bone of a leg of a baboon,

10:20

and it's carved with 29 notches. And

10:24

the bone is broken off at one end, so

10:26

we don't know whether the seed is continued or

10:28

it ended there. But 29 is a special

10:30

number, because it's almost exactly the

10:33

time it takes, the number of days it takes for the moon

10:36

to do a full period of

10:38

the moon, 29.5 days. 29

10:40

is pretty close. It's

10:42

as close as it gets. And also, perhaps not

10:44

coincidentally, it's the same length as the average woman

10:47

cycle, which, again, is a big mystery. Why is

10:49

it aligned with the period of the moon? We

10:52

don't know. There is various ideas, but there is

10:54

no firm evidence for it. But the

10:56

point is that if this fibula of the baboon,

10:58

which is 17,000 years old, was

11:00

actually used for counting something, and that something

11:03

was the days or the nights that pass

11:05

between the full moon and the next full

11:07

moon, that makes of it one of the

11:09

first lunar calendar. And because

11:12

of this connection between womanly cycle and

11:14

lunar cycle, which was inescapable,

11:17

very, very powerful on dark nights in

11:19

prehistory, I like to think

11:21

that the people who actually carved these

11:23

notches in this fibula, which has been

11:25

heavily used, is polished, because somebody has

11:27

been fondling it for a long time.

11:30

Well, those people are actually women, I

11:32

think. And that will make

11:34

women not just the first astronomers,

11:36

but perhaps even the very first

11:38

mathematicians. It's

11:41

funny, because the first female

11:43

name to be written in history books

11:45

was a woman called Ed Hedoana. And

11:48

Ed Hedoana, she had a great title.

11:51

She was the chief priestess for the moon goddess of

11:53

the city of Babylon. I want that

11:55

on a business card. It's just so cool. And

11:58

she's celebrated today because she wrote poetry. about

12:00

measuring arcs across the sky. So she was the

12:02

first female astronomer, but the first female named to

12:04

be written in the history books. So I think,

12:06

yeah, female astronomy goes back a long way. Is

12:09

there a kind of the different, because when the night

12:11

sky, when they do, you know, anthropomorphize it, whatever you

12:13

want to call it, in terms of turning it into

12:15

men and women, and I think the moon is very

12:18

often the female. Is it Celine? Yes. Is

12:20

that right, what you mean? Yes. And so that,

12:22

as we look at the myths, which can sometimes just

12:24

be thrown aside, do we also see within that important

12:27

and useful knowledge beyond the story?

12:30

Yes, and it's quite interesting when we talk

12:32

about sort of stargazing, when we talk about

12:34

constellations, we have the 88 sort of official

12:36

constellations as sort of attributed

12:38

by the International Astronomical Union. But

12:41

one of the things I like to sort of

12:43

is archaeoastronomy. So looking back in time and seeing

12:45

how everybody interpreted the sky. And

12:47

if you take a constellation like Orion, it's quite

12:49

distinctive, you know, the three stars in the center,

12:51

then you have Betelgeuse and the other stars around. Different

12:54

cultures have interpreted that constellation in different

12:56

ways. In sort of an Greco-Romanist, here's

12:58

the hunter and yeah. But other people

13:00

saw it as is of the wanderer.

13:03

And you can see how people might have used it.

13:05

So like the ultimate projector. Oh yes, so here we have,

13:07

you know, the hunter going across the sky and you can

13:09

see him there. Oh yes, there he is. And

13:12

so I think that's why we do that projection. And,

13:15

but I think it is a reflection of our own cultures.

13:17

But what I do like to see is look at it

13:19

across the different cultures, because it's

13:22

something that everybody has done. Every

13:24

culture projects onto the sky, whatever they want

13:26

to see. Also, before writing was invented, you

13:28

had to pass on all the stories to

13:30

the next generation. So whatever stories

13:32

you had that you wanted to remember and

13:34

pass down the generations, and they couldn't be

13:36

written. One example is the song

13:39

lines of Australian Aboriginal peoples who

13:41

used the stars in the sky,

13:44

not very much as a navigation

13:46

aid, but more as a way

13:49

to remember the instructions that were

13:51

needed to go from one place

13:54

to another overland and

13:56

travel across the vast expanses of Australia.

13:58

And when the first settler came. they

14:00

followed the very same routes and along

14:02

those routes villages and then cities were

14:04

founded and nowadays the highway system in

14:06

Australia follows Largely the very same routes

14:08

they were once written in the sky

14:10

and song along the the dream song

14:12

and the dream lines of the Australian

14:14

Aboriginal people and to me that's a

14:16

beautiful thing. I'm fascinated by the fact

14:18

that we've all got our own Normal

14:21

circadian rhythms, you know human beings

14:24

have animals have plants have so

14:26

when the night comes That's

14:28

when we all closed down the

14:30

human beings have chose to stay

14:33

awake when it's colder When

14:35

there's less chance of hunting when there's less reason

14:37

to be there Apart from

14:39

to look up at the sky and

14:41

then the sky's filled with

14:43

all of these dots I'm one

14:46

of them's gone. Oh, look at that.

14:48

That's a half man half beast fire and bow

14:50

and arrow You

14:52

spend the rest of your life going no, it's not.

14:54

No, it is look look at that. Look I'm always

14:56

blown away by what somebody has decided You

15:03

don't like the as you say in the

15:05

Romans see did not they just dots

15:07

you can put what you want there Well,

15:10

yes, it raises the question actually because

15:12

when when do we see people beginning

15:15

to say what actually are those? Are

15:17

they really just little holes in this

15:19

big crystal? Whatever it is

15:21

that surrounds us or are they something else?

15:24

I think that comes with the same scientific

15:26

revolution really and the 16th century when when

15:29

Newton starts Realizing first of all

15:31

that the laws that command the fall of an

15:33

apple in a garden in Cambridge

15:35

here are the same that command the

15:37

moon to go around the earth in

15:39

orbit and also keep Comets

15:42

on on on track and so

15:44

now the notion is born the

15:46

very same laws that that are

15:49

Active here on earth can apply to the

15:51

crystalline crystalline spheres up there at

15:53

that point the question comes You know are

15:55

there other words so press we should step

15:57

back because that that it's

15:59

the observation of the planets, isn't it, initially, that

16:02

leads us. So

16:04

perhaps you could just give us a brief

16:06

history of that time when we start saying

16:08

these things are not gods wandering around. The

16:11

data is telling us they're moving in a

16:13

regular way. Well, by the time that Kepler

16:16

comes around, for example, so we're talking at

16:18

the end of the 16th century, at

16:20

that point in time, maybe the idea

16:22

that Mars was the God of War

16:24

had passed his heyday. But the idea

16:27

that the influence of what is above

16:29

stretches to what is below remain very,

16:31

very strongly in their minds. So if

16:33

they didn't see the planets as gods,

16:35

they still see the influence of

16:37

the sky in human affairs as being very, very

16:39

present and very, very prominent. One of the things

16:42

I go out and speak to lots of school

16:44

kids, one of the things I like to talk

16:46

about is the fact that our knowledge of the

16:48

universe has evolved greatly. And it always goes back

16:50

to that, you know, we're humans, we're at the

16:52

centre of the universe and all the stars were

16:55

a rotate around us. And it was those wandering

16:57

stars that sort of triggered hold it, something's going

16:59

on here. And it was people like Copernicus who

17:01

sort of thought, no, no, no, hold it. We

17:03

don't have this earth centered universe. We have the

17:05

sun centered universe. And that explains why these stars

17:07

are wandering because they're not stars, they're planets like

17:10

ours. So I think that was sort of

17:12

the first burst. And also I think it

17:14

was Aristotle that came up with the earth

17:16

centered universe. And so to go against Aristotle

17:18

in those days was, you know, his ideas

17:20

have been around for about 2000 years and

17:22

say, no, you're wrong. Aristotle was quite a

17:24

bold move. And so I think that's

17:26

when that came along, people thought that the

17:29

orbits were circular, but it turned out that

17:31

they people like Copernicus were looking and they

17:33

knew they were actually not circular. They were

17:36

elliptical. Because Aristotle came up, he said that

17:38

women had what forfuered teeth and men. And

17:40

that's a really simple experiment to do to

17:42

find out whether that's true or not. Everyone

17:45

just went, yeah, Aristotle said it. So

17:47

that change in thinking seems to entirely

17:49

change the possibilities of astronomy as well.

17:51

It is about how can we test

17:53

our hypotheses. That's very interesting because it

17:55

is the idea of the scientific method

17:57

that you're to go out and measure

17:59

things and then check in with your

18:01

hypothesis and see what it's right to

18:04

run. Well, that was born with astronomy,

18:06

actually. And so in a way, I

18:08

like to think of astronomy as the

18:10

midwife of sciences, because it was the

18:13

very first domain where that became possible,

18:15

indeed necessary. And the theory that came

18:17

from Newton later on, for example, wasn't

18:19

sufficiently accurate to account for the observational

18:22

error. And so because people were so

18:24

obsessed with planets, and T. Cobrae was

18:26

one of them, they had

18:28

incredibly precise data, and the marginal error

18:30

of error became important. It was the

18:32

very first science, if you like, where

18:34

you had quantitative measurements of

18:37

a phenomenon that was regular enough

18:39

to be amenable to actually scientific

18:42

analysis. And that's the

18:44

beauty of astronomy. It gave our ancestors

18:46

something complicated, a complicated puzzle to work

18:48

out, and that's how the scientific method

18:50

was born. So with no astronomy, we

18:52

would have no science, no technology, we

18:54

wouldn't be here. It's

18:57

always interested me that you

18:59

see in astronomy the

19:01

descriptions, the Ptolemaic systems,

19:04

all these epicycles and things like that, people

19:07

try to just

19:09

predict the motions of the

19:11

planets, and so predict where

19:13

they were gonna be at different times

19:15

of year, build accurate calendars. When do

19:18

we see the idea, which is probably

19:20

the revolutionary idea in science, that actually

19:22

there's a simple model of this. So

19:25

it becomes, if you put the sun at the

19:27

center of everything, it is in

19:29

some sense more elegant and beautiful. When

19:32

do we see that idea beginning to

19:34

take hold? Yeah, that was the idea

19:36

of Copernicus. And he said, the sun

19:38

is such a beautiful lamp that illuminates

19:40

all of the universe. What better place

19:42

for that lamp than the very center

19:44

of that universe? And that's how this

19:46

conception of the heliocentric model,

19:48

the sun at the center of the

19:51

solar system was born. Then others worked

19:53

out the details like Kepler, for example,

19:55

he then took this idea and

19:57

started to think, well, if that's true, what are the

19:59

consequences? The thing that gets me

20:01

is what you were saying. There's

20:04

a gap between a belief and

20:07

something that you can prove, the measurement.

20:09

That's the birth of science, isn't it?

20:11

Where you stop saying, I think

20:13

this, and you start saying, I can show

20:15

you this. Yes, but what Galileo brought is

20:18

newly invented telescope to Rome to show the

20:20

Pope and the other eyebrows of the church.

20:22

They did look through the telescope, but they

20:24

didn't believe what they saw. A

20:27

few years ago, we went

20:29

to the Vatican, and

20:32

we met the Vatican astronomers. This

20:34

was the Vatican's take on things. They said,

20:36

no, they were aware that the Sun was

20:39

the center of the universe. It's just the

20:41

way Galileo told it that it didn't go

20:43

down well. I think

20:45

there were something like 41 charges against him, and the

20:47

only one that ever gets mentioned is because he believed

20:49

that there were other planets in the universe, but there

20:52

were other 40 as well. There

20:54

were a bunch of reasons they ended up against

20:56

him. It was a bit of a stir. It's easy

20:58

today, isn't it, to go Aristotle. It's at the

21:00

earth, at the center. But his

21:02

arguments were good, which he doesn't feel as

21:04

if we're moving, and everything falls towards it.

21:07

When I was a kid looking at this guy, I'm

21:09

looking up, I believed I

21:11

was the middle of everything. It felt like

21:13

it's all his conclusions

21:15

were absolutely valid and made a

21:17

lot of sense. And based

21:20

on evidence, because you could see the Sun rise, you could

21:22

see the Sun set, it seemed as if we were the

21:24

center of everything. The stars seemed to wheel around us. So

21:27

it was evidence, but they needed to go deeper, really.

21:30

For me, the big thing is what you're saying about

21:32

early Mano. Even Neanderthals, again,

21:34

there's an argument in your book

21:36

that you say that may well

21:38

be part of the difference between

21:40

homo sapiens surviving and Neanderthals, and

21:42

the fact that homo sapiens were

21:44

potentially more aware of what was

21:46

the night sky, so could move

21:49

better because they knew geography better.

21:52

However, to me, it's the fact

21:54

that these things are

21:56

slow. So when you're

21:58

marking, when you're checking... your

22:00

observations, you're not there the

22:02

next day checking them, you're not the next

22:04

hour, some of these things take years for

22:08

your observation to be affirmed.

22:11

And what we can assume is it

22:13

was the same individual checking

22:15

them. So that awareness of

22:17

the importance of the stars

22:20

must have been passed down. Otherwise

22:22

things like Stonehenge wouldn't exist when

22:25

you look at you just cannot

22:27

explain without the precise

22:29

science that we've got today. So

22:31

how much do we know in terms

22:33

of the direct connection of things like

22:35

Stonehenge and Perimage to the night sky

22:37

itself? I think it's an

22:39

area where we do need to be careful.

22:42

For instance, one of my favourite Stoneherge circles

22:44

is called Navdeplyer. It

22:46

sits on African soil, it is

22:49

about 7,000 years old, so it's

22:51

older than Stonehenge. And people will

22:53

look at it and say, oh yes, yes, you

22:55

can see how it's aligned. But you're not taking

22:57

into account that the stars have migrated with time

22:59

because the galaxy is moving. Sometimes

23:01

I think we are pattern seekers and

23:04

we want to superimpose as early as

23:06

possible onto these things. Now Navdeplyer, I

23:08

think it's still under debate, but that's

23:10

what we need. We need the debate

23:12

to see if it truly is an

23:14

astronomical phenomenon or maybe they were doing

23:17

something else with it. But

23:19

I think that's why the scientific method works.

23:22

Carbon dating, things like that. We can actually try and work it

23:24

out. And is that why Atlantis failed

23:26

as a society? Because I read a book

23:29

which said that due to the refraction as

23:31

they looked at the stars... So anyway... ...is

23:34

why they're underwater turnips. I want a

23:36

series on Netflix, like that other bloke

23:38

had. Anyway, so back to Atlantis. We

23:40

have 1600s, late 1500s, early to mid

23:43

1600s. We have this idea and a mathematical model of the

23:50

sun at the center and the planet's

23:52

obviously grounded. When do we start then

23:54

to see an idea of

23:56

the, for example, the distances? So

23:58

the distance... to the planets and

24:00

the distance to the stars. So

24:03

the fact that the planets had to

24:05

be in relative distance

24:08

to each other is something that was known

24:10

because you could compute essentially the periods of

24:12

the planet and from that you can compute

24:14

the relative distances. But the distance from us

24:16

to the sun remains unknown until 1769, which

24:18

is actually the

24:20

spur of one of the greatest scientific

24:23

expeditions certainly to date, and that's the

24:25

Tahiti expedition on James Cook. There's a

24:27

wonderful story where James Cook, the great

24:29

navigator and captain, gets

24:31

sent to the other side of the globe to go

24:33

and measure the transit of Venus in front of the

24:35

sun because if you measure the passage of that planet

24:37

in front of the sun, which happens every 100 years

24:40

or more, then you measure it

24:42

from two different places on the surface of the

24:44

Earth and you can work out what is the

24:46

distance of Earth to the sun and therefore the

24:48

size of the solar system. A fantastic expedition, incredible

24:51

ambition, traveling with a

24:53

ship full of astronomers and instruments

24:55

all the way from Britain to the

24:58

Pacific Ocean, hit the target 30 kilometers

25:00

wide, and then get there,

25:02

set up a cutting edge scientific observatory,

25:05

taking all the measurements, and

25:07

so that's when we actually find out that

25:09

the distance Earth to sun is 150 million

25:11

kilometers and that was a great success. Then

25:14

Newton comes up around and says, well actually

25:16

if those stars are as fiery as the

25:18

sun is, then by measuring the relative brightness

25:20

of Sirius, the brightest star in the sky

25:22

to the sun, we can work out distance

25:24

using Saturn as a stepping stone because it's

25:26

very, very difficult to do so. And then

25:28

Newton comes up with a number which says

25:30

that Sirius is a million

25:33

times further away than the sun. We don't know how

25:35

far away is the sun at that point in time,

25:38

but a million times is a great deal further away

25:40

and at that point it was clear the universe is

25:42

a big place. These are the

25:44

Large Hadron Collider or the Hubble Space Telescope

25:47

of their time. It's a

25:49

tremendous effort. Do we

25:51

have any sense of why it was

25:53

so important? It's one of the big

25:55

expeditions of the time just

25:57

to measure the distance to the

25:59

sun. I suppose when you think of things

26:02

like the Royal Greenwich Observatory, which

26:04

was originally set up, that was mainly set up

26:06

for navigation. And so the stars

26:08

played an important role for that. I think

26:10

it's not really the Earth's sun distance, but

26:12

understanding the cosmos at latitude, working

26:15

out how to navigate across the sea, working out

26:17

where you are, forming a sort of a, having

26:19

a clock on board and sort of measuring using

26:21

sextants. And so all that

26:24

was about navigation, sort of touring

26:26

the world, increasing the empire

26:28

and the domination. So I think

26:30

that was very much a part of astronomy as

26:32

well. As we look in the history of astronomy,

26:34

what other individual stars have we

26:37

been able to understand,

26:40

them and therefore understand ourselves? If

26:43

we continue from what was being

26:45

said about the sun-Earth distance, one

26:47

sort of, it's a group of stars and

26:50

they're called seafed variables. So

26:52

by the time we get to sort of the 1900s and

26:54

we're getting sort of later, there

26:58

was a woman called Henrietta Swan

27:00

Leavitt, and she came up

27:02

with a Leavitt's Law, and it was looking at

27:04

these special types of stars called seafed variables. Now

27:07

a seafed variable, you can see them in other

27:09

galaxies, but they flash, and depending on

27:12

the frequency of their flashing, will tell

27:14

you how intrinsically bright that star is. Now

27:17

this is wonderful for astronomers, because it

27:19

means that if you see this seafed

27:21

variable and it's flashing, and you know

27:23

how bright it is, you can work

27:25

out how much light you're seeing and

27:27

then scale it up to work out how far away

27:29

the star is. It's something called

27:31

the inverse square law, but you can work this

27:34

out. And so they were looking at these seafed

27:36

variables, and this is one of the things that

27:38

Hubble was doing on Mount Wilson Telescope in the

27:40

1920s, largest telescope on Earth. And he

27:42

was looking at these seafed variables, and he realised

27:44

that the universe was far, far bigger than we

27:47

could anticipate. And some of these

27:49

sort of clusters, these sort of

27:51

small clusters they thought, they were other galaxies. And

27:54

then something very close to my heart is a

27:56

spectroscopy. And so with a spectrograph, you

27:58

take the light from the object, You split it into

28:00

its component colours and you can work out if that

28:03

star is moving towards us, moving away from us. And

28:05

from doing that, you'd call it red shift or blue shift,

28:07

from doing that Hubble was able to work out,

28:09

not only that the universe was much bigger than we first

28:12

anticipated, but the universe is also expanding. We

28:14

thought we had everything sussed, but no, in

28:17

the 1920s, suddenly the universe sort of changed

28:19

in virtually all dimensions. And I find that

28:21

so exciting that, you know, a few simple

28:23

experiments can sort of change our understanding of

28:26

the universe. But that goes straight to

28:28

the heart of what we're talking about

28:30

here, the cultural impact of astronomy, the

28:32

idea that the universe had

28:34

an origin, it's suggested

28:37

partly theoretically, I suppose from Einstein in the 1915,

28:39

1920s, George

28:42

Lemaitre, the great physicist

28:44

and priest, is noticing

28:46

that there may be an expanding universe then,

28:49

as you said, Hubble does it. So then

28:51

we start talking about creation, then

28:53

we start talking about an origin

28:56

to everything from, as you

28:58

said, Maggie, just analysing light from

29:00

the stars. So it begins to

29:02

get very important culturally. Yes,

29:04

it's almost like going throwing back because when

29:07

we talk about sort of the ancients looking

29:10

up at the light sky, and so many

29:12

cultures came up with creation stories based in

29:14

the stars. And here we are again, the

29:16

universe was created, the universe began and

29:18

expanded outwards. So how do we explain

29:21

that? Is there a

29:23

sense of culturally of a

29:25

real shock, but of interest in

29:27

that? When the moment happens in the

29:29

early 20th century, when we realise that

29:32

the Milky Way is just one among

29:34

billions of other galaxies, we're very peripheral,

29:36

that changes completely the perspective, is a

29:38

huge cultural shift, as huge as it

29:40

would be to find life elsewhere in

29:42

the universe, which might happen in our

29:44

lifetimes, if you're lucky. And

29:46

so that changes everything in the sense, and

29:49

those big questions about what is the origin

29:51

of everything there is, they keep being pushed

29:53

back and back and back in time. Now

29:55

we understand pretty well everything

29:57

that happened from the 10

30:00

to the minus 32 seconds after the

30:02

Big Bang until today? That's pretty good.

30:04

But what happens between 10 to the minus 35 and

30:07

minus 32 seconds after the Big Bang? Well, that

30:09

remains uncertain. Certainly science has pushed

30:11

the veil back almost all the way. But the

30:13

question's for me. We still don't know what happened

30:16

then or earlier before

30:18

there was time. What would our civilization

30:20

have been like? We can't know. But

30:23

how do you imagine our

30:25

civilization would be today if we did not

30:27

have access to the night sky? Very

30:30

different. So the book recounts the story of

30:32

what the stars did for us,

30:34

in my view, from prehistory to AI. But

30:37

also there are little mini chapters inside the

30:39

book that are sort of fictional. They

30:42

take place on a fictional planet that I've

30:44

invented. I've called it Caligo, which is a

30:46

Latin name for fog. And I try to

30:49

invent what might have happened or what would

30:51

not have happened. So that's one way of

30:53

imagining it. But for sure, I think we

30:55

wouldn't have science. Our spirituality

30:57

would be completely different. The

31:00

way we think about ourselves, the way we think about

31:02

the world would be completely different. And even,

31:04

I think, Neanderthals might be here

31:06

in our place, actually, if you will, for

31:08

the stars. It's funny, because if you look

31:10

at the planet Venus, that is shrouded in

31:12

cloud. And so we're pretty convinced there

31:14

aren't any Vesuvians. But if they were, they would have

31:17

looked up and just see sort of a cloudy sky.

31:19

But at the same time, when we

31:21

talk about a cloudy sky, we're talking about in

31:23

the visible light. And as an

31:25

astronomer and as an instrument maker, one thing

31:27

I like to talk about is tripping the

31:29

light fantastic. And so we look

31:31

at visible light, and that's what is part of our understanding

31:34

of the universe. And going back to ancient times,

31:36

of course, that was the only source of understanding

31:39

the universe. But for instance, with

31:41

the James Webb Space Telescope, I'm

31:43

just one of the 10,000 scientists that worked on

31:45

that. But we use infrared light. And

31:48

so although we might not have been able to see

31:50

that there was anything out there, I don't

31:52

know, I believe in serendipity as

31:54

well. Oh yeah, I've got this

31:56

infrared sort of center. Oh, wait, what's that? Maybe

31:58

we would have actually... not in the infrared because

32:00

we're swamped in the infrared, but maybe with something

32:02

we would have picked up one of the other

32:04

wavelengths and realised there might have been something beyond.

32:07

I'm always a glass half full person, but

32:10

I think that we might have found other

32:12

ways of detecting what's out there. I suppose

32:14

radio as well, I mean you may well

32:17

have invented radio and then suddenly there's a

32:19

sky aglow with radio waves, but

32:21

I suppose the question might be, we could

32:23

rephrase it, if you had no access to

32:25

the sky at all, which I suppose it's

32:27

not invisible light or radio or we

32:30

just did not know there was a universe

32:32

beyond the planet. There is a counterfactual of

32:34

sorts, going back to the Neanderthals

32:36

themselves, we know that

32:39

there were a different kind of human who

32:41

had been around for 800,000 years

32:43

before we came around and yet they never

32:45

developed all these technologies, they never got to

32:48

radio or the space or the James Webb

32:50

Space Telescope and then even have the the

32:52

suing needle for example. And they were as

32:54

intelligent as we are, we believe now, they

32:56

had the same cranial capacity, they had arts,

32:58

they were masters of fire, they

33:01

were social, they could probably speak

33:03

or suddenly produce sounds. Why

33:05

didn't they invent all this stuff? Is

33:08

it curiosity? Star-driven

33:10

curiosity, yes, I think so. So

33:13

the reason that the Neanderthals died

33:16

out, you're claiming, is because they

33:18

weren't astronomers. Yes,

33:22

exactly, that's why

33:24

astronomers it's so

33:26

important to keep funding astronomy in this day and age.

33:29

I'll definitely second that. We don't fund

33:31

astronomy, we will go the same way

33:33

as the Neanderthals. If you listen back

33:35

to about 50 episodes of

33:37

this show you will find there will

33:40

always be a point where a scientist

33:42

who's waiting to get his funding grant

33:44

accepted will say, and that is unfortunately

33:46

why I think their lack of understanding

33:48

of the human genome led to the

33:50

death of Neanderthals. So do you never

33:52

get any Neanderthals right and then go

33:55

look we're getting a lot of stick

33:57

on that show? Well nearly

33:59

all of us are. We've all got a nice

34:01

bit of Neanderthal. I wondered, John, what do you,

34:03

you know, this discussion, this is beautiful. So Frankie

34:05

Howard. We've all got a nice bit of Neanderthal.

34:08

Yeah. All fur coat

34:10

and no telescope. The, er, now, erm... But

34:13

I, I wondered what you feel about, er,

34:15

like, there's a beautiful phrase, cosmological vertigo, you

34:18

know, and we've been talking there, which is

34:20

that moment where you think of the enormity

34:22

of the universe. And we, you know, you

34:24

mentioned there, 300 billion stars, and

34:27

then I presume that even though it's gone up by

34:29

100 billion, we're still imagining there are more galaxies

34:31

than there are stars in our galaxy. Do

34:33

you ever get that sense of cosmological vertigo,

34:35

or is it something positive that always comes

34:37

from this? Well, when you say cosmological and

34:39

vertigo, just like it's just too much... It's

34:41

just too much of a gluttony. I know,

34:43

I know, like, like, like, like, you've written

34:45

a whole book on what would it be

34:47

like without stars. If it was me, I'd

34:49

just do that. For

34:53

the listeners, John is underneath

34:55

the tablecloth. And

34:58

has been for the whole show. Look,

35:01

I've been on this show a

35:04

number of times, and like, I'm

35:06

friends with you both, and there

35:08

are times where the conversation gets

35:10

beyond what my head can cope

35:12

with. And I'm literally hanging on.

35:15

So I've got stuff in my head, and I think,

35:17

just remember that bit and drop that in. Just

35:19

remember Kepler, Galileo, they're all there,

35:22

early 1600s, Bruno got killed just

35:24

before them. Throw that in, everyone thinks

35:26

you've read it. You know what I mean? So

35:29

I am a little bit

35:31

cramming. And I'll be honest with you, by

35:33

Tuesday I would have forgot it all. But

35:37

it's also the wonderments of it. I

35:40

think there's a spirituality when you look

35:42

at the stars, the relationship between human

35:44

beings and why we're here, and all

35:46

of that stuff that sometimes feels a

35:49

little hippie dippy can get

35:51

explained by science and be

35:53

understood by science, but not lose its

35:55

spirituality or its meaning. And I think

35:58

that's a wonderful thing. with

36:00

that. And I think some people

36:02

do get overwhelmed because I get schools, I

36:04

speak to people, like, 300 billion stars, and

36:06

they're like, hey, 200 billion galaxies, whoa! And

36:08

people come up to me afterwards and say,

36:10

whoa, yeah, when you say that, it makes

36:12

me feel a bit, you know, a bit

36:14

uncomfortable. But I think there are

36:16

two sorts of people, the people who make

36:18

them feel uncomfortable, the people who don't make

36:20

it feel uncomfortable. But to the people who

36:22

feel uncomfortable, I like to say that it

36:24

just means we are part of something fantastic.

36:26

We are part of this amazing cosmos. And

36:28

sitting on this planet, we are looking out

36:30

there and trying to understand it. And

36:33

so we are an infinitesimally small part

36:35

of that amazing cosmos, but we are

36:37

still part of it and understanding

36:39

it. And of all the things that you wrote

36:41

in your book, of all the things, I actually

36:44

stopped, put it down, and went downstairs to my

36:46

wife and said, listen, we need a cup of

36:48

tea. And she said, why? And

36:50

this might be a figure that loads of

36:52

people have heard before. But I'd never heard

36:54

it before. And it's that if you're born

36:56

in Western society now, you are

36:58

likely to have 4,000 weeks

37:01

of life. And

37:06

I suddenly went, oh my God, how many

37:08

of them have gone? How many have got

37:10

left? And what am I going to do

37:13

with the thousands or so who got left?

37:15

Because, you know, when you say 25 Christmases,

37:17

25 summers, it doesn't mean to say, but

37:19

a thousand weeks. And then you

37:22

put that down to how many nights are

37:24

you going to look at the sky? How

37:26

many times are you going to reference who

37:28

you are and where you fit into all

37:30

of this? And sometimes when you're saying hundreds

37:32

of millions and billions and billions of stars,

37:35

it's too much. But you've

37:37

got to remember that you're just passing

37:39

through. So just take a moment. You've

37:41

only got four thousand weeks. I genuinely

37:43

find every time I look at it,

37:45

daytime looking at the clouds, nighttime looking

37:47

at the stars, to do that

37:50

before you go to bed, as you

37:52

said, to lie in the long grass and just

37:54

stare up. Short grass is better. And

38:03

that is why your tribe died

38:05

out, predominantly. I'm always hiding

38:07

from someone. But

38:09

everything, everything, you know, a game

38:11

when you come down to all

38:13

this new understandings of mental

38:15

health and the relationship about being outside, being

38:17

in woods, being in trees, being able to

38:19

see the night sky. All of

38:21

those things matter to us in

38:24

a way that I don't think we fully understand.

38:26

And maybe previous human beings did understand it a

38:28

little bit more because they were less closeted.

38:32

And I think that connection you're talking about

38:34

is absolutely important nowadays because, yes,

38:36

you can go out in nature in the woodlands, whatever. But

38:38

the night sky is our shared global

38:40

commons. It's literally the only one aspect of

38:42

nature that's shared among all of us, although

38:44

we're losing it now to light pollution and

38:47

so on. And to me, that's

38:49

really, really important because to recapture that sense,

38:51

not just the understanding of the billions that

38:53

we were talking about, but the emotional connection

38:56

with the night sky, making you feel small

38:58

and insignificant, yet significant in that strange way

39:00

when that photon hits your retina and you

39:02

understand or feel something. I think

39:05

that's fundamental in this day and age

39:07

where we are facing a dramatic ecological

39:09

crisis and loss of biodiversity and all

39:12

the dangers that our planet faces to

39:14

understand how special we are, how unique

39:16

our blue marble is in that vast

39:18

blackness of space. And that's fundamental to

39:21

make good choices. How special is the

39:23

time we have? You know, when you

39:25

started out in life, if

39:27

someone said, this is as far as you're

39:30

going to get, you've gone for a thousand

39:32

weeks, you would use that time better. I

39:34

mean, there's a week in Benidorm. I'll never

39:36

get back. Maybe

39:39

with previous human beings, because

39:41

their life expectancy was shorter

39:44

and their closeness

39:46

to death was always relevant, that

39:49

their relationship with the stars might have

39:51

been more powerful because

39:53

they were mapping things that

39:55

the next cycle of

39:57

some of those changes would have been out there.

40:00

outside of their lifespan. And

40:02

somebody still mapped it. Well,

40:04

we're gonna wind up there, but I think

40:06

you're entirely right, John, that you always find time

40:08

to that experience of wonder and

40:11

curiosity and connection and delight. Thank you so

40:13

much to our panel, Roberto Trotto, Maggie Adiram-Pocock

40:15

and John Bishop. And

40:30

we asked our audience a question, and

40:33

today the question was, what scares you

40:35

most on the darkest of nights? Why

40:38

did you do that in a Northern accent? No, that

40:40

wasn't a Northern accent. That was mainly the darkest of

40:42

nights. But

40:44

I didn't. What scares you most on the darkest of

40:47

nights? Why did you do that? In a Northern accent.

40:49

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry. Zoe

40:52

said, my A-level results and

40:55

I'm the teacher. Knowing

40:58

statistically, I will eat a

41:01

spider during my lifetime together

41:03

with flies and other insects.

41:07

And that's from an old

41:09

woman who's been

41:11

very worried for some time. John,

41:18

what have you got? I've got to read

41:20

this one, although afterwards I think there'll probably

41:23

be an inquiry, because it's got getting caught

41:25

peeping and that's signed by Tom. This

41:30

is anatidophobia, a fear

41:32

a duck is watching me while I

41:34

sleep. Don't question it, Brian.

41:36

Don't question it. Just accept it.

41:38

Why a duck in particular? No,

41:41

we'll leave that to all in the mind. I'm sure

41:43

Claudia Hammond will have it. If the night is truly

41:46

dark, the duck wouldn't be able to see you. So

41:49

you'd be fine. So what's duck night

41:51

vision like then? Well, not good. If

41:53

it's completely dark, there's literally no photons

41:55

there. Then unless the duck is emitting

41:57

light. Duck with a

41:59

torch? Like a bat. Like sonar. We

42:05

didn't say anything about banning

42:07

torches. I think I've cured

42:09

the anisogymophobia. Because

42:11

the duck can't see you. So

42:13

don't worry about it. I think

42:15

it's more worrying, because then the duck might

42:18

start accidentally walking into you. The

42:22

duck's not evil, but it just can't

42:24

see anything. No, I think you've

42:26

made this farm worse. That should

42:28

be the advert that the duck's not evil. Yeah.

42:32

The strawberries I had for supper might still be alive.

42:35

Anyway, so next week, next week

42:37

we go from neutron stars to

42:40

the neonatal. From the music

42:42

of the spheres to the development of

42:44

the ears, from the mysteries of the

42:46

skies to the twinkle in our eyes,

42:48

from the beauty of Uranus... Yeah,

42:50

yeah, yeah, yeah. That'll do. Because

42:53

next week we will be exploring embryology,

42:56

the science of how we came to

42:58

be. From today's Big Bang to

43:00

Big Bang next week. And thank

43:02

you very much for listening. We'll

43:05

see you next time. Goodbye. Turned

43:27

out nice again. Strong

43:56

message here from BBC News. Radio

44:00

4. Listen now on BBC

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