Professor Michele Dougherty, scientist

17:12Lauren Laverne:And it took a couple of years for me to feel that I had caught up. and if it hadn't been for the fact that my dad was an engineer and was able to help me, I don't think I could have managed it. Did you ever doubt yourself, ever feel like giving up? Always. Yeah, those first two years were really difficult. What kept you going? Not wanting to let my dad and my mum down but also not wanting to let one of the professors in the department down. He's still alive, his name's Manfred Halberg and he took a real chance on me. He was head of physics and he said, yeah, let's give it a go. So I didn't want to let people down.

17:50Lauren Laverne:But also I'm quite competitive. So once I start something, I want to complete it. It's time for some more music, if you wouldn't mind. Your third choice today. What's next for us? OK, my third choice is Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto No. 1. Frank Peter Zimmerman is playing. And when I was little, my mom and dad took me to a classical music concert. We were sitting in the front row. And this was the piece that was played. And I sat there thinking, I want to do that. And just afterwards, I then started learning how to play the violin. And I remember my mom and dad would come to, I was part of a youth orchestra, and they would come along and listen.

18:32Lauren Laverne:And the looks on their faces, you know, they tried desperately to be proud of the music they were hearing, but they knew what it was supposed to sound like. But they would come along and they would cheer and clap at the end. I think I played for four or five years and I realised I was never going to be that good. So I then stopped. But every time I hear this piece of music, I have this vision of myself as a little child sitting in the front row thinking, I want to do that.

19:31ORCHESTRA PLAYS

20:01Michele Dougherty:Part of the third movement of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto No. 1, performed by Frank-Peter Zimmerman with the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Lauren Mazel. Well, Michelle Doherty, you went on to get both a master's and a PhD in applied mathematics. What was your career plan back then?

20:21Lauren Laverne:I didn't really have one, actually. All I knew when I went to university was that I loved maths. And then by the time I'd finished my honours, I realised I really enjoyed physics as well. For me, maths was a little bit too dry. I saw physics and my mathematician friends, and I'm not going to be happy with me, but I saw physics as solving real life problems. But I went ahead and got a PhD in applied maths and I just then wanted to do something different. So I went to Germany on a two year fellowship.

20:55Michele Dougherty:So this was at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. What were you working on there?

21:00Lauren Laverne:So I was working on an applied maths problem, looking at there's a wind that blows off from the sun called the solar wind and trying to understand how it blows off, how it interacts with planets and bodies in its path. But I'd never looked at a piece of data in my life until I went to Imperial College. Oh, my goodness. I know. I know.

21:21Michele Dougherty:So how did you get on? How did you find it? Yeah. I sort of bubbled my way through.

21:28Lauren Laverne:You looked a bit green there for a second. Yeah, it is really interesting to think about it. You know, I'm now responsible for an instrument that measures a magnetic field. I'd never looked at a piece of data in my life until I went to Imperial. So quite a risk taker, quite a chance taker. Yes, I think that part of who I am, if you don't take chances and say yes to things that you don't know how to do, you will never find out if you can or not.

21:56Michele Dougherty:I do want to ask about moving as well because obviously you know you love South Africa you've just been back for Christmas you're very close to your family there I know you had to make the move to progress in your career and move to Germany and then came to the UK how was it leaving?

22:13Lauren Laverne:It was very difficult because there were no cell phones so we used to write weekly letters to each other I remember I'd save all my coins so I could phone home on a Sunday to find out how things were and I would save up every year to be able to go back for Christmas. And that's when I grew up. Right. But, you know, I never meant, I was never planning to stay. You know, I was in Germany for two years and then I thought, oh, yeah, I'll come to the UK for a couple of years. And then I got involved in spacecraft missions. What choice did I have?

22:45Michele Dougherty:All right, Michelle, let's have some more music. Your fourth choice today. What are we going to hear next and why are you taking this to the island?

22:52Lauren Laverne:So this is a Christmas carol. We Three Kings of Orient Are. I was putting this list together just before Christmas, and I love Christmas. I love Christmas carols. I love singing Christmas carols. And it reminded me of when I was a kid, how excited we used to be about Christmas. And I only realized once I was a teenager, but my dad used to dress up as Father Christmas. And he would ring a little bell. And, you know, my mom would close all the doors so that we couldn't rush out and go and greet Father Christmas. And we would be told that Father Christmas had sent one of his friends just to drop the presents off.

23:32Lauren Laverne:Isn't this sung from the perspective of three astronomers as well? You're right, actually. It is. Until you pointed that out to me, I hadn't realized that. It must have been in my head, but I hadn't realized it. But that was the one I most enjoyed singing at Christmas carol services. So clearly when I was a kid I wanted to be an astronomer, I just didn't realise it.

24:27Michele Dougherty:We three kings of Orient are the Robert Shaw Chamber Singers. Michelle Dochersey, in 1991, you joined Imperial College London as a postdoctoral researcher. You started work on the Ulysses Project. That was a joint venture between NASA and the European Space Agency, which was the first mission to study the environment of space above and below the poles of the sun. What was your task?

24:52Lauren Laverne:To put a magnetic field model together so that as we were approaching Jupiter and flew by, we would know what kind of measurements we were going to take. I didn't know what a magnetic field model was and how to put it together, but it sounded really cool, so I said yes. And it was so exciting. and we went out to the jet propulsion lab and we saw the data coming in and after that I was just caught. There was nothing else I was then able to do after that.

25:23Michele Dougherty:And you hadn't known what a magnetic field model was? What is it exactly?

25:28Lauren Laverne:So it's a mathematical model, so that's where my maths background helped. It's a mathematical model that you put together that you can fly the spacecraft through and you can predict what the actual measurements are going to be. What was the data saying? What was it telling you? The measurements that we made confirmed that there's a solid core and there's a process called a dynamo that generates the magnetic field. The Jupiter results were fortuitous in a way. We used Jupiter to get above the poles of the sun. And so we just took data while we were there. So we saw the northern and southern lights at Jupiter.

26:08Lauren Laverne:We saw the signals in the magnetic field that were generating them. and that's the first time we had the lights as well as the signals that were actually generating them. And I was so excited. My first paper that had data in it. And so that's when my enthusiasm for the outer planet started.

26:30Michele Dougherty:In 1997 then, Michelle, the Cassini mission launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Cassini was a probe that had been devised to study Saturn and its system. What were the scientists hoping to find out?

26:44Lauren Laverne:So the plan was they were going to orbit around Saturn and its moons for at least four years. In the end, the mission was extended for 13 years in total. No spacecraft had orbited around Saturn before. So we didn't really know what we were going to discover. There was a real focus on one of the moons called Titan, which has an atmosphere. and we thought at the time that the atmosphere of Titan was very similar to what the Earth's atmosphere was like when we first formed. So that was going to be a real focus. My boss at the time was David Southwood and he saw something in me that I didn't know I had.

27:21Lauren Laverne:What was that, do you think, looking back? He, and I don't know how he saw it and I've never actually asked him, but he realised that I was a people person and that I could make difficult decisions and I could take people with me. And I didn't realise that until he asked me to step in for him as lead of an instrument on the Cassini spacecraft. That's when I realised I could do it and he saw it in me before I did.

27:49Michele Dougherty:It's time for your next piece of music, Michelle. Disc number five, what's it going to be? This is Dancing Queen by ABBA.

27:55Lauren Laverne:So this takes me back to my teenage years. My sister and I loved ABBA. So I remember there was one summer in particular where we spent most of the summer lying on the couches, learning all the Abba songs. So even today, we hear an Abba song come on and we sing along. I know all the words. Dancing Queen, I think, epitomizes for me the joy of that summer.

28:39You can dance You can dance Having the time of your life She's a girl

28:51Michele Dougherty:Abba and Dancing Queen taking you back to singing along with your sister Susie, Professor Michelle Doherty. So Michelle, not long after Cassini launched. Your boss left Imperial. He asked you to take over as principal investigator in charge of the magnetometer on board the probe, a key instrument on this mission. Why exactly?

29:12Lauren Laverne:The magnetic field threads the environment. And so everything that goes on in the environment is governed by what the magnetic field is doing. So you really need to understand the magnetic field. But in addition, if you measure a magnetic field outside of a planet, it allows you to get an understanding about what's going on inside. And I love the way you said it's a very important instrument. I always tell everyone it's the most important instrument on the spacecraft and they all laugh at me.

29:41Michele Dougherty:2005, that was when the breakthrough happened and it came out of the Cassini data. Take me through it. What did you find? Seven months after we got there,

29:51Lauren Laverne:we flew past one of the little moons called Enceladus. didn't expect to see much at all i must confess we didn't look at the data until about 24 hours later but we saw something in our magnetic field data that was a bit strange it was the first flyby we had done we weren't sure if our data was calibrated properly and so we held back we didn't say anything because we knew there was a second flyby a month later and on the second flyby we saw a similar signature. And we also saw a large increase in water group irons. We saw lots of noise in the data and only a magnetometer person can get excited about noise in the data.

30:33Lauren Laverne:But you can use that noise to work out there was a big increase of water group irons. And I thought, OK, if it's really there, let's see if we can persuade the project to take us close on a third flyby which was planned in July of that year. So I remember I flew out to the Jet Propulsion Lab. There was a science meeting that was going to take place. And I was going to try and persuade them. It was going to be difficult to do that because one of the things that we did in the six and a half years it took us to get to Saturn, we planned every second of every day's worth of observations. Everyone knew what the instrument was going to do.

31:08Lauren Laverne:And here I was coming in saying, oh, let's just change all of that. So the Jet Propulsion Lab is based in California. So I flew from London to California, which is an eight-hour time difference, and I arrived the day before the meeting. So I was standing in line at Starbucks to get a coffee because I was jet-lagged to hell. And the man in the line in front of me, whose name was Jerry Jones, was responsible for the Cassini spacecraft. And he turned to me and he said, Michelle, what are you doing here? I wasn't expecting to see you. And I explained to him why I was there. And he rubbed his hands together in glee and he said, I've always wanted to go closer to a planetary body than anyone else.

31:48Lauren Laverne:So I knew I had one vote in my back pocket. So I made the case. It wasn't consensus, but the project agreed that they would change the flyby. So instead of being a thousand kilometers away, they were going to change it so it was 173 kilometers above the surface.

32:06Michele Dougherty:Okay.

32:08Lauren Laverne:For two or three nights before that flyby, I didn't sleep. Because if they hadn't found anything, no one would ever have believed anything, I said again. Well, that's probably a slight extreme statement, but I was a little bit concerned. And then what we found was instead of it being an atmosphere, there was a water vapor plume coming off from the South Pole. Other instruments saw there were cracks at the South Pole. There was internal heat leaking out from the South Pole. and there was organic material in the plume.

32:42Michele Dougherty:So what does that tell us about Enceladus and what are the implications? I mean, and that is a massive discovery, isn't it? It was a massive discovery.

32:51Lauren Laverne:So if you're looking for life or habitability in our solar system, our understanding of how life forms is you need liquid water, you need a heat source and you need organic material. But you need those three things to be stable enough over a long enough period of time that something can happen. So we had three of those things. So I think that and some of the observations which the NASA Galileo spacecraft made at the moons of Jupiter have changed our thoughts about where you can find life in the solar system. There was a real focus on planets close to the sun because if you're looking for liquid water, you need to be close to the sun so that water on the surface is liquid.

33:36Michele Dougherty:It's not thinking of it as rather than it could be inside. Absolutely.

33:41Lauren Laverne:And so I think one of the most important realisations planetary scientists have come to in the last 30 years is you can go much further out in the solar system, find liquid water, but it's not on the surface. It's underneath the surface.

33:55Michele Dougherty:Michelle, I know that you lost your parents quite close together in your early 40s. Yes. You must have thought of them at that moment, and I'm sure those big moments in your life since I just wish they were there. What would they have made of it, do you think?

34:07Lauren Laverne:You just want to phone them up and tell them, you know. Yes, it has saddened me because they've just missed out on so many things. And I still, every once in a while, I still want to phone them and say, guess what happened today?

34:22Michele Dougherty:Let's have some more music, Professor Michelle Doherty. It's your sixth choice today. What are we going to hear?

34:27Lauren Laverne:So that actually touches on what we've just been talking about. And the sixth choice is called Dance With My Father. Luther Vandross sings it. It's a really sad song. It talks about loss. But also it confirms how lovely it is to be loved. So if you listen to the words of this, this man is talking about having lost his father. But clearly the life that he had with his father was spectacular. So it's a combination of loss, but also being really fortunate to have been loved like that.

35:28Lauren Laverne:Spin me around till I fell asleep

35:33Michele Dougherty:Luther Vandross and Dance With My Father. So, Michelle, your current mission is to Jupiter. It is. That's the next place on the list, the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer mission, known as JUICE, launched in 2023. What are you hoping to achieve?

35:48Lauren Laverne:We are going to focus on three of the moons of Jupiter. The three moons where we're almost certain that they have liquid water oceans under the surface. And we're going to go into orbit around one of them, the moon called Ganymede. And that moon is a magnetometer person's dream. Why? Because it's the only moon in the solar system that has an internal dynamo field. So if you stood on the surface of Ganymede with a compass needle, it would be like on the Earth, it would point to the north pole of the Earth. So it's the only moon in the solar system that has. So why wouldn't I want to go there? But the most difficult measurements that we are going to need to make are the very small signals coming from a liquid water ocean.

36:33Lauren Laverne:So the way that it works is if you've got a conducting body and you've got a magnetic field that is moving and changing around that conducting body, that changing magnetic field induces electrical currents in the conducting body. Those electrical currents generate a magnetic field and we need to measure those. And they're tiny. So when I lose sleep, that's what I lose sleep over. We've built the instrument that can do it, but can we separate all those effects out? It's like trying to find needles in a haystack that are changing shape and colour all the time. Oh, I don't like the sound of that.

37:10Lauren Laverne:But it's going to be cool. When we do it, it's going to be really cool. And what will they tell us exactly? So it will tell us how deep the ocean is, what its salt content is. Is it a global ocean? Is there a thick ice crust? And there were some observations that were made on the deep oceans on the Earth where bacteria was found at temperatures and pressures where you would never expect to find bacteria. Is that similar to something that is going on on the outer moons of Jupiter and Saturn? We won't find that out with juice. But what we will find out with juice is where we might want to land in the future, whether all three moons have these liquid water oceans.

37:57Lauren Laverne:Do they have organic material? You are younger than me. So in my lifetime, we will probably be able to say that the conditions are there at Jupiter's moons for life to be able to form. I'm not suggesting there's life like us out there, but bacteria, some kind of bacteria, I would be amazed if there wasn't.

38:23Michele Dougherty:Juice won't reach Jupiter until 2031. You'll be in your late 60s by that point, by the time the mission's complete. Do you think you'll still want to be involved at the current level you're at?

38:34Lauren Laverne:Yes. We first started thinking about a Juice-type mission in 2008. I want to see it through. But I see myself as sitting in the shade somewhere drinking a gin and tonic saying to the team, you did what? I would never have done something like that.

38:51Michele Dougherty:So the mission is going to run till 2035. I mean, how do you feel when a mission or a project comes to an end? How are you with endings?

39:00Lauren Laverne:It's really interesting, you know, the only end of mission that I've really gone through was Cassini. And it had been going on for 13 years. And the end of the mission in particular was very intense. We were flying, having a close flyby past Saturn every six and a half days. We were exhausted. And so we were almost relieved that it was going to come to an end. And then it did. and you suddenly realize that the last 25 years of your life, it's not over, but it will never be the same again. I remember I was out at the Jet Propulsion Lab and there was a screen showing a graph that had a big spike on it.

39:41Lauren Laverne:And as long as that spike was there, the spacecraft was talking to the Earth. And at the end of the mission, the spike disappeared. but then it came back again because the spacecraft had been trained to move itself so it could continue to talk to the earth no one had told cassini the mission was coming to an end and so it moved itself so it could continue to talk and then the tumbling got too great and it disappeared oh and when i give outreach talks i show that picture and every time i tell the story even now the hair on my arms are standing up and in. But it was like losing a family member.

40:18Michele Dougherty:I can imagine. I mean, I'm horribly sentimental and prone to anthropomorphised things. I'm going to be thinking about that when I'm trying to drift off to sleep later tonight. Thank you, Michelle.

40:27Lauren Laverne:I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I didn't want to do that to you. A lovely spacecraft trying to talk to you.

40:31Michele Dougherty:All right, Michelle, let's have some more music. This is disc number seven. What's next?

40:35Lauren Laverne:OK, so this is Parnas Angelicus. Dame Kiri Takanwa is singing it. I'm so jealous of people who can sing I remember when I was a child at school every year I would go and try out for the school choir and every year they would smile at me thank me for coming and ask me to come back next year never got into the school choir so this is partly jealousy but also just awe at listening to her voice

41:31Michele Dougherty:CHOIR SINGS

41:38Thank you.

42:04Michele Dougherty:Parnas Angelicas, composed by César Frank and performed by Dame Kirita Kanoa with the English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Barry Rose. Professor Michelle Doherty, the data that's coming back and the information that you're getting, it's a new frontier, isn't it, for space exploration? I wonder what your thoughts are on private space exploration companies. Positive in the main because it allows more launches to take place.

42:35Lauren Laverne:It enables the launches, the cost of launches to be cheaper. So it helps push the boundaries of what we launch and how we can launch. But a concern that I have is there are so many spacecraft up there now that we might get to a position where seeing the night sky and all its glory is going to be difficult. It's getting really crowded up there. There are old spacecraft which are no longer operating but are up there and one has to be really careful that the spacecraft you launch don't crash into these other spacecraft. So I think we need to take a deep breath and think really carefully about how much is being put up into space.

43:19Lauren Laverne:needs to be joined up thinking. And I don't think we've quite got there yet.

43:24Michele Dougherty:Elon Musk is a member of the Royal Society, Michelle. He's a controversial figure, in part because of his role in Donald Trump's Doge Efficiency Initiative, which cut science research budgets. Do you support his membership?

43:40Lauren Laverne:So I wasn't involved in the discussions or in the decision that was made. But once I heard that they had decided not to take it away from him, On thinking about it, I think it was the right decision because the reasons that he was awarded the fellowship, all that he had done for space launches and for spacecraft, those were still there. You know, he's done a lot for improving our ability to get into space. And so I think it was the right decision.

44:10Michele Dougherty:OK, Michelle, I wonder about your curiosity as a scientist. What drives it today? so much more to find out what do you do for fun

44:23Lauren Laverne:I was about to say I drink wine that's not the only thing I did hear that there's a wine fridge in your office I must confess when I became head of department at Imperial, head of physics seven years ago now I was one day into the job and I thought oh this is a difficult job so I thought I'm going to need some help so I bought a wine fridge which I hid behind a couch so no one could see it. And what was really interesting, you know, was the number of colleagues who would want to have meetings with me at five o 'clock in the afternoon because they knew about the wine fridge. I was very well behaved because I always drove home, so I'd never have more than a glass or half a glass of wine.

45:03Lauren Laverne:But we solved all of the world's problems in those meetings after five o 'clock in the afternoon.

45:09Michele Dougherty:Well, it's almost time to send you away to the island. Apparently, you're worried that there might be bananas.

45:14Lauren Laverne:Yes. So I'm really weird. I have two phobias. One of them is snakes and the other is bananas. Okay. I think they're linked. So when I was a kid in South Africa, we had a big banana tree in the garden. And a gardener would come in once a month just to chop things down if they needed to be chopped down. And he was trying to chop part of the banana tree down and he found a black mamba snake in the banana tree. This is one of the only snakes in the world that will go after you. And I don't know if it was that, but I'm terrified of snakes. and I just don't like bananas.

45:45Michele Dougherty:Okay.

45:46Lauren Laverne:People have said to me, would I ever eat a banana? And I would, my answer before you guys even approached me was I would only ever contemplate eating a banana if I was stuck on a desert island and there was nothing else to eat. Oh dear. Here we go. So you aren't going to put me through that, are you? The prophecy has come to pass. I know, I know. Terrible. I can't bear the taste or the smell.

46:09Michele Dougherty:It's really strange. We'll have to hope that yours is an island of coconuts only. Thank you. Thank you. If you could do that for me, it'd be much appreciated.

46:16Lauren Laverne:Beyond the bananas, Michelle, how do you think you'll get on the island? I'll certainly stare up at the night sky. I'm not very good at spotting what things are, so I've got a secret. What's that? People come up to me and say, oh, what's that planet? And I always say, oh, I've just got to quickly go to the toilet. I'll be back in a sec. and I've got an app on my phone that tells you what's just above the horizon. I'm assuming my app on my phone won't work on the desert island. Indeed not. You won't have your phone, I'm afraid. So you can have to... So I will just have to make it up.

46:47Michele Dougherty:Spot the bear in the plant. Make it up. Why not? Why not? That's another way of expanding our notions of what the sky could hold. Absolutely. Well, we'll let you have one more track before we send you to the desert island. Your final choice today, please.

47:01Lauren Laverne:So this was difficult for me. And the month that before I had to give you my list, every time I heard a song, I was thinking, no, that's got to be that song. So the way that I decided on this last one was how I would feel if I was stuck on a desert island for the rest of my life and I never heard something like this. So my eighth choice is Pie Jesu performed by Malachi Bayo.

47:40Piesum, piesum, piesum, piesum. Oh

48:29P.A.

48:30Michele Dougherty:Yezu

48:50Michele Dougherty:What will it be?

48:51Lauren Laverne:I've said Lord of the Rings, partly because my dad read the whole book to us when we were kids. And it just takes you into fantasy land. But also the good thing about it is it's such a long book that by the time you get to the end, you can start from the beginning and it's like starting from that again.

49:10Michele Dougherty:It sounds like the perfect choice. You can also have a luxury item. What would you like? It would need to be wine, please. Oh, OK. Any more direction other than that?

49:19Lauren Laverne:Reds, whites? So, champagne, please. Indeed. A really nice Chardonnay. Okay. And the beautiful red blends that you get in South Africa. Fabulous. Done.

49:30Michele Dougherty:Thank you. And I'll give you a solar-powered wine fridge so everything's at the correct temperature. Fantastic. I love that. We're not animals, Michelle. Come on. There might be bananas there. You might need a stiff drink at the end of the day. Oh, clearly.

49:41Lauren Laverne:I was just thinking of that. Yes. No, I thought you said it was an island with coconuts. I'm hoping.

49:46Michele Dougherty:There are no guarantees in this game. No, that's true. And finally, Michelle, which one of the eight tracks that you've shared with us today would you save from the waves first if you needed to?

49:55Lauren Laverne:Oh, I think probably Elga's Cello Concerto, because it's one of the first pieces of classical music that I came to love. And because it's the instrument that I think makes the most beautiful music when it comes to classical music. and because it makes me think of all the lovely things we did as a child. So that one please.

50:21Michele Dougherty:Professor Michelle Doherty, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Thank you very much.

50:42Michele Dougherty:Hello, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Michelle. I really do think the champagne will help fortify her against snakes and, yes, bananas. We've cast away many space experts, including NASA's Head of Science, Dr Nicky Fox, and the astronomer, Carl Sagan. Astronauts Tim Peake and Chris Hadfield are in our archive too. The studio manager for today's programme was Steve Greenwood. The researcher was Fiona Woods. The executive production coordinator was Susie Roilands. The content editor was Mugabe Turia, and the producer was Paula McGinley. Next time, my guest will be the costume and creature effects designer, Tara Zafar.

51:18Michele Dougherty:I do hope you'll join us.

51:34Michele Dougherty:How does someone invent a political theory that reshapes the map of the world? How do you get to a scientific breakthrough that saves thousands of lives

51:41Lauren Laverne:or create works of art that stand the test of time? How have brilliant thinkers through history done their best thinking and what can we learn from them? From BBC Radio 4, it's the second series of Human Intelligence with me, Naomi Alderman.

51:57Michele Dougherty:From Karl Marx to Marie Curie, from Emily Bronte to Leonardo da Vinci, how did those exceptional minds do their work and are there ways of thinking we can emulate today?

52:08Lauren Laverne:To find out, listen to Human Intelligence on BBC Sounds.