Outside of school, my access to scientific information as a child came from my family’s weekly library visit, the chemistry and microscope sets my parents bought me over a couple of Christmases, and from television and newspapers. At that time, in England, this actually constituted quite a lot of exposure to science, since the newspapers and television contained quite a wealth of scientific content. Nevertheless, I didn’t have real access to more direct experiences, and I certainly didn’t know scientists personally, or visit laboratories at a local university.
The sole exception to this were the trips to Jodrell Bank, 35 miles or so from our home, that my parents and grandparents would occasionally take me on. It is so long ago that I don’t really recall every detail of these trips (this was way before I had even taken any kind of real science classes), although I do remember actual working scientists explaining how some of the equipment worked, and what some of the exhibits they had out for visitors were. What has clearly stuck in my mind though, over all these years, is the planetarium. I remember sitting there in the dark, the night sky whirling overhead, and one of those booming planetarium voices describing the sheer absurdity of the sizes and distances involved, and just flat-out loving it! It isn’t what made me a cosmologist, but it is one of my first recollections of being enthralled by what we as humans can actually figure out about the universe.
Of course, Jodrell bank was much more than a planetarium – it is an important astronomical facility, contains the third largest steerable radio telescope in the world, and is a treasure of British science. Despite this, the facility was almost closed last year, and remained open only after a phenomenal public outcry. The Guardian details this, and the exciting ongoing science at Jodrell Bank in a recent article by James Randerson. As someone who was inspired as a child by Jodrell Bank, it is wonderful to see it going strong and safe from closure (at least for now).
But the other thing I remember about Jodrell Bank is that it appeared in a famous Dr. Who episode (the last one starring Tom Baker as the Doctor). The reason that the Guardian article caught my eye is that it is accompanied by a “Science Facts and Science Fiction” piece, also by Randerson, detailing the history and highlights of the observatory. And indeed there it was, in the middle of the article
In a 1981 episode of Doctor Who, the Doctor’s fourth incarnation, played by Tom Baker, fell to his death from a walkway at the Lovell telescope. He regenerated into Peter Davison.
followed by another sci-fi link that I had completely forgotten, but was delighted to be reminded of
In Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Jodrell Bank scientists missed the alien invasion because they were having a cup of tea.
I really should visit there again some day!
February 16th, 2009 at 7:23 am
As a young lad I remember that Doctor Who episode well.
I’m afraid though that the memory cheats. The Doctor Who production team actually filmed the scenes at a BBC receiving station in Crowsley Park, not at Jodrell Bank. They used a model for the shots involving the radio telescope.
Cheers
Graham
February 16th, 2009 at 7:29 am
I was interested to read that Jodrell Bank has the largest erection in Cheshire.
February 16th, 2009 at 8:12 am
Graham – those bastards!
Peter – not according to Mrs. Bank.
February 16th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Thanks for the memories! I remember being taken to JB by my relatives, and I loved every minute of it. I think it helped me decide to become an astronomer.
I especially enjoyed steering the small radio dish to follow people who were walking around outside, and who hadn’t realised that there was a kid sitting inside at the controls….
February 16th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
I instantly thought of Douglas Adams when this popped up on RSS, and you thankfully quoted him. I would have had to get my copy and post it if you hadn’t!
February 16th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Mark,
I hope this comment doesn’t get deleted. I have been to a planetarium, it was last year down south. I went to the South Downs Planetarium. Day before was at Sir Patrick Moore’s house. You should see his observatory!
Claire
February 16th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
I do miss K-9…
February 17th, 2009 at 11:28 am
Well – one really could do worse than have a nice cuppa tea, if the world is about to end.
February 18th, 2009 at 8:45 am
I’m delighted that Jodrell is surviving.
I spent a couple of years at Jodrell as a postdoc – an amazing place, right out of 1950s science fiction movies, down to (in 1986-87) the pastel pink and green pastel switches on the old home-built correlator. It’s a bit isolated by English standards (a couple of miles to the nearest pub); nothing there but radio astronomers and sheep. I can verify the crucial importance of cups of tea in the daily operating rhythm of Jodrell.
I’m a bit surprised by Graham’s claim that the BBC didn’t film the Who ep at Jodrell; I recall that there was still a Dalek holding pride of place in the visitors’ center in 1986, and the grad students would occasionally take it for a test drive.tardis.wikia.com, found via google, implies that although Crowsley Park was used for some external shots, location shooting at Jodrell was indeed the bulk of the scenes
Indeed
Sometime I’ll post the pictures I took of the Mk I’s 30th anniversary, with Patrick Moore et al in attendance.
- Jonathan McDowell
February 19th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Jodrell Bank also missed the chance to conduct the first modern SETI project back in 1959.
Guiseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison had just published a paper on how one might go about using large radio telescopes to search for alien intelligences in the galaxy. Cocconi realized that the then-new JB might be able to detect artificial signals from at least the nearby star systems.
He wrote to Sir Bernard Lovell asking permission for the 250-foot radio telescope to be used for what would have been the first modern search for alien life. Lovell thought it would be a waste of time and turned Cocconi down.
The next year, Sir Frank Drake did conduct the first SETI at Green Bank in West Virginia, USA under the name Ozma. While he did not find any aliens, he did make the science history books and got the whole process rolling.
England was also the same place where a prominent astronomer of theirs in 1956 said that space travel would be “utter bilge”. And these were the same people who used to send expeditions all over the world.
February 20th, 2009 at 8:27 am
I think the most important thing about these places is they equate science with fun in the minds of young children. They probably won’t remember any of the details of what they learnt a week later (or at least not consciously – they might find it easier to learn it again when it is next presented to them) but they will remember they had fun and it was something to do with science. Positive reinforcement and all that.
February 20th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Another science fiction connection for Jodrell Bank is “A for Andromeda” the 1961 SF serial on the BBC by the late Sir Fred Hoyle. Jodrell Bank recieves an alien signal that descibes how to build a special supercomputer together with the programs to run on it. They build the supercomputer and it electrocutes a lab assistant played Julie Christie. Then it instucts us poor earthlings how to build a machine that clones her. Julie Christie then becomes the embodiment of the aliens on earth. The hero Dr. John Fleming is obviously Sir Fred’s alter ego.
@Winter Solstice Man
Anyway on space aliens and Jodrell Bank, in retrospect Sir Bernard was right to turn down the SETI request, it would have been just a waste of observation time. Remember Fermi’s question.
February 20th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Chemicalscum said -
“Anyway on space aliens and Jodrell Bank, in retrospect Sir Bernard was right to turn down the SETI request, it would have been just a waste of observation time. Remember Fermi’s question.”
A waste of time for whom? Frank Drake didn’t find anything with Project Ozma in 1960, but he is the one along with the Cocconi and Morrison paper who got the whole SETI ball rolling.
That is the kind of thinking that continues to hold us back from all sorts of endeavors. We could be so far ahead without the naysayers.
And for the record, Lovell later said he regretted not taking Cocconi up on his offer. Jodrell Bank has done some actual SETI since that time, but they will never be known as the pioneers in that field.
February 20th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
To add to the above: What if a signal from ETI did happen to sweep through our system in 1959 when Jodrell Bank could have been available to detect it had Lovell listened to Cocconi? We’ll never know now, will we?
As for the Fermi Paradox, I’ve become more than a little bored with that one brought up all the time. Where are they? Probably in their own home star systems dealing with their own problems and not caring one whit about the talking monkeys with car keys from an obscure yellow dwarf star in the middle of nowhere.
With SETI, my hope is that we will pick up a stray signal or two, because I doubt anyone is foolish enough to bother contacting us directly. And if they want to do the old cliche of conquering Earth, they won’t bother to knock first.
February 20th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Seems as though I remember Lovell saying all kinds of silly things about radio signals picked up from cosmonauts in orbit also, though my memory could be fooling be there……
February 20th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
On Fermi’s question, does anyone remember the Group of 50. They were if I remember rightly founded by an emeritus astronomy professor from the U of Toronto. They had come to the conclusion that on this basis of this that the aliens were already here, presumably hiding on the dark side of the moon or in the asteroid belt. They felt the aliens would, because of the greater scientific and technological development required to master instellar travel, be more morally advanced than us. They would therefore wait until we we ready to accept them before they made contact.
The Group of 50 issued a statement on the internet by themselves, a disparate group of scientists and writers, calling on the aliens to make email contact with them. They assumed that by monitoring our satellite radio traffic the aliens would be monitoring the internet. It was proposed that to eliminate hoaxers the aliens would arrange for a flash of light observable from the earth from the moon which would be emitted at a mutually agreed place and time.
The Group of 50 no longer seem to be on the web so I guess they never were contacted by the aliens, unless the men in black got to them. About that time someone completed a research project looking for the the infrared signature of alien colonization in the asteroid belt and they published a paper with negative results. OK if they are not here then all technological civilizations in the Galaxy are boring stay at homes watching TV all day. Personally I take the consequences of Fermi’s question seriously enough to consider that it is probable that anyone who uses a Bayesian analysis to input it into the Drake equation is going to come up with a pretty low probability of intelligent aliens out there emitting radio signals. Hey anyone done the calculation or have a reference to a paper where its been done.
February 23rd, 2009 at 12:07 am
Hi. This is great news indeed. JB has fascinated me since childhood – in the ’60’s , in India. So the first time I went to Britain – mid 90s – we discovered we were near the place, and made a trip that was close to a pilgrimage.
The loo had a poster with a detailed set of [tongue-in-cheek] instructions on how to maximise the efficiency of the hand dryer. I’m afraid I did not have camera handy to take a photograph though.
I hope that survives too, perhaps updated with a doff of hat to the carbon footprint.
Nary
February 23rd, 2009 at 6:54 am
Do you mean Allen Tough and his Invitation to ETI? It’s on the Web right here:
http://ieti.org/tough/index.html
Hopefully aliens will have better luck finding it than you did. :^)
As for one reason why ETI haven’t contacted us yet, besides the incredible distances and volumes of space involved plus the fact we may not be very interesting to a truly advanced species, they may all have gone to live in virtual worlds where life is much nicer and you can get whatever you want. We are certainly headed in that direction.
February 27th, 2009 at 5:33 am
I spent 1997–8 working at Jodrell Bank, and was there several times
1999-2000 in the context of collaborations (and back to visit a couple of
times since). It was one of the happiest times of my life. And to be honest,
who needs ET if you’ve experienced the Jodrell Bank tea room?
Just a few years after the (optical) astronomy group on the main campus
at the University of Manchester moved out to Jodrell Bank, essentially
everyone (except for some technical people) moved to the main campus
a couple of years ago. This is a trend which happened somewhat earlier
at the old optical observatories in Europe. The idea is that a) not much
observation is done there anymore anyway and b) interaction with the
other physics people is important. Of course, c) reducing costs is also an important
factor. a) isn’t true with respect to Jodrell Bank since it’s a radio, not optical,
observatory. b) might be to some extent. c) is probably not a factor, since the site
still exists.
Whatever the objective reasons for doing so, it takes the romance out of
being an astronomer. Yes, in downtown Manchester fish and chips or a curry
are much closer, but it was fun getting a couple of cars together to drive down
unmarked winding roads in the Cheshire countryside to have a pub meal
(and perhaps see one of the bright comets which were around in the late 1990s,
much more easily than from downtown Manchester). Even as a theoretician
it was inspiring to look out my office window and see the dishes. And at night, it
was dark enough to see the stars. (I lived on-site while working there.)
I am happy I was there when I was!