Albert Einstein Dara O Briain's Science Club

Welcome, now as you can see we are joined tonight by an audience, as

ever, chosen for their cuss yosity, I will be say theing that by chat

to go our guests, Helen Czerski, Alok Jha, what are you speaking

about? Massive experiments are they worth it. Gravitational waves

travelling before us now. Marcus Brigstocke, how are you? I'm happy

you said expert guests and included me. Expert guests and Marcus

Brigstocke, how are you? A bit of balance in me! What are you talking

about tonight? Nothing. That is a big issue in physics. We will also

be saying hi to Mark Miodownik, he will be doing an experiment in a

few moments. What better way to kick off Science Club than

concentrating on Einstein, a man who changed our understanding of

the universe, with his thinking about time, gravity, his thinking

still goes on now. We like to look at things from as many different

angles as we can. Alok Jha asks the difficult questions about funding

big physics experiments. Are you implying we shouldn't fund things

that have some sort of immediate application. Absolutely. Following

in Einstein's footsteps, Mark Miodownik pulls a fridge to pieces.

And comedian, Marcus Brigstocke, gets a crash course in the concept

of nothing. When I think of nothing in space, I think of literally

nothing, a blank space, you know, Nick Clegg's political future!

also ask is it possible to measure the speed of light using cheese on

toast. It will all make sense as we go on. You can get exclusive pics

and helpful Daoudyles which the web sieltd -- doodle on the website.

Here is background on Einstein. The story of physic, is, for the most

part, a tale of ever-increasing confidence.

In the early 1600, an Italian got the ball rolling, by measuring and

observing balls rolling, Galileo also turned pendulum, and dropped

different-sized objects off the leaning tower of Pisa to see what

would happen. Despite upsetting the Pope, apparently he made God cross,

his work became the rock on which modern physics is found.

Later, free from angry Popes, Isaac Newton moved things on by

abandoning balls and embracing apples. Why, he wondered, did they

always fall downwards, not sideways or up? By 1687 he had an answer. It

was a force called gravity, which worked on balls and apples. And

planets, holding them in nice, predictable orbits around the sun.

In the 1800s, James Clerk Maxwell cast his eye over more mysteries,

he showed how electricity and magnetisim are related, and can be

combined as one force, electromagnetisim.

Physics, it seemed, had mastered the universe. All that was left was

to plug a few remaining hole. But by 1900 the holes were getting

bigger. The latest discoveries didn't build on the old ones,

things like X-rays and radioactivity were just plain weird

and in a cad way. Lord Kelvin saw dark clouds hanging over the

subject. Then, in 1905, a Swiss Patten clerk started a full on

storm. 26-year-old Albert Einstein tore up the script. First he

claimed life is a kind of wave, but also comes in packet, particles. In

the same year he published his famous equation, e=mc2. It says

that mass and energy are equivalent. If that wasn't shocking enough, he

released the mind-blowing results of a thought experiment. Hold on to

your heads. It starts with the assumption that the speed of light

in a vacuum is constant. Now imagine that someone watches a

spaceship flying very fast. They would see a ship's clock running

slower than their own watch. And the ship will actually shrink in

size. But for the astronauts inside, all would be normal. Einstein said

that time and space can change, they are relative, depending on who

is observing them. This is special relativity.

His ideas shattered traditional physics, he had opened a door on to

the weird world of the quantum. Where cats can be both alive and

dead, where God plays dice and where everything is uncertain.

His famous equation, led to nuclear energy, without special relativity,

the Large Hadron Collider would be pointless.

General relativity predicted both black holes, and the Big Bang. An

idea now endorsed by both church and science. Galileo would have

been pleased. Well done Albert.

Our main guest tonight, not only understands Einstein's they arey,

but is building on them to advance our knowledge even further. She's a

professor of fisks and astronomy, and studies the black holes and the

way objects distort the space conten yum.

Welcome Janna Levin. How are you.

We're a century on from those initial discoveries of Einstein,

surely he's old news by now? know, the theory is pretty

complicated, it takes a long time to work out solutions, just because

Einstein said something like space time is curved, gravity is a curved

space time, doesn't mean we immediately know all the

implication of that. How much of a revolution is it all the things he

was saying? It was incredibly revolutionary, he re-thought the

whole way we view the world. It was, in some sense, kind of

unprecedented change in par dime and world view. We measured briefly

an icon, he was the world's view of what a scientist was? It is hard

sometimes to understand why Einstein became so famous, it isn't

because so many people grasp or think about the ideas on daily

basis. It was probably also the concept that the mind could triumph,

in a time when maybe the world wasn't doing so well after two

world wars, and a lot of economic strive. And the hair didn't hurt?

The hair was awesome! He became very, very celebrated at the time,

turning up on red carpets? really is the hugeest thing you can

point to. In the 100 years since, and in 3900 years since Newton,

there is no question that what Einstein is that big, it is not

exaggerated.S What the fundamental, if you had to pick of all the

things he tore up, what is the most fundamental change? We no longer

think of space and time as absolute, time is not some stage on which the

events of the universe are unfolding. Ined stead, time is

something that depends on where you are in the universe, and if you are

near a black hole, or the earth, or how fast you are moving, relative

to somebody else. That is a major shift in really how we think about

the nature of reality. But, of course, Einstein wasn't just some

crazy-haired theorist work on a blackboard, when he wasn't looking

at the universe, put his mind to more mundane matters. Mark

Miodownik has the story. In the mid-1920s the big problem Einstein

was tackling had nothing do with the laws of physics. But, instead,

keeping food nicely chilled. Albert, along with his colleague,

filed several of their own patents on domestic refrigerators. It

worked on the same fundamentals as your fridge at home, and this one

here. You can see those principles in action, with this thermal camera,

where cool things like my spectacles are much darker than hot

things, like my head. As expected, the inside of the fridge is cold,

that is because the heat has been removed from everything, including

this egg. But where has it gone? The first law of thermodynamics

tells you it can't disappear, it has to go somewhere, it comes out

the back of the fridge, that is why the back of the fridge is hot. If

you leave the fridge door open it won't cool your house down, energy

can't be removed, it is just moved. The real genius of the fridge is

how the heat gets extracted, that is down to the stuff inside these

pipes. The refridgeant. I have some isobutane, exactly what

is in the fridge. Then blow on it, it gets instantly

freezing cold. What is happening is the liquid is evaporating, in order

to do that, it needs to get heat from somewhere, it is taking it

from the lid. Because eyes sow butane has a low boiling --

isobutane has a low boiling point, the cooling process happens, it

happens even when you lick the back of your hand. This process goes on

inside your fridge, rather than a themable of water, it draws heat

from your food. It may be the world's smallest ice-cube, but it

is an ice-cube. In a fridge it happens in a sealed system of tubes,

rather than evaporating, it gets recycled. These tubes are the high-

pressure side of the fridge, it keeps the fridge in a liquid state.

I'm just getting rid of the insulation, this play as very

important role in a fridge, the inside needs to remain cold, and

the outside, as we have already said, gets hot. It is sucking the

heat out of the food, we don't want the two to talk to each other.

We are getting through to the inner layer of tubes, the cold side of

the fridge. It is pretty cold. What they do, is they allow the

refridge rant, to stay cold. The compresser allows it become a

liquid. They brought an experiment into a refrigerator, when they

entered people's homes there were problems. Einstein read about a

family living in Berlin, two parents and several children,

poisoned in their own home, all because the compressor in their

fridge had leaked. Accidents like this were becoming increasingly

common, because the fuels were toxic or flamable. The death of the

family deeply upset Albert. He thought there must be a solution.

He set out to redesign the compressor, this is what he came up

with. I know it look like a milking machine. It was ingenious, unlike

anything that had come before. It used a liquid metal as a pissen to

to compress the refrigerant, it was a sealed system, and less likely to

leak. It did the same job as a compressor, without any mechanical

parts. It never made it to the showroom floor. As the political

situation in Europe became frosty, it was harder for Einstein to put

his idea into practice. In America a chemist came up with an

alternative, safer refrigerant. The doflt of CFCs, he inhaled them to

show their safety. They dominated the industry for 70 years and found

their way into every home across the world. We know now that CFCs

are not toxic to humans, they don't mix very well to the ozone layer,

we have gone back to using hazardous refridge ld rants. What

happened about Einstein? It never got to the economiesic market, it

did get used in nuclear reactors to cool uranium and plutonium.

This will lead us on very nicely to our unsung scientist feeture, our

chance to acclaim some of these scientists who have done fantastic

work, who wouldn't be with the giants of the field, and maybe we

think history needs to get better attention to. As for the fridge

itself, it never went into production? It didn't. What

happened was that initial the CFCs were cheap and convenient and

fitted into the current technology, of a that went, and until we worked

out that CFCs were very damaging to the ozone layer. We went back to

the poisonous stuff? It is in the modern fridge. It comes to the

unsung heros Hall of Fame. We know the big hitters, like Newton,

Einstein, Darwin and the Galileos. But, you want to nominate, not

Einstein, but...That Fridge was Einstein's fridge, but his friend,

Leo Sillard, the student, he have the one that spotted the Nazis were

starting to regulate uranium. He wrote to Einstein and said we

better tell Roosevelt that a nuclear bomb is possible and the

Nazis might get one and we should start one soon. He wrote the letter

and Einstein signed t later in life he invented this idea of radiation

treatment for cancers. He goes in there. Who would you include?

going to nominate Carl Swarcfield, his legacy isn't as broad, but

during World War I he was a German infantry soldier, working on the

Russian front. Between gunfire he was reading Einstein's newly

published general theory of relativety. He was the first one to

really understand that a possible candidate for curving space time

was the black hole. He wrote to Einstein and said despite the war

and gunfire I wandered through the land of your ideas. Einstein was

impressed with this solution and couldn't believe it was done so

quickly and elegantly and he helps them to get published. Einstein

believes black holes aren't real. This debate wages after Carl's

death for decades until people realise that actually the death

state of stars are black holes, if they are massive enough.

There's Carl. I'm going to add the guy you

mentioned, technically not adding him here this is Thomas Midgely. He

invented CFCs which revolutionised it, and then destroyed the ozone

layer. That was his second invention, what else did he invent?

The other thing was leaded petrol. The guy had lead poisoning, he had

to recover for ay, and then went back to sold it to the public, by

inhaling it in front of TV cameras. Would he be among one of the

greatest polluters in the history of the planet? He's the candidate

we know of. I'm not putting him there I'm putting him here, they

are still there and remembered by history, but we're not going to

shift them to the glowing wall there. If there is detail that we

haven't covered about Einstein, we have our aftershowers Science Club

after the show, physicists will be waiting for your questions.

While you are watching, you can get exclusive pictures, surprising

facts and helpful doodles by following us.

Our universe seems to be made of up stars, planets and gas, that are

clumped together. With vast gaps inbetween them, and even at an

atomic level it is pretty much all space. When we sent out Marcus

Brigstocke, who knows nothing about physic, to make a film for us. It

seems suitable that the question he Like most people, I grew up

thinking that space was full of nothing, a vacuum, as empty and

cold as George Osborne's smile. You know, it is just the void, with

some stars in it and stuff. It turns out that nothing lies at

the heart of physics. And figuring out what nothing is has vexed

physicists like professor Jim Alkalilly for decade. What did

scientists think was up there before Einstein They thought the

whole of the universe was filled with the ether, the stuff that is

invisible to us, but allows light travel through. That is the only

way they could figure out light could reach us from the stars.

think that? That is wrong, Einstein came along and said there is no

such thing as the ether, he proved it, that was his theory of

relativeity. There is nothingness, Einstein said so? Jimmy's taking me

to space. The nearest thing to space, in this laboratory.

M This is a vacuum chamber, you close the door and suck out all the

at tomorrows from inside there, to get -- atoms from inside there, and

get as close as you can to empty space. You suck out the atoms and

inside there is nothing? Firstly, you can't do all of them, but if

you could, there is other stuff going on there. The walls are

radiating waves, or particles of light, called photons. You can't do

it here, but in space, then you can have nothing? Even in deep space

there are still particles, photons, flying about. Even if you could get

rid of them, if you manage taking two atoms, this far apart, with

nothing inbetween them, that nothing isn't complete nothing. If

those atoms can feel each other, if the electrons can repel each other,

they are exchanging particles. Photons. Empty space always

contains something. It is unavoidable. So you can't have

nothing? No, nothing doesn't exist. Really? You haven't read Richard

Little John's column! Those tripy sounding particles are not alone in

the void. Jim reckons there is a whole party going on out there.

Empty space is also filled with forces. The force of gravity is

something, and Einstein, in 1915, explained how the universe was

acting under graphty. He thought gravity was causing everything to -

- gravity. He thought gravity was causing everything to collapse in

on itself. We now realise that actually the universe is expanding

ever more quickly, and the thing we think that's causing that to happen

is something else that we think exists in space, something called

vacuum energy. To show me this vacuum energy, Jim

has borrowed what appears to be an appliance found in every office in

the land. I recognise this, because this is a photo copier, isn't it?

Almost. It sound like a photocopier when you witch it on, but this is a

sophisticated machine called a cloud chamber. What it does is

detect particles. There we go, it is firing up! What you can see in

the surface are lines that appear and desappear. Those are particle

tracts, particles from outer space come in, they collide with the

atmosphere and atom on earth, and prodrues these tracks. What this

has to do -- produce these tracks. What this has to do with empty

space, even though you have no energy at all, nothing at all, you

can still make a pair of particle, an electron and anti-electron.

what Jim seems to be telling me, is that the same kind of particles

that turn up in the cloud chamber, can pop up everywhere, even in the

most distant, barren corner of the universe. When you say nothing, you

don't mean the same nothing that I think of when I think of nothing.

When I think of nothing in space, I think of literally nothing, a blank

space. Nick Clegg's political future. When you say nothing, you

know that in any chunk of space, that is a constant state of

activity and change? This quantum energy, the quantum fluctuations of

these particles being very busy. That looks like it is the

explanation for one of these deepest mysteries of physic, which

is, what is out there in empty space. What is driving the universe

to make it expand. So, nothing is something, and that

something may explain the bizarre observation, that the universe is

inflating all around us. And just as it couldn't get any

stranger, Jim has left me in the dark with this man, who believes he

knows why we live in an expanding Cosmos.

When we look How can you tell a picture like this, that the

universe is expanding faster and faster.

We see the galaxies in those image, using telescopes like this to

measure distances to the objects as a function of time. What we can see

is the amount of distance per unit time is changing. And the universe

is accelerating in its expansion. We think what is driving that is

something called dark energy. is, as used by the Dark Lord Darth

Vader. Dark energy is a term we use for anything that could be

explaining this acceleration of the universe. The most favoured

explanation we have is something called vacuum energy. If it carries

on being this vacuum energy then it will never stop accelerating, and

you will end up with a universe where galaxies are flying apart

faster than the speed of light. In about 60 billion years we will have

what they call the big rip. If we are right, space itself will start

to dismantle. Ladies and gentlemen, Marcus

Brigstocke. I want to thank you for doing that

film for us, it was probably the least enlightning science film ever

made in history, from your face alone it was clear you went in with

nothing, and came out with less. mean, I thought, one grows up

thinking there is a nothing out there, that there is an empty space,

and there isn't, at all. That's all right. But when you see that we are

being bombarded by things, all of the time. You know there are forces

acting on you, even as a punter and non-scientist like me, you know

about that. But actual things, passing through this roof now and

hitting us. We're all right, but, you know. They are quite tiny

little things, some are passing through us and not hitting us at

all. Mostly right through us. many hundreds of thousands of

millions are going through my thumb right now, it is happening all the

time. How many fields are we sitting in right now? Electric

fields, magnetic fields, gravitational field s. The Higgs

fields? Presumably. When everybody says this used to be fields, it is.

They love. That I learned that, and that the universe will rip itself

apart. That was nice, that was a fun thing to learn, that the

universe is just gradually going to rip theself apart. Obviously, like

all of these things, I really did find it fascinating, it has led to

millions and millions of other questions in my mind. I find the

whole constant expansion of the universe, the basic first question

for me is, well expanding, but into what? I'm stumped by that

immediately. Expanding into what? It has been explained into nothing

because it is going round and I can't get that. It can be infinite

and expanding. Not in here it can't. There isn't room enough. Why not

ground this with an emnint scientist, it is an every day

problem. How many people have headphones with them at the moment?

This is essentially what it is like in your pocket at the moment. Nice,

top-quality example. This, why does this happen? It is so frustrating,

it drives me crazy. It happens to me all the time. There is fis he

cans in that? I would say one way of talking about that is to say

that there is many more ways that can be tangled than not be

tanninged. Many fewer ways for it to be smooth and untangled. It is

entrophy, it says the larger number of ways of doing something is

entrophe, the chances are higher to have it knotted. Anyone here,

tangled, tangled. That is a mess, to be honest with you. Anyone

unhang -- tangled. I keep mine in a pouch! That is to tragic. A little

pouch, and they are made of a different thing so they are easier

to unknot. This won't work now. hope it doesn't. There we go. My

knotless pouch, now who looks foolish! It is still you.

What complex mathematics, knot theory? They are knotted in

different ways, it is not a magic thing that you put it into the

pocket and it comes out the same knot. Knot theory there is a whole

branch of mathematics that tries to understand the complexties of the

way things become knotted. It can have application for things like

quantum gravity, and spring theory. Which are about the foundations of

the universe. It is the most frustrating thing, that. Because

you think that's just happened without me touching t I put it in a

bag or pocket, therefore, when I hold it, there is probably one way,

if I get hold of the right bit and pull it, it will come out straight.

Never once have a lucked out with that, hence, the poach! It is the

same argument why your room gets messier rather than cleaner unless

you do something. I have a woman comes in. Adding artificial energy

to the system. Cheating! She's not artificial, she's real. Do you pay

her through the book, or cash thing? It is a Jimmy Carr

arrangement, she's from Guernsey! You might think that Einstein's

theory affects you in any way, it is all about planets and space, you

are wrong. Here are some numbers. Your head might be only 175cms from

your feet, but time ticks fast up there. 678quadrillionths of a

second. By the end of your life, it is 484billionths of a second older

than your toes. Say you took a job at the top of the Empire State

Building, that is 8.4 hours day, 260 days a year, for 46 years, you

would have worked a colossal slight of a second longer than the people

If the sprinter ran 100ms in 9.58 seconds, he would finish six

quaddrillionths than those starting If you try to break the land-speed

record, then, you would have gained three trillionths of a second.

Spend your whole life at that speed and you would half a measure of a

second ahead of everyone else. Higher up, as well as going over

100-times faster than the eurosta, the International Space Station is

over 4 ,000ms above oured head. Spend your entire life up there,

and you will be a second younger. Proof that science really can --

415,000 miles above our heads, spend your life up there you will

be a second younger. Proof that science can really explain

everything. It was discovered by Maxwell that

the speed of light drops out of electricity and magnetisim.

Suddenly there is this huge discovery that electricity and

magnetisim, and these electromagnetic fields are light.

If you run at a train, it is coming faster than if you run away from a

train. Life is not like that. The fact that it is the same, weather

you run towards a light beam or away from a light beam, is so

strange that everyone thought it was a wrong result. And what

Einstein did was say, actually, I think that's right. Everything we

see and every measurement we have made, and all we know about space

is because of light? Yes. More or less. Are there other ripples we

should be looking at? If we are talking about Einstein, we have to

talk about gravitational lifts, the idea that if very massive things

were to collide, like two black holes, which is the favourite

candidate. That they would cause space to ripple around them, like

fish swirling in the pond and the water would ripple. Those waves are

in the shape of space, if you were standing beside the black holes you

couldn't see them and if they collided you wouldn't know, and

then all of a sudden you would be squeezed and stretched as they

travel through you, and they travel at the speed of life light.

space squeezes and stretches, do you feel yourself squeezing and

stretching? If it is strong enough you would. If it is strong enough

to overcome the electrochemical bonds that hold you together.

are they so elusive? They are so weak, so, you know, I can fight

gravity with my little arm, the whole of the earth is pulling on me

right now, and I can easily overcome it. Gravity is incredibly

weak. So, you need something like two massive black holes smashing

together. Even then, it's so incredibly weak by the time it gets

to the earth, that for a long time people thought there would never be

any hope of actually experimentally getting there. We have yet to?

have yet to, but the ambition has been decades in the making and we

are on the verge. When scientists such as Newton were coming up with

theories they could test them immediate lo. Einstein's ideas were

so advanced, he had to wait for the technology to catch up to test his

they are hey. They have all been proved correct with one outstanding,

that is gravitational waves. We went to see how the hunt for this

most elusive of physical effects is progressing.

Gravitational waves are really elusive things to detect, because

of the effect they have on the world around us.

General relativity, predicts that mass gravity can warp space time.

And that's what gravitational waves are, they are ripples in the fabric

of our universe in space time. So here's the problem, a

gravitational wave can be passing through me right now, stretching

and squishing the space time around But if it is stretching and

squishing what is around me, it is also stretching and squishing me.

So the difficulty is, that from my point of view, nothing has changed.

The business of catching gravity waves is, therefore, incredibly

difficult. It requires big, expensive

experiments. This is the laser interfrometer,

wave experiment. It cost $365 million to put together. That makes

its boss, the man under pressure to prove instein right. You see two

long arms, there is one down there by you and one past me. They are

4kms long each, we shine light down a laser down both of the arms and

measure the lengths of those arms. We measure the difference between

one arm length than the other. gravitational wave came through,

here now, what would LIGO do? Imagine it were coming straight

down from the sky. It would make one arm a little longer and one

shorter, and that would reverse with the in coming gravitational

wave. We measure the difference between the two arm, we would see

one arm getting longer, the other getting shorter and back and forth,

it would trace out the same wave form as the gravitational wave.

are using the laser as a ruler, these two arms are giant rulers in

space time. That is right. LIGO's 4km arms can detect movement a

thousand if diameter of the smallest nucleus. That is looking

at the entire width of the Milky Way, and noticing something the

size of your thumb move. In 2005, Joe's team set their trap for

Einstein's theoretical wave, all they had to do was wait. Before you

built this, you must have been able to make predictions about the sorts

of waves you thought you would see. Have you, were you right, do you

know? We haven't seen, we haven't detected any waves yet.

For seven years the detectors have been working. Waiting. For the

universe to light up. For LIGO to detect a gravitational wave, it

needs a powerful source. A massive collision between neutron

stars, or black holes would do it. So would a supernova from a nearby

massive star. The resulting gravitational wave would have to be

big enough that at its current sensitivity, LIGO, would be able to

watch the wave go by. Do you know why haven't you seen

anything, you built it because you thought you would see anything,

what happened? So, in a particle physics experiment, you shine a

beam on to a target, or shine a beam into another beam and you

create the events, and then you can count them. We are not a particle

physics experiment, nature has to send us the advance, nature has to

create the sources. We have estimates about how many of the

sources are out that there that we can detect. It was a bit of a long

shot that we would be able to see one, with the initial LIGO

sensitivity, that is why we have to look for a better detector.

isn't giving up yet. LIGO is getting an upgrade, to advanced

LIGO. The new optics in Joe's laser rulers, have some of the smoothest

surface on earth. The thing about these waves that

really gets me, is they are really subltle. We have these great big

long arm, and even then to measure the difference in space time, we

need it to be really accurate, because it is such a tiny tiny

difference. These will make this detector much more sensitive to

able to detect even smaller differences? That's right, and it

is very pretty, too, isn't it. are stunning.

I feel like I'm looking at the cleanest thing I have ever seen. It

look atomically perfect. When LIGO's laser is bounced between

these flawless optics, Joe will be able to look out for much longer

wavelengths. Increasing the sensitivity of the instrument, and

allowing a wider range of potential gravitational wave sources to be

seen out there in the universe. We have been joined by Helen, who

made that film for us. Helen, they have been seven years looking and

they think they won't see anything for five years? They are in the

process of upgrading it. This experiment has actually been going

on for a long, long time. The idea to test for this started in the 50s,

people have been refining their methods, and this last upgrade they

think they are going to get it. have two arms heading out at a 90

degree angle, you send light bouncing out 4qms and back again,

if that doesn't -- 4kms and back again f that doesn't happen it is

because space time has been distorted? You set it up with one

laser beam, you split it into two, those are identical. So you send

them down identical arms and back. If one of those arms changes length

and the other one doesn't, or if both change, when they get back

they won't match up any more. You know you have seen a change in

space time. They are refining it, in five years they think it will be

refine today see something there, or be ready when something arrives?

To be ready when something arrives. It could have happened a billion

years a we are just sitting here waiting. We have five years

relative to a billion, we have to hurry. If there is any detail about

special relativity we haven't word, we have our afterhours science club

standing by, we have a top physicist standing by to answer

your questions. Alok Jha poses a thorny question, can we afford big

ticket physics experiment. We try to track down Einstein's brain.

One thing you will keep hearing when we discuss this sort of

science, is the speed of light being a constant. It is incredibly

fundamental to the whole thing. It is a fundamental fact of the

universe. As such we should be able to take ownership of that, we

should all be able to measure the speed of light. Mark, you were

going to show us show. Exactly would presume this is technically

done with telescopes and planets? You can do it that way if you want.

The big science, whatever way you want. We can do it by making cheese

on toast. That is because radio wave, X-rays, and microwaves, are

all types of light. Same speed? Same speed. It is not unreasonable

to use a microwave to do the experiment. And that brings us to

what a wave is. And so, here is a wave, and it's a certain length,

that is this wavelength, it goes that length a number of time per

second, that is the freakcy s you times the freak -- frequency, you

times the frequency by the length. We will put it into the microwave,

I can't touch the cheese. This is genuinely a fun thing to do around

a cheese phobic person is wave cheese in their general area. This

is not a childhood thing? It is actually disturbing. You actually

have a problem with it? I have always had it. I should have been

more sensitive to, that generally this show is cool with that kind of

stuff, but it is funny to do that. I'm sorry, I'm being insensitive.

That goes in. Put that in the Mick crow wave. It is non-standard

because we have small wooden blocks? We have taken the thing out

that goes round. Because when the wave is bouncing back and forth in

this, it gives it hot spots and cold spots. If we get it going.

is a student of physics here? You, fabulous. I'm a this eroatition.

You have used a ruler? This side. Here we go. Lovely, that's perfect.

You can see the hot spots and it has been left over the cold spot.

Should we go for the centre of the piece there. If the theory is

correct, it should be half. really aren't good with a ruler,

are you! We don't care about the bread. Think of the budget this lab

works on. Let's go for 6.5. That means the wavelength. For a

microwave that is a fairly big wave. It is micro, though, because it is

13cms, which is 0.13 of a meeter. 0.13 of a metre, we we are half way

there, what about the frequency? need to make an observation

independent of that, otherwise we will have our numbers compounding.

Can we not use him, he almost blew it in the first part. I saw the

things. What we need is someone who can make an observation on the back

of the microwave, so you can see the frequency, could you read that

number? 200 450 -- 2,450 megaherts, that is the frequency, which is

2.45X10 to the 9. We have to multiply those two to get to the

speed of light. I can tell you are doing that in your head.

Rainman. Somebody get a phone out. Do you want me to type it in.

times 2.145. That will be by ten to the eight. 0.3185. That is 3.2

times ten to the eight metres per second. I'm definitely asking this

one, does anyone know what the actual speed of light is. We have

19 physics students here. 2.9 792. Not in that detail! To one decimal

point it is 3.0 by ten to the eight. 0.2 off. That is remarkable with a

simple experiment and get that close. I'm going to test this, if

you average it out, if you have someone of those, bread and cheese

at home, try it. Send me pictures of cheese on toast, clog up my

account with that kind of thing and the average value. Very good, give

Mark a round of applause. Einstein did a lot of his here toising with

thought experiments, just -- they areising, with thought experiments,

technology has caught up with his thinking and allowed us to test the

theories, it doesn't come cheap, can we afford some of the huge

science experiments. Alok Jha examines the issue. The big ideas

in physics need big experiments, whether you want to understand the

tiniest fundamental particles, or work out dark matter in the

universe, you need progressively Are the price tags you need for

experiments like these on fundamental science, are they just

a bit too high? In Texas, like nearly 15 miles of -- lie nearly 15

miles of disused tunnels. This was going to be the

superconducting, supercollider. But after ten years work, Congress

pulled the plug on all funding. Project director Roy watched $2

billion come to nothing. How much bigger would this have

been compared to the large hide dron collider? Basic skiez is three

times larger the hide dron collider at SERN. Why did it try up? A new

President, the Cold War had ended. Congress needed to control spending,

as now, it needed a symbol for its responsiveness to the issue. We

became a spectacular version of that symbol. I have no doubt, had

we continued on the plan we were on, that we would have discovered the

Higgs a decade ago, or more. In the UK, Sir David King was

Government science adviser to the Blair administration. He questions

whether megaprojects like the recent quest for the Higgs boson

will ever repay their investment. The theory of the Higgs boson has

been around for 40 years plus, new discoveries, which will take us in

new directions are yet to emerge from SERN. Are you implying we

shouldn't fund things that have some sort of immediate or medium-

term application? Absolutely. Why limit ourselves to particle physics.

We have a whole range of challenges ahead of us in the 21st century.

And the question is, whether we should now divert funds into

meeting some of these other challenges. Energy technology, for

example, brain science, are we funnelling enough if into research

over Malaria. There are all these issues around the world where I see

a shortage of funding. This very exciting physics we are talking

about now has to be played against all these other demands in the

research field. You can see Sir David's point, we are in the middle

of a global recession, is it really right to divert so much money away

from these big problems, and into something like fundamental physics,

where, frankly, sometimes it is hard to see what the point is.

But there is another way to pursue physics, that is quite affordable.

The perimeter institute at Waterloo in Canada, is devoted to the

cheapest form of science, pure theory.

Every day dozens of the world's finest minds are paid to come

together and make like Einstein. They sit, and they think.

Neil is director of the institute. Do you think that Theoretical

Physicists have a bit of an image problem. You assume Theoretical

Physicists are slightly strange, don't like to talk to people.

Bang Theory. For example! Yes. Theoretical physics has this

reputation because, and to some extent it is deserved. There are

many strange people who to it. You have to be incredibly focused,

incredibly driven, have a lot of hutzpah to imagine you know what

happened at the Big Bang. theoretical fistics is so hard to

grasp, how can you know if this work gets any worthwhile results?

It is very hard to predict the impact of the kind of discoveries

being made here. The one thing I would predict with some confidence,

is that an entire institute like this, will, in ten or 20 or 30

years be judged on the discovery of one person, who discovers something

completely unexpected, which changes our picture of nature, and

which has spin-off which we cannot now foresee. That sounds great, why

don't you put even more money into theoretical physic, do you ever get

jealous at places like at the Large Hadron Collider, they have billions

to do their experiments, do you ever think you wish you had some of

their cash? I never get jealous of experimentalists, in my view, they

are busy with all the technical challenge of the they arey, we have

to focus all of our energise on developing theories, to the point

they can be tested. So there is extremely strong interaction

between theory and experiment. And I would say, the pointless thing

would be to support one without the other. You have to have both.

bizarre art imitating life fact, that film you just saw is the most

expensive film we have made in the entire series! The beneficiary of

that, Alok Jha, it can't get more and more expensive? It will, the

next generation of particle colliders, the reason all the

countries work together, all the countries in the world, because it

is so expensive. Billions of pounds and dollars to do this stuff, the

next generation will be even more expensive, because they want to be

more sensitive, get to even Tyneier scales to check the sorts of don

tinyier scales to check the sort of things that Janna and others want

to know about. With SERN people want to talk about the Worldwide

Web? Medical scanners, Worldwide Web, all comes from the technology

to examine the particles in extreme amounts. These things have repaid

investment we have made times over. Do we fetishise particle physics,

saying they are answers to unlock the universe, we used phrases like

changing the view of the universe. It is an easy sell this kind of

physic, do we put too much into it? Could you look at it like this,

particle physics and these extreme experiments, even in cosmologyy,

they are like venture capital, you shouldn't put all your money into

it, but they are the things that will inspire the next generation of

people. They are the things that might have the amazing results you

can use in energy technology, something of the future, but is

also good to know this stuff. not asking you to talk your field

out of money. Do we have a tepbtd tendency, is it an easy result --

tendency, is it an easy result to talk people into a cheque? If you

look explanations about the Higgs people talk about the discovery of

Higgs at the Large Hadron Collider where it was discover. People have

to hear it ten or 15 times, it is not an easy sell. There is the case

that we have this natural human instinct to ask questions about our

origin, and where we stand in the universe, and what are these

elaborate systems. It is simply impossible to quench that. You work

in material, predominantly, Mark, given a cheque for a billion, what

would you do, would it revolutionise the field? Energy is

our biggest problem at the moment, making energy without heating the

world. We have the technology that will do the job, solar cells,

material science came up for solar cells, we could have solar cells on

every roof, why not do it. Because we haven't decided as a culture to

go for that goal. We have political things, cheap oil, nuclear power,

we have people fighting for wind. But we should just go for solar,

the stuff is raining down from the sky. You just have to collect it

and we're done, no more digging for oil, no more nuclear waste, just

collect the stuff. We can do it, give us the money. We have a clever

science interested audience, in the current climate can we justify

spending this amount of money on big ticket science experiments plus

for yes, and minus for no. It is rigged. Anyone who is a student of

physics or involved in physics leave your hand up and the rest put

your hands down. Interesting enough, the physics people aren't sure they

want the cash at all. I'm going to give it to yes, in

this room, for what that's worth would be in favour of that. That

seems to be about an 80/20 split in that. Of course these debates

continue on-line all the time. You can check our Twitter account.

Join in with the hashtag. Sorry, we have vt, if you ever want

to see Einstein's brain, this is it. That is the brain that came up with

all the stuff that was on there. That is the man examining the brain,

enormously closely. This is interesting, Einstein died in 1955,

the on-call pathologist, decided we have this amazing guy, what makes

him like that, he took the brain without any permission. He didn't

publish any papers and he lost his job because of it. Not because he

stole Einstein's brain. No, that's fine? But because he couldn't

publish papers as a result. Because he didn't do good research

afterwards. That is an undignified way to end. Fabulous, Einstein's

brain. Some people did see experiments on the brain to find

out what it was about it that might have been clever. They found that

the parital lobe, at the front, was 20% bigger than normal, he was much

cleverer than everyone else. That is how we know he was clever

because that bit of the brain was bigger. Scientists will work it out

that was the truth. We are nearing the end of the show. Thank you to

our reporters, Helen, Alok and Mark. A round of applause. And, our

wonderful guest, Marcus Brigstocke, and of course, Janna Levin. Which

only leaves to us reason out what we have learned here tonight, the

lessons are multiple. Cheese is constant throughout the universe,

physics is becoming too expensive we will never know what it really

means. The biggest thing is, don't steal brain, I'm always stressing t