Talk on search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence with Prof Brian Cox and Dr Adam Rutherford and film, Contact, at BFI

I do love our jaunts to the South Bank. I feel like going to lots of literary / cultural history things, but I rarely do, I like to see my literary heroes but I also like to expand my knowledge of what is going on in the world.

Adam Rutherford

Prof Cox didn't seem too lively last night, he said he had recently come back from Australia and his body didn't know what time it was; from my seat near the front clearly he was tired and longing to be at home on the sofa with the kids and the blooming missus. But Dr Rutherford is jolly super! He is a natural -born leader to whom orchestrating a large audience of questioners is a simple joy. He speaks easily and confidently and one judges his brain to be on tip-top form.  He kicked the conversation along and tried to prod old Coxy into wakefulness, and Coxy did his best. Sometimes Brian Cox is best when he is a bit acerbic, as he is with conspiracy theorists. He just cuts them short. I had already heard him say (on Monkey Cage which I have on my iPod) that he thinks intelligent life like us is incredibly rare, even though they have now found 2,000 planets in our galaxy which look good for supporting life, and he said that again, also tried to explain wormholes, and the fact that gravity doesn't exist.

40 years ago we sent a transmission into space, which is called the Arecibo message. Arecibo is in Puerto Rico (very beautiful trees) where the big radio telescope is. Cox and Rutherford explained the origin of the message and what it means.  It sounds a well thought-out message but we only transmitted it for 3 minutes!!

the Arecibo message

They both loved the film they introduced - Contact - with Jodie Foster playing a scientist they both approved of: single-minded, brave, fighting like a lion for funding, being done down by a senior man who wants all the glory after she's done all the work. She is obsessed with listening for a message from space. Other scientists think she's crazy, but the film is called Contact, and the scene where she at last hears something (loud!!!) is very exciting. It's directed by Zemeckis (Forest Gump) who is particularly strong on special effects and it is based on a book by Carl Sagan. Brian Cox seems to have been greatly impressed by Carl Sagan but the counter view seems to be that Carl Sagan was messiahnistic (OK that's not a word, is it?)

The film was 2.5 hours long and I was really uncomfortable in my seat too close to the front and way off to the side (it was cheap) but I was gripped the whole way through. Jodie Foster played a blinder and one felt for her so much.  I recommend this film as a story and a spectacle. I don't feel as though I am now convinced that there is intelligent life elsewhere but it did give me a glimpse into what scientists dream of. They dream of aliens who give them difficult puzzles to solve and behave like father-figures. In spite of the billions of people on our planet they feel lonely and think that there is an answer "out there". 

However, the film does point up the parallels between those who have faith in a God that no one can see or prove the existence of, and those who experience other phenomena ... but I don't want to give the plot away. See the movie !! Recommended by scientists!

Here is a lecture on genetics by Adam Rutherford.