Brian Cox Neil deGrasse Tyson Communicating Science in the 21st century

hello Brian hello Brian yeah good my name got changed earlier yeah yeah I I should say that we spoke earlier about um because I I was going to give a talk can we we were talking last night and we felt that there were interesting similarities and contrasts between communicating science particularly on television in the UK and the US and so we thought it might be more valuable to have a discussion around what science communication is what are the I suppose the compromises and decisions you make particularly when you put in science on television but also in the broader context I think as Brian Greene said earlier the idea that there's a I think a strong polemical element that obviously can be put into science communication in particular science television programs and I think that's very valuable we talked about that it's there's a different atmosphere I think in the United States and the UK regarding that kind of a polemic the idea that the ideas of science can be applied much more broadly in the way that we deal with each other and political questions yeah I'd like to think that what science communication might be going forward would it would include more of a direct statement of relevance to how we live our lives to the role that science plays and politics and the survival of our species if you look back at the traditional science programming that you might get you would see a documentary on television and it would communicate some very important interesting science but then that would just be that you would it would be like a wiki page may visible in a video medium and when you're done it it's as though you you learned a little bit more science but you didn't learn why it mattered and so I think we both agree that in our lives one of the most important statements about the relationship of science to our lives to our culture to our civilization was made by Carl Sagan in his 1980 landmark series cosmos not only did it connect you the public emotionally intellectually physically to the moving frontier of science but it also blended science in such a way you were no longer thinking oh I'm learning this science versus that all science was seamless in the delivery and so I think maybe science education going forward should think less about what chapter of a book is communicated and more about why science matters and how it works and why can affect the fate of civilization yeah I mean when we talked about I was 12 when I first saw cosmos and the thing particularly that very famous 13th episode made a big impact on me which was really a plea to use all we've learned about our place our physical insignificance but yet because it's likely in my view at least that civilizations are rare you can make an argument actually the the we may be the only civilization at the moment in the Milky Way galaxy you can argue that it's a possible point of view so that connection was made so powerfully in the context of the nuclear arms race at the time 1978 19 9 1980 and that put me in mind of an essay which I think the value of science it's a famous essay by Richard Fineman which was based on a talk that he gave I think back in the 1950s the early 1950s and you would expect it you expect him to say that the value of science is in the spin-offs the technology increased life expectancy medical science etc and of course he says that first but then at the end of the essay he says that is not the most valuable thing if I could if I could give communicate one thing about the process of science and Brian Greene actually emphasized this absolutely rightly I fully agree with him it's what Feynman called the divine science is a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance which i think is a wonderful definition first it's very humble it first by a merely satisfactory and it is the philosophy that you begin ignorant and you build ideas you test them against data its Fineman very famous they always said it your ideas disagree with experiment they're wrong and it does matter who you are what your name is that wrong in that very famous speech she gave you can obviously on YouTube but I think that idea that he goes on to develop the the gift of science primarily is that is the philosophy of ignorance and he extends out to the idea of a of what a democracy is he says that because nobody knows anything with a hundred percent certainty the only way you can run a society or a countries is by a trial and error system so you try something for four or five years and if it doesn't work you turf the guys out and try something else for four or five years and in his own inimitable style he talks about that but he surely writes and I think that is one of the the key things that we can aim to deliver in any science documentary of course it will be 90% about the science because malla gr the origin of life or biology whatever it is but underpinning that the idea of the celebration of uncertainty and and making sure that art for me anyway every time we we speak of ideas as Brian Greene absolutely beautifully did we underline the fact that this is always preliminary and there are no great sages that stand and get it right no no trumpian ideas are present in science I think he's very very inconsiderate Brian also confessed that they granted his PhD even though it was wrong is that correct right you bet on the wrong horse one of the ten to the five hundred horses running around no yeah it was it was definitely definitely wrong which is all you can definitely be sure over the course you actually actually knew good yeah because the in the UK that is on the BBC even the the mass market channel BBC one that's a very acceptable thing to do to take a rather overtly polemical stand and I tend to do that do you feel that it's the same in the u.s. we're not ready for that yet because I think yes we're just not I don't think we're ready for it but you were of course because it were in the 70s late seventies eighties Carl Sagan did that it was a cosmic took thirty five years to do cosmos second time I think it's we're not it the current discourse doesn't seem to care what is objectively true or not people will want something to be true because it feels good whether or not it is true and the only way I can parody that is to comment that just because perhaps you gained a kilo of weight last week doesn't mean you can protest the law of gravity because it did not serve your needs this is doesn't work that way so so I worry that so much of what I do is not advancing people's understanding of their relationship to how the universe works but it's just sort of holding on do you remember in the old days the old variety shows there'd be somebody who'd be spinning discs on long sticks do you remember this and they would just run around and if they were successful it meant no plates fell that was success but it was a constant effort spinning place and so I don't know I cannot speak with confidence I can only say what level of energy I'm investing in this and by the way I think the press has to participate in an in a way that understands what we're saying on I'll give an example often when there's a new discovery especially in physics the first line of the newspaper article will say Oh scientists have to go back to the drawing board because their cherished theories are now challenged as though we're sitting in our office with our legs up not think it just basking in our mastery of the universe no you do a bit of that I've got an image in my mind now view the Hayden Planetarium no and I've said this before that there there there are if you are an active research scientist you are always at the drawing board at the chalkboard and and you revel in a new idea that will challenge your idea because that means things are ready to move forward that's the most exciting time not sometime we worry about we might use the word worry I worry but at the end of the day behind closed doors it's the most exciting thing that can happen and with the Higgs boson the great search for that and ultimately discovered it by the Large Hadron Collider it would have been almost as interesting if they had searched that same parameter space and didn't find the Higgs boson then it's like oh my gosh all of this that requires that it be there has to be reassessed yes people would go back to it but they would do it gleefully well I mean I should say I mean it did nothing to do with science communication at all but there this is why there's tremendous excitement now at the LHC that in the as many people will know because those results were published there are hints of interesting particles a particular one what we call around 750 GeV 750 times the mass of the proton which is a signal which is not statistically significant enough as we saw in the the newer supernovae results actually the dark energy results not significant enough yet we need more data that's why the LHC is running now to take it but those signals have caused already just preliminary results that may go away with more data I think over 200 theoretical papers the last we which tells you that nobody has a clue what it is because the theories are wheeling away the work published paper unless you know about it I mean it is fascinating I'm not sure I got to drive that home if you go to the book store and look for books on gravity there's maybe four or five on the shelf look for books on stars there's maybe six you look for books on consciousness their shelf after shelf after shelf sit the hell that means we know nothing about it okay because once you know you're done no more books are necessary and you move on to the next problem don't be confused by the volume of what is written what is what is fascinating about those in those theoretical papers you see what are the signals so basically if it's there and I am side I'm often new particle yeah it is I I don't know because we're analyzing the data so I don't have any secret knowledge I'm hired in a way but if it's one of the really but if it's there then it's so it what is it look it would be a heavy particle a new heavy particle 750 times the mass of the proton so you know what is that five times the mass of the higgs or something like that decaying into two photons two particles of light that's that's what it would be the signal stands up and that is what there are many that it could be one of the particles for dark matter which we heard about earlier could be one of those could be though if you go more speculative and exciting it's one of the signatures for extra dimensions in the universe so called Kaluza klein graviton signals there are ideas around that so it could be that at LHC we're on the verge of making a breakthrough into some of the things you heard in the the start of this session possibly but that's the key term says what you said the points of the Large Hadron Collider it was built because we knew we could confirm or deny that the Higgs model but it was also built because it's operating in an energy regime in which we've never operated before so it is certainly not ruled out that there is new physics in that energy regime and it just possible that we may be seen hints of that and that oxide the corresponding frontiers that we experience in my field derive from either opening up vistas in new bandwidths that we have never looked in before gravity light yeah Bradley wave certainly one of them consider was not until a hundred years ago 150 years ago where we had telescopes looking anywhere other than just this narrow portion of the spectrum we call visible light we were trying to deduce the nature of the universe using only that band of that part of the spectrum without knowing what black holes would tell us what the early universe would tell us so we were basically searching blind thinking we weren't and that's an interesting steps we took coming out of that era to then discover how to make detectors in microwaves and a longer wait length radio waves and x-rays gamma rays all of these bands of the spectrum now I hesitate to say complete but they give us a very broad view of what the universe is trying to say to us but I'll say also in my field if we build the biggest telescope ever we will have detection capabilities where you point it anywhere in the universe you're going to come up with something interesting and new and different that could challenge us all now here's a here's I want to get back to the across the pond difference in what you're experiencing in the UK versus the United States you know I've seen in the United States a groundswell of interest and caring about the role of science in our lives and the prevalence of science in pop culture and in our media it's there it's there the number one show in American television perhaps many places around the world is a sitcom that basically celebrates the geek averse in the name of the show called the Big Bang Theory in fact apologies to Big Bang folks in the audience if you google Big Bang Theory the first hit is the TV show the second hit is the origin of the universe so you gotta smile at that at some level ok so but in tandem with that is a rising community of people I don't know if they feel disenfranchised from this moving frontier of science maybe they didn't do well in science they have a bad experience so they want to reject it and want to create a world that is that that that ignores it and they think that that's possible I don't think the solution here is just telling them they're all just go take science again we I think we need some sensitivity to who they are because they're out there and they vote and they they yes definitely vote and so so I would welcome some conversation maybe even offline what pathways into the rest of who's out there because they want to live long lives and they care at some level I think I mean it's one of the conversations that I have often because because we have the the BBC in the UK which is a a public service broadcaster in the in the purest sense of the word the first one ever of course its mission is to is to engage people and bring people in to a diversity of programming I think it's very important if you what worries me in in the u.s. a little bit when you have multiple channels you have the Science Channel you have this channel that channel and those channels are specialist channels I think you can you're in great danger of getting the audience and then what you end up is preaching to the converted rather than drawing new people in and introduce them to ideas and one of the great values of the second round cosmos that we did yes was that it was not relegated to the science ghettos yes of the higher channels that you've never heard of so in the first run in the United States it appeared on Fox the network a place where many demographic communities plug in to cover all ranges in the political spectrum both Carl Sagan and andrey and it's said that to me that was the original cosmos as you well know because you were around at the time when you that was the absolutely the central idea was it would bring in astronomy to people he would have never looked at the stars before and to do it on network television did it and then it went around the world on the National Geographic channel's and I was told in some countries that I got dubbed in a local language yeah they dubbed me I should say I just before I finished I got to meets now it happened here did they I mean I don't I don't know I just would say one thing which because we're talking earlier last night actually about the I've done a new series it was a challenge of them how do you bring people in how do you you you the BBC have afraid which is quite useful in science communication which is give people permission to watch so how did they how is the initial door opened and one of the programs we've just finished it's called the universe in a snowflake and it's just interesting for a particular audience like you I think it's quite geeky where that came from and it came from a book that puller wrote now Keppler of course everyone knows Kappa the laws of planetary motion I think 1609 1611 in 1610 he wrote a book called on the six cornered snowflake which is a masterpiece of science communication and also for me the best evidence I've ever seen that Kepler was one of the greatest scientists we all know he was a genius but the level of you genius had not been open to me until I read this books I strongly recommend it and just very what happened to me was walking across a bridge in Prague on a New Year's Eve party I think to his benefactor and patron and he hadn't brought a present and he was kind of a upset about it or not a bit worried probably because it was his benefactor and he saw a snowflake landed on his arm and he said to his benefactor I brought you the gift of almost nothing but in the gift of almost nothing I bring you everything and he went on to ask questions about the symmetry of snowflakes this is 1610 so he says this thing is a six-fold symmetry and the other one all of them have a six-fold symmetry that the hexagons and why is that why they are different but the same is it indicative of some kind of deeper symmetry is it indicative of the underlying structure that builds the snowflake which is something to do with water of course in your nothing about molecules but it's a 21st century mind that you see this is this is the way a modern theoretical physicist things and I think it just if I could have one recommendation as a piece of brilliance in science communication but also just the insight into the mind of Kepler that on the six kind of snowflake is the most wonderful book and that form the basis of one of the programs because we thought all snowflakes or a rather whimsical thing there's something that they're not scary there you have permission to watch a program about snowflakes drifting down but actually you can see all the ideas that Kepler said at the end I've read the whole universe into a snowflake I've gone too far I leave it to future generations to explore it's the most beautiful work I think the value there is that he's connecting deep scientific thoughts to something highly accessible such as a snowflake Faraday did that as well one of his great essays was a recitation on a candle yeah and the Christmas letter yeah Christmas lectures and the recitation on a candle very familiar source of light in the day and so you had access point to it dare I say that one of my most popular tweets was similar in but I did not reference a candle or in snowflake I referenced Beyonce Beyonce as a something that's popular that people had access to she performed during the American Superbowl and in that game the lights accidentally went out in the stadium and I'm tweeting physics facts about football and momentum and collisions then the line structure if Beyonce and it was I tried to I thought what can I say about this and I commented that the average human radiates about a hundred watts as a light bulb but after Beyonce had danced the halftime show Beyonce probably radiates 500 watts but we have to run a special experiment just for her well this connected like physics with a major pop star who everybody else cares about for other reasons and now you add to that I found that this little bit of physics got picked up into the jet stream and that for me was the way in this long tradition if you take some physics connected to what people otherwise care about then maybe they they become a little more enchanted by what role physics science in general can play in their lives absolutely I think we've run out of time Jim standing up so I've said thank you very much thank you everyone you

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Length: 22min 15sec (1335 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 12 2017

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[u/InformedChoice]

Why am I the first person to comment on this topic? Odd.