Physicists From England

"The basic principles alone often won't provide specific answers, but they'll provide the context needed to ask the right questions. And if we're used to working things out... we won't feel hopeless when the answer isn't obvious..."

"Critical thinking is essential... especially with advertisers and politicians all telling us... they know best."

"No one can understand every... detail of our complex world, but the basic principles are fantastically valuable tools..."

"This is what separates science from other disciplines—a scientific hypothesis must make specific testable predictions. ...[Y]ou have to look hard for consequences that you can check for, and especially... that you can prove wrong."

"Science is not about 'them', it's about 'us'... we can all go on this adventure in our own way."

"[B]eing at sea during the , when it arrived in the UK... back in 2013. I was on the in the North Atlantic and the swell... the during that storm was 10 meters during the middle of it."

"[J]ust being on the bridge when that storm came along... and watching those waves roll towards the ship and... rear up in front of us. It wasn't everyone's favorite thing, but I felt privileged to be there."

"[W]e have all these dry numbers and significant wave height is one of them... [W]atching what it really means for a significant wave height to be 10 meters and thinking about how small that is compared to the depth of the ocean... It's like... having a swimming pool and... blowing tiny ripples across the top. ...Being in that situation was... fascinating and fun... I wouldn't want to do it every day, but it was... a special experience."

"It's not a linear path. I did my PhD... in experimental explosion physics... I was interested in the , which was much harder then than it is now. This was before CCDs and CMOS sensors were built into things like high-speed cameras... [Y]ou had to do it the old-school way. ...[I]t was interesting and challenging and I liked building that kind of experiment. Looking at small things that were too quick... to see directly. But I never wanted to do [explosion physics]..."

"So after I finished my PhD I looked around for another topic, and I found bubbles... [T]hat... took me to Scripps, to the lab of Grant Deane and he... showed me the ocean... indirectly... I was in that lab. I had these experiments on bubbles. They involved things I understood, s and tanks and... s... [T]here was this frame by the door... and after three weeks they all started fussing around it, and I realized this thing, which I now know is just a surface following buoy, was their gateway to another world."

"I've looked at basic bubble physics, and optics... the dynamics of what bubbles do underneath waves, and particularly, sensing them in very difficult conditions like that big storm. ...Acoustical and optical devices for detecting bubbles... just under... [Y]ou're interested in the top meter, but the top meter is going up and down, or in the case by 10 meters. So it's not an easy place to get to. But that kind of challenge, studying bubbles in difficult situations... in the ocean, that's what I do now."

"I was indignant because I hadn't even read about it. ...I was that kid who had read every physics book, every science book, I'd read every copy of ' and whatever else... I was the... kid who had really read everything, and nobody had ever mentioned the ocean."

"[I]t's not just about pretty fish. We all like pretty fish, but... it's much more interesting than that, and we are shortchanging people if we don't really show what the ocean is. We all take it for granted as ocean scientists... So it's that opportunity that NOC has to do something really important. That's why I'm on board."

"But you have to try... [T]hat's the lesson of ocean science... It was never going to be easy. If you go back to Challenger, we're now 150 years on from the Challenger expedition... something like 400 stations around the globe... That's like going around the and checking what color the paint is... on 400 dots along the ceiling... and the Sistine Chapel doesn't change every season... and people did try, and there are fundamental principles behind it all, and so it's worth it to try."

"Ocean scientists... who have read it said they learned lots of things. So there is this assumption that popular science books are for the people who don't know anything, and that is not true because the oceanographers know the oceanography, but they don't know the stories, and I think that the stories are worth it."

"[T]hey came back with these two photos. One from , which was ', which was the Earth rising over the surface of the moon... before they'd landed on the moon, and the other on , the last of the Apollo missions, where they had the... full disk, the fully illuminated disk... '. ...That was when people started referring to the Earth as a "Blue Planet" because you couldn't look at that and not see that it was blue... [T]hen we spent 50 years not talking about the blue."

"I did my degree in physics and... the telling of the history and the philosophy... is built into the telling of the subject, partly because of quantum mechanics, and partly because some of these ideas in physics are so big, you almost can't not discuss the philosophy of it... [T]he... mind blowing moment when Einstein presents general relativity and... unites these things, or these moments where Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is being worked out... [Y]ou've got to go and see why it's called that... [T]hese stories are built into physics, and in ocean science it's not really the same, and it's... not the same across the biology and chemistry and physics of the ocean, because they tend to be taught... separately..."

"[T]he called two or three... great series, '... but when did they actually say "What is the Blue?"... Not ever addressed."

"Any alien visitor to Earth... would look at the ocean first. Any alien visitor who wants to know the dynamics of planet Earth would look at the ocean before they looked at the land. And yet, we don't see it. ...We don't see this engine that completely defines our planet, and that has to change. ...Now is a good time for that to change."

"Helen Czerski's engaging debut book seeks to demystify physics in everyday life... this should be an invaluable primer. ...Dealing with the everyday... enables Czerski to offer a mixture of erudition and enthusiasm... keeping the discussion light, accessible and interesting."

"Alongside being a researcher for the past 10 or 12 years, I've also had the opportunity to make a lot of documentaries for the . ...This is not my first book. I've written science columns for years, for Focus magazine and '..."

"I think it's not an approach that many people have taken. I think oceanographers take those stories for granted. ...[W]e don't tell our own history..."

"[E]ven the ocean scientists don't really know all the little stories, the places where it's mattered in history... [S]o I went looking for those."

"So... The Blue Machine is the story of the ocean told through its messengers, passengers and voyages... [I]t's a mixture of natural history... human culture and human history... It's... a textbook dressed up as a bunch of stories."

"And so this time NASA... the Artemis missions are... very much gearing up to go back to the moon. Different setup, different politics... but fundamentally, this time... for the first time in 50 years, we're going to be far enough away to look back at the Earth and to see... this blue planet. And this time we have to see that blue for what it is. ...[T]he timing of the book... from the point of view... of the arc of human history, this time... we have to understand the blue itself, is the point."

"My [publisher] actually said she was very moved by... the scale of trying to track these tiny bits of that are drifting around in the ocean... [S]he found something about that very... awesome, in the traditional sense of the word "awe"... The enormity of it really caught her."

"[T]he ocean world is not good at talking about itself... [A] lot of ocean scientists... assume that people should care about the ocean, because they should... [A]ctually it's much more interesting than that. There are much more interesting things to say, but you've.. got to frame it right... [I]t's the framing that we miss in these conversations. ...You ...need a skeleton to hang pieces of information on, and for most people ...you say the ocean, they've got literally nothing... It really is a void. They're just like, "I don't know what to think about that. I don't know where to even start thinking about it, so I... forget everything I hear about it. ...I ...know it's all going wrong somehow ..." ...[T]he opportunity that NOC has is to earn a place in people's perception of what their world is like, by providing some of that context. ...[T]he most powerful thing that NOC has is... the collective."

"Scientists always think that the most important thing about what they do is the individual things that they're learning. That's not true. The most important thing... actually the gift that you have as a scientist that you've been given through the training, is a perspective on the world. ...[W]hat NOC has is an amazing opportunity to share a perspective, and not to dumb it down or to sugarcoat it, but just to say, "This is what it is." and to say that really well... [T]hat's... where you really can change people's idea of what it means to live on planet Earth, if you do that well..."

"[P]eople can experience the ocean in lots of ways, and... that's the important point. It's the experience of the ocean in some sense, so... it's not just a computer game..."

"[N]o one was talking about the ocean, and when I went looking for popular science books... about , there really is close to nothing. There's lots of things about fish and whales and about pollution. Everything except the water itself, and that seemed to be the most ludicrous omission... I was sure the stories were there, but... to tell the story, to paint a picture of the ocean."

"It's very, very important to make the point that there are lots of ways to be an oceanographer. You don't have to go to sea... I would say to people, "I'm a physicist. I'm not an oceanographer." and they would go, "Oh you go to sea, so you're an oceanographer." But actually now we have much better data availability, data visualization... There are lots of people involved in coding and modeling and building devices and the engineering, who don't go to sea. But they are part of the ocean science community, and it's very, very important that they are there."

"[W]e're past the point now where we say you have to go to sea to be an oceanographer, because it's not true, and it's actually very important that it isn't true."

"[P]eople can contribute in lots of ways... [W]e're at the stage now, especially with any environmental science and... designing the future of society... where we... need all the help we can get... [S]o it is ludicrous to rule people out because they get seasick, for example. ...That's something of the past and... we have to move on from that."

"[T]he problem with the ocean... is that it's too many things to sum up in a sentence... [Y]ou can say logically what it is. It's a layer of water about this thick that covers 70% of Earth. Fine, it doesn't mean anything. But to convey to people what it means to have an ocean, what it means to be a citizen of an ocean planet, you... need lots of different types of stories..."

"It's interesting how you can look at the sea and not see it. There's this phrase... that the Merchant Marine use, which is sea blindness... [T]he UK is especially guilty of this... We talk of ourselves as an island nation and we talk... of having this maritime history, and yet we never actually look at the sea... This idea that it can be right there and yet we're somehow blind to it... I was totally guilty of that... being sea blind."

"I think that video... We made little DVDs of it that got shared around the participants on the cruise. They were all... interested in it, and... this was long before I'd done any stuff for the and... I didn't think of filmmaking as something I would want to do. But in retrospect... there was a story to tell, and I was interested in telling that story."

"My favorite element is . That's mainly because of this organism... a ... a tiny... organism that lives in the surface of the ocean..."

"[A]ll of these platelets, this really intricate structure... is made of so calcium is incorporated into this structure..."

"[M]ost of the south coast of England is underlain by a great layer of this calcium carbonate, mostly made of this one amazing organism."

"So after the calcium has been part of the cliffs it can crumble down... It goes back into the ocean and this cycle starts all over again."

"And then they go down, and they go hunting for fish... [I]t comes time to go back up to the surface and hop out onto the ice past the s."

"[A]s they're starting that swim upwards they... unfluff their feathers and... release... a coat of bubbles... [T]hose bubbles... are inducing . It's just like the same reason a golf ball has dimples, the bubbles are reducing the drag on the penguin and a penguin that is producing bubbles can travel 50% faster... So it stands a much better chance of getting past the leopard seals now, onto the land."

"They are reducing... drag, which is one of the most complicated problems in , and the penguins just... do it."

"And... it changes the ecosystem because the penguins can then survive in conditions they would not otherwise be able to survive in."

"Look at... cyclists; their high visibility jackets... oddly bright... as though they're glowing... It's... the same trick the scorpions are playing..."

"[A] nugget of physics... isn't just an interesting fact: it's a tool... useful anywhere..."

"A toaster can teach you some of the most fundamental laws of physics..."

"Physics is awesome... because the same patterns are universal... in the kitchen and in the furthest reaches of the universe."

"The ... has produced many... spectacular images... But when you're floating... in space... how do you hold your position... How do you know... which way you're facing? Hubble has six s, each... a wheel spinning... Conservation of angular momentum means that those wheels will [tend to] keep spinning... and the spin axis will stay pointed in... the same direction... The gyroscopes give Hubble a reference direction..."

"I come from in the north of England... a long way from the coast. ...I learned to scuba dive at Scripps. I learned to sail in . I hadn't done any of that before, so I was about as much a landlubber as you can get, but I was up for the adventure... That's the reason I'm doing what I'm doing... because it not only involves very interesting physics, but you are right in the middle of... experiencing it while it's happening..."