[0:00] There’s a bit of tension in the story
for this video.
[0:03] When I put out a call for interesting
things that I could film in England,
[0:06] one of the team from Jodrell Bank
got in touch.
[0:09] Tucked away in the Cheshire countryside,
[0:11] it’s the home of the Lovell Telescope,
a World Heritage Site,
[0:14] the largest radio telescope
in the country,
[0:16] and one of the scientific and engineering
icons of Britain.
[0:19] And the tension is this.
[0:21] They wanted to show off the new science
they’re working on
[0:23] all across their campus,
[0:24] and we are going to do that,
’cos one of the big questions I had was,
[0:28] is a 70-year-old telescope still useful?
[0:31] But also, from my side,
what I wanted very much
[0:35] was to climb the giant telescope.
[0:38] (bird twitters)
[0:40] Well, there are definitely worse views
than that to start the day, aren’t there?
[0:43] There is a reason for that,
[0:45] beyond my just being a massive nerd,
[0:47] when I was young,
probably about ten years old,
[0:49] I went to Jodrell Bank as a visitor,
[0:50] to see what was then called
the Discovery Centre,
[0:53] not on a school trip.
[0:54] Young me,
very much into space and science,
[0:56] wanted to go see the big telescope.
[0:58] But of course, they don’t let visitors
onto, or even up close to the telescope,
[1:02] it’s a working science thing.
[1:04] And while I had a good day out,
[1:06] I think I was a bit disappointed
that I couldn’t get under it or...
[1:10] up on it.
[1:11] There’s no photos of that trip,
by the way, it was the nineties,
[1:13] people didn’t carry cameras around
every minute of their lives.
[1:15] Anyway, about 30 years later, I went back.
[1:18] Adult-me parked up, checked in with the team
at Jodrell Bank, and first up,
[1:22] they took me to see
the newly-updated visitor centre.
[1:25] There’s a lot of screens and displays,
[1:26] it’s far more impressive
than it used to be,
[1:28] but I was quite glad to see there were
still a couple of things I remembered.
[1:32] Do you still have the black hole table?
[1:33] ’Cos I remember...
 -If you just go round here...
[1:36] You still have the black hole table!
[1:39] I spent like 15 minutes as a kid
just playing with that black hole table.
[1:43] I was really tempted to do that again,
[1:45] but never mind.
[1:46] Also, the old acoustic dishes
are still there!
[1:49] What you’re about to hear is the audio
from the on-camera mics, by the way,
[1:52] no trickery.
[1:53] I have such a strong memory of these
from when I was like ten years old.
[1:58] (sotto voce)
You can whisper very quietly...
[1:59] And it turns up on the other side.
[2:02] Core memory. Got to do that again
30 years later.
[2:05] It’s not bad.
[2:06] I couldn’t find the mock control room
[2:08] where kids used to be able to sit down and
pretend they were controlling the dish,
[2:10] but still, happy with that.
Nostalgia complete, on to the science.
[2:14] Now, there are two sides behind the scenes
at Jodrell Bank these days.
[2:17] I did remember seeing the old university
buildings from the ’60s and ’70s,
[2:21] but in the last few years, there’s been
a very shiny new headquarters built
[2:24] next door for another project.
[2:26] The Square Kilometre Array Observatory,
the SKAO,
[2:30] is a big intergovernmental organisation.
[2:33] The actual telescopes
are on the other side of the planet,
[2:35] in South Africa and Australia,
[2:36] but the headquarters is at Jodrell Bank.
[2:39] I met William, who’s their director
of communication, outreach and education,
[2:43] and the first thing we went to
seemed almost out of place.
[2:46] That’s a very sci-fi sign, isn’t it?
[2:48] You’ve picked
a full science fiction font there.
[2:50] Okay, you have a proper council chamber!
[2:54] Well, so, that’s, you know,
right there in the middle of Cheshire.
[2:56] That’s quite unusual. 
-Yeah.
[2:58] It’s an unusual setting.
[2:59] Big picture, what is the SKAO?
[3:02] So, maybe, you know, you should turn
around, and this is the SKAO here.
[3:06] You know, all these flags. 
-(laughs)
[3:08] Oh, I can see why you’re head of outreach.
That was smooth.
[3:12] But this really embodies who we are
as an international organisation.
[3:16] What we are doing is really to build
and to operate
[3:20] the world’s largest radio telescopes.
[3:21] And one will be observing
lower frequencies,
[3:25] so that’s the one in Australia.
[3:26] That’s the one we will be using
to really go back in time
[3:29] to what we call the cosmic dawn.
[3:31] The Cosmic Dawn, as in D-A-W-N,
[3:34] is the period just after the Big Bang.
[3:36] And by “just after”,
I mean a quarter of a billion years,
[3:40] because the numbers you encounter
in astronomy are mind-boggling.
[3:43] So, really observing, you know,
these very first signals
[3:46] which were emitted after the Big Bang.
[3:49] And so, that will give us some clues
about, you know, how all of it started.
[3:54] We know that Nobel Prize discoveries
will be made with our telescopes.
[3:59] When? I don’t know, but, you know,
that’s the goal.
[4:03] I got to talk to their
head of science operations.
[4:06] One of the cool things about the SKA
[4:08] is really that we’re building it
[4:10] to be as flexible as possible to observe
things that we don’t even know about yet.
[4:14] We don’t know what our galaxy
really looks like.
[4:16] I mean, it’s quite bizarre to think about
the fact that...
[4:18] Do we not know that?
[4:20] With all of the beautiful images
of other galaxies out there,
[4:23] we don’t really know
what our own galaxy looks like
[4:25] because it’s quite hard to observe.
[4:27] -Yeah, you don’t have a mirror out there!
 -Exactly.
[4:29] We don’t actually know how big stars form,
[4:31] and when you’re talking about
understanding galaxies
[4:34] throughout the universe,
[4:36] I mean, if you don’t understand how those
building blocks are really being formed,
[4:40] then how can you really know the detail
of what’s going on in the galaxies?
[4:44] I mean, how planets form. 
-Yeah.
[4:46] I mean, we know that they form
in the debris disc around stars.
[4:50] But we actually don’t know the crucial
phase of how things get from
[4:54] really, really small particles
through the centimetre scale
[4:58] up to something that’s much larger,
of course, to make a planet.
[5:01] We just assume it happens.
[5:03] It must happen.
[5:04] -Yes. 
-We just don’t know how.
[5:06] We know it happens, but our theory
currently doesn’t support it.
[5:09] And the SKA is really well-suited
to that scale.
[5:14] A lot of things that I assumed
were pretty much proven and sorted
[5:16] are still promising theories
with data attached.
[5:20] The SKAO is going to produce about
a petabyte of science data every day
[5:24] to help with a lot of astronomy.
[5:26] But while that’s all coordinated
at Jodrell Bank,
[5:28] the actual receipt of signals
is happening in other countries.
[5:31] Because one of the problems
with any radio telescope in the UK
[5:34] is there isn’t much room
for radio quiet zones.
[5:37] And certainly not this close to cities.
[5:39] Jodrell Bank does ask visitors
to turn their phones off,
[5:41] but there are still roads and train lines
nearby, there will be interference.
[5:46] So I still have the question...
[5:48] is the Lovell Telescope,
the famous one, still useful?
[5:52] Or is it now more history than science?
[5:54] To start answering that, I got taken
into the telescope control room by Simon,
[5:59] he’s a professor and the associate
director of the observatory.
[6:01] Five years to build?
[6:03] Very rapid project, enormously ambitious
in the early 1950s,
[6:07] not long after the war,
[6:09] to build a radio telescope
[6:12] which was so much larger
than anything that existed before.
[6:16] How much?
[6:18] So, it was ten times larger than
the largest telescope that existed before.
[6:21] Oh, okay. Right, sure.
[6:23] And a leap in the dark.
[6:25] They had no idea what they would discover.
[6:28] There were big telescopes before
[6:30] what became known
as the Mark One 250-Foot Telescope,
[6:33] they just weren’t steerable.
[6:35] To this day, the big dish at Jodrell Bank
[6:37] is still the third largest
fully steerable telescope in the world.
[6:40] It can be pointed at anywhere in the sky.
[6:43] I cannot tell you how much
the young version of me
[6:47] that sat at the mock control room
that the discovery centre had back then
[6:52] is absolutely overjoyed.
[6:56] Oh, my word.
[6:58] (laughs)
[7:00] So, that is the telescope.
[7:01] That’s the 250-foot,
76-metre Lovell Telescope.
[7:05] Pointing straight up,
[7:06] ’cos we’re doing some painting
and repair work on it at the moment.
[7:10] I keep worrying that I’m getting
in the way of science here.
[7:12] And I’ve just realised
that this is not an observing day.
[7:15] There is literally a cherry picker with
someone painting the telescope in there.
[7:18] Alright, so, can I have a look?
What’s it...?
[7:20] So, this is Mirza, our controller today.
[7:23] So, there’s somebody in here,
[7:25] there’s a controller in this room
24 hours a day...
[7:27] Right. It’s a lovely control desk, this.
[7:29] I know that’s the nerdiest thing
I’ve said in a while.
[7:32] It’s a really nice control desk.
 -This is the original 1957 control desk.
[7:38] -Right.
 -In terms of the steel.
[7:39] But all the electronics
that drives the telescope
[7:41] and controls the telescope
so precisely is new.
[7:45] I am a little worried that,
because the folks in that room
[7:47] were explaining the very basics
of their radio astronomy work to me,
[7:51] I’m doing them
a little bit of a disservice.
[7:53] So, just to be clear, everyone
you’re hearing from in that control room
[7:57] has a PhD.
[7:58] Anyway, Mirza, the telescope controller,
[8:00] also showed me a more modern-looking
bank of screens at the back of the room,
[8:03] that connects the telescope
to the E-MERLIN network,
[8:06] a collection of smaller dishes
across the UK.
[8:08] So, you can remote control
all of those as well?
[8:11] We can remotely control
from this station here.
[8:13] As you can see, we have the names
of all the telescopes.
[8:17] You’ll see they’re pointing
at the same position,
[8:19] so they’re all on the same source.
[8:22] That’s not an icon....
that’s not a static icon.
[8:24] That’s literally the direction
it’s pointing.
[8:26] That’s live.
That’s live data coming through.
[8:29] You’ll see the Lovell is... 
-Lovell is pointed up, and it’s red?
[8:32] It’s pointed straight up, and it’s red.
[8:33] It’s pointing up,
but not in a few hours’ time, hopefully.
[8:36] Right.
[8:36] So, you’re observing something right now.
[8:40] I’m not sure what it is, but you’re
definitely observing something.
[8:43] That something was explained to me
by Emmanuel.
[8:46] Again PhD.
[8:47] We are pointing
on this particular target, 3C84,
[8:51] which is one of the brightest
radio sources in the sky.
[8:53] And we use this source as a calibrator
[8:56] to calibrate the instrument
or the observation when it is done.
[8:59] So, once it stays on this target
[9:01] for some time in the sky,
[9:03] all the telescopes will move
to the science target
[9:06] from the calibrator to the target
and then observe.
[9:09] And then once the data comes through
the fibre-optics
[9:11] from all the network of telescopes,
[9:13] it is correlated right here
in Jodrell Bank.
[9:15] And someone’s going to earn
their PhD off that,
[9:17] or someone’s going to find
some magical discovery.
[9:21] -You never know. 
-You never know.
[9:23] One of the advantages of radio astronomy
is that scientists can take signals
[9:26] from telescopes that are a long way apart,
[9:28] correlate them all together
with fibre-optic cables and computers,
[9:31] and end up with the equivalent resolution
[9:33] of a telescope the size
of that entire network.
[9:36] This is the ends of those optical fibres.
[9:40] So, these optical fibres stretch out
to the individual telescopes,
[9:43] and then we have to focus them,
[9:45] and we do that in the machine
which is behind us.
[9:47] Oh, there’s a...
[9:49] (laughs)
[9:51] Okay, you’ve got...
[9:54] Oh! Okay.
[9:55] Yep.
[9:56] (whirring)
[9:58] Little bit noisy.
[10:00] So, this is the supercomputer
which is doing the focusing.
[10:04] It’s a correlator designed to multiply
the raw signals
[10:08] from each pair of telescopes,
[10:09] accumulate those,
[10:11] and then Emmanuel and colleagues
turn those into images.
[10:14] And the reason it’s in this
rather weird room
[10:17] is that this keeps any
of the radio signals that this generates
[10:21] away from the big dish.
[10:22] So now we can go and see some of our young
scientists working on the data.
[10:26] The young scientists in question
[10:28] all either have their PhDs
or are working on them.
[10:31] Sorry to interrupt.
[10:32] I’ve been told you’ve all been briefed on
who I am and what I’m doing here.
[10:37] I’m worried that Simon just kind of opened
the door and said, “Hi, here’s Tom.”
[10:40] Benjamin is working on a live feed
from the 42-foot telescope,
[10:44] one of the other smaller dishes
at Jodrell Bank,
[10:46] which is picking up the signal
from the rapidly rotating remnants
[10:49] of a collapsed star, called a pulsar.
[10:52] I have an animation
of what one of those looks like here...
[10:55] Someone has prepared a presentation here!
[10:57] Simon’s been doing hard work here.
[10:59] Thank you, folks.
[11:00] So what we’re seeing here is a beam
of radio emission,
[11:03] a little bit like a lighthouse
that is sweeping itself around the sky,
[11:08] and the reason it sweeps around
the sky like this is,
[11:10] I actually have a little model here.
[11:11] You have a model!
[11:16] I knew you were coming.
[11:18] As the star rotates, that beam,
[11:20] that radio beam, like here
that’s coming away from the magnetic pole,
[11:24] is sweeping around the sky
somewhat like a lighthouse.
[11:26] And if we happen to be
fortuitously located in the galaxy,
[11:30] and that beam sweeps across Earth,
[11:32] we will see a little pulse
every time it does so,
[11:35] and so we call them pulsars.
[11:37] A pulsar is the size of a city,
the mass of the Sun,
[11:40] and the fastest one we know of
rotates 716 times per second.
[11:47] Like I said, astronomy includes
mind-boggling numbers.
[11:50] The idea really
is to unambiguously account
[11:52] for every single rotation of these stars.
[11:55] Right.
[11:56] Because if we can do that,
then we can do all kinds of experiments
[11:59] because what we have
is effectively clocks in the sky,
[12:02] and if you have clocks in the sky,
[12:04] that’s a fantastic way
to test general relativity
[12:07] to find the limits of Einstein’s theory.
[12:10] Next up is Phoebe, who was bouncing
radio signals off asteroids.
[12:14] So, there’s a radar in Madrid
that’ll be transmitting,
[12:18] and then all the radio telescopes
in this network
[12:20] will then be listening to the echo
of that radar pulse,
[12:24] like, bouncing off the asteroid. 
-Wow.
[12:26] And you do that a few times,
and you can work out how fast it’s moving,
[12:29] what direction it’s going,
everything like that, or...?
[12:31] -Hopefully, with just one observation. 
-Just one?
[12:33] With the multiple telescopes
at the same time,
[12:36] you should get an idea of the speed
from that as well.
[12:38] Resolution is much better than optical.
[12:41] We can get down to about a metre,
[12:44] sort of, with the imaging
that we’re going to do.
[12:47] Hopefully.
[12:48] This is, sort of, quite new,
and we’ve not tried it before.
[12:51] This is the first VLBI observation
[12:55] to get this level of detail.
[12:57] VLBI there
is Very Long Baseline Interferometry,
[13:02] which is the name for that process
of combining multiple telescopes
[13:04] in different locations.
[13:06] I mean, do I just ask
what everyone’s working on?
[13:08] Like, I’m assuming Simon has prepared
all of you with something, but...
[13:11] Uh, no. This is my regular office.
[13:13] Okay!
 (all laugh)
[13:15] Thank you!
[13:16] That was a little unfair to Justin,
[13:18] who I later found out specialises
in researching cosmic rays
[13:21] and high-energy particles,
[13:22] and was actively working there.
I’m sorry, Justin.
[13:25] But all this research is based on data
coming in from other dishes.
[13:28] We still haven’t talked
about the Lovell Telescope itself.
[13:31] My question remains...
[13:33] can a 70-year-old telescope
still be useful?
[13:36] Or is it just a heritage landmark now?
[13:39] Because it has a huge amount of heritage.
[13:41] Perhaps most famously,
it intercepted photos
[13:43] that were transmitted from the first
Soviet lander on the moon.
[13:47] Those pictures were in the British press
[13:48] well before the Soviets
ever wanted them released.
[13:51] [announcer] The Western World had their
 first word of the successful probe
[13:54] from an English source.
[13:55] The Jodrell Bank Observatory
near Manchester.
[13:58] It was now time to head out
to the telescope itself,
[14:01] while the maintenance teams
were also out there,
[14:02] and I wasn’t disrupting science.
[14:04] I put on a climbing harness...
[14:06] (harness clips and zips) 
Yeah, alright.
[14:07] ...and then went out to the dish,
accompanied by Simon,
[14:10] plus telescope supervisor, Phil,
[14:11] who’s worked on the site for decades,
[14:13] and also, hastily-recruited
and quite excited, Megan,
[14:17] one of Jodrell Bank’s comms team,
[14:18] who was very happy
to volunteer to hold another camera.
[14:21] Lead the way! Thank you very much.
[14:23] Oh shades.
[14:25] Definitely going to need them.
[14:26] I’ve never encountered
safety sunglasses before,
[14:28] but when you’ve got not only the sky,
[14:30] but also the sky reflected off the bowl
of a bright-white telescope,
[14:34] they’re a good idea.
[14:35] I thought razor burn was just
a part of life
[14:38] that I had to deal with.
[14:39] But recently, I have unlearned
a bad habit
[14:42] and it’s got better.
[14:43] I used to instinctively
push down when I shaved.
[14:46] Most folks who shave do that
without even thinking about it,
[14:49] because most modern cartridge razors
are built with pivots or springs.
[14:53] Or if you use disposables,
like I did,
[14:55] the whole thing just
flexes a tiny amount.
[14:58] Because the blade can move,
it feels a little unstable
[15:00] when you're shaving and it meets
the resistance of your hair.
[15:02] It tugs. So you push
just a little harder
[15:06] to try and stabilise it
against your skin.
[15:07] That doesn't actually stop
the blade flexing.
[15:09] It just increases friction, and that’s
one of the causes of razor burn.
[15:13] Just bad design.
[15:15] A few weeks ago, Henson Shaving
sent me their razor.
[15:18] It’s machined out of solid
aerospace-grade aluminum,
[15:21] the tolerances are as tight
as 13 microns in places,
[15:25] the blade is held completely rigid.
[15:27] Which means I had to learn not to
apply so much force, and
[15:30] let the weight of the razor
do most of the work.
[15:32] And now I have less razor burn!
[15:34] There’s no subscription model
 or proprietary blades here:
[15:37] this takes the inexpensive, international-
 standard, double-edge blades.
[15:41] If you want to use a different
brand of blade, you can,
[15:43] so it also works out
much cheaper long-term.
[15:47] If you use the link in the description
or scan the QR code on screen,
[15:50] you too can get a Henson razor,
 hopefully end up with less razor burn,
[15:53] plus they’ll throw in
a hundred free blades,
[15:56] which should last you a long time.
[15:58] It’s still impressive.
[15:59] It really is.
[16:00] 3,000 tonnes, able to move from one part
of the sky to another fairly quickly,
[16:06] but also able to track things
across the sky
[16:08] to within a thousandth of a degree.
[16:11] And that’s a challenge now.
[16:13] It was a challenge in 1957... 
-Right!
[16:16] ...before computers! 
-(laughs)
[16:18] I came here as a kid,
[16:20] and remember looking up at this
when I was about this tall,
[16:24] and wanting to do this.
[16:25] Where do we go from here?
[16:26] -We’ll head up towards the lift. 
-Alright.
[16:29] We just take care stepping over the rails,
you can see they’re quite oily and greasy.
[16:34] Oh okay.
[16:34] And we don’t want greasy boots
to go climbing with.
[16:37] Oh! Yeah.
[16:39] So, are these railway tracks?
[16:41] Yep, standard railway tracks.
[16:42] Huh!
[16:44] That makes sense, because it was built,
what, 70 years ago?
[16:47] And you use the technology you have,
if it works and it’s proven.
[16:50] It’s about 50-100 tonnes per wheel,
is the load.
[16:54] -Yep.
 -64 wheels it runs on.
[16:57] -(exhales)
 -So...
[16:59] -How on earth?
 -When you change the wheels,
[17:00] you jack the telescope up.
[17:01] Yep.
[17:02] -Really?
 -Yep.
[17:04] So yep...
[17:05] Just a hydraulic jack.
[17:07] -Wow.
 -About 200 tonnes to lift it up.
[17:10] Slide it out and put another one in.
[17:12] The telescope is named
after Sir Bernard Lovell,
[17:15] first director of the observatory,
[17:16] the driving force
behind building the telescope.
[17:18] And the painting job
is apparently never-ending.
[17:21] You can see the blue cherry picker
in the background there.
[17:23] It’s a steel structure,
it relies on painting to protect it.
[17:28] And, you know, it’s been operating
for nearly 70 years,
[17:32] and we want to keep it going
for another 70 years.
[17:34] Bit cosy, but it does take four people.
[17:37] (laughter)
[17:38] And as we headed out onto the catwalks,
[17:40] I was a little bit lost for words.
[17:43] (laughs)
[17:46] Oh wow!
[17:52] -You okay? 
 -Yeah!
[17:54] This is very, very cool.
[17:55] We didn’t check that you’re okay with
heights before coming up here, did we?
[17:58] (laughs)
[17:59] Megan was absolutely fine with heights.
[18:01] Also, you can see two of the other,
smaller Jodrell Bank dishes there,
[18:04] those were the ones actively listening
and doing science at that moment.
[18:07] From there, it was up
onto the first surface of the dish.
[18:10] The telescope does look a bit different
compared to the early days.
[18:13] It’s been shored up
and upgraded over years,
[18:15] and it gained a brand new surface
in the early 2000s.
[18:18] Oh!
[18:19] The first stop
was between those two surfaces,
[18:22] and then it was up onto the dish.
[18:25] (laughing)
[18:28] Thank you!
[18:29] The telescope’s been standing
for 70 years,
[18:33] this floor has been standing for 25 years,
[18:35] and it’s made of steel, and yet,
[18:37] somehow I’m still just
a little bit worried as I go up here.
[18:41] So, the idea of the parabola is to focus
the radio waves that land on the telescope
[18:46] to the focus, which is what you can see
at the top.
[18:48] Yes, because there’s all sorts
of bad graphics
[18:50] where the beam
is coming into that directly,
[18:53] and it’s not, it comes into this bowl...
[18:55] -Yes. 
-...and gets bounced up to there.
[18:58] Yep.
[18:59] And the property of a parabola is,
wherever it hits this surface,
[19:03] it ends up in that hole in the middle.
[19:05] And moreover, the path length
from each ray is the same.
[19:09] So, if you like, all those radio waves
add up coherently, in step, at the focus.
[19:14] -Oh!
 -That is the property of a parabola.
[19:16] Right.
[19:17] Radio has a wavelength anywhere
from a few centimetres to kilometres,
[19:21] so thankfully, the dish surface
doesn’t have to be too precise.
[19:23] We’re not going to cause any damage
walking on it.
[19:26] To see nothing but dish
and the sky is magic.
[19:30] Okay, if you’re ready
for the next challenge,
[19:32] we can have a go at heading up
to the top and have a look.
[19:35] Yeah, this is where I leave
you two behind.
[19:38] Let’s do it.
[19:43] And the sun’s come out!
[19:45] And it’s blinding!
[19:46] You were right about those shades.
[19:48] I’m going to put those on.
[19:49] I know, I look like a dork...
[19:51] Oh, my word!
[19:52] ...and you can’t see my eyes.
[19:54] I take the shades off again in a bit,
[19:55] but with the sun out and that light
being reflected up towards us,
[19:58] it was bright.
[20:00] There is a reason that you do not point
a telescope at the sun.
[20:03] Even well off-axis, like it was,
it felt so bright.
[20:07] But we were high enough
that I could see the horizon again.
[20:10] I am so incredibly lucky. Right.
[20:13] Where do I go from here?
[20:14] Climbing harness hooked in,
[20:16] up the ladder to the focal point.
[20:18] That is the very top of the telescope.
[20:23] (laughs)
[20:27] Oh, it wobbles!
[20:30] Course it does.
[20:31] What an incredible view.
[20:34] Something special, isn’t it, up here?
[20:36] It really is.
[20:39] So, is it still doing science?
[20:43] I don’t know what I was expecting.
[20:44] Some mirror system,
some fancy little thing?
[20:46] No, you’re literally moving
the entire detector.
[20:49] Yep. Because there’s only one focal point
to the whole dish.
[20:54] So, to use that same focal point twice... 
-Yeah.
[20:58] ...it requires to move one out of the way
and put the other one into the same slot.
[21:04] The telescope is 70 years old.
[21:06] It’s now a Grade I listed historical site,
[21:08] which is probably going to give them
all sorts of trouble
[21:10] refitting it in future.
[21:12] But the surface is only 25 years old,
[21:14] and those multiple detectors,
the different science packages
[21:17] that can be moved into the focal point
are much more recent than that.
[21:21] The Lovell Telescope
is still doing world-class science,
[21:24] on its own, as part of networks,
[21:26] because it turns out
that as long as you do the upkeep,
[21:28] the scientific concept of
[21:30] “massive parabolic dish
that you can point anywhere”
[21:34] doesn’t really go out of date.
[21:36] But there is one more thing.
[21:38] I spent a while admiring the view,
[21:40] and then headed back down,
and back in the control room,
[21:42] I got to do something
that my ten-year-old self,
[21:45] playing at the controls in the mock
control room in the discovery centre,
[21:49] would never have dreamed was possible.
[21:51] Alright.
[21:53] Five seconds on the siren?
[21:54] Five seconds on the siren, yes.
[21:56] (siren wails)
[22:02] (siren fades)
[22:05] That got their attention, right?
And then...
[22:08] Return.
[22:09] -Enter on here.
 -Yeah.
[22:13] With slow grace,
[22:15] the Lovell Telescope began to turn
[22:17] and pointed at its first science target
for the day.
[22:22] There’s a kid, um, on the fence there,
[22:24] he’s going to be, like,
a few pixels in the final footage.
[22:27] And he’s just staring up at the machine,
[22:30] and he’s about the age
I would have been when I got here.
[22:35] I wonder if the same thing’s
just sparked off in his head?
[22:39] (chuckles)
[22:43] The ten-year-old version of me
is so happy.
[22:46] Your dream’s come true.
[22:50] Next time, or right now
on Nebula,
[22:51] I visit a school
where the students have four legs
[22:54] and a bendy backbone,
to see how they outperform robots.