The acclaimed University of Manchester professor of particle physics and BBC science presenter talks about the universe.
Where: Queen Elizabeth TheatreBrian Cox, a University of Manchester school of physics and astronomy professor, is a pop culture superstar in the U.K. A best-selling author and fixture on the BBC as presenter of hit series such as 2010s Wonders of the Solar System and 2013s Wonders of Life, his lecture tours set Guinness world records for attendance. Stating that “science is too important not to be part of popular culture,” Cox does his part to make it so.
“I’ve always felt that cosmology is both fascinating and terrifying to people in equal amounts,” said Cox. “Because the idea that we are here in orbit around one star amongst 200 billion in the Milky Way Galaxy which is one of two trillion galaxies in the observable universe is a very challenging idea. It challenges our idea of what our place is in the universe, raises questions of what it means to live a finite life in a vast universe and that is the proper description of the word terrifying.
While studying physics at University of Manchester, Cox also had a career as a pop star in the 1980s to early 1990s. His present day fame probably has more to do with why videos of both the bands Dare and D:Ream continue to rack up YouTube videos long after almost everyone has forgotten them entirely. D:Ream did have a No. 1 with Things Can Only Get Better, which New Labour adopted as an election anthem, but Cox didn’t play keyboards on the track.
“On the face of it, science is a really a simple and humble pursuit of the study of nature, it’s a way of thinking,” he said. “I’ve been heavily influenced by a superb piece of work by the late Richard Feynman titled The Value of Science where he defines it as a “satisfactory philosophy of ignorance,” which I think is a useful premise. You have to accept that mode of thinking that you don’t understand everything and need to learn more, and that is useful beyond science into things like politics.
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