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Paul Olding |
What on Earth is Wrong with Gravity?
A journey of discovery across
Festivals
Goethe
Institute Science Film Festival, Bangkok 2008
In Brief
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Particle physicist and ex D:Ream keyboard
player Dr Brian Cox wants to know why the Universe is built the way it is. He
believes the answers lie in the force of gravity. But Newton thought gravity was
powered by God, and even Einstein failed to completely solve it. Heading out
with his film crew on a road trip across the USA, Brian fires lasers at the
moon in Texas, goes mad in the desert in Arizona, encounters the bending of
space and time at a maximum security military base, tries to detect ripples
in our reality in the swamps of Louisiana and searches for hidden dimensions
just outside Chicago. |
Behind
the Scenes Preview Clips
Brian tries to explain a
Gravity Wave whilst waiting for lunch
Brian scared of snakes and
spiders in Louisiana
Going to GPS HQ, Colorado
Springs
Brian on faking the Apollo
Moon Landings
Only
Got 8 Minutes to Spare?
What
the Papers Say: Previews
“…A brilliant and funny young particle
physicist called Dr Brian Cox presents this fabulous Horizon…” Times
“…At last some real science on Horizon…” Daily
Mail
“…A Shame…” Daily Mail
“…Each new bit of the story involves visiting a
new location, which means shots of a car on the highway,
giant cactuses in the desert, slide guitar
music…” Radio Times
“…There are painful efforts to make the
narrative cool…” Radio Times
“…Non stop music and an endless bombardment of
more or less random images…” Daily Mail
More
Comments
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“my kind of viewing - a very complex subject made for the
layman to watch and learn” "I think it would have interesting to have investigated entangled particles in the programme. I think the programme could have discussed this side of particle physics in more depth." "I thought that the programme gave a lot of information and discussed it in a down to earth way. I think that the BBC should show a lot more of these scientific programmes. It was great to see a programme made so easy to understand." "I was irritated by the presentation of Dr Brian Cox, he was talking over the shoulder instead of to the camera."
"who needs drugs when you can get stoned on Horizon?" "Horizon has been sailing rudderless for several years now, unable to take itself or its audience seriously…" " A rare acknowledgement from a science documentary that simplification can be a tricky business" "endless bombardment of more or less random images. A shame.." “The subject wes explained very well, for people like me with no knowledge of this type of subject.” “The BBC should do more programmes like this. We're not all reality t.v idiots.” “Hat's off for taking a very difficult subject and explaining it very well - and admitting when it was difficult to do so” “Improvement in the style of delivery of interesting scientific material.” “At last a lesson in quantum physics etc that I can begin to comprehend! Thank you!” |
Photo Album
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Paul on Kitt Peak |
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On the road |
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Brian bending spacetime (sort of…) |
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Brian at the Tevatron Particle Accelerator |
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4m telescope, Tucson, Arizona |
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After a long day filming, |
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Brian with Leonard Susskind chatting about String Theory |
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Brian, Paul, Soundman Tom and Cameraman Paul California |
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Brian and Joe Giame detecting gravity waves |
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Filming en route |
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Paul and Brian |
Road
Trip Routing
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Flight London Heathrow via Chicago to Drive to New Orleans, Louisiana – LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory Flight New Orleans to Drive Colorado Springs, Colorado – GPS headquarters at Shriever Airforce Base Drive to Flight to Drive to Chicago, Illinois – Fermilab, Tevatron Particle Accelerator Drive to Flight to Tucson, Arizona – Kitt Peak Observatory Drive to Drive to Fort Davis, Texas – McDonald Observatory Drive to Flight to Flight Home… |
Extra Info
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Particle physicist and ex D:Ream keyboard player Dr Brian Cox takes
Horizon on a unique journey of discovery. Brian’s not content with his
research at CERN, nor with his collaboration with Danny Boyle on Sunshine
providing the inspiration for the character played by Cillian Murphy. Brian
wants to discover why the universe is built the way it is and he believes the
answers lie in the force of gravity. Gravity is the
thing that keeps our feet on the ground and it was the first force of nature
we thought we really understood. Back in 1687, Sir Isaac Newton managed to
distil gravity down to one short equation. With it, he could predict how
bodies moved under its influence, how the moon orbits the Earth, how the
planets orbit the sun and even how stars move about the night sky. But
driving out into the wilds of Texas, Brian goes to the McDonald Observatory
where astronomers have categorical evidence that Newton wasn’t entirely
correct. Back in 1969, it
was Newton’s understanding of gravity that helped get Neil and Buzz to the
sea of tranquility. When they came home., the left behind on the moon’s
surface some very special mirrors which could be used to put Newton to the
test. By firing a laser at these mirrors, scientists like Peter Schelus make
incredibly accurate measurements of the distance from the Earth to the Moon.
Taking readings over 40 years, we now have a phenomenally precise map of the
orbit of the moon. But the orbit of the moon is different to that
predicted by Newton. “…It turns out that
simple Newton’s laws of gravity really don’t answer all of the questions.
You’ve got to explain your observations and Newton’s gravitational theory
just doesn’t do it anymore…” In other words, Newton got it wrong. Although he had
his equation, Newton never really had any idea how or even why gravity
worked. He simply put that down to God. It was Albert Einstein who came up
with a completely new understanding of the Universe and with it, the key to
the workings of gravity. Unlike Newton’s Universe
which was pretty much had stuff wafting around empty space, Einstein
Universe’s had an internal fabric in which all matter was embedded. This
fabric was made of the 3 dimensions of space intricately linked with the
fourth dimension of time - the spacetime. In Einstein’s universe, the
planets, stars, galaxies actually warp, bend and distort the spacetime. “…Everything that happens in the universe
effects the spacetime and the spacetime affects everything that happens in
the universe...” Brian heads out
to the famous Kitt Peak Observatory just west of Tucson, Arizona. Looking
deep into the heart of the Cosmos, some 7.8 billion light years from Earth,
astronomers here witnessed what appeared to be two completely identical
galaxies. This baffled them until they realized that there was an
intermediate galaxy in the frame. According to Einstein, this nearer galaxy
was physically bending the spacetime which caused the light coming from the
far off galaxy to get bent, producing the multiple images we see from earth. Einstein realized that his universe of bendable spacetime could explain the existence of gravity. With spectacular graphics, conceptualizing spacetime as never seen before, Brian explains that the Earth distorts spacetime, and it’s this curving of the fabric of the universe that creates the effect we feel as gravity. The bigger the mass, or the nearer you are to an object, the more curved the spacetime becomes, and so the stronger is the effect of gravity. This may sound like science fiction, but many of us use the bending of spacetime everyday, when we switch on our GPS Sat Nav. Heading south of Denver, Brian uses the car’s GPS to navigate to the Global Positioning System HQ, a maximum security military instillation just outside Colorado Springs. Guided by Major Bandit Brandt, he is taken round the very room from which the whole GPS network is controlled. To keep the system working, the clocks onboard the satellites up in orbit have to be in synch with time on earth. But up in the reduced gravity of orbit, spacetime is bent in such a way that time ticks faster than time on earth. “…What Einstein said is that the stronger the gravitational field the slower time ticks and the weaker it is the faster time ticks…” For the GPS to work, the controllers have to dial in a time correction, otherwise GPS would drift by around 11km per day and be completely useless. On Earth and throughout much of the Universe, Einstein’s idea of bending spacetime is an accurate description of how gravity works. But Einstein knew his theory of gravity doesn’t apply to the whole universe. It fails to work in the most violent and turbulent places in the cosmos. In the swamps of Louisiana, scientists are trying to peer deep into the most brutal corners of the Universe. At the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, head man Joe Giame explains how they hope to use something called ‘gravitational waves’ to observe violent cosmic phenomena. ‘Gravitational waves’ are believed to be created when the spacetime is violently churned up by fast moving massive objects, sending out waves in the spacetime. “…These waves are physical distortions in our reality. You know they really are stretching and contracting the space and time that we’re in…” But so far, this bit of Einstein’s understanding of gravity and how the Universe works has yet to be proved correct. Einstein has no answers in the dark heart of a black hole, and his idea of gravity completely fails at the Big Bang, the beginning of time. Here the Universe was incredibly hot, incredibly dense, and incredibly small. Much as he tried, Einstein never managed to answer the question of how gravity works when things get very small. “…Einstein’s theory of relativity just can't provide the answer, the maths doesn't work on the smallest distance scales…” But Brian insists that we have to know how gravity works at the smallest distances, if we want to know how it all began. Brian takes us into the dark world of subatomic particles
and the quest for a quantum theory of gravity, a universal theory that will
work everywhere in the Cosmos. Quantum
mechanics predicts that the force of gravity is ultimately created by the
transmission of a particle, which they’ve called the graviton. Using the Tevatron Particle Accelerator just outside
Chicago, scientist Greg Landsberg has been trying to create these illusive
gravitons. But in this complex field of science, Greg has a significant
challenge on his hands. “…Its
amazing that the way to see the graviton is by not observing it, by observing
it’s missing…” If
gravitons are created, Greg believes they would instantly disappear,
vanishing from our reality into alternative dimensions of space. Brian
explains that “…what scientists like
Greg are proposing is that there can be extra hidden unseen dimensions. It
sounds ridiculous and it is impossible to picture, but theoretically It’s
possible. And it’s also possible that gravitons can spend most of their time
in their extra dimensions…” For the time being, the quest to find the graviton, and with it the solution to the mystery of gravity continues. Brian is confident we are looking in the right places. “..The solution to a deeper understanding of gravity will certainly lie in the marriage of Einstein’s theory with the quantum theories of sub atomic particles…” But he concedes that “…If there are things that I listen to, you listen to that you think that I just don’t understand that, then you’re in good company because nobody understands it…” |
All
Images copyright Paul Olding 2008 or BBC