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Sept. 30, 2015 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:06:53
Edition 223 - Mars Latest

Top British Astronomer Dr Nick Lister – What next after apparent traces of flowing water arefound on Mars?

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Across the UK, across continental North America, and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes, and this is The Unexplained.
And you know, because of recent developments in the last 24, 36 hours or so, I'm starting to think that maybe we should say not only across the United States and around the world, maybe we should say whatever planet you happen to reside upon.
Maybe we should start spreading our net because the chances that there are other life forms out there somewhere, I think, have just increased with what we've discovered on Mars in the last day or so.
We're going to talk about that a lot with a guest who's been on this show before about 110, 112 shows ago, Dr. Nick Lister.
Now, Dr. Nick Lister has appeared on a BBC television program that you may have seen if you're in the UK called Stargazing Live.
The idea behind that, very clever idea by the BBC, to monitor the skies actually live at night and have a team of experts there to analyze what they see.
So Nick Lister was part of all of this.
I think he explains astronomical phenomena in a very down-to-earth way, in words that I can understand because I'm no scientist.
So we'll have Nick Lister on very soon.
We're going to talk about water, apparently flowing on Mars, boosting the odds for life.
That's one headline that I saw online when I got up this morning.
The blood moon, of course, that we heard.
And we'll reflect back on what has been, and it's now September, almost October, and we're looking back at what has been the most remarkable, unbelievable year in space.
So many things coming, so many mind-blowing developments, including, of course, the discovery of a planet a lot like ours, somewhere a long way from here.
These are very interesting times, and it makes you wonder in the next year and the next 10 years, what are we going to discover?
Are we finally going to come to the realization that maybe we're not alone?
And maybe we didn't just appear on this planet.
Perhaps we moved here at some point.
A very controversial view, one you've heard expressed on this show before.
I think you may hear more about that again.
Of course, as ever, I don't know what to believe.
But it's a great time to be asking questions, don't you think?
No shout-outs on this edition, except for Hanna in Norway.
You know that I'd like you to explain to me what you're doing when you're listening to these shows.
I'd love to hear your stories of where you are, who you are, and what you're doing.
It just means a lot to me to know who the members of this family that is growing all the time.
We're well into the iTunes Top 100 podcast.
Thank you for that.
But just good for me to know who is there, and it helps me in a way serve you better, but also helps me when I'm doing this, when I'm speaking these words right now, to visualize you.
Now, Hannah in Norway listens to these shows while doing 12-hour shifts peeling crabs at Trondheim.
The beautiful deep waters off Norway there, of course, I guess, are abundant with fish, all kinds of sea life.
So that is one person's experience of the unexplained.
So if you'd like to let me know how you're using this show, what you think of it, what I can put on it in future, I would love to hear from you.
Go to the website theunexplained.tv, www.theunexplained.tv, and follow the link.
And there you can leave me an email.
Just follow the little link there that says mail to the unexplained.
If you'd like to, while you're passing by, you can leave me a donation too.
Thank you very much for your great feedback on the show.
I do love to hear from you.
It's terribly important to me.
Adam Cornwell, the webmaster for this show, helps to keep it on track, maintains, curates the website, and will be spearheading developments here.
So thanks very much indeed, Adam.
And we'll have a lot more to do for you and a lot more to explain soon.
What to say?
Well, look, not only is this an important time in space, I think it is also an important time in digital media.
I think that in 2015, digital media turned the corner.
I told you that we are now in the top 100 of the iTunes chart.
But we're not alone there.
Other people are venturing into this territory.
There's a broadcaster in the UK who isn't working on mainstream radio now, who is doing it himself.
I believe, as somebody who has his foot in both camps at the moment, this is the way of the future.
And there is no denying that.
Anyway, we'll explore that at some point in the future.
But just think of the nature of existing media and how they've consolidated, how the programming is all the same wherever you go.
Anywhere in the world, almost.
It's going like that.
And ask yourself the question, is the mainstream media really talking to you?
Is it serving you?
Or are they serving themselves?
That is a question that I can't answer for you.
I've got my thoughts on it, and I know you'll have yours.
On this edition, we're going to talk space.
Dr. Nick Lister is the man, and the reason we're doing that right now is because of this announcement from NASA.
They told us on Sunday afternoon here, UK, that they would be saying something in a news conference on Monday, and indeed they did.
And like I said, the first headline that I woke up to this morning was, water flowing on Mars boosts odds for life.
Those 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 words say it all.
That's where we're at.
This week, of course, we also have the blood moon phenomenon, which many people in the northern hemisphere saw.
What's that?
What's it all about?
But we'll talk about developments in space this year with a man called Dr. Nick Blister.
Now, he is the Lawrence House Astronomy and Space Science Center head.
He is a qualified astronomer, and like I say, he's been on that TV show, Astronomy Live, or Stargazing Live.
And he is a great proponent of astronomy for all of us, not just for scientists and boffins.
He talks very plain language, and I think you're going to like him in this edition.
One of the news stories I read about this Mars discovery today sort of explains it.
It says liquid water flows on Mars, boosting the odds that life could exist on the red planet, a new study suggests.
The enigmatic dark streaks on Mars called recurring slope linnae that appear seasonally on steep, relatively warm Martian slopes are caused by salty liquid water, according to researchers.
Liquid water is a key requirement for Earth, the study Lead author Lugendra Oha, I'm sure I pronounced that wrongly, of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, told the website space.com, the presence of liquid water on Mars' present-day surface therefore points to environments that are more habitable than previously thought.
I think we can read between those lines and we know what he's saying.
So these are very, very crucial times for the human race and any other race that may be out there because we are coming to a learning and an understanding that we have not seen before.
And don't you think it's exciting?
I don't think you'd be listening to this if you didn't.
I think most of us are.
But the people who seem to be not as excited as they might be are the media, who covered this story with a certain amount of excitement, but in the UK returned pretty quickly to the Labour Party conference, which in itself is interesting with the new leader Jeremy Corbyn, and other matters.
And this morning, a story that you would have thought would have been all over everything is not quite in the front page, centre-spread prominence that I would have expected.
But I guess that's part for the course.
Okay, just a reminder, if you want to get in touch with me, it's theunexplained.tv.
Follow the link, send me a message.
Let's get now to the northwest of England, to Fleetwood near Blackpool.
If you know the north of England, you'll know where that is.
And we'll talk to Dr. Nick Lister, astronomer.
Nick, nice to have you back on.
It's my absolute pleasure, Howard.
Thank you for the invitation.
It's great to be here again.
Now, I know you're a great proponent.
You're a great exponent, one of the two, of promoting astronomy, aren't you?
Bringing it to the ordinary people and demystifying the subject.
Well, I do do my best, Howard.
Absolutely, yeah.
To be honest with you, you've hit it on the head there, as you seem to always do.
That's all.
I have a center here that just teaches astronomy to everyone, all ages, all levels, because of the subject nature.
The nature of the subject is incredible.
It's full of the most amazing wow factors.
It's got an amazing knock-on into science in general.
Astronomy touches other disciplines, maths, physics, chemistry, geology, even biology with new ideas about life out there, etc.
So yeah, it's all about just passing these wow factors on to people in general, Howard.
And what do you think has fired the recent upturn in interest in astronomy?
Because more people are.
I mean, I'm sure if I was to talk to a person selling telescopes and, you know, locally here, I'm sure if I was to talk to that person, he would tell me that sales have gone up recently.
Absolutely 100% correct.
There's no question about that.
And you're asking the question, what's caused it?
Well, there's been a huge upturn, hasn't there, in media attention, et cetera, in a big, big way.
I'd suggest, especially in the last two or three years, that's happened.
And as time's gone on, particularly recently, of course, we've had a lot of great stories related to ideas of perhaps life out there in the universe.
And of course, that always grabs people's attention massively.
So, and so it should, to be honest with you, Howard.
And not to put too fine a point on it, Nick, do you believe, as I sometimes think, especially with the announcement from NASA that we've just had about water on Mars, which we'll talk about, do you think that we're being softened up for something?
Because it seems to me that we're being edged towards something more than this, and we're being edged at quite a fast rate.
Well, that could well be the case.
That definitely could well be the case, because if you're talking about the grand ideas involving space and nature and life out there, obviously if there's something really heavy going on here, then scientists in general, astronomers, physicists, even biologists, etc., they are going to want to use a gentle approach to introduce people to these ideas.
If we ever did actually find evidence of life out there, I think it would be a very, I don't really, I hesitate to use the word dangerous, but I don't think it would be the right approach to just suddenly announce that, yes, we found life out there on another planet.
Well, exactly.
I mean, if you go back to documents, as we both have done research on this, haven't we?
You go back as far as the Brookings Institute, you go back to the 1950s, the very dawn of our contact with space, talk of UFOs and aliens and all the rest of it.
That's when it all started.
That is when they began academically to debate how we would reveal what we might reveal.
Yeah, I think that's absolutely true.
If you would go back again, just say 20 years, I'd suggest, which isn't a very long time if you think about it.
If you just go back a couple of decades, I think a lot of astronomers, again, biologists, scientists, etc., they were, a lot of them were still saying, look, there's life on Earth and that's it.
And I think now in the last 20 years, those ideas have really, really changed dramatically.
And more and more astronomers, et cetera, are now saying, well, actually, who's to say that we didn't once have life even on Mars a long time ago?
Are astronomers now starting to say, hang on a minute, is it possible there is still some form of life clinging on under the subsoil on Mars?
And if you think about it, certainly in my childhood and my young years, I can remember doing interviews when I started in radio, and that's in the 80s.
And I would talk to people about these subjects, and many academics, people involved in the subjects that you're involved in and you teach, would poo-poo it.
If I said anything like that, it would be the stuff of kids, comics, TV shows on a Saturday morning, but really, they'd not be up for it.
You just think, if we just take a second out and think about this, the quantum leap that we have taken in 30 years is huge.
There's no question about it.
Absolutely huge.
And you just hit it on the head there again, because the point is, of course, if you brought those same issues up now, people wouldn't laugh at you, for want of a better phrase.
They wouldn't poo-poo the idea.
Certainly not.
There's too much evidence out there now.
We have, if you think of not just necessarily our local space, our solar system, but if you think of the deeper realms of space, way out into our galaxy and even beyond that, as we study the chemistry of space, we're starting to find proof now, not just ideas or theories, but proof of the existence of chemicals basically out there in space just floating around.
Chemicals which we know are responsible for developing life here on Earth.
Especially if you buy into the theory and use the words that a lot of academics have over the years, primordial soup, the primordial soup of chemicals, the mix that created us.
If that mix is out there somewhere, then something like us may well exist.
Without any shadow of a doubt, We're talking about organic chemistry.
We're talking about carbon-based chemistry.
And of course, the other things that we often talk about related to carbon-based chemistry are a source of energy.
So light, heat from the sun, etc.
But the other thing is water.
And we've already hit on this already, but water is becoming so prevalent now in our exploration.
We are finding water.
And a lot of the water, the H2O that's out there, until recent years, we know there's loads of water, H2O there.
But until recent years, we've realized it's a lot of gaseous water or frozen water.
And now we're starting to find evidence of liquid water.
Which is where we come in with this staggering news conference that we had from NASA.
As we record this now, it's 24 hours ago, but people will be hearing this a little later than that.
But people will be chewing this over for weeks, I'm sure.
NASA told us on Sunday that there was going to be a news conference.
I thought, that's interesting.
Of course, like most of these things, we got a hint of what it might be.
And lo and behold, it was confirmed to us.
Yes, they are looking at the possibility of flowing water.
And a great headline that I quoted at the top of this show was, water flowing on Mars boosts odds for life.
That little headline that was on space.com says it all, doesn't it?
Absolutely 100% perfect.
Yeah, it's a fantastic revelation.
When we knew that NASA were going to announce something, people do tend to get very excited.
NASA do tend to hold fire.
They're trying to make sure their facts are right, especially on an issue like this.
And I was looking at some websites over the weekend and they were saying, what are NASA going to announce?
What are they going to say?
Are they going to announce life on Mars, this kind of thing?
I did actually have a hunch myself that they might be coming out and trying to more or less confirm, look, we have found water.
It is huge.
It really is huge because liquid water, Howard, is the important thing.
As you know, as I mentioned just five minutes ago, there's a lot of H2O out there.
But if you think about the temperature range that exists in the universe, it is immense.
We're talking about a temperature stretch of many, many, many millions of degrees.
Now, the point is that liquid water only exists between 0 and 100 degrees.
That's a very, very, very tiny fraction of that immense temperature range.
What that means is, therefore, that most H2O water that's out there is either going to be a gas, very hot water, or very cold, solid water ice.
Now, when we talk about life and water, everybody knows that liquid water is important for all forms of life on Earth.
Everybody knows that.
Why?
That's the question.
Why?
Well, the reason it's so important is because liquid water is a transporter.
That's the best way I can explain it.
Liquid water picks things up, chemicals in your body, and takes them round to where they need to go.
Water does the same thing for trees.
So we need the water to be liquid so it acts as a transporter.
That's why it's so important for life.
Now, the Martian environment on Mars, often it's very, very cold.
So even though we've really known for a long time that H2O is there, we've often seen it in the form of solid water, ice.
But this is why we look for liquid water.
This is why we think it could be so important, because it basically flows.
It's a transporter, Howard.
Okay, now before we get too carried away with ourselves, and I'm very excited as you are about this because, you know, I have a hunch I know what this all means and will add up to.
But, you know, what do I know?
I'm no scientist.
I did hear one scientist on late night radio last night saying, okay, before we get carried away with this, if this is briny and salty water, then it may be so briny and so salty that it will not allow for life to form and develop.
And, you know, I think part of me thinks that's rubbish because as we've seen here, life has surprised us living at the very deep ocean depths, in hot places, in freezing cold places.
Life surprises you.
Life finds a way.
And in particular, Howard, things like bacteria find a way.
You've just mentioned it there.
We find bacteria thriving in the most extreme environments.
We never thought we'd find life on the deepest ocean floors, Mariana's Trench, 30,000 feet down, where the pressures are immense.
It's very cold.
There's no light.
There's no oxygen.
Bacteria find a way.
I heard, and I don't know whether this is true or not, so forgive me if it isn't, but I did once hear a statement that I think it's somewhere in Russia, that scientists had found bacteria living on, not near, on nuclear reactor spent control rods, the most radioactive environment on Earth.
So if bacteria can survive in these conditions, as you've correctly insinuated there, a briny environment, a reasonably chilly, briny environment for them could be a cakewalk.
They could easily manage that.
Bacteria could manage to live under those environments.
The other thing is, because of the way we're assuming this briny environment could have been created, equally, could we not talk about if you have little underground environments, is there not an opportunity where saline, briny liquid could even distill itself?
And then you end up with liquid water again.
And even though the liquid water might then very soon freeze, some forms of life, you might only need the liquid water to be there for a few minutes.
Silly question that a lot of punters, ordinary people like myself will ask, and I've thought about.
How is the rover, the Curiosity, able to do this?
If you think about the amount of time it's there, the amount that with complete mechanical reliability it's been doing its job, the resolution of photos, the quality of data that we're getting back, a lot of us don't quite understand how it's possible for a craft to be able to do that and how it's possible to get that data back here.
That's a very good question.
Often what we tend to do nowadays, the last say 15 years or so, if we've got an object, as you mentioned, the rovers that are actually physically on the ground, yes, they take photographs, etc.
But the other thing they do is more mechanical, more abrasive.
A lot of these machines, they are able to chip at pieces of rock, scoop up pieces of the Martian sand, and analyze that material inside themselves using various spectral analyzers and this kind of thing.
Now, any information that they then find out, they can literally beam back to Earth, just radio message it, if you like, back to Earth.
Another way this is done, and in particular we're talking about the recent NASA findings again, as well as having these objects on the actual surface physically there on the ground, nowadays, of course, we do also have orbiting spaceship.
Now, the orbiting spaceship, yes, they're not on the ground, but they are always equipped with incredible cameras, incredible, very finely working instrumentation.
So, again, in this case with the water business, what we've done is kind of like a spectrometer, a spectral analysis of these dark streaks that have been found on the side of the hills.
So, if you like, we are in a way photographing, we are bombarding the surface with radio waves and radar and this kind of stuff.
And in the same way that we can get information here on Earth from using those instruments up in the air, so orbiting spacecrafts can do the same thing.
They then just radio the information back to us here on Earth.
And for those of us who are fascinated that we can get a signal from a couple of hundred miles away, how is that possible?
As far as you understand it, what sort of technology do they use to get signals to come back over those great distances?
That's a very good question, Howard.
If you have a radio, for want of a better description, a transmitting radio, just of a reasonable power, just a few watts in effect, if you transmit it in the right way, those radio waves will reach across literally thousands of millions of miles.
They'll just keep going through empty space, through the vacuum of space.
The only way they'd stop ineffectively, in effect, Howard, is if something large and heavy got in the way, like another planet, for example.
So in effect, as long as you've got line of sight, for want of a better phrase, from Mars to the Earth, you can relay radio information.
It travels at the speed of light, which is very, very quick.
It's say seven times round the Earth every second, 186,000 miles per second.
The speed of light, radio waves travel at the same speed.
It still, nevertheless, takes something like quarter of an hour, up to half an hour, to get from Mars to us.
But that's how the radio waves do it.
It's not a problem for radio waves to beam across millions of miles of space.
Not bad, though, if you consider how long it would take you or I to get there.
Exactly.
Exactly.
There's a little bit of difference there, which of course is interesting because I think as we find out more and more, shall we say, positive things about Mars, I think we really are going to have to seriously start, I mean, seriously thinking about getting people to Mars.
You mentioned the little space probes, et cetera, on the surface how that have done wonderful jobs.
There's no mistake about that.
But let's face it, they are both literally and metaphorically scratching the surface.
And we need people out there with a bucket and spade walking around on the surface of Mars, getting stuck in to find out what really is out there.
And up to now, I think a lot of us have been bemused of the efforts that certain governments, like the Russians, are making to prepare people for going there, putting them in isolation for long periods to see if they can just get on together, testing all sorts of suits and gambits for growing crops up there and all that sort of stuff.
And a lot of us thought, this is almost science fiction.
Now I think certainly within the last 24 hours as we record this, we start perhaps to understand why we are making these preparations now.
Very much so.
The film has just come out on time as well, hasn't it, for Ridley Scott?
What a great coup that is for him with the Martian.
And again, even in that story, of course, you've got the idea of the guy trying to grow his own food in desperation.
So yes, this is very, very prevalent.
I think, to be honest with you, I think the Martian adventure, for want of a better phrase, again, I think the only thing that's in the way is cost.
I really do believe that.
I think the psychology of sending people there, the time span, the technology, I think it's all there.
I don't think that's an issue at all.
I think it's purely cost.
I might even suggest that in the reasonably near future now, that you're going to get things like rocket ships with Coca-Cola written on the side.
Sorry, I don't mean to advertise, but that's the point I'm trying to make.
You're going to get big corporate organizations even paying for these ventures, or even the Chinese people perhaps putting forward their enterprise to get people to Mars.
I would suspect it will be an international effort.
But I think it is, as you've insinuated again, I think these sort of ideas are coming closer and closer all the time.
I think we'll see people on Mars in the next 20 years.
A year ago, I would have said, I think we'll see people on Mars in the next 30 or 40 years.
Now I'm changing my mind.
And as we know, it's because of the revelations that we are definitely getting from that planet.
And we know the way that NASA works and space agencies generally, but here, NASA in particular.
I also had the feeling, and you can only operate on feelings when you say these things, that they are very definitely news managing this.
So they may well be announcing this one step behind where they are.
Which leads me to the question, what do they do next, given the hardware that we've got up there right now sending back to us?
Do we wait to see the time of the Martian year when this water might appear?
Do we park it in that position to hopefully find it there?
What do we do?
I think the idea of the Martian water is something that's huge, and they're going to stay at that like a dog with a bone.
And they're going to analyze it, as you've suggested, throughout a Martian year to see what really happens into the autumn, how much things freeze up, do things keep flowing, etc.
I think that's a big, big issue.
If there is liquid water on Mars, of course, aside from this amazing ideas of life, etc., it will help us in our endeavors to actually go there and stay there for any length of time.
I think not as a side issue, but as an ongoing, another event that NASA will still be looking into, aside from Mars, but very much related to what's happening on Mars, is the idea that, look, in our solar system, it's not just Mars at the moment.
Okay, Mars is in the news now.
Mars always gets in the news.
Ever since H.G. Wells's days with War of the Worlds, etc., Mars always gets in the news for good reason.
But there are other issues in our local space, in our local solar system.
So, for example, Howard, we know now that one of the moons, at least one of the moons, but primarily one of the moons of Jupiter, Europa, Is an awesome place for the potential for life.
Again, we think we may have on that moon 500 million miles away from Earth, out there in space, orbiting Jupiter.
There may be this moon Europa that has an icy outer layer with maybe subterranean, watery lake environments.
Who's to say that if those environments haven't existed for many, many millions of years, that life could have kicked off, maybe not even bacterial life, maybe even at this stage, aquatic life?
So because of the knowledge we have currently about Europa, therefore, are NASA thinking, well, hang on, another priority is perhaps to send more missions to Europa, land a spaceship on this icy outer crust, melt through it into the subterranean liquid environments underneath and see what's going on.
Related to that as well, I'm sorry to prattle on, but related to that, there is another issue there for us.
As we do venture forth, we do have to think of the sterility environment, i.e.
not polluting what could be otherwise pristine ecosystems on Mars, maybe on Europa.
So you're asking me what are we going to do?
How are we going to follow this on?
What's the technology?
What are we aiming for?
Well, one thing I would say is there are several environments in the solar system, not just Mars, actually not just Europa.
But if we go forward and try and explore these environments more, one thing we have to do is make sure we are not, for want of a better phrase, polluting those environments because they could be pristine ecosystems.
They could have life developing on them, which we don't want to affect.
They could have the potential for development of life, again, that we don't want to affect in any way.
And that's something I do know that scientific institutions like NASA are currently putting a lot of money into.
Isn't that fascinating?
And what a debate that is.
Because, you know, here we are making a mess of our world.
Do we want to make a mess of somebody else's?
Do we have the right to do that?
It comes back to the Prime Directive and Star Trek and all the rest of it.
And yet, we need to learn.
So how do you balance that desire to learn and develop and possibly find a way forward for ourselves on a planet whose resources are diminishing alarmingly because of the amount of people that we have here polluting the place up and more people coming all the time?
You know, we have to solve that problem.
But also, do we have a responsibility?
Arguably, yes, we absolutely do, to what might become another civilization somewhere else.
Absolutely 100%.
And I think that's why these scientific monies are being put to one site to do that, to protect the environments that we might go off and explore.
I think regarding, say, the Europa issue, for example, scientists are putting a lot of money into finding out a way of actually sending probes that are completely sterile.
That might sound like a very easy job, but it isn't.
I know recently we discovered a pristine lake environment under the Antarctic ice cap, I believe.
And this is a pristine environment on Earth that's not been touched by humans, basically.
And so we want to get into that environment and explore it.
But definitely we need to do that in a sterile way because we don't want to affect any ecosystem that's there.
That could be a great test lab for any future investments in outer space to prevent us affecting any ecosystems out there.
And equally, there's another issue here, isn't there?
Say that you send up your probe with some tiny little microbe from here on it.
That tiny little microbe that you didn't know was there or you hadn't taken sufficient steps to make sure wasn't there might react with something that is there and will then give you false data results.
Absolutely.
Without any shadow of a doubt.
That's one of the things that primarily a lot of the people at NASA have to do when they've got their little probes crawling around on the surface of Mars in particular, the probes that you mentioned earlier, the little rovers, then you have to make sure that any material, any information you're gleaning is not influenced by your own environment, i.e.
the spaceship that's doing the experiments in the first place.
That's a very big issue without a doubt.
And that has always been done.
Well, certainly for the last 30 years, I would suggest.
That's something that the scientists do concentrate on.
It's very, what you're actually, everything that you're saying is very important and I find very interesting because when we do talk, we've already mentioned ideas, obviously, of us traveling to these places.
We've mentioned ideas of the cost, etc.
We've mentioned ideas of us not wanting to influence any ecosystems that are there and being very careful.
But I think one of the things this always does lead to is the idea, I get asked quite a lot, why would we want to do this?
Why do we need to do this?
Why are we spending all this money in doing what we do already?
And I think I have a reasonable response to that.
You do hear a lot of people with the classic response, which is valid.
You do hear a lot of people say, well, it's innate in us as human beings to explore.
That is correct.
Of course it is.
That's why we went up Everest.
That's why we try and conquer the very deep oceans, et cetera, to find things out.
But there is another more, I think, prosaic answer to why we need to do this, Howard.
And it all revolves around life and everything else we've discussed so far.
And that is the idea that our planet, the Earth, and not just our planet, the Earth, but our whole solar system is under threat from space.
A lot of people who know anything about astronomy, they will already know the story of our star, the sun, in 5,000 million years will basically destroy the Earth.
Now, that's a long time ahead.
But what a lot of people don't realize and don't really think about is there are other things out in space, which won't just threaten life on Earth in the future, but will threaten life in the whole solar system.
So in time, if we've colonized Mars and we've moved on to other planets in our solar system, that is not going to be the end of the story.
There are objects in space which could threaten life throughout our whole system.
And so therefore, in the very long future, we are, you mentioned this earlier on, we are going to have to have a Starship Enterprise.
The Star Trek thing is going to have to come into being because as a human race, we are going to have to reach the stars for our own safety at the End of the day, Howard.
And you get these alarmists periodically saying we're going to be hit by something pretty cataclysmic.
I think, wasn't there one supposed to be around about September?
I think, isn't there somebody saying now that there's something going to hit us a year from now?
It's all very confusing.
And of course, the one thing that we do know, that no matter how sophisticated our technology is, we're not looking all the time in all the right places, are we?
No, and more so as well.
Right now, you mentioned our sophisticated technology, but right now, Howard, if we did find something, say an asteroid, a big chunk of rock that was heading our way, that was big enough to damage us, basically, we found that right now.
We don't have the technology to intercept it or to nudge it off course, which seems to be the prevalent idea.
We don't have the technology to do that right now.
So that's something we do need to work on in the future.
I think a lot of scientists have been telling governments for many years now, look out.
We have to watch what's going on here.
We know the Earth has been hit, not just once when the dinosaurs were knocked on the head, but several times the Earth has been hit in the past.
When you look at the law of averages and you look at the spacing and the dating of these events, perhaps one is long overdue.
So we need to look after our planet.
I think governments are starting to take a little bit more notice because, of course, a year or so ago, we had the big chunk of rock coming into the atmosphere above Russia that detonated in Russia.
Didn't hit the ground, thankfully, so no fatalities there.
But it does form a bit of a wake-up call for scientists in general.
We've all heard of the asteroid story.
We've all heard of big chunks of rock hitting the Earth.
But one of the objects I mentioned earlier, we now know, for example, there's a type of supernova, an exploding star.
There's a type of supernova.
And the object that creates this particular supernova is a white dwarf, which people will maybe have heard of.
And we know that in our reasonable vicinity, in our galaxy, the Milky Way, there are quite a few white dwarfs around.
The problem is, if one of these explodes as a certain type of supernova, the first thing we might get here on Earth and throughout the whole solar system, therefore, is a huge dose of things like gamma-ray radiation, which would be lethal for people on Earth or even people living on Mars.
That's why I mentioned earlier that in the very, very far future, we are going to have to get out to the stars.
There's no question of that.
And what you just talked about is a sort of cosmic electromagnetic version of a tsunami.
Without a doubt, that's a perfect way to say it, 100%.
The only problem as well, the problem with these huge radiations that are very harmful from space is that the thing is, Howard, you don't see them coming because all forms of radiation, visible light that we can see, radio waves that we mentioned earlier on, gamma rays, X-rays, which are very harmful to us, they all travel at the speed of light, Howard.
So you don't see them coming.
Frightening, which brings me on to another very important question and takes us back to Mars in rapid succession from what you've just said.
This point, there are so many risks out there, and for the duration of our civilization, we've been pretty lucky.
We've managed to dodge a lot of bullets, it seems to me.
What would happen if, just as a scenario, and I punted this one on social media a couple of days ago, if there was a civilization before us on Mars, maybe it was us, who knows?
And that civilization was leveled, destroyed, wrecked, wiped out by asteroid impact, plague, war, electromagnetic waves, radiation, whatever.
The thing we have to think about is, and I'd love to get your take on this, Nick.
When a civilization is wiped out and there is very little or no life left, what we think is permanent here will be gone in a couple of score thousand years.
There will be nothing to see apart from just rubble.
It will look like a bunch of rocks and may end up, what do you think, looking like some of the stuff we're seeing on Mars?
I understand exactly where you're coming from there.
Yeah, that's a very good theory, isn't it, that's currently put around the idea that are we Martians at the end of the day?
Have civilizations developed on Mars previously, been wiped out more or less?
Has even things like what I do tend to prefer, have you got ideas whereby perhaps even bacteria has managed to come from Mars and seed the Earth?
And you've asked for my opinion.
I think from my perspective, one of the things that really fascinates me is the idea that scientists, geologists, biologists, etc., they do think they have tied down very neatly and very nicely the way life has evolved here on Earth from the most primitive forms to us.
But what a lot of those scientists will also readily admit, Howard, is that they don't know how that life was initially seeded here on Earth.
What kicked life off here on Earth?
So that does cross over a little bit into what you've just asked me.
Where did we come from?
At the end of the day, we know we came from apes, et cetera, but where did they come from?
And going right back, where did life initially come from on Earth?
Because Earth, when it was very, very young, was a very, very hostile place.
It was a molten, hot mess.
That relates as well to where does the water that we now have so much of here on Earth, where did that come from?
Because the very, very early Earth would not have supported water.
The water that the Earth might have formed within the first place will probably just all literally boiled away.
So where's all this water come from?
One of the theories there is that maybe our very, very young Earth was actually bombarded by chunks of rock, comets that people have heard of, laden up with ice, and that's where the water has come from.
So in other words, the life that we now have here on Earth may indeed have come from not necessarily Mars, as soon as you asked for my opinion, but from out there in space.
Who's to say that those same comets that brought ice, in other words, water, to Earth, did not have on board them amino Acids, carbon-based chemistry that we've mentioned earlier on, and who's to say those chemicals that were brought to Earth from space weren't then responsible for seeding life here on Earth?
The Martian idea, who knows?
Because as you've correctly said, if you had a civilization on another planet literally millions of years ago that literally was wiped clean in a way, how would we ever know?
How would we ever know if that was?
I just think it's a question that's worth asking because I think people tend to think, especially in this chuckaway world that we live in, where we think we're so damn clever, the fact of the matter is there is nothing that would allow what we have now to be absolutely permanent.
And everything has a sell-by date on it here.
So if we were to vacate London where I am now and leave it for 20, 40, 60,000 years, there would be nothing left.
All of our data, we think that we can store stuff on a hard drive, put it up in the cloud.
We think that we can write stuff down, put it on paper.
We think that we can make monuments and buildings and all sorts of things, but they will be gone.
And what will result is what we seem to be seeing on Mars, something like that.
Now, whether that is completely natural, or whether that is the remnants of something that's been there before, well, people are still talking about that.
And I don't know what you think.
I think they have a right to debate it.
100% a right to debate it.
And as you mentioned right at the beginning of this program, you can't poo-poo those ideas as much as perhaps some people would have done, say, 30 years ago, and it was all very much science fiction, science fiction.
I think, from my perspective, I think the way our society is now, I think to completely erase evidence of our existence in the very, very, very far future would take some doing.
I think it's possible, but in the very, very, very far future, who knows?
I mean, I remember seeing a program several years ago where they took New York as an example and they said, right, we're just going to vacate it.
You've mentioned vacating London.
We're just going to vacate New York.
What would happen?
And they showed what would happen, that vegetation would reclaim New York.
Eventually, all the big buildings, the Empire State Building would crumble away, etc.
So yes, what you're talking about there, a lot of evidence for our existence would disappear.
Whether everything would disappear because of the way we are now, I don't know.
I literally don't.
I'm not saying I disagree with you.
I'm saying I actually, I don't know.
Well, it would disappear to the point of view of buildings and those sorts of things and things that we created.
But the sorts of things you can't erase are the things that you might find inside a rock, like a fossil.
So I guess, and some people have said that maybe we're finding these on Mars already.
This is a big stretch of the imagination, but perhaps the next thing to be found might be, or the thing that they'll be looking for, is a fossil, a trilobite, or something like that.
I think that's a great thing to mention.
I know for years, when I've been talking and lecturing, et cetera, about Mars in particular, the phrases I've used, more or less of what you've just hinted at there, I've basically said, look, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, a lot of scientists would have assumed Mars was just a dead, cold, sandy desert.
Since then, with the findings that we've had, initially people have started to say, look, hang on, who's to say life didn't kick off on that planet X million years ago?
Now, if it did, therefore, if life is no longer there, are we going to find fossilized evidence of life?
So that was the thing that was being bandied around.
I've talked about it for years and years.
But we do get a little bit more excited now and we start to say, and myself, I say this, who's to say nowadays, never mind the fossils, let's just imagine that things like bacteria could still be actually there, which would be awesome.
Again, it illustrates the idea, of course, that the space probes on Mars, they're literally scratching the surface, literally and metaphorically, and they must have scratched, what, 0.00001% of the surface of Mars, probably less than that.
That's just a guess.
So we do need people there with buckets and spades to try and find maybe fossilized evidence.
There was, of course, wasn't there several years ago reports that they thought they'd found what looked like a multicellular organism fossilized in a rock.
And I don't think that was what people were saying it was now.
I think we've kind of explained that away.
But the debate at the time was slanted, I'd suggest more so towards, no, it's rubbish.
That's not a fossil.
I think if you got a similar finding now, I think the debate would be slanted more towards, hang on a minute, you know, what is this?
Is this fossilized evidence?
I think it would be more believable now, Howard.
That's what I'm trying to say.
But you also think, as you said at the top of this discussion, that the only way to take this further, we can do very well with telescopes here, radio telescopes.
We can do incredibly well with things that are in orbit around Mars.
We can do incredibly well with little probes.
But the only way to do it properly is to get people there and using analytical tools that they will have with them in their space dome or whatever on the surface of Mars.
I think so, personally, yes.
I think we need human beings there.
I often talk to people and I talk to a lot of younger people who say, you know, even small children or up to 16, 17, 18 year olds.
And I say, I'm envious of you lot, because in your lifetime, I think we are going to hear of evidence of life out there, whether it's on Mars or elsewhere, I don't know.
But I then talk about the idea of people going to Mars.
I say that in your lifetime, people will walk around on Mars.
Who knows?
You are the sort of people who are going to find evidence of life on another planet.
And wouldn't that be remarkable?
And a lot of people that then listen to ideas like that, I think they do jump on their bandwagon and say, yes, it would be.
It would be incredible.
And they do want to go.
You know, it would be amazing.
I think there'd be no shortage of people volunteering, even on a so-called one-way ticket, which I don't think would happen, to be honest.
But I think if there was one, I think a lot of people would volunteer for it.
I would have volunteered for it 25 years ago myself.
I wouldn't do now because I don't think my wife would be very pleased.
But certainly, I don't think there would be a shortage of volunteers.
That's actually good news, though, isn't it, Nick?
Well, maybe, yes, yes.
I think we do need people there, Howard.
and I think we are moving as well into a very exciting time.
I really do believe that, and I think as well, even in you and me, Howard, in our lifetime as well, because in the next 10 or 20 years, I think we're going to see some incredible things.
I think science in general is accelerating, you know, a mathematician would say exponentially.
The rate that we are increasing our knowledge now and the rate that we are finding things out is increasing.
We mentioned at the beginning of the talk that there are things coming into the media every month now regarding astronomy alone, things that we're discovering every month.
This is not an accident.
It's because our technology is increasing at an exponential rate.
This is a real science fiction age without the fiction, I suppose, is the way I would say it.
But it's also a frontier where astronomy and science bleed into philosophy.
Because here we have a time at which we are making incredible strides with our knowledge, our knowledge of the universe, our knowledge of the place we live on.
Yeah.
But equally, we are threatened by war, disease, overpopulation, and pollution.
And so it's a race, isn't it?
It's a race between finding solutions to everything and destroying ourselves.
And it is, as we stand here, we were the Pathfinder generation.
So much has been achieved while you and I have been on this planet.
Exactly.
But there's a race going on at the moment to whether we will destroy this place and end up with a divided, ruined, broken society and a destroyed planet, or whether we will make these great strides forward and get ourselves out of here, find ways to solve our problems here.
It is a fascinating struggle that is going on, a battle.
Yes, it is.
Knowledge is a very dangerous thing.
And people have often said that.
And it's true.
And I think the reason it's true is, as you've just suggested, there's a very fine balance.
There really is a very fine balance about what our knowledge can do for us and how our knowledge can, you know, in effect, damage us in many, many ways.
The philosophy that you mentioned there does cross over very much into astronomy the more we find out.
And I suggest the philosophy angle comes in when we start debating on the grand ideas of astronomy and astrophysics.
In other words, what I'm saying is how nature, how the universe, let alone life, but how the universe was created perhaps 15,000 million years ago and the grand debates revolving around that and the grand debates revolving around how the universe itself as a whole is going to evolve in the future.
What part are we going to play in the evolution of the universe, etc.?
So philosophy does come across, and of course, therefore, so does the religion angle.
And I have many, many discussions here about the religion angle, especially when we do start discussing the grand ideas, the Big Bang, the creation of the universe, etc.
And as we've said, we were the Pathfinder generation, but those young adults that you are teaching, those young people you are schooling at the moment, they will inherit something amazing, but they will also inherit an incredible responsibility, a responsibility for not completely ruining it.
You know, the responsibility that rests on their shoulders, I think in our generation, we've had a lot of fun.
In the next generation, they've got serious decisions to make.
A brilliant thing you've hit on there once again, Howard.
I agree with you completely.
And one of the things I've noticed over the last few years, this does relate to what you've just said.
Often, when I've had the younger people in, and we've, again, we've been, say, looking at Mars, and we put slides up of Mars, and there's a classic slide I always use, which shows a beautiful, barren, red, desert landscape, rocky-strewn, fantastic image.
And in the foreground of the image, there's a footpad of the spaceship that's taken the actual photograph.
And then, slightly in front, several yards away, there's a canister, an empty canister lying on the ground.
And quite often, before I even go into explaining what that canister is, basically, it's a discarded, empty battery.
The cameras and the instruments on board the spaceship, they need batteries just like our cameras do at home.
And quite often, in some cases in the 70s and 80s, when the batteries, for want of a better word, became flat, they were kind of sprung away from the central spaceship.
So they lie on the ground, in the foreground of the photograph.
And often, before I even say anything, a lot of the people in the lecture theatre, etc., especially younger people, they will instantly point and they'll say, we're littering another planet already.
Because they see the discarded remnants from this space probe, which I think is wonderful.
That's a very, very good sign, because I'm not sure whether our generation would have noticed that.
We'd have just been so blown away by the achievements, we wouldn't have thought of any of the ramifications.
It doesn't mean that our generation, as you're saying, is particularly, you know, don't care about this situation.
We just didn't understand.
Yeah, exactly.
And we're more blown away, as you've correctly said, about the, you're looking at the soil of another planet there.
What an incredible photograph that is.
But because the present generation have grown up accepting that anyway.
So yes, you're right.
They see it and they look at the image and yeah, they think it's incredible, but they instantly latch on to this idea that, hang on a minute, we're littering another planet there and that's not right.
So I think regarding the question you just asked me five minutes ago, I think that's a good sign.
And I think when I see people of any age from eight year old to 18 year old latching onto that immediately and talking about that, I think that's a really, really good and positive sign because you're right.
For the generation that we have, Howard, we are leaving it to somebody else now and we are thinking, are you going to look after it?
And my personal view is, as we stand right now, I feel more secure leaving the earth to the coming generation than I would have done to the generation that we're in or even the generation that preceded us, to be honest.
I completely agree with you, Nick.
I think you're absolutely on the money.
the only reservation i have is whether we will destroy the place before those smart people get a chance to implement their thinking processes with um inequalities wars poverty um pollution and all the rest of it it's it's still It's still a race.
But the nice thing is that there are thinking brains at work, if you know what I'm saying.
So, yes, Howard, I think so.
And I hope we've got positive things to think through.
But there are big times ahead, aren't there?
And I think the population size is probably the root of most of our problems that we have to surmount properly and fairly.
And in the meantime, science is finding ways to keep us alive longer.
And, you know, I say amen to that.
But that means even more of us.
Yeah, so do I. I might not have thought that 10 or 15 years ago, but I'm starting to lean that way myself, to be honest, Howard.
Yes.
Okay, we've got a couple of things to talk about, if you don't mind as we wrap this up.
Deep space exploration.
We're going further and further and further out, and we're finding remarkable things as we do.
How far can we go and how far should we go, given the tasks that we have in our own ballpark closer to home?
Great question, once again.
I think it's a balance.
You've talked about this word balance before, Howard.
And I think what we're doing currently, I think what we're doing currently, how can I explain this, is the right amount.
I think we've got a reasonable balance at the moment.
I think the exploration that we're doing, we have to do, because as I explained earlier on, it's not just that lovely cliche we have to explore because it's innate, which is true.
That is in us.
You can't knock that out in the same way that you can't disinvent knowledge.
You can't disinvent the knowledge that we have of nuclear weapons.
You could get rid of every nuclear weapon on Earth, but the knowledge to make more is still there.
So you can't disinvent this knowledge.
You can't disinvent this passion for exploration.
I think the amount we're doing currently is a reasonable balance.
I think in the future, it will increase because it has to increase for reasons which we've mentioned.
And I don't mean this as a scaremongering issue, but it does surprise me that more scientists on the many, many plethora of programs that we see and hear, it surprises me that more scientists, astronomers, et cetera, don't talk about this issue, not in a scaremongering way, but just in a matter of fact way that the solar system, the whole solar system can and will be under threat in the future.
So therefore, let's hope it's in the far future.
We do need to get out beyond the solar system and get out to the stars.
Now, in that respect, how far should we go?
Well, that is as long as a piece of string.
It's maybe how far do we need to go to survive?
Because that is the prevalent thing to all human beings.
Survival is the thing.
I think we have the technology today to start building a spaceship, which would be like an arc in space.
In other words, there would be families on board and the spaceship would, off it would go, and it would venture off through our solar system and beyond.
And then to get to the stars, we would have the technology to build this spaceship would cost a lot of money, but the technology is there.
To get to the stars, these families would take off.
And then if you took off in this spaceship, you wouldn't see the stars that you're traveling to.
Your offspring wouldn't see them.
Your grandchildren wouldn't see them.
Your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great great grandsons and daughters, many times removed, would eventually get to the stars.
To give you an example, the sort of spaceship that we could make today or start to make today could take us to the stars.
It would take to get to the next nearest star, our neighbor star, a star called Proxima Centauri.
In this spaceship, it would take about 30,000 years.
Yes.
Now that's just to get to the next star.
Our whole galaxy has in it about 300,000 million suns, stars.
So to get to the nearest one, take about 30,000 years.
But we could do it, Howard.
And I think we will need to do it in the very, very far future.
Of course, there are people who would say that whatever is out there will come to us before we have a chance to get out there.
There are indeed.
Yes, indeed.
And of course, we do have.
I mean, we always laugh about it, but you don't know.
The thing is, you do not know these things.
And 30 years ago, 40 years ago, we would have definitely poo-pooed the idea, perhaps, of life out there in our solar system on Mars, etc.
We would have poo-pooed the idea even of there being water on other planets.
So the idea, of course, about other intelligences trying to get in touch with us nowadays is not laughed about perhaps as much, or let's say by so many people as it once would have been.
And you know, of course, that we do have listening posts around the world for that very purpose.
Listening out for basically, as we mentioned earlier on, radio wave communication from out there.
And of course, we also send radio waves outwards on an outward journey saying, hello, we're here, basically.
And what do you think of the work of people like Seth Szostak?
There's about to be a television documentary airing about him.
My voice is on there because the film crew were there while I was interviewing him for this show.
You know, he's dedicated his life to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Do you think this is valid work?
Oh, I do think it's valid work.
There's no question about that.
I think people like that often struggle, of course, to get funding because of the abstract nature of what they're doing because there's no proof, nothing like that, or a lot of people would assume there's no proof.
And so why is money being spent on trying to do this?
Again, if a certain person doesn't do a project like that, somebody else will.
Because again, it's a drive for knowledge.
It's a drive for exploration.
And I think you have to do it.
And there will always be people wanting to do that.
And I think people need to do things like that as well.
We need to find out as much as we can about the outer reaches of space and certainly the local space around us.
We've mentioned a couple of times already that we might need to reach out there physically ourselves one day.
So these projects need to be carried out by people on Earth, no question.
Now, when people hear this, the blood moon phenomenon will have been and gone.
Explain to those of us who don't entirely understand what it is and what it looks like and how it gets there.
Talk to me about the blood moon that we've had.
The blood moon, yes, no problem whatsoever.
There are some different definitions, if I'm being honest, of a blood moon, but I personally think the best one is the idea that it's a moon, our moon, when it's in eclipse.
So, what happens how it is that the moon, our beautiful moon, orbits around us once, about once a month, that kind of thing, orbits around us in space.
It doesn't give off any of its own light.
The reason we see it usually is because sunlight also comes across space, bounces off the solid surface of the moon to our eye.
So, it's reflected light.
That's where we usually get to see the moon.
Now, our Earth is much bigger than the moon, and our Earth throws quite a large shadow into space.
So, on occasion, what actually happens is that the Earth gets in between the Sun, the light source, the Sun, and the Moon in a direct straight line.
What then happens, however, is that the full moon actually passes directly into the shadow that is cast by the Earth into space.
So, logically speaking, what you would assume would happen is because the Moon is no longer receiving all that lovely sunlight, we wouldn't see it at all.
And that logically is what would happen.
What actually does happen, though, however, is that the sunlight that's hitting the Earth, a little bit of that sunlight kind of bends around the atmosphere of the Earth.
The Earth's atmosphere acts a little bit kind of like a lens, and it bends or refracts some of that sunlight and actually throws it onto the surface of the moon.
The net result is the moon passes into the Earth's shadow, but we do still see it because a little bit of light gets thrown its way.
So it goes very dark.
Astronomers, the term astronomers often use is a deep coppery red colour, or hence a blood moon.
It's spectacular to watch.
I do hope a lot of people did get to see it.
Unlike an eclipse of the sun, which only lasts a couple of minutes, this, of course, lasted, say, three hours.
So, even with our inclement weather in England, we were hoping that the clouds would part, and they certainly did where I was.
And I did get up for half an hour, and then I've seen them before.
It was beautiful, but I got up for half an hour and had a look.
And it was glorious because what you can, of course, watch is the Earth's shadow gradually creeping across the surface of the moon.
Gradually does so.
And then eventually the moon is in full eclipse and it's this beautiful blood red or coppery red colour.
And then over the next hour or so, the earth's shadow then retreats and you're left with a beautifully shining, pristine, full moon once again.
Spectacular to watch, really beautiful.
I think there's another in 2018.
I'm not dead sure, but I think there is, Howard, to be honest.
And always great to watch.
And also great to watch, but is it a research opportunity too?
Yes, it can be actually.
People use the encroaching shadow to measure things, often even to measure distances to the moon, etc.
Anything that happens like that out in space, scientists do use it as a proper basis for measurements, time measurements.
Some things we have slightly different things happening.
We have ideas whereby the moon actually encroaches upon things like planets, like Saturn, way out there in space.
So Saturn looks like a little speck of light.
And as the moon crosses and cuts out our view of that little speck of light, that's Saturn, we often use things like that to update our clocks, basically, and to increase our accuracy of the way we time things.
It is something as well, which I do always mention, I hope it's okay just to mention it very briefly, the night sky, these happenings like the eclipse of the moon, they are wonderful, Howard, because it encourages people to look at the night sky.
And I always say to people, please, you don't need fancy gear.
You don't need fancy kit.
You don't need great telescopes.
The best tools that are available to us are our eyes.
The night sky, Howard, with the naked eye is the most beautiful, beautiful thing.
It is so overlooked.
You just need to get away from light pollution, get into the so-called outback, get into the countryside, away from town lights, street lights, etc.
And the night sky is the most beautiful, beautiful thing it really is.
Can I tell you why I agree with that?
Just a few weeks ago, and I know I've told my listeners about this, I haven't had any kind of holiday in five years.
So I managed to find myself a cottage in the middle of nowhere in West Wales, near Aberporth, not far from Cardigan.
And literally where I was staying, very nice cottage, very quiet, all by myself in the complete peace and darkness.
I can't do this in London.
I was able to open the bedroom window and look up.
And I spent literally hours transfixed by what I could see, the northern hemisphere stars.
But just a panoply in front of you.
Most of us who live in cities don't get the chance to see this, but for as long as there's been mankind, people have looked up and been awestruck.
And I was.
It is, isn't it?
You can't over-exaggerate the difference between a non-light polluted sky and a cityscape, a light-polluted sky.
You can't over-exaggerate the difference.
Interestingly enough, I laughed when you said that because I think the best night sky I've ever seen was from the top of Mount Snowden in North Wales.
I went up there years and years and years ago.
It's perfectly safe.
Everybody knows.
There's a big track.
You can walk up in the dark, no problem.
And we got to the top and it was cloudy.
But just as we got to the top, after about five minutes, the clouds parted as if on cue.
And the night sky, you feel like you could just reach out and pick the stars out of the sky.
It's the most beautiful thing, yeah.
Yeah, and you are captivated by that thought, which must have been captivating mankind for thousands of years.
What's out there?
How far away is that?
Why is that so bright?
Why is that twinkling?
All of those very fundamental, basic questions that we're starting to answer, but we're learning all the time.
Nicholas, it's a delight to have you on.
My audience loved you last time.
I'd love you to come back on again.
And something that I'm kicking around as an idea, maybe for next year, have a think about this if you'd like to do it, because I'd love you too.
If I ask at some point for people to send me questions for you.
Oh, definitely.
Obviously, I'll let you know what the questions are so that you can make sure you're totally prepared.
But I'd love to do space questions.
How about that?
That would be awesome.
That would be absolutely incredible.
It's always a pleasure to come on, Howard, because your questions are right, they're relevant.
It's always an absolute pleasure.
So, thank you for asking me.
Well, I think we both, although you're the scientist, I'm not, we both share the fascination, just like when we were kids, don't we?
Absolutely 100%.
No question about it.
Wonderful.
Look up at the night sky, everyone.
I would always say that.
If people want to know more about you, where do they go?
Thank you for that.
The best thing, Howard, is the website, which is astronomyforall.
All one word, astronomy, followed by F-O-R-A-L-L, astronomyforall.co.uk.
Nick Lister, thank you very much for coming back.
Thank you, sir.
What a fascinating man, Dr. Nick Lister.
And I'll put a link to his site on my site, theunexplained.tv.
We have more exciting guests coming soon, including hopefully during October, the first appearance on this show of Graham Hancock.
He lives about an hour and a half's driving distance from me, but for some reason we haven't been able to get him on for many years.
He is a very busy and very important man, so after many requests I know that you've made, it'll be really good to get Graham Hancock on this show.
Your guest suggestions, always welcome.
Your thoughts on the show, your comments on the way that I'm doing it, guests you'd like to hear on here, anything you want to say.
Gratefully received.
Go to theunexplained.tv.
That's my website, designed by Adam Cornwell at Creative Hotspot in Liverpool, our webmaster here.
There you can follow a link, send me an email, and if you'd like to, while you're passing, drop in a donation for this show, which would be very, very important and very gratefully received.
If you have donated to the show recently, thank you from the bottom of my heart for allowing us to continue in this way.
Like I say, more exciting shows to come, but until next we meet here on The Unexplained, my name is Howard Hughes.
I am in London, and please, stay safe, stay calm.
Above all, please stay in touch.
Take care.
Thank you.
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