Chris Lintott’s Universe

Enough of the pictures, especially as I can’t always get them to resize. Tomorrow’s program is the end result of more than a year’s hard work by a cast of thousands (well, it’s felt like thousands by normal Sky at Night standards). We did an ‘archive’ programme for BBC4 (hopefully this will be reshown at some point) about a year ago, and wanted to do something different for the 50th anniversary.

Patrick wrote the first script, and for once we completely ignored him as it handed over to me and others about five minutes in. Typically generous, but just not on! Eventually, between us we came up with the idea of looking at astronomy 50 years ago compared to that 50 years in the future. At which point we got a little ambitious.

Those of you who are regular viewers will suspect that we’re rather proud of the low-budget Sky at Night effects. Our masterstroke, I think, was explaining the period of transits of Venus using a couple of hoops and a lemon (don’t mock, it got us our only newspaper review to date as the Independent said it made more sense than any amount of computer graphics). For this, though, we’ve been a little more ambitious and the second half of the program will be presented by a computerized Patrick. For anyone roughly the same age as me, the effect is rather similar to Gamesmaster. The script was worked out by talking to the interviewees - Brian May (on Mars), John Zarnecki (on the ISS) and Bob Nichol (on the Moon). The only constraint was that we’ve been deliberately optimistic - this side of a few pints I don’t really think we’ll be on Mars in 2057, but it is possible.

This left 1957 to deal with. My original idea was to use the (few) surviving archive clips and reconstruct an interview between 2007 Patrick and his older self. The only problem was that the clips are a fairly random selection and it was difficult to get anything coherent together. At which point, Jane Fletcher, our long-suffering producer, had an incredible, mind-blowing idea, and we recruited this man. Jon Culshaw, impressionist and amateur astronomer. Suddenly (budget out of the window) we were reconstructing the 1950s set in the studio, recruiting owners of vintage cameras and bringing the two Patricks face to face.

It sounds like a gimmick, but take my word for it (for the next 36 hours at least) it’s wonderful. It’s stunning to be reminded how little we knew a relatively short time ago, and hopefully that will come across along with the fun. It’s what the Sky at Night has always done - enjoyed ourselves while being deadly serious - and it’s a powerful combination. Here’s to the next 50, hope you enjoy the program. 11.30pm Sunday night, 8.30pm Monday night BBC4, Saturday 7th 12.45pm on BBC2.

P.S. I want to say thanks to everyone involved for an amazing ride, but particularly to Patrick and Jane (mentioned above), the indefatigable Dirk Maggs (the man who introduced Brian and Patrick) for his help with the script and our researcher Phil Rosenberg.

This Sunday’s Sky at Night, at the (for us) earlier time of 11.30, will be worth watching. It’ll be a full half hour long, and will be the first half of the 50th anniversary celebrations. More details later in the week.

Update : See the photo below for now…

New Mexico is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, but I’d be careful about saying I was an astronomer around there right now. They’re so upset about the demotion of Pluto (discovered by local Clyde Tombaugh) that their senate has decided that it will be a planet when it passes through their airspace.

This, here, says something important. Although in eight or so years of ranting about this, I’ve never managed to get anyone I’ve been talking to to care.

Just to say that I’m giving a couple of public lectures in the next couple of days to promote . The first is on Sunday morning, in Newcastle as part of their Science Festival and there are still tickets left. The second, at Torquay museum, is on Tuesday. Hope to see you at one or the other (if anyone is at both then you probably need help).

Blogging may be even lighter than normal this month, as the Bang! team are the authors of a guest blog over at the New York Times. It’s subscription only, I’m afraid, but there is a free 14 day trial available.

We were running around at the weekend, recording the last of the interviews for the 50th anniversary programme and enjoying the lunar eclipse. Spectacular, wasn’t it?

Anyway, with only one more bout of filming to go and the rushes looking fantastic, time for another photo.

I think out of everything we do, I most enjoy talking about Mars and Saturn. The missions to both have brought back amazing pictures over the last few years, and it’s great that for the last program of the first 50 years of the Sky at Night, we’re going to back to Saturn. The latest results from Cassini are incredible and in John Zarnecki and Michele Dougherty we have two of our best interviewees.

It’s on Sunday night, on BBC2 at 23.45, followed by the extended edition on BBC 4 on Monday evening at 7pm (repeated at 00:50 in the early hours of Tuesday).

I should be beyond getting riled about this kind of thing, but an article by Martin Livermore in today’s Telegraph takes this biscuit. Those of you who understand how science works, may skip the rest of this post.

His headline is ‘All those scientists may still be wrong’ and he is talking about climate change. The headline is correct, they may. We know that and they know that. That’s why the recent Intergovemental Report on Climate Change said that it was very likely that the climate change was caused by human activity. They even define ‘very likely’ as more than 90%, a level of precision not found in Mr Livermore’s article.

He seems very upset about the lack of experiments, for example, lamenting that scientists must

rely on observation and, in parallel, produce mathematical models of how the climate system operates. These models - fed with a range of assumptions about how population and energy use may change - are run on the world’s most powerful supercomputers to give projections for future climate changes. It is these on which tales of future catastrophe are based.

Well, yes. How else does he think scientists actually work? ‘Relying on observation and producing mathematical models’ is a pretty good one setence description of the scientific method! Or are we supposed to distrust these results because supercomputers are lest trustworthy than Newton and a pencil?

Mr Livermore then puts forward a theory (which is not his alone - I have met scientists who share this view) which blames change on Earth on changes in solar activity. The most recent variation on this theme is the suggestion that high energy cosmic rays can cause clouds in the atmosphere, and that an active Sun can protect us from these rapidly moving particles. This may or may not be true (and how we are supposed to test these ideas without ‘observation’ and - worse - ‘mathematical models’ I do not know), but I am convinced that the experts in this field weighed up the possibility as best they could. As Mr Livermore says The IPCC’s view is that these changes are too small to cause the climate changes we have seen.

Yes, the IPCC could be wrong; that’s why they said it was only very likely that climate change was our fault, not ‘extremely likely’ (95% confidence) or ‘virtually certain’ (99% confidence). Yet we are told by this pathetic article that

The scientific mainstream, however, refuses to concede that it could be wrong. It insists we must act now to decarbonise our economy, whatever the consequences. If the science were as certain as suggested, it would have a point.

How, how, how is saying you are 90% certain of something ‘refusing to concede’ that one might be wrong? Quantifying errors is what science is all about. It seems writing pieces for think tanks is about not quantifying anything at all.

There is worse, much worse in the article. Go and read it if you dare, but I need coffee.