Science Authors

"This thing... is a , and it will tell us whether these things are radioactive. ...There is something coming off [clicking noise from the thoriated rods] there. Just to demonstrate that the bananas are really only mildly radioactive, we can't pick them up with a Geiger counter. It's really is very mild."

"In answer to some of the questions that we had a few years ago when the Large Hadron Collider started up... "Could it destroy the world?" ...The most convincing answer to me as to why it couldn't, is because we have particles in outer space from cosmic rays and things like that, at much much higher energies than we could ever dream of creating in the lab. And so far they haven't done anything catastrophic to us and we're perfectly fine. So in terms of just reaching a higher and higher energy... it doesn't really matter what we do in the lab. We should be safe on earth from these high energy particles."

"So what is ? It's energy in the form of moving particles or waves, emitted by an atom or another body as it changes from one energy state to another. That's the official definition."

"[Y]ou can have two... main types of radiation, which are ionizing, or non-ionizing."

"Now is the stuff that does us damage, and there's three... types... called alpha, beta and gamma radiation. ...Alpha radiation won't go through your hand, beta radiation won't go through a piece of aluminum [a few millimeters thick] and gamma radiation is penetrating and won't go through a big piece of ."

"The only problem is [that] the accelerator for this is about 10 times more powerful... than we can currently make. So there's lots of challenges for people like me who design accelerators, to try and come up with ways of making them more and more powerful, for very good reason."

"The interesting thing about radiation is it is naturally present in most of the things around us. ...How many bananas do you think you'd have to eat to get a dose of radiation that would make you sick? ...It's the in the bananas. ...A very small percentage of the potassium is naturally radioactive, but you... have to eat five million... in one sitting to get sick..."

"Number three. Don't use a particle accelerator as a death ray. When I was putting together this lecture I asked... my very esteemed colleagues, "Has anyone ever tried to develop an accelerator as a weapon?" And they said, "Oh mumble, mumble cold war, space, Star Wars something or other... No" That was their conclusion... They were wrong."

"People in the U.S. did think about building a particle accelerator (a neutral beam accelerator) that they would launch into space... and then they would use it to shoot down satellites and... missiles and destroy anything that they didn't like, because they were going to have this super powerful beam in space."

"In this book, I will take you through twelve key experiments that marked... a discovery... we now see as essential to our understanding of the world... [T]hese experiments embody the spirit of enquiry that stems from human curiosity. ...[T]hey have changed our lives in almost every aspect, from computing to medicine, from energy to communications and from art to archaeology."

"That thing... is radioactive. They're called thoriated rods, and they're used in welding. You can... just buy them."

"[I]f we start creating things like mini black holes, which we may or may not, they will pop out of existence so quickly that they wouldn't have time to suck any matter in... [T]he interesting message that I take from this is that these machines are built so infrequently... 25-30 years between these big accelerators. Every time it happens, I'm told by my... retired colleagues... It happens every time, this scare story that we're going to destroy the earth with it, because it's so long between them that people actually forget the media hype that happened the last time around."

"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."

"[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."

"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."

"I've collaborated with many people from NOC over the years... I visited Steph Henson and the group she works with that study ... [W]hat was great... was seeing the variety of practical ways of doing things, and this... contrasts with what looks very crude... these... big yellow plastic funnels, and then the technology that's coming down the line. This... holographic camera and other things that will let them watch marine snow as it's falling, rather then waiting for it to be scooped up and put on the sample plate. ...The huge benefit... of being at NOC is that you've got all these people, it's such an interdisciplinary place. You've got all these people right next to each other that can learn from each other... I definitely miss that, not being in Southampton any more."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"[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."

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

"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."

"I paddle outrigger canoes with the and I also do that here in London. I work on research ships. I've worked on many of the world's oceans. ...I've had the privilege of working at Scripps and at the Graduate School of Oceanography... at NOC, or the University of South Hampton... and it felt like no one had told those stories, so I wanted to tell those stories... because I wanted people to see. I was so frustrated of people assuming that the ocean was just a place where the fish lived, or assuming that the ocean was just a big empty pond... and I realized, "Why would they see?" because no one had told them."

"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..."

"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 way I started to think about it... sometimes you get those kind of special effects where little pictures start appearing, making a , and then there's a shape left in the middle, and once you've got enough little pictures you can see the shape. But... until you've seen all those little pictures, you can't see anything. ...[T]he ocean's ...like that. The only way to really understand it, and we take this for granted as ocean scientists, is that you have to see it in lots of different ways. It's like the blind man and the elephant... One finds a trunk and thinks it's a snake. One finds a leg and thinks it's a tree. Yet you need all those perspectives, and then you start to build up a picture of what it means for an ocean to be there. ...[I]t ...bugged me that no one had done that and I thought I could find those stories."

"[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."

"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."

"[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."

"[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..."

"[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."

"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 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..."

"I've always studied the physics in the middle, even when I was doing my degree. ...I passed my exams in quantum mechanics and cosmology, but I knew I was never going to touch those things, but with the ocean it's something you can directly experience... I'm much more interested in the everyday world than in... s or something."

"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."

"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 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..."

"[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."

"I set out to learn. I went around Scripps... I knocked on people's doors and I said "Hello, I'm a physicist. ...I'm learning about the ocean. If you've got a book you would recommend..." and people recommended books to me... [O]ne of them was Jacques Cousteau's Silent World and a whole bunch of others... Once I knew I wanted to learn, I was in exactly the right place to begin that journey."

"I was on the Kilo Moana, out of Santa Barbara, on a preparatory cruise for a bigger one... [W]e were in... calm water off Santa Barbara and the Kilo Moana... has swath holes, so a very stable platform kind of a ship, more of a platform than a ship in some sense... [T]hat was the first time I'd ever... hung an instrument over the side... in order to try and measure something... [I]n the second cruise... I made a video of the cruise, like a... mini-documentary..."

"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..."

"I never wanted to go into filmmaking. It was just that I had the opportunity... I found the visceral nature of it very appealing... [Y]ou're in the middle of something directly experiencing it at the same time as studying it... [T]hat was really interesting to me."

"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 '..."

"Helen Czerski has the coolest job in science—she's a bubble scientist. Or... full title... a physicist and oceanographer at University College London. When she's not doing that... a science presenter for the BBC. ...[S]he also plays badminton competitively."

"It wasn't my first time at sea. It was my first time in waves that big."

"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."

"We know how that graph goes... Wind speed... along the x-axis, some measure of gas flux... along the y-axis, and we knew at the time that the graph only went so far to the right... [W]e were putting dots... on the graph that had not been there before... So there's that added thing of being there with the right equipment at the right time to... measure something that has not been measured directly before..."

"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."