:: gia’s blog ::

There have been many times over the years when I’ve been extremely proud of my lovely husband. His appearance on Newsnight the other night is right at the bloody top of the list. Delight with me in the massive smackdown he gives to Sir David King who, believe it or not, is the President of the British Association of the Advancement of Science. Seriously.

“On this day, of all days.”

Anyone following the CERN switch-on in the media may have seen the article in the Telegraph this week about how some physicists have been getting death threats. Brian was quoted as saying, “Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat.”

As of this writing, teh interwebs is alight with conversations about his quote and – again as of this writing- it’s the fourth most popular Digg. Brian’s been getting requests for interviews from all over the planet.

There are about three people behind these scares. They have no knowledge, but very loud voices. Anyone who has been following blog posts about CERN and the LHC will have seen JTankers pop up everywhere spewing shite. He always refers to the main centre of this crap, the LHC Concerns site.

The other day the “death threats” article was written about there. Brian responded:

Dear all,

I’m quoted in the article posted here as being rather abusive to people who are worried about the LHC – I’d like to clarify!

I certainly don’t think that people who are worried about new scientific endeavors are “tw*ts” ! Skepticism is a valuable and vital part of our society, and one which is perhaps sadly lacking in public debate. For the record, the concerns about LHC are certainly wrong from a scientific perspective – nature is rather more robust than we give her credit for, and nothing we can do at the low energies we can manage at LHC or anywhere else in the foreseeable future will affect us in any way. But – I would always encourage a rational debate about future advances in science, and in that sense I support the goals of this forum.

What I would say is that it is not sensible to hold an opinion in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Whilst I understand that much of the language of particle physics is opaque, there does come a time when it is worth accepting the views of experts. The analogy I would give is the design of aircraft wings – I am happy to trust an expert in aerodynamics to get it right rather than offer my own opinion about what shape they should be. It’s really the case that the particle physics community are sensible, rational human beings who go about their research because they believe that exploring the subatomic world is good for our civilization, not to mention interesting. It is also true that if anyone, including myself, had any doubt about the safety of what we are doing, we would stop immediately. I and all my colleagues consider our personal safety and the safety of our families to be FAR more important than the search for the Higgs particle – indeed, if the risk were even as high as 1 in a billion, or whatever people quote, then I would be campaigning with you to stop it.

But honestly – the case advanced against the LHC is based on the rather loud pronouncements of a couple of people who really do not have the knowledge to make them. This “jtankers” chap who posts all over the place began one statement claiming that we collide particles together at twice the speed of light, and Otto Rossler, whilst clearly a distinguished biochemist, has based his argument on a pretty basic error in General Relativity. Now I am not criticizing these gentlemen for offering an opinion, but wisdom comes from noticing when ones opinion is disproved by evidence. This is the key to science.

So, in summary – I support this forum as a place where skeptical voices can be raised, but skepticism must go hand in hand with rationality. When theories are shown to be false, the correct thing to do is to move on.

Yours,

Brian Cox.

**EDIT** Brian did a little ‘diary’ piece in the Telegraph this weekend which mentions the ‘twats’ thing.

The director of Horizon, Paul Olding, has put up more behind-the-scenes clips from the new one on Time.

Why should we want to understand Time?

How the minus sign protects the past from the future.

On Life in the Universe.

Loads more here.

Some more videos from behind-the-scenes on Brian’s new Horizon on Time are up on YouTube.

The documentary explores the idea of Time – what we think it is, what it isn’t and asks ‘does it exist at all?’ He talks to all kinds of people from the Director of the US Naval Observatory which keeps the Master Clock, to cosmologist Max Tegmark (who acts out what it would look like if he were to fall into a black hole), to theoretical physicist Neil Turok who talks about how Time may *not* have had a beginning. He explores Einstein’s theory of Time as well as newer theories of ‘granulated’ Time…

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On the 23rd of August at UCLA Royce Hall, Brian is taking part in the orchestral symphony by Mike Einziger:

“Simply stated, end vacuum is a jagged collection of orchestral music Michael Einziger has been writing for the past year. A horrendously turbulent, and at times serene, aural interpretation of complex patterns and geometric shapes that assemble themselves firmly into my consciousness. A 40 minute-long insomnia induced orchestral anxiety-attack.”

TX: December 2, BBC2, 9pm

*UPDATE* 16/11/08

The teaser is out.

NOTE: UPDATES TO THE POST ARE BELOW

Brian is off filming a new Horizon at the moment. His last one about Gravity was rather popular (thanks for watching, everyone!) and was very well received indeed. They asked him if he’d do another one. This one is about Time- humans’ concepts of it and what it actually means and, of course, relativity.

The first place they’ve been filming is in Mexico on Mayan pyramids. Here’s Brian with director, Paul Olding.

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OK, well, not quite. Firstly, because I am a foreign national in the UK and can’t vote. Secondly, because I’m a Democrat (American, like), I still equate ‘rightwing’ with ‘neocon’ and it makes me fume and get all angry and want to argue with Bush-loving Fundamentalist Christian Military Housewives.

Saying that…

Brian and I just had an excellent day with Ed Vaizey, MP for Wantage and Didcot. Conservative. Brian met him during the course of this whole STFC funding crisis thing (Newsnight piece here) and really liked him a lot. Ed came out to CERN to visit ATLAS and CMS, have a look at the tunnel, meet some of the VIPs as well as loads of the British scientists working at CERN. He asked tons of questions and was really into it all. In fact, by the time I got him, he’d already blogged about it! Yes, he has a blog.
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**UPDATE** 02.12.08 More on Professor Brian Cox here.

Yep, Brian has been promoted to Professor. Weeeeee! We found out a few weeks ago, but couldn’t say anything until it had been announced at the University of Manchester. I’ve just re-designed his website, so make sure that if you link to it you use the words Professor Brian Cox in order to help all the search engines catch up.

Now, that he’s so respectable, I’m wondering if he needs an image change to live up to the title?
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Here are some more photos from our trip. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, Brian did his talk. It was very well received. I was so happy for and proud of him.

Here are a few photos from the past few days.
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There’s an article about Brian in today’s Sunday Times. We read it about an hour ago when we woke up here in San Francisco, I said, “It makes it sound like all you do is eat, drink wine and talk about physics.” There was a pause where he just looked at me and I realised how silly I sounded, “Oh yea… that is all you do.”

He’s currently in the bedroom on the phone with a journalist from Wired magazine. They’ve been talking for 45 minutes or so about CERN… though I did hear Brian say, ‘Yea, it was a bit Spinal Tap’ which must have been when he was talking about how his first band Dare broke up having a fist fight in a hotel bar in Germany. :)

Today, we are going to take it easy in order to get over the last of our jetlag and the cold we’ve both had this week (thank Christ we were in business class on the flight) then this evening we are going to meet up with a bunch of people including Mike and Jess who are over from London, as well as some Seesmic people, Jasmine, Maryam and Robert, hopefully a physicist from Berkley and several other people! If you’re in SF and want to pop in, we’ll be at Medjool from 8.30 for drinks and whatnot. Come say hi!

**EDIT** The Wired article is here.

Paul Olding, the director of ‘What On Earth Is Wrong With Gravity?’, has put up some unused clips from the programme.

Dr. Brian Cox explains the Holographic Principle in a very nice vineyard in California.

Brian and Leonard Susskind on String Theory

Brian talks with Leonard Susskind about Extra Dimensions.

For those of you in the UK who missed Brian’s ‘Horizon’ – ‘What On Earth Is Wrong With Gravity?’ – it’s available to view on the BBC’s iPlayer.

**UPDATE** More on Brian’s Horizon ‘Do You Know What Time It Is?’ here.

Brian was on BBC Breakfast this morning to talk about his Horizon (tonight BBC2 9pm) ‘What On Earth Is Wrong With Gravity?“. Click the image to watch the video.

Watch Video

It’s been getting lots of good reviews. The only criticisms are about the ‘style’ of the programme- it’s beautifully shot and edited. I suspect the criticisms come because the reviewers can’t see science as part of popular culture. It’s perfectly acceptable to have ‘stylish’ programmes about music, films, books, etc… but science?! Well, why not?

The Guardian
In an effort to explain the essentially inexplicable nature of gravity, Dr Brian Cox heads to America, where the boffins are bountiful and the astrophysical anomalies are served with fries. It’s a game attempt to de-ice several brain- freezing concepts (Einstein’s theory of relativity, Newton’s doofer, something about “gravity waves”), though efforts to further invigorate the venture via scenes of crew-based japery merely remind us why boom operators should never be allowed in front of the camera.

The Telegraph
The BBC’s flagship science series continues as dishy particle physicist (and how often can one say that?) Dr Brian Cox asks: just what is gravity? Newton predicted its effects and Einstein thought he knew how it worked but Cox thinks there’s more to gravity than even these two giants worked out. Despite some annoyingly modern editing (the programme jumps around all over the place), the arguments are reassuringly intelligent, yet still accessible to novices. AG

You can watch outtakes and clips from the programme, as well as read more about it on the BBC’s ‘Horizon’ site.

A very special thanks to Hugh for Twittering about Brian’s programme.

Finally, the BBC agreed to allow more clips to be released online. Which is nice of them. Considering that Brian’s programme *isn’t* going to get any advertising or marketing at all from the BBC. They choose about three Horizons in a year to publicise… hmmmm…

Anyway, these are pretty funny.

One thing to know about Brian is that he’s afraid of spiders and creepy crawlies. What a wuss.

On the way to the GPS Headquarters.

Here Brian gets angry with director Paul Olding whilst trying to explain gravity waves.

Brian refuses to even mention that some people think the Moon landings were faked.

Brian appeared on NorthWest Tonight, er, tonight with a report on the physics funding crisis in the UK.

Click to watch