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July 23, 2015 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
15:05
EXTRA EDITION - New 'Earth-like planet'

As NASA announces it's found a planet a lot like Earth we speak with British astronomerHeather Couper...

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Hello again, it's Howard Hughes in London at the Home of the Unexplained on a rainy day in London town at the back end of July.
I wanted to get this item out to you as soon as possible.
It's a short interview that will be included in a future edition of The Unexplained about NASA's announcement just hours ago from when I'm recording this of the discovery of an Earth-like planet a long way away from here.
Very, very exciting stuff, has enormous potential.
We'll hear more about this.
But as soon as I read this news, I got in touch with Heather Cooper, British astronomer, very well known around the world.
You may well have seen her television documentaries or read her books.
She's been on this show many times before, and I've known her for more than 20 years.
So, first thing I did was get Heather's reaction.
Okay, Heather, new planet, lot like Earth, very exciting.
Absolutely.
Yes, it goes by the name of Kepler-452B, which is a very exciting name.
And the reason why it's called Kepler-452B, it was discovered by an orbiting space probe, which looks at stars and watches them as their light dims very, very briefly when a planet passes in front of them.
And to this date, it's discovered a possibility of, would you believe it, 4,175 planets, not all confirmed yet, but definitely a thousand.
So how did we, and this, I think, baffles a lot of people, but certainly me with my small brain.
You haven't got a small brain, Howard.
It's fairly small compared with many people's, but how did we zero in on this one place?
How were we able to?
Well, basically, Kepler is looking at a certain area of space, and it's looking at the constellation of Cygnus, the swan.
And if you go out at night, it's virtually overhead.
It's a cross-shaped constellation.
And it actually looks like a swan.
It's got a long tail and a head and everything like that.
So it was looking at that area, looking at stars in that area.
And it's homing in on stars that are like the Sun.
And this particular star is actually very like the Sun.
It's yellow.
It's about the same temperature.
The only difference is it's about 1.5 billion years older than the Sun.
But it is very similar.
The planet that they found is in a very similar orbit to the Earth.
Its day, its year is 385 days, which is very, very similar to our three six.
That's five.
That's astonishing.
I know, it's amazing.
It's about 60% bigger than the Earth.
And almost certainly, because its star is older and going into probably its evolving and probably getting a little bit hotter, the planet might be going into a greenhouse effect phase like Venus is.
But you never know.
What we need to do is to check out this planet with telescopes on the ground, see what its atmosphere is made of, see if it's got water, and then what we'll try to do then is to try and contact it with radio signals and see if there are any people on board the planet who want to actually be in contact with us on the radio, like you and I do.
I'm being overexcited about this because scientists are saying, I certainly heard one last night say, this planet has the conditions that are necessary for photosynthesis.
That would allow plants to grow if they were there.
I wouldn't believe that so far, I must admit.
I think that's going a little bit ahead.
But it's in the right conditions.
It's at the right distance.
It's at its distance from its star in what we call the Goldilocks zone.
It's like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, if you remember that from your youth.
Oh, once upon a time they were.
Yes, it's not too hot, not too cold.
Nice soft bed and everything like that.
So it's a possibility.
But we'll have to check it out.
And this is the week, of course.
And all of these things seem to be coming so fast now, so many developments in space.
What an exciting time.
But this is the week that it was announced that we were putting far more resources into the search for ET.
That's right.
I mean, this Russian guy has put in loads and loads of DOS into the search for extraterrestrial life.
And we've been looking now for 60 years and we haven't found anything yet.
And I did an interview last night.
I've got to confess, Howard, that I'm beginning to get a little bit pessimistic.
I've...
And we are relatively, the Earth and the Sun are relatively new kids on the block.
So our technology, how we communicate with extraterrestrial life, is, I suspect, very primitive.
I think it's the equivalent of the Indian people sending smoke signals into space.
I think we need a better form of technology to communicate with alien life if it does exist.
I think they're way, way ahead of us, because when you think about it, the universe is nearly 14 billion years old, and we've been around for only about 5 billion.
So we're primitive.
We're primitive geeks, basically.
But on the upside of all of this is that our techniques and our ability to scan the skies, to go even further out, to go beyond our own solar system, this is almost growing exponentially.
We're getting better at it every year.
We are definitely getting better.
I mean, when you think about it, the really exciting news about Pluto, which happened recently, was amazing.
It was the first time you've actually flown past Pluto.
We've made incredible discoveries.
And New Horizons, the space probe that went past Pluto, has got enough fuel to keep it going for another 10 years.
And it's going to be going past very similar objects to Pluto in what's called the Kuiper belt.
And we'll be able to find out what these other bodies are made of.
And so, well, it's literally the sky's the limit.
And when I was talking to the guy who runs the mission, Alan Stern, he said, I've got to phone you up.
He said, I'm on a plane at the moment going from LA to Washington, but I've got some news to tell you.
And I said, what's that?
He said, I'll phone you back.
So he phoned me back, and beyond the Kuiper Belt is the Oort Cloud, which is where the really big comets come from.
The really massive ones that come every so often, like Comet McNaught, which was an astonishing sight in the southern hemisphere.
It had nine tails.
It was, oh, it's beautiful.
Anyway, I said, Alan, I think I can anticipate what you're going to tell me.
Are you going to tell me that you think there are big planets out in the Oort cloud?
He said, yes, Heather, I am.
He said, when you think about the disruption in the outer solar system, how Uranus has been knocked on its side and things like that, I think there are big planets.
I think there are Earth-sized planets, possibly even bigger, in the Oort cloud.
And he said, and I think with our present technology, we can actually get probes out to the Oort cloud within 30 years.
So Kepler-452, whatever other numbers it has after it.
Thank you.
Kepler-45b.
I knew you knew that.
Kepler-452b is just literally the tip of an interplanetary iceberg.
There could be so much more that we will find out very soon.
Absolutely.
I mean, I think there are at least 2,000 planets we've discovered in the last 20 years, well, going around other stars.
And we don't know what they're made of.
We don't know what they're like.
We don't know if they contain life.
But, well, it's basically, you know, everything is open for grabs at the moment.
And I'm very excited about it.
I mean, a lot of us, you know, and as I say, we have to resist the temptation to get over-excited.
But excited we have to be, because those of us who grew up, as you and I both did, in the space age, didn't actually think that we would get this far so fast.
We have got far so fast, but not quite fast enough.
And I remember interviewing Arthur C. Clarke, who said that if we had actually progressed from the Greeks, who actually invented the first computer in 850 BC, it was discovered in a shipwreck off the coast of an island called Antikythera.
It's called the Antikythera mechanism.
He said, if we had actually progressed at that rate and built more computers from the Greek model, we would be going to the stars by now.
So let's not be complacent.
Let's keep our finger on the pulse and let's go there and keep up all our researches into space and everything like that and look into the whole SETI thing and, well, just let's go for it.
You've been very prolific this year, Heather.
I think it's four books, isn't it, this year?
It's four books.
Four books.
Four books.
Including that great pocket guide to astronomy, which is a superb primer for it all.
Oh, the astronomy Bible.
That was great fun to write.
And it will be a great Christmas present.
Let me do the commercial for you.
Oh, you're an angel.
But what about this latest book that you sent me?
I have to confess that I haven't read this one yet.
Talk to me about that.
Oh, the latest book, The Secret Life of Space.
Things you never knew about.
Things like the fact that the alignment at Stonehenge, which everybody thinks is it was built to align with the sun at the summer solstice at midsummer's day.
It's not.
It's actually built to basically celebrate the winter solstice, which is the time when the year turns round and people then think, ah, spring's on the way.
And the reason for the misinterpretation of the alignment is all to do with the Freemasons' interpretation, because they didn't like an Eastern alignment.
They'd like to have a Western alignment and things like that.
We talk about the Greek computer, which I mentioned earlier on, the Anti-Kythera mechanism.
And we talk about various things, about the characters of various people who populated astronomy.
I mean, the thing about today's astronomy is it's conducted in university departments where people sort of have to agree by consensus.
But there are some fabulous individuals out there, most of whom sadly have now died.
There was one called Fritz Zvicki, who was Swiss, and he put forward the idea that the universe was largely invisible and made of dark matter and dark energy.
He absolutely hated the Americans, and he would go to America, give lectures, do research.
And, okay, this is probably not suitable for a radio program, but I will say it.
It is a quote.
He described the Americans as being spherical bastards.
Well, I think my American listeners might well have some views about that one, Eva.
Well, well done, Mr. Zvicki, for the Entente Cordiale International Relations.
So you're keeping busy, that's good.
That's four books this year.
What are your plans for any more?
At the moment, I've just been so busy that I haven't actually managed to actually get any more projects going.
What I'd like to do, actually, to be honest, there have been a spate of books recently which have been looking at days throughout the year where things have happened.
Classic FM has got a very good one out at the moment which looks at when composers were born and died and what they did and what instruments were thought about.
Well there's a whole series in that isn't there?
You could do, I mean, they say broadcasters, many broadcasters are Geminis.
Excuse me.
You know, the great art Bell is a Gemini and many, many people who do this kind of thing are Geminis.
And I'm a Gemini.
And that's why you and I, you know, always talk so freely together, because even though nobody else knows where we're going to go next with our brains and our mouths, we do.
Exactly.
So what I'd like to do is a book called The Universe in 366 Days.
366 because you've got Exactly.
So I'd like to do a review of that.
I'd like to do a book on black holes.
I need to do more radio.
I've been getting loads of requests on my website saying, come back to television.
So I ought to do that.
You need to do more broadcasting.
I've always said that.
Just as long as you don't forget me.
Of course I won't.
Can I ever forget Howard Hughes?
Oh, heaven.
But yeah, as I said, my colleague Nigel has his own YouTube channel, and that's been going very, very well.
Okay, well, as we close this out, let's give him a plug.
It's Nigel Hembest.
It's Nigel Hembest and his YouTube channel, and it's called Nigel Goes to Space, because he signed up as an astronaut with Virgin Galactic.
He's just passed his medical to go on the centrifuge in Philadelphia in a month's time.
So he's about to be...
Four.
Four Gs.
Disembodied voice there, right?
Four.
Wish him good luck.
Nigel, I know you can hear me.
Good luck with all of that.
And he and I, you and I, Nigel, we've got to talk about that sometime soon.
Heather, you and I have got to talk as well at some point very soon, at great length about a lot of stuff.
Okay.
Love to talk to you.
British astronomer Heather Cooper with her reaction to the news that NASA has discovered a planet very much like Earth, a long way away from here.
Kepler-452B, about which you are going to hear a great deal more.
The next regular edition of The Unexplained is coming soon.
Thank you very much for checking by the website theunexplained.tv.
The website designed and maintained by Adam Cornwell from Creative Hotspot.
If you want to send me a message or leave a donation for the show, then you can go to the website theunexplained.tv and follow the links from there.
Like I say, I'll be back soon with a regular edition.
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