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The BBC Earth Science presenter talks about the great concepts of the Universe before it stops at the Jubilee on Friday.
Professor Brian Cox here in the Highlands, Iceland, for Episode 1 of Universe, a new program that airs on BBC Earth. Photo by Melissa Michaels / Suministrat
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The University of Manchester physicist and professor of public participation in science at the Royal Society, Professor Brian Cox has returned with a new series and an American tour. For fans of the famous science presenter, this news is like his favorite band going on the road.
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Only a handful of scientists can exhaust the spaces that give lectures on some of the most complex problems that bother current particle physicists. Cox is one of them. His ability to distill some of the more complex questions that researchers ask about space, time, and the things that are above and beyond in something that the lay person can understand is rare.
His latest program, Universe, aired as part of the BBC’s Earth Week programming. The show follows the acclaimed planets, taking viewers even further from our earthly realm to the cosmos. The Horizons tour will also link issues of cosmology and how we are trying to understand it.
“You really see it in episode 1, which aims to tell the stories of the stars differently,” Cox says. “I worked with a director who usually works in the arts, he has even directed Shakespeare and, speaking of the stars, we realized that there was an interest in the art of traveling from the first star to the last. star. There is a finite window into the universe where meaning, conscious beings like us, can exist and this arc raises important questions about the meaning of life.
What does it mean to live a finite and fragile life in an infinite universe?
Even for Cox, Universe jumps all out from the start. Then, the series delves into the ultimate science of existence. Subsequent episodes incorporate research into articles that were published as recently as 2021.
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“The movie of the stars became almost a hymn to the stars and a reflective, meditative piece about the meaning of it all,” he says. “It’s interesting that he really divided the public in the UK between those who loved him and those who thought it was not the right kind of scientific paper. There is no shortage of such hard scientific material, which explores black holes, the holographic principle and the paradox of information and other articles that science fans want. “
He likes the films they have made to be good enough to get strong opinions from viewers. Over the course of successive series, Cox has learned more about the “best practices” of scientific presenters for both instructing and entertaining. With the mysteries of the cosmos constantly exposed with each theoretical and technological advance, there is no shortage of material.
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Only in this finite timeline to unpack it.
“The live show deals with similar issues but on a much larger scale,” he says. “It simply came to our notice then that the problems of (Arthur C.) Clarke and (Stanley) Kubrick, such as the nature of reality, where we come from and what we can become, are. our place in nature and space? “
He says it’s a lot of fun to look at the work of futuristic artists speculating on the possible future of humans in space, incorporating everything from O’Neill’s cylinders to Dyson spheres and all the elements that can build beings. smart. Expect images of these and more in the live show. In addition, he will marry music.
“The introduction is Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony, third movement, because I asked my director friend Daniel Harding, a bit of a joke, what music Kubrick should have used for 2001, ”says Cox. “When I heard it, on one level, it was a swan taking off from a lake in Finland and it’s beautiful and natural. But on another level, it is the genuinely deep mystery of nature, so it is obvious that the questions posed by cosmology are as interesting as the facts. “
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In other words, humanity has always imagined the stars, the universe, and wondered what is on the horizon. He has performed this lecture in front of crowds and designed it to be presented with a live orchestra playing the 10th Sibelius and Mahler Symphony and more. In the UK, it has had a crowd of 14,000 people.
“All we do for the smaller shows is fit most of that stadium-to-space LED, which is a kind of production Tetris,” he says. “It’s pretty easy to spend all the money from the promoters bringing the full-size event to Europe and Australia.”
As for whether he believes the growing space tourism market is likely to have a positive or negative effect on scientific research, he is firmly in favor of it, even if at the moment it looks like the yard of a rich man.
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“What Space X, Blue Horizon and others are doing is facilitating science because it makes it cheaper,” he says. “These companies can make access to orbit close to Earth and then to the Moon and Mars relatively cheap. That’s pretty much the natural progression that aviation had as well, if you look closely.
No discussion with Cox would be complete without some news about black holes. He gets dizzy discussing a topic he has spent a lot of time studying.
Answering a question posed by Stephen Hawking about what happens to information aspiring to a black hole in 2020 has turned the investigation upside down. It can be argued that space and time are not fundamental, but arise from something deeper, such as building blocks in a quantum field theory.
At this stage, it has exceeded the capacity of this journalist to report. The Universe will do better.
PREVIEW
Professor Brian Cox introduces Horizons
When: June 6, 7 p.m.
On: Jubilee Auditorium, 11455 87 Ave.
Tickets: starting at $ 58 at ticketmaster.ca
sderdeyn@postmedia.com
twitter.com/stuartderdeyn
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