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Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to Talk Nerdy. Today is Monday

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May eighteenth, twenty twenty six, and I'm the host of

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the show, Doctor Kara Santa Maria. And as always, before

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we dive into this week's episode, I want to thank

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those of you who make Talk Nerdy possible. We use

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t R e O N dot com slash talk Nerdy.

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This week's top patrons include Chuck Blell, David J. E. Smith,

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Daniel Lang, Mary Neiva will Defrain, David Compton, Brian Holden, Gabo,

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Jay Ulrica Hagman, Pasquale Gelati, Rika Maharaj and Joe Wilkinson.

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Speaker 2: It's because of.

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Speaker 1: You and many many others that were able to keep

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making this show all the way gosh since twenty fourteen.

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Today's episode is episode six hundred to two. Thank you,

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Thank you. All right, so let's get into it. This

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week I had the opportunity to chat with doctor Emma Chapman.

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She is an award winning astrophysicist. She's a royal Society

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Research Fellow and lecture based at the University of Nottingham.

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She's received many many commendations and prizes, including the Royal

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Society Athena Metal. Her first book was called First Light,

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and she has a new book out in the UK

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the title is Radio Universe, but here in the US

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it is called The Echoing Universe, How Radio Astronomy helps

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Us See the Invisible Cosmos. So, without any further ado,

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here she is doctor Emma Chapman. Well, Emma, thank you

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so much for joining me today.

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Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. I'm really looking forward to

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having a.

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Speaker 1: Chat absolutely, So we're going to be talking about your

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new book, The Echoing Universe, How Radio Astronomy helps us

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see the Invisible Cosmos. And like I usually do at

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the very top of the show, before we dive into

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any sort of specific content, I like to get a

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little bit into process. I'm curious about your kind of

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career trajectory, how you found yourself in astrophysics, what you

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studied in school, and if it was sort of like

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a linear path or if there were some twists and

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turns in there.

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Speaker 2: I'm gonna say linear chaotic. I do like that that's

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a thing but like I've been on a straight path,

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but it's been very weakly, there's been. Yeah, I did

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not grow up loving space. I will say that straight away.

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The first time I owned a telescope was I was

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about thirty four. Oh wow, Okay, only a few years ago,

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believe it or not. So I've been a professional astronomer

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for far longer than I actually ever owned a telescope.

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But I did grow up loving history, and I really

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really wanted to be an egyptologist, So I did all

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of my work experience in Egyptology, packaging five thousand year

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old shoes into little like acid free paper cardboard boxes

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a very famous museum in Oxford. And then I picked

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up a book in the library that was about something

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called special relativity, and all I really remember I was

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about fifteen, and it had a blurb about, hey, this

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is about time travel and how the faster you move,

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the slower you age, and I genuinely thought somebody had

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put it in the wrong section and that it was

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a science fiction book. So I took it home and

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I didn't understand ninety nine percent of it, but I

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did understand that I wanted to understand it, and almost

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overnight I switched on my options to study physics. I

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love that. Yeah, it's It's what I tried to tell

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to tell high school students now when I give talks,

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is that you know what, if you don't know what

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you want to do right now, that's fine. You can

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have a few left turns in your life. That's okay.

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And yeah, even even then I went to I went

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to university to study physics, didn't I still didn't have

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real interest in space until again I found out about

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the way we can explore the Big Bang and the

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era of the first stars. And then that little kid

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who had been fascinated by history and wanting to explore

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tombs in Egypt suddenly went, well, hang on a minute,

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that's history. Yeah, yeah, but of like billions of years,

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supposed a few thousand, And I was like, wait, nobody's

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dug up this time, nobody's explored this first billion years. Well,

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how do I do that? How do I do that?

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And so I started a PhD. And I was told

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that the only way I could do that was using

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radio telescopes, And so I gave myself a very quick

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crash course on radio astronomy during my PhD. And I've

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never looked back. And yeah, I like to tell people

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it's a bit tweet, but that I kind of I'm

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still a historian. It's just that I've swapped the trowel

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for a telescope.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely, And I mean so many things come up even

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as you're sharing your story. One that is sort of

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in the front of my mind has to do with

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the way that we structure academia. And obviously the structures

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are pretty different between the US and the UK, but

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there's still a lot of crossover. You know, American students

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can go study in the UK and vice versa and

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still you know, be on the right path and get

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the degrees that they are setting out to get. But

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one thing that I do notice is that, especially at

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the undergraduate level, and of course even worse as we

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get to more specialized graduate training, I worry that we

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don't do a great job of introducing these topics from

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a top down approach first and then getting into the

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bottom up training. I worry that so many kids are

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subjected to fundamentals of physics before they ever understand why

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we want to learn physics, that they are turned off

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by the I don't know, not being able to connect

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the dots between let's say, learning the mathematics and understanding that, yes,

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this is like a historical enterprise for example.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree completely, so much I could say on this,

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but it comes down to you need to inspire people

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need to feel inspiration and or are is a big

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word I use a lot. Is that. It's it's you

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need to feel that or that like, wait, I just

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don't understand this, but I feel something deeply. That feeling

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is what I try and kind of inspire in younger

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people for exactly that reason, to be like, hey, look

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our physics curriculum. I don't know about the US particularly,

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but in the UK is really quite dry. It's all

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you know, right, We're going to learn about simple harmonic

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emotion and this and that and oh my god, no wonder.

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I wasn't planning on studying physics and it took a

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popular science book for me to be like, wait, I'm sorry,

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time travel what? And that's what made me do it.

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But I think there's a bit of kind of almost

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is it snobbery or gatekeeping, I'm not sure what the

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right term is, but I think it's that people want

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to feel like they're super smart once they've done all

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of this training and they do understand general relativity and

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they're like, well, I can't possibly explain it to a

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thirteen year old, while no, you could. Actually, it's just

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that you don't want to lower yourself as you see

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it and break down that theory to the exciting fundamental blocks.

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And that's how I write Actually is is very much

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is kind of the second part of that. That question

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you asked was kind of like the process of me

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becoming an astrophysicist and in some way an author on

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this is that's how I understand science. If somebody comes

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to me with a scientific theory, now, I still to

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this day can't absorb that one hundred percent and go,

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oh yeah, it's very very clever. I have always been

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the one in the room that is absolutely willing to

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ask the air quotations stupid question, right, because otherwise you

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can't advance. And so what I always do is I

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go back. I go back to when that theory began,

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and I like to read and watch how that theory

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evolves over decades. And that's how I understand something is

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by breaking it down. But you're right, unless you have

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that knowledge of what's going to come, what's at the

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end of this journey. Yeah, you know what, it can

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look a bit dry at the start because you don't

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know where you're going.

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Speaker 1: You need both, and it's hard to not see that light, right,

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the light at the end of the tunnel, to help

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you get through the slog. Sometimes, you know, I think

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that I see a similar I don't know if it's

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a character trait or if it's just an insight. Really,

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I think that's more than anything, it's a similar insight

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amongst my peers and colleagues who work as both scientists

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and science communicators, or individuals who yeah write kind of

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trade publications, books for public consumption, or do television or

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podcast that they see that there is that disconnect. And

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I think about the fact that I had a friend.

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He's an older adult, so which will matter as I

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describe this, But he was lucky enough because he was

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a non major when he attended university at Cornell, he

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took a course from Carl Sagan called Physics for Poets.

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Speaker 2: Oh my lord, can.

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Speaker 1: You imagine that probably was the you know, the quintessential

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course that does exactly what we're describing here, inspires awe

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and wonder and assumes you guys aren't going to become

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professional physicists. So here's some of the stuff that you

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need to know in order for all of this to

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make sense. But we're not going to get lost in

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the minutia. And I wish we'd treat it all young

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physicists as.

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Speaker 2: Poets absolutely, and all poets like as physicists and physicists poets.

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You know. It's it's it's this old idea that you

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can send people to Artemis, or you can send a

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probe to the moon. Sorry, that's very different from having

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a human on board, especially someone who's got an artistic

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or poetic disposition and he's able to describe that in

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like a language that humans can understand. Yeah, And I

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think when it comes to this kind of to extend

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the analogy you just said about the light at the

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end of the tunnel, you need to see it. To

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see the light at the end of the tunnel, you

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can't have a lot of stuff in the middle. And

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that's where science communication comes in. It's about removing the

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stuff in the middle. You need to give them the

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inspiration the light at the end, and you need to

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start them on the journey and give them the means

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to get through that tunnel. But if you keep it

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blocked up with all the equations and all of the like, oh,

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this and that and all, we must be fair to

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include exactly this. It's like, do you know what? Forget

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your caveats sometimes, sorry, but what's important is this this

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feeling that you inspire into people, and that I guess

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that you help reduce their fear. You help reduce their

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fear so that they can go on. And then the

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next time they come across something with the title radio astronomy,

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and for example, they'll be like, oh, actually, do you

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know what, I am smart enough to read this article.

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I am going to give that a day.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, I think radio astronomy is such

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a perfect example of a topic and an area of

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inquiry where you do have to dig a little bit

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deep to find that way in. And the reason I

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say that is because when we think of popular science communication,

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especially now that everybody is on their you know, cell

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phones and everybody is connected to social media. One of

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the ways that I think NASA has historically, for example,

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had such a wonderful public outreach effect is through imagery.

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And very often that imagery is it's visual you know,

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it's like the visual spectrum imagery, and so I talk

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to astronomers from time to time on the show who

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are working within spectra that aren't as readily understood to

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the eye. And so I'm curious if maybe you can

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share with us right at the top, you know, what

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is radio astronomy, Like what tools do you use to

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detect it? And what does it look like physically? Like

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can you print it on paper?

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Speaker 2: Is that?

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Speaker 1: Do you approximate it with visual representations?

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Speaker 2: Sure? So radio astronomy it puts together two terms that

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we're really familiar with. One is astronomy, which is the

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study of the universe. I'm literally looking up and radios

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we're used to in our daily life. The older of

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us will have remembered actually having a physical radio with

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an antenna, whether or on our car. The younger of

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us will maybe surprised to know you do have radio

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antennas but miniaturized in your phone, and what those are

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doing are collecting a type of light. To optical light

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is one part of the whole spectrum of light, but

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the really long wavelength low energy light is called radio light.

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And that's so good at communicating, It's really good at

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keeping information and not getting kind of disturbed by the

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atmosphere of the earth or clouds or all sorts of things.

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So that's why we use it to broadcast on radio stations,

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because it's just really good transferring information over long distances.

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So radio astronomy is putting those two things together. It's

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looking up and communicating. It's looking up and listening and

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sometimes sending radio waves out into space and echoing them

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back and seeing what information we can get when we

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listen back. And to do that, I use the word listen.

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I use the word listen loosely here, and that's because

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when we think about radios, we think about listening, but

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what it really is is seeing, and so we need

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to build a different kind of eye. Now, our eyes

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are evolved to see really really small wavelength light, so

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you can kind of just really imagine like a very

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drawing a wiggly line that's really really really really wiggly.

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But the radio waves is march broader wiggles, and you

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need a march bigger eye to be able to do that.

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And the thing that works for us is a big

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metal antenna. So what happens is we use an antenna

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that you might even have on the side of your house.

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Rusting from the days of satellite television, what you might

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have something that looks a bit like a kind of

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spindly Christmas tree on the side of your house, or

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you might have a satellite dish. Both of those are

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radio antennas. They are both able to receive radio waves,

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and they're both able to receive radio information from the universe,

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so you could call them radio telescopes as well. And

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that's kind of what it is. It's using this antenna

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to gather radio light and then translate it into something

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that we can understand as humans. So the way I

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like to think about that is a paint by numbers.

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So if anybody has done a paint by numbers with

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their kid or by themselves, I'm not judging. You have

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like these images and they'll be broken down on a

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canvas where it's kind of got like all of certain parts.

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We'll say one is red, two is green, three is blue,

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and you have a set of paints and you'll paint

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all of the red, all of the number one's red,

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and eventually you have an image. Now, that's all we

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do with any wavelength of light that we're not evolved

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to see. So it's almost like we take the rainbow

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and we shift it to the radio wavelengths, and we say,

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you know what, a two meter wavelength radio wave we're

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gonna call red, and a two point five meter wavelength

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radio wave we're gonna call blue, and we color the

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image that we're getting in like a paint by numbers,

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and then it's just that image looks like any other

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kind of image that we might see in the optical light.

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And I'll just finish by saying that that layer of translation,

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you're right, does seem to provide an obstacle. It does

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seem to be like, oh gosh, this is a little

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bit hard until you realize that actually the optical images

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you see from Hubble, for example, which is an optical telescope,

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they have also been translated. They have been observed in

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different optical well wavebands like red, green, blue, and they

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put them together in a certain kind of way. So

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that layer of translation is always happening. It's just people

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are more fearful of it when it comes to something

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like radio astronomy, which is just that touch less, tangible

295
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right right.

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Speaker 1: Just beyond what their I can see, But the data

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are still there. And I think that's that's the important

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kind of point here, is that you know you were

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describing these these dishes on the side of your home.

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I have a dear friend, doctor summer Ash, who's been

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on the show before. For anybody who who remembers way

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back when, I'm probably due to have her on again.

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And for years she was a staff member at the

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National Radio Astronomy Observatory, and so she actually managed all

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the tours and the visitor experiences at the Very Large Array,

306
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which is very close to me here in Los Angeles.

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It's in New Mexico, and so this is I think

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what people usually, at least in the US. I think

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if if you have heard of radio astronomy and an

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image comes to your mind, I think it's probably the

311
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Very Large Array that comes to your mind, these massive

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satellite dishes that are actually telescopes.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really interesting. I'm so jealous to start with.

314
00:18:44,359 --> 00:18:47,000
That's really I hadn't actually thought about what image might

315
00:18:47,000 --> 00:18:49,839
come to you in the US, actually, because here it's Jodullbank.

316
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It's the level telescope, which is big, kind of three

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hundred foot ish two hundred and three I think diameter dish.

318
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For me, it's always our Cibo in Puerto Rico that

319
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comes why in this massive dish that's that was three

320
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hundred meters across. But what those instruments do is just

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this level of translation from light to electric signal, and

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that's exactly what our eyes do. So this light comes

323
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in through our our pupil, so I was struggling. That

324
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comes in and it hits the retina and it produces

325
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an electric impulse in the retina which then goes on

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to go down the nerves into the brain and is

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translated into an image that we can, you know, understand

328
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a little bit more. And that's what an antenna's doing.

329
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Is the radio light is falling on that metal, it's

330
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introducing an electric voltage or current, and that current is

331
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then going that that voltage is going down your cables

332
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into your computers, and it's being translated into okay, that

333
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means it's that bright in that wavelength over there. And

334
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that's all we're doing. And we might steer our telescopes

335
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in different ways. We can get into the weeds of

336
00:20:05,319 --> 00:20:07,400
that a bit later if you like, but you can

337
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have these dishes that kind of point in different directions,

338
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like we turn our head. You can have a little

339
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bit more clever stuff like the VLA, the very large array,

340
00:20:17,440 --> 00:20:22,839
which can plug dishes together, telescopes together and create the

341
00:20:22,880 --> 00:20:26,039
equivalent of a gigantic telescope as well. There's some really

342
00:20:26,079 --> 00:20:29,000
cool stuff that you can do just with radio astronomy.

343
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Speaker 1: And there's also I think when it comes to the

344
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data itself, like what we are actually observing. You mentioned

345
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the comparison. You know, you did such a beautiful job

346
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of describing to us what those radio signals are and

347
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how they do differ from optical signals, and how we

348
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can sort of translate and interpret that data. But of

349
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course that means that with radio astronomy you can quo

350
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to see or hear things that you can't see with

351
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just visible light. Isn't that true?

352
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Speaker 2: Absolutely? Yeah, And it is the same with any wavelength.

353
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I try not to get too tribal about it.

354
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Speaker 1: Right, That's true.

355
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Speaker 2: Like I do absolutely have a soft spot in my

356
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heart of a radio astronomy obviously, which is why I

357
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wrote the book, because I do find that it is underreported,

358
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let's say, because of people's fear of it. And what

359
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amazes me is that even though I'm a cosmologist by trade.

360
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My areas the first stars, first black holes to exist

361
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in the universe. I have always had a really strong

362
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interest in other areas of astronomy and actually all popular science.

363
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I read a huge amount popular science across the board,

364
00:21:45,480 --> 00:21:49,039
always have, and I was fascinated that I just kept

365
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reading these books that had nothing to do with radio astronomy,

366
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and there'd just be a throwaway sentence saying, oh, and actually, yeah,

367
00:21:55,720 --> 00:21:58,960
the first exoplanet, the first planet outside our solar system

368
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was found by radio telescope. Oh, oh, okay, I didn't

369
00:22:02,839 --> 00:22:04,839
actually know that. And then you know, and it would

370
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be it be every area that I'd come across that

371
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radio astronomy had kind of just been quietly getting on

372
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with it and not really enjoying much attention, I suppose.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

374
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Speaker 2: And so so there's there's many many things that radio

375
00:22:21,480 --> 00:22:24,680
astronomy can look at. It's looking at different physical processes.

376
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That's the way we can think about it. All the

377
00:22:26,559 --> 00:22:30,880
wavelengths of light probe different physical processes. So the James

378
00:22:30,920 --> 00:22:35,200
Web Space telescope, it's really good at getting through kind

379
00:22:35,200 --> 00:22:37,920
of the dusty parts of our galaxy and looking at

380
00:22:37,960 --> 00:22:42,519
stars being born. It's really good in that radio telescopes

381
00:22:42,640 --> 00:22:45,839
radio waves. Sorry. As I've mentioned, their superpower is kind

382
00:22:45,839 --> 00:22:49,319
of being able to travel unperturbed, which means that they

383
00:22:49,319 --> 00:22:52,440
can glide not just to our own atmosphere, but through,

384
00:22:52,480 --> 00:22:57,279
for example, the atmosphere surrounding Venus, which is entirely impenetrable

385
00:22:57,359 --> 00:23:01,920
to optical like we've never seen the surface with optical

386
00:23:02,000 --> 00:23:04,400
light sent from Earth. We've sent a few probes down

387
00:23:04,400 --> 00:23:07,519
there that have been horrifically crushed after thirty minutes, but

388
00:23:08,160 --> 00:23:11,400
just before they die horribly after thirty minutes, these metal

389
00:23:11,400 --> 00:23:16,200
probes not crude, I should be vocalar. They have sent

390
00:23:16,240 --> 00:23:18,559
that twelve twelve images, and that's all we've got. Whereas

391
00:23:18,759 --> 00:23:22,799
radio waves, we can from Earth press a button, send

392
00:23:22,839 --> 00:23:26,880
some radio waves along. A few minutes later, it'll bounce

393
00:23:26,920 --> 00:23:30,279
off the surface of Venus, having just slid through that

394
00:23:31,680 --> 00:23:34,759
almost impenetrable atmosphere. It'll come back and we will get

395
00:23:34,799 --> 00:23:38,240
these incredible three D renderings of the volcanoes on the

396
00:23:38,279 --> 00:23:42,039
surface of Venus. And yeah, I could go on and on,

397
00:23:42,160 --> 00:23:44,400
but I don't know how much you want me to

398
00:23:44,440 --> 00:23:47,000
talk about it now. But you know, my absolute favorite

399
00:23:47,359 --> 00:23:51,240
in the Solar System is ice on mercury. So that

400
00:23:51,680 --> 00:23:54,920
blew my mind. I could not wait to share that

401
00:23:54,960 --> 00:23:56,680
with people. I found this out and I was like,

402
00:23:56,720 --> 00:23:59,400
I have to write about this now because I mean

403
00:23:59,480 --> 00:24:01,440
I literally felt like coming out of the pub and

404
00:24:01,480 --> 00:24:03,160
tapping people on the shoulder and be like, seez I

405
00:24:03,240 --> 00:24:07,160
did you know there is ice on mercury? I was like,

406
00:24:07,480 --> 00:24:09,920
because I feel like you should not go home not

407
00:24:10,039 --> 00:24:15,039
knowing that. It became this compulsion in me to tell

408
00:24:15,079 --> 00:24:17,039
people like this is this is why I write, is

409
00:24:17,079 --> 00:24:20,680
so I don't alienate all of my friends and family

410
00:24:21,599 --> 00:24:25,039
because I just tell my word process so instead.

411
00:24:24,720 --> 00:24:28,720
Speaker 1: Of and so the only way that we know that

412
00:24:28,880 --> 00:24:33,240
is is because of because of detection with with radio.

413
00:24:33,680 --> 00:24:36,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, because where you can't where you can't kind of

414
00:24:36,440 --> 00:24:39,279
shine a light an optical light on something you can't

415
00:24:39,400 --> 00:24:42,160
you can't see it with an optical camera. And mercury

416
00:24:42,200 --> 00:24:45,480
has some really deep craters and parts of its surface

417
00:24:45,680 --> 00:24:49,039
never ever see sunlight because of this weird way it rotates.

418
00:24:50,920 --> 00:24:54,480
It rotates so weirdly that actually the sun sometimes comes

419
00:24:54,559 --> 00:24:59,680
up halfway, goes backwards and then comes back up to

420
00:24:59,720 --> 00:25:03,519
fini vicious onset. It's really very strange. But anyway, there

421
00:25:03,519 --> 00:25:06,319
are places that optical light just cannot get in even

422
00:25:06,359 --> 00:25:09,279
if you're write up close and so radar what that

423
00:25:09,480 --> 00:25:11,920
can do radar, by the way, is just the method

424
00:25:12,039 --> 00:25:15,599
of sending radio waves and then echoing back towards you,

425
00:25:15,640 --> 00:25:18,119
and you listening to how that echo is changed to

426
00:25:18,240 --> 00:25:21,640
work out how big the cave or the crater is

427
00:25:21,240 --> 00:25:24,039
in this sense, And what happens is when that light

428
00:25:24,599 --> 00:25:28,559
bounces off the bottom of the crater. Usually it would

429
00:25:28,599 --> 00:25:30,359
come back and we'd be like, Okay, this crater is

430
00:25:30,400 --> 00:25:33,759
about this big, this deep. Fine, This light came back

431
00:25:33,839 --> 00:25:38,759
ever so slightly changed in its kind of direction of waviness.

432
00:25:38,799 --> 00:25:42,599
We're going to call it that, but polarization, the direction

433
00:25:43,119 --> 00:25:47,880
the wave is traveling kind of yeah, at ninety I'm

434
00:25:47,920 --> 00:25:49,039
not sure I can be bothered to get into this

435
00:25:49,119 --> 00:25:51,920
right now unless you ask a follow up question on that.

436
00:25:51,240 --> 00:25:54,359
But because honestly, you know what I said earlier about

437
00:25:54,359 --> 00:25:56,519
the caveats, let's just you know what the cool thing

438
00:25:56,559 --> 00:25:58,519
is here, not the polarization, is the fact that the

439
00:25:58,599 --> 00:26:01,160
light came back changed, and it can be changed in

440
00:26:01,200 --> 00:26:04,160
such a way that it could only have been reflected

441
00:26:04,200 --> 00:26:07,880
by something really shiny and frozen like ice. And yeah,

442
00:26:07,880 --> 00:26:10,119
sure enough, they then knew what to go look for

443
00:26:10,240 --> 00:26:13,039
with other probes, and they confirmed it. It was indeed

444
00:26:13,079 --> 00:26:17,480
water ice on Mercury from comets millions of years ago

445
00:26:17,839 --> 00:26:22,279
that has sat there frozen on the hottest planet, well

446
00:26:22,279 --> 00:26:26,519
not the hottest planet, but the closest planet to the Sun. Yeah,

447
00:26:27,119 --> 00:26:28,519
in incredible temperatures.

448
00:26:29,119 --> 00:26:32,680
Speaker 1: That's amazing. It's I mean the fact that it's not

449
00:26:33,119 --> 00:26:35,000
just about sort of.

450
00:26:37,160 --> 00:26:37,680
Speaker 2: Tools.

451
00:26:37,720 --> 00:26:40,559
Speaker 1: Obviously, these are tools that are used to answer questions.

452
00:26:40,599 --> 00:26:44,759
I think science is interesting in this way because sometimes

453
00:26:44,759 --> 00:26:49,119
when I talk to folks who aren't scientists, I notice

454
00:26:49,160 --> 00:26:53,039
certain assumptions that are completely reasonable assumptions. And I'm going

455
00:26:53,079 --> 00:26:56,599
to take a hard left turn to explain or to

456
00:26:57,000 --> 00:27:02,000
prepare for the for the discussion. I'm teeing up here.

457
00:27:02,200 --> 00:27:04,920
I'm remembering. So I'm a psychologist and I work in

458
00:27:04,960 --> 00:27:08,680
a cancer center, and I'm remembering talking to a patient

459
00:27:09,039 --> 00:27:12,160
who had a very rare kind of cancer. But that

460
00:27:12,319 --> 00:27:15,319
very rare kind of cancer has all of these really

461
00:27:15,480 --> 00:27:19,480
like cutting edge treatments available that are you know, nearly

462
00:27:19,680 --> 00:27:24,160
curative and just very very almost sci fi in nature.

463
00:27:24,480 --> 00:27:26,920
And I remember this patient asking me, like, why would

464
00:27:26,960 --> 00:27:29,599
they have that for what I have? When so many

465
00:27:29,640 --> 00:27:33,480
more people have, you know, breast cancer, prostate cancer, all

466
00:27:33,480 --> 00:27:36,319
these different types. And I was like, oh, right, because

467
00:27:36,960 --> 00:27:39,720
sometimes in science we ask questions and then we go

468
00:27:39,799 --> 00:27:42,440
try to work to find answers, and other times in

469
00:27:42,480 --> 00:27:47,359
science we are asking broader or somewhat related questions and

470
00:27:47,400 --> 00:27:50,279
then we stumble upon things where we're like, you know

471
00:27:50,319 --> 00:27:52,839
what that would be good for you know what that

472
00:27:52,880 --> 00:27:56,599
would probably help us. And that's why certain cancers have

473
00:27:56,799 --> 00:27:59,880
certain treatments available that feel light years ahead of others.

474
00:28:00,079 --> 00:28:03,759
It's because somebody stumbled on some genetic quirk or some

475
00:28:04,039 --> 00:28:07,000
cool way that the cells were reacting to something in

476
00:28:07,039 --> 00:28:09,799
the lab and they go, oh, this actually isn't working

477
00:28:09,839 --> 00:28:11,480
for this solid tumor, but look what it can do

478
00:28:11,559 --> 00:28:15,440
in the blood. And I'm curious. I mean, I can

479
00:28:15,519 --> 00:28:20,240
only imagine that physics, and especially astrophysics, works in a

480
00:28:20,319 --> 00:28:24,880
similar way that sometimes it takes those really innovative minds

481
00:28:24,960 --> 00:28:29,000
who were working so hard and so narrowly to solve

482
00:28:29,039 --> 00:28:31,720
a problem, but then said, I wonder what would happen

483
00:28:31,720 --> 00:28:35,839
if I apply this technique to this question over here,

484
00:28:36,400 --> 00:28:41,720
and then something breaks wide open? Absolutely, yeah, like what

485
00:28:41,839 --> 00:28:45,119
kinds of questions has radio astronomy been able to answer

486
00:28:45,519 --> 00:28:46,160
in that way.

487
00:28:46,759 --> 00:28:49,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm going to give you the less in a minute,

488
00:28:49,200 --> 00:28:51,799
but just to like comment on that question, yeah, yeah,

489
00:28:51,839 --> 00:28:56,599
I couldn't believe more. How do I put this? People

490
00:28:56,640 --> 00:29:00,000
will often talk about a serendipitous discovery, as in like, oh,

491
00:29:00,039 --> 00:29:02,920
it just came out of nowhere. That's very really true.

492
00:29:03,240 --> 00:29:05,400
It is exactly what you describe, is that somebody was

493
00:29:05,440 --> 00:29:08,799
trying to ask a broader question. They had the education

494
00:29:09,400 --> 00:29:15,720
and the curiosity is absolutely key, I think to answer

495
00:29:15,720 --> 00:29:19,839
that question. But that curiosity carries them further than the knowledge,

496
00:29:20,079 --> 00:29:23,240
than the education, because it's that curiosity which when you

497
00:29:23,319 --> 00:29:27,640
find a radio signal, like Jocelyn Bellbanel in the nineteen sixties,

498
00:29:27,720 --> 00:29:32,079
and she's sat there for months looking at a print

499
00:29:32,119 --> 00:29:34,759
out of what is basically a straight line with some

500
00:29:34,799 --> 00:29:37,640
wiggles on, and she's looking for one kind of wiggle,

501
00:29:38,160 --> 00:29:42,240
and over football field length pieces of paper, she has

502
00:29:42,319 --> 00:29:46,680
the curiosity to notice a very small, different kind of wiggle,

503
00:29:47,400 --> 00:29:50,119
and most people would have walked away. Most people have said,

504
00:29:50,160 --> 00:29:53,039
that's not the wiggle I'm looking for. I'm not interested

505
00:29:53,079 --> 00:29:55,599
in this wiggle. I haven't got time for this wiggle.

506
00:29:55,799 --> 00:29:57,599
I want a PhD on the other kind of wiggle.

507
00:29:58,079 --> 00:30:02,079
She said, wait a minute, that weird, Hang on, what

508
00:30:02,240 --> 00:30:05,359
is that? And everything stops and she has a curiosity

509
00:30:05,359 --> 00:30:08,799
to look, and she finds after a small amount of time,

510
00:30:09,279 --> 00:30:11,960
finding that this signal is repeating, and it's like, what

511
00:30:12,119 --> 00:30:15,839
is this signal? Is it aliens? And they famously wrote

512
00:30:16,000 --> 00:30:18,720
LGM in the margins of this print out, being like

513
00:30:18,720 --> 00:30:22,160
could it be little green men? Until they realized there

514
00:30:22,160 --> 00:30:25,960
were four on the disky and it was very unlikely

515
00:30:26,000 --> 00:30:29,559
that aliens were communicating to them from four different areas

516
00:30:29,720 --> 00:30:32,720
at the same time. And they eventually found that this

517
00:30:32,839 --> 00:30:36,319
was a completely new kind of astronomical object called a pulsar,

518
00:30:37,039 --> 00:30:41,200
which was a spinning neutron star, so a star that

519
00:30:41,240 --> 00:30:43,839
has collapsed at the end of its life to such

520
00:30:44,960 --> 00:30:49,839
a compact little sphere that it's only about ten kilometers

521
00:30:49,880 --> 00:30:52,720
in diameter, so a star, but about the width of

522
00:30:52,720 --> 00:31:00,759
a city small city, completely composed of one type of particle, neutron,

523
00:31:00,839 --> 00:31:04,160
and it's spinning so fast, it's spinning thousands of times

524
00:31:04,200 --> 00:31:08,119
a second, and in doing that it triggers a physical

525
00:31:08,160 --> 00:31:11,920
process where beams of radio light come out of it

526
00:31:12,160 --> 00:31:16,319
like a like a jet of like a lighthouse beam

527
00:31:16,440 --> 00:31:19,240
and that beam is passing over Earth, and that is

528
00:31:19,319 --> 00:31:24,559
creating a wiggle in Joscelyn Bell Bernell's radio telescope where

529
00:31:24,559 --> 00:31:28,160
she was least expecting it. And if that person hadn't,

530
00:31:28,200 --> 00:31:31,559
if she hadn't been curious and open at that moment,

531
00:31:31,640 --> 00:31:34,599
and I'm going to get political slightly here, hadn't had

532
00:31:34,640 --> 00:31:38,359
the funding and the time to be able to explore that.

533
00:31:38,400 --> 00:31:40,960
It's so important in science to give people time to

534
00:31:41,039 --> 00:31:45,599
study this curiosity driven research. Then you know what, that

535
00:31:45,880 --> 00:31:49,039
pulsos wouldn't have been discovered in nineteen sixty seven, I

536
00:31:49,039 --> 00:31:51,440
think it was. They would have been discovered in let's

537
00:31:51,440 --> 00:31:54,519
say nineteen seventy five and nineteen eighty three. It would

538
00:31:54,519 --> 00:31:58,240
have happened. It's just you need both the knowledge and

539
00:31:58,359 --> 00:32:01,920
education and the cure real stina time to be able

540
00:32:01,960 --> 00:32:02,359
to do that.

541
00:32:03,119 --> 00:32:07,960
Speaker 1: So before you before you continue with the examples more examples,

542
00:32:07,960 --> 00:32:10,599
I guess from radio astronomy, I feel like that is

543
00:32:10,640 --> 00:32:12,880
a point that so bears repeating. When you said, you know,

544
00:32:13,519 --> 00:32:17,920
get political for a second, obviously, it speaks to exactly

545
00:32:18,480 --> 00:32:23,640
this concept that so many people in I think positions

546
00:32:23,640 --> 00:32:26,880
of political power in you know, who have the power

547
00:32:26,880 --> 00:32:30,440
of the purse who are sort of setting policy on

548
00:32:30,519 --> 00:32:33,440
who gets funded and who doesn't and where we spend

549
00:32:33,480 --> 00:32:41,400
our tax dollars. They are thinking and not not nefariously. Simply,

550
00:32:41,480 --> 00:32:45,039
I think naively that the way to answer questions in

551
00:32:45,079 --> 00:32:48,519
science is to make sure you are asking the correct question,

552
00:32:49,039 --> 00:32:51,519
to fund the thing that we think is the best,

553
00:32:52,640 --> 00:32:55,599
you know, current way to investigate the thing, and then

554
00:32:55,640 --> 00:32:59,559
to report on those results and that you know the

555
00:32:59,599 --> 00:33:03,359
truth of the matter is a lot of discovery comes

556
00:33:03,440 --> 00:33:11,480
from interdisciplinary collaboration and conversations and crossover and having exactly

557
00:33:11,480 --> 00:33:14,640
what you said. The empowerment which comes from privilege, it

558
00:33:14,640 --> 00:33:18,359
comes from funding, it comes from backing, and it just

559
00:33:18,400 --> 00:33:21,160
comes from like having you know, people in positions of

560
00:33:21,200 --> 00:33:23,680
power to say, yeah, you have I don't know, you

561
00:33:23,720 --> 00:33:26,960
are empowered to do this thing, to be able to

562
00:33:27,200 --> 00:33:32,720
chase down a side quest from time to time, because

563
00:33:32,720 --> 00:33:37,319
if we didn't have that latitude to do that, everything

564
00:33:37,359 --> 00:33:40,079
would be siloed. We would have a bunch of false

565
00:33:40,119 --> 00:33:42,559
stops and starts. And actually I think that the political

566
00:33:42,640 --> 00:33:46,960
machine would become disillusioned because they would say, no, we

567
00:33:47,000 --> 00:33:49,200
funded you to do this thing and you couldn't do it.

568
00:33:49,359 --> 00:33:51,519
So clearly you're not you know, you're not the right

569
00:33:51,559 --> 00:33:54,160
person for this, or this lab is not the right lab,

570
00:33:54,240 --> 00:33:56,519
or you guys aren't good at your jobs. Well, sometimes

571
00:33:56,519 --> 00:33:58,400
we just can't do certain things because we don't have

572
00:33:58,440 --> 00:34:01,960
the technology yet, but we have other things that not

573
00:34:02,000 --> 00:34:04,200
being able to do that thing taught as we could do.

574
00:34:04,880 --> 00:34:08,280
Speaker 2: Absolutely, you can use the technology that you didn't expect

575
00:34:08,320 --> 00:34:10,960
at the start of the grant, for example, to suddenly

576
00:34:10,960 --> 00:34:15,639
do something else, or you know, if you're expected. Sometimes

577
00:34:15,639 --> 00:34:18,719
people think that they want a question answered and that

578
00:34:18,760 --> 00:34:21,039
there should be one group of people that are best

579
00:34:21,079 --> 00:34:23,960
tasked to answer that. That's not true. You have to

580
00:34:24,000 --> 00:34:26,719
have people working all the different little parts and then

581
00:34:27,119 --> 00:34:30,360
you know what, trying every combination. It's a buffet. You're

582
00:34:30,360 --> 00:34:32,880
going to try every combination of things to make something work.

583
00:34:33,159 --> 00:34:38,840
And the temptation to seek a shortcut, and you're right,

584
00:34:38,880 --> 00:34:42,199
it's not nefarious. The people don't want to waste taxpayers money.

585
00:34:42,199 --> 00:34:45,679
They shouldn't want to waste taxpayers money. What we fail

586
00:34:45,760 --> 00:34:50,679
to communicate sometimes is that they are wasting taxpayers money

587
00:34:50,280 --> 00:34:56,239
by seeking these single solution questions. We're undergoing what are

588
00:34:56,320 --> 00:34:59,519
quite catastrophic cuts to UK science at the minute, as

589
00:34:59,519 --> 00:35:03,719
I'm sure. I'm sure you share the pain, so you

590
00:35:03,840 --> 00:35:07,760
understand this. And we're trying to communicate with people that

591
00:35:07,800 --> 00:35:09,679
have that are really trying to do the best by

592
00:35:09,719 --> 00:35:14,159
their constituents that that actually, you know what, you need

593
00:35:14,239 --> 00:35:17,280
curiosity driven science. And it's not it's not a case

594
00:35:17,320 --> 00:35:20,519
that by allowing people that space to do the side quest,

595
00:35:20,559 --> 00:35:23,800
I love that to pursue the side quest, that you're

596
00:35:23,840 --> 00:35:27,119
giving them a blank check. No, right, we're not. We're

597
00:35:27,119 --> 00:35:31,320
not saying, hey, you go do your thing and you know,

598
00:35:31,400 --> 00:35:33,719
book first class and do whatever you like. We won't

599
00:35:33,800 --> 00:35:37,000
check on you, not at all. We're saying, here's some money,

600
00:35:37,119 --> 00:35:39,760
here's your main quest. Yeah, sure, you know what, have

601
00:35:39,840 --> 00:35:44,719
some side quests, and having the confidence in those people

602
00:35:45,440 --> 00:35:48,119
that they are going to do some wonderful science and

603
00:35:48,159 --> 00:35:50,159
it might not be what you expected, but it is

604
00:35:50,199 --> 00:35:51,880
going to be darn good.

605
00:35:52,679 --> 00:35:55,800
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and it's going to make some sort of difference.

606
00:35:55,800 --> 00:35:59,239
And I think that's where the communication of science, not

607
00:35:59,239 --> 00:36:00,760
not to go off on a comple lee tangent, but

608
00:36:01,280 --> 00:36:05,119
the public communication of science is so fundamental to the

609
00:36:05,159 --> 00:36:09,760
scientific enterprise. And while I am somebody who agrees wholeheartedly

610
00:36:09,880 --> 00:36:14,119
that there are scientists who are phenomenal scientists who probably

611
00:36:14,199 --> 00:36:16,840
shouldn't be the people that we are putting out in

612
00:36:16,920 --> 00:36:20,480
front to communicate their science. I don't think that a

613
00:36:20,719 --> 00:36:24,440
lab should exist on the planet where there are not

614
00:36:24,800 --> 00:36:29,679
individuals whose entire maybe not their entire career, but their

615
00:36:30,320 --> 00:36:34,400
a portion or their entire emphasis is being able to

616
00:36:34,440 --> 00:36:38,440
communicate what is coming out of that lab, both for

617
00:36:38,719 --> 00:36:44,360
other scientists, but also for policy makers and for the public.

618
00:36:44,639 --> 00:36:47,760
Because if we can't do a good job as scientists

619
00:36:47,800 --> 00:36:51,320
to get people to understand why what we are doing matters,

620
00:36:51,400 --> 00:36:54,159
it is all done. It's a tree falling in the forest,

621
00:36:54,880 --> 00:36:59,400
like nobody is going to be able to justify continuing

622
00:36:59,400 --> 00:37:02,719
to fund it, and the public is going to become

623
00:37:02,800 --> 00:37:07,480
disillusioned and they're not going to want their taxpayer dollars

624
00:37:07,760 --> 00:37:10,000
to go towards that funding. And I think part of

625
00:37:10,039 --> 00:37:13,800
the problem sometimes is that there are fields like biomedical

626
00:37:13,880 --> 00:37:17,480
science that have done a phenomenal job of saying, look,

627
00:37:17,559 --> 00:37:22,320
this directly impacts you. If you don't help us work

628
00:37:22,360 --> 00:37:26,960
in this Alzheimer's research, you personally may suffer in the future.

629
00:37:27,440 --> 00:37:29,920
And I think it can be more difficult when we

630
00:37:30,000 --> 00:37:34,360
talk about questions like what is the origin of the universe.

631
00:37:34,760 --> 00:37:39,360
But you know, these are also very existential questions. And

632
00:37:39,400 --> 00:37:42,920
I think people like you are so important in your

633
00:37:43,079 --> 00:37:47,320
fields because you take the time to say, this is

634
00:37:47,400 --> 00:37:48,480
why this matters.

635
00:37:49,679 --> 00:37:54,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's that I'm a minded of a

636
00:37:54,480 --> 00:37:59,039
time I visited Stanford, and I visited Stanford once in

637
00:37:59,039 --> 00:38:03,079
my life. I do not come I come from like

638
00:38:02,599 --> 00:38:05,800
a like a middle class kind of UK family. So like,

639
00:38:05,960 --> 00:38:09,079
you know, we we did fine, but we certainly weren't rich.

640
00:38:09,800 --> 00:38:11,880
We had to watch money and everything like that, and

641
00:38:11,960 --> 00:38:14,239
we I certainly would have never been able to go

642
00:38:14,280 --> 00:38:17,760
to kind of like anywhere I like Stanford. So I

643
00:38:17,880 --> 00:38:20,239
was so scared when I went. And this was only

644
00:38:20,320 --> 00:38:23,320
like five years ago, okay, so well into my career,

645
00:38:23,320 --> 00:38:25,559
and I was still that intimidated by everything I'd had.

646
00:38:25,639 --> 00:38:27,119
And I got there and yeah, do you know what.

647
00:38:27,199 --> 00:38:30,000
I was so intimidated, and I was thinking, oh my gosh,

648
00:38:30,000 --> 00:38:32,280
people are just going to be awful. And then I

649
00:38:32,320 --> 00:38:36,679
found out that this astrophysics department in Stamford hired full

650
00:38:36,760 --> 00:38:40,599
time a science narrator. And I was like, I'm sorry,

651
00:38:40,599 --> 00:38:43,559
what is this? And I had never come across this,

652
00:38:44,039 --> 00:38:46,679
and it was the most wonderful thing. This whole department

653
00:38:46,840 --> 00:38:49,119
was completely versed in the fact that they would do

654
00:38:49,159 --> 00:38:52,719
their amazing astrophysics research. And then there was this person

655
00:38:52,840 --> 00:38:56,719
who had who you had done astronomy research previously, but

656
00:38:56,840 --> 00:39:00,159
had like also like a really good like science communication background,

657
00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:04,119
and their job was to listen to this scientist and go, Okay,

658
00:39:04,599 --> 00:39:09,239
now this is the narrative of what you have studied,

659
00:39:09,679 --> 00:39:13,239
and it is about picking out exactly what the problem

660
00:39:13,559 --> 00:39:19,480
is that they have moved towards solving. And I always

661
00:39:19,480 --> 00:39:21,639
come away from that because I went with such of

662
00:39:21,639 --> 00:39:23,920
my own prejudice. I was so freared, like I was

663
00:39:23,920 --> 00:39:26,400
so scared of big kind of the victim of like

664
00:39:26,480 --> 00:39:29,360
this prejudice, and I went with my own thinking like, oh,

665
00:39:29,440 --> 00:39:32,719
these like super rich universities that they're not going to

666
00:39:32,760 --> 00:39:35,199
care at all about science communication. Actually, I've taken that

667
00:39:35,320 --> 00:39:39,119
lesson back to all of like the lesser privileged universities

668
00:39:39,119 --> 00:39:41,599
that seem to think we must do pure science to

669
00:39:41,639 --> 00:39:43,679
be respected. And I'm like, no, no, no, do you

670
00:39:43,679 --> 00:39:47,239
want to know what they're doing. They know this matters,

671
00:39:47,559 --> 00:39:50,159
they know that this is how they get more funding,

672
00:39:50,880 --> 00:39:53,239
they know that this is how they do public good

673
00:39:53,559 --> 00:39:56,440
as well. And you're right, It is hard in astrology.

674
00:39:56,480 --> 00:40:00,280
It's both easier to be in astronomy because people love

675
00:40:00,400 --> 00:40:03,480
space from like the minute they understand it, right four

676
00:40:03,559 --> 00:40:04,000
years old.

677
00:40:05,280 --> 00:40:09,440
Speaker 1: It's kind of like space and paleontology already have that built.

678
00:40:09,480 --> 00:40:14,320
Speaker 2: It's space and dinosaurs exactly that, and so we already

679
00:40:14,360 --> 00:40:16,719
have that that people are naturally like, oh wow, tell

680
00:40:16,760 --> 00:40:20,360
me more. Also, they don't really want to listen after

681
00:40:20,440 --> 00:40:23,760
five minutes, so you'll tell them something amazing about black hole,

682
00:40:23,880 --> 00:40:26,400
but ah, that's amazing. But then they'll go around the

683
00:40:26,679 --> 00:40:30,599
day and they'll not understand that. Let's say, some of

684
00:40:30,639 --> 00:40:33,719
the technology that's used to develop the telescope has actually

685
00:40:33,800 --> 00:40:37,039
been used in retinal implants because we're so good at

686
00:40:37,079 --> 00:40:41,239
detecting incredibly low levels of light in our telescopes that

687
00:40:41,320 --> 00:40:46,079
we've managed to transfer that technology into that kind of

688
00:40:46,119 --> 00:40:51,039
medical application. Nobody wrote to Grant saying I'd like to

689
00:40:51,400 --> 00:41:00,280
study dark energy and also solve the problem of partial sight. No,

690
00:41:00,920 --> 00:41:02,920
it came out of it, and there were there were,

691
00:41:03,039 --> 00:41:06,360
you know, plenty of things, plenty of examples like that.

692
00:41:06,480 --> 00:41:09,679
But it's yeah, it's both hard of and easier.

693
00:41:12,360 --> 00:41:15,639
Speaker 1: Absolutely. You know, I'm curious kind of going back to

694
00:41:15,760 --> 00:41:20,719
this this uh opening conversation about you know, what is

695
00:41:20,920 --> 00:41:23,679
radio wave and how do we detect it? And and

696
00:41:24,400 --> 00:41:27,440
you know, you told this wonderful story about the discovery

697
00:41:27,559 --> 00:41:34,880
of pulsars by this this blip on radio wave data

698
00:41:34,960 --> 00:41:37,559
print outs that was not what was being you know,

699
00:41:37,880 --> 00:41:44,840
originally observed. What other things about our universe? I mean,

700
00:41:44,880 --> 00:41:47,480
obviously I can imagine that it's like pretty much name

701
00:41:48,119 --> 00:41:51,400
name an aspect of inquiry, and you can you can

702
00:41:51,639 --> 00:41:55,400
identify what radio waves have helped us understand. But you know,

703
00:41:55,480 --> 00:41:58,800
you mentioned, for example that personally you were interested in

704
00:41:58,840 --> 00:42:04,199
the early universe kind of the immediate outcome of the

705
00:42:04,239 --> 00:42:06,719
Big Bang and what was happening kind of when everything

706
00:42:06,840 --> 00:42:10,360
was very hot and not very differentiated. And I'm curious,

707
00:42:10,639 --> 00:42:15,679
what does radio astronomy tell us about a really long

708
00:42:15,719 --> 00:42:16,239
time ago.

709
00:42:17,760 --> 00:42:20,519
Speaker 2: Well, that is a difficult question for me to answer,

710
00:42:20,639 --> 00:42:23,159
because at the moment we're still in the very early

711
00:42:23,199 --> 00:42:28,000
stages of exploring it. We have started building these incredible

712
00:42:28,039 --> 00:42:31,440
telescopes like the square kilometer array in the Western Australian

713
00:42:31,440 --> 00:42:35,239
Desert one hundred and thirty thousand antennas we're going to

714
00:42:35,280 --> 00:42:36,280
pluck together eventually.

715
00:42:36,400 --> 00:42:36,599
Speaker 1: Wow.

716
00:42:37,039 --> 00:42:40,639
Speaker 2: And the reason we're doing that is because very early

717
00:42:40,679 --> 00:42:44,280
in the universe, it's very hot, it's very chaotic, nothing

718
00:42:44,440 --> 00:42:48,079
much can form apart from hydrogen and helium, the two

719
00:42:48,159 --> 00:42:53,119
lightest elements there are hydrogen and helium, and eventually, over

720
00:42:53,400 --> 00:42:57,679
tens of millions of years, this begins collapsing into the

721
00:42:57,880 --> 00:43:02,719
very first stars, which were completely different, completely different species

722
00:43:02,719 --> 00:43:04,559
to the stars that we see around us today. They

723
00:43:04,559 --> 00:43:06,960
were one hundred times the mass of our sun. They

724
00:43:06,960 --> 00:43:12,239
were bright blue, they were really astonishing objects. And what

725
00:43:12,320 --> 00:43:17,320
they did in that era was they kind of heated

726
00:43:17,840 --> 00:43:21,280
and changed all of the rest of the universe, all

727
00:43:21,280 --> 00:43:25,559
of the hydrogen lying around, and it emitted radio waves.

728
00:43:26,400 --> 00:43:29,719
And those radio waves have been traveling to us for

729
00:43:29,760 --> 00:43:34,239
thirteen and you know, change billion years, thirteen point eight

730
00:43:34,239 --> 00:43:37,519
billion years. And as I said right at the beginning

731
00:43:37,519 --> 00:43:40,159
of this conversation, if you want information to last a

732
00:43:40,199 --> 00:43:43,559
long time, what do you use radio waves? Because they

733
00:43:43,559 --> 00:43:49,000
are the ultimate communication device basically. So, yes, did a

734
00:43:49,039 --> 00:43:52,239
lot of stuff in the early universe give out UV light,

735
00:43:52,679 --> 00:43:56,920
optical light, infrared light. Absolutely, it's all there. It's just

736
00:43:56,960 --> 00:44:00,679
that we can't detect any of it anymore. Whereas the

737
00:44:00,880 --> 00:44:05,480
radio light are like the hieroglyphics on the walls of

738
00:44:05,519 --> 00:44:09,440
the ancient Egyptian tombs. They have these ancient messages which

739
00:44:09,480 --> 00:44:13,519
were written over thirteen billion years ago, and we're just

740
00:44:13,679 --> 00:44:17,519
uncovering now. And so our job is to get those

741
00:44:17,639 --> 00:44:20,800
radio waves and looking at those what we will be

742
00:44:20,840 --> 00:44:24,719
able to work out is how many of these first

743
00:44:24,719 --> 00:44:28,320
stars were there, because we've never seen this kind of

744
00:44:28,719 --> 00:44:31,480
first few hundred million years of our big bang. We've

745
00:44:31,480 --> 00:44:33,639
never seen the first stars, we've never seen the first

746
00:44:33,679 --> 00:44:36,840
black holes or the first galaxies, and we'll be able

747
00:44:36,880 --> 00:44:40,800
to work out, okay, well, how many of them were there.

748
00:44:40,840 --> 00:44:43,760
It's like working out how many dinosaurs were walked the earth.

749
00:44:43,880 --> 00:44:46,960
We know that we're there, how many were there? And

750
00:44:47,079 --> 00:44:50,679
when did the first black holes come first? That's something

751
00:44:50,880 --> 00:44:55,119
really recent totally upended our understanding. We thought the first

752
00:44:55,119 --> 00:44:58,639
stars came first collapsed into the first black holes. Now

753
00:44:59,320 --> 00:45:01,920
with the early kind of data, we're starting to think,

754
00:45:01,960 --> 00:45:04,320
actually it's the other way around, and the first black

755
00:45:04,320 --> 00:45:10,039
holes formed alongside the first stars, which is which is

756
00:45:10,199 --> 00:45:13,119
just a fascinating area. So yeah, that's that's what we're

757
00:45:13,119 --> 00:45:15,559
trying to work out, and doing that, we're going to

758
00:45:15,599 --> 00:45:21,920
be able to create images of the early times hundreds

759
00:45:21,920 --> 00:45:25,519
of million years after our big band, but like the

760
00:45:25,960 --> 00:45:28,920
first billion years, let's say, let's round it up, the

761
00:45:28,960 --> 00:45:31,400
first billion years of our big band will be able

762
00:45:31,440 --> 00:45:36,760
to actually create an evolving image of these radio waves

763
00:45:36,800 --> 00:45:39,440
and that will tell us how it's changing over time.

764
00:45:39,480 --> 00:45:43,239
So it's like going on to Netflix and streaming, you know,

765
00:45:43,400 --> 00:45:46,400
like a live action film of something going on for

766
00:45:46,480 --> 00:45:48,480
a few hours and working out. And that's what we're doing.

767
00:45:48,639 --> 00:45:53,719
We are streaming the universe. We're downloading like a historical documentary,

768
00:45:54,960 --> 00:45:58,719
historical footage of our universe growing up and watching it,

769
00:45:58,880 --> 00:46:02,119
watching I would press fast forward and watching it over

770
00:46:02,119 --> 00:46:04,840
that billion years. When did the first stars come? When

771
00:46:04,840 --> 00:46:07,199
did they die? Oh?

772
00:46:07,239 --> 00:46:11,159
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. And so is this one of the areas

773
00:46:11,199 --> 00:46:14,480
that you were digging into for your dissertation.

774
00:46:14,960 --> 00:46:18,039
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is exactly my area. It's the area that

775
00:46:18,079 --> 00:46:21,199
my first book was written about. And yeah, so this

776
00:46:21,320 --> 00:46:24,159
is my bread and butter is what I studied. My

777
00:46:24,360 --> 00:46:28,400
job specifically is to kind of use these really huge

778
00:46:28,480 --> 00:46:31,440
radio telescopes. I use one in the Netherlands to try

779
00:46:31,440 --> 00:46:34,440
and get this radio signal from the cosmic dawn that

780
00:46:34,480 --> 00:46:38,199
we call it the problem that we're trying to solve,

781
00:46:38,360 --> 00:46:41,639
is that that signal's really faint because you can imagine

782
00:46:41,800 --> 00:46:44,639
you try shouting, you know, it's a few, like a

783
00:46:44,639 --> 00:46:46,920
few tens of meters before somebody can't hear you, right,

784
00:46:48,000 --> 00:46:50,960
you try doing that over thirteen billion years of distance,

785
00:46:51,960 --> 00:46:55,800
it's a long long way. So my job is to

786
00:46:55,880 --> 00:46:59,639
dig that signal out. Like the archaeologist. I always wanted

787
00:46:59,679 --> 00:47:04,920
to be from something ten thousand times brighter, which is

788
00:47:04,960 --> 00:47:08,400
our own galaxy. And it's really hard, which is why

789
00:47:08,639 --> 00:47:13,480
I'm still doing that about fifteen years after I started

790
00:47:13,760 --> 00:47:17,039
to dick. But we're getting ever, ever, ever closer, so

791
00:47:17,039 --> 00:47:20,039
it's really exciting. It really is like just one of

792
00:47:20,079 --> 00:47:22,840
those little brushes kind of like you know, dusting away

793
00:47:22,840 --> 00:47:23,880
one layer at a time.

794
00:47:26,000 --> 00:47:29,199
Speaker 1: So I'm curious. Then that leads me to wonder. You know,

795
00:47:29,280 --> 00:47:34,159
as you're putting together this most recent book, you've obviously

796
00:47:34,440 --> 00:47:38,159
been studying radio astronomy throughout your career. You are a

797
00:47:38,239 --> 00:47:43,440
radio astronomer. You've been digging deeper and deeper into this,

798
00:47:43,920 --> 00:47:48,280
you know, kind of time in our universal past where

799
00:47:48,440 --> 00:47:51,679
there are so many more questions than answers. Right now,

800
00:47:53,400 --> 00:47:56,559
you probably already knew quite a bit going in. But

801
00:47:56,639 --> 00:48:01,519
of course, in order to write a book for public

802
00:48:01,519 --> 00:48:04,920
consumption about a topic, you want to be somewhat thorough.

803
00:48:04,960 --> 00:48:07,280
You want to ensure that you're, you know, doing research

804
00:48:07,280 --> 00:48:11,199
in areas where maybe your understanding wasn't there. Is there

805
00:48:11,280 --> 00:48:14,920
anything that you discovered? I mean, I think that you

806
00:48:14,960 --> 00:48:18,320
already gave us a beautiful example with the is mercury.

807
00:48:18,840 --> 00:48:21,400
But were there things that you came across or maybe

808
00:48:21,440 --> 00:48:23,000
you knew them, but you were like, oh, I forgot

809
00:48:23,039 --> 00:48:25,480
I knew that, or like, wow, I can't believe I

810
00:48:25,519 --> 00:48:29,639
didn't know that about radio astronomy that surprised you.

811
00:48:30,360 --> 00:48:37,000
Speaker 2: Every chapter that might undermine my authority, but I don't care.

812
00:48:37,239 --> 00:48:42,559
I once had a publication when I admitted that in print.

813
00:48:43,679 --> 00:48:46,199
This was years ago for a different things. But I've

814
00:48:46,199 --> 00:48:47,840
been like, oh, I actually didn't know much about this

815
00:48:47,880 --> 00:48:50,480
going and they were like, our readers do not appreciate

816
00:48:50,960 --> 00:48:55,119
knowing the same amount as our experts. One must provide

817
00:48:55,159 --> 00:49:00,800
an air of expertise. I'm like, no, like you know

818
00:49:00,880 --> 00:49:04,480
what I think we're done here? No, I will admit

819
00:49:04,519 --> 00:49:06,960
that you know, I knew the headlines. Of course I did.

820
00:49:08,039 --> 00:49:12,079
I am a radio astronomer. What I discovered it again

821
00:49:12,119 --> 00:49:16,280
and again and again, is that I didn't know how

822
00:49:16,519 --> 00:49:20,880
rich this history was and how some of the major

823
00:49:20,920 --> 00:49:23,400
discoveries like that. The one that comes to mind after

824
00:49:23,519 --> 00:49:26,400
the Eyes of Mercury is that the first ever ever

825
00:49:26,760 --> 00:49:30,559
planet outside our Solar system was discovered using radio astronomy.

826
00:49:31,519 --> 00:49:35,800
The reason it's forgotten is because it was around a pulsar,

827
00:49:36,000 --> 00:49:39,559
which luckily I've already talked about today, which is this

828
00:49:39,599 --> 00:49:42,960
spinning neutron star. The reason that that was quickly forgotten

829
00:49:43,039 --> 00:49:48,239
was because we're very we're human centric and life centric,

830
00:49:48,280 --> 00:49:50,719
and when we're looking for planets, we want them to

831
00:49:50,719 --> 00:49:53,960
be habitable because we want to find aliens. And so

832
00:49:54,519 --> 00:49:56,880
you can't live around a pulsar because the radiation is

833
00:49:57,000 --> 00:49:59,440
ridiculous and it's a dead star. So we wanted to

834
00:49:59,440 --> 00:50:01,719
find the next planet around a sun like stuff. So

835
00:50:01,800 --> 00:50:05,719
the minute that happened, it's like the radio one didn't exist.

836
00:50:06,599 --> 00:50:10,079
But the technical ability of being able to do that,

837
00:50:10,559 --> 00:50:13,440
and so yeah, going into this that the pleasure of

838
00:50:13,480 --> 00:50:16,159
this book was starting from exactly the point you say,

839
00:50:16,199 --> 00:50:20,000
which is like, Hey, I'm a radio astronomer doing cosmology,

840
00:50:20,039 --> 00:50:22,199
I'm going to write a book about like that. That

841
00:50:22,199 --> 00:50:24,760
that kind of stuff. Oh what else can I write about? Right?

842
00:50:24,880 --> 00:50:28,480
Solar system? Honestly, I started writing this book where the

843
00:50:28,480 --> 00:50:32,440
solar system was one or two chapters. As I dug,

844
00:50:32,960 --> 00:50:36,119
I was like, my god, this is this is part

845
00:50:36,480 --> 00:50:39,079
one of three, Like this is this is half the book?

846
00:50:39,719 --> 00:50:41,800
You know, you know I need to go planet about

847
00:50:41,840 --> 00:50:44,599
planet here because I had no idea. It was that rich.

848
00:50:45,119 --> 00:50:48,519
Like again I knew the headlines, but like, yeah, just

849
00:50:48,679 --> 00:50:51,679
it just it got me again and again. And I'm

850
00:50:51,760 --> 00:50:55,880
such a nerd for the actual instrumentation itself, I think

851
00:50:55,880 --> 00:50:59,199
because I feel like I owe it something. By instrumentation,

852
00:50:59,239 --> 00:51:03,039
I mean the actual tell because I the first time

853
00:51:03,079 --> 00:51:05,760
I ever saw a radio telescope, I was deeply disappointed.

854
00:51:06,199 --> 00:51:08,639
I was like, are you kidding me? Like I've got

855
00:51:08,679 --> 00:51:11,840
to spend four years in a really flat, wet place

856
00:51:11,880 --> 00:51:15,079
in the Netherlands where all my optical colleagues get to

857
00:51:15,079 --> 00:51:21,559
go to Hawaii? Are you kidding me? Like? They literally

858
00:51:21,599 --> 00:51:25,199
look like TV aerials. And then that completely flipped as

859
00:51:25,199 --> 00:51:27,280
I just so after a few months and I realize

860
00:51:27,280 --> 00:51:31,559
that wait, wait, wait, wait, with just a few TV aerials,

861
00:51:31,960 --> 00:51:36,400
we can look back to the first stars. Damn, We're smart.

862
00:51:37,760 --> 00:51:40,599
It's like and so like I'm a real nerd for

863
00:51:40,679 --> 00:51:43,320
kind of just just explaining to people that, yeah, you

864
00:51:43,360 --> 00:51:45,000
know what, you look at it and you might be like,

865
00:51:45,360 --> 00:51:47,719
that's not as kind of cool as a rocket launch

866
00:51:48,239 --> 00:51:51,079
and like you know, flying to the moon and everything.

867
00:51:51,079 --> 00:51:52,639
It's like, yeah, but I just want you to spend

868
00:51:52,800 --> 00:51:55,920
three minutes thinking about the fact that somebody can switch

869
00:51:56,119 --> 00:52:00,920
like send some radio waves boiler kettle and come back

870
00:52:01,039 --> 00:52:07,159
and have answers about Venus that Souls Space Probe was

871
00:52:07,199 --> 00:52:11,519
able to answer. And I think the breadth of radio

872
00:52:11,559 --> 00:52:13,800
telescopes as well always amazes me. So like a lot

873
00:52:13,800 --> 00:52:17,679
of optical telescopes will kind of be designed to look

874
00:52:17,679 --> 00:52:22,360
at galaxies or to look at this. Radio telescopes they

875
00:52:22,440 --> 00:52:24,400
tend to be Do you have Swiss army knives over there?

876
00:52:24,400 --> 00:52:26,639
I'm not sure what you good and we can do

877
00:52:26,760 --> 00:52:29,000
the same thing. Yeah, okay, good. I don't know why

878
00:52:29,000 --> 00:52:30,800
I didn't assume it because the Swiss and I'm not Swiss,

879
00:52:30,840 --> 00:52:35,519
but anyway, but the Swiss army knife of telescopes basically

880
00:52:35,599 --> 00:52:38,519
like any pretty much any radio telescope is able to

881
00:52:38,960 --> 00:52:45,280
look for aliens while checking for pulsars, proving general relativity,

882
00:52:45,840 --> 00:52:49,559
looking at the central black hole of our galaxy, which incidentally,

883
00:52:49,599 --> 00:52:53,119
actually is how the whole of radio astronomy was invented

884
00:52:53,679 --> 00:52:57,880
in the nineteen thirties. We talked about serendipity earlier. It

885
00:52:58,000 --> 00:53:02,199
was about this guy called Cultski putting on some headphones

886
00:53:02,239 --> 00:53:06,039
basically and hearing a hiss over this this telephone line

887
00:53:06,519 --> 00:53:08,880
and being like, hey, I wonder what that hiss is

888
00:53:09,480 --> 00:53:12,800
and building this antenna that could look at the sky

889
00:53:14,519 --> 00:53:17,280
and he found out that that was actually that hiss

890
00:53:17,719 --> 00:53:20,880
was coming from the central black hole of the super

891
00:53:20,920 --> 00:53:23,440
massive black hole at the central of the Milky Way.

892
00:53:24,079 --> 00:53:27,760
And yeah, in nineteen thirty three, which is she that's

893
00:53:27,800 --> 00:53:28,760
how it all began.

894
00:53:29,559 --> 00:53:34,000
Speaker 1: That's incredible, and we're very young. Yeah, I mean and

895
00:53:34,360 --> 00:53:37,280
at the time like questioning even the existence of some

896
00:53:37,360 --> 00:53:41,920
of these like cosmic kind of objects, and you know,

897
00:53:42,079 --> 00:53:45,079
do they exist? Even are they theoretical is how can

898
00:53:45,119 --> 00:53:48,679
we measure them and detect them and continue to collect

899
00:53:49,320 --> 00:53:52,559
evidence for their existence? Like a what a cool thing

900
00:53:53,320 --> 00:53:57,960
to be involved in a field, in a you know,

901
00:53:58,079 --> 00:54:02,079
particular endeavors within that field where there are so many

902
00:54:02,760 --> 00:54:10,159
brilliant and innovative people using so many just interesting tools

903
00:54:10,599 --> 00:54:16,679
to try to answer similar questions from different perspectives, where

904
00:54:16,679 --> 00:54:19,880
at the end of the day you can say, you know,

905
00:54:19,960 --> 00:54:23,159
we're pretty confident that that is what's happening here, that

906
00:54:23,199 --> 00:54:25,360
there is a giant black hole in the middle of

907
00:54:25,440 --> 00:54:28,320
our you know, solar system or in the middle of

908
00:54:28,360 --> 00:54:30,360
our galaxy, because we can we're actually in the middle

909
00:54:30,360 --> 00:54:32,159
of the galaxy. Are there a lot of them?

910
00:54:32,719 --> 00:54:36,719
Speaker 2: There are so many you're not going to sleep at night.

911
00:54:38,039 --> 00:54:41,199
There are black holes roaming around our Milky Way quite happy.

912
00:54:41,639 --> 00:54:46,119
But there's one super massive one, the essential right in

913
00:54:46,119 --> 00:54:47,239
the middle. Yeah.

914
00:54:47,320 --> 00:54:49,559
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so in the middle of our galaxy, this

915
00:54:49,719 --> 00:54:53,559
super massive black hole that was you know, at one

916
00:54:53,599 --> 00:54:58,119
point in time, highly theoretical in nature. Now we're able

917
00:54:58,159 --> 00:55:03,079
to say, because of the these measurements and those detections

918
00:55:03,119 --> 00:55:08,519
and these equations and those observations, we were able to

919
00:55:08,639 --> 00:55:13,880
freaking image a black hole recently. I mean there you do.

920
00:55:14,440 --> 00:55:17,880
Speaker 2: Just pop that in there. People think that image was optical.

921
00:55:17,920 --> 00:55:19,440
It was not. It was radio.

922
00:55:19,119 --> 00:55:22,840
Speaker 1: Waves phenomenal, And now I think, too, right, we've imaged

923
00:55:22,840 --> 00:55:27,679
too yeap, oh, that's so cool. I mean that's what

924
00:55:27,760 --> 00:55:31,559
science is really all about, right, It's about saying, you know, huh,

925
00:55:32,239 --> 00:55:36,840
I'm just sitting back, feeling the vibes, noticing that something

926
00:55:36,920 --> 00:55:41,599
feels peculiar or interesting. How do we explain this, How

927
00:55:41,599 --> 00:55:44,679
do we describe this? Let's build some stuff, Let's start

928
00:55:44,719 --> 00:55:47,159
to investigate an interrogation. Oh, you over there, you want

929
00:55:47,159 --> 00:55:47,840
to try it that way?

930
00:55:47,880 --> 00:55:48,119
Speaker 2: Cool?

931
00:55:48,159 --> 00:55:49,679
Speaker 1: Try it though, And then at the end of the

932
00:55:49,760 --> 00:55:52,599
day everybody gets together and goes, hmm, your thing and

933
00:55:52,639 --> 00:55:55,360
my thing and their thing. Yeah, seems like maybe there's

934
00:55:55,400 --> 00:55:58,679
something going on here and what a cool thing?

935
00:55:59,599 --> 00:56:03,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the universe is the biggest laboratory that you

936
00:56:03,159 --> 00:56:05,320
can you can find is that you know, you can

937
00:56:05,400 --> 00:56:07,840
kid yourself that maybe, oh, astronomy is the pretty subject

938
00:56:08,199 --> 00:56:11,159
is It's like, no, no, excuse me. You can't find

939
00:56:11,320 --> 00:56:15,800
magnetic fields that are that are more intense than around

940
00:56:15,840 --> 00:56:20,159
neutron stars and black holes. You can't find denser matter

941
00:56:20,280 --> 00:56:22,960
than is near a black hole. You can't find hot

942
00:56:23,079 --> 00:56:27,079
temperatures colder temperature's. Nuclear fusion could solve the energy crisis

943
00:56:27,119 --> 00:56:28,920
on Earth. Do you know the only place we've seen

944
00:56:28,960 --> 00:56:33,679
at work in a star? So for me, like, I think,

945
00:56:34,119 --> 00:56:36,360
just just bookend in this conversation. You asked how I

946
00:56:36,400 --> 00:56:38,840
got into this. I very much came into this not

947
00:56:38,880 --> 00:56:43,320
as somebody who loved space. I do love it as

948
00:56:43,360 --> 00:56:46,239
certainly as increases i've got older, but like I do

949
00:56:46,320 --> 00:56:49,559
love it. But I came into it as a physicist

950
00:56:49,800 --> 00:56:55,239
wanting to test the frontiers of our of our understanding

951
00:56:55,639 --> 00:56:57,679
of our universe. And that comes to the very small

952
00:56:57,679 --> 00:57:01,840
as well, so general relativity, onto physics, condense matter, physics,

953
00:57:01,880 --> 00:57:07,480
all these like crazy terms that you can test by

954
00:57:07,800 --> 00:57:11,440
looking at this massive laboratory. And there comes a level

955
00:57:11,440 --> 00:57:14,360
of patience with astronomy as well, where you know your

956
00:57:15,239 --> 00:57:18,519
line of work and a lot of different places will

957
00:57:18,519 --> 00:57:21,559
have laboratories, but they'll set up a hypothesis, they'll test it. Right.

958
00:57:22,360 --> 00:57:25,360
We can't always do that as astronomers. We can't say, hey,

959
00:57:25,400 --> 00:57:28,039
I want that start to explode tomorrow because it's during

960
00:57:28,039 --> 00:57:32,079
my grant. We have to be quite creative about working

961
00:57:32,159 --> 00:57:34,000
out where to look and when to look, and how

962
00:57:34,039 --> 00:57:37,880
to combine data to get to the answers we want.

963
00:57:38,320 --> 00:57:43,079
And it's that ingenuity that I really enjoy in astronomy broadly,

964
00:57:43,159 --> 00:57:45,679
but especially in radio astronomy, where you have to go

965
00:57:45,719 --> 00:57:47,800
with that step further because you don't have the intuition

966
00:57:48,679 --> 00:57:51,239
of your optical sensors.

967
00:57:52,000 --> 00:57:57,760
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, gosh, so many fascinating stories to continue to tell,

968
00:57:57,800 --> 00:58:01,000
and so much you know are and one to inspire

969
00:58:01,119 --> 00:58:05,440
in us, and hopefully for those listening their appetite has

970
00:58:05,480 --> 00:58:08,880
been whetted a little bit to be able and curious

971
00:58:08,960 --> 00:58:11,679
to dig even deeper. And should you do so, the

972
00:58:11,679 --> 00:58:15,559
place to start is with the book The Echoing Universe.

973
00:58:15,599 --> 00:58:19,719
How Radio Astronomy helps Us See the Invisible Cosmos, by

974
00:58:19,760 --> 00:58:22,639
doctor Emma Chapman. Emma, thank you so much for being

975
00:58:22,639 --> 00:58:23,519
here with us.

976
00:58:23,920 --> 00:58:25,400
Speaker 2: Thank you and.

977
00:58:25,400 --> 00:58:28,360
Speaker 1: Everybody listening, thank you for coming back week after week.

978
00:58:28,599 --> 00:58:30,880
I'm really looking forward to the next time we all

979
00:58:30,880 --> 00:58:33,559
get together to talk Merity