Back to Earth 3 Stargazing Live

Hard to believe that's the last time will be dancing to the music. Hello,

and welcome back for the last time this year to Jodrell Bank, where

we'll try and bend the space time continuum to fit as many of your

questions into our final 30 minutes of Stargazing. Joining us are once

again Professor Brian Cox, GAIA scientist Professor Gerry Gilmore,

The Sky at Night's Dr Chris Lintott, Associate Director of Jodrell Bank,

Professor Tim O'Brien, and space scientist Dr. Maggie Aderin-Pocock,

who is going to be joining Chris on The Sky At Night when the new series

starts next month. Can I give you a drink to congratulate you? You

always have tenuous connections to drinking here, but thank you for

bringing Matin. Award-winning wine! -- that in. On the back it says that

the Chardonnay goes with salmon in cream very well, and commentate

she's, one of my favourites. -- Comte cheese. It goes very well with

a 1 billion pixel camera as well. Nice to see you sipping wine on a 1

billion pixel camera. We have loosened the requirements on the

names we might be going to. Unlimited people, maybe a bit too

much. We want to speak to one of the discoverers of the galaxy, and I

mispronounced your name, because I can never announce that Polish name

will stop you there? -- are you there? Hello, it is Chetnik. Who am

I to impose a different pronunciation? But you are an

enthusiast who has potentially discovered this galaxy? I've been an

amateur astronomer since the age of six. And I think in every amateur's

life, and any astronomers out there, they would always like to discover

something, and I have wished this for many, many years, and for it to

actually happen is just stunning, so exciting. Especially with all the

information I'm hearing now about this new discovery. It is, just, at

the beginning of the year, the first day of this year, I thought to

myself, it's going to be a lucky year for me. And then, to suddenly

find something very special. When people say it will be a lucky year,

they don't think, I'm going to win a galaxy! That is what amateur

astronomy is about, it's the one science where amateurs can make a

difference. We talk about the amateurs who discover supernovas,

but this is amateur astronomy on a cloudy night, and we have more data

upon the site now. It's worth emphasising there are other

discoveries to be made, and thereon more than 50 now. We put the best

bait -- Best date back in. But if you went to the site, you could pick

up more. Congratulations, an excellent story after a lifetime of

stargazing. It is also nice to give the scientific societies and the

scientific people something that will sort of help them in the future

on future research. A lot of people saying it is nice to give something

back. We have left the Lovell telescope pointing at the galaxy.

Yes, he got no sleep last night. But well done, congratulations. I think

it captures the spirit of astronomy, to emphasise it again. It was great.

People were there a burly, ploughing through data to capture the images

capturing the excitement. This is an object 40 billion light-years away,

because the universe has stretched for 12 billion years that it takes

to reach us, in terms of the light, so do think we can discover that as

a civilisation -- to think we can discover. It proves that Einstein is

right, the mass bend space-time. We talked a lot about the distant

galaxy, because the early universe is kind of sexy, but the nearby

galaxy we can see the bending of the light and we can wave at that nearby

galaxy. The first guess, about 500 billion solar masses and we know

that precisely by looking at how the lenses bend. So while Tim is doing

observations, a lot of the scientists have created models of

the lens, trying different combinations to work out how much

mass there is. It's interesting because it exceeds the mass of the

stars. It is a bad fact -- it is about a factor of six tenths. We

will get the number precisely, although we don't have it now. That

gravitational lensing technique measures the total mass, so it's not

just visible mass, visible light, radio waves, infrared, so it's the

total mass including dark matter and that's one of the best ways we have

doing it, so that's about 25% of the mass of the universe in the dark

matter. Only 5% of the universe 's stuff we know what it is, the stop

the chairs are made of, what we are made of -- the stuff the chairs are

made of. Lottie said there were nine green bottles. There was the offer

of nine K9. Deep Space nine was suggested. It's all true. I still

think Chetnik works. I think it works. Can we use the full first

name, if you can remind us? This is the most distant radio Einstein, so

if it turns out to be a full ring? That was only 3.5 hours worth of

data, just as the programme started last night, and it is set. We

tracked it right down to the horizon with the telescope is hitting the

buffers, so we only have 3.5 hours. That picture we saw is a full but

small area, and you can fill that up. We imagine, but we think so. The

infrared images brighter on the other side, so the question is

whether it goes round. It might end up in the textbooks, so if it does

end up there, generations of students will be cursing us. There

is almost certainly a black hole there, because it's so bright in the

radio, but as the material spirals into the black hole, that's an

efficient way to generate the radio waves. Do all galaxy -- galaxies

have black holes? We even think that the black hole might come first, and

it forms the galaxy around it. So that is central to the galaxy? If

you look at the gravitational pull of a supermassive black hole, that

might attract the stars, so therefore the stars are created

around it. I could talk to Tim all day because the story of the object

has been changing as the data came in, and you said over lunch that

this is an unusual way of doing astronomy and very accelerated,

because of this programme. If they'd come at a normal time and on the

observation they would said they could fit it in the schedule, but in

this we have to do it now, and it is something we have to get the image

out by the time we have the programme, so it is unusual to be

quite so pressured, so we did enjoy it even if it was quite pressured. I

think the dire perspective is to find that this perspective of the

galaxy but what it is designed to do is answer the question which is what

is the connection between supermassive black holes and the

galaxies around them. It is clear that supermassive black holes stop

the galaxy 's growing late in their lives as they turn on and blow the

gas away. But how these things happen early on, we don't know. But

the Milky Way has a reasonable size of black hole at its heart, and we

can study that detail, and we can compare the history of that black

hole with a history of the oldest stars in the Milky Way and use it as

a template. The other thing that GAIA will do is determine how the

dark matter is distributed. The Milky Way property has ten times

more dark matter than ordinarily, so the dark matter is a reality. We are

on the top. But we don't know what the dark matter is. All we know is

that it is probably related to elementary particles, and those

elementary particles are probably related to the solutions of the

really big questions in science, like white tie and goes in only one

direction, why is the universe made of matter not antimatter -- like

white time only goes. These things are probably the same families that

make up the dark matter but we cannot find them in the

accelerators. The only way we know to find them is to wave the dark

matter. But GAIA will give us a high precision measurement which will

tell as if the stop is lumpy, if they are moving slowly, if it is

smooth, or whether it is both or there's something more complicated

going on. You also get it from the background data which backs up that.

It's interesting what you said. This is one of the intersections between

particle physics, subatomic physics and cosmology and it's very

exciting. It looks like the consensus is there. It's a great

inspiration to kids. 95% of the universe is missing. And the other

quarter is dark energy. We will go from those enormous questions to a

more trivial one. Our intrepid metal canine explorer K9 has got one more

space trivia question for us before he goes back to the galactic kennels

for 11 months. It's probably actually a cupboard in Manchester

somewhere. Here he is now. Good evening, master Dara. My name

is K9. Here is your question. What does a spatula, a bag of tools and

Gene Roddenberry have in common? Answer wisely, Master

So what do they all have in common? Send your answers in the next fvie

minutes via email - [email protected], or by using

hashtag #k9stargazing on social media, and we'll read some of the

best out later, when K9 will explain all. We did interrupt the discussion

on what 95% of reality is made of for that! It is wrong on many

levels. Nine invader from Laura. Nine Bob said Maggie Hill. 99

problems, but my galaxy 81 was one suggestion. That is my current

favourite -- but my galaxy isn't one. Is there a limit to how big a

galaxy can become? It's a difficult question, it's about how massive

galaxy is. The of stuff it has will determine the gravity -- the amount

of stuff. You can see galaxies hundreds and thousands of times. The

simple answer is there is no limit at all, and in fact, if you wait a

few more billions of years, holding your breath, the really dense parts

of the universe, the superclusters, the things that cause these

gravitational lenses, they are going through the process of galactic

collision and that process will keep going, and eventually all of those

tens of thousands of galaxies will merge into one single super galaxy.

The central reasons -- regions are already weighing more than the Milky

Way and they will get bigger again, so the whole show, in the Young ones

-- long term, it will end up as a small number of mega galaxies.

Another question on galaxies, what are the chance of that being another

me somewhere in another galaxy presenting Stargazing on TV? If you

are there, I hope you get a less stroppy co-presenter. Is there

another parallel galaxy to this question marks it is a topic of huge

speculation. It is recognition of how little we understand about

fundamental questions of the universe. How decisions are made in

quantum mechanics, do two universes come into existence. It's a cat dead

in one and live in another? Most people would say, the reason we

cannot answer these questions is we haven't got sophisticated enough

physics yet. But other people would say there are multi-universes and

potentially there is an infinite number of them. If you have an

infinite number of them, everything will happen. Whether everything

happens twice, is slightly less clear. Is the universe is infinite?

We know it is bigger than this small place we can see. 90 billion

light-years across at the moment. There is a lot of beyond that. The

light from the edge of the universe has taken 40 billion years to reach

us since the Big Bang. But we know it goes on beyond it. We don't know

if it goes on for ever. It is weird to think of a universe that is not

infinite. If it is not infinite, then it has two wrapper back on

itself. Are the galaxies far apart between them and what is between

them? Not very much. It is clustering things together so not

much lies in between. The galaxies in eight big cluster are closer

together than the stars within a galaxy. A galaxy is relatively

crowded so we do see collisions between galaxies but not collisions

of stars within a galaxy. So the sun may still be burning or not? That's

right. Would you see the stars rearrange? You star formation so the

gas does collide and it would cause a spectacular night sky. You would

have two Milky Way is as well. I have seen a modelling of those

things and it looks like the galaxies are dancing together. Being

on a star on a colliding galaxy must be very interesting, and slightly

scary. K9 answers on Twitter. All of them had galaxies named after them.

All made of plastic! All from the same planet? Yes! Nothing says

another one. What do they have in common? I know what happened to Gene

Roddenberry after he died. It is this bachelor I am confused about.

They are all lost in space. K9 explain it, please.

The answer is they are all lost in space. Jean Roddenberry's Ashes were

blasted into orbit on board a Pegasus rocket. This bachelor and

tool bag were both lost during space walks. It was caught on camera by

NASA and the tool bag was seen orbiting Earth right amateur

astronomers. Until next time, farewell. Now we have dealt with

that, let's act to reality. The tool bag was dropped by an astronaut who

then watched it float away. We have that on video. There it goes. It is

the flailing hand. Oh no, I am in space. It was ?100,000 worth of

tools and NASA went for it and tried to track it for a while. You could

follow it on a website. It is more space debris. There it went there.

How it moved away from the space shuttle, you cannot throw something

to hurt from the space shuttle? If you let go of it very carefully it

would have stayed there and flown alongside. It is the way she pulled

it out, she gave it some momentum. Could it physically drop out of

orbit? I thought the 27,000 pounds, mutter components going that way,

you would not make a dent in that? You will spiral in. A tiny

up-and-down movement is decoupled. It will keep going until it hits the

floor. It would burn up in the atmosphere most likely. Somebody

else said it was 99, the ice cream galaxy. More Star Wars stuff. What

will that galaxy look like, it will be different to the image we have

got. It will still be there 11 billion years later presumably. It

is a pretty good thing. Something that looks like it is in its early

stages of turning into that, by now it is a dead galaxy. No new star

formation? Know, the gases are dying and the old stars orbiting around

each other and slowly sinking into the big black holes. There is a

Rosetta. It is due to wake up? It wakes up on the 20th. And it lands

later in the year in August? That is right. It has six different alarm

clocks on it. They are sensible these space hardware guys. It will

start waking up in a couple of weeks. Then it will have to look for

this thing and then find out what it is like. Then hope it can actually

land. It depends what the surface is like. It is exciting. How fast does

the, to go? It is close to the escape velocity -- philosophy from

the solar system. It has been bouncing around satellites. Been

past the Earth several times, past Mars. It is really exciting. It is

going to follow the comet all the way. There is so much for you to

look forward to in 2014. This is what Mark Thomson is looking forward

to in the night sky over the next 12 months. This is a quick guide the

2014. The biggest planet, Jupiter will be

visible for the next few weeks after passing closest to Earth on January

the 5th. The first week in Mark is National astronomy week and this

year is dedicated to Jupiter, so look out for events in your area. On

the 8th of April, Mars will be at its closest to Earth. Rising into

the sky from the south-east just after sunset, sitting in the middle

of the constellation Virgo. On the 14th of April, it will make a

beautiful sight lit sitting close to a full moon. Skip ahead to make the

10th and it is the turn of Saturn, for even a medium sized telescope,

it should look spectacular. Look to the south after funds -- sunset and

it will rise in the constellation of Libra. On May 24 there is a chance

we will be treated to the most spectacular meteor shower in a

decade as we move through the trail of a comet and we could be in for as

many 100 meteors per hour that night. Then on August the 18th,

there is a chance to see two bright planets together, as Venus and

Jupiter appeared to almost touch in the eastern sky just before sunrise.

Moving on to December the 13th and 14th for the meteor shower. One of

the best meteor shower 's all year. It is best viewed at the midnight

from a dark location. The Geminids are always underrated.

This is an image from this year's display. It is spectacular. We will

put that there. But 2014 is going to be a fabulous year for

astro-photography. This is Jupiter from the Canary Islands just a

couple of days ago. We are already seeing the giant planet at its

best. It is higher in the sky than it has been for decades. This is an

image from this afternoon in Bristol. This is the sunspot that

cause this projection we got so excited about. There is plenty to

look out for and to help you find your way around the night sky in the

next year, we have our calendar. We will be giving them out at parties

around the country over the next few days and weeks. You can also

download it and printed out from our website. It is all you need to know

for 2014 Stargazing. I want to but something to the vote. Two people

have suggested a particular name which we think will be a particular

candidate. They have come up with the name, Ninestein. Obviously we

can defer the decision, not baked in wine. But hands in the air for the

latter? He gets enough credit. It is wonderful. And we can pronounce it.

What is the most distant object that has been seen in the universe? We

have seen galaxies in the first billion years after the Big Bang.

85% of the way back. 380,000 years. The hydrogen in this room was

created when the universe was three minutes old. So you are actually

made of this stuff that is that old. Suddenly my back hurts. Next year we

have a whole year of stuff, what are you looking forward to? GAIA. When

will first images be coming in? They came in last night during your

programme. But the first images will be seen by the public and we will be

releasing those in July and possibly August. We will make it available

for the public to go out with their telescopes. When is the first show?

It is in February, BBC Four and it will be fabulous. We have had a

great time. Thanks to Jodrell Bank for having us again. Astronomy, what

a wonderful thing to do. If you are not already an amateur astronomer,

the an amateur astronomer. That is the end of Stargazing the 2014. Lots

on the website. Tune in on February the 9th on February the four for the

new series of the sky at night. Thank you to all