Brian May - The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss - FULL VIDEO

[Music] hello and welcome to the origins podcast I'm your host Lawrence Krauss when I think of an individual who successfully merges science and culture I'm hard-pressed to find a better candidate than Brian May he's of course the lead guitarist of the legendary rock band Queen and one of the greatest guitarists in the world but he also holds a PhD in astrophysics and was on the science team for the New Horizons mission to Pluto having had the opportunity to have a conversation with New Horizons team leader Allen Stern I asked Brian to take time out for a brief conversation as well I wanted to talk about his thoughts about the mission but I also wanted to go back in time and talk to Brian about what caused him to choose between fields and how he's navigated that choice I knew that Brian famously built his guitar with his father and I wanted to talk about how his tinkering as a young man with the electronics of guitars may have spurred his interest in science or vice-versa I also knew his other interest in science fiction and the signs behind stereo scopes about which he's written several books the conversation was especially warm and enlightening and I hope will be of interest not just for Brian May and queen' fans but more generally will provide new and exciting insights for all fans of science and culture patreon subscribers can find the full video of this program in all our programs immediately upon the release at patreon.com slash origins podcast I hope you enjoyed the show [Music] Brian it's really nice to see you and thank you so much for having us as your guests to allow us to come in here and have a chat you know it's a pleasure and well I want to I want to start with your scientist hat I want to talk we we talked a while ago with Allen Stern and I wanna I just thought I'd talk to you a little bit about new horizon and you're the part you played but also what you were surprised by in that mission it so far and what was the biggest surprise for you I'm most surprised by Allen Stern yeah phenomenon in himself oh my god yeah the man's amazing I don't think he sleeps you know and his brain is so quick and so agile and also I think what people don't realize is a position like that as leader of a mission like that and these incredible people skills and he as the management skills that just has that knack of getting the best out of everybody without ever being you know kind of pushy or or impatient or whatever he just gets 300 percent out of everybody amazing me well people realize out that science is generally big science and and most some big scientific experiments require management skills as much as scientific skills yeah and also so long because the for the time of Inception of a mission like that to the time we actually take the first picture of in this gate fluid always yeah and you got to keep people motivated when when did you sort of begin to get involved in and how long have you been associated with it it's gradually I was kind of on the outside looking in fascinated you know because I keep an eye from a distance on all this stuff and I have a great collaborator called Claudia Manzoni who helps to keep me fed with all this informations is great because I don't always have time to yeah so she's my channel really and she works with me on the stereoscopic stuff so I was very aware of the missions but I do you know the funny thing is Alan I were talking about we can't remember how the first contact actually happened I think it was through a mutual friend we got talking and he said you know you'd be welcome to come out and and and be with us when we actually do this flyby of Pluto so I jumped at that chance yes yeah I jumped a little nervously because you know it's a little out of my at the time I felt it was out of my sort of price range you know I'm an interested party and I you know I am an astronomer to a certain extent but I'm not a professional this job I do other stuff as you know so I went down there and I have really the major interest that I have is this stereoscopic side of everything you know I had this passion for 3d yeah stereos could be of all kinds is surrounded by here yeah here we have in around us all sorts of stereos could be starting from about 1838 onwards and of course stereos could be was huge in the 1850s which is the great boom and that's kind of where my heart is but I apply everything that I learned from the 1850s to Astro photography so you just all the time these nothing if there's nothing new Under the Sun yeah since Charles Wheatstone yeah who discovered the principle so all you need is a baseline and you in astronomy and especially with all these probes that go out and get close to objects you can normally get what you need to take an amazing stereoscopic picture of something right you know well actually I we have one of your books here but and and I know a bunch of 3d books have you produced a 3d book of astronomy ever of astronomical images well mission moons 3d is all about them the Apollo yeah on the Apollo missions and the whole space race around the Russians too so that's the closest we've come to an actual mystery I've never seen any 3d pictures of Pluto yet right oh there is one yeah I was able to get it that was my great scoop you know I happened to be in the right place at the right time and oh you haven't seen that okay well nice showing you but yeah you just need a baseline and this probe is relying on by thousands of miles an hour passed this object called Pluto which until now has been a white dot yeah distance and what you get is a picture from this point and then it moves on you get you from the next point so you have your baseline how far baseline do you know how far it would be tens of thousands of miles uh-huh quite a bit but yeah it's a few thousand miles away yeah and the speed is going you have to you know snap those pictures relatively quickly yeah which is what they do yeah I mean it's a kind of nail-biting thing that New Horizons does you busy in most of these missions is very different from most of the NASA missions which go around things you know like there's a mission they go there they get into a position next to it and they more or less orbit to the yeah yeah chase New Horizons doesn't do that it just whizzes straight past so everything has to happen everything has to happen in a few minutes and the the the tension that the drama in that is colossal because if you mess up you there will never ever be another chance and you've been waiting for yeah okay yeah twelve years you've waited for that moment so it's incredible to watch it unfold and the moment when you first see that images is incredible and and both times but we know with Pluto and with Ultima Thule I was there to see the first image come in that's me I mean Pluto it it seemed less surprising to me that they actually got a picture the planet but albumen to light it amazed me given given what little was known about that object and if dick and the speed and the and not knowing exactly where it was or at least having to infer to be able to it could have been so easy for them to just take a picture and be off by a few degrees I'll miss it absolutely it was really amazing the precision that they were - is incredible and you think it's four billion miles away and they're guiding it to an accuracy of a couple hundred miles yeah and everything has to be time to the second it's it's well I'm always as a theorist I'm always amazed when it's any kind of experiment work yes it's it because it's it's it it and also the dedication is required for people doing it because you are working for 12 years and if you miss it then that's 12 years yeah we essentially wasted it and everybody would hate you yes they would try not to have a neighborhood when I looked I remember when I first saw the image of Pluto being as everyone was but I just remember being shocked because it the assumption was it was gonna look like us I mean like a snowball is gonna and and potentially a heavy crater snowball the fact that there was dynamics in Pluto the fact that this part of the surface was so smooth that it clearly had been new material the fact that this object out there was a dynamical is a negative yeah it's very unexpected yeah it's really I mean beautiful thing whether well it's true every time we've had a new picture of any or a new learned but not just objects in our solar system we've learned that our conventional wisdom in some sense is wrong and even as we learn about exoplanets outside our solar system we learn that that what we thought was conventional that gas giants out there in a rocky and it's just different for it's it's it's a really a fascinating thing to see as someone who studies particle physics and cosmology it's really nice to see that in our neighborhood we continue to be surprised it's not as if it's all known it's very that's something that strikes me every time it's never what we expect never never no yeah it's always something more interesting more surprising well the age I mean that's the point for me for science is that the imagination of nature is just much bigger the imagination of humans and you lock theorists in a room for 30 years and had them describe how things should be it would be totally different and so we keep having to be guided by observation experiment which is why we have to keep doing it and it's it's not you know people often wonder why do you have to keep building things but if we don't we just the surprises of the of of the universe and our context within the universe our own origins are totally misplaced so what what eight new horizons all the way yeah yeah yeah exactly and and and the fact that we're inspired by these things and it can inspire us and there's no doubt that Pluto and smart the picture of Pluto of course more recently the pictures of black hole they inspire people in a way I don't think many producers in tough television and other and realize how much people are inspired by science and by images that can really change their picture themselves that's right well yeah well it's an important thing this this thing called outreach is very important otherwise scientists would just do stuff and nobody would know people have to know and something that I love doing here it's nice that you can well because of who you are you people are probably more willing to listen or less afraid maybe well I can be a channel because I'm visible and people kind of expect to get something from me my great inspiration is Patrick more so than actually more who for 50 years presented that program yeah one presenter for 50 years the sky at night yeah and since I was a kid and begging to be allowed to stay up and watch it 10 o'clock at night you know it inspired me and it inspired generations of astronomy it's known in Britain and its outreach yeah it was all happening but unless Patrick Moore was telling us we are no yeah no it's it's it's really amazing I think how many people I'm a scientist could to start by those kind of things I for me I remember this series by Jacob Bronowski when I was growing up and it was just an amazingly ascent of man and yeah there's one remarkable guy sitting in front of the camera talking about everything from science to culture and and and that's one of things I want to talk to you a little bit because part of my interest and part of the interest is program generally is to try and combine science and culture that science is a vital part of our culture it's not a separate thing and you epitomize it in some sense in a thank you in well you do by your very by what you do and and and I wonder I wasn't mind going back a little bit yeah - it seems to me to some extent as far as I can see you've always been a tinkerer not just tinker with these but but in the in making her for the first guitar so yes what what was it was in terms of chicken and egg and music and science or wit was there one that that motivated the other was there one that that prompt together no it's only an extremely linked I think I just had this passion for discovery I suppose and tinkering is a good word I think I got that from my dad yeah we got this idea me and my dad that we could do anything if we set our minds to it there so in this tiny little room spare bedroom which was converted into a work so we made my guitar and it's from scratch you know it's not a copy of anything and we experimented to get our ideas together we're there a lot of other failed versions of your guitar somewhere so we did a little test rigs for the like the tremolo and the truss rod and all sorts of things yeah not exactly failures but yeah and I still have some of that stuff yeah yeah just you know things that are on the road oh yeah failures are good yeah well failure is essential part of yeah you're not failing they mean in the learning yeah it's true for science it's true for music it's true for anything I mean that you're not pushing yourself if one of the problems I think when we teach by the way I've talked about that is we don't teach kids to fail effectively we give them problem sets in physics classes and they're designed to be able to do and and and even a thesis um that in general they can do but then when you get out through a world that you have problems that you try and solve and it and you can't and then what you need to do is learn how to solve maybe not the problem you thought you were going to do and and I assume I don't know if the process of your writing in music is the same when you if you have an intentionality and you find the final product is very different that's a big question I think there are parallels yeah I think you're searching I've always had this feeling that art and science are not really any different yeah they're different parts of the same animal and the Victorians felt that instinctively you know if you look at the Crystal Palace 1851 it works of all nations it wasn't arts and science brought together it was just works and thanks to the glorious Prince Albert and the Victorians generally if you look at all the great scientists they're generally musicians almost without fail and they didn't see the distinction all the great photographers I'm a passionate collector of Victorian photography especially the stereoscopic all those guys are artists and scientists and they have to be because they're working in a medium that requires incredible knowledge of chemistry and physics they also are creating art creation portraits landscapes beautiful things and they don't even think that there's a distinction so that's how I am you know and I resisted the 20th century concept that you have to be one or the other and they try to split us and they're 684 I think that was bad and I think now we're seeing a coming together a rejoining of art and science in someone like Matt Taylor for instance who's the PI of another rosetta mission you expect to meet this buffing guide my successful scientist over time he's a heavy metal phenomenon you know he's got nine Stein tattooed here and lemme guess he's as much passionate about his music as he is about his his his work you know his science and his engineering so that to me is lovely I think that's a healthy thing we're all coming together and realizing that we're human beings we're supposed to be complete human beings were supposed to have all those sides to us otherwise we're not complete well exactly and it used to be speaking of that of the 19th century that an illiterate person in the 19th century it was I think expected to have at least a cocktail party knowledge of the science of the time yeah whereas now it's kind of sad that you can sort of proclaim your scientific illiteracy as a badge of honor of being cultured it's like I'm I'm cultured because I don't get the science just doesn't do it to me and and where is everyone at least I think everyone can enjoy that AHA experience it's orgasmic whether it's whether it's listening to the first song for Queen or or or or seeing the first picture of Pluto it's it just changes your picture of what it means to be human definitely I'm with you and and you know but well there is one thing that interests me about in that regard and you're one of the only people I could talked about this because I because you have spanned it for a while I guess you had to separate right mean you had that you left astronomy to do music I did I always thought this one we benefited from me leaving yes I did but you came back and was it hard was it hard well I was never that far away yeah okay you always sort of academically it was hard yes it was it was tough and it was a mountain that I nearly didn't manage to climb to be honest I was fortunate in having Michael Ron Robinson who was the head of astrophysics at the time about to retire I was one of his last probably yeah but he rang me up when he'd heard that I was thinking of rejoining there's the astronomical community we should become astrophysics yeah and said if you want to do if you want to finish your PhD I am here at the place where you started it and I will be your supervisor Oh I was incredible I mean my heart kind of stopped really and I dropped everything and I dropped for a year I didn't do any anything pretty much except yeah except just sitting in the little office in the Imperial College back where I started yeah picking up the pieces of my PhD it was tough yeah well yeah and they had to I mean they couldn't make it easy for me because that's not what PhDs are about he's about making it hard because happy to get it over with yeah every PhD student has to want to give up yeah I almost you know that's like well you know I think it yeah because if you didn't you might be do comfortable being a PhD so yeah exactly yeah so I was hard and I think three distinct times I tried to give up but I had good friends one of them is Carrick israelian who runs Damas yeah he took me away for a week and taught me how to read papers again scientific papers he re educated me on now how to actually get the information out and that was incredibly valuable to me and Patrick Moore yes incredibly supportive he just kept saying you couldn't do it Brian cause you can do it Patrick I can't my brains gone I've been playing music for the 30 years I can't do this of course you can and my wife was very supportive she was great she was just like yeah you know you chose to do this you're gonna do it you can do it oh that's great you say you're going back to be a student how will we survive she's a breadwinner to that's the thing yeah well the but what I was gonna ask you is you know I often what disappoints me about people that their approach to science often is the notion that to appreciate science you have to be a scientist no one says to appreciate Queen you have to be a musician Mord appreciate art you have to be Picasso or or a literature you have to be Shakespeare I mean you could everyone could appreciate those things but somehow the notion is well you really have to be a scientist to appreciate science when in fact of course we are all scientists but it's interesting that that now I think the hurdle partly is this sense that mathematics is involved in science and somehow there is a there's a hurdle that people need to get but of course and mathematics is beautiful in its own right of course I think I would blame some of the communicators of the 20th century who kind of wanted to mystify it yeah to make it seem like they were very clever and yeah understood it and we really didn't I think that still persists a little bit but we're coming out of that I think yeah and peecher's really helped yeah everyone can Instagram is great you know you put a picture up of that black hole on Instagram it was enormous one of the biggest things that ever I don't understand black holes really honestly yeah I know but I look at it and I feel like I I'm connected to it I had some kind of understanding that this is happening out there and we're discovering and I'm excited yeah everyone was excited about that yeah it's amazing to me I got of course lots of calls and letters and at the time as you need for about it was and of course and I actually worked on black holes theoretically and and and you know it not as if it changed our picture but just seeing it and no yeah for me was it a triumph of human ingenuity I mean the notion that we could actually combine eight telescopes around the world and interfer meant to be yeah take such an end and it worked it's I mean it would have been interesting if the picture hadn't looked at all like we expected either that would've been in fact for many scientists would have been more interesting right - yes like Pluto look different than you would have expected but it looks a little asymmetrical isn't it yeah yeah well I think it does look asymmetric although some people argue because the the spinning of it that you'd and that you'd see one side a little hot a little little different than the other one - yeah but it's but being connected it's it's pictures you're right and yeah and I want to ask you another question cuz I we could I wouldn't mind talking a little bit about your impressions of say man versus unmanned or human - versus on human space travel I when I see pictures from the Rovers I almost feel like I'm on Mars more than if a man was on Mars or ugly I'm with you yeah I felt that about the Pluto mission yeah every time I'm sitting in that control I feel like I am in that probe approaching this because the cameras part of the probe it's not separate from the probe it's an integral part of it yeah and and yeah and so I think the notion that we stuck to this planet can be at the same time able to experience black holes or in or you know and say the the pictures from the earliest history of the universe are just are inspiring because they change our pic our view of ourselves which is what the purpose of art is to I think I mean right as I change how to reflect your view of yourselves yeah absolutely we have that ability as a species to be able to look inwards and part of looking inward is looking outwards yeah understanding and relating to what is inside us yeah you know one thing that interested me about you given that it looked seemed to me that you're a tinkerer either built you like you've this Pat this is patented right it's here yeah an inventor I love it I sit in my little workshop and I fiddle around and make stuff now but but I wonder that's what surprised me because as a if I understand your astronomical work its theoretical right mmm no not really oh really oh I was an experimentalist on my PhD is about spectroscopy and looking at movements of lines but not building spectral yeah the whole bit yeah I built the spectrometer the sila stack that went with it to direct the light into it and I built the electronics very crude electronics in the 1970s which process the information no it must be it was oh yeah I was experimental PhD but you have to bring some theory of course but I don't you okay that makes more sense I just seem to me that given everything else I knew about you that I would have been surprised if your science wasn't involved in in building and and and and including the electronics to some extent yeah I hated it I hated my electronics because it was very crude and didn't always work well what about the electronics of the guitar which I understand you wired differently yeah well how did that come about well I had my dad see my dad's an electronics engineer so I really had a great start there told me about everything he told me what series in parallel meant and I wasn't as good as he was ever you know he just lived and breathed electric currents and or your ladies and stuff me but he taught me that so it makes it very good sense that we rewire the guitar well we wired the guitar in a way that was different from anyone else at the time and but it was always his idea and it was probably both our idea yeah and what was looking I kind of knew what I was what I was looking for which was a breadth of sound from the Utara but my dad was there to help me find what I was looking for that's fascinating I well fascinated me that people who do do that professionally hadn't hadn't done that I guess it was it because what we what do you think was it because they weren't musicians or because they well they've clearly musicians but well it's hard to know why someone has a new idea well they did pretty good you know the people at fender and the people that gives them did a pretty damn good job you know I was just finding variations little corners that people hadn't explored before when I also look back at your scientific history I was just in Tenerife a actually with my friend of filmmaker Werner Herzog and we were up at the at the solar observatory but it was of course I've been up there before yeah and but this day was beautiful amazing because it was of course completely covered in miss and it's picked up we got some incredible photographs I'll send you a few burners wife as it was a photographer I love the of the observatory coming out of the mist if you don't you know I lived there and yeah yeah I just part of my heart is up there I love it up there any Sonya it's an amazing it's like cerveteri blossomed yeah because you wake up very often and you are above the clouds it's a sea of clouds so beautiful well when I was in the mist I was wondering well that's not great if you're a solar astronomer or but was that a rare day or or scenery the mist is below doesn't generally rise that hyn yeah you do get changed it even snowed on that on the Ontario on the mountain and something were there so in fact we couldn't go up the top because they closed it if there's no right and you get this Colima as well which gets in the way you get this dust from the Sahara that's the other problem you get in Tenerife but on a good day without any of that and with all the clouds below you it's heaven yeah it's Evan yeah yeah gone back about three times and it's just each time how beautiful and but you spend a year there he's there on and off the observation yes and did you speak Spanish before I entered a little bit but I learned a bit from being there actually there's another connect interesting connection in our in our dialogues with people given the cover of one of the album's is an astounding science right and any look yeah yeah okay yeah and so if Shelley glasha was a friend of colleague of mine a Nobel prize-winning physicist said it was astounding science that got him into into science and interest and did you was that so astounding science fiction yeah yeah yes did did you did you be that was or was that your doing putting another cup actually Roger found that yeah he found it because we were both science fiction buffs when we were kids and yeah he found that and we got in touch with Frank Kelly Frese who painted that peach here and he we commissioned him to do a version for us the original picture had at him the robot which we call Frank after he's created yeah these days the original picture had this hand of the robot he's holding it up and it's there's blood coming from the soldier that he's picked up yeah but what he's saying apparently is fix it daddy oh really he's not like a monster he's someone who's he's like a young robot who's done this stuff and doesn't realize what he's done the damage these caused oh so there's an innocence about Frank which people don't always realize I know a lot of people got very scared about him when they were kids it's funny you know even you see that on them on The Simpsons you know they have an episode with a it's kid of of the robot on news of the world but yeah so we got Frank to do this Peter he did his - one for the front cover and one for the inside because it was a gatefold yeah yeah and the inside shows what's happening from the incident on arena where the robot is reaching in and pulling us out oh that's so great it's a great story yes stranger there's a sequel in my sequel that there's a the story continues because Frank passed away sadly a few years ago but we're very much in contact with his wife and she always comes to see us when we play it's nearby and just recently the original artwork has surfaced for that PT a-- so we're hoping to get it you know keep it from our our archives oh good oh well lovely thing to have yeah what both so both you and Roger were science-fiction fans you again oh yeah I wonder again I I like science fiction and one it's hard to know once again chicken-and-egg you like science fiction because your interests in science or the science fiction inspire you to to be interested in the science it's just all at the same time that's pretty well as a kid you just open on you know just everything I loved I picked up every bit of science fiction I could yeah I used to like John Windham was a British so yeah I read every single one of his books you know old penguin books when they yeah yeah exactly and and although the you know I wrote a book called a physical structure actually Stephen Hawking wrote the foreword for it and he said there that science fiction like science inspires the human imagination really yeah and but what I've learned since then of course the great part of what makes science fiction good if it's good is the story it's what the science is there but it's not what makes it it what makes it see it's good I like the Frank like the robot I mean that's a poignant thing that you can relate to mmm I mean the robot is there it's nice but the story of the I agree yeah it's always the human side which makes it worthwhile any I mean I've my science fiction song 39 and if you know how it's gonna ask you about the same kind of thing you anticipated there's there's a scientific phenomenon there if you're not you know the the time-dilation yeah exactly yeah well and you want to I mean you always wanted to write a song with it well it was just in my mind but what fired me up was not the fact that the the physics made you you lose time what would this do to you as a human being how would that experience be if you came back from a trip and all your relatives were dead and you're looking at your descendents yeah how would that be so to me it's a human song it's going to science fiction skeleton if you like but it's about human beings well it's again that interweaving of the human experience yes science and I think that's essential and that that and and and too often people think science is out there or the universe is out there and we're here and there's no relationship and and and and and in in in that book you have I as you know I point out that every atom in our body is came from a star that exploded we we are the cosmos we have that connection we are Stardust yeah we are we are indeed us as some as Joni Mitchell see I quoted that my thesis yeah that was the yeah that was the yeah you see it on the title page well it's it's it's been a pleasure to talk to you about everything from from science to go through I could to I wish we had a lot longer and I did a lot of quite Asians and a lot of discussion it's just nice to spend time with you and I really appreciate it too isn't really stimulating we'll we'll do it again I hope you'll come see us in Phoenix and and just keep it's just it just keep any wing what you're doing it's great thanks a lot thank you bless you the origins podcast is produced by Lawrence Krauss Nancy doll Amelia Huggins John and Don Edwards and Rob's EPS directed and edited by Gus and Luke Horta audio by Thomas a misen web designed by Redman Media Lab animation by tomahawk visual effects and music by Rick Alice to see the full video of this podcast as well as other bonus content visit us at patreon.com slash origins podcast

Channel: The Origins Podcast

Views: 29,001

Keywords: The Origins Podcast, Lawrence Krauss, The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss, The Origins Project, Science, Podcast, Culture, Physicist, Video Podcast, Physics, brian may, brian may 2019, brian may interview 2019

Id: V9c16t7ywNc

Length: 31min 14sec (1874 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 02 2019