Inside the Radio Universe | 360 Interview with Dr. Emma Chapman

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Hey space cats. I'm Dr. Maggie Lou and today I'm here with Dr. Emma Chapman who has just released a new book, Radio Universe. Um, and it's radio for book of the week.

[00:00:14]>> Yeah, it is.

[00:00:15]>> This is not a paid advertisement, but you should definitely buy this book.

[00:00:19]>> It would make me happy. What more could you want?

[00:00:23]>> Um, so yeah, we're just going to jump in and have a chat with her. We're on the beautiful campus of the University of Nottingham today. Um, so Dr. Emma Chapman, >> hi. Yes. Hello. So, I was just looking at the ducks. I was thinking if they're going to quack really loudly, it's going to be a very Yeah. See, they're quacking. If you hear quacking, it's not us. It is the ducks.

[00:00:44]>> So, they can see everything. This is a 360 video and they will be able to like look around.

[00:00:50]>> So old.

[00:00:51]>> So, everything whilst we're talking. Um, so yeah, if you're on your like computer, you can click the buttons and drag the screen wherever you want to see. Um, and if you're on your phone or a iPad, just tilt the screen and you'll be able to see everything we're seeing basically.

[00:01:11]>> Including the ducks.

[00:01:12]>> Including the ducks.

[00:01:14]>> Right. So, Emma, tell me about yourself.

[00:01:17]>> Okay.

[00:01:17]>> Who are you? What do you do?

[00:01:18]>> It's a really, really broad question.

[00:01:21]Um, yeah. Okay. So I'm a lecturer and research fellow here at the University of Nottingham. I'm paid by the Royal Society uh to do research, but I do lots of teaching as well. Uh yeah, and I I have a side hustle, which is writing because I absolutely love getting really excited about science and astronomy.

[00:01:40]That's not my exact research niche, I suppose. And then telling everybody about it. Uh yeah, and I've been here for about four years and it's beautiful and I still love it, which is good. So, writing like how do you get into writing? Cuz like when I was in school, I used to love maths and sciences and all that. Probably English was like my worst subject. I did well in it, but I hated it. I think I think all writers do hate English. I I'm kind of like that as well. I Yeah. How did I get into writing? Um, okay. Okay, so I don't even know if had this has anything to do with it, but I always wrote stories as a kid.

[00:02:20]Like way up to like being 17 years old, I was writing awful fiction. Terrible emo like working something out fiction.

[00:02:28]>> Sci-fi fiction.

[00:02:30]>> Yeah. Everything from time travel to like murder to like it was it was just me working through some teen stuff. Um so I loved writing as a way of kind of almost therapy and then science writing.

[00:02:43]Um, okay. So, I really like I I have a lot of opinions and then I like other people knowing them. Um, so I started blogging when that was a thing.

[00:02:52]>> Oh, that's and I started tweeting when that was cool. And basically I got picked up by uh an editor in Bloomsbury messaged me saying, "I've seen you tweeting. Um, I think you could write something, you know, fun." Um, and yeah, and that's how it came about. It came about actually just from a few tweets.

[00:03:12]>> Uh, which is very strange.

[00:03:14]>> Writing a book is very different to writing publication articles.

[00:03:18]>> Oh, it's so different. It's so different. And I think it's it's funny because I guess that's it's definitely where my skill set lies in being able to break big ideas down into smaller chunks that are kind of really fun. And I love the excitement of it. And the bit where I get it's really selfish. It's a selfish thing to do really because I just want to get excited again. And when you're doing research, as you know, like you can get into this niche of where you're like you're just applying the same statistical method over and over again. It's like, "Oh, why am I doing this?" And actually, then when you start researching, you're like, "Oh, wait. We can use radar to look beneath the clouds of Venus and map out a 3D landscape of volcanoes." I'm like, "Wait, what?"

[00:04:01]And then that's an excuse for me to go and learn about that and then digest it and then tell everybody else how cool it is. Science writing in terms of like paper writing. I'm not good. And like my collaborators are not happy a lot of the time. They're like why are you talking like you're blogging?

[00:04:18]>> But for me they're wrong >> agree >> because if you're not communicating your research effectively then other people can't reproduce it and build on it. So, like if you read the earlier papers, >> which you I'm sure you've read like some of the early papers, >> they're so chill. They're always like, "Oh yeah, we've we don't know why this is happening. Can anybody else help? We think our telescope might be broken or it could be like the big bang." We're not really sure.

[00:04:44]>> Now it's all like, "Oh, we're the cleverest people in the world and we've actually come up with the best method and uh all of you are rubbish."

[00:04:50]>> And then everyone's meant to understand everything you've written. Like >> like I just hate >> there's like a million references in between like >> Yeah. If you want to understand this better, go to this paper. But like >> I hate it.

[00:05:02]>> Yeah.

[00:05:03]>> I don't know about you, but like I I find it easier if you've come up if you learned about something completely new.

[00:05:08]Let's say, okay, so you're like machine learning whiz, but I'm not so much like if I've learned of something new in the machine learning world, I can't just get that paper and read it and understand it. I have to go right back to when they first thought of the first germ of that idea.

[00:05:22]>> Yeah.

[00:05:23]>> And read there and then I build on it.

[00:05:25]And I think that's why I love doing this because this is like every chapter is a different completely different area really like pulsars or the sun or the moon or Venus or galaxies or black holes and so they're quite nice and contained and I can go away and I can be like right what do we know about Venus and and start from the beginning and yeah I like I like bringing people on that.

[00:05:47]>> So a lot of research has gone into this book so much.

[00:05:51]>> How long did it take to write >> over four years? over four years, >> probably close to five. Uh yeah, in terms of re and that's again my fault because I get so excited about each topic that I should have spent let's say a month reading around it, a month writing the chapter, something like that. Actually, for example, the chapter on aliens, I got so into it, I spent a year going into it. I flew to Puerto Rico to attend a conference on it. I interviewed like the major players on it because I was so obsessed with this like cutting edge research that was happening in detecting extraterrestrials and like it was a year before my editor was like write something now but yeah so the actual real push to write it took a year the last year and before that I did a lot of words that were bad and then I put them in the right order and now it's published. So before we go into aliens, let's talk about what what is the radio universe because it's very different from the universe that I look at. So I look at like optical stuff for week lensing. Um your telescopes are nothing like my telescopes. I'm sure we can have a look >> later in your office. But um >> yeah, so it's it's it's the same concept in a way in that you are observing the universe using light. So optical astronomy uses the optical light. our eyes have evolved to see. Um, and we just put lenses on them, whether it's glasses if we're looking or a telescope if we're looking. Um, but light comes in many different kind of forms according to its wavelength. So, if you get uh a longer wavelength, like if we call light like optical light like that, if you get a longer wavelength light, then we call that radio light. And it's actually quite subjective kind of where you put these containers according to their properties. And so optical light, it's great because we can see it. It's rubbish because it can't get out of the Earth's atmosphere. It can't get through the clouds of Venus, for example.

[00:07:49]>> And that's why we build space telescopes telescopes.

[00:07:53]>> Exactly that. And that happens for a lot of the wavelengths. Radio for the most part can go straight through clouds, through trees, through, you know, the atmosphere so that we can build groundbased radio telescopes and see the universe in radio light. And it's really obviously difficult to imagine that, but I just want you to imagine. Um, did you ever do paint by numbers as a kid?

[00:08:14]>> Yeah.

[00:08:14]>> Yeah. Okay. Or or now. I'm not judging.

[00:08:18]Or now.

[00:08:20]>> I like the gem gem by numbers now.

[00:08:24]>> Gem by numbers. I love them. All really good. Have you done the sticker by numbers? They're really good. You get books, you get little stickers, and you put the different stickers. Oh. Anyway, anything you have gem by numbers, sticker by numbers, cross stitch. you're looking at a translation where you get like a map of what you're going to be doing and it's normally like one, two, three, four, five and one is red, two is green, three is orange, something like that.

[00:08:46]>> That's such a good analogy.

[00:08:47]>> Thank you. And like the radio universe.

[00:08:50]Yeah. Okay. We've got a map of the the black hole at the center of our galaxy, for example, and it's all at wavelengths like uh 21 cm, 25 cm, 2 m. And so all we do is we say, "Right, 25 cm, we're going to call that red." Doesn't matter as long as you're consistent. And so you just color in your picture according to those numbers. And then you see the universe in radio light.

[00:09:16]>> Amazing. And you see things that are quite different because we can't see a lot of things um well through the atmosphere with our eyes.

[00:09:25]>> Yeah. You see different things firstly because Yeah, exactly that. So, for example, Venus, I've mentioned before, but it's a really good example because you look at Venus with an optical telescope, all you see is clouds. That's it. And every probe we've sent down there has been crushed into oblivion within about 30 minutes. Um, whereas radio can just go straight down. We can send radio in the form of like radar, send it down, it bounces back to us, and within a few minutes, we've mapped out Venus. But it's also useful to look at things like um Bob I'll say black holes again >> because it's different processes that create those different kinds of light.

[00:10:01]So, uh, James Web Space Telescope, for example, is so cool because it's able to see stellar nurseries, like the places where stars are born, cuz it heats the gas to this infrared kind of um stage, whereas radio will be is better at tracing cold gas and that actually gives you the skeleton or the scaffolding of the whole of the galaxy. And so, for example, something really cool you can do is you can look at spiral galaxies using radio. Um, and the you can map the cold gas, not just the stars, and it goes way further out. And you can use that to trace dark matter halos up to like double the distance out from a spiral galaxy and and really learn about like the rotation curves of all sorts of Yeah. dark matter stuff.

[00:10:49]>> Wow. Um so let's kind of pivot to the other people that tend to be listening in radio is like SETI like everyone knows uh SETI search for extraterrestrial >> intelligence get there eventually. Um >> yeah there's plenty of people looking for unintelligent aliens as well in form of bacteria but um >> so it's not just natural things that can produce radio waves.

[00:11:18]>> No. So, um, the I talked about kind of light having different superpowers, right? Uh, optical superpower is kind of that our eyes can see it. Microwave superpowers is that it can heat food.

[00:11:30]Yay. We get a takeaway two days in a row. Um, radio superpower is is that it's great at communication. So, your phone um anyone's phone will have a tiny little radio antenna in it that's been miniaturaturized.

[00:11:46]And that is what's giving you like the Wi-Fi and all of this communication.

[00:11:49]That's because these radio signals are really good at traveling long distances without kind of losing any information.

[00:11:56]>> Yeah.

[00:11:57]>> Um and so when you look at the universe in radio light, what you're doing is you're communicating across really long distances and not losing so much information.

[00:12:09]Sorry. That's so cool.

[00:12:11]>> Um, it's quite awkward trying to do a >> talking whilst stepping step. I mean, like I'm just waiting for a big splash where I just like get so excited I just go straight in. Um, yes. And so you can look at the the universe with this this kind of radio light and it's its different processes. Uh, and there Yeah.

[00:12:32]So search for extrust intelligence that's about searching for communication. So, >> so do you think aliens would communicate with radio waves?

[00:12:40]>> Yes.

[00:12:40]>> Yeah.

[00:12:41]>> Yeah. So, that's the only thing they can really communicate with. So, there's a small chance you could have them communicate with, let's say, lasers, but actually the amount of power you need to create laser light is huge compared to the really low energy radio waves. And that's why radio waves don't hurt us.

[00:13:00]>> Gamma rays are really high energy and they can they can kill they can mutate your skin cells, right? UV burns you.

[00:13:06]Um, optical can hurt your retina, for example. But, um, radio waves, they're going through me right now, like, and I don't care. Um, and so if there are aliens out there on other planets, they will have atmospheres. The only thing that can get through atmospheres really effectively is radio. And like, the physics doesn't change. Like, they might be a bit different looking, but the physics doesn't change. And the physics of radio is that it's the best form of communication. So that's how we'll find them if we're going to find them.

[00:13:38]>> Yeah.

[00:13:38]>> So do you think we will find them?

[00:13:41]>> So um >> well do you think they exist first?

[00:13:46]Maybe.

[00:13:46]>> That's easier. Yes.

[00:13:47]>> So I think there are far too many planets uh you know several per star. If you're looking in our Milky Way, there's hundreds of billions of planets. Um, even when you start filtering them down, saying, "Can you live on them? Is there an atmosphere?"

[00:14:03]>> Um, there's still plenty left. And so, yeah, I do think they exist. The issue, >> sorry about the little kids screaming, but he's having fun with the ducks. And why not? Look at them. Even the ducks are having fun. Yum, yum, yum, >> yum, yum.

[00:14:20]>> Um, so yes, uh, what was I going to say?

[00:14:23]Yes, they definitely exist. But um well, I think they exist anyway. The issue is going to be whether we manage to get the timing right because when you're listening or even when you're sending a message saying hi, say hello, we're friendly. Um you've got to choose where to point. We don't have infinite energy resources to kind of send or listen in every direction. Um and so you've got to decide where to point. And there's there's quite the possibility that we would listen at the wrong planet at the wrong time just when they've gone on bank holiday.

[00:14:54]>> So this is why it's super important that we also have searches for exoplanets and yeah planets that are similar to Earth.

[00:15:02]>> Exactly that. Cuz it helps us know where to look. Um we've kind of been pointing a little bit in the dark since the 1960s, but actually since the 1990s when we started finding uh exoplanets. Um and even more recently we found whole systems that have got habitable zones in. Um those are where we target and so they target them again and again. They keep listing and then they switch and then they come back just in case and then they then they come back again. Um, and so they have whole cataloges and there's just these there's this beauty to the radio telescopes that do this because they look like all different things, but the easiest one to imagine is you've probably all got a rusting satellite dish on the side of your house or your flat, you know, from Sky TV days when you had all of this kind of big satellites inside your house. Um, they kind of just look like that, but maybe like, you know, a few a couple of meters wide, these ones for seti. and then you join them all up. So there's like 42 and they all look in the same way and then they move together and they dance and it's like watching this amazing choreography like you know the synchronized swimmers. So I love it. I think it's really beautiful. I grew up like one of my favorite films was contact growing up. So >> like that's what I imagine like a radio astronomer is is just like sitting under a big telescope listening >> pretty much is we got to stay in the cabin where they filmed that in in Puerto Rico when I was on this seti kick like did not really need to go there but you know whatever it was it was a lot of fun. Um, and yeah, it really is. It's it's I think it's quite a quiet and calm and patient existence being a radio astronomer compared to other kinds of astronomy because the great thing about having your telescopes on the ground where you can get to them with a screwdriver is that you can fix and you can upgrade them. And so we have radio telescopes that have are still going from the 1960s.

[00:16:54]>> Yeah. compared to JWST which I love.

[00:16:57]>> Give it another 5 years it's not going to be there anymore you know. Well, my last YouTube video was on judg bank. So on the lovely telescope, it's like okay.

[00:17:06]So exactly that. That's the one I was thinking about that has been taking um observations of pulsars, these really rapidly spinning stars like thousands of times a second since the 1960s. So it's able to build up longterm studies of how things change over decades. No other wavelength can really do that continuously. And so they did that for Venus, for example, and worked out that the the day on Venus actually changes by I think it's something like 25 up to 25 minutes. So it's like not 24 hours in a day, it's like 24 however many hours plus or minus 30 minutes over this time.

[00:17:44]And they worked it out over decades.

[00:17:45]They're like, why is this happening? And they worked out it's because the atmosphere is so blooming heavy. It's literally dragging the planet >> back and forth. And you wouldn't have noticed that if you had even an orbiter right up close to Venus taking observations every you know um for for a couple of years at a time.

[00:18:06]>> Yeah. And no one would ever go down to kind of study itself because it's all sulfuric acid. So >> yeah and the pressure like it's the equivalent being like a kil kilometer or something under the sea.

[00:18:17]>> Either way your bones would like literally disintegrate them.

[00:18:22]So, >> so our best way to look at it is through radio waves.

[00:18:26]>> Yeah. And even Arteimus, right? We were just talking about Artimus before we started uh recording. Like Arteimus is going out up soon. Hopefully these missions to the moon.

[00:18:35]>> Hopefully tomorrow.

[00:18:36]>> Hopefully tomorrow. Um but radio gets there in one and a half seconds. Not not the five days it's going to take them or four days. Um and it's a lot cheaper.

[00:18:48]And as much as I love space exploration, I actually really do back it. It is dangerous and very very expensive. And you want something that can get there first, like a kind of uh what do you call it? Somebody who's going I can't think person now, but you know the person that kind of like goes and tests stuff out first. Canary in the mine, I suppose. Um and radio can get there and it can work out where the caves are so that when there's a big solar storm, they know where to run to and they know where to build the base and where the water is. like RA radar could reflect off water ice differently. So just from Earth in three seconds, one and a half seconds there, one and a half seconds back, you've got a map and you can you can look underground cuz radio goes a little bit deeper. So you can excavate and dig and Oh, it's got so many cool things about it. This is what I love. I could >> How do you feel about like radio telescopes on the moon and how do I feel about >> radio telescope? Okay. So, as an astronomer, yes, I'm all for it because my my actual research area is using radio telescopes to detect light from the era of the very first stars to exist after the Big Bang. The only way you can really push back to the very first ones is by um going to the moon because the Earth is incredibly uh noisy with radio signals because even our phones right now are talking to all over. So if you go to the dark the far side of the moon, you're using the moon as a shield. You're blocking the noise from the earth. Everything gets a lot quieter and you could hear the universe better basically. So yeah, as a researcher, yay, ethically, morally, as a human, but additionally on the science front, maybe um like radio benefits from like long baselines, right? So you get higher resolution >> for sure. So you would use one radio telescope on the moon, one on the earth.

[00:20:42]>> You could >> and then >> Yeah, you could do that. Um >> maybe explain to them what what long blased lines.

[00:20:48]>> Yeah. Um >> Okay. So, it's it's it's a really tricky like mathematical equation idea that I always forget and and all I all you really need to remember and all I ever bother remembering is that if you've got two antennas, the further you put them apart, the finer resolution they can see. So, it's almost like a kind of like a triangle. I kind of think of it is like that. And so if you've got two antennas um really really far apart, because radio waves have got such a long wavelength, they basically see a mirror.

[00:21:22]They basically see nothing missing.

[00:21:24]They're like, "Oh, it's a big dish."

[00:21:26]Even though it's got like, you know, maybe 42 antennas or something. And so if you've got a baseline where you, like you said, you've got a one part on the moon, one on Earth, if you get the timing right of working out when the signals get to each antenna, you've got this unbelievable resolution. So you've essentially got a radio telescope as big as the distance to the moon.

[00:21:45]>> Yeah. Yeah. And I think we're a long way from that just because being able to like work out the timing. Um you've got to be so precise. But we've already done it. For example, we've made a telescope the size of Earth uh when they joined up about eight radio telescopes across different continents and they zoomed in to the equivalent of about a bagel on the moon. But they looked at the center of the Milky Way and they took the first ever image of uh this the silhouette the shadow of a black hole. That's >> super massive black hole.

[00:22:15]>> Yeah. And that was done using radio.

[00:22:18]Everyone would have seen that bright orange kind of coffee stained image. Um but that was radio. We just chose to color it orange so that your eyes could see it. Could have been pink. Who cares?

[00:22:31]>> So morally why are you against?

[00:22:33]>> I'm not It's not that I'm against. I'm conflicted. I'm conflicted because of the extent that the the moon is being industrialized.

[00:22:43]>> So, and I'm like I can't help but know that I would be a part of that. I can't say, well, no, it's not okay for you to build your communications and your exploration and your space industry, but it is okay for me to have my radio telescope. So, like I'm a bit conflicted. I do want to keep things pristine. Like it's the same reason I'm conflicted as as this the satellites up there. Like >> I get that it's providing internet to people that that it's it's becoming this great equalizer in terms of having everyone access the internet. As a distra look at the sky and I die inside a little bit every time I see one go across.

[00:23:19]>> Absolutely. But if someone came and asked you and was like, "Oh, we're building a radio telescope. Can you come and work on the moon?" Would you go? Oh, >> that's a good question.

[00:23:29]I don't think I would at the minute because it's just so dangerous and I have small humans that depend on me for feeding.

[00:23:38]That came out weird. Like as in chicken nuggets and chips like they're like dead. But like they need somebody to cook the chicken nuggets in the air fryer. Um but maybe you know if I was a bit older I think yeah I think when I had less responsibilities I would I would go it would I wouldn't go further than the moon. I don't think like Mars.

[00:23:56]>> Should we head back to the office?

[00:23:57]>> Sure.

[00:23:58]But um yeah, then would you go?

[00:24:01]>> Absolutely. I just don't know anything about radio telescopes, so I'm not sure I'd be much help.

[00:24:06]>> But >> you can learn on the job. It's fine.

[00:24:09]>> I could radio you back. It would only take a second.

[00:24:11]>> Exactly. I'll just tell you what to do.

[00:24:13]It's fine.

[00:24:14]>> Emma, it's not spinning.

[00:24:16]>> Yeah, exactly. Just give it a good kick.

[00:24:19]>> Turn it off and on again. No, the funny thing is is I'm rubbish at like the actual technology a lot of the time.

[00:24:25]Like I have my own personal radio telescopes at home that I dabble with, but in terms of as you know like the data we get now, we barely ever see the telescope, right? We just get the data packages.

[00:24:35]>> Absolutely.

[00:24:35]>> So like I don't think there's many people that would be good at actually fixing a telescope on the moon.

[00:24:42]>> That's something you're just going to have to learn on the job.

[00:24:46]>> That's not good. We need to train the next kind of generation of engineers.

[00:24:51]>> Yeah. No, for sure.

[00:24:53]>> That's very exciting though. I think I give talks to teenagers and I'm I'm always like you do realize that by the time you graduate university you could have a job on the moon and they're like really I'm like yeah I'm not making this up like I promise you. Well, to be honest, I feel like we're going so slow.

[00:25:08]Like maybe like 20 years ago, I was like, I want to be an astronaut.

[00:25:12]>> Yeah.

[00:25:12]>> And I was thinking by the time I get to be an astronaut, which is like around about now, I thought astronauts would be like kind of bus drivers >> like fing people back and forth from like space hotels and stuff.

[00:25:26]>> They're kind of just doing I mean, I guess they are. They're doing the tourist stuff for the millionaires, aren't they? like >> well it's allated a lot of it now.

[00:25:35]>> It's true. It's true.

[00:25:37]>> Yeah. Yeah. It would be nice. I'd like to visit the moon. I couldn't live there. I mean, nobody could, but I wouldn't want to live there.

[00:25:45]>> Optimus 2 is building a base there, right?

[00:25:48]>> It is. Yeah. I mean, yeah, they they've shut down Gateway, haven't they? And now they're building the base on the moon, which interesting. But, you know, they're going to to to kind of pivot back to radio. like they're going to choose that based on the best caves and where the water is. And if you go and you send an astronaut and you tell them, "Right, go explore in that bulky kind of suit, you can't go far." Like Apollo astronauts only went a few kilometers at most like from where they landed.

[00:26:15]>> Absolutely.

[00:26:16]>> That's a rubbish geological survey.

[00:26:18]>> Even like the rovers, they don't explore very far.

[00:26:21]>> It's useless. It's It's like It's such a bad way of exploring. It's a great way of like going and living and trying out different things in microgravity and you can do incredible things in industry and microgravity. But in terms of exploration, you need a better tool and that's why like like radio and and optical to be fair like I'm not just team radio like optical satellites are so good radio is so good at digging under and like really looking at the whole moon and being like right this is where we land this is where we never go this is you know.

[00:26:52]>> Yeah.

[00:26:53]>> Yeah.

[00:26:54]So, lots of lots of things that we can do with radio.

[00:27:02]So, what do you think is like the future of radio astronomy?

[00:27:07]>> Um, well, the imminent future is the square kilometer array.

[00:27:10]>> Yeah. Do you think that's ever going to be finished?

[00:27:12]>> Yes, definitely. I work.

[00:27:14]>> Can you tell everyone like what the square kilometer array is?

[00:27:16]>> Yeah, so square kilometer array is um the next generation radio telescope. You can kind of think of it as the James Web of radio. Um, and it's being built in two halves because we can do that. Um, and we've got a whole load of antennas, about 130,000 currently being laid. They've already been laid for 2 years now, I think. Um, in the Western Australian desert, and then we've got a whole load of dishes, big dishes in the um, South African Keru region. Um, and the idea is you join up all these things and then they can basically cover every type of astronomy we've talked about. Again, it's like a proper Swiss Army knife. It's a multi-purpose telescope. Um, and that's going to be able to do everything that's already been done, >> but better and faster. And we're going to be able to dig back to the era of the first stars. Um, look at pulsars and we're going to be able to >> So, that is your like kind of background though is the first stars, isn't it?

[00:28:10]>> Yeah. And and >> what are first stars?

[00:28:12]>> First stars, they are the well the stars that started it all. So after the big bang, it's way too hot and energetic to have anything build up apart from basically hydrogen, a bit helium. How do you build planets? How do you build stars? How do you build life? You have to find a way of making bigger elements.

[00:28:30]The way you do that is using stars. And so the very first stars coalesed out of that really kind of pristine gas we call it because it was just hydrogen, helium, none of this carbon oxygen nonsense. And when they did that, it condensed into the first stars. And like you've got this completely dark universe and then one by one blinking on like fireflies.

[00:28:50]You've got these massive stars probably more as a rule of thumb around 100 times the mass of the sun as opposed to that being really abnormally large. That's kind of like the average and even up to about a thousand times the mass of the sun. And we think we might have even had like direct collapse black holes where you've got stars that are so big that they basically just continuously collapse straight into a black hole.

[00:29:14]There's a lot of cool stuff going on back there and I love it.

[00:29:16]>> Do do we believe first stars actually exist >> for sure because we believe in the big bang. If you have the big bang and you believe in a beginning, which you should because that's where that's it's like irrefutable evidence. Um then you believe in firsts. You have to have a first galaxy, a first star, a first planet. You just have to because it's the beginning. And so what makes it different is that it's different chemistry and they die very quickly. So within about a million years, which is tiny, they're all gone. They've all supernova. They've all collapsed, you know. So, they're an extinct species and the only way we can find them is by looking back in time.

[00:29:50]>> But there's no way that these the first stars could just be like normal stars.

[00:29:55]>> No, because because of the big bang theory because we've observed the the cosmic microwave background radiation.

[00:30:01]That tells us how hot it was back then, how energetic. And you you can't build things that are bigger. And I I I of as I said I've got small children. I often think of it as like when you're building a tower out of Duplo or Lego bricks.

[00:30:14]Like if you think of those as like the atoms to make molecules. If you've got one Lego brick, fine, it's going to survive. If you build two, make helium.

[00:30:20]Yeah, that will survive. If you do like 10, which is like a really complicated thing, let's say like carbon or nitrogen. All it takes is one photon or one of my children very energetic to run past it will it will fall. It will break. And so you can't build things bigger. So you have to have a pristine universe and the chemistry tells us that creates massive stars and yeah massive first stars. So they definitely exist and we'll uncover them soon. So yeah, that's probably the future of radio astronomy is the SKA and then maybe >> will it ever finish?

[00:30:54]>> It will. Yeah, it will. It will. The wonderful thing about radio telescopes is that you can build them out like Lego sets.

[00:31:00]>> So with JWST, you couldn't send it up with half a mirror. No.

[00:31:03]>> Right. It wouldn't have worked. You couldn't send it up with half a rocket.

[00:31:06]But with a radio telescope, you can build a thousand antennas, join them up, get the get the computation working, then you get a bit more money, you do another thousand. And so you can actually build it out over decades, but the SKA's got so many governments, so much money that yeah, the first phase is going to is going to go and it is going to be absolutely incredible.

[00:31:28]>> The data processing for that is going to be insane. Like radio data processing already is horrible, right?

[00:31:36]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is horrible.

[00:31:38]You're streaming the universe. You're streaming like imagine downloading, you know, a Netflix show, but you're downloading the history of the universe.

[00:31:45]Um, it is huge. It's the biggest data sets on the planet, which is actually why I think we've got the funding and why it's going to go ahead because everybody, especially governments, loved the word big data, right, a few years back and so they would invest heavily in it. Yeah, it takes I forget all the stats, but it's like I think just a fiber optic cable wraps 10 times around the earth.

[00:32:11]>> That amount of cable. You can look it all up. They love the statistics on the website, but >> yes, we will look that up. Um, but do you think we're prepared to process all of this data?

[00:32:21]>> Um, it's not ideal because we can't we have to delete it a lot of it like on the fly. um because there's so much coming in, we basically have to um get rid of the stuff that we that we think that we hope is useless.

[00:32:40]So, as it comes in, we have loads and loads of tests which basically say, right, we don't think that this is an extraterrestrial signal cuz it's just slightly, you know, I don't know, on the wrong angle in terms of its frequency or something. Um yeah, that was a good walk.

[00:32:56]>> That was a nice walk. But we're back in Emma's office now. Um, and I just wanted >> subtly blow my nose while you >> really subtly. Carry on. Carry on.

[00:33:05]>> This will be like the bloopers that they love to like >> super super subtle.

[00:33:10]>> But I wanted to bring everyone back here so that uh we could see Emma's amazing uh radio telescope. Nothing like what we're used to with optical with like the big mirrors or even X-ray telescopes that we usually see. Right. So this is a radio antenna. Yeah. And all it is is wire and wood basically.

[00:33:30]>> So anyone could make this.

[00:33:31]>> Anyone can make this this part of it.

[00:33:33]So, and that's why I like it because it's so freaking underwhelming, right?

[00:33:36]Like, and a lot of radio telescopes arguably are in their like individual parts. You go up to an SKA antenna. It's like, okay, it's a bundle of wire that looks a bit like a Christmas tree that's about my height. Fine. A lot of them just look so old and like and they are like you could have built this in the 1950s when or 30s when radio astronomy was born. What's different is this and the computer behind it that it's usually connected to is that um this part yeah it's wire and wood and that's because this for example is detecting um solar flares. So if a solar flare comes in like a big um ejection of radio light from the sun um then it will hit earth.

[00:34:19]It will cause beautiful auroras if it's accompanied by like a coronal mass ejection thing like that. But the radio waves will get here. It will activate the electrons in this wire. It will create a voltage. That's easy. That's fine. And then it comes into the electronics and the computational and then we work out okay where did that flare come from? How big was it? out and and that part is the kind of cutting edge technology part but you can't really see as much but that's why I love it is that you can walk up to like Georgia bank you know your last video I mean that is actually it's probably a bad example because you do walk up to Georgia bank and you're like wa my favorite comment was I went there the other day and there was this tourist woman fabulous and she just walked up she went course big in it perfectly sums it up it should be on the posters so that is quite magnificent but you look at it and you don't know what it's doing, right? And then you realize that it's actually tuning in to spinning stars like light years away and like working out general relativity and proving general relativity through spinning stars. Like that's mad that it can do that. And so I love the fact that this looks like I made it personally.

[00:35:32]I did not. But it's tuning in to solar flares which is really important because so much of our technology like our satellites our communication depends on satellites like uh staying where they are in orbit and if you get a solar flare coming in it can it can basically mess up all of that. So this is like a warning system.

[00:35:51]>> So does this point anywhere or does it just listen? So, this one listens in general because if you've just got one antenna, it's like having one ear or one eye. Like, you can you can kind of roughly work it out, but you actually need two eyes or two ears to work out distances >> because of the different times the light gets or the different times the the sound waves get into your ear. So, I would need a second antenna >> and then you would be >> and then I would be able to start say right actually that radio light is from just above that sunspot.

[00:36:20]>> Brilliant.

[00:36:21]>> Um, but yeah, this one is a hobby one.

[00:36:23]This is, like I said, I dabble.

[00:36:25]>> How much would something like that cost to build?

[00:36:27]>> The whole kit um cost £200.

[00:36:30]>> That's like really affordable.

[00:36:31]>> It's so affordable. Yeah, this this is the company. Again, not a paid advertisement. I have no con I have no connection to them at all. Um I I just Googled it one day and I found them. And yeah, you can you can just buy buy the kits and they either come completely formed like that or they literally just send you a box of bits.

[00:36:47]>> I bet the listeners would love to know something like this. And it is and like I don't want to be misleading because it is it is tricky. Um it's it's tricky to kind of understand what you're doing to connect it all up to like to understand that this waveform that looks exactly like this kind of like almost like a shark tooth kind of drop that that's a solar flare whereas something like that is not a solar flare. Let's say >> that's not intuitive, right? Like I wouldn't have known that before I got this. Where is if your listeners have a smart telescope all like I do all that all you have to do is tap tap tap tap be like oh there's Andromeda and you understand that. So like the thing the reason one of the reasons I wrote the book was to try and get people over that obstacle uh I guess being intimidated by radio astronomy um because I'm intimidated even when I go for like the amateur stuff cuz it's just not what I'm used to. And so, but once you've got over that obstacle and you've done a bit of homework and you've got there, it opens up so much of the universe and you can get meteor beacons where you can hear the ping of meteors coming in even in the day.

[00:37:56]>> Um, that's a home kit.

[00:37:57]>> That would be so having a meteor monitor in your house.

[00:38:02]>> Get cosmic ray uh what they call muons.

[00:38:05]Muon detectors.

[00:38:06]>> Muon detectors.

[00:38:07]>> Um, from solar muons. the stuff you can do is it's the amateur radio astronomers which I just prefer calling them like unpaid because they're way better than most radio astronomers that are paid.

[00:38:20]>> So good.

[00:38:20]>> Brilliant.

[00:38:20]>> So if every anyone watching wants to know more about the radio kind of universe, radio science, get out and buy Emma's book, Radio Universe. Um this is Dr. Emma Chapman. Uh I'm Dr. Magaloo.

[00:38:34]Uh, thank you everyone for watching.