Episode 02: INTERSTELLAR

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In this episode, Steve tries to measure distant stars with his thumb, Matt talks black holes & plot holes and Helen plays some of her favourite space sounds. Plus a song from Helen that may provide useful information for your future interstellar travel needs.

01:01 –  Steve’s bit
12:24 – Helen’s bit
25:40 – Matt’s bit
39:53 – Helen’s song

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Corrections and clarifications first:

• 12:09 – Helen uses the phrase “standing on the shoulders of giants” which – as Lynda Goldenberg rightly points out – not actually a complement, but rather a heinous insult used by Isaac Newton to describe Robert Hooke. We’ll pull this apart properly in a future episode.
• 20:49 – Anaesthetists @brisgasdoc and @mjtb1987 have confirmed that they use the blood oxygen level tone all day, every day with their patients. This paper is an interesting investigation into attention and sonification in the operating room, and does mentions how surgical colleagues prefer to keep the oximeter volume down low.

Here’s a heap of unnecessary detail from this episode:

• More about the awesome Henrietta Swan Leavitt.
• How astronomers use parallax to measure the distance to stars.
• How the Earth-Sun distance was measured during an 18th Century Transit of Venus
• The complete Cosmic Distance Ladder.
• A visualisation of the LIGO chirp pattern detected in 2015.
• “I heard Gravitational Waves before they were detected!”
• Steve explaining gravitational waves – as also seen in our latest comedy special “You Can’t Polish A Nerd”.
• A bonus explanation of when black holes go faster than light.
• Those creepy noises detected around comet 67P.
• The thing that Interstellar got right: the first accurate visual rendering of a black hole in a Hollywood movie.
• Matt has added to his YouTube channel a brilliant interview with the visual effects expert who actually worked on the Interstellar black hole, Eugénie von Tunzelmann.
• More of Helen’s favourite space sounds:
  • Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, Pulsars and a Joy Division album cover.
  • The sounds of pulsars from Jodrell Bank Observatory.
  • Solar flares interrupting VHF radio transmissions.
  • “Whistlers” in Jupiter’s atmosphere.
  • Listen to the lingering sounds of the Big Bang.
• Like free stuff? Get all of the songs from this series as downloads for zero pounds from Helen’s Bandcamp page.

Thanks for listening!

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