bluedot 2019 | Interview: Tamsin Edwards

[Music] hi I'm Tamsin Edwards and I'm a climate scientist I'm a physicist and I did my undergraduate degree at Manchester so the first time I came to Jodrell Bank I was actually doing an experiment here I was very lucky to use one of the telescopes and we were studying the crab pulsar so the Pulsar in the Crab Nebula and we came twice a week for a term and we we sat and we watched the telescope and the data coming in and we analysed it it was incredible I completely fell in love with a place not just the physics but the peace of the place and the history as well I probably first started really looking at the night sky when I was about 16 or 17 and I learned all the constellations I remember wandering the streets kind of tripping over things trying to work out what everything was and at the same time I was learning about astrophysics about black holes and you know trying to understand little bits of quantum mechanics as well and and I'd really fallen in love with physics so when I look at the night sky I think of that that first time of really falling in love with with physics when I was a teenager [Music] I mean Joshua's just part of our culture isn't it as part of our history you know you go past on the trains and the rows and you and you look out for the dish in the distance I look can you spot George or people maybe you haven't even been here that much see it as a really iconic telescope as a as a real sort of marker point in our history and our landscape so you know it's got huge numbers of memories I think for people whether they really come and studied other science or if they've just seen it at a distance to kind of think Oh what you know what's it looking at you know what's it looking for so it's incredibly important I have to admit space travel makes me think of my partner Dallas Campbell because he has been doing a ton of interesting stuff around space science and human spaceflight this year around the Apollo 50th anniversary and I've learned a lot from him about the the wonder and the curiosity that go into those missions and the history I think as a as a physicist you know I'm always interested in sort of you know hearing the latest discoveries and technology but just as a human you know we all have that that desire to imagine what other worlds could be like and what other futures could be like whether it's science fiction or dreams or conversations so yeah it makes me think of I guess everyone else looking up at the sky thinking about the future thinking about Mars thinking about their favorite science fiction programs and books as well yeah it's just what makes us human I really love blue dot it's a out putting science into culture one of the things I love when I come here and give a talk is that people say they came for the music and they've never been to a science talk before but they they just wandered in or they just thought something sounded interesting and and they loved it and and that was their first science talk so that's really special that bringing together of different passions and different beautiful ideas and inspirations of humanity all together you know whether it's the moon installation the light the the music sort of installations beaming music up at the moon bring it all together there's nothing like that I think anywhere else in quite the same way my talk is called polar thinking and it's about it's a pun on the fact that I do polar science but it's about the idea that we shouldn't fall too much into polarization and black and white thinking I you talk about climate science and how it works and and my own research but also the kind of overarching theme is not to be too simplistic not to be to tribal them and us and and just to think carefully about the nuance of things you know is the truth somewhere on a spectrum is is the truth maybe to sort of slightly contradictory things at once that we've got to keep in mind at once until we know what's really happening so it's a sort of a plea for thinking carefully about the world well where could you be but blue dot for the anniversary of the Apollo moon landings I I loved seeing not only the way that the different installations and you know the different acts and the different music and everything is linking together but I love the people that come and dress up you know I see some incredible spacesuits engineering you know lighting up helmets aliens and so I think that that it's really developing its own or has developed its own kind of feeling and culture so that if there's any way you'd want to be for the Apollo landings it would be the Blue Dot festival at Jodrell Bank I was really happy to see Jarvis Cocker I was a pulp fan 25 years ago really real excited but lots of other amazing bands here as well I hope that people can feel at the same time both urgency and optimism about the future I think it's important to stay optimistic that we can make changes to make the planet better whether it's climate change the environment pollution biodiversity energy all of these big challenges we've got poverty water inequality we've got to stay optimistic while still feeling urgent about it I think that's something that I'm really trying to figure out how to to keep in mind at the same time with people we have to be quick and push hard but not be demoralized at the same time it would be a message of love because what else would you send to the moon

Channel: bluedot festival

Views: 140

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: bluedot, festival, bluedot 2019, bluedot festival, Tamsin Edwards, TED Talk, Science, Science Talk, Climate Change, Climate Scientist, Climate Science, Jodrell Bank, bluedot festival Tamsin Edwards, bluedot 2019 Tamsin Edwards, bluedot Tamsin Edwards, Tamsin Edwards Science

Id: pVtMDgCr6e0

Length: 6min 50sec (410 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 14 2019