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.

Scientists on the TV

Scientists on the TV: in my opinion they need to have personality, and if it is a bit eccentric so much the better: a bland personality and a subject like science is going to be a turn off. The late Patrick Moore was great because he was terrifically knowledgeable and a passionate educator. His correspondences with keen schoolboys could be unending as Chris Lintott remembered on the Life Scientific, listen here and he brought many children to astrology by writing books as well as by being a posh uncle figure on T.V.

There are many pictures of Patrick Moore as a fat old dear, when he was young he was rather handsome.

Chris Lintott does the Sky at Night now and he is very good himself. I like his enthusiasm for getting the public involved in classifying stars (and there are lots left to classify!) click here to find the site to start classifying.

Prof Brian Cox is very good because he has an attractive voice and has enough personality without making the show about himself. I used to dislike his crew for making B.C. look gorgeous everywhere he went, bathed in a golden glow from a lovely sunset in the desert/ up a volcano etc. but in his last series they let other human beings have their turn in the golden glow, children, young girls, old men, the lot. In this series BC's thesis seems to be that the whole point of the human journey, from our earliest wrigglings in the primordial soup  is.... space exploration! But I haven't watched the last episode so maybe I have misinterpreted it. It seems ironic that he tells you the meaning of our lives is the ability to explore the universe while the cameraman is shooting National Geographic-style pictures of goat-herders and nomad children who are too busy scratching a living from the dry earth to be interested in space exploration. So what about these people, Brian? No point to their lives?

Now Brian Cox is attractive to look at as long as you don't dwell on his mouth: the rest of him is fine and I like him in jeans and T-shirts. The best thing is that he is really not thinking about what he looks like.

Prof Alice Roberts has been taken on by my University, Birmingham, to spread the word about science to the masses, and I can't get on with her at all. She is too cute for words with her big smiley smile. I love her clothes and jewellery, hate her over-enunciated voice, and find everything she says boring and unclear possibly because if you take her away from anthropology, which is her subject, she isn't that confident. I liked her doing Wild Swimming, but I was already a convert (in theory rather than practice), and I daresay everyone else found it a bit bland. She is a presenter first and a scientist second, sadly.

James Burke (still with us, but not seen on TV) was very good at explaining science and communicating its importance without being a bore. Possibly he was over-exposed in the 1970s and he needed to be saved for short doses. Interestingly, he was at one time a teacher of English as a Foreign Language (like me) and his degree was in Middle English, not science, but he became well-known as a science writer and a consultant to a SETI project. (After years of watching science programmes I know what this means).

Nobody was a better presenter than Jacob Brunowski. His sentences were based on a lot of thought. Jacob Bronowski was a Polish-Jewish British mathematician, biologist, historian of science, theatre author, poet and inventor. Wikipedia

He had a good way of stopping after sentences and waiting for the next one to form in his mind. Not many do that these days, which is a shame. 

I wish we had more ecologists on TV. There was an excellent programme on the global threat to habitats on the radio last night: an entrancing conversation by very committed grownups: sad and serious though. Please try to spare some time to listen : Shared Planet

whoops: forgot to link to a personal review of science progs and science fiction on TV by Brian Cox, with Alice Roberts and Brian Blessed.

Quick: only here for 1 month