Back to Earth

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:00:19. > :00:26.APPLAUSE Thank you very much, thank you very

:00:27. > :00:32.much, hello and welcome back to Jodrell Bank for the culled, and I

:00:33. > :00:41.mean that for all the people of earth, for whom I speak now! -- for

:00:42. > :00:45.Stargazing: Back To Earth. We will spend the next 30 minutes answering

:00:46. > :00:56.your questions about the first 60! We are joined by Chris Lintott, Dr

:00:57. > :01:00.Carly Howett, a former flight director of the lab on the

:01:01. > :01:03.International Space Station, Libby Jackson, our own scientist, Lucie

:01:04. > :01:08.Green, and of course Professor Brian Cox. In honour of having Carly with

:01:09. > :01:16.us, we have a Pluto related cocktail, so please, enjoy, it is

:01:17. > :01:22.called Sunrise On Pluto, because as we learned today, it is blue. You

:01:23. > :01:27.are allowed to drink this! That is quite nice, the nicest cocktail we

:01:28. > :01:36.have had. I think we have a winner, it is gin, tequila, they gave me the

:01:37. > :01:40.thing... Honestly, I did not feel like, grenadine and lemonade!

:01:41. > :01:49.Somebody go, we know what we are doing! They are here to answer your

:01:50. > :01:55.questions, and there is still time to send in yours by e-mail, or you

:01:56. > :02:02.can tweet us, or, you can go to the website. You can find out what we

:02:03. > :02:09.have been up to on the website, have I told you that enough now?!

:02:10. > :02:13.Questions about Pluto, let's pick up about Pluto, a number of people have

:02:14. > :02:20.asked, Joshua is a good example, does the New Horizons discovery of

:02:21. > :02:26.Pluto mean that it should be reclassified as a planet again? Oh,

:02:27. > :02:31.this is a good question! The reason it was declassified is because it

:02:32. > :02:35.has a moon called Charon, that is about the same size, and they orbit

:02:36. > :02:39.each other, rather than having the more usual moon orbiting the earth

:02:40. > :02:43.formation. Those things have not changed, but I think everyone can

:02:44. > :02:48.agree that Pluto is a very interesting place, it should sit in

:02:49. > :02:53.the hearts of everyone. I think it should be a planet, don't you? It is

:02:54. > :02:57.kind of tribal. I don't think it should, because I am lazy, and there

:02:58. > :03:03.are lots of other exciting things out there, and some of them, if we

:03:04. > :03:06.explored them, may be as interesting. I think we should send

:03:07. > :03:09.probes and have a look, but I don't want to have to learn the names of

:03:10. > :03:14.20 planets! We have these wonderful things on the edge of the solar

:03:15. > :03:21.system. Went New Horizons has transmitted data, it will change

:03:22. > :03:26.course, wanted? We have already completed the trajectory correction,

:03:27. > :03:30.and the difficult bit is beginning, asking Nasa to punt that. We have

:03:31. > :03:34.done the manoeuvre, the technical things, data is coming back, now we

:03:35. > :03:40.have to believe that the science we are going to get is worth the money.

:03:41. > :03:44.David asks, are the colours on the photo of Pluto genuine or an

:03:45. > :03:49.educated guess? I love this question, because what is genuine

:03:50. > :03:55.colour? We see things with eyes, but what I see as red may not be the

:03:56. > :04:00.same as what you see as red. But let's say we all see the same colour

:04:01. > :04:04.system, we only see a certain part of the wavelength, so we understand

:04:05. > :04:08.how our cameras work and we understand the responses, so we can

:04:09. > :04:12.make true colour images, but the image being shown as a true colour

:04:13. > :04:17.image of Pluto. We get better science if we go into enhanced

:04:18. > :04:21.colour, so pretend you have superhuman vision, go into the

:04:22. > :04:26.infrared and the ultraviolet, and then the pictures are more diverse,

:04:27. > :04:30.telling a small cut about the composition of Pluto. So no is your

:04:31. > :04:39.answer, fair enough! What is colour?! That is essentially what

:04:40. > :04:43.you said! It is important to say, is that what you would see with your

:04:44. > :04:50.eyes? But it is extremely dim, the image, isn't it? You wouldn't see it

:04:51. > :04:54.that bright. Actually, Pluto is quite bright, Charon is about half

:04:55. > :04:59.the brightness of Pluto, so often that brightness has been brought up.

:05:00. > :05:03.So that is what it might look like if you've loaded there? If you

:05:04. > :05:07.survived the journey and packed another Sam Burgess. Why is the

:05:08. > :05:14.sunset blue? -- sandwiches. It is to another Sam Burgess. Why is the

:05:15. > :05:18.do with the particles that make up the atmosphere, to do with their

:05:19. > :05:21.composition and size, and that is the main difference, mainly

:05:22. > :05:25.hydrocarbons and the earth, nitrogen and oxygen, and the particles are a

:05:26. > :05:29.different size, so they scatter light in a different way. So we are

:05:30. > :05:32.still trying to understand exactly what that means in terms of the

:05:33. > :05:39.atmosphere, but it is very different. You should have just

:05:40. > :05:46.said, yeah, but what is blue?! Pleasure to have you here, you were

:05:47. > :05:50.involved with Tim's training, were you not? I have working with him

:05:51. > :05:54.since he was selected in 2008, I helped him trained in the role that

:05:55. > :05:58.he would do when he would be talking to the astronauts on the space

:05:59. > :06:02.station, and I have been preparing for his mission, making sure we have

:06:03. > :06:06.a good education programme for everyone to get involved. And the

:06:07. > :06:11.big event on Friday that we are building up to, questions are coming

:06:12. > :06:16.in about it, the sheer scale of it, by the way, a question from Charles

:06:17. > :06:23.on social media, do astronauts eat on a spacewalk? No, they go out the

:06:24. > :06:27.door, as we say, we think he will be out for six and a half hours, they

:06:28. > :06:30.can go for up to eight, they take a bag of drinks, orange squash or

:06:31. > :06:36.orange juice to give them energy, but I was reading an account of a

:06:37. > :06:40.spacewalk, a Nasa astronaut said that she loaded with carbohydrates

:06:41. > :06:44.the night before, just as if you are going to do a marathon, eat well the

:06:45. > :06:50.night before, have a good breakfast, work hard for six or eight hours.

:06:51. > :06:54.Can they go even longer, endurance levels? After about eight hours,

:06:55. > :06:59.Mission Control will bring them back in, they would not plan for anything

:07:00. > :07:03.longer. I think the longest is about eight and a half. There is no

:07:04. > :07:10.heroics, if people are less effective after that. First and

:07:11. > :07:12.foremost, we want to give them safe, that is the mantra of Mission

:07:13. > :07:16.Control, so if there is any danger, we will bring them back in and look

:07:17. > :07:24.after them. I have wheeled out a small section of the table... It is

:07:25. > :07:29.quite worrying! You will tell me if I need them! This is particularly

:07:30. > :07:39.interesting, this is an actual hammer that they will use. These are

:07:40. > :07:43.examples of tools that were used on the Mir space station, from about 20

:07:44. > :07:48.years ago, but the physics have not changed. Newton's laws say that if

:07:49. > :07:52.you do something, there will be an equal and opposite reaction, so if

:07:53. > :07:57.you were to hit that hammer, you will go backwards, which is not

:07:58. > :08:02.ideal on the space station. If you shake that very closely... I will

:08:03. > :08:05.put it next to my microphone. There are ball bearings inside, and it is

:08:06. > :08:11.a simple way that the Russians came up with to make sure that will not

:08:12. > :08:14.happen. When you hate it, there are ball bearings, and you are striking

:08:15. > :08:20.the hammer down, the ball bearings go to the pointy end of the Hammack,

:08:21. > :08:26.and as you hit it, it wants to recoil, the ball bearings cancel

:08:27. > :08:34.each other out. -- of the hammer. It is a no recoil hammer. I looked like

:08:35. > :08:40.the world's worst maracas play a! You were using a hammer instead of

:08:41. > :08:43.maracas. We were talking about the force is being transferred, it is

:08:44. > :08:52.one of the reasons we were spinning a shed, obviously, it is not like a

:08:53. > :09:00.boat on the Ocean getting damped down. No, it will keep spinning. It

:09:01. > :09:05.was interesting, I saw a question, I mentioned that one of the forces

:09:06. > :09:09.that acts on the space station is the light hitting the solar panels,

:09:10. > :09:17.hitting the space station. There was a question from a viewer. Let's see,

:09:18. > :09:23.yes, Tony asking, if photons have no mass, then why would the sun move

:09:24. > :09:28.the ISS a little bit? It goes back to special relativity, back from

:09:29. > :09:32.1905, that photons are particles of light, and although they have no

:09:33. > :09:37.mass, they can have momentum. The force is the change in momentum, the

:09:38. > :09:43.rate of change. If they photon hits something and recoil is, just as

:09:44. > :09:46.with the hammer, you get a force, radiation pressure, and that is

:09:47. > :09:51.plenty enough to start the space station spinning, because there is

:09:52. > :09:55.no reaction. Obviously, we are thrilled to see Tim Peake doing a

:09:56. > :10:01.spacewalk, not the first organism to have gone from this country, to

:10:02. > :10:10.thrive and survive on the outside as well. Indeed! I thought you were

:10:11. > :10:16.referring to Helen Sharman! Other organisms, as I call you English!

:10:17. > :10:23.Not only on behalf of the people of earth, but all the organisms of the!

:10:24. > :10:27.No, there are tests done for microbes surviving, exposure tests.

:10:28. > :10:31.Indeed, we think that in the vacuum of space, with the radiation and

:10:32. > :10:37.cosmic rays, perhaps not think that survive, but I have a box sitting

:10:38. > :10:40.next to me which is actual space hardware which was installed on the

:10:41. > :10:44.outside of the Columbus module, the European part of the space station.

:10:45. > :10:49.It was at there for a year and a half when it was first launched, and

:10:50. > :10:54.we had some rocks from a cliff in Devon, and they were chosen because

:10:55. > :10:59.they were known to be microbes that we thought would be very resistant,

:11:00. > :11:03.which might perhaps survive in space, and it turns out that they

:11:04. > :11:08.did, we were able to grade them and they survived. We have now got a

:11:09. > :11:15.similar experiment on the Russian segment, and this stuff in front of

:11:16. > :11:20.you, a bacteria,... A delightful thing! We have got some there, and

:11:21. > :11:25.we are looking to see how it survives in films of bacteria,

:11:26. > :11:31.colonies that exist in this film like substance, and it helps us

:11:32. > :11:35.understand how bacteria behave in microgravity and also on earth.

:11:36. > :11:39.People have talked about having these in asteroids, if you're going

:11:40. > :11:43.to move life from earth to Mars, we know rocks have made that journey,

:11:44. > :11:48.people talk about long-term survival. Absolutely, and there is

:11:49. > :11:53.talk of industrial applications in terms of mining. If we go on to mine

:11:54. > :11:56.an asteroid, which people are looking at in many decades, these

:11:57. > :12:00.are the sort of things that will help us do that. It is remarkable

:12:01. > :12:05.that life on earth can survive in those conditions, people talk about

:12:06. > :12:11.a theory that life may have been transferred from a planet like Mars,

:12:12. > :12:15.and it is strange, isn't it, that these microbes can survive the

:12:16. > :12:20.conditions in space? Why would they be able to do that? For Cassini, we

:12:21. > :12:24.had to be careful, we talked about Enceladus being the best bet for

:12:25. > :12:29.extrasolar life, and astrobiology, and when Pasini ends its life, we

:12:30. > :12:35.will ditch it into Saturn so that it never hit Enceladus. -- we would not

:12:36. > :12:41.want to transfer anything into what could be an active world. Galileo

:12:42. > :12:45.too, yeah. We are getting better views of our planetary neighbours,

:12:46. > :12:50.it can be hard to tell what was taken where, so this challenge is

:12:51. > :12:54.called earth versus space. One of these images was taken on the earth,

:12:55. > :13:00.one somewhere else in the solar system, which is which? Go to the

:13:01. > :13:02.website, if you already know the answer, do not tell us. That is

:13:03. > :13:07.hard! We will answer, do not tell us. That is

:13:08. > :13:13.tweet us, tell us where you think they have been taken. As we said

:13:14. > :13:20.earlier, the geology, we tend to compare it, it can be very alien

:13:21. > :13:24.indeed. It can be quite familiar and also quite alien close to each

:13:25. > :13:28.other, you can move between one thing and another remarkably

:13:29. > :13:34.quickly, which is interesting. We are always after your photographs of

:13:35. > :13:39.the night sky, and 2016 looks like being a good year. There will be

:13:40. > :13:43.plenty of opportunities to see the International Space Station from the

:13:44. > :13:47.UK, starting as soon as early tomorrow morning. Look out around

:13:48. > :13:51.6am when the ISS will appear high in the south-west, pass through the

:13:52. > :14:05.south, and then head towards the eastern horizon. Last year, we told

:14:06. > :14:09.you to look out for -- this comet, but a cloudy November meant our

:14:10. > :14:16.views were limited. In February, we will have another chance of a

:14:17. > :14:21.highlight when the comet passes next to a line of faint stars. May the

:14:22. > :14:26.9th will be an exciting day for fans of mercury as it will pass in front

:14:27. > :14:31.of the sun, the first time it will be visible from the UK since 2003.

:14:32. > :14:35.Mercury appears as a small black dot, taking around seven and a half

:14:36. > :14:40.hours to fully crossed the sun's face. Remember, never look at the

:14:41. > :14:46.sun without proper protection. If you are looking with the naked eye,

:14:47. > :14:50.always use a certified solar filter or glasses. Looking directly at the

:14:51. > :14:56.sun, even for a short time, can seriously damage your eyes.

:14:57. > :15:04.Scene is very difficult but the best chance for 2016 will be in July --

:15:05. > :15:07.seeing Pluto. The Dwarf Planet will be in the Commodore Sagittarius,

:15:08. > :15:13.some of which will be visible just above the southern horizon just up

:15:14. > :15:17.the sunset. You will need a large telescope as it tracks into a

:15:18. > :15:21.pattern of stars commonly known as the teaspoon. Pluto will be

:15:22. > :15:30.extremely tough to see, so how about we end the year with something you

:15:31. > :15:37.can't miss? A super moon. It is the point where the moon is closest to

:15:38. > :15:42.us, so appears at its largest. And then three celestial bodies in a

:15:43. > :15:45.line, the Earth, Moon and Sun, making the mood incredibly bright.

:15:46. > :15:50.The supermen only happens once a year so look out on November the

:15:51. > :15:56.14th for this exciting event -- super moon. It will cap off another

:15:57. > :16:00.great year of stargazing. And for those of you that didn't catch all

:16:01. > :16:03.of that, details are on the website. People mark those dates down in

:16:04. > :16:08.their diaries and we get great photos sent in. Lucie, you have some

:16:09. > :16:13.highlights. We have had some amazing photos sent in and I have selected

:16:14. > :16:17.three of my favourites. This one, I love, the total lunar eclipse that

:16:18. > :16:22.we had recently and it is fantastic, you can see the Clifton suspension

:16:23. > :16:27.Bridge in the photo and it is a composite image, 22 photos stacked

:16:28. > :16:32.together and Hannah Beller watched an eclipse as a teenager and has

:16:33. > :16:36.been hooked ever since. This one is spectacular as well, you can see the

:16:37. > :16:40.Milky Way in the background and if you look carefully, you can see a

:16:41. > :16:46.meteor, one of the Perseid meteors, taken by Stephen Banks and the river

:16:47. > :16:52.you can see is the River Stour in Dorset, so the picture taken in the

:16:53. > :16:55.UK. And finally, you have to have a picture of this planet, you have to

:16:56. > :17:02.have sat absolutely gorgeous, and you can see four of the many moons

:17:03. > :17:06.of Saturn has, so thank you for those. We love having you

:17:07. > :17:09.participating in all of this and there will be more photos on the

:17:10. > :17:13.live blog, please keep them coming in via e-mail and the website and

:17:14. > :17:19.keep looking for pulsars. How is it going? The stargazing audience

:17:20. > :17:25.flooded the website and we are 10% of the way to the target. We need 1

:17:26. > :17:30.million in the next few hours before Tim goes to bed, so we can get the

:17:31. > :17:36.telescope pointed on the target. A million clicks or a million

:17:37. > :17:43.assessments? How many pulsars can we get? A million assessments. We are

:17:44. > :17:47.hoping for some exciting ones. All pulsars are interesting, they add to

:17:48. > :17:52.the map of the galaxy but I want to see some unusual pulsars, that is

:17:53. > :17:57.what is driving the project. If we get something interesting, how

:17:58. > :18:01.detailed with the characterisation be? We had to confirm it, these will

:18:02. > :18:07.be really good candidates and we follow up with the Lovell telescope

:18:08. > :18:11.and in Germany tomorrow, so that will tell us if it is really a

:18:12. > :18:14.pulsar or not. That gives us a measurement of the period and we

:18:15. > :18:18.start to measure things like how much it is slowing down, giving us

:18:19. > :18:24.an estimate of the age and magnetic field strength. And we can add to

:18:25. > :18:28.the map as well. If it were in orbit around something else, you would get

:18:29. > :18:33.it quickly? That takes a little longer, we have to see what we get

:18:34. > :18:36.out of the data. We look at the rates at which the pulses change as

:18:37. > :18:42.it moves around the orbit but it needs further study, which is why we

:18:43. > :18:45.are doing it. So you would hear something differently if it is

:18:46. > :18:50.whipping around a black hole? That is right, that is how we detect it

:18:51. > :18:54.is moving. You can see the clock fall into the gravitational period

:18:55. > :18:59.of a black hole and it slows time down. You really want to find one of

:19:00. > :19:07.these! It all depends on people going to the website. Please! Before

:19:08. > :19:12.we get onto extreme physics... Our careers depend on this! And we will

:19:13. > :19:22.give credit, it is not all about Dara. I will have a lot to discuss

:19:23. > :19:28.with people about being denied credit for finding pulsars when this

:19:29. > :19:32.occurs. Typical. The magic of this is having lots of people look at the

:19:33. > :19:36.data, not just to get through the data but having lots of people look

:19:37. > :19:39.at each observation, that is how we can be confident and it allows us to

:19:40. > :19:44.know what we should put our telescopes on. So there are people

:19:45. > :19:47.at home wondering if they have the astronomical chops for this but we

:19:48. > :19:50.know it is a task everyone can do and we promise if you are watching

:19:51. > :19:55.this programme, you are better than a computer at this already. If you

:19:56. > :19:58.ever wondered why science is so exciting, the way to find out is to

:19:59. > :20:05.do it and this is genuinely doing it. You could find something nobody

:20:06. > :20:09.has seen before. If you don't, we will be in trouble but we won't know

:20:10. > :20:14.unless you look. Is there much chance of that? We think we will

:20:15. > :20:19.find something but we don't know for certain. We certainly told your

:20:20. > :20:27.producers we would find something. That is why we are here! A question

:20:28. > :20:35.on Twitter from Blue Thunder, are there any plans like that the plan

:20:36. > :20:39.was rejected earlier? The estimate is to order the same number of

:20:40. > :20:42.planets around stars. It is an estimate but it is hundreds of

:20:43. > :20:46.billions. People I've talked about this being more common than our

:20:47. > :20:50.normal kind of planet, which is mind-boggling, the idea that the

:20:51. > :20:56.average planet in the galaxy would not be in the stars. But it is a

:20:57. > :20:59.roundabout sort of number. I don't think we understand enough about

:21:00. > :21:04.planet formation, what kind of stars form which kind of planet to answer

:21:05. > :21:09.definitively. We said about Pluto, one of the big questions... Be used

:21:10. > :21:12.to think that gas giants formed further out on a rocky planets

:21:13. > :21:20.formed further in and we start to find gas giants next to stars, hot

:21:21. > :21:23.Jupiter. And some of the best models indicate the gas giants themselves

:21:24. > :21:27.have moved towards the sun and they are not formed where they are now

:21:28. > :21:30.under the whole solar system a long time ago looked very different to

:21:31. > :21:35.how it does now. A lot of people are asking that for long duration

:21:36. > :21:39.flights, why not have spinning aircrafts? Why not have spinning

:21:40. > :21:44.spacecrafts, like we see in the movie that creates a form of

:21:45. > :21:47.gravity? It is one of the things we are looking at, we don't know what

:21:48. > :21:51.will follow the Space Station or if we are going back to the moon or to

:21:52. > :21:55.Mars, what it will look like. It is definitely something that could

:21:56. > :21:57.happen and if anyone has seen the Martian, the long-distance

:21:58. > :22:01.spacecraft was quite plausible, it had a spinning part to it which

:22:02. > :22:07.allowed the astronaut to have a feeling of gravity on the way there.

:22:08. > :22:11.Some of the old Mars designs from the 1980s from Nasa, which were

:22:12. > :22:17.essentially two Skylab is chained together that they set spinning. It

:22:18. > :22:21.is more expensive to do that rotation, presumably. Do you need

:22:22. > :22:24.it? One thing we have to consider is that the trip to Mars will take some

:22:25. > :22:30.months and Tim will be up in space for six months, Scott Kelly, the

:22:31. > :22:33.others, therefore a year, that will take its toll on the human body and

:22:34. > :22:36.one of the biggest things is when you get there, you need to be able

:22:37. > :22:41.to function and do the job you have gone to Mars to do, so if we can get

:22:42. > :22:44.some artificial gravity going, it may be more expensive but worth the

:22:45. > :22:48.price to have the astronauts doing something. We hear about the

:22:49. > :22:53.reduction of muscle mass or bone density, those would be presumably

:22:54. > :22:57.reduced if you have people on some sort of centrifuge? What happens is,

:22:58. > :23:00.right now, we are all sitting here and fighting gravity and our muscles

:23:01. > :23:04.are working and in space, they are not doing that. They do two hours of

:23:05. > :23:08.exercise every day on the Space Station to keep the muscles strong,

:23:09. > :23:12.the impact of the running helps keep the bones strong, but they still

:23:13. > :23:18.deteriorate by about 2% every month so Tim is already weaker. Would it

:23:19. > :23:21.have to be full gravity or is half gravity of the Earth useful?

:23:22. > :23:25.Something is better than nothing because your muscles will do

:23:26. > :23:30.something. When you are on Mars, it is not a full gravity field. And it

:23:31. > :23:33.could be a daily dose of gravity, you have it for some period of time

:23:34. > :23:37.and rather than two hours on the running machine, two hours of

:23:38. > :23:43.gravity to get your muscles going. This one asks where does the Space

:23:44. > :23:49.Station get the air for the astronauts to breathe? They recycle

:23:50. > :23:53.most avid. -- they recycle most of it. They have carbon dioxide

:23:54. > :23:58.scrubbers which purify the air. We do still have to get some supply

:23:59. > :24:02.sent from and they come on cargo ships. The Progress ship, a Russian

:24:03. > :24:08.ship, brings it in tanks and it is put in but most of it is recycled.

:24:09. > :24:19.Let's revealed the results of earth versus space. We asked which photo

:24:20. > :24:26.was Earth. 31% said a. 69% were right, it is be, an overhead shot of

:24:27. > :24:30.a glacier and the other is Pluto. Did you know we were looking at that

:24:31. > :24:37.picture? I did, it is the edge of the interesting heart-shaped smooth

:24:38. > :24:41.part, between the ice bedrock and smooth nitrogen, carbon monoxide

:24:42. > :24:45.glacier, so you are looking at... We think it might be the broken away

:24:46. > :24:50.bedrock but has formed these weird blocks and mountains and is held up

:24:51. > :24:53.against the cliffs against the base in, so it is almost like the

:24:54. > :24:58.shoreline of this weird smooth region. On you Roper, the fracturing

:24:59. > :25:03.in the ice was indicative of activity below the ice, the way the

:25:04. > :25:08.ice fractures on earth -- you Roper. Is it the same there with no

:25:09. > :25:13.straight lines? We do see fractures on Pluto that are indicative of

:25:14. > :25:17.that. It is hard to see them in that image, but we don't know what is

:25:18. > :25:22.causing them. We know Pluto had a lot of heat at one time so we don't

:25:23. > :25:27.know if these fractures are a result of a gradual cooldown or if it is a

:25:28. > :25:29.result of a more active time, the cryovolcanoes are going off and the

:25:30. > :25:36.whole planet is more active. We don't know. Very quickly, this one

:25:37. > :25:40.asks now the New Horizons has gone past Pluto, where is it headed?

:25:41. > :25:43.Great question. We have done the trajectory could rapidly correction

:25:44. > :25:50.manoeuvres so it is going to go to another object. -- trajectory

:25:51. > :25:58.correction manoeuvres. We don't have a proper name for it yet, it is

:25:59. > :26:01.going to head to basically a much smaller, slightly larger than the

:26:02. > :26:06.Rosetta comet, but much smaller than Pluto and it will go there and in

:26:07. > :26:09.the meantime, it is returning all of our data, so its primary function

:26:10. > :26:15.right now is to make its way to this object but to really return the

:26:16. > :26:18.data. I know there is a lot of politics involved, but you have a

:26:19. > :26:21.functioning spacecraft, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go

:26:22. > :26:26.to another object and see how they behave in this fascinating way. Of

:26:27. > :26:34.course, it would be an amazing opportunity but I have a bias. This

:26:35. > :26:38.does seem like we only do this to the guests, feed them dreams, but

:26:39. > :26:42.this is ceremonial, a sparkling English campaign called nebula

:26:43. > :26:46.because we are celebrating a birthday. A month ago, Jodrell Bank

:26:47. > :26:52.and the Lovell telescope turns 70, so it is time for celebration. Tim

:26:53. > :26:58.O'Brien... We even have a cake with a scale representation of the

:26:59. > :27:02.telescope. Congratulations, lots of excellent work being done. What has

:27:03. > :27:06.been the highlight in that time? Many highlights, thinking back 70

:27:07. > :27:09.years to when people first arrived in the 1940s, they built a telescope

:27:10. > :27:15.which was the biggest in the world before this one here, and they were

:27:16. > :27:18.amongst the first in the world to look at this invisible universe, to

:27:19. > :27:21.look at the sky above us in radio waves and they were discovering

:27:22. > :27:27.things where they had no idea what they were. Hambly Brown and Cyril

:27:28. > :27:35.Hazard found the remnant of a supernova, a star that exploded in

:27:36. > :27:39.1572, observed by a man whose nose had been sliced off in a duelling

:27:40. > :27:44.incident at university and they saw this thing that hadn't been seen for

:27:45. > :27:47.hundreds of years, they founded and that is when we realised radio

:27:48. > :27:52.astronomy was a good thing, looking at invisible light was a good thing.

:27:53. > :27:56.And still a bright future, it hasn't been superseded in the 70 years?

:27:57. > :28:01.Amazingly, the telescope outside is over 50 years old and it is still in

:28:02. > :28:06.the cutting edge, everything you can change except for the big steel

:28:07. > :28:11.service grid service. The computers have all been upgraded but the

:28:12. > :28:15.future is a bigger array of telescopes, we are building them in

:28:16. > :28:17.Australia and South Africa and the headquarters is here at Jodrell,

:28:18. > :28:21.which will see us to another 50-70 years of future work.

:28:22. > :28:27.Congratulations and thank you for hosting us so elegantly for the last

:28:28. > :28:31.six years. Thank you to all of the guests here. Brian's mum is here as

:28:32. > :28:36.well, we should pass her the champagne. That is the only back to

:28:37. > :28:41.this time around but we do have an extra show on Friday. Join us. Days

:28:42. > :28:47.in live tomorrow, where we hear from Tim Peake and have a permanent lunar

:28:48. > :28:52.base is vital the space exploration and we talk about one of our best

:28:53. > :28:56.known constellations. BBC Two at 9pm tomorrow as we build up to the huge

:28:57. > :28:58.event that is Tim Peake's spacewalk on Friday. From all of us here,

:28:59. > :29:02.thank you very much and good night. Join Chris Packham for the

:29:03. > :29:09.World's Sneakiest Animals. 'BBC Two will help you stick to

:29:10. > :29:17.your New Year's resolutions.'