Brian Cox: The 20 Billion Earth-Like Planets That Could Harbour Life | The Jonathan Ross Show

my next guest uh believe it or not has actually traveled through time and space to be with us this evening he left lambeth at six o'clock and he's here now please welcome professor brian cox [Applause] looking to be a professor what's going on thank you you're looking great in that suit uh so you're doing a new series it's going to be called the human universe it's not the universe this is what's up before i don't know if you cover this in the news or not but i've been reading online about science about the universe and they've discovered there's a telescope out there called the kepler yeah and they've discovered what they think is a solar system rather similar to ours it's it's a space telescope and its job is to look for planets beyond our solar system you go back you know 15 years or so 20 years we only knew of our solar system so it's possible to believe that only 20 years ago that's what we knew so it's possible to believe all those stars in the sky were just stars we didn't know but now we've discovered over a thousand planets out there around stars and this solar system you talked about kepler 90 i think it's cold that's right seven planets around that around that star but the remarkable thing and this was announced about three weeks ago so kepler has been looking just a little piece of sky to do a kind of a survey a tiny piece of sky and it found six earth-like planets these are rocky planets in the right zone around the star so the temperature's right so there could be oceans and rivers wow and if you just then extend that over the entire sky the number now people are talking about is 20 billion earth-like planets that could have a life in the milky way 20 20 000 million other earths so there must be life out there well you would think so the huge question now is so can we find microbes and we might find mammals we're looking really seriously to see if there's life on mars but no we know there's not life on mars well we don't i mean yeah but not proper life i mean very happy for your science people but we couldn't care about my fault we want aliens well this i don't know that this is the lay down this has got a name called the fermi paradox after the physicist enrico fermi because now you know 20 billion earths the the galaxy's been around for almost the entire age of the universe 13 billion years ahead why the huge question is why we haven't seen evidence of another civilization do you think it's out that you think it's out there don't you i think simple lives are microbes we may well find back to that again no one cares about something with fins and a scar i thought you said fins in a scarf i guess they might have a scarf if they're on a cold planet like pluto not a planet anymore but it would be remarkable it would be remarkable if we found life on mars and it had arisen separate so it's different life even if single microbes it would tell us that whenever the conditions are right life can arise how many times i've got to tell you how big does something have to be for you four and a half feet anything anything smaller than the little one out the crank is i don't care that's the microphone all right she's probably bigger than the girl in the cranky so the mini mini cranky planet bigger than that you're not interested in that no anything bigger than that kepler 90 g probably is mini cranky planet depends on the gravitational field you could just be making this up if it's a big huge planet a big massive planet intense gravitational field then the people will all be little what yeah because because you you're as big as you can be without the the gravitational you know what you're talking about but yeah there could be a cranky plan so so real giants could only be on a small planet probably probably wheat gravity then you can grow to a lot you wouldn't get a lot of them because there's not a lot of space i think dementia sorry the really big planet the little people what a really small planet that big one really big bloke [Music] that makes some sense to me and he's going to other planets to use the toilets how did he evolve on a planet well that's your job to find that out cloth i've done the hard work um okay so we're going to do an experiment and this is always exciting i love it when brian comes on the show because he's keen to show us hands on science and this does get people i think exciting involved what can we demonstrate this is something to do with the universe isn't it well you've see you saw the story of this comet isom the the almost was was going to be one of the most miraculous comments a medieval style huge comment a big flaming threat in the sky and it was on its way into the sun it's a remarkable story it began its journey probably a a million years ago or more in something called the art cloud which is a big sort of cloud of dirty snowballs basically that orbits the sun perhaps out to a light year so a quarter of the way to the nearest star and he started the um one of them got disturbed somehow and began a journey in a million years ago so it's been on its way for a million years and they start heating up as they approach this was it made of ice then it was frozen mainly ice and rock and then and people are interested to know does it have organic compounds you know the building blocks of life but this thing came so close to the sun it went within a million miles of the sun the sun is six thousand degrees at a surface so it didn't survive as it came around but we're going to make a comment make a comment which is potentially going to be edible because i know that that's the only way to keep you interested i am so you can eat it afterwards but then we're going to simulate the death of a comet well you're bringing me down again now with that well you know everything dies including the universe well that's made me feel cheerful again things get worse jack is right his face is a perfect expression of something called the second law of thermodynamics which essentially says that everything everything is going to statistically speaking decay away to and the fate of the universe is ultimately ultimately dire and that that to me if i was teaching thermodynamics to my students now i'd just show them that picture and go that's the fate of all of us [Music] so it's tom tom daley is the more cheerful first law of thermodynamics where well everything's great he's defying the laws of physics at the moment but eventually eventually oh tom look to your left and look at your future jack's the more scientifically accurate of the pet okay so brian lead the way we've got the equipment audio over here so we're going to try and make a comment that's right we're going to make a comment and it's a little bit dangerous so we'll um safety goggles on rubber gloves on so comets are dirty snowballs why is it a dirty stuff well they'll have bits of rock in it um but but it's the most ancient stuff compared to yeah obviously so we thought we'd make one with with um cream and this actually and then and then this you can put this is this is minus 200 degrees this is liquid nitrogen so it's liquefied air if you want to think of it like that don't do that minus 200 degrees so don't don't don't that's why because i've got our protective glove on yes it's minus 200 degrees man look at that just throw a bit in there give it a stir so we're making it what's this i don't know some of that this is actually this what is that you just have no idea so this is a dirty snowball so we're gonna be actually this technique was first used i'm turning it to cookery program this was perfect to make ice cream i was told in 1901. the idea is that comets comets are much colder than this this is minus 200. can i put it with my hand yeah you can touch it wow that is super cold you can eat it be careful actually i don't know whether you can eat it i don't check with health and safety [Applause] is it good it's delicious creamy creamy death from above time let's get tom dalia to help trump coming out and help us make our delicious deck from above yeah hold it tommy's got tom you need some gloves as well let's stick it get more of that hold it let him get started here let's uh we've got some more cream [Music] so that's our comment so so there's vast amounts of that stuff not literally that stuff that's milk and there are no cows out there but it's a vester that's stuck frozen solid much colder than that out there in the oort cloud and what we thought we'd demonstrate uh because it's dangerous is what happens when so this is boiling water and what a good approximation to what happened to the comet is that we're going to put some minus 200 degrees celsius liquid nitrogen into the boiling water and try and simulate what happened to as well so actually so this oh it's hot hey before you do tom have a snuggle that's good what's in there i can't drink cream i'll put on about 10 million pounds in like one sermon which one have you ever been to you know why you're on the vodka back there is that your training double cream but it's delicious it's delicious tom you sure you're done with some of this double cream i'd rather eat this treat yourself a bit of ice cream i'll try a bit this is my favorite thing by the way so it's like so that's been cooled down to minus 200 or so pretty good in there good though we'll knock it down with a bit of this this is good i don't know honestly i'm re maybe pour a bit on top oh yeah there we go oh yeah there's only one way there's only one way to stop it that's stopping right that's done say that but i like a challenge [Music] okay so what we're gonna do so we're gonna simulate what happened to comey iso step back a little bit so actually you can do it so this is this is what happens when it so these comets frozen solid snowballed minus 200 minus less than that comes into all the sun heats up rapidly and what happened to iceland was it exploded and fell to bits it's a 300 degree temperature difference they're not going to get along what either this is going to explode this is going to explode all right you ready for me as well okay here we go don't put your head over it all right you ready is the light to have an exploding comment shall i move this out the way where does that go that's what is going on here we'll move out of the way brian it's all right for you but we're national treasures all right here we go you ready so this is like a comet in space 300 degrees on its way all of it oh wow that's pretty good pretty good oh man i really wish we could have like a genesis track play now okay let's go for it let's go for it we've got the giant tub of the dude yeah this is all filled with that stuff okay okay so hold it before you do that i'm going to say good night now just in case that's all my guests this week next week on the show will be joined by start of elephant anchorman will fall from x-files in the fall the gorgeous centaurity gillian anderson david beckham will be here in person and we've got music from singing star leona lewis so before we go to the music let's see if we can blow up the studio ryan cox ladies and gentlemen [Music] you

Channel: The Jonathan Ross Show

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Keywords: The Jonathan Ross Show, ITV, Jonathan Ross, chat show, jonathan ross chat show, jonathan ross, the jonathan ross show official, the jonathan ross show new series, the jonathan ross show 2021, Cosmology, joe rogan experience, jre #1233, joe rogan, brian cox, physics, space, mma, ufc, brian cox joe rogan, brian cox time travel, brian cox wonders of the universe, brian cox documentary, brian cox lecture, brian cox audiobook, brian cox god, brian cox gravity, universe documentary

Id: dTUL0RbLZig

Length: 12min 45sec (765 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 21 2021