Professor Brian Cox on the big questions of the universe | 7.30

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Brian Cox, welcome.

[00:00:02]>> Thank you.

[00:00:03]>> It's particularly nice to have you in the studio, not down the line somewhere.

[00:00:06]Yeah. In a hotel room. Um, I just wanted to start by talking about your uh Australia and its skies because you're here. Why is Australia a great place for stargazers?

[00:00:17]>> Well, part of it is the geometry of the solar system. So, the southern hemisphere points towards the galactic center. So, the Milky Way is far richer.

[00:00:25]If you come from the north, you're dazzled by the Milky Way here because Australia points towards the galactic center. And you also have the two satellite galaxies of the Milky Way, the Melanic clouds, which um just dominate the sky, beautiful things which you can't see from the north. So in the north, we're pointing outwards to the outer sort of backwaters of our galaxy.

[00:00:45]So you're very lucky here. So for someone who's never gone out and looked at the stars with any particular focus, what is it that looking at the stars, what does it do to you, to your mind?

[00:00:59]>> Oh, it's it's it's always been um it's the thing that got me into science in the first place. Um so for some reason when I was very young and I don't know why I became fascinated by these points of light in the sky and it's an example of something that's common I think throughout science which is the more you know the more magical it becomes. So for example now we know that I would say pretty much every star you see in the night sky has planets which we we now we didn't know that when I was growing up in the 1970s but we know it now. So you your imagination can begin to wander that they're all solar systems. Every single one of them is a solar system.

[00:01:36]Then you start thinking well you know are the planets with oceans on them and if there's oceans on the planets is there life out there beyond beyond our solar system beyond the earth and so on.

[00:01:46]So I think it's um it's a it's a science that you can do from your back garden as you said and it's a science that allows your imagination to wander.

[00:01:56]>> So is that what it does? We understand a little of what it did to you to put you on the journey that you're on, but for someone doing it for the first time, how much does it change you to have that sense of wonder in the sky?

[00:02:09]>> I think it's it's a good question. I think astronomy has always been in part about our place in initially with our place in creation. My my show starts actually in around 1600 people like Galileo and Kepler laying the foundations of the modern science modern science at the time cosmology was Aristotle's cosmology that so the earth is motionless at the center of a finite universe nothing changes beyond the orbit of the moon and this is 1600 and within a few decades we have Newton's law of universal gravitation and within a few centuries we've discovered that there are two trillion galaxies in the observable universe the universe 13.8 8 billion years since the big bang. That raises questions though to your to your question because obviously then you immediately say what is our place and I think astronomy and cosmology are the two sciences that really force you to ask that question.

[00:03:08]What is the value of of of our civilization? What is our place in that vast universe? So what happens to that question if you say that's 400 years that we got from Galileo and his telescope to now to conceiving of the possibility of of humans living on the moon even the remoter notion of a colony on Mars if we survive what's another 400 years going to bring us >> you know that that's also a very great question because it it feeds so I would say it will take us to the stars if we carry on at this rate of progress just a few centuries. We've already got two spacecraft now in interstellar space that we are communicating with primarily actually through the deep space network in Canberra. So that's pointing towards those telescopes that those um spacecraft. So in in 400 years of modern science, we've gone beyond our solar system. So you're right, we should be voyaging to the stars in the next few centuries if we survive. does raise an interesting question that actually which is why does nobody else appear to have done that which is sometimes called the Fermy paradox which I do discuss in the show. It's one of the I I I think it's one of the most puzzling observations we have made that as far as we can tell there isn't anybody else out there.

[00:04:25]>> I I noticed that you said a friend of yours, a biologist I think said don't worry about it. It's just if there's anything out there it's slime. Could he could he be wrong?

[00:04:36]Absolutely. I mean it could, you know, we we systematically look for signs of other civilizations. It's called SETI and it's we use radio telescopes like the parks telescope here in Australia and we we listen and we look for signals. So the reason we do that is because we would not be surprised if we saw something tomorrow. But it's actually you said don't wor it's interesting you said don't worry it's all slime. I would worry if if everything >> if we are alone. Well, yeah, because then in in some sense I would say that we have the responsibility to um allow meaning to persist in a galaxy of 400 billion suns. We're the only intelligent civilization of weight on our shoulders.

[00:05:17]>> Yes, indeed. So, I actually personally would perhaps be more relaxed about events here on Earth if there was somebody else carrying the torch as well.

[00:05:27]>> The the show that you're doing here is called Emergence. What is the emergence of the title?

[00:05:34]>> It starts with a story of Johannes Kepler. So the idea that planets move in ellipses around the sun. This is Kepler.

[00:05:41]But um in 1610 he wrote a book called the six cornered snowflake and it's still available. I strongly recommend it. It's a beautiful book. And he just asked this question about snowflakes.

[00:05:53]Why are they all six cornered? Why are they all similar? Um and it's actually extremely deep question um for for many reasons. One is that you it's a 20th century answer. It's to do with the water molecule and quantum mechanics and all these things we discovered in the 20th century. So he couldn't have answered it. But one of the most important things is that at the end of the book he says I don't know the answer. He he writes, you know, I leave it to to you to it's actually to his benefactor this who he wrote the book to, but also to future generations to to to find out. And if you think about progress, I' i've seen it written that progress was invented pretty much around that time. You real progress starts. We talked about 400 years after that we're, you know, flying to the stars.

[00:06:41]>> But for progress, you need to accept there are things you don't know. Is that why you describe certainty as something brutish? I yeah I say yeah the at the end of the show actually I say that um we we that we live in a world where the silence necessary for progress is drowned out by the vulgar noise of certainty and it's it is it's a it's a noise if you see so if you think about it if if you think you know everything you cannot make progress and the idea that that was radical only a few centuries ago is is really central to the show I say right at the start and we're going to focus on a lot of things that we don't know because that's where the excitement is and that's where that's the reason the future will be better than the past is because we accept that there are things yet to be known.

[00:07:30]>> At the same time I I I see that you tend optimistic in the way you think about the future and progress. But at the same time there's an enormous amount of exploration going on around the moon around possibilities of of exploitation of the moon and indeed the universe. How much damage could we do with satellites and radio waves?

[00:07:52]>> I I don't think that's the the way to think about it. So because the so the space economy is one of the fastest growing areas of the global economy.

[00:08:03]Indeed, many economists I speak to say don't don't talk of the space economy and the it's just the economy. You think about the GPS system, for example. It's it's central to the way that we live our lives. Um I think the number in the UK is I think it's 18% 16 or 18% of UK GDP is relies on space-based infrastructure and that's including things such as financial transactions that take the timing information from space and so on. So it tells us that already our economies the global economy and our national economies are reliant on that infrastructure. And so the more we expand that infrastructure then really what you're talking about is growing the economy.

[00:08:49]>> So so we we should learn to trust people like in a way learn to trust Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. Obviously people have all these doubts and anxieties about what they're doing along with the the brilliance that attends a lot of the the engineering achievements. Should we trust them a bit more? The reason that we have international bodies like the the UN and intergovernmental organizations that are working on that framework is of course that we don't just trust industry or you know this is not a judgment on industry being moral or otherwise industries are industries but we do have frameworks that that obviously regulate how industries operate in our countries and internationally and we need to make sure the right frameworks are there because it's becoming as I said it's it's some like something like approaching ing a fifth of the UK economy reliant on that infrastructure, then you begin to understand that there needs to be some it's just like it's no different to the the the rules and regulations that govern international air travel or or or travel on the oceans. We understand that that's necessary. In fact, in some ways to you call me an optimist. So the optimistic take on it is that we are forced to collaborate and to operate as a world when we start to try to understand how we navigate the challenges of space. It makes no sense does it if you think about the international space station for example.

[00:10:14]>> You think well it's in it's in Australian airspace if it goes I don't know how often it goes over Australia but but it's in your airspace as a country for a few minutes. So it makes no sense to but I I take that as very positive because it forces collaboration on us.

[00:10:31]>> Brian Cox, thank you very much indeed for talking to us.

[00:10:33]>> Thank you.