 I have been warned that this is on now, so I better watch what I say, oh, I can hear it. Oh, what a change is seeing it like this. Hello and welcome to the Scottish Parliament, I'm Christine Grahame MSP, I'm a deputy presiding officer and I'd like to welcome you all here to our second science-themed family day. I hope that you've already been enjoying yourself at the inflatable planetarium or the sci-fi roadshow or maybe just bouncing around on the space hoppers. I'm a bit old for that now. I'm delighted that as part of this family day you're able to join us at this very special festival politics event, the brilliant daughter of Maggie at Darren Pocock MBE. Dr Adrian Pocock is a space scientist, if you don't know it, hello, yes. A broadcaster, a science educator and now the author of The Sky at Night, Book of the Moon, a wonderful and very accessible celebration of our unique neighbour in the sky. As a young child, she dreamed of space travel to visit the clangers. Who knows who the clangers are? Hands up if you know who the clangers are. Oh, there we go. Can you make the clanger noise? There you go. As most of you know, it's a children's TV series about mice-like creatures who lived on the moon. Perhaps Dr Adrian Pocock would still be thrilled to hitch a ride on a NASA mission to space to see if there's any of those small, green, souk loving creatures. Dr Adrian Pocock graduated with a BSc in physics and later a PhD in mechanical engineering from Imperial College London. She then went on to work for the Ministry of Defence on projects ranging from land mine detectors to missile warning systems before returning to her first love of building instruments to explore the wonders of space. She's worked on a host of high-profile, big-budget projects that are guaranteed to astonish any space fan. She was the lead scientist for the optical instrumentation group for Astrium and is working on the observation instruments for them—I'll get this wrong—Aliolas satellite to measure wind speeds as part of the investigation into climate change. Who knows about climate change? Hands up. Oh, there we are. From ground-breaking work on the Gemini Observatory in Chilly to the Hubble successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, Dr Adrian Pocock is always leading on those exciting and amazing projects and innovations. Since 2014, she has co-presented the long-running astronomy TV programme, The Sky at Night. Who knows about The Sky at Night? Hands up. Oh, there we are. And is a regular contributor on a TV comedy panel shows, Duck Quacks Don't Echo and Would I Lie to You. That's exciting. Oh, forget the mood. Would I lie to you? I've been taking her first steps at a time when Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the moon. Dr Adrian Pocock attended thirteen schools during childhood and struggled with undiagnosed dyslexia for many years until a telescope-making night class changed her world and a space scientist was born. Who knows what dyslexia it is? Ah, yes. It's trouble with… Oh, a spelling's mind, eh? Trouble with spelling and reading words. Thirteen schools dyslexia. Look at this wonderful person, so there's hope for us all, isn't there? You're supposed to say yes. That's it. There's hope for us all. Partly because of her own experiences and because she's passionate about making science successful to all, Dr Adrian Pocock has spoken to almost 30,000 schoolchildren through her own company, Science Innovation Limited, inspiring them to chip away at the stereotypes of STEM subjects being the preserver of white males. What is a STEM subject? Oh, Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. There you are, just so you know. It is now my pleasure to introduce Dr Maggie Adder and Pocock invited to give a presentation all about what? The moon. What? The moon, yes. Over to you. First of all, I think that I should introduce my friend. This is Mooney. It's not a very original name, but this is Mooney. I don't know if anyone can see him. My daughter Lauren, who's sitting in the front there, she may heckle later. She found him for me. I think Mooney sums me up, really, because one of the reasons I wrote the book is mainly because this year is a very exciting year, because this year is 50 years since we first stepped foot on the moon. The words you'll be hearing a lot this year is, you know, one small step for my own, one giant leap for mankind. Because that's the words that Neil Armstrong said as he stepped out on the moon. And he did that 50 years ago. So on the 20th of July this year, we'll be celebrating that, and there should be all sorts of wonderful things happening. Now, the other reason I wrote the book is because my name is Dr Maggie Adder and Pocock, and I am a self-certified lunatic. Yes, it's embarrassing, but I do need to say it. And when I say I'm a lunatic, it's because I am mesmerised by the moon. Now, we've been up in Scotland for a few days now because we flew up on Tuesday, and when we left London, it was cold, it was wet, and it was horrible. And we flew up and we landed in Glasgow because we were doing some filming there, and it was beautiful and it was sunny. And each time I see a nice clear day, I think, oh goodness, it might be clear tonight. And it was true that night I looked out and there was the moon. And I must confess, I don't know if you two know about this, but that night I actually went outside at about one o'clock in the morning and I was just looking at the moon like this. And that's why I'm a lunatic. But what I want to do is I want to show you that each and every one of us should be lunatics because the moon does so much for us and we take it for granted. So yes, with the moonies help, I'm going to talk about the moon. So first of all, I think I should give you some of the basics about the moon. And to do that, I've got some props here that this, as you might recognise, is the world. Now, if I look at the world, how big is the moon? So if this is Earth, then the moon is about this size. Now, let me put this piece of paper down. Now, that doesn't look very big. Oh, thank you. I'll need that back in a minute. It's my crib sheet. Now, it doesn't look very big. Our moon is one of the biggest compared to its planet in the solar system. And this makes a lot of difference and I'll explain that as I go along. But so if this is the Earth and this is the size of the moon. So the moon is quite a bit smaller, but it's of a fair size. Now, life on the moon, when the first people went to the moon, they weren't too sure what to expect. Because the moon is sort of a, it's a long way away from the Earth and they weren't sure what to expect. But as they analysed the moon, they did lots of sort of orbits around the moon to try and find out, you know, what it's made of, where would be a good landing sites. Now, one of the first things that people notice about the moon is, I've got an image here, is the moon looks a bit like this. Now, can everybody see this if I hold it up? I pass it round. Can everybody see? The moon is covered in craters. Now, this is quite interesting because it's very, very different from the Earth. If you look at sort of the planet Earth, you see oceans, you see land. But four-fifths of the Earth's surface is oceans. When you look at the moon, no oceans at all. Although these craters, when people first looked at the moon, they thought that these craters were full of water. And so the craters on the moon usually are called seas. They're called various, and they're given names of various seas. So looking at the moon, they saw the craters and they thought they were full of water. And it turns out there's not much water on the moon. But there is a little bit, but I'll talk about that later as well. So the moon is of a fairly barren place and it's got no atmosphere. And that's one of the reasons why we have all these craters. Because it hasn't got an atmosphere here on the Earth, when a debris comes from space, it comes and it hits the Earth's surface. Sorry, it hits the Earth's atmosphere and it gets very hot as the friction as it passes through the Earth's atmosphere. Now has anyone here seen a shooting star? Okay, see a few hands going up. A shooting star unfortunately has nothing to do with stars whatsoever. Stars are massive. Our local star is the sun and it sits at the centre of our solar system. Now if you take planet Earth, planet Earth here, you can fit a million planet Earths into one sun. So if we had suns shooting through the atmosphere, that would be very bad news for Earth. So what a shooting star actually is, it's a small piece of debris that's left in space. And as it hits our atmosphere, it burns really brightly and it leaves a trail. And sometimes you get different coloured trails and from that trail you can see what that meteorite is made out of. And actually when it hits the Earth, that's when it becomes a meteorite and that's when we pick it up. And actually I was told that actually there's some meteorites downstairs. So if you go and look downstairs, you might see some meteorites. Okay, so that's a meteorite. Now on the moon it has no atmosphere. Or it has something we call an exosphere, which is really, really, really thin atmosphere. So when things are hurtling through space, they just go plop and crash straight into the moon's surface and that's what forms these craters. So the craters are formed by things from space hitting the moon. Now the moon has had a hard time because it was formed about four and a half billion years ago and in that time it has been pummeled with various things from space. Now here on Earth, if we do have a sort of big meteor of craters, there's something called a barringer crater in Arizona and it's about a mile wide. And it's where a huge meteor hit the Earth and made this huge crater. But most of the craters on Earth, because we have plate tectonics and we have weather, they get eroded away so there's not much evidence of them. But on the moon, because it has no plate tectonics, because it has very little weather, when you get a crater it can stay there forever. So there's an idea that Neil Armstrong, as he stepped out on the moon, he left a footprint. There's no wind to take that away. There's nothing to erode that. The only thing that's going to take that away is a meteorite hitting that space. And if that happens then that will be obliterated. But otherwise, things just stay on the moon's surface for billions of years. So the moon in that way is a time capsule. It shows us what the early solar system was like. And so that's another reason why I'd love to go to the moon and investigate. So this is what the moon looks like, but it has been pummeled with all sorts of debris for many, many years. Okay. So the moon, what would it be like to live on? Well, in the future it would be lovely to have a moon base. But the moon is a sort of a very alien atmosphere. And it's alien because of two things. When people think of the moon, they think of it as quite cold. But the moon, depending on what side of the moon you're on, if it's in the daytime side, then the radiation from the sun is hitting the moon and the temperature of the moon goes up to 100 degrees. Now who's had a cup of tea here and used boiling water? Yeah. So boiling water, that's 100 degrees. And so that's the temperature on the moon's surface during the daytime. Now daytime on the moon lasts about two weeks and then you have two weeks of nighttime. And then the temperature plummets to minus 100. Now that's colder than Antarctica. So one day it's hot, wow, it's a bit hot here, 200 degrees C. And then the nighttime comes and whoa, it's freezing. Suddenly it plunged down to minus 100 degrees C. So it gets very hot and very cold. And so when they sent astronauts to the moon, they had to sort of dress them appropriately so they could survive those extreme temperatures. And so I don't know if many of you have seen pictures like this. It's a picture of an astronaut on the moon and he's wearing a big bulky spacesuit. And they had to wear that because A, the extreme temperature difference. And also I mentioned that there has no atmosphere. We are surrounded here on Earth by a wonderful atmosphere when it allows us to breathe and run around and do all sorts of things. On the moon there is no atmosphere, there's no oxygen, there's nothing we can breathe. And so they have to wear a big bulky spacesuit to protect them from the temperature range but also to provide an environment where they can breathe and they can survive as humans. So a life on the moon looks like fun, but it will be pretty challenging. So that's what they did. They sent, so 50 years ago, they sent the first people to the moon. So I mentioned that I'm a lunatic and the lunar landscape is pretty hostile. I think that's the best way to describe it. And so yes, one of the other questions is had anyone seen the moon changing shape? I mean maybe some of the kids. Yeah, have you seen the moon changing shape? So what sort of shape does it have? Can you tell me? Yeah, crescent half and full, perfect. Now I've got another paste to here if I can find the right one. It's probably this one on the floor. Let's have a look. Yes. Is that the right way round? No, it's not. Let's go this way. So you mentioned crescent half and full. So that's some of the faces of the moon. Now I'll just show you that round. Now I think people are familiar with the faces of the moon. Now, but why do we get them? Does anyone know? Do you know? What do you think? The sun is reflecting to the light on the moon and the sun is not reflecting to the dark part of the moon. Yes. And so if I take moony here, now imagine that you guys are the sun. So now this is the moon and I'm going to be the earth. Now if the moon is here, the sunlight is coming in this way and I'm looking at the moon this side. So this side of the moon is all lit up but I'm on this side of the moon so I only see the dark side of the moon. So this side is in the night time side of the moon. So this is what I see. So this is what we call a new moon where you don't see the moon in the sky at all and I hate that phase because I can't see the moon and I get quite upset. Okay, let's go for the other extreme. Now you're still the sunlight. Sunlight's coming in here. This is the moon here and now the sunlight is hitting the moon and I'm looking at the moon. So I'm looking at the bright side of the moon. So this phase of the moon is a full moon. But let's say the moon's over here. Now I'm here, the moon's here and the sunlight's coming in this way. So this is the lit side of the moon and I'm seeing half of that lit side. So I'm seeing half of the moon's disc, well, quarter of the moon's disc actually but I'm seeing this side of the moon lit up. So that's why we get the different phases. It depends on where the sunlight's coming in where the earth is relative to the moon. And so we get all these different phases. Now if you think about it, if you're the sun and this is the moon and I'm the earth, this is actually what we call a solar eclipse because the moon should be in front of the sun and then the sun, the moon's in front of the sun. So that should be a solar eclipse. But has anyone here seen a total solar eclipse? Were you impressed? Were you impressed when you saw it? Yes, yes, you were. Okay, because I saw a total solar eclipse and it blew my socks off. The first time I saw a total solar eclipse I had to sit down afterwards because I was so blown away and my mind was like, whoa, that was amazing. Because what you see is the sun disappear behind the moon. And all you see around is you see the bright corona of the sun. That's the outer atmosphere of the sun beaming out into space. And so you see this dark disc and then all this light streaming off the sun. And then as the moon moves on in its orbit, what you do is you get the diamond ring effect where a bright ray of light springs out from the sun and you see this diamond ring effect and then the moon goes on. Now a total eclipse of the sun only lasts a few minutes. But you'd think with all the alignment you could get a total eclipse of the sun every month as the moon goes around the earth because it takes about a month for the moon to go around the earth. But the thing is you don't get that because the sun and the moon and the earth aren't in a perfect alignment. They're about five degrees off. So sometimes the moon is too high to eclipse the sun. Sometimes the moon is too low to eclipse the sun. So that's why you don't get a total eclipse every month but every few years. And I think the next one is coming up later on this year in a place where I used to work in Chile. So I'm really looking forward to going out and seeing that if I can. Because we went out as a family in 2017 to see the total eclipse of the America it was called because it was a total eclipse that went across America. And we started right at the beginning in Oregon and saw it there and it was an amazing thing to see. So that's eclipses of the moon. And that's eclipses of the sun, a solar eclipse. But you also get eclipses of the moon where the earth gets between the sun and the moon and the moon disappears for a while. But the moon doesn't just disappear. What happens is the moon goes blood red. Now has anyone here seen a lunar eclipse? Now you've seen one. Did it freak you out? Was the eye saw one and a total eclipse of the moon because the moon literally goes red. And you can imagine ancient people looking back in time looking up and whoa, okay, the moon's red. We're doomed. I don't care what's happening, we're doomed. But it happens because what happens is the earth gets between so this is the moon and I'm the earth and the earth gets between the sun and the moon and so light can't get through the earth and so the moon should just disappear. But what actually happens because the earth's got an atmosphere, some of the light from the sun goes through the earth's atmosphere and as that light goes through the earth's atmosphere some of the blue light gets scattered out so it's only the red light reaching the moon and so that's why the moon goes blood red. Now a total eclipse of the sun only lasts a few minutes. A total eclipse of the moon lasts a few hours. So if you get a chance to see one do check it out because it's pretty freaky. Okay, that tells you a bit about the moon. But one of the things that I'm interested in also is something called archaeoastronomy which is a bit of a mouthful but you know you've heard of archaeology and you've heard of astronomy. Well archaeoastronomy is just emerging of the two so it's looking back in the past and seeing how people have celebrated the moon and lots of people have been fascinated by the moon and I've mentioned a few of them here. Now one of the women that I was fascinated about was a woman who lived 4,000, I think 4,000 years ago and her name was Ed Hedwanna and she was the chief moon goddess in the city of Babylon. Now see to me that is a great title. I would like to be, Archie if you don't mind, I'd like to be chief moon goddess of the city of Edinburgh. So if that could be arranged. Hands up you look like a chief moon goddess. There you are, you're officially that though. And so I think it's an amazing title but her name was the first female name to be written in the history books and it's quite interesting because we can find pictures of her and we can find busts of her and if you find some we've found these ancient busts of her and we looked at them and there was something a bit odd because we found pictures and they were named and they had her name on it but she had a beard and we thought hey what's going on here and it turned out that because she was speaking to many of her male colleagues to show that she had sort of you know she was a sort of an important woman she used to have to wear a beard. Now I do this television programme called The Sky at Night every month and it's been going on it's the longest running television series in the world and I've never had to wear a beard yet. So we think we've come a long way in 4,000 years but it's quite interesting that she used to have to wear a beard. So this was an amazing woman and sort of celebrated and one of the things I love about her is she used to write poetry and she used to write poetry about the moon and she used to write poetry about astronomy and her poems live on today. People sort of read these poets and they sort of study this poetry from 4,000 years ago but your her title Moon Goddess of the City of Babylon. Now I'm looking at people and I've investigated people but I'm also investigating places and one of the places that really caught my eye is a celebration of the moon because people here are places like Stonehenge and various other places that celebrate the sun but there are many many many places that celebrate the moon and many of them are up here in Scotland and one of the places that I'm most interested in and I wrote about is somewhere called Warren Fields. Now Warren Fields was only discovered in 2013 and it's up in Aberdeenshire and it's a series of pits that run I think a track of 50 kilometres and each one of these pits is one of the phases of the moon. Now when people worked out when these pits were actually dug they were dug 8,000 years ago so this is going back 8,000 years and people dug these pits over a track of 50 kilometres. Now as I say each pit represents a phase of the moon but also if you look at the winter solstice the alignment of these pits also aligns up with the winter solstice. Now 8,000 years ago people here were nomadic they weren't sort of a they were hunter-gatherers they were moving around and so the fact that they took time to build these pits shows that they wanted to celebrate the moon and understand the moon. So if you go back in time you can see that people across the world have wanted to understand the moon and they did this because the moon is like a timekeeping piece. Back in those days they didn't have digital watches funnily enough but they needed to keep track of time and you can have the sun but you can map the sun over a period of a year. The moon is really convenient because you can map the phases of the moon over a period of a month and a month is quite a handy unit of time and so they were looking and understanding the phases of the moon to try and keep track of time to try and see when the seasons were going to change when to plant things when to do things and so I think this was sort of a moving people from hunter-gatherers to actually people who were sort of who stayed in one place looking at the moon helped them do that because they understood the phases of the moon and they understood the passage of time. Now actually oh I've got a poem one of the other things that people have done is they've just looked and just like me they are we have many fellow lunatics out there people have looked up at the moon and they've wondered about the moon and they've written stories about the moon but people have written some amazing poetry about the moon now I can't do the poem here but there's a poem called Child Moon and it's by a chap called Carl Sandberg and he's an American poet and he wrote about a little girl looking up at the moon out of her window and she looks up at the moon and she sees the beauty of the moon and then she falls asleep saying oh moon, moon as she goes to sleep so if you get a chance to read the poem it is truly beautiful but there are many many beautiful poems about the moon and so people are celebrating the moon in all sorts of different ways now yes one of the other interesting things is I love science fiction I think there's a science fiction exhibition here so I might go and check that out later but I love science fiction I'm dyslexic so I always found reading hard and one of the things I did as a child I started reading science fiction and when you start off reading it's all about Peter and Jane and sort of very pretty dull stuff but when I started reading science fiction I thought oh wow this stuff is worth reading and so that's I think science fiction really helped me sort of get established because of sort of reading science fiction that they were stories worth reading and so one of the things I was interested in is trying to find out yeah what was the first science fiction stories about the moon and there was there is a sort of an ancient Greek the first science fiction stories written by an ancient Greek philosopher who talks about a whirlwind sort of picking people up and taking them to the moon but one of my favourite stories is about a chap called Wan Huw and Wan Huw is a bit of a legend because Wan Huw was a Chinese bureaucrat and he lived in China and he kept on looking at the moon and sort of think oh yeah the moon and so he did this and one day he decided that he's going to go and visit the moon so this was our first potential astronaut and so what he did is he actually got his minions to put fireworks onto his chair and so they strapped lots of fireworks I would not recommend this no one tried this at home but this is what he did he got his minions to put lots of fireworks on his chair and he sat in his chair and then he's okay like them and so the minions came forward you know lit the touch paper ran as fast as they could and there was a large explosion and Wan Huw wasn't there any longer now the question is did he make it to the moon I can see some people sort of shaking their heads he seems unlikely well the unlikely answer is he did not through the rockets though because I don't know if this story is true or not but people have been speaking about this story for many many years and as a result when people first started orbiting the moon and seeing the craters of the moon they named one of the craters of the moon after him so there is a crater on the moon named Wan Huw so he did make it to the moon but not technically I think there's a couple more people I'd like to mention another person who was a poet a Chinese poet called Lai Po and Lai Po is a guide directly after my own heart because he used to write poems about the moon and one of his poems is just very simple it's about four lines and it says you know I sit here drinking and I salute the moon and we drink together now I've done that because I'm a lunatic and so I do that sort of thing but I was working out in a telescopes in Chile and I was on my own for about six months and I used to get a glass of Chilean wine which is very good wine and I used to sit there with the moon and would sort of close together and would drink together so that's one of the things I did with the moon but Lai Po wrote this poem probably a sort of 2000 years ago but Lai Po was definitely a lunatic because I think one day he'd actually drunk a little bit too much wine and someone was rowing him across the river to take him home and he saw the reflection of the moon in the water and oh it's the moon and he reached out to see the moon and he fell in the water and drowned so be careful be a lunatic but not too much of a lunatic okay so that sort of covers some of the amazing things of the ways who has celebrated the moon in the past and we've talked a little about you know what the moon's made up of and you know how it works but one of the things is that really interests me is the moon in the future will we actually put up your hands here how many people here would like to make a trip to the moon okay I'd say that sort of a I think that's probably about 50% and so then actually oh that should be I would definitely love to go to the moon and it's been sort of my dream it's been actually literally a dream for me I remember having a dream as a child and I was sort of a I had a nice hot bath and I put on a bathrobe and I stepped out and I looked out of the window and I could see the earth it's like this picture oh where is it this picture I could see the earth rising around the moon and this is a picture that is called earth rise and it's one of the first it is a picture of the earth sorry I can hold it I can hold it like this it's a picture of the earth rising behind the moon and this is the image I saw in my dream and since then I've always wanted to go out there but this image is quite interesting in another way because it's a powerful image when we first went out to the moon and we started taking photographs and when we first went out into space we suddenly saw the earth more like this when we're living on the earth we sort of run around its surface and you go well we're all very busy and all doing lots and lots of things but isn't until we saw the earth like this that we realise what's truly going on because when you see the earth like this you see the earth as vulnerable you see it as a point in space we see it as something that should be nurtured and some people believe that by seeing images like this people were inspired to actually protect the earth the environmental movement is thought to be partly responsible from pictures like this because suddenly we saw the earth as a small sort of a blue entity in space rather than just the thing we live on so the moon can inspire so many different things and it can inspire things like this so my dream is one day to get to the moon myself and it's a crazy dream but I love crazy dreams because I think crazy dreams take you further than you ever think is possible so my crazy dream is one day to get to the moon but will we do it? well I think we went to the moon and landed on the moon 50 years ago and it's about 45 years since the last people sort of left the moon and sort of travelled back to that was 1972 so it's a while ago since we've actually been to the moon but when will we all get the opportunity to go to the moon? well I think we're in a new era of the moon because in the past it was about sort of a dominance sort of showing you I'm better than you and I can reach the moon and it was all about the space race here the Russians against the Americans showing who was sort of the dominant power and now we're actually going through a sort of an era of collaboration where many people are going to the moon I don't know if you heard I think yesterday or the day before and there was an Israeli moon probe a lunar probe unfortunately crashed into the lunar surface but more and more countries are getting interested in the moon and but also it's not just companies the people who crashed into the moon they were a commercial company and I think it's commerce that is going to get us to the moon and I like to compare it with things like computers and mobile phones and actually um flights when people first started flying across the world it was the great and the good it was you know the starlet with the chihuahua hopping onto an aeroplane it was only the famous people that flew across the world but slowly but surely things have changed and more and more of us and so I think we didn't actually fly up easy jet but now we're living in the easy jet era where most people can fly anywhere because flights have become cheaper so why did that happen? well it was demand we wanted to travel across the world and so when there's commerce and there's demand people will actually meet the demand and flights and things like that get cheaper you can see the same with mobile phones the first mobile phones were sort of you know whoa they're huge and the only sort of you know a few business people had mobile phones because you know they were the only people who could afford them but slowly but surely phones got cheaper and cheaper and now so you know I've got my mobile phone in my pocket and yeah supposedly this has more processing power than the things that top people to the moon so with demand and computers as well the first computers were the size of this chamber but now we've got sort of more computing power in this than the computers we had earlier and that's because there was a demand people wanted it and so the price came down and so I think as many of us want to go to the moon in the future the price should come down we have our first space tourism sort of travelling into space and they're paying sort of virtually millions to get out there but given time I think that the price will come down and so maybe sort of the young ones in the audience will be making regular trips to the moon and sort of living out on the moon and sort of having fun on the moon so I think there is a future for all of us out there and why go to the moon? Well there's so many things we can do out there I mean there's a great astronomy to be done on the moon radio astronomy sort of a visible astronomy that will be great on the moon and that's my dream to have a visible telescope on the moon in one of the dark craters that never see the sunlight that would be my ideal job I'm working on it it's a bit expensive but other things on the moon in the future as we get sort of a less power here on earth maybe we want to use the moon to actually provide us with power on earth and there's one idea that you can actually out of the moon soil you can make solar panels and you can put these solar panels on the moon's surface they'll get two weeks of constant daylight and then you can beam that power back down to earth via microwaves so we could use the moon to power the earth in the future but at the same time we can mine the moon for all sorts of elements in the future but at the same time there's a question to be asked should we be doing this? Is it ethically correct? Because it rather feels to me as if we've had a wild party here on earth yo wo ho we're going to burn all the resources yah ho oh no we're running out where do we go next? Hey the moon so should we be looking for the moon or should we be solving our own problems and looking to have a future here on earth when we look after our resources rather than just going further out and looking for somewhere else to mine so I think these are the questions that we're going to be answering and it's the young people that will be having to face the consequences of these decisions so I think each and every one of us should be looking to the moon so the moon does so much for us I mean it gives us tides but effectively I think the moon created life here on earth by creating a chemical called RNA which is the precursor to DNA so without the moon I don't think it would even be here so I think each and every one of us should be lunatics because the moon does so much for us we take it for granted but the best thing to do is just look at it and admire it thank you very much well it's your turn now to ask questions so if you want to ask a question just put your hand up and the microphones in front of your little red band will come on and that will be you live so watch what you say and so who wants to ask a question come on oh I can see a hand up over there that so there you are little boy if you want to stand up so we can see you oh there you go watch your name it's a microphone as the microphone is on but you need to stand next to it go in front of it that's you thank you what's your name Joshua Joshua watch your question Joshua how far away is the moon how far away is the moon now see I'm dyslexic so I don't remember numbers but I have a handy crib sheet here and I can tell you exactly how far away it is so hold it let me just see if you talk amongst yourselves um because um see because of my dyslexia sometimes numbers come out wrong and I want to get this right so let me see if I can find it and unless anyone else knows off hand but it's if you want to travel to the moon it would take about three days to get there so um although um the um um the Israeli probe took a lot longer because it took a scenic route sorry let me just get to my while while we're searching that who's getting another question on the pipeline right now just I'll come to you next in gray Lady in gray okay actually well do you want to tell me your question while I while I write that right what if you want to ask your question wait till the red that's in gray in the middle here I'm pointing can you see is your red light come on is it is it come on no oh maybe because that lights up I'll need to wander over over here is it come on that was a tumble right there you are you can you can ask your quick you can ask your question now what's your name Erica Erica there's your question I'll try not to fall over again right Erica what's your question can you swim in the sea on the moon can you swim in the sea on the moon well first of all let me answer your question and your question is so the answer is the moon is on average and I'll need to explain the average two 239 000 miles away okay it's quite far but I need to qualify that because that's on average because so let's say if my hand is the earth and this is the moon people usually think that the moon goes around the earth in a circular orbit but it doesn't the moon actually goes around in an orbit which is slightly squished everything that orbits so the earth's orbit around the sun is a squished circle called an ellipse and so it means that sometimes the moon is closer to the earth and sometimes the moon is further away from the earth depending on where in the ellipse it is and so it's on average about 300 000 miles but sometimes it's a bit closer and sometimes it's a bit further away depending on where it is in its orbit does that make sense thank you now Erika yeah now Erika can you swim in the moon seas the answer is no but you see in the past we thought that the moon was really really dry and there was no water on the moon but there is some water not enough to swim in the seas but there is water and the water is mainly at the poles because I mentioned very briefly that in some areas of the moon where the craters are so deep and in the northern regions or the southern regions where the sunlight doesn't actually get into the craters now any chemicals that go into those holes they are some of the coldest places in the solar system because the moon is pretty cold anyway and without the sunlight those places are just incredibly cold and so any water very close or we are whiffing past that goes into those holes the water will collect there and we can find ice water on the moon now this is really important because if we want to live in the moon in the future water is one of the critical things we'll need because water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen hydrogen is rocket fuel but oxygen is what we need to breathe and so to have a self-sustaining a sort of a colony on the moon we need to be able to tap into that water break it down into hydrogen and oxygen and then we'll be able to create environments like in domes and things like that where we can use that water break it down into oxygen and we'll have a breathable atmosphere so rather than ferrying things up from earth which is incredibly expensive because the earth is so big and it has such a huge gravity getting things off the earth's surface is really hard work and so if you can find water on the moon it's going to be really helpful now there was one sort of a we looked at the amount of water that we found on the moon and many of the orbiters that go around the moon they look for signs of water and if you actually took all the water on the moon and you were able to melt it you'd probably get a pud which covered the whole of the moon's surface which was about half a metre deep so unfortunately all this is in little pockets and it's sort of in the actual sun in the lunar soil so you can't swim in the seas but there is water on the moon so if you did go and live there as a colonist you could probably have a swimming pool and there was a question up there yes can you watch myself here is your red light come on yes good good oh we're getting progress what's your name Ross Ross, golffelwp Ross how big is the moon how big is the moon well if this is earth this is the moon so it's sort of significantly I can check the time to I can give you the facts and figures but I always have to check them because I was going to get them wrong so what I should tell you is the earth sorry the moon where is it sorry next page because the moon is sort of significantly smaller than the earth but its diameter is actually all tilt rotation distance from earth diameter is 2159 miles in diameter so from this side to this side that is its diameter and see compared with the earth the moon is about 27% of the earth's diameter so it's significantly smaller so yes that is the actual diameter of the moon and but because it is smaller it has less gravity so I don't know if you've ever seen pictures of people walking on the moon but you know they're sort of you know whoa and they have that sort of really funny date and it's because the moon has less mass and so it has less gravity and so when you're on the moon if you jump on the earth the sort of force you need to do a one meter jump on the earth if you did the same jump on the moon you'd jump about 1.6 meters so on the moon it should be a lot of fun and there are some videos of some of the astronauts playing golf on the moon's surface and there's one guy who uses I think an eight iron and he sort of just swacks the ball and he sees it and he says look at it travelling miles and miles and miles and it literally did it travelled about 2.8 miles when he whacked it on the moon's surface because the moon is so much smaller and there's less gravity and there's no air resistance this ball just went and I think it was travelling for about a minute and a half before it actually landed on the moon's surface so golf on the moon could be a lot of fun right yeah well a whole sea of hands now I'll give you numbers so I'm coming to one then two then where's three three anybody else four remember your numbers and they're called five oh six seven eight nine right you all know your numbers good number one who's that my lady in red red light on my name is Ashwita my question is can we fly on the moon can we fly on the moon can we fly on the moon unfortunately no because to fly here on earth we need the earth's atmosphere we need the sort of this gas surrounding us because we're held up by sort of the air pressure and on the moon because it has virtually no atmosphere at all we couldn't fly that way so because even helicopters and all those things they need the pressure of the earth's atmosphere to keep us up there so on the moon we can't so if you walk on the moon and sort of jump on the moon it might feel a little bit like flying but if you want to take a helicopter there or anything like that you couldn't and it's quite interesting because recently we've been trying to land probes on Mars now Mars is sort of a bigger than the moon but it's smaller than earth and Mars has an atmosphere around it but it's quite a thin atmosphere and so when we actually land things on the Martian surface we need to find ways of slowing them down because they were zooming through space through space and then they get into orbit around Mars and then we want them to land on the surface now here on earth we have air resistance and if you see sort of meteorites I mentioned meteorites coming down to earth or meteors coming down to earth or if you see spacecraft capsules coming to earth they heat up in the earth's atmosphere and that friction slows them down in Mars it's got a thin atmosphere so moon has no atmosphere so that wouldn't work at all you'd just go splat into the surface and so you need other ways of slowing yourself down but on Mars it has a bit of atmosphere and so they have to find ways of using some really huge parachutes and sort of jet packs effectively on the Martian probes so they can land on the surface gently and unfortunately on Mars it's really quite embarrassing but 50% of our landers hit the surface too hard and go smash and every so often you see footage of you know sort of a or you see sort of pictures of where another Martian probe has landed on the surface and gone smash so it's all to do with the atmosphere and unfortunately the moon hasn't got enough atmosphere to hold anything up in the air no flying on the moon I'm afraid number two who's number two that's Lady there but the glasses I mean is your light come on oh yeah your light's on perfect did my name is Kayu and my question is is the moon hot or cold so it depends on where you are during the daytime the moon gets incredibly hot about 100 degrees so if you're making a cup of tea and you bore the kettle that is 100 degrees and you know if you that would really hurt wouldn't it so you wouldn't want to touch it that is the temperature of the daytime on the moon but at night time so you get two weeks of daytime and when the moon is blasted by the sun then during the lunar night time and the temperature plummets to minus sort of 100 degrees and it's sort of really really cold and so and then that's quite quite challenging so anyone who's going to live on the lunar surface in the future that have two weeks of daytime two weeks of night time but the temperature change between them would be vast bigger than Antarctica and so and we need to develop sort of houses and things like that where people can survive those temperature range and also spacesuits where you can live comfortably and sort of run around the moon's surface but it will protect you from those huge temperature ranges so the moon is both hot and cold but I'm a yes I'm a it's I'm a pretty challenging either way I think sounds worse in Scotland it's a change where's number three and who's number four who's number four where's three who is four I've got three okay okay four was here just remit I forget numbers you see so you're number four number three where are you we're back is that we're back to you yes oh no no please say your question say your question come on darling say your question I think you've does the moon change any other colours apart from red and white that is a very good question one of the things I was quite interested in is now if you ever had the opportunity to see the moon when it's low on the horizon so sometimes you see it when it's up here in the sky but if you see it low on the horizon it looks very different now a while ago oh yeah I've got your question a while ago I was looking at the moon and it was low on the horizon and it looked really orange and in fact it looked so orange I couldn't believe it was the moon and I was looking at it you're boy is that really the moon so it was low on the horizon now when it's low on the horizon what you're seeing is the moon and the moon itself doesn't change colour but the light coming from the moon is coming through the earth's atmosphere now when it's low on the horizon it travels through more of the earth's atmosphere than when it's directly above us what we call it zenith and when it's doing that the blue light again gets scattered and so the moon looks more orange and so um but then when it's up here it looks its usual sort of pale sort of bluey yellowy colour but there's also something called a blue moon has anyone here heard of that a blue moon you've heard of a blue moon you've heard people say ah once in a blue moon well I've looked at the moon for many many years because I'm a lunatic but I've never seen the moon go the colour blue now a blue moon is actually a phenomena and it's a phenomena when you actually get two full moons in one month and that actually happened this year in January this year we got two full moons because we got one very early in January and then one in late January so you get two full moons in one month that is considered to be a month with a blue moon but then if that happens in January then February has no full moon at all and then March again has two full moons so that's what happened this year we had two full moons in January no full moons in February and two full moons in March and so and this doesn't happen very often maybe once every sort of three or four five years and so blue moons are quite rare but they're a bit like buses um you wait for them to come along and then two come along at once so blue moons that's what you were but the moon doesn't change colour at all so you can get a red moon during a total eclipse you can get a sort of a yellowy moon or an orangey moon when it's low on the horizon but you never actually get a blue moon a blue moon is just a phenomena where you get two moons in one month but thank you very much for your question question four wait is the red light on there it goes my name's Savannah and me and my big sister have the same question so you know how the other planets in the solar system have their own moons so does the moon have its own moon ah does the moon have its own moon our moon doesn't have any moons around it and it's quite interesting we don't believe that moons we haven't I don't think we've found any moons that have their own moons but we have found asteroids so if you think of the solar system you've got your sun at the centre a big bright moon and then if you move further out you've got sort of a mercury a venus earth and then you get something called the asteroid belt and in the asteroid belt you get lots of sort of lumps of rock which of a sometimes you get sort of dwarf planets which are at the size of Pluto so quite small but then you get sort of a tiny tiny little sort of little rocks and it's funny that some of these tiny asteroids actually have moons going around them and there's actually an asteroid out there that has two moons so this is something that is smaller than our moon but it actually has moons going around it so we don't believe another interesting place is Saturn Saturn I think has something of the order of sort of 62 moons going around it but it also has something called moonlets and it seems that these moonlets are what guide the rings around Saturn because you know Saturn is the planet with the huge rings around it well it's these moonlets that actually keep those rings in place and so we have sort of many many moons out there in the solar system but none are quite as good as ours because our moon compared with our planet is very very large if you look at a planet Mars Mars has two moons but they're really diddy and one looks like a potato and one looks like a pebble and they're really quite small and I think the see it's quite interesting because where do these moons come from so we think the moons of Mars because Mars is next to the asteroid belt we think that sort of an asteroid was sort of bumbling along one day and whoa it got caught in the gravitational pull of Mars and so that's how Mars got its moons but the earth moon is too big for that to happen so there is a question as to where our moon came from and there are all sorts of different theories and the most common theory is our moon was formed when a planet about the size of Mars crashed into earth about you know four and a half billion years ago you know crash and it's sort of effectively it's sort of it smashed earth up and all this sort of debris it's sort of from this Mars-like planet we call Thea hit the earth and it sent all this debris up into space and this debris was around the earth and it slowly clumped together we call it coalescing it coalesced to form the moon but when the moon formed it was much much closer to earth and so you know I like looking at the moon I see the moon in the early earth four and a half billion years ago the moon would have been massive in the sky because it was so much closer but slowly but surely it's spiralling away from us so to get back to your question the moon doesn't have any moons we don't know of any other moons in our solar system that has moons but there are some asteroids that do have moons which is a bit surprising because they're pretty diddy thank you for your question question five where's five oh five thank you five are you five are you good you're glad you remember that's your light just give us your name your question my name is sigh why is there little water on the moon why is there so little water on the moon well it's a black I think it all comes back to this atmosphere again one of the questions that we often ask as scientists is where did all our water come from because when the earth was first formed it was hot and it's all like a mods and ball of lava so where did the water come from as the earth cooled down we got water and the idea is that sort of asteroids because in the early solar system it was chaos things were pinging around all over the place you know some of the outer planets used to be closer in and then they've got gravity gravity from other planets pull them outwards and so in the early solar system there was things that were zipping around all over the place you'd have had to duck and so what we think is that some of these sort of a large rocks had quite a bit of water on them and in the early we call it the I think the mass bombardment period we think lots of these rocks hit the earth and left water here and that's why now four fifths of the earth's surface is water and we are very much a product of the planet we live on so we were bombarded with all these rocks now the moon could have been bombarded in the same way but the moon is much smaller and it doesn't have this atmosphere that we have and so if it had got water the water would have just evaporated out into space so if it was bombarded by similar rocks containing water the water would have settled on the surface but just evaporated into space because it has no atmosphere sort of to contain it so that's why and it has no atmosphere partly because it's sort of much smaller and also our gravitational sorry our magnetic field around the earth helps us contain our atmosphere so these are the various reasons why we don't have why the moon doesn't have water it was probably bombarded in a similar way to earth but that water just evaporated into space because there was no atmosphere and not enough mass to keep it all in place but another interesting place is Mars because if you look at planet Mars in a smaller than earth Mars used to have water flowing over its surface we can find sort of a river tributaries and we can find sort of a boulders or a sort of a rocks or actually a shape by water but Mars also lost its water and that's quite interesting because we have all this water we're here on earth Mars used to have water but what happened to it and so we're investigating the history of Mars to try and understand what happened why did the environment change so much that it lost all its water so by looking out in the solar system sometimes it helps us understand our planet a lot better and that's why I love what I do I love being a scientist and investigating all these amazing different things because it helps us understand our place here on earth as well thank you for your question it's a bit like being Ms Marple it is a detective it is a detective I think that's what being a scientist is as well it's sort of detective getting the various clues getting the evidence and trying to come up with a theory and sometimes you come to the right conclusion and sometimes you come to a totally different conclusion I've got where's six and where's seven now I'll take if I may two hands went up for seven well I'll take six and then I'll take the two sevens together if that's all right that sounds good to me number six so if you stand up tell me if you're like where are you there it's a light on and yes your name my name is Sandy and does the moon have the same minerals underground as earth like diamonds, gold, iron etc that's a very interesting question now I mentioned that we think the moon was formed because we had this collision with the planet Thea and they sort of smoothed and the moon formed one of the problems that we're finding is when we analyse rocks that we've got from the moon so you know when the Americans went to the moon they brought back moon samples and I've actually held one of the moon samples it was very exciting and when the Russians went to the moon they brought back moon samples we've analysed those rocks and when we analyse them and look at the chemical composition and compare it with what we have on earth they are very very similar in fact they're too similar and this is one of the reasons why the theory about Thea doesn't quite add up because if the moon was collided if Thea collided with the earth and formed the moon then the moon should be partly Thea and partly earth but what we're finding is that the composition of the moon as you say the minerals and the chemicals that make up the moon are very very similar to what we find here on earth and so Thea doesn't quite add up so this is why we've got a theory but it doesn't quite the detective we need to do some more detective work so the answer to your question is the moon has very very similar chemicals to what we find here on earth but at the same time that is a problem for us because it means our theory about how the moon was formed doesn't add up but it's also quite interesting because if you look at the moon if I take this ball and say this is the moon if I was to slice this ball in half and look at what's inside the moon and slice the earth in half on the earth we have a sort of an outer crust and then after that we have a sort of an area called the mantle and then after that we have the core and the core is made up of two layers one is a liquid core which is liquid molten metal liquid molten iron actually then at the very centre of the earth we have a hard iron core and it's that liquid metal core that gives us our magnetic field that protects us from all sorts of things out there so we have a magnetic field if you have a compass and it points north that's the magnetic field of earth at work we often compare the earth to a sort of like an egg so if you crack open the egg you've got the shell and then the white bit is the mantle and then the core is the yolk in the centre now if you look at the moon and crack the moon open and the moon isn't like an egg it's like a chocolate chip muffin but it's a really boring chocolate chip muffin so it's a boring sugar coated chocolate chip muffin because if you crack the moon open what you have is you have a nice sugar coated outside which is sort of the crust and then you have the mantle which is the nice cakey bit of the muffin I like that bit but then at the very centre you have this tiny chocolate chip so it's a muffin a chocolate chip muffin with just one chocolate chip sitting right at the centre and that's the core of the moon because the core of the moon is quite small it's iron but it's quite small and one of the questions we're asking is does the core of the moon it's iron at the centre like the earth it's much much smaller in comparison to the size of the planet but does it have a liquid outer layer which can cause a magnetic field we know it did in the past because we've found magnetism on the moon but it's quite interesting to know if it's all solid now or is there still a bit of liquid metal flowing about the moon creating a tiny tiny magnetic field so yes I mean they're very similar in composition they're very similar in composition in terms of the chemicals they're made up of but the inside of them is quite different because the earth has got a much much bigger core than the moon has thank you for your question no two sevens yeah two sevens what the real surprise seven a lady in the red got red yes lovely how come some planets have more means than ours yes now that's the first so what's it done I'm trying to squeeze them in because we're getting on where was the other number seven stand up please what's your question um how did the moon go further away from the earth in time okay perfect thank you okay that's two questions so the first one is how come we've only got one moon I know I mean yes I think Jupiter's got about 67 a Saturn's got about 62 you know how come we only entered only one well it's all partly to do with gravity as well but if you look at the planets of the inner solar system let's start with you they've got the sun at the centre then you've got Mercury no means at all Venus no moons Earth just the one moon and Mars two moons but they're barely moons I mean you know pebble and potato and then you sort of go through the asteroid belt and then you get to the gas giants now the gas giants are huge so Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system and Jupiter and if I took planet earth I could fit 1000 earths into one Jupiter that's how big Jupiter is and when you're that big it means that you have lots of mass and so you can sort of attract things to you so with Jupiter's moons we're not too sure how they formed one way is when the solar system formed it had a sort of a huge disk around it and we think that sort of things in this disk sort of clumped together and Jupiter's so big we think that Jupiter clumped together but things around Jupiter clumped together and so that's how its moons formed so I think it very much depends on the size of the planet you're talking about and also their location in the solar system so Mars has got two moons but we think it just stole them from the asteroid belt but then as you go further and further out but then you sort of Jupiter has lots of moons Saturn has lots of moons but then as you go further out into the ice giants a long long way away from the sun you get fewer moons again so they've still got quite a few moons because they're quite big planets but they do have fewer moons so I think it depends on where you form and how big a gravitational mass you are to attract other things to you so I think that's why and although we've only got one moon I have to say unbiased it is the best moon it really does help us in all sorts of different ways so thank you that was number seven and then the other question the moon is moving further and you said it's spiralling of it used to be really I was worried about that because what if it goes away completely well see it's a very interesting question and a few years ago I made a documentary called do we really need the moon and the answer is yes we need the moon but the moon is now this is a bit of a complicated idea but if the okay let's say if we've got the earth in the centre the moon is sort of it orbits the earth but it orbits the earth in a spiral rather than just in a static ellipse and so it's slowly but surely spiralling away from us and as it does this as the moon speeds up and spirals away from us the earth actually slows down so um if you go back in time a day on the early earth when the moon was first formed was only about five hours long so rather than taking 24 hours to go all the way around to spin on its axis the earth used to take just five hours but as the moon moves further away from us the moon speeds up but the earth slows down and it's due to something called the conservation of angular momentum which I'm not going to go into but it's a process that happens and so as the earth is slowing down we have a 24 hour day now but in the future the day will slowly but surely get longer and longer and longer now now we you have to be at school longer then so no longer I can see a look of horror on your face now the problem with this is I don't know have you ever seen someone sort of have a a netball or a baseball on their finger they spin it up and it spins on their finger because it'll just balance it really carefully I've tried it a few times and I just burn my finger so I'm not very good at it but if you do that the problem is as the ball starts to slow down you might notice that the ball starts to wobble and as the earth starts to slow down as the days get longer and longer and longer and the earth starts to slow down the earth could start to wobble and if it does this interesting things could happen because our seasons would go up the creek because at the moment we're sort of at a tilt of about 23 degrees and we've got the solar ice cap and the polar ice caps but if the earth starts to tilt what could happen is that ice caps could actually go to the equator and if that happens these ice caps will melt and if that happens quite a bit of the world will be submerged under water and so the whole world could change now this isn't going to happen for about another two, three billion years so no one panic we're okay I know I can see the size of relief all round but as the moon moves away from us so if we didn't have a moon our days would be a lot longer our earth would be a lot less stable so this is another thing that the moon gives us so nothing to worry about because we're safe for a long long time but in the future as the moon keeps on spiralling away from us and gets further and further and eventually it could get far far enough away from us but it's not really captured by the earth's gravity and it could sort of spiral on out into space which would be quite scary but as I say two, three, four billion years we haven't got anything to worry about for now we're covered for now but yes I've got eight and nine where's eight and nine is there a nine no well let me have one from over here somebody who's not asked a question who's not asked a question over here we'll see two questions here there I'll take eight, nine and ten and then where is your I'm going to have to take it so there's my daughter like your daughter yes so shall we end with your question my love eight, nine and we'll end up with ten eight please where are you just right you stand up and watch your name is your microphone on oh did you just ask a question have you just asked one somebody who's not if you asked one already what somebody who's not asked a question where are you you're up I've got the lights on that's it thank you my name that's you yes my name's Isaac and my question is how many moons can you fit into the earth how many moons can you fit into the earth well actually oh because I haven't done the calculation but let's have a look I want you to guess so this is the earth and this is about the size of the moon how many do you reckon you'd get in there four to six four to six oh I think it may be a few more because if you think of this as a fruit bowl and this will be this could take quite a few oranges couldn't you and then if you put the top one that's another sort of few oranges what would you say well I'm going to ask how many think 10 20 25 30 are we getting close yet I think of the order of I think of the order of 20 I think oh there we are but I think we should you should go online and do the calculation because if you work out the volume of the moon and work out the volume of the earth and then divide the volume of the earth by the volume of the moon you can work out exactly how many you can squeeze now that will be swizz if you do that calculation that will be how many moons you can fit into the earth if you squish them in but it's an interesting calculation to do I've done it for the sun and I've done it for I've done it for the earth and the sun and for the earth and Jupiter but I haven't done it for the earth and the moon so it'll be an interesting one to find out lovely so next question where there was yes right at the back I got all muddled up where are you pointing that oh I can't see are you standing right at the back pigtails is the lady with yes shoes that you you're are you standing there you are now I can see you as your light come on there you go ask your question my name is Claudia and and what makes the moon no one's pushing it that's a good question now you see now how can I tell you if the earth so if the moon wasn't going around the earth and moving then what would happen is the moon would just get sucked into the earth and so if I had if I had a piece of string and a ball on the end if I swing the ball around my head if I go very fast and I cut the string what's going to happen to the to the ball it'll go pinging off effectively into space that's right it'll go whoosh and now but if because gravity is an attractive force if the moon didn't have what we call momentum if it wasn't travelling around the earth it would actually get pulled and sucked into the earth but we think it's about how the moon formed we think the moon sort of hit the earth at a glancing blow but it had it had sort of a momentum it was carried and so we think that it sort of continued because it was captured by the earth's gravity and because it had speed or velocity when it first hit the earth we think it continued spiralling around the earth but it is slightly spiralling slowly but surely away from us so because in space for instance the earth goes around the sun and the earth takes a year to go around the sun if things in space were static then they would just be sucked towards the very large bodies around them so the moon would be sucked towards the earth the earth would be sucked towards the sun but because they have this angular momentum which is keeping them spinning around and around it means they keep on orbiting and they don't just get sort of sucked towards the very large mass that is at the centre of whatever they're orbiting so that spin is very important because it would have a very very different solar system if it was just all the force of gravity because gravity is a force that attracts things but it's the velocity of these things the speed of the things that actually keeps them in orbit around the bodies they're going around but a very interesting question thank you now I've got a couple from over I'm going to take a... oh yes and it is one over there as well which will be... oh yes and this one where's the one but I don't want to keep you too long but I want to... I know gosh we have gone over I'm so sorry and you know answer yourself where's the one that I've missed oh in the gap oh whoa right with a microphone well wait a minute I'm going to take can I take two or three at once yes yes I think that's fine you have to remember them for me I'm coming to you in a minute you get there so that'll be one two will you one as well I think three and then yourself and that's it darling I'll have to stop soon or we'll be here till the moon goes up and this lady will be a lunatic and won't let us leave because she'll be taking the glass of wine looking at the moon maybe we should all have a glass of wine looking at the moon right so question up here first please who encouraged you to be a lunatic who encouraged that well keep that one to last and I think that's the who encouraged you to be a lunatic where's the other ones a here yes is your microphone on little chat there yeah that you are right oh golly pull the two words a wee but that's it why is the moon's path an eclipse and not a circle around the earth okay why is it why is it elliptical okay yes why is it not a circle and if you're in a moon base and you're and you're growing a flower would and because there's less gravity would this affect the growth okay moon base flowers will come to you very very last will come to you very very last right okay so well coming well we come to you second last about white so we'll come to this one about why doesn't it go around in a circle I've learned so much I know it's an ellipse now is he an ellipse yes and you want to know about growing flowers right so it's quite interesting because many if you go back way back in time people thought that the earth was a centre of the solar system that everything went around the earth and that makes sense because they saw the sun rise as it'll go around the earth and set but then people came up with new ideas that was the helo that was the sort of that came up with what we call the helocentric universe which is has the sum at the centre and people like um sort of Copernicus started coming up with these ideas and they started doing the calculations but it doesn't work if it's a circle now I need to be careful because an ellipse a circle is a special type of ellipse so an ellipse is a this squash circle and when you actually look at the planets going around the sun or the moon going around us most of these they're quite circular but they are this squash circle and unfortunately the maths just doesn't add up and it just it's not a stable orbit if they're circular and ellipse is a special thing because it has a circle has a sort of a point of centre in the middle and ellipse has what we call two foci and for it for a planet to go around the sun or for the moon to go around us it needs to be the ellipse for the mathematics to work and it took us a long time to work this out because when people started studying that the sun was the centre of the solar system they said okay then the planets go around the sun in circles and when they did the maths it didn't add up and so it wasn't until they realised that it was ellipses that the maths added up and we could actually predict where various things are and these predictions are really important to us because for instance we send probes out to Pluto which is billions of miles away and it's because we understand how the universe works and these ellipses that we're able to actually actually fly past planets like Pluto or land on Mars so these are very important but it turns out that the ellipse is the stable configuration and a circle just doesn't work with the maths so that was a discovery but it took a while to get there okay so I think the next question the flower the flower yes now flowers are interesting because have you ever when I was at school we did an experiment called tropisms and I don't know if you remember this but this is when sort of flowers grow and if you put light on one side of the flower and not the other the flower will bend towards and also gravity is actually affects the way a flower will grow so because the gravity of the moon is fairly even the flowers will grow but I think they might grow faster and shoot up quicker because the force of gravity is less so it's quite interesting now have you heard of Tim Peake he's lovely I met him once and he's really really very friendly and he actually took rocket up to the international space station and he took some seeds that went into space and left some seeds behind then he sent it out to schools and so it was quite interesting to see if the seeds that had been into space were any different than the seeds that were stayed on earth I don't think they were but if you're actually growing a plant because of these tropisms and the ways that plants are affected by light by gravity and by various other things I think the plant might grow and sort of it has a force to grow up and because the gravity is less I think it might grow up faster so you might get taller plants and if you as a baby if you were born on the moon and you grew up on the moon you'd probably be taller on the moon surface than you are here because just like a plant you'd grow up but with less gravity you'd probably grow taller so people who live on the moon and who were born on the moon would be taller people who live on Mars the Martians would be taller as well so for the future people if you have a baby on Mars they're likely to be taller than you because there's less gravity pulling them down and their muscles will grow and their bones will grow and they'll shoot up but at the same time just as a quicker side if you're living in less gravity then your bones suffer from something called osteoporosis because they're not working against earth's gravity the calcium in your brains actually leaks out and some of the early astronauts well astronauts that go on the International Space Station people who live on the moon in the future if they want to come back to earth they're going to have lots and lots of exercises so that they don't lose the calcium from their bones and that's another way that space is teaching us about earth because people here on earth can get osteoporosis and by studying astronauts and seeing how the calcium comes out of their bones we can get a better understanding of how we can help them by looking at the astronauts and what they do thank you very much for your question okay so we've got a question over here and that was I think that was about getting you oh why am I a lunatic yes yes well um I think it runs in the family because my father used to tell me because he was brought up in Africa he came from Nigeria I was born here in the UK but my father came from Africa and he used to tell me about riding his bicycle late at night because he lived 12 miles away from his school and so he had to cycle to school and cycle home again and sometimes when he was cycling home it was dark and there were no street lights so he'd be cycling across and the moon was his friend because when the moon was up it had more light and so he could see where he was going so my father always told me that the moon was his friend so I thought the moon must be my friend now I grew up in London and there's lots of street lights and you can't see the moon so well but I still thought the moon was fantastic because it was a good enough friend for me for my dad it was a good enough friend for me and my daughter who's going to ask the last question I think she is a lunatic too sorry kid but because sometimes we look at the moon and sometimes we go outside and we just howl at the moon you're oh because the moon's so beautiful so it might be hereditary but it might be just indoctrination but I think I got it from my father and so my father passed it on to me and now I'm passing it on to my daughter but what I want to do is I want to pass it on to everybody because I think it's worthwhile being a lunatic we should all be howling at the moon so thank you very much for your question and now your daughter yeah and then finally leading on to you us our spacesuit soft our spacesuit soft that's a very interesting question so actually this wasn't I didn't know this was coming honest our spacesuits the spacesuits they took onto the moon were quite hard and rigid and most spacesuits that they use are quite hard and rigid but and it depends on the environment that you're in so on the moon's surface and because of the temperature ranges and because of the very very extreme environment the the spacesuits are quite rigid and they're articulated in various places it's a bit like one of your barbie dolls you know some of them got arms that move and the elbows can move and things like that so um but if you had a spacesuit for somewhere like Mars Mars is a bit of an atmosphere I haven't got such a quite as such a big temperature range so the the spaces they're designing for a planet like Mars could be a lot more flexible and sort of a less rigid and less because I have to do less protection so I think the spacesuit is very much a product of the planet you're on or the moon you're on or wherever you are so um I think that's for it's like dressing you know um um when we flew up here it was really warm and so we sort of yeah we're wearing summer dresses now it's got a bit colder we've got our winter coats out it depends on your environment the way you dress thank you very much well can I can I say fascinating we could sit here all afternoon now it's cool and super questions from you all really great questions from right round so big round of applause here because that was really excellent and and I know you've got copies of your book downstairs at the at the shout side the shop where you'll be signing them I hope there's a cue there because I'm learning I'm coming I really learned an awful lot about the moon I just felt like doing a moon yawl who would like to do a moon yawl let's let's how do you do you sure sound good right ready one two three okay so I'm going to do a how okay so yeah one two three lunatics for all lunatics now thank you very much and thank you for your questions enjoy the rest of the festival