Begin Again Moments: The Power of the Sun & Moon | Dame Maggie Aderin-Pocock & Professor Brian Cox

0:00Ultra Running Shoes are all about space. The space to go further. To feel better. To do something you never thought possible. And this space starts with Ultra Fit. Unlike traditional running shoes, Ultra Fit gives toes more room to move naturally. So every step is strong, balanced, and comfortable. Whatever you're lacing up for, stay out there. With Ultra. Shop now at ultrarunning.com. That's A-L-T-R-A running dot com. My father loved the moon because it was his friend when he was in Nigeria because it helped him when he was cycling across the savannah on unlit roads. Oh, wow. It lit the wave for him.

0:40Yes. Is that why he loved the moon? I think so, yes. I love that. Yeah, but the thing is, and also growing up in London, because we were sort of growing up in inner city London, so you can't see many stars and things like that. But you see the moon shining through. last night, just moved to a new house and it was quite cloudy but I just saw a patch of moonlight so I ran up and looked out the window and there it is shining and it just lifts my heart and so yeah, even if you can't see the stars you can see the moon and the idea that people had gone there as well Yes, it is mad, isn't it? The other night there was a meteor shower wasn't there and they said look north and you might be able to see it and Michael and I went outside and we looked north we saw five shooting stars five in an hour it was unreal we're out of town with no street lights or anything it was look, goosebumps absolutely mind blowing so was it your dad then that gave you the kind of moon bug I think so so my dad was sort of mentioning this at the moon and also because I'm an insomniac sort of growing up yeah you sort of you're wandering around the house when everybody else is asleep and you open the curtain and the moonlight shines in so so it's his friend it was my friend and so um yeah my father always called himself a self-certified lunatic yes he threw that because when it said I um I was reading about you and it said that you were a lunatic and I was like well that's a bit route and then I and then it came to me I was like oh lunar yes under the lunar cycle um because um he always said you know the self-certified is very important because so I'm not just a lunatic I'm a self-certified lunatic so I've brought this upon myself and I think it was similar for him he just loved the moon and growing up I used to go to the top of the flats and look out and across London and you could see London lit up by you know sort of moonlight and it's beautiful So, yes, and I always say it's hereditary because my father passed it on to me and I've passed it on to my daughter.

2:49Yeah. And so we go outside. We moved into the new house recently and I said, oh, look, there's the moon. Oh, stop that, mother. The old neighbours used to hear me howling at the moon. No, I'm 16 now. We're not howling at the moon anymore. Harry, come on. Always howl at the moon. Come on. I know. I think it's necessary. And it is so wonderful. It's liberating and cathartic. I got slightly obsessed with these supermoons and I've never really got into astrology or the moon, but I did know from having three babies that babies often deliver on a full moon. Every midwife I met told me that if the due date was near a full moon, I would probably, you know, go into labour on a full moon.

3:45And then they also told me that the police braced themselves. Yes. Is that true? Yes. One of the things I was exploring, I wrote a book about the moon and it was my love letter to the moon. It was celebrating and it was looking at sort of, you know, lunacy and the fact that, you know, and some police forces do actually put extra cops on the beat when there's a full moon. and it's quite interesting because it's cause and effect and we try and do it scientifically because you can say you're working in a hospital and something interesting happens and it happens to be a full moon, you remember that.

4:22But if something interesting happens and it's not a full moon, you might not remember it. So it's trying to look at sort of the evidence and the sort of yes, but I do like the idea. But also a friend of mine that was a social worker, she also said that they used to have more call-outs for disruptions in the home on a full moon. They would all brace themselves for that. Oh, the phone's ringing more. Yeah, no one. And I thought that's fascinating because we are made of water. Yes. And am I right in saying, does the moon affect tides? It affects tides. And so large masses of water. Well, actually, the thing is, gravity, the way gravity works, it affects everything.

5:00So, for instance, when I jump up, I fall down because the Earth's gravity is pulling on me. Yes. But also, my gravity is pulling on the Earth. Now, my gravity compared with the Earth's gravity is insignificant. But people do say if everybody jumped up at the same time, I still don't think it would have much difference. But it's a large mass moving. And so, yes, then it could have, you might see a noticeable effect. But yes, and so there is this interaction, the gravitational force. But it does, yes, pull the water because the water is fluid. when you have sort of the moon on one side and the sun on the other for instance then the water gets all elongated and you get high tides and there's lots of things that spawn when there's a full moon so yes it does have an influence.

5:45So they spawn at full moon? Yes quite a few creatures So that makes sense about having a baby at full moon? Well yes but you see you try to work out why they spawn at full moon and I think it is almost like timing It's quite interesting. If you look back in time, people often use the moon as a calendar because it's of the order of a month. And so it's a nice cycle. And there are all sorts of things like menstruation and things like that. We sync together. So, yes. Think about it. Yeah. And the thing is, it's nice to sort of analyse and get an understanding of it. But, yes, I find it fascinating.

6:20There's something very satisfying about this synchronicity in the world that when you start looking for it, it's everywhere. Yes. And we are, as humans, we're akin to patterns. We pick them up and we want to home in on them. We like that. Well, it's order. Yes. In the chaos. Yes. There's some kind of order in a pattern that makes you feel safe. Yes. Yes. I went to see Brian Cox the other day. Yes. And the first half, I was like, oh, my God, I'm trying to remember all of this. I thought I should have taken a notebook and pen. But then the second half, he put it into practice. Yes. What it all meant.

7:03Yeah. And what it did and why. Yeah. And I thought, God, this is it. This is so interesting. And that's what you do. There are very deep questions about why the universe is the way that it is. And if you think what I mean by that is that so we know that 13.8 billion years ago, very close to the Big Bang, All the universe was was just the simplest elements, hydrogen and helium. So it's the stuff in party balloons, right? And hydrogen, which is the stuff that goes into water. And that's it, right? There's nothing else. It's just a soup of those things. And just some simple forces of nature. And that's it.

7:4313.8 billion years later, those atoms have ended up in patterns like us that can have a conversation. so the universe can observe itself and think about itself through us here on earth right it's a remarkable property of the universe so you say why that why is it that the laws of nature and the building blocks are such that they can get just this gas right can end up in patterns like human beings could you talk me through what happened to the hydrogen and helium and how it evolved because it's such an interesting way that they came together to create something else which created something else and it's the grandest of stories it's amazing so you have this um and this is part of the heart of the show really you have this hydrogen helium just these gases right um and that but the slight differences in they're almost just featureless the universe is almost There's nothing.

8:46But it's got these little bits where there's a bit more gas here and a bit less here and a bit more there and a bit less. That's it. Tiny little variations. Then gravity, as the universe goes, expands and cools. Gravity can allow them to collapse into galaxies and stars. And that, by the way, is a huge story about how does that work. But essentially, just where it's a bit denser, gravity takes over and they collapse and they make stars. And stars shine by sticking lighter elements into heavier elements. So the sun at the moment is making hydrogen into helium. And that's why it's doing it. It's just making heavier elements.

9:27But then at the end of its life, when it runs out of hydrogen to make into helium, it starts making carbon and oxygen and those things. So those things out of which we are made come from generations of stars that assembled them and then died through that stuff out into the universe. And then gravity takes over and it recollapses that into new stars and then ultimately planets. And that's the story of the universe. So the story is 13.8 billion years, of which the Earth has been around four and a half billion, by the way. So to get a scale of it, you end up from this simplest of elements. The heavy elements get made in stars.

10:10Gravity collapses it all back together again. And ultimately you get places like this. And some of it, by the way, so you've got like gold, you've got like a gold ring or something, a wedding ring or something like that. If you're listening now or watching, you look at that. It was one of the great mysteries, actually. Where is that made? Because we didn't quite understand it until very recently. Yes. So we thought it's made. Maybe it's made in supernova explosions when they explode. But then a few years ago, we had these experiments, and they're called gravitational wave experiments. And they're in their own right are amazing.

10:45So we can see things like black holes colliding and sending ripples out in the fabric of the universe, space and time. What happens when a black hole comes? So they merge into two black holes. So they become massive? A bigger black hole. But it's really violent. And so they make space and time ripple. And these things are called gravitational waves. And they go out. A friend of mine, Kip Thorne, actually got the Nobel Prize for this work, called it a storm in time. So this time storm goes. And we can measure it. So we saw one of these time storms in our detector. And it was a collision between these things called neutron stars, which are stars that are the mass of the sun.

11:26But they're collapsed to the size of a city. They're about 10 kilometers across. Wait, say that again. It's a star, actually more massive than the sun. Bigger than the sun, collapses. Until it's about the size of London. And are you talking about that's when it runs out of, so it dies and collapses into London? Gravity just collapses it. So you get these remarkable, they're like a single atomic nucleus, these things, really violent. The last step towards a black hole. If they get any bigger, they just go. But so these things are around. And we saw two of them collide. With these ripples. And we got our telescopes and sent them and looked in the sky and watched.

12:05And we saw gold being made. So we think that a lot of the gold, and this is this gold that you're wearing now, that came, a lot of it, perhaps most of it, from the collision between neutron stars. Isn't that amazing? And it ended up in Earth. Yeah. And then so it got made in these collisions. And then gravity collapses it. And we dig it up and make it into jewellery. It's part of that remarkable story.