As you read this, five of the eight planets in the Solar System have spacecraft orbiting them or landers on their surfaces – and more are on the way. In his new series Solar System, Prof Brian Cox reveals the freshest insights coming from these spacecraft and landers, and which of the planets they’re studying holds the most promise for finding signs of life.
So, naturally, we had to ask him all about it: from filming in the most alien-like places on Earth to his hope that aliens might explore the vast expanses of the Universe after we humans (possibly) extinguish ourselves.
SF: As a show, Solar System sounds familiar, but this series is very current and looks behind the scenes of the biggest space missions right now. What were your hopes for the show?
BC: That was one of the central ones: to show that there are over 40 spacecraft currently active in the Solar System, so the amount of knowledge that we have of our neighbourhood is increasing all the time. With that increase – that huge amount of data that’s raining down on us every second from these probes – we find that there are more questions than answers quite a lot of the time.
So, as with a lot of science, one of the things I hope that the audience takes away is that in no sense do we know everything about our neighbourhood in space.
In particular, [in the show] we talk about life – and life is a central part of any exploration of the Solar System. We say that the Solar System is a giant chemistry set and life is chemistry – complex carbon chemistry.
I think it’s fair to say that we’re finding more potential habitats than we ever would have guessed, in stranger places than we ever would have guessed, in stranger places than we ever would have guessed. Ceres, the minor planet, is a good example. The fact that it appears, because of data from a spacecraft called Dawn, to have liquid water below its surface is a tremendous surprise.
Even the fact that the moon Enceladus around Saturn seems to have liquid water, an ocean perhaps, going all the way around it was a surprise. We would never have guessed that before the Cassini spacecraft got there. So we’re finding more and more places where the possibility for complex chemistry, and therefore possibly life, exists – and that’s, I think, one of the messages.
SF: There are lots of behind-the-scenes moments: I loved the bloopers you’ve integrated into the series. Why did you decide to keep these in?
BC: That stuff always happens – I’m always messing around! But the decision to put them in was, I think, a really good one because it shows you that not everything’s perfect all the time when you’re trying to do experiments and demonstrate things.
But I think [it also shows] there’s joy in doing science – even the apparently silly experiments that actually illustrate deep properties of nature. I like that we decided we would just put in some of the fun stuff as well, and not take ourselves too seriously.
SF: You’ve previously said that stupidity is one of the biggest threats to our species. In the series, you also talk about our responsibility not to destroy ourselves, given how rare we seem to be. What do you think: are we special?
BC: As with many profound questions, the answer is: we don’t know. But what I can do is look at what we do know and make a guess – my guess would be that civilisations are very rare in a galaxy like the Milky Way.
What [the evidence] suggests, if you look just at Earth, is that single-celled life may potentially be quite common (although we don’t know). But complex multicellular life might be less common, and something as complex as a human being in a civilisation might be extremely uncommon.
My guess is that, and I wouldn’t be surprised if, there are no other civilisations in the Milky Way. But in the entire observable Universe, where there are over a trillion other galaxies, I would be very surprised if there weren’t any other civilisations. It’s a big place!
Someone asked me once what I would feel if I saw an alien spaceship. I wouldn’t be surprised if an alien spaceship came floating down and landed in Hyde Park. I’d go: “Okay, well, that solves a big puzzle here.”
But what I’d feel would be relief. We’re such idiots, I fear, that I think the chances of us surviving long enough to get out there to the stars are perhaps quite low. I’m not entirely convinced that we’re going to do it; that we’re going to solve the problems that we have here sufficiently well so that we can start to move out and become a multiplanetary and interstellar civilisation.
I’m quite miserable in the sense that if we don’t do it, I think maybe nobody will. So there’ll be nothing; the whole Galaxy will be meaningless, potentially, forever, because there’s nothing out there that thinks, other than us. So if it turns out there [are aliens], then at least it’s a weight off my shoulders. Then I’ll think, “Well, at least somebody’s done it.”
I’d be utterly delighted if I was wrong. And that’s really important because the foundation of science is to be delighted that you’re wrong – that’s when you find stuff out. The job is not to be right, but to find out more.
SF: Let’s talk about some of the missions and the research. The timescales involved are long: Europa Clipper is launching now, due to arrive at Jupiter’s moon in 2030; the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) will arrive in 2031; and the Perseverance Rover is due to return its rock samples from Mars in the mid 2030s. How do you stay patient while we wait for these results?
BC: What about the people who are working on them? Can you imagine? You build these things, then have to wait 10 years, 15 years, 20 years for the data. It’s a remarkable way of life for space scientists. The thing is, the distances are so big. We could get things there more quickly, but it would make them a lot more expensive at the moment. That’s part of the reason rocket technology, like what SpaceX and Blue Origin are working on, is really important.
Getting things into orbit and sending them off to the planets is really expensive. So the cheaper that gets, the easier it’ll be to get more there, more quickly – and the easier it’ll be to learn more. So, although I’m sometimes pessimistic, I’m optimistic about the future of space exploration just because it’s getting easier and cheaper to do.
SF: What were your top highs and lows of filming?
BC: We filmed in Spain, a beautiful location that really delivered for us. But [we forgot that] it was the place that Terry Gilliam tried to film the Don Quixote film, which failed because of the location.
The thing is, it’s a Spanish Air Force bombing range, which immediately should tell you it’s not the easiest place to film because they’ve got jet aircraft practising bombing runs in it. And then it’s also full of mosquitoes like you wouldn’t believe – just clouds of these insects. It turned out very beautifully, but it wasn’t very nice to film there!
And also Alaska: it was freezing cold. I always enjoy Alaska, but it’s never easy. They told me to take a lot of protective clothing cause it’s zero degrees, and I thought “Oh, that’s fine.” But it was zero Fahrenheit (-18°C) they were talking about! [When filming] my nose would go white, which is a sign of the start of frostbite, so then I’d have to put hand warmers on my nose and sit there for 10 minutes [before starting again].
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