Episode 3 Stargazing Live

Tonight we have great news. Stargazing viewers may have made a

genuinely significant scientific discovery. Thousands of you have

been hunting for pulsars - or elusive spinning stars. We will be

listening to some of the new once you have found with the giant is

behind us and also to not what it is like a walk on the moon, Ben Miller

will join us to find out with the help of a few balloons. We have more

from bridge in space Tim Peake about life in orbit. And the final part of

astronaut training for Tim Peake wannabe John Bishop. So far we've

nearly drowned him, starved him of oxygen and tonight he has to cope

with the dreaded centrifuge. I'm lie, he's Dara O Briain and this is

Stargazing Live. Welcome back to this beautiful clear

night at Jodrell Bank Observatory, my goodness, we are all counting

down to the historic my goodness, we are all counting

show we will get a snapshot of ordinary life on the International

Space Station. A genuinely significant discovery, that is not

the usual kind of television, you may say that we would say that, but

we have been speaking to a fantastic team of scientists today, we are

excited about the thing you have found, we are talking about pulsars,

we have one of the astronomy grates with us, the discoverer of pulsars,

to discuss that discovery. If you have anything to ask, send us your

questions, and if you would like to get their behind-the-scenes look,

the usual addresses on screen out. It's also a great night to get out

and start looking up at the stars - Lucie is out in our Dark Field

now... I'm joined here by astronomers from the University of

Manchester, and I know that you said it is a clear night but it is just

clouded over! Just five minutes ago we had a fantastic view of Comet

Catalina, near the star allocate, in the handle of the plough, but the

clouds have come in. We are optimistic. This evening we will be

looking at the future of the sun through our telescopes, back to you

in the studio. First, this week has been all about astronaut Tim Peake.

Tomorrow, we will bring his been all about astronaut Tim Peake.

ever spacewalk, and we will be been all about astronaut Tim Peake.

joined by Chris Hadfield. To give us an idea of the kind of training

Tim's been through - Liz Bonnin has been at the European Space Agency's

Astronaut Training Centre in Cologne with John Bishop - setting him a

series of astronaut tests... She should be preparing John for his

latest and last mission. It could well be the end of him! LAUGHTER

Welcome to Envihab, at the German Aerospace Centre, state-of-the-art

medical research facility, I am so excited to show you this, we speak

about ground-breaking signs on Stargazing all of the time and this

could be the game change that is needed for long duration manned

missions to space. This is the short arm human centrifuge, and over here,

training astronaut for the week, lying in one of its arms, about to

do his last training exercises. This was the one you were dreading the

most. Not looking forward to it, I do not even like the waltzer! I get

motion sickness! Your mentor, Agnes Morgenstern, he he has been your

always, and he is going to help you. You train them to get used to rocket

launches and re-entrance. We go up to about 8G, that is to simulate an

uncontrolled ballistic re-entry, that is when you are plummeting

towards the ground. What does that feel like? You are pressed into your

seat with eight times your own body weight, more than 700 kilograms of

weight, it is like a cow sitting on your chest! 1G on earth, this

machine can go from zero to 60, in 30 seconds, and when you were told

you were doing this, what kind of Jeans were you thinking about?

Re-entry is 3.5, four, at this is different, it is a different

machine. -- what kind of G. This is reminiscent of what fighter pilots

go through, the G-force passes from your head to your feet, there is a

chance you could pass out through lack of blood to your brain.

Thanks! LAUGHTER It is difficult to breathe but there

is no danger of passing out. This herd has got to go over your head,

the flashing lights can cause fits blackout, but there is a camera in

there, so we are keeping a close eye on you, and so we are ready for

this, John, are you ready? -- hood. This is so much fun! LAUGHTER

You wanted to be an astronaut! He would join a very select set of

people who have been in a centrifuge for the purpose of this programme.

What is interesting, astronaut Andreas was eight G, he looked

exactly the same as he does at 1G. Where is asked... Me, in particular!

LAUGHTER That is about 5.5, if I remember...

Five, coming straight through... It pulls the blood out of you and you

Five, coming straight through... It would faint at that point. That is

my excuse for that face! Back in October last year, we had our

closest approach in nearly a decade from a major asteroid of

earth-threatening size. What became known as the 'Halloween Asteroid' -

this spookily skull-shaped thing - loomed out of deep space

this spookily skull-shaped thing - 31st. And it was just the latest in

a long line of close encounters. And one day, whether we like it or not,

something very big is going to be on a collision course with earth -

doing a lot of damage...unless we do something about it. VOICEOVER: It

came without warning... A ten tonne rock, on a collision course with

Earth... Nearly a thousand people have been injured by debris

Earth... Nearly a thousand people flying glass after a media shot

across the sky in Russia, sending fireballs crashing to. With the

power of 13 nuclear bombs, it was a warning shot from space, telling of

an earth-shattering disaster waiting to terror the world apart. --

sending fireballs crashing to earth. What if next time it was bigger? Are

we ready? Alex Gibbs is the nightwatchman, his job is to look

we ready? Alex Gibbs is the out for asteroids that written our

planet. As the sun sets, his watch at the Catalina sky survey telescope

begins. The asteroids we look for really do pose a threat to the

Earth, and we are interested in those over a certain size that could

do damage. Catalina is among a global network of asteroid spotting

telescopes, and here we have a live image coming back

telescopes, and here we have a live spots that move in successive

photographs. Four hours, there is nothing. But just after midnight, as

we are filming, Alex spots something. -- for hours. Here we go,

this object is moving faster than quite a lot of the stuff that we

see, it looks interesting, it is almost definitely a near Earth

asteroid. Brand-new discovery, Alex is keen to launch a well rehearsed

procedure. I'm going to send this to the Minor Planet Centre, so that

other observers around the world can follow it up. First step in

assessing the threat to Earth. If the risk is higher, the next call is

to Nasa. Scientists will calculate the impact site... The US president

will be informed, and if necessary, orders are given to evacuate. What

is the assessment tonight? Are we doomed(!) in my opinion this

asteroid is quite small, robbery in the order of the few metres at most,

maybe ten, small enough that even if it hit the Earth, it would burn out.

For now, we are safe... What if it was bigger? And heading towards

Earth? One ingenious solution takes some rather surprising inspiration!

It might not look it, but this is a serious demonstration of how this

professor plans to save the world. Essentially, the gas and the

particles injected from the extinguisher were propelling the

person. And that is the same principle that we want to use to

deflect an asteroid. -- ejected. Using lasers in his laboratory at

the University of Strathclyde, Max is going to test the theory. This is

a sample of meteorite, made from the same material as an asteroid. It is

suspended in front of a superpowered laser. And we will try to vaporise

part of the meteorite. It will be like a rocket engine. It is heated

up to 3000 degrees, creating a gas jet, a bit like a fire extinguisher.

The jet of gas expands in one direction, the meteorite in space

would move any opposite direction, changing trajectory. Thus saving the

world from a catastrophic impact. Max's dream is one of a handful of

serious projects. Like Nasa's planned to crash into

serious projects. Like Nasa's 2022, to see if they cannot it off

course. It is all a long way from becoming a reality. So, in the

meantime, we rely upon Alex! And his early warning system.

STUDIO: The Halloween Asteroid that we did not see until three weeks

before... Interesting object, looking at this series of still

images, it is actually a dead comet nucleus, we talked about Rosetta

yesterday, this was a nucleus, we talked about Rosetta

the solar system for 4.6 billion years, the interesting thing is that

we did not see it, it came up at an angle, essentially, not one of those

that we had seen in the surveys, taking us by surprise, when you plot

its orbit, I can show you... taking us by surprise, when you plot

show you what its orbit is, it is very inclined, to the plane of the

solar system, it would have got knocked out of the plane by

interaction with a planet that went past Jupiter, at some point. That is

why we did not see it. We can calculate where it has been and

where it is going to be in the future, it came passed in 1975, we

found out, and we did not see it. Will it come past again? That is a

40 year orbital period, yes, we know this one is not a danger but it will

come back. It is about this one is not a danger but it will

circumference... So that is about as big as the famous impact into

busker, in Russia, in 1908... That flattened about five miles of

forest. -- Tunguska. Even something 20 metres in the conference, if it

hits a city at the right angle, it would pretty much wiped out a city,

they are dangerous things. This is one of the reasons why, for space

travel, for astronomy, this is very important, this is a real danger. If

you calculate the big risk to civil as Asian, that is not

self-inflicted, then asteroid impact, at some point, is one of

them, and that is why, as you say, people like Tim Peake are learning

to be engineers, to live and work in space, it is there will be

to be engineers, to live and work in we can say this in certainty, it may

be in 1000 years, but there will be a time when we have got to deal with

something bigger than that. Ben Miller has joined us in the

Darkfield. Actor, comedian, and fan of all things space! Thank you for

joining us. Exciting to be here! Clouds are coming and going. When we

first interested in space? Child of the late 60s, man walked on the

moon, Apollo... 15, 16... I remember one of my first memories is seeing

the body on the moon! I felt like I had... Not only had we gone to the

moon, we had taken had... Not only had we gone to the

moon! Seeing the footprints on the surface of the moon now, so

exciting, will we ever go back? Of course we will, we must build the

space rockets of the future, we will tell reform the moon, it will be

amazing! Nearest neighbour, we should not forget about it, but we

will be talking about the future of our son, and there is a magnificent

object, when you look at it through a specialist solar filter, it really

comes to life. Perhaps you can tell me something about the sun, it is...

This is something that fascinates me, and I know that you are an

expert, it gets much hotter and much colder over periods of hundreds of

years. What is going on? It does vary a lot, sometimes it is cooler,

sometimes it is hotter, depends upon the wavelength of light. It all

comes down to the magnetic field. And PM and flow of the size and

complexity, marvellous object. ISS it possible to predict if it will

get hotter or colder in the future? Hard to predict but we're working on

that but one question I get asked ISS how the sun ISS going to die or,

will it end up shining forever? I have joined friends from the

Chipping Norton amateur astronomy group to reveal how the story of the

sun can be written in the night sky. We will look for objects telling us

about the stages of the life of his son, from its past and its present

and also looking into the future. The son was born four and a half

billion years ago in a cloud of gas and dust and I have challenged Alex

to usurp telescope to show us one of these nebula. How are you getting

on? I am surprised because it is so windy, I was expecting the stars to

be all over the place and this is what I have got, this six minute

exposure. That is stunning, this is a star-forming, one of the many you

can see in the night sky? You can find the nebula to the east of

Orion. It is incredible to think that the sun started off this way.

That is right. Our part of the universe would have looked like this

for .5 billion years ago? Birth is just the first chapter in the life

of the star, the Sunnis in the prime of its life, like 90% of the stars

we can see. -- the sun is. One, which looks like a son, seen from

outer space, is called Sirius and that is what you are looking at?

Sirius is always at the foot and to the left of Orion, one of the

easiest stars to find. The naked eye is fantastic, pair of binoculars, it

will knock your socks off. What I love about ten to is that a twinkle

is more than most stars. It goes, it sentiments, it has these flashes of

colour. It looks like a diamond sparkling in the sky. Stars like

Sirius and the sun spend the vast majority of their life in this

middle stage. But to reveal their future, I have asked our astronomers

to find a star that has reached old age. How are you getting on? Fine.

It is a bright start towards Orion, very easy to find. Aldebaran has

used up much of its fuel, Andy Serkis has cooled down, it has

become a Red Giant. The colour really stands out through this

eyepiece. It is very distinctive to look at, very orange, very

attractive star. It is nice to look up but the star and think about the

sun becoming this time of object when it approaches the end of its

life. Our sun will become a Red Giant as the surface cools. Then, in

around five billion years or so from now, it will start to die. Looking

this far into the future is the hardest, the sun will end its days

as a glowing ball of carbon and oxygen, about the size of the Earth,

simply fading as it cools down. It will become a White Dwarf. What will

it look like Ben? -- then? Hello. Happy started the white -- spotted

your White Dwarf? Yes, have a go. Look carefully. There are none too

stars, the bright one is tempted, the one like the sun, but next to

it, only visible thanks to a filter, there is a smaller, faint White

Dwarf called Sirius B. We can see the remnant of a star and think that

is what is quite a become of the sun, that is fascinating to watch

and have a look at in the night sky. There you have it, our sun will

become dwarf in around 5 billion years. But White Dwarves themselves

can take aliens or trillions of years to cool down and completely

fade away and that feels like the sun will shine forever.

In look to the future. Want to ask, have you ever seen a dead star in

the night sky? How poetic! That reminds me of David Bowie. They are

hard to find. I want to show you one of them. We have collided again, the

cloud has just come over but earlier we captured a White Dwarf. , Cron

two! White Dwarves what the sun will become in five billion years. These

are the fading embers of stars and work with tricky to use but. This is

to the west of Orion. -- to spot. Question, I thought all stars ended

in a supernova. They were the famous stars but only the biggest ones die

out this way but our sun is not big enough to produce a supernova, the

court will collapse of the outer layers explode into the solar system

but there was one of them we saw a couple of years ago in the Cigar

galaxy spotted by chance during a break in the clouds. By students at

the London University. And the supernova star is so bright, you can

see it on the right-hand side of the Cigar galaxy and this one star

outshone all of the others. How long does a supernova last? It just

happened during a break in the clouds, they then will fade away

over weeks and months. Imagine that, a break in the clouds. Could this

ever happen? I will keep their fingers crossed! Thank you, we have

a correction, extra live television, I said that the Halloween Asteroid

was 20 metres in I said that the Halloween Asteroid

is actually over one kilometre! That means that it was the side of an

asteroid that would be a small country threat, rather than just a

city. Just to reassure you... Don't have nightmares! Letters lift the

mood! Everybody has been looking for a pulsar, this is the year five

class at Harrogate Academy in Stockton-On-Tees and they have been

doing searches for pulsars. It was not long ago that nobody knew that

pulsars existed, that is until our next guest discovered the first one.

One of the biggest names in astronomy, Jocelyn Bell-Burnell. How

did you make that discovery? By accident. The classic way of making

any discovery, also with hard work and some luck also. What were you

looking for? I was supposed to be looking for quasars, which were very

new, the hot, sexy topic and we did not know many of them so I was

supposed to be finding one of them and I did but amongst all of that

signal from the radio telescope was a tiny signal that did not make

sense. We have some video of that telescope, that you build with your

own hands? Along with half a dozen others. It took us two years. It

covers an area of 57 tennis courts. What you said about the chance

discovery, serendipity is one of the most valuable tools in science, if

you pay attention. You see this regular radio pulse, what is your

first reaction? Something is wrong. With your tools? Something mundane?

You have to start with the mundane, you have to make sure you are not

falling into some silly trap and shouting with enthusiasm, and that

it really is cosmic. How long did it take you to realise this was a new

astrophysical object, a pulsar? We had one month checking things out

and at the end, I found a second and if you mix it, the third and fourth

and that makes you think, is this some kind of new Star? Was predicted

theoretically or where people waiting for an example? It was known

the stars are very small, ten miles across. It is extreme in heart to

see something that small garden space, people had not reckoned on is

they a very strong magnetic fields and a sweep radio waves around the

sky, like a lighthouse and each time it shined across the Earth, but had

a pulse. What was the period of the one that you could see? Just over

one second. The fastest I find was one quarter of the second but we

know that some gold 700 times every second. You say that, ten miles, 20

kilometres across, this is what our viewers have been looking for? These

exotic objects. We discovered many of them, thousands in the sky, what

is the interest today? They are of interest for several reasons. They

way millions and millions of tonnes, in one ball ten miles across, that

is very tense and the physics of that is in itself interesting. They

are also very useful cox, they keep spending and since they have been

found we have been able to test Einstein 's Theory of Relativity

because these are very good clocks. The ones that are particularly

reliable, we can look at for gravitational radiation, ripples in

space time because they will bob in the ripples and you can see that.

Gravitational waves. If the pulsar the ripples and you can see that.

is close to another star you can test theories of gravity with the

signal again. Up to now, the theories of Einstein are doing very

nicely so far! And 101 years old, the Theory of Relativity. Each one

is distinctive. Are they like landmarks in space? They are like

navigation beacons, each has its own flash rate and its own pattern of

clashes. When we travel through the Galaxy, in spaceships, we will not,

but when people do, they will use these things like navigation

beacons, we get the fix on several and think, we are here. We will not

review will be discovered, we will talk about that later, but the holy

Grail would be to find pulsars going around other objects? With a black

hole would be the ultimate? That would be good, and in a triple

system would also be good but all stars that are orbiting others,

there is a lot of physics in that and information to be extracted. We

don't have a triple system? We do. One pulsar going around another and

going around another? Going around another star and the peril of them

is going around another star. I see! And the question is, does this

pulsars and the White Dwarf, do they behave the same way in the gravity

of the Star? It is called the principle of equivalence. And by

what we have discovered, that is later on... It is actually exciting,

this is not television hyperbole! We have been catching up with Tim Peake

on-board the International Space Station and write down his over

South Atlantic, since we started this programme on Tuesday, he has

circled the planet 32 times. He has a very busy schedule carrying out

experiments and this week he has been preparing for his spacewalk

tomorrow but also found time to send us some specially recorded messages.

Good morning, it is Saturday morning at 730 yeah. I have just woken up.

Time to get breakfast and start cleaning the station, it is this

morning's job. Breakfast this morning. Scrambled eggs. Tim Peake

cannot just put his pan on the hop, but of the food is dehydrated, so

just add water. In five minutes that will be ready to eat. Even though it

is not fine cuisine, eating is a lot more fun in microgravity.

Like the rest of us, news morning routine involves a quick wash and a

bathroom break. Unlike the rest of us, that involves some pretty

specialist equipment. How do you go to the toilet in space? It really is

quite simple... Here is the tube that you go in, you take off the

cap, U-turn on the phone, the air flow keeps everything going down the

pipe, and also... My number two, the air flow does the same thing, simple

as that! I really hope that tube has been cleaned since it was last used!

It is not all experiments and spacewalking on the International

Space Station, in the vacuum of space there is a vacuum cleaner!

Dust will either float around indefinitely or clog up the station

filters, and so team has got to do his fair share of the chores.

I reckon after all of that cleaning, it is time for a copy break, let's

go! -- coffee. The coffee packet is filled with

nice hot water, we need a little plastic straw. Insert the straw,

take off the cap... And drink! After a productive morning, it is time to

unwind. By far the best thing about being in space, is the view of

planet Earth, let's take a look. STUDIO: When Tim launched into space

on December 15 he was momentarily exposed to three times normal

gravity, his arms and legs felt three times their normal weight on

earth, ever since then, he has weighed nothing, of course, and

finding out how that is affecting his body is an essential part of the

research that he is doing in the space station. Research on the

ground aims to make space travel less arduous on the body. But the

only way to do that is understand how and why it punishes us, and then

try to stop it happening. Over in Cologne, Liz Bonnin is at one such

facility, the German Space Agency's 'ENVIHAB'. And she is about to offer

the services of John Bishop for the advancement of

to this short arm human centric views test. I'm doing OK. Are you

ready for this? I think so. OK, start it, we have a doctor

monitoring his vital statistics, technicians making sure everything

is going to go smoothly, the lead technician is here, he's in control

of the test to date. It will take 45 seconds to get up to where we need

him too. I can feel myself getting drawn down, the pressure is going to

my legs and my feet... Make sure you keep your head very still, are you

feeling all right? Yes, I am getting a sensation of almost standing up.

Why does he feel that? Because the balancing system, that balances

towards the feed, this is felt as the same as standing up. Please do

not try to stand up, that would not be a good idea! I can feel pressure

into my back as well. That is centrifugal force for you! LAUGHTER

Not too bad so far? Not so bad. You are doing brilliantly. We have

already reached 2G, and we are 30 seconds into this phase, we are

doing brilliantly. The idea, in the future, is that machines like this

will go into space with the astronauts. Yes, and counteract the

effects of microgravity on the muscles, so you would get doses of

hypergravity, exercising as you would spin around, what kind of Gee,

do we need to get to for that to happen? Between 1G, and 2G, to get

up to that, what this would be the individual. It seems to be between

1G, and 2G. This is the research you are carrying out, does this mean

that this data will help in the research? Yes, it will give us

information about different behaviours. Are you really going to

be sending a comedian into space(!) at the very least tonight you are

contributing to science! He has made it! Trying to take my mind of what

is happening. You have a smile on your face, that is a bonus. Do not

move your head! And I felt it, immediately, you feel a massive

rush, and everything comes to your head... That has told you, you were

told to keep still! That was close... One minute left at 2G, you

have got this, you have got it. Well done. How long would astronauts have

to train? Our idea is to have 20 minutes, nowadays, they are training

to and a half hours, we can reduce this to 20 minutes. That would

reduce the amount of time they must exercise, but you could make a

bespoke machine, punching in your details determined on what number of

GU can withstand. That would be for each astronaut. -- G. Yes, that

could happen. Incredible, how far are we from making this area Lizzie?

At the moment we are at the beginning, scratching the surface,

we must find an answer within the next five years. Not a long time for

research? We have to make sure that the data is valid, Nasa may be

designing the spaceship around this centrifuge. How are you feeling? I

can feel pressure along my spine, and in my neck... But it is OK...

You have now completed three and in my neck... But it is OK...

minutes, at 2G, and we are beginning to slow it down, how does it feel? I

feel it now. I feel it... It is like my own brain is catching up with my

body and meeting it on the way back! That is a beautiful way to describe

it! Are you feeling like you are going in a different direction? Yes,

completely. The fluids in the balancing system are adapted to that

spin, if you stop, it is still swirling around, and you have a kind

of vortex. Let's go in and see him, a big thumbs up, delighted to see

that! There was a bag for any eventuality... (!) he did not have

to use it, rate news. Is in here... INAUDIBLE

I did not want to be showing everyone me dinner! Well done, you

have made it! Knowing what 2G, feels like, you think he would be able to

exercise during that? I can really appreciate how it changes your body,

you need if you goes of this, but I can see that you can move on and

exercise. Would you go higher, now that you know...? Of course I would!

That was your final Astronaut Training Centre is a completed, come

back to us to get the final verdict to find out if John Bishop has the

right stuff to go to space! STUDIO: Well done, John, you did not vomit,

you win! LAUGHTER We are still out here,

unfortunately, it has clouded over, two minutes ago it snowed on us! We

unfortunately, it has clouded over, cannot show you any stars at the

moment, but there is something I can show you which does not need good

weather, something I have on my phone, this is a prototype messaging

service, Whispering Stars, I hold up my phone and move it around, and

there is an arrow which point me towards a star that has a message

for me... If you want to use this service and send people messages,

head over to the website and click on the appropriate button --

corresponding button and see if you can see the message I have left for

corresponding button and see if you you. The message on my phone says,

corresponding button and see if you don't forget about the planets. That

is right, this is a great time for planets. We had an amazing view of

the planet Venus this afternoon, that was during the daytime, we

often forget that we can do it in the daytime. And then later on we

have the line-up of the five planet closest to us in the dawn sky. What

one planet we cannot see so easily from you, a special planet, but we

know somebody who can, and that is Tim Peake.

The most amazing thing about being on board the International Space

Station is the view of panic error -- the view of Janet Earth, every

time I looked out I see something unexpected and completely different.

Thunderstorms over planet Earth. -- the view of planet Earth. Lights on

the cities, thunderstorms, and by daytime, magnificent cloud

formations. Whole weather systems that are covering vast areas of the

globe. It is truly stunning and truly beautiful.

STUDIO: All week we have been attempting demonstrations to look at

the physics of space exploration, proper science. Proper science! The

gyroscope shed, we had a tanker... There it is... Collapsing in a

vacuum! Today we are exploring gravity with the help of Ben Miller

and these helium balloons! LAUGHTER Looking very comfortable... I should

explain what we are trying to do here, we are... We have helium

balloons, essentially, we can see what an astronaut on Mars could

actually do. The jumping is amazing! Apart from the slight wedgie

effect... That is really good! I think I want a go! LAUGHTER

There is a points to this! LAUGHTER The point is, when the Mars Rover

goes and lands on Mars, built in Britain, by the way, the chassis of

the Rover, it must dig down below the Martian service, to look for

life which may exist below the surface, digging on Mars is

difficult... Echoes, as Ben will demonstrate, it gives you do not

have the weight, you have only half the weight, you can see... You

cannot apply the force downwards on the drill... LAUGHTER

Or on the shovel, to get through the surface, it means it is a terrific

engineering challenge... LAUGHTER If only we had this man on Mars!

LAUGHTER We would be absolutely fine!

LAUGHTER We could have a really great act!

That is actually really liked! People will be able to do a

piggyback, important in space! All week we have been asking you to find

new pulsars, extraordinarily dense spinning stars... I'm doing this

really seriously!... Here is a story about how pulsars can be such

essential tools for astronomers. VOICEOVER: Smartphones and Wi-Fi,

online shopping and microwave meals. These technologies have shaped the

world, where would we be without them? Greenbank, West Virginia, that

is where. It is a nice, quiet, simple life. Very little crime, not

a lot to do. This is not a town that time forgot, it has just turned its

bank on modern technology. No microwave, no cell phone, no Wi-Fi.

For folks that visit here, sometimes they break out in hives and rashes

because they are not comfortable without being connected. -- it has

turned its back on modern technology. The time warp existence

is because of this. The Greenbank telescope. It is the largest movable

structure on the planet. It is so sensitive that the town-macro boss

residents have to live in total radio silence. -- Green Bank. It is

all to help Professor Scott Ransom. Scott is searching for a whole new

way to observe the universe. Everything we know about the

universe we have found out so far using the electromagnetic spectrum,

just like liked that your eyes can see. Light reveals stars, galaxies,

universe teeming with wonderful objects. But there is more, we win

over 96% of the universe is invisible. For now, at least. Scott

wants to reveal it. Not by waves of light, but with mysterious waves

that no one has detected before. Gravitational waves. If we can start

measuring gravitational waves and Gravitational waves. If we can start

doing astronomy with them, it is looking at the universe in a whole

different way. Gravitational waves are ripples in space-time. Nobody

knows for sure that they exist. We do know that massive object, like

black holes, distort space time. It is thought that massive things

moving will create waves in space time.

These gravitational think are coming from many different

sources throughout the universe, they are flowing through us, through

the Earth, through the solar system, that means our bodies and a tiny --

at a tiny level are being stretched and compressed. These movements are

small, under the nucleus of an atom. So there are effects are easily

drowned out by electronic interference. -- so their effects.

To search for them, Scott needs an enforcer to keep the airwaves clean

in Greenbank, and that enforcer is Chuck. I am looking for unknown

radio signals. Something that is screwing up the data, it is our job

to figure out what it is. -- Green Bank. And if it is something that we

can fix, we found a heater in a doghouse that was causing

interference, all kinds of things can cause problems.

If Chuck can help keep the airwaves clear, and help tune into these

mystery swathes, it might reveal but we have never seen before. Like

directly observing the inside of a black hole. Or detecting dark

matter. The invisible stuff that makes up much of the universe. But

to find gravitational waves, Scott must play detective. He is trying to

observe their tiny but potentially measurable effects on pulsars. That

sound you can hear is a pulsar and we can measure with high precision

the rate at which it is rotating and that lets us do the science with it.

You are listening to light waves from a spinning pulsar, converted to

sign. The tone does not change unless something disturbs the

pulsar. Like a ripple in space time. The gravitational waves, moving

through space, compress space time and that causes a change in the

tone, much like if I have a tuning fork, the Doppler effect causes the

change in its tone, like this. If Scott can spot a pitch change in the

pulsars he is monitoring... He will have detected a ripple in space

time. For the very first time, he will have proved that gravitational

waves exist, but he cannot do this alone. As long as the observatory is

here, that is a good thing for the community. For the sake of science,

we can do without cellphones. It will be such an historic discovery,

people around the world are racing to beat Scott and the good people of

Green Bank. Using everything from giant lasers to space probes. The

first detection of gravitational waves will definitely get the Nobel

Prize so I am hoping we will be the first but who knows? Were joined by

Tim O'Brien, Chris and Jocelyn Bell-Burnell. People are trying to

beat the observatory, and one is Jodrell Bank? Were all hunting for

gravitational waves and to be the first to get there. Let us look at

the scientific discoveries we have made. We announced this at the

start, an incredible thing has been discovered? We did not know this

would work but the Stargazing Live audience have come through once

would work but the Stargazing Live again, we have looked at 3 million

separate observations across hundreds of thousands of parts of

the sky and we have found a good handful of pulsars were things we

think might be pulsars and we have been using the telescope to follow

up on this. A handful of pulsars? That would be very heavy material

indeed! There is lots more work to do and we have started to put the

results on the website but I thought we would talk about one particular

discovery that we have been able to confirm using the telescopes. This

is what we started looking at life on the television? Reset the

telescope turning and this busy pulsar we have got the results from

and it did turn out to be a pulsar. We looked at the data overnight and

this is a pulsar. This is how it appeared on the website, this is

data from a survey done by a telescope in Germany, there are

pulses, that could be anything, somebody's mobile phone, another

source but we looked at this with the Lovell Telescope and let us

see... This is 30 minutes of observation, the pulses arriving in

this sequence and we can turn this into a signed. That is the sound of

a pulsar? This is the new pulsar that viewers discovered. We should

just visualise this because this is a star of the size of a city? 1.5

times the size of the sun. And that is the spinning red? About 30 times

every second and that buzz that you can hear is the sound. That is

pretty fast and the reason is that we know that this pulsar is in a

binary system so it is in orbit around something else and we know

that because that's tone has been changing over the time that we have

had the observation so we had the archive of observations from last

night and that spin rate has slightly changed. Five millionths of

a second. It seems to be moving. From the observation people looked

at and the observation from last night. Do we know what it is moving

around? The likely candidates are the dead remnants of a partner star,

either a White Dwarf, or it would be another neutron star, it is right on

the border and with the properties we know about today, we cannot tell

you which it is but what the team will do is watch this thing

continuing around its orbit and once we have got the orbit we can work

out the mass. We spoke earlier about the system, these global systems

which are fascinating objects and also for

which are fascinating objects and Relativity. Quite an exciting

discovery, but are not many of them but can you give us some sense of

what the system is like? We know all about 2500 pulsars but only a couple

of hundred that are in binary systems. This one feels different,

what strikes me is when we saw the Jodrell data stacking up, like Joy

division cover... It has a very sharp cut-off point, that particular

pulsar, slow rise and then donk! It is unusual. I do not know what this

is telling us. This has definitely got structure, it has got three

different peaks. If we use the Lighthouse

different peaks. If we use the light keeps flashing when it goes

past us and we're seeing some structure around the thing that is

emitting that light, right down at the pulsar level. We have the

distance measured? We do. We actually have a map. We look at

where these pulses are arriving in different parts of the radio

spectrum and that is the sun and the Milky Way and we can add the pulsar

to that, it is 18,000 light years away, the green dot, out in the

Perseus spiral. This is about 20 kilometres across! 18,000 light

years away! We actually have the people who discovered this? There

are quite a few of them and the names run the website of some of the

first, we have got them. We have the Flynn family, are you excited? Very!

How many would you look through? Hundreds! It does take a while to

find these things! This is very serious stuff! Did you have any

sense that this was going to be something big? Did it stand out? No,

there were loads, we could not find any until nine! How did you feel? We

spoke yesterday about this and when you look at data, you find something

and for a moment, for a few hours, you were the only people on Earth

and in human history to know about the existence of that thing. How did

that make you feel? Really excited! We have a smaller problem, I'll be

going to name it after Neeve or after Aidan? We decided to name it

after one of the guinea pigs! So... So it shall be called O-M. It is

good we had that committee meeting! That is the level at which these

things happen! He named his after his guinea pigs! Well done to the

family. This is a genuinely exciting discovery? It is really good. We

don't know just how good it will be, we only have these few observations,

it might turn out to be great. You will not tell anyone precisely where

it is? People want to make sure they can get all the information first.

The other thing, especially these other candidates that we think are

promising, these possible pulsars, if they are true, another thing we

have shown is that there is a lot more in this data that most

astronomers had anticipated. This will go on? Were used to skimming

off the top of his observations and looking for the brighter ones but if

there are extra pulsar is in that noise, we will make more of an

array. Someone else who needs to be things -- congratulated after

arduous work at the Astronaut Training Centre, it is John Bishop.

Is he ready for space? I think he is, he survived three days of

astronaut training and this, I have to say city! I have loved this, I

have gained a real appreciation of the commitment that the astronauts

go in for but also the commitment of everyone around them, and the level

of science going on every day. What surprised you the most? That they

had a suit to fit me! Somewhere between an astronaut and a

ghostbuster, I feel like! I think just the whole amenity, it is one of

those things, people going into the Space Station, it is out of this

world, obviously, but all the way down, at every level, people are

contribute in. The amount of things they think of, no stone is left

unturned. How do you think he has done? Brilliantly, really well. We

even have something for you to complete that suit! Your own little

personal patch! That is my patch? It even has a microphone on it! You are

personal patch! That is my patch? It officially part of the gang. You

have done so incredibly well. Yes, I am so proud of you. Some of those

things were very hard, but well done. He is on the crew for the next

mission? It does not matter! This is me dressing up for my no doubt! We

have had an amazing time. Over the next three days we will see just how

much goes into getting an astronaut ready for space and we have also

seen the extraordinary amount of science that takes place, science

football ultimately contribute to the success of long-term space

exploration, missions that are just within our grasp and it has been a

privilege to meet you and play with John Bishop, it has been great fun,

good night from us! Take care. Thank you very much. And to everyone there

at the German Aerospace Centre. And that has cost you ?40 because he

survived! Yes! To all of the guests because -- Tim O'Brien, Lucie Green,

need, Aden and the guinea pigs! Very complicated name! Yes. Pulsar O-M.

That is all we have time for. OK, I must say, I am very excited about

this discovery. How long will we be trawling through these results? Four

months at least. We have done six years of work in done two days, the

team will be very busy. And it helped to train all of these

computer algorithms so we will be better at finding pulsars. And you

have got some new PHD students, there! Definitely! Thank you all

again, tomorrow, the first ever there! Definitely! Thank you all

spacewalk for Tim Peake, we will watch all seven hours and we will

bring you the highlights from nine o'clock tomorrow on BBC Two. Until

then, goodbye! So, no-one pays tax here?

No-one pays taxes.