:00:33. > :00:41.Welcome to Agnes Lukudu. How exciting is this? We have found a
:00:41. > :00:44.planet, it is amazing. It is exciting. Normal people, amateur
:00:44. > :00:50.astronomers have found the planet around a distant star, something
:00:50. > :00:55.none of us could do 20 years ago. In the way you involve people who
:00:55. > :01:03.are interested in these projects is absolutely superb. Astronomers for
:01:03. > :01:09.the future. Not astronomers from the future. A few quid
:01:10. > :01:16.introductions, Tim O'Brien, Lucie Green. The John Bishop, good to see
:01:16. > :01:25.you. I am going to skip pass that, would you pour some wine for these
:01:25. > :01:32.people. It is that why I have been brought on. Essentially, yes. We
:01:32. > :01:41.have with us, Chris Holmes, one of the disc covering people of our
:01:41. > :01:48.planet, Threple-Holmes. Chris, are you there? I am. The you are
:01:48. > :01:54.regarded as a God. How are you handling the responsibility? It is
:01:54. > :02:01.quite a surprise, but quite exciting. How long did you spend
:02:01. > :02:08.having a look at the website? was yesterday morning, I checked
:02:08. > :02:12.out 14. Are you an amateur astronomer, an enthusiast? I have
:02:12. > :02:18.had an interest in it since school, but I am more of the technical
:02:19. > :02:24.person, computers are my thing. you make the other co-discoverer?
:02:24. > :02:29.We cannot track him down, if you are there please get in touch. We
:02:30. > :02:39.have to get the two of you together. So we can fight it out at over the
:02:40. > :02:43.
:02:43. > :02:47.name? There is a more formal name to go through in process?
:02:47. > :02:56.Congratulations. It is a bizarre piece of maternity you have a
:02:56. > :03:06.planet named in your honour. Congratulations. -- eternity.
:03:06. > :03:08.
:03:08. > :03:15.Thanks very much. He is so mellow about it. Relaxed. John, how are
:03:15. > :03:25.you? If I had a planet named after me, I would have been going off my
:03:25. > :03:26.
:03:26. > :03:33.cake. I would have been blotto on the couch shouting YES! You cannot
:03:33. > :03:39.see it, but it is there. A UN enthusiast? Increasingly so. I am
:03:39. > :03:44.one of those people who think it is really interesting until it gets
:03:44. > :03:52.hard. Shows like this are the avenue to it. We have in front of
:03:52. > :03:57.us, it is turning into a picnic, we have some free food, astronaut food
:03:57. > :04:05.for you to try. These are strawberries you would take into
:04:05. > :04:15.space. Every time I seafood I think Brian is going to scope, "if we are
:04:15. > :04:28.
:04:28. > :04:38.here...". How is it? It is like dry Special K. OK. This it is like real
:04:38. > :04:39.
:04:39. > :04:48.food that has had a life sucked out of it. Why am I trying it. This is
:04:48. > :04:54.made for us by the Mayor's daughter of Dulverton. Since they turned the
:04:54. > :05:00.lights off about 40 minutes ago, Dulverton has turned into
:05:00. > :05:05.lawlessness and chaos. The you are going to be sued by the electricity
:05:05. > :05:14.board for the loss of earnings. do have a number of questions.
:05:14. > :05:21.Human life, we were listening to a planet, Kepler. We did not listen
:05:21. > :05:28.to Threple-Holmes because it is Degas, it is less likely to have a
:05:28. > :05:34.population. One of the things you kept on saying is you are looking
:05:34. > :05:42.for water. Why are you so sure water has to sustain life, that his
:05:42. > :05:46.life as we know it. On earth, where you find it water you find life. In
:05:46. > :05:54.some parts of Antarctica where it does not rain, very arid, you don't
:05:54. > :05:59.find life. We know water is special, it is a biological process. It is
:05:59. > :06:03.almost the scaffolding of which biology happens. There is a list of
:06:03. > :06:10.special properties of water that most scientists would probably say
:06:10. > :06:16.make it necessary for life. It is most likely you need water.
:06:16. > :06:23.tried to listen in to this planet but did not hear anything. This is
:06:23. > :06:29.a question... The BBC have to look through the editorial guidelines to
:06:29. > :06:33.see if we do discover an alien civilisation because there is a
:06:33. > :06:40.health and safety form to fill in because it could trigger riots.
:06:40. > :06:44.Researchers rang a number of global bodies, the un wouldn't tell us.
:06:44. > :06:50.Neither confirm or deny there is a protocol and they won't discuss it
:06:50. > :06:55.and hung up. There is a protocol, I am shot. The only people who took
:06:55. > :07:01.the call and spoke for 20 minutes are where the Vatican. They were
:07:01. > :07:07.extremely excited about the possibility of contact. We have the
:07:07. > :07:10.Pope's mobile number. The first thing we had to do is ring the Pope.
:07:10. > :07:18.You all scientists and listening to that genuinely hoping to hear a
:07:18. > :07:26.sound, but the rest of the country was hoping to hear and go do.
:07:27. > :07:33.is a question from Glyn Grant, if the radar was pointed to worth from
:07:33. > :07:38.Kepler 22b, what were they here? are not sending out strong signals.
:07:38. > :07:43.They would have had to have been sending an extremely strong signal
:07:43. > :07:48.to pick it up. Our TV and radio and stuff is pretty weak, so they would
:07:49. > :07:54.need a big telescope to detect us. It is not beyond the realms of
:07:54. > :08:01.possibility. We did send a message out didn't we? There was a
:08:01. > :08:07.publicity stunt in 1974. It was a coded message in binary digits and
:08:07. > :08:13.it had information about us. Fragments about our DNA, how many
:08:13. > :08:23.planet's there are around the sun. Where the earth was, and so on.
:08:23. > :08:27.
:08:27. > :08:31.we know how far away it could be detected realistically? It depends
:08:31. > :08:38.what you assume in terms of what the aliens have got. Are you in
:08:38. > :08:42.favour of sending a message out? Absolutely, it is a fundamental
:08:42. > :08:47.question to ask. If we could find life somewhere else and have a
:08:47. > :08:54.conversation. It blows my mind how we would have that conversation.
:08:54. > :09:01.Because it takes years and years. If you want to say hello, it would
:09:01. > :09:08.be slow, several generations down the line. A teenager going, she
:09:08. > :09:13.never writes to me, she never called. We don't send information
:09:13. > :09:21.out to them? Some people are in favour of sending out a signal, a
:09:21. > :09:28.lot of people are against the idea. I don't think there is a consensus.
:09:28. > :09:32.What about that signal. What could it be apart from an alien planet
:09:32. > :09:37.may be on T-Mobile that lost a signal. Why would something come
:09:37. > :09:44.out and then not be anything? something that drifted through the
:09:44. > :09:49.beam of the telescope. Some think drifted past as the Earth spins. It
:09:50. > :09:53.rose and it fell in the way we would expect. When they pointed the
:09:53. > :09:59.telescope in the name -- same direction again, there was nothing
:09:59. > :10:06.there. Maybe we do get Astrophysical sources that fade
:10:06. > :10:10.away and we don't see again. What was the contents of the signal?
:10:11. > :10:15.There was no information, it was just the brightness of the signal.
:10:15. > :10:22.It rose and fell as it drifted through the site of the telescope.
:10:22. > :10:26.It wasn't a fragment of a conversation? You should get on to
:10:26. > :10:30.the News of the World, they will tell you what it was! In favour of
:10:30. > :10:35.sending a beacon out and alerting other civilisations and other life
:10:35. > :10:43.forms to us, show of hands. How many would be in favour of doing
:10:43. > :10:52.that? A majority. Anyone against it? That man there. That is a
:10:52. > :10:56.mandate will stop I think this is a pointless question because it is
:10:56. > :11:00.not like a teenage girl or boy communicating. It is like your
:11:00. > :11:07.parents try to communicate with you. If there are aliens out there, they
:11:07. > :11:12.are likely to be more advanced. As an interim person, is this
:11:12. > :11:21.inferiority complex that we assume they will be better than us. I can
:11:21. > :11:26.explain that. You don't have much of an inferiority complex!
:11:26. > :11:31.other one is about, we think they will be better than us, but they
:11:31. > :11:36.have to be based on what we believe is biologically possible. Also we
:11:36. > :11:46.have based it upon a framework of understanding. We have sent out a
:11:46. > :11:48.
:11:48. > :11:51.message based on a bindery signal. It is a A6 signal. It is this thing
:11:51. > :11:56.between this life and the afterlife. If we are going to communicate with
:11:56. > :12:00.them they have invented radio astronomy, so they understand
:12:00. > :12:04.physics. They must have a basic understanding of the university
:12:04. > :12:08.must know about scientific signals. We don't know what sports they play
:12:08. > :12:14.or what music they like, but if they are receiving a signal they
:12:14. > :12:19.have an understanding of science. We can assume civilisations go a
:12:19. > :12:24.long and then they invent things like satellite dishes that are
:12:24. > :12:29.sitting out there. We have only had it for 60 years, the technology to
:12:29. > :12:32.detect any signals from space. Unless you are willing to say all
:12:32. > :12:38.civilisations to invent this technology destroy themselves
:12:38. > :12:46.within 100 years, almost everyone is ahead of us. We are in the
:12:46. > :12:53.reception class. We can see this vast... Mark is in Dover to end
:12:53. > :13:03.fighting off an army of people fighting for loyal like Mad Max in
:13:03. > :13:03.
:13:03. > :13:11.the thunder don't. -- Dulverton. We do the photographs? Have you been
:13:11. > :13:17.shown what we want you to do? have, it is very interesting. The
:13:17. > :13:21.first one is from Ross Harper, who actually went out last night after
:13:22. > :13:27.watching the programme, on his balcony in Manchester and he did
:13:27. > :13:33.this one which I am going to put here, I suppose. He took that
:13:33. > :13:38.picture. I know the game, I have got to put it somewhere. It took
:13:38. > :13:45.him 87 minutes and that is what he did after the show. He was taking
:13:45. > :13:52.pictures every 25 seconds. It shows you it is an amazing programme that
:13:52. > :14:00.inspires people or that there is nothing to do in Manchester! The
:14:00. > :14:06.next one is this one. I have got to be honest with you, I think it is
:14:06. > :14:14.great and looks fantastic. It has come from New York from Peter Lopez.
:14:14. > :14:20.It took Peter 17 hours of exposure which he took over four days. What
:14:20. > :14:27.I have found out his he has put filters on, a green, blue and red
:14:27. > :14:30.filter. That would normally be read. It looks pretty like this, so it is
:14:30. > :14:40.a photo shop picture of the universe. OK, but you know what I
:14:40. > :14:41.
:14:41. > :14:46.mean? And the third one is from Wales and it is taken by Carl Jones,
:14:46. > :14:54.but what is good about that one is it is taken on what I think is a
:14:54. > :15:04.normal camera. It is 11 images stuck together. But he is not happy
:15:04. > :15:05.
:15:05. > :15:13.Damian, what competition did you win. Astro Photographer of the Year.
:15:13. > :15:20.Do you have the photo? Not on me. Is it in a vault? It is a
:15:20. > :15:25.photograph of Jupiter, and it is moons Ganymede and Io. So what did
:15:25. > :15:30.you use for that. That was taken with a 14 cinch telescope and high
:15:30. > :15:37.speed video camera. Was that from the back garden. No, it was taken
:15:37. > :15:44.from the Caribbean island of Barbados. All of a sudden nobody
:15:44. > :15:50.likes you!. That, is that Io? is yie owe on the bottom left and
:15:50. > :15:53.Ganymede at the top. What did you do with the video? It is pluling
:15:53. > :15:59.plugged into the telescope. All those frames are stacked together
:15:59. > :16:04.and that gives you a final image which is enhanced. How long did you
:16:04. > :16:09.run the video for ?. That is two- and-a-half minutes of time. With
:16:09. > :16:19.detail on the moons. They normally appear at points. You get a sense
:16:19. > :16:19.
:16:19. > :16:23.of the size of Ganymede there. Ganymede is the size of Mercury.
:16:23. > :16:26.Thank you very much Damian. Enjoy your next holiday in Barbados.
:16:26. > :16:33.Question of exo-planets. A number of questions, it is possible for a
:16:33. > :16:38.telescope to get a picture of a exo-planet. If we are really lucky
:16:38. > :16:43.so we have a trick where we can block out the light for a star. If
:16:43. > :16:47.a nearby planet, there are as many as ten which have been seen like
:16:48. > :16:55.this. So ground based telescopes. The Hubble has seen, but normally
:16:55. > :16:58.they are dazzled by the star, it is like looking through a fly, flying
:16:58. > :17:03.in front of one of your lights. This will be something that is much
:17:03. > :17:08.more in the media, because the new spacecraft will be launch and able
:17:08. > :17:12.to use this technique and another one, and be able to see the thermal
:17:12. > :17:16.emission and reflected star light to try and see.. But the cool thing
:17:16. > :17:21.isn't the image. The cool thing is to detect the atmosphere of the
:17:21. > :17:25.planet. If you can find out what it is made of, that tells us more
:17:25. > :17:30.about a planet than a pretty picture. I think this is remarkable,
:17:30. > :17:34.that we could find signatures of life on an exo-planet, round a
:17:34. > :17:38.distant star before we find any... I think that is going to be the
:17:38. > :17:41.care, because we can scan the sky, especially with the mission we were
:17:41. > :17:44.talking about, that will use this technique and look for the
:17:44. > :17:49.siingchoufrs life, whereas to find life in our solar system we are
:17:50. > :17:54.thinking about going there and drilling and taking samples,
:17:54. > :18:00.robotic exploration, and that is a single place you go to, very
:18:00. > :18:07.expensive. How far away is, how close is the closest exo-planet?
:18:07. > :18:09.the moment the closest is, we are saying closer but it is not close
:18:10. > :18:15.enough, I mean it is quite different. It is certainly possible
:18:15. > :18:20.to go there. How far is it away? few tens of light years, so, I
:18:20. > :18:23.really don't think we can go there in a foreseeable future. Can I ask
:18:23. > :18:28.a question about the exo-planet. When you were doing that clip from
:18:28. > :18:33.South Africa, that guy said the most exciting thing he had was the
:18:33. > :18:38.exo-planet that going in rotation, counter to its sun. Why would that
:18:38. > :18:44.happen? What is going on there, because that defies, it is the only
:18:44. > :18:49.one. We have strange rotation, so Venus rotates slowly, Uranus
:18:49. > :18:52.rotates on its side. It is not uncommon. They need to be flicked
:18:52. > :18:59.over during a collision process in the planetary system. We have
:18:59. > :19:04.learned the beginning of the solar system was chaotic. Uranus and
:19:04. > :19:07.Neptune are thought to have swapped places. So collisions can...
:19:07. > :19:12.creation of the moon came from a collision, so these things are
:19:12. > :19:20.common in the early days. We are going to go to a question from Sir
:19:20. > :19:24.Patrick Moore. Science fact or science fiction. I love music, so I
:19:25. > :19:30.thought I would give you a music question. Is it true to say that
:19:30. > :19:39.The Beatles were part of the first attempt we have to send music into
:19:39. > :19:44.space? OK. Were The Beatles in space in I won't ask you because
:19:44. > :19:52.you will blurt the answer out. ruined both questions. I will sit
:19:52. > :19:57.and have a drink of wine. I will ask you. Yes. You are saying yes.
:19:57. > :20:04.think their mie sick went. OK, so you are saying science fact. Let us
:20:04. > :20:09.go back to Patrick Moore. Oh dear, I am afraid you are wrong. I was
:20:09. > :20:19.referring to the list of all the Voyager probes so bad luck I win
:20:19. > :20:23.that one. It is only Chuck Berry included on that disk. Chuck Berry,
:20:23. > :20:27.this is the model of the plaque which is there, what information is
:20:27. > :20:32.contain on this Lots of information. My favourite one is our position,
:20:32. > :20:39.the position of our sun in the local. Which is there. Sun there
:20:39. > :20:48.and the distance markers. This is a record. A lot of instructions to
:20:48. > :20:53.play the record. Is it is. The RPM is encoded. This is a picture of a
:20:53. > :20:57.hydrogen molecule. Anyone who knows about physics can look at universal
:20:57. > :21:02.properties, of the universe, things we would agree on, things you don't
:21:02. > :21:06.have to be human to understand, like the propertys of hydrogen. It
:21:06. > :21:09.maps that on how to build a record player and how to rotate it. It is
:21:09. > :21:16.a very clever thing. Then you have the grooves on the other side. So
:21:16. > :21:21.it is a wonderful thing. That will outlast our civilisation. It will
:21:21. > :21:27.be so long until it get tots any planetary system. Tens of thousands
:21:27. > :21:33.of year, so it... I think we said it is 300,000 years to Sirius. It
:21:33. > :21:37.goes very close to Sirius, which you can see at the moment. On the
:21:37. > :21:41.horizon. It is low down in winter but it gets confused for a UFO
:21:42. > :21:47.because it is bright and twinkles. It is not long before we will get a
:21:47. > :21:51.group of school kids who have no idea what it is and see if they can
:21:51. > :21:56.decode it. Give a group of school- children anything that is on vinyl
:21:56. > :22:00.records and let them decode them. No amounts of pictures of hydrogen
:22:00. > :22:04.will do it for them. There are questions about alien life. Lucie
:22:04. > :22:09.asked, what would an alien look like? Depend where it is found. So
:22:09. > :22:14.if we find it in the seas of Europa, it would be streamlined and fish
:22:14. > :22:22.like. If it is in the clouds of a gas giant, someone was talking
:22:22. > :22:27.about flying whales. We have had flying whales. Is that a real
:22:27. > :22:33.picture. Yes, a genuine picture taken today! The atmosphere is so
:22:33. > :22:40.dense, the idea, they could get enough lift to fly through. Because,
:22:40. > :22:43.if you were standing on a planet. Three four times the size of earth.
:22:43. > :22:47.You remember, wonders of the universe, they put me in a
:22:47. > :22:51.centrifuge and spun me round to 5G. I think that was the gravitational
:22:51. > :22:54.force on one of the planets, I can't remember which one, but one
:22:54. > :22:59.of the exo-planets we detected. Because it is five times the mass
:22:59. > :23:05.of the earth. The radius is not too much different so the Gav taitional
:23:05. > :23:12.pull would be excessive and my face went very funny. It was not very...
:23:12. > :23:17.So that means a human could not land on a planet larger than ours.
:23:17. > :23:22.5G, your rib cage weighs five times more, you are not built to breathe,
:23:22. > :23:26.so it is very difficult. If you get to about 9G, then you don't survive.
:23:26. > :23:30.So taking that the other way, what you said, everything that aliens
:23:30. > :23:36.have got is better than our, they will come from a bigger planet. If
:23:36. > :23:41.they came here what would happen then.. They would jump over you.
:23:41. > :23:45.Giant leap. They would if they came from a bigger planet. Like the
:23:46. > :23:52.astronauts on the moon. They went to a smaller body and that moonwalk,
:23:52. > :23:59.so if you see anyone bouncing down the street... That is a good tip!
:23:59. > :24:04.With the Olympics coming up. He's not on drug, he's an alien! Thank
:24:04. > :24:09.God we sorted that out. There an argument from evolution, we can
:24:09. > :24:14.look at earth and look at what evolved. Intelligence has only
:24:14. > :24:18.evolved once but the eye has evolved 17, 18, 19 time, so maybe
:24:18. > :24:24.we, that means that is ease groi get to and we should expect that
:24:24. > :24:28.aliens have eyes and most things that have eyes have two I suspect
:24:28. > :24:34.they have eyes. Would they have eyes that pick up the same wave
:24:34. > :24:38.length of light. We have a star that matches our eyes. I like to
:24:38. > :24:42.think, could something evolve that had the ability to detect radio
:24:42. > :24:47.waves. They would have very big eyes. They are so much loner, that
:24:47. > :24:51.you get a blurred view, even that giant, if you imagine your pupil
:24:51. > :24:58.expanding to the size of that telescope, you could get, that is a
:24:58. > :25:06.more blurred view than your eye, to see sharp images they would need
:25:06. > :25:14.giant sensitive radio dishes. Dulverton, they are fighting
:25:14. > :25:18.Predator for control. Christina says is it possible that advances
:25:18. > :25:23.extraterrestrial life could communicate using other waves?
:25:23. > :25:27.think we know the whole of the spectrum from gamma waves to radio
:25:28. > :25:32.wave, but we have only searched a tiny fraction so it is possible
:25:32. > :25:37.they could be sending us signals we haven't noticed. We are bad at
:25:37. > :25:41.looking for fast signals, as well. So they are sending rapid pulses,
:25:41. > :25:46.we wouldn't necessarily have seen them. We have been talking about
:25:46. > :25:50.sending a solid object or by using radio waves but it could be using
:25:50. > :25:53.laiders so there could be other parts of the spectrum that we
:25:53. > :25:57.aren't using at the moment. One of the things we want you to do over
:25:57. > :26:01.the course of the few days is take advantage of the clear skies if
:26:01. > :26:05.they are above your area. To do that Mark has left us with a star
:26:05. > :26:10.cast. The the sky is clear where you are after the show look in an
:26:10. > :26:18.ark from the west to the east t. You will be looking at a band of
:26:18. > :26:28.familiar sounding star, the zodiac. In the east, is Leo the lion. Then,
:26:28. > :26:35.
:26:35. > :26:39.Cancer the crab. Gemini the twins. Taurus the bull. Aries the ram. And
:26:39. > :26:43.Pisces the fish. These are the stars that the planets pass through.
:26:43. > :26:47.Just above Pisces tonight is the brightest object visible in the
:26:47. > :26:53.night sky. If you can see what looks like a very bright star, it
:26:53. > :26:57.will be the planet Jupiter. And if you can stay up for a while after
:26:57. > :27:03.the programme ends, you will be able to watch the planet Mars
:27:03. > :27:10.rising in the east from around 10pm. As the night progress, it will move
:27:10. > :27:18.towards the south. And then, after 1am Saturn follows in Mars's past.
:27:18. > :27:23.Rising behind Virgo. And finally, if you are out early tomorrow
:27:23. > :27:27.morning, there is a great chance to see something different. The
:27:27. > :27:37.International Space Station flies over head tomorrow morning between
:27:37. > :27:37.
:27:37. > :27:41.7.15 and 7.25. Look out for it at its highest point in the south. Now
:27:41. > :27:45.there have been Stargazing Live events happening all over the
:27:45. > :27:49.country and they don't do so it is a fairly social thing, being an
:27:49. > :27:55.astronomer so we have events all over the country. You can find out
:27:55. > :27:59.more information about them if you go to the website. There is also,
:27:59. > :28:03.it is there in Nottingham, there in Northern Ireland. These events are
:28:03. > :28:09.taking place all over and will continue to do so to find out more
:28:09. > :28:13.go to the website we as we all know is bbc.co.uk/stargazing. Also on
:28:13. > :28:19.the website you will find information on loads of resources
:28:19. > :28:24.given to us by the Open University. I want to thank all our guests.
:28:24. > :28:29.Chris, thank you, your excellent work. John, I hope you enjoyed your
:28:29. > :28:33.time here. I think I have given a lot. So much. We only have three
:28:33. > :28:38.seconds left what is thing that stands out. That comment from duver
:28:38. > :28:42.on the at the end when someone said this is inspire us to form a
:28:42. > :28:45.society. To carry on doing astronomy. That is the key thing I