Many thanks to sequential artist Francesco Francavilla for permission to use his wonderful work ‘Mad Doctors’.  Here is a link to Francesco’s website and his sketch blog.

The latest episodes of Space Hoppers, the BBC tv programme on which science communicators Professor Mark Brake and Jon Chase helped innovate the science, are now available on BBC iPlayer.

In Lost in Lava, the space hoppers go on the trail of volcanoes in the solar system, and Wet and Wild (a curious choice of title for a children’s programme perhaps) looks at how finding water in the solar system may be every space explorer’s dream.

Podcasts and other media highlights of the science communication work led by Professor Mark Brake play a major part of the recent launch on iTunesU.  The highlights include podcasts on major works of science fiction, such as Frankenstein and Dr Strangelove,

And the superb Alien Worlds, a multimedia presentation of the search for life in the Universe developed by Barry Richards, and supported by Sue Burnett, Mark Brake, Martin Griffiths, and Toby Murcott, is also a major feature.  Barry’s excellent animations have been enhanced with a voiceover, and is one of the flagship items of the site.  The work has also made an impression on Apple, as they featured Alien Worlds as one of the noteworthy items on the iTunesU homepage.

The BBC tv programme, on which science communicators Professor Mark Brake, the University’s Professorial Science Champion for Public Engagement, and his colleague Jon Chase, worked on last year, is to be broadcast tomorrow on BBC 2 at 7:30am.

Full story here

Two members of the University’s successful science communication team, Professor Mark Brake and Jon Chase, are involved in a brand new television program, and spin-off book, for the BBC.

The series, Space Hoppers, is a brand new seven x 30-minutes interplanetary adventure in which intrepid travellers investigate worlds beyond our planet and try to find out exactly what you would need to do to take a holiday in outer space, do a bit of space hopping.  They will delve into the wonders of the Solar System, blending global adventures with explosive experiments, and quirky animation with state-of-the-art CGI.

Each episode explores a holiday-related theme, from holidays in the Sun to volcano-spotting. The search will take in extreme environments, wild weather and the best places in the Solar System to ‘enjoy’ a bit of snow and ice.  Science rapper Jon Chase appears throughout the series, directing the explosive experiments, and performing a specially commissioned rap for each episode.

Professor Mark Brake, who acted as science advisor to the program, has also written the spin off title for the series. The book helps explore the Sun, ice, volcanoes, comets, extreme weather, extreme distances and water on Earth and in the Solar System. The book is also packed with experiments that can be done at home.

Professor Mark Brake, the University’s Professorial Champion for Public Engagement, said: “It’s great for Jon and I to be involved in such a powerful science series. It is perfect inspirational material for a young audience which is constantly curious about the world around them and how it works.”

2010 is Year of Science at the BBC.  Timed to coincide with the Royal Society’s 350^th anniversary, Space Hoppers is part of the recently launched year-long series of programmes and activities in a celebration of science.

University of Glamorgan science communication expert, Jon Chase this week engaged The Royal Society in London with his creative brand of communicating science.

The event, one of a select number staged at the Society this year to mark its 350th Anniversary, was titled Is There Anybody Out There? and focussed on the science and culture of astrobiology, the search for life beyond the Earth. Rubbing shoulders with a line-up of world-leading astrobiologists, such as Paul Davies, Martin Rees, and SETI founder Dr Frank Drake (pictured above with Jon at the meeting), Jon performed his now famous Astrobiology Rap discussing man’s search for extra-terrestrial life and the consequences for science and society.

Glamorgan protégé Jon rose to fame when he was commissioned by Professor Mark Brake and NASA to create his Astrobiology Rap, which has had over 250,000 hits on YouTube. Professor Brake said, “I am delighted that The Royal Society has recognised Jon’s innovation and skill in communicating astrobiology in one of their select public engagement events. Jon has a unique and tremendous energy and vibrancy which is a heady fusion of science and rap”.

The Royal Society event is part of a busy 2010 for Jon. Next month he is to star as guest scientist on the new, ground-breaking CBBC science programme Space Hoppers, for which Professor Brake has written the spin-off book. Both scholars, who also played at The Royal Institution in July last year, teach on the University’s MSc Communicating Science, which trains for careers in media, government, and research. The course is now available both full-time and part-time.

University of Glamorgan Science communication experts are once more at the leading edge of developments in the field this week as a new book, written by Professor Mark Brake, is launched internationally by Palgrave MacMillan in the US.

Revolution in Science, is the compelling story of the two biggest events in the evolution of ideas: the revolutions of Galileo and Darwin. The ideological shifts associated with these upheavals were crucial not only to science. Their impact on society and culture has been equally decisive up to the current century. The book aims to capture the adventure and excitement of these two revolutions – one that overturned humanity’s central place in the universe and another that challenged the very notion of the origins of humankind.

Roy Davies, author of The Darwin Conspiracy: Origins of a Scientific Crime, describes the new book as, “Fascinating. Mark Brake takes a story about the political manipulation of the scientific ideas of Greek natural philosophers by the established church across two millennia and with a facility and style rare among scientists and an acute understanding of the human condition breathes life into the entire fabric. A compelling, thought provoking and inventive narrative.”

And Dr Toby Murcott says, “A fresh, radical, vision of two scientific revolutionaries. Brake’s innovative fusion of Galileo and Darwin is both thought provoking and a good read. At a time when books on Darwin abound, this one stands out from the crowd because the author understands both the science and the politics. Brake has the courage to think anew about two scientific giants, more should follow his lead.”

The book launch continues the excellent work of the University’s science communication team, which is headed up by Professor Brake. Last July, Dr Toby Murcott, scooped the front page of Nature, the prestigious science journal, with a paper on science journalism. And throughout last year Professor Brake, Reverend Neil Hook, and science rapper Jon Chase, another member of the team, have headlined at public engagement events, including appearances at the Science Museum, and the Royal Institution.

Professor Brake is to have two further books published this year, “Space Hoppers”, with MacMillan and the BBC, and “Really, Really Big Questions about Space and Time” with Kingfisher.

This Christmas/New Year Doctor Who special is typical Russell T. Davies fare. We have end of the Universe plot decorated with smatterings of Cocoon, Heroes, and Silence of the Lambs. The Doctor and Master become giants, god-like beings, from mythology not sf, doing battle amongst puny humans.

Sometimes I wonder if RTD suffers from a writer’s equivalent of megalomania. Time was that the destruction of planet Earth and the end of humanity was all you needed to create the tension needed for a dramatic, everything in the balance, science fiction adventure. Now it seems that is no longer exciting enough, only the destruction of Time itself (and therefore the Universe) will do. Perhaps because of Global Warming and the real possibility of a nuclear terrorist age the ‘end of the world’ scenario is beginning to look a little bit too every day?

In the classic series the Master was evil but rational. He was to the Doctor what Professor Moriarty was to Sherlock Holmes, something that made the series a bit predictable in the seventies since every plot seemed to have The Master behind it. In the new series he’s become more of a nutter. Understandable, perhaps, given the end of the time lords, but (and here’s the cunning bit) he was always destined to go insane from the day he looked into Untempered Schism) on Gallifrey. His madness, it turns out, is all part of a ruthless plot hatched by the President of the Time Lords to escape their destruction.

The cleverest bit of the whole story, however, was the wonderful twist at the end. It wasn’t The Master or the Time Lords who kill the Doctor. It is gentle Wilfred Mott (played by Bernard Cribbins) who knocks four times and fulfils the prophecy.

RTD plots are fast paced, twisting, turning adventures with occasional emotional pauses. I did wonder if this was something to do with the alleged limited attention span of British television audiences, but I think it is because it helps cover up some the holes in his plotting. For example, the President of the Time Lords is named as Lord Rassilon. Yet Lord Rassilon is a semi mythological figure from Time Lord early history. Perhaps he was somehow brought out of history to lead in the war against the Daleks? And what was the point of Donna being in the story, she didn’t anything, especially die when she started to remember? There are others, but do we really want to be anorak enough to look for them? Actually, sometimes I do, but not this time. This was a great farewell to David Tennant’s tenure as the Doctor.

written by Peter Grehan

The University’s irrepressible Professor Mark Brake, described recently by the Western Mail as one of Wales’ foremost scientists, spoke at Cambridge University this week on the subject of Are We Alone in the Universe? Sharing a platform with professors “Monica Grady”http://www.open.ac.uk/science/people/people-profile.php?staff_id=Monica%26%26Grady and Jack Cohen, and doctors Lewis Dartnell and Carolin Crawford

In a fascinating debate on the topic at The Triple Helix group, Prof addressed an audience of well over 100 on the cultural and scientific aspects of the extraterrestrial life debate. Starting by informing listeners of the importance of the ship as a weapon of discovery for science, Prof went on to lucidly outline the role of the telescope and literature as great and lasting influences on the ET debate. Professing that the best position on the existence of ET is a sceptical one, the Prof suggested that the aliens are already among us, made flesh by our own creativity. But such has been the power of film and fiction in the C20th, we are now rather loathe to doubt them.

Prof’s appearance in Cambridge is the latest in a year of scoops for the University’s science communication team. In July, Dr Toby Murcott, scooped the front page of Nature, with a paper on science journalism. And throughout the year the Prof, Reverend Neil Hook, and science rapper Jon Chase, another member of the team, have headlined at public engagement events, including appearances at the Science Museum, and the Royal Institution.

Prof’s next book, Revolution in Science: How Galileo and Darwin Changed Our World is to be published by Palgrave in the United States.) He is working on a book, Alien Life Imagined: Communicating the Science and Culture of Astrobiology , for Cambridge University Press.

It is a classic repeated formula in science fiction, and especially Doctor Who, to isolate the characters in a story.

The Waters of Mars continues this tradition and highlights the difference between how isolating the protagonists in science fiction and, another genre where this technique is used a lot, horror. The isolation allows a stage to be set whereby the protagonists are contained and are forced to do battle with the ‘other’. Both genres isolate to define boundaries and increasing the tension within the story. However, in science fiction the stakes are often increased because the alien threat is to humanity as a whole and the isolation allows this battle to be contained until it is concluded. But the fact that we find human protagonists isolated within a hostile alien environment in so many science fiction texts also suggests a greater metaphorical content.

It is a recurring theme within science fiction often exemplified by the BBC’s Doctor Who series. The Doctor has regularly stumbled into small isolated human communities that include space stations, off world bases, colonies and archaeological expeditions. In isolating the protagonists, science fiction effectively represented humanity’s existence, within the vast hostile universe, as a metaphor of the struggle for long term survival in a post Darwin evolutionary battlefield.

The interesting thing about this story is that we learn early on that the humans on the base are fated to die. “Waters of Mars” shares many of the characteristics with John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982). In fact the scene where Andy Stone infects Tarak Ital with the mysterious lifeform could be a direct homage to one of the final scenes from “The Thing.”

In both stories the source of the threat is some form of alien virus. The imperative becomes preventing this infection reaching the rest of humanity. And so we come to another characteristic of the science fiction isolation text, self-sacrifice. The humans in ‘Bowie Base One’ are to make an act of self-sacrifice to defend humanities boundaries against the horrors of the void.

In making “The Thing” John Carpenter wanted to avoid simply remaking Howard Hawks’ 1951 film The Thing From Another World so he returned to John W. Campbell’s original novella that had inspired it Who Goes There? (1938). As a result he produced a more faithful retelling of Campbell’s text as the basis of his film. Consequently many of John W. Campbell’s themes are therefore transferred to Carpenter’s film. Again a small isolated outpost within the hostile Antarctic environment represents humanity within the hostile universe. At the same time they also become a defensive picket line defending humanity from the threat emerging from the unknown. To this end all the humans on the Antarctic base accept the fact that they must die in order to prevent “The Thing” reaching and infecting civilisation.

“Waters of Mars” is, in fact, a highly optimistic episode of Doctor Who. Its message is that the disasters and tragedies that humanity faces should been seen as a sacrificial payment of our growth and development. Perhaps the most significant thing about the “Waters of Mars” is that it highlights the Doctor’s weakness of character in not being able to accept this and his hubris in thinking he has the ability to alter any key events. It is the ‘human’ Adelaide Brooke, played by Lindsay Duncan, who has to teach him humility once more. David Tennant’s superb acting makes this all the more believable. I’ll be very sorry to see him leave the role.

written by Peter Grehan