SECOND PART 3rd September 2007

0:09:07 Nature of ideas; few Kuhnian revolutions in science; Einstein extended Newton's laws but didn't overthrow Newton; science is an evolutionary procedure; in my subject advances have been made through new observations made possible by technical advances; there are key insights which are most important in the development of science; Dan McKenzie was involved in such with continental drift and tectonics that unified lots of data; the other big contrast between science and humanities as regards creativity is that in science although your work is durable it generally loses identity; Einstein is an exception; Peter Medawar's description of creativity; Kuhn's examples include Galileo v Copernicus, another is the quantum revolution of the early twentieth century; marvel at how far we can get with commonsense intuitions in making sense of the physical world

6:05:20 Own working methods; my work has been phenomenology, although a theorist have been in close contact with observations; adopted a fairly synoptic or synthetic style of thinking trying to link together unrelated data obtained by different techniques; at the start of my career evidence was coming in for the big bang origin of our universe and for black holes etc. and it was possible to have naive and novel ideas; fortunate that my subject has not stagnated largely through improved technologies, and the rate of discoveries has remained very high; in the last few years a new force has been discovered which is pushing the universe and making it accelerate; we have learnt more about the very first incipient stages of how galaxies and stars form and also that our solar system is far from unique which has opened up an entirely new subject; the cosmos has become much more interesting as the body of data has been enriched by new technologies; tend to sit and think but get a lot from collaboration, talking about ideas, the social side of science is a very important part of it; value of conferences; e-mail and internet collaboration

12:56:12 Sub-nuclear physics relies on experiments that are very difficult to do and has been held up for twenty years though there is hope for new advances next year when the new accelerator at CERN in Geneva comes on line; also is a sign of achievement as particle physicists have understood everything to this point; however that is only one branch of science as biologists are not impeded by not knowing what goes on in an atomic nucleus but by the complexity of what they are trying to understand; each science has its own irreducible concepts and tries to interpret things in terms of those concepts so understanding the sub-nuclear world not important for the rest of science; however understanding the beginning of our universe; at present we can extrapolate back with a good deal of confidence to a point where the universe was about one billionth of a second old; at this point conditions get more and more extreme and the laws of physics we can test in the laboratory break down; we need some new knowledge of fundamental physics; cosmic science need quantum science at this point; suspect that the whole idea of space and time has to be revised

19:18:00 Space technology has been very important for my science; we have been able to send probes to the planets and have understood more about the solar system as a result; also having sent telescopes up into orbit can observe in a way that you can't on the ground; above earth's atmosphere you get much sharper images but also certain kinds of radiation infra-red, ultra-violet and x-rays which are emitted by cosmic objects and which don't get down to ground level as absorbed in the atmosphere; some of the things I have worked on like cosmic explosions would not have been possible without this; by-product of Soviet-US rivalry and developments continue for both military and commercial purposes where the latter now exceeds the former in expenditure; scientific expenditure is a tiny spin-off from this; future plans for large instruments in space to study back in time to where the  stars and galaxies were forming and to see planets round other stars, even planets like the earth; exciting as the planets we have detected so far are big ones like Jupiter, but within twenty years we should have telescopes in space which would be able to image a planet like the earth orbiting another star; the question of whether there was life on other planets would be left to biologists; the question of the origin of life isn't understood here on earth yet; looking at the development of space science and technology it has also been motivated by sending people into space; American moon landings crash program driven by superpower rivalry, now thirty-five years ago; what is the long-term future of people in space subject of debate; international space station doesn't really inspire people; Americans have a long-term program to go back to the moon and to Mars but am unsure whether this will materialize; American civilian program is risk averse because of shuttle accidents; personal view is that the only future of manned space flight lies in high-risk private enterprise, as adventurers and explorers; the practical case for sending people gets weaker all the time with each advance in the miniaturization of robotics; the European effort in space has been rather low level compared with the US but feel we should eschew manned space flight completely and spend all our money on advanced robotics and then we can fully match what the Americans do on a much lower budget; just as the leading particle physics lab is at CERN in Geneva so we can make leading space science an activity which is driven from Europe

32:02:03 Education must maintain our expertise in science and technology in UK but the wider public should be given a feel for science and technology; young people are growing up in a world ever more moulded by science and technology facing ever more ethical choices about how to apply science; need a public that is informed enough to take part in such debates on these questions; should not be left to professional scientists to decide on the applications of science as they have no special ethical sensitivities; scientists should feel the obligation to explain the scientific background; people should understand the key ideas and not the details and the fact that we are never really certain about things, nothing is ever risk free

37:32:02 With regard to outreach, new communication media via the internet are crucially important; if a scientist wants to get ideas over clearly then writing a book or an article is the surest way; television is frustrating because of the compromises you have to make but with the internet it is possible to make videos available to discerning viewers so there may be a revival of serious documentaries; apart from expounding ideas, dialogue is important and scientists have been rather remiss in not getting into dialogue with the public; scientists regarded as ghettoised in comparison to other intellectuals; bad for the image of the scientific profession; scientist have a responsibility to engage with the public when their work has implications of an ethical or societal character; classic case of this is the atomic scientist in World War II; many of the physicists who had worked on the bomb later went back into academia but did maintain a long term concern and responsibility to do all they could to urge steps towards arms control; Joseph Rotblat and Hans Bethe who were involved in Los Alamos devoted part of the rest of their lives to campaigning for control of nuclear weapons; have been involved in Pugwash-type activities - in 1950's Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein signed a manifesto drafted by Joseph Rotblat and in consequence an institution was formed to get together scientists of east and west and first meeting was held in Pugwash, Nova Scotia - Pugwash conferences especially important in the 1960's as at that time very little opportunity of scientists in the Soviet Union and the west to meet; after meetings could report back to their governments which helped to get the partial test ban treaty in 1963 leading to the anti-ballistic missile treaty about 1970; privileged to know Joseph Rotblat who worked almost until his death two years ago campaigning to rid the world of nuclear weapons; able to see that such persons as Robert McNamara became convinced that this should be a long-term goal

47:04:00 Own feelings about the future; 21st century is special as the first time that human beings both collectively and singly are going to have an effect on the whole planet; good that the destruction of the planet has come up the political agenda as a long-term concern; am worried about whether we can cope with rising population and the aspirations of the developing world without a long term bad effect on climate and biosphere generally; new risks come from us living in a more interconnected world where individuals are empowered more than ever before which means that society is far more vulnerable; technologies advancing faster and a broader front than ever before; as a scientist of cosmology and astronomy have an awareness of the long term future as well as the past; view that humans are the culmination but I know as an astronomer that the sun is less than halfway through its life and any creatures that witness the demise of the sun won't be humans but as different from us as we are from bacteria; if we destroy the future of life on earth in 21st century this could resonate far beyond into a post-human era; we do not know if there is life elsewhere in the universe but this is the challenge for the 21st century