Hello, and welcome to the Physics World Stories
podcast. I'm Andrew Glester, and I'm delighted to
say that today we're joined by Andy Weir,
the writer of The Martian and, of course,
Project Hail Mary, and doctor Becky Smethurst, you
may know her as Doctor Becky
on YouTube, as we talk the science behind
Project Hail Mary. The new film, based on
the book
by Andy Weir,
adapted by screenwriter
Drew Goddard for the Phil Lord and Christopher
Miller
directed film, which is currently,
as we speak, in cinemas.
Those not familiar with Andy Weir's books they
are dense
with
lovely
beautiful
depth of science behind the stories. You'll hear
all about that in this podcast in this
process, but he's really keen on getting
accurate science into
his stories. If you haven't seen the film
yet, I do recommend that you find a
way to watch it, get yourself to the
biggest cinema screen you can find to watch
the film and then come back and listen
to this episode. If you don't mind spoilers
or if you've seen the trailer, I don't
think we'll be talking about anything in here
that is a spoiler that isn't already revealed
in the trailer for the film, But if
you'd like to, go away, watch the film
and come back. We'll still be here when
you are ready. But to kick us off,
who better to describe the story
than the man who wrote it, Andy Weir?
The initial sizzle is that a guy wakes
up aboard a spaceship with no memory of
who he is or why he's there. And
as his memories start to come back to
him, he realizes that he's on a last
ditch desperate,
space mission
to save humanity from an extinction level event.
So no pressure.
Also, he's the only survivor. There are two
dead people in the ship with him. I
mean, Ryan Gosling,
contacted us. So, I mean,
that was awesome. Drew Goddard, I was the
one who, like, really pushed for Drew. I
mean, everybody loves Drew. He said, like, guys,
I just don't have the time to work
on this. I'm sorry.
And so I was like, okay. Well, here's
a copy of the book. I hope you
enjoy it. Because I like Drew. He's a
friend of mine. And then he read the
book and said, like, well, I think I
would like to work on this. And so
that was very flattering to me. And, then
he said, but I you know, guys, I
I've got, like I wouldn't be able to
consider starting for at least, like, six to
eight months while I'm working on this other
stuff. And I so I pushed I pushed
for every everybody in the production. I'm like,
let's wait for Drew. Let's let's just wait.
We're not gonna be shooting anything during the
pandemic anyway, so let's just hold on and
and wait for him. So we did. But
Drew is just such a fantastic screenwriter. I
mean, he did such a good job on
The Martian. He gets me. He gets what
I'm going after, and so I just feel
much more comfortable with the with the screenplay
in his hands and with anyone else. Yeah.
Fantastic. Much more from Andy Weir later in
the podcast, But that interview did take place
before the film came out, so I wanted
to have a conversation with someone, well, an
astrophysicist,
about it since it has. My name is
doctor Becky Smethurst. I'm an astrophysicist at the
University of Oxford, and I also share a
lot of my knowledge online, including on my
YouTube channel, doctor Beggin. Okay. And you've been,
quite active
in,
videos
about
films, I think. Mhmm. And I think,
well, I don't know about you, but I've
been particularly excited and looking forward to, Project
Hail Mary since I read the book when
they came out. Yes. Yeah. I listened to
the audiobook last year, which was narrated by
Ray Porter. And
I don't usually listen to audiobooks. It was
weird. Like, I was just like, I'm doing
a bit of, I'm doing a few jobs.
I was like, I I need someone to
listen to. And I thought, I've been meaning
to read that book for ages. And I
was doing honestly,
it was one of those books that you're
like, I'm a different person on the other
side of this. Do you know what I
mean? And the audio book was just so
well done. So I've been so excited for
this film. Yes. And there's so much science
in the book, in the story as well,
which I think is just so
nice if you just sort of I don't
know. If you just love science and you
have that sort of, like, oh, just do
a quick back of the envelope calculation. You
don't want this. It's one of those books
that really scratches that itch. Yeah. I don't
I'd so I I've spoken to Andy Weir
a few times. I know you've spoken to
him, about this book. And one of the
times that I called him to to chat
to him,
it was a Sunday morning
where he was. And, and I was like,
oh, hi, Andy. How are you doing? He
said, yeah. I'm alright. I'm just working out
what would actually happen if you were stuck
between the moon and New York City.
He's just doing the maths on that, which
is What a fun job. And that's where
these kind of Yeah. Ideas come from is
that that it's just who he is. He
just thinks about
problems and then tries to work them out,
and then there's these these stories come out
of them. If we do nothing,
everything on this planet will go extinct.
You'll find a solution.
You are my solution.
When we first spoke many, many years ago
before the Martian film came out, you said
you were writing a book called Zeke. Yeah.
And it had
things like interstellar travel in it. Did aspects
of that find their way into this? Yes.
They did. So Zeke, I worked on it
for about a year. I got about 70,000
words in. For reference, the Martian is a
100,000 words.
And I was about 70,000 words in when
I realized one day, oh, dear. This book
sucks. It's it's no good. The
the the story isn't interesting. The plot is
too convoluted. The characters are boring, and
I'm still in the first act. So this
is gonna be some 900 page ego tome
that no one's gonna wanna read.
So I gave up on it, and I
I back burnered it. In fact, then put
the stove that has that back burner in
a backroom. You know? I just
figured it was done, but there were a
few diamonds in the rough. There were a
few nuggets in there that I thought were
really cool. And one of them was this
well, Ingeq, it was an alien technology called
black matter,
and it was this fuel that you could
use for your spaceship. It would mass convert,
itself into
basically light and shine that out the back
of your ship for propulsion.
So that was in ZEK, and I I
thought, like, well, I want I want to
use that. That's really cool. So I said,
like, that was kind of the nugget that
started the story with hail Mary. I was
like, okay. I want this to be a
story, but let me think here. What what
would I
we couldn't possibly have black matter in the
modern day. There's no way we'd be able
to invent that. So what if we found
it? Okay. Well, it's annoying to me that
it's an alien technology. If we if we
find this incredible alien technology, that means I
have
to explain that there is this
advanced alien race who for some reason isn't
around and stuff like that. And I thought
like, well, what does black matter do? It
also absorbs all light and turns it into
more black matter. That's why it's called black
matter. It's black.
And,
I thought, like,
well, that's interesting because we have a substance
that takes energy and makes more of itself.
That sounds like a life form. Right? And
so I'm like, oh, instead of an alien
technology, it'll just be a naturally evolved life
form that does this. And I'm like, okay.
Why does a naturally evolved life form need
to do, like, interstellar travel? I'm like, okay.
It's an interstellar life form.
Okay. Well, it needs a lot of energy
to do interstellar travel. I'm like, okay. Well,
let's have it live on the surface of
stars,
and it's like algae, and it spores out
like mold does to go get other stars
and stuff like that. And it's all just
evolution. So it is an alien,
quote, unquote, but it's not like, take me
to your leader. It's just like, hey. Don't
mind me. I'm mold.
I'm just gonna breed.
And,
then I got to thinking like, oh, okay.
That'd be cool. And then then humans could
get a hold of some of this stuff,
and then we'd start breeding it in farms,
and then we'd be flying around our solar
system. We could colonize Mars and Venus. Oh,
we'd have to make real we'd have to
be real careful to make sure none of
that crap got into our sun or we'd
start breeding out of control, and that'd be
a disaster.
One Mississippi, two Mississippi. Holy shit. That's a
book. You know?
Like, right there, that's that's it. So I'm
like, forget all that other crap. We're doing
we're we're starting with that. You know? This
life form starts affecting the total solar output
of of our sun, and now
yeah. That that's the shower epiphany that led
to the book. The sun is dying.
You are the only scientist who might know
what this is. I'm just a teacher at
Grover Cleveland Middle. We have a doctorate in
molecular biology.
I need you to come with us.
This is Project Hail Mary. I loved the
film. It is it it is obviously different
from a book. You know, anybody who's ever
loved a book and then gone see a
a film adaptation, it's going to be different
because it's a completely different medium.
So a lot of the science that is
communicated,
obviously,
in the book as you're reading this character
sort of in a monologue
is is communicated visually in the film, which
obviously,
and in a monologue takes a lot of
pages compared to a few seconds of a
visual, you know, flash up.
So in that sense, it's very different. And
so if you, you know, you love the
science, like, the aspect of it there is
is a very quick, you know, flash and
you'll miss it. But in terms of the
story, the characters, the visuals, the cinematography,
the way it was filmed, just the heart
and soul of this film is just incredible,
and it's so
joyful.
Like, everyone raves about, you know, Interstellar
as as a sci fi film and how
it is very epic. And, you know,
I just Interstellar is missing some joy for
me. Okay. Yeah.
Like, yes, I like to come out of
the cinema and be like, woah, and feel
like I've been run over with a truck,
but at the same time, I also
love coming out of the cinema just with
a huge smile on my face, and that's
what this film
did, and it's what the book did as
well. And so that kind of heart of
the book and why, you know, I fell
in love with it and why I was
like, I'm a different person after reading this,
is so there in the film, and I
loved it so so much. They did such
a good job on it. The directors, Phil
Lord and Christopher Miller, they did they did
great. So you've interviewed Ryan Gosling
Mhmm. Andy Weir and Lord and Miller for,
your YouTube channel. Obviously It's a mom's scream
here when she I told her I was
interviewing Ryan Gosling. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
Well, that's kind of my question. So, obviously,
we'll post links to all of those on
the Physics World website. Oh, nice. At at
which people can find alongside this episode,
of the Physics World Stories podcast. But,
as a person,
which of those are you most excited slash
nervous about?
Oh my gosh.
I think just, obviously, naturally from maybe everybody
in my life's reaction to telling them I
was scared to be Ryan Gosling, it was
possibly that. I just sat there, and all
I could hear is my mom and my
sister's voices just going,
like,
And he was just absolutely so so lovely
and just exactly as you'd imagine in real
life. So I think the the the sort
of nervous energy was definitely there. But in
terms of, like, the the freak out science
fangirl moment, it was Andy Witt. Like, because
I loved The Martian.
I, you know, obviously loved Project Hail Mary.
I've also listened to his other book after
I finished Project Hail Mary as well, the
one about the moon. Artemis. I'm currently trying
to remember the Artemis. Thank you. Which was
also great. And
chatting to Andy was so fun because it
was just like chatting to just another,
you know, science nerd kinda thing. He showed
me this massive spreadsheet that he produced for
the book that was literally just like, here's
my spreadsheet that tells me, like, this is
how much fuel the hail Mary spacecraft will
need, and, like, you know, this is, like,
you know, the temperature of this thing and,
like, all of these relative relativistic calculations he'd
done and everything like that. And it was
so fun
seeing that because
as a as an I mean, no. I
don't think any of me and my colleagues
use spreadsheets. I'm gonna put that out there.
Maybe for a very quick thing or whatever,
but for our actual astrophysics work,
we are very much entrenched
in Python coding,
you know, is is the main language of
choice. I think there's obviously a lot of
simulations that are done in other things, like
c and all that kind of stuff as
well. But mostly, it's it's all with code.
And so any data tables we have is
all in, you know, CSV if you if
you have to be, but then also probably
more what's called a FITS format,
a flexible image transfer system,
which basically can store images and data tables
at the same time. So, like, any data
that's taken at a telescope with all of
the metadata that comes with it, it's like
this telescope, this time pointing, this direction, etcetera,
etcetera.
So most of the time, if you're seeing
relativistic equations realized, it's it's in code.
And so
it was so wonderful to see it
from someone who, you know, is is kind
of like a science enthusiast in that way.
Obviously, he has a bit of a science
background with working at NASA and JPL from
the computer science side of things.
But seeing relativistic equations translated into, like, just
a spreadsheet was so I think it was
like a Google Sheet, you know. It there
was just something so, like, raw and incredible
about that
that just blew me away that, you know,
he'd managed to to do it. So, yeah,
I think during the interview, the most the
most sort of, like, I was, I think,
was actually Andy after you showed me that
spreadsheet. So There are infinite possibilities
for this to go wrong.
This ship wasn't built for this.
You want me to do it now. In
general, my story start with some scientific idea.
For hail Mary, it's like, what if we
had a a a fuel that could mass
convert, you know, spacecraft fuel that could do
mass conversion for thrust? Great. For the Martian,
it was like, how could we put a
humans to Mars and, you know, what are
the fail safes on that mission? And that
led me to thinking of all the things
that could go wrong, etcetera.
And for Artemis, it was,
what is humanity's first city that's not on
Earth gonna look like? What's it gonna be
like? So all I I mean, I always
start off with just some I mean, this
is not on purpose. It's just this is
where my story is tend to come come
from. I'm speculating on cool science stuff, and
then I I speculate about that stuff all
the time. Once in a while,
I'll get far enough along that I think,
oh, okay. This might be a good story.
So it wasn't like I I sat down
and said, like, alright. I'm gonna write a
completely different thing from The Martian. It was
when I'm gonna write a book, I try
to go with whatever I think is the
best idea I have at the time, and
Artemis was what I thought was coolest.
And, honestly, I'd hoped that I I I
had really hoped that it was gonna take
off and it was gonna be a setting
that I could write book after book in.
I wanted it to be my own disc
world. Right?
But,
it just wasn't as popular as a Martian.
It did well. People liked it, but they
didn't love it. It didn't, like you know,
people weren't people aren't clamoring at the gates
for more Artemis. There are I I get
emails, like, every day saying, oh, make more
Artemis. But, I mean, there's not enough of
a demand, and my my publisher's like,
don't make a sequel to Artemis. Make something
new. Art Artemis is a a crime novel
slash heist
kind of thing. Yeah. And this is sort
of a return to my hard sci fi
isolated scientist roots. I was
acutely aware that it's very similar to The
Martian in that respect, so I tried to
I I tried to not duplicate any plot
beats from The Martian at all. Like, for
instance, Ryland's ship works.
Like, nothing breaks down. Everything functions the way
it's supposed to. He has other problems,
but,
but the ship works. If Grace, Rocky, save
stars,
we can go home.
I think this is a one way trip
for me.
Let's get into some of the science of,
project hail Mary. Now Andy Weir has a
thing in every book Mhmm. Which he calls
a MacGuffin, which is he likes it to
be really scientific
scientifically
accurate, but there's one thing in each thing
that he allows himself,
that's not scientifically accurate. He makes up a
little bit of science for the fiction side
of it, but everything else has to be
consistent.
Yeah.
In this particular
book and film,
it is the astrophyte. Like a space algae,
which also stores energy
that can be used as fuel.
Yes.
How do you feel about it?
I really like the idea that,
like, if we ever found life in the
universe,
the the likelihood is it's not going to
be,
you know, intelligent life or have or even
evolved life. Like, the fact that it could
be, like, single cell organisms that we end
up finding, and that first contact would be
with something like that, I think is a
very I don't wanna say realistic, but more
probable,
side of things. You know, for example, if
we were sending missions to Titan, for example,
Saturn's moon, with the Dragonfly mission, a little
drone that's gonna fly around.
You know, we're
sending things to things like, you know, Enceladus,
Saturn's moon,
plans possibly with Europa,
things like that. All these kind of moons
of the solar system that life,
if we found it in the solar system
could possibly be there. And also, obviously, with
this ongoing searches with perseverance as well for
life on Mars or past life on Mars,
the likelihood is if we find anything there,
it's going to be
tiny, right? It's going to be tiny microbial
life.
So I think in that sense, like,
I don't think that's a story that's as
explored as much as
first contact with little green men, you know,
classic aliens, that kind of thing. So I
really liked the aspects of the story, and
I think it really surprised me. In terms
of energy storage,
you know, it's just mass energy equivalence is
sort of the the crux of the story
there is if they can take in the
sun's energy and store it and then release
it later. It's just e equals mc squared,
and you can get an a stupid amount
of energy to to accelerate a spacecraft up
to close the speed of light. Great.
In terms of whether
a single cell can store
that much energy with that much energy efficiency
is ridiculous because it's like a billion times
more efficient than, say, energy storage that, you
know, like, in terms of life met metabolising
on Earth can do in terms of
energy from sugars. You break apart a sugar
molecule and you release the energy from the
chemical bonds, and that's the energy that we
then use to power life. It it's like
a billion times more efficient than that. So
we don't have anything
in terms of the the sort of the
biophysics,
to actually
come anywhere close to that. But I think
that's what's that's what's fun about Andy's work,
and he says, you know, that kind of
energy storage aspect.
He sort of did a bit of a
hand wave. He like, oh, it's neutrinos.
The cell that's storing the energy,
which he likes to joke, you know, you
get down to the quantum level, and
that's when things start to break apart.
And he invented this whole term in the
book called, like, super cross sectionality or something
like that,
which is fun because it's sort of a
borrowed word from particle physics when we talk
about cross sectionality of particles and whether they're
likely to intersect and things like that. So
I like that you know, the idea is
is is obviously a sci fi, but the
fact that it's rooted in some elements of
of physics and made that effort to do
that,
I think was incredible. Because there's a lot
of sci fi that's just like, oh, yeah.
We can go warp speed, you know, close
to light speed. Don't don't question it. There's
a a fuel. Don't question it, you know,
and stuff like that. And and this, I
think, is is like, well, how do we
solve that problem with the plot point in
the story,
is is really cool. There is a a
centrifugal force
that causes,
gravity.
Yeah.
On the ship. I mean, from a filmmaking
point of view, it means that Ryan doesn't
have to,
be on Walk around. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you
have to float all the time. You can
walk around. Yeah. Exactly.
But from a science point of view,
why would you do that if you were
in space, and how would you how do
you do that? Yeah. There was actually two
types of artificial gravity in the film,
which are realistic.
So one of them is, you know, he
wakes up, first of all, in space, and,
the ship is accelerating
just in a straight line.
So his spacecraft is oriented so that, you
know, the the floor is like a one
big long column, basically. So he's he's kind
of, like, climbing up ladders and stuff to
go all the way up this column.
And so because the chip is accelerating in
a straight line, you feel the acceleration. So
that's like when you're in a car and
you put your foot down and you really
do get thrown back in your seat. Right?
That's the first type. So it's it's an
artificial gravity in that way because he's just
getting permanently thrown back into his seat door
into the floor of this big, long column.
But then the other aspect of the artificial
gravity is the centrifuge you were talking about.
So it's really cool what the ship does
is it basically rotates that long column 90
degrees.
So then you've got, like, one big long
cylindrical room, kind of like the International Space
Station.
And then what the ship does is it
rotates
so that
that, long groom
is always sort of being thrown backwards
in a way.
So if you think about it like you
hold hands with a friend
and spin around
or you get on a roundabout and spin
around. You feel that force pushing you backwards,
rather, it's it's such a centrifugal force. So,
basically, once this ship of his is spun
around into one long room, he's always being
pushed down into what now becomes the floor.
And so the long column that he was
climbing up with the ladders now becomes his
floor.
And
it and it's it's a an idea that's
been explored so many times, not just in
sci fi, but also, you know, as as
sort of people consider,
you know, long journeys to Mars and things
like this. If you're gonna send humans to
Mars, you know, living in,
zero g for longer than a year, which
is always really been tested so far,
with humans, you know, is is is is
an issue.
So can you create, an artificial gravity in
that way?
And depending on how fast you spin gives
you how much gravity you feel. The faster
you spin, the more gravity. But also,
the further away you are from the center
of the centrifuge, so how with, you know,
the distance from the thing that's spinning, basically,
or the distance from the I guess, how
long your arms are if you hold hands
with your friend. Right? The longer your arms
get, the the the higher the force gets.
It's a it's a really interesting idea to
see realized on film, because I think
just thinking back on, like, okay. Who's done
this before in terms of artificial gravity? You've
seen it in the Martian, actually. Like, the
Martian ship that they they took to Mars
and back, like, had a big centrifuge where
the the crew compartment was, like, a big
circle,
and the whole circle was rotating.
But, again, in terms of getting the right
artificial gravity, you end up with, like, quite
large things that you need to to make
this happen. So the fact that you can
have a sort of ship that spins out
on cables the way this does to make
it so that it rotates around and then
can then get your centrifuge, I think is
a nice way of sort of getting around
that that problem.
But it's like, would we need to do
that if we were doing this kind of
long distance space? That's the big question, isn't
it? So that's what I was sort of
alluding to was, like, we've only tested it
with astronauts for usually spans of six months
is is tends to be the longest that
people do in space, but I think it
was was it Mark Kelly that did a
year in space?
So
in theory, you know, people can spend an
extended amount of time in in very low
gravity.
And,
I mean, I would say with with, you
know, little to to minor effects from it.
Obviously, there's muscle mass loss, there's bone density
loss, things like that from not having that
force pulling you down.
But I think in terms of, like, long
term studies, they're still ongoing. Thankfully, Mark Kelly
had a twin, so we've quite literally got
a control
for who stayed on Earth and who went
to space for a year and experienced,
zero g for that, like,
extended period of time. So those kind of
studies are still going on. So I don't
think we'll we'll fully know from a scientific
perspective and a medical perspective to say,
you know, is it an issue to to
spend that long,
without gravity?
So there's another thing which happens, which is
about relativity and time. And how do you
think they dealt with that in the film?
I thought they dealt with it well. It
was very much sort of one of those
things that if you knew it was happening,
it was there.
But if you weren't aware with it, it
wasn't gonna trip you up in the film,
which I think is is is sort of
a a good way of doing it. So
you're very
you'll hear the ship's computer
say at one point that the the journey
time
is
about four years.
And I won't say what journey time that
is,
but, the technically,
the light travel time for that journey would
have been twelve years.
So if you're, you know, if you're if
you're in the know, you'd go, oh, hang
on a minute. What's going on there? You
know? And you'd think, well, are they somehow
going faster than light? Because as Einstein told
us, nothing can go faster than light.
Traveling at the fastest speed there is in
the universe, about 300,000 kilometers a second or
a 186,000
miles a second for those in imperial.
And,
so you think, okay. Well, how is he
doing it? Well, he's doing it at three
times faster speed than light. But, actually, what's
happening is that you've got what's known as
time dilation.
So the four years is the time that
the ship will experience
traveling at close to the speed of light.
So
time dilation is a is a prediction of
Einstein's theory of special relativity. It's one that
we have proven using
very precise clocks, atomic clocks that have been
flown around the world while one's been left
on Earth and the times compared afterwards and
that they're different.
So you can get time dilation in two
ways. Basically, the the faster you travel, the
less time you experience compared to someone stationary.
And, also, if you're in a heavier gravity,
the less time you experience compared to someone
who is in less gravity. That was a
a plot point that was explored in Interstellar,
in the bit that annoyed me the most.
Just screaming at the screen going, he's like
70. Get back on this shit.
But yeah. So,
where was I? I get so distracted by
Interstellar every day.
Yes. So in in in Project Hail Mary,
it was it was sort of nice to
hear that that was happening.
And in the book as well, there's a
plot point where someone else doesn't know about
relativity, and they were confused and this kind
of stuff, you know, about how long it
would take and how much fuel was needed
and things like that.
So it was really cool to to see
that that was sort of realized in the
film as well, that time dilation was
was sort of not necessarily explicitly said,
but was recognized. There's a character in the
film called Strat. If we do nothing,
everything on this planet will go extinct, including
us.
Doctor Grace,
the world is counting on you. I mean,
she's my favorite character in the book. How
about you? She's one of mine too.
I
I it's funny because I've seen some people
criticize her as just kind of very one
not one dimensional, but that is sort of
like the bossy female role. But I'm like,
yeah. But if you'd had a man playing
that role, you wouldn't have even questioned it
in a way.
So I love her. I think she's great.
And I just think she's no nonsense, and
she's just absolutely
just, yeah, cracks on and and it is
wonderful. And I love how she was played
by Sandra Huler as well in that no
nonsense way, but with sort of this deadpan
humor as well,
was very, very well done.
So I really enjoyed how she brought that
character to to life in the film as
well.
I always probably see bits that I still
wish it ended up in from the book
that weren't in the film and things like
that, But that's that's, you know, even unless
you made a five hour film,
you know?
If we did have something like this happen,
if we had a a situation where the
Earth was in
dire peril,
what Andy Weir does in his story is
is give all the power to one person.
Which I think is a terrible idea, but
great for a story. Yeah. Okay.
Okay.
It's 11.9
light years away. The astronauts
die in space. It's what you Americans would
call a lung shot. Hail Mary. I get
it. What Earth is gonna sign up for
this? I mean, I would not wanna live
in a world that has a Strat at
all times.
Strat had unrivaled authority. She's probably the most
powerful human being of all time,
And, like, she could tell countries what to
do, and
it's kinda like an ancient Rome. They had
what was it? They,
they could, declare someone
I forget what it was. It was I
forget the name of the act, but basically,
the senate could vote for that person to
have, like,
complete dictatorial power for a certain length of
time and then and then go back.
And that's kind of what happened for Earth
is that everybody said, like, okay. We don't
have time for
slow ass UN committees to try to figure
out the best,
you know, color for the flight manual cover.
I mean, we we don't have time for
that. We need
this to go very rapidly. So they put
all their eggs in the strat basket and
had her just
run everything. And they picked the right person.
I mean
Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Didn't they? K. The the
thing in the book is that we don't
have time to do it by committee, so
we give it to one single person. The
thing is the committee would decide the person.
Right? And, it still take ages.
But I think the fact that we have
those kind of committees in due process in
all aspects of whether it is space agency,
government,
you know, United Nations, whatever it might be,
I think is is good.
Yes, it will slow things down, but
the kind of power that Strat has in
the book. And I think perhaps that is
the thing that doesn't come across in the
film is the just
just how much power she singularly has. Like,
the scene in the book where she's in
a courtroom, and
they are, you know, suing her because she's
put every single, you know, book
and,
piece of software ever, you know, that's been,
ever, you know, ever produced by humans onto
the onto the Hail Mary ship because we
don't know what would be needed. And they're
suing her for, like, IP. You know? And
she's like, I just don't have time for
this. You know? Like, I every government in
the world has said I can do this.
Why are we here?
And just walks out. You know? And I
just I I wish I had that,
a bit more Strath in me sometimes, you
know, to just
just no nonsense and just go
no, and and shut that kind of side
of things down in in a way.
If we did have to,
give all that power to one person,
is Straub the right person to give it
to? Is there anybody that you can think
of on earth who we would say, like,
you're the right person to give this money?
Absolutely not. No. I don't think it was
and and if anybody said they were the
right person, that would make them less of
the right person Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Is the
problem. So I have a tremendous amount of
faith in humanity. You can probably tell from
my writing that I'm a pretty optimistic guy,
especially when it comes to humanity and human
nature and our ability to cooperate and work
together.
And if anything, I think the pandemic has
shown that we do that. So I do
think that the world works together when there's
a common problem. If it's a direct and
immediate,
problem like COVID,
We're not so great at it when it's
a slow burn like environmental damage, but
you you can't expect us to all be
completely perfectly efficient at all times in every
way. But I do think that that humanity
is pretty awesome.
And the one example I like to give
is if you, you know, if a guy
falls on the street and breaks his leg
and a total stranger helps him, calls the
calls an ambulance, helps get him to a
hospital, Do you see that on the news?
No.
It doesn't make the news because it's so
normal. It is so presumed in human behavior
to help each other out like that that
it's not even newsworthy. What's newsworthy is when
someone doesn't.
And so the fact that you see all
this negative stuff on the news, look at
the negative stuff you see on the news
and remind yourself, the only reason it's on
the news is because it's abnormal.
It's very abnormal. So when you see people
being callous or being horrible to each other,
that is abnormal by definition because it's on
the news.
What you don't see is the billions of
little
acts of
acts of, selflessness by humanity every day. This
might be very hard for you to understand,
but some people are not good at things.
You know who you are. You're gonna do
great. I conquered zero g in five hours.
Yeah.
Object approaching.
Oh my god.
You know a lot about space.
You know a lot about communicating.
Maybe you might be in the room in
you maybe you might be in one of
those discussions.
But what you might not find yourself doing
is
in a bar with karaoke.
It No. You would find me that's where
you'd find me. Oh. That's the more likely
scene in the film that you'd wanna be
doing karaoke.
I do a great Bonnie Tyler. I've just
put that. Is that right? Because that was
what was that's actually gonna be my question,
which is, you know, if you were kind
of
in that situation, maybe you're falling for someone,
maybe you're not, who knows.
May Oh, I didn't like that aspect of
it, actually. I was like, no. There was
no relationship there. Don't they really did do.
But anyway Yeah. There's a Maybe some people
read into it that I didn't, but yeah.
I don't know. But,
the the world's kinda failing.
You've got
a a choice of a song.
What do you pick?
Yeah. Well, my usual karaoke song is Total
Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler, but
that feels not appropriate for The World is
Ending.
So what would I Total Eclipse is a
bit on the nose as well, wouldn't it?
The end of the world as we know
it, I guess.
Amazing.
Yeah. I think Sign of the Times was
a great track to pick.
But yeah.
The National has a song called Light Years.
It's like you're only light years away. Yeah.
That would be appropriate
for this. That's that would be amazing.
For this story. Do do you do a
good night when you're in the, it No.
I've
not got enough sad dad in me. Well,
I've got loads of sad dad in me.
Maybe I'll try it.
I just have a big grin on my
face throughout the whole thing. But can anyone
do my good Matt Biddens channeling again?
Okay. There's another right. So,
I don't know how to do this without
spoilers. Well, the trailer shows you Rocky. Right?
So This is and I know that so
I I particularly as a book fan as
well. So I went into Project Hail Mary
completely blind.
I did not even read the blurb. I
just was like, it's a sci fi thing.
Cool. Just tell me more. So I had
all the reveals that the character had as
well. And so I understand
why people were so annoyed that they
put something in the trailer that I think
you're about to say, but, like, they put
something in the trailer that was a big,
big reveal.
So I met an alien. He's kinda growing
on me. At least he's not growing in
me, you know, which was a concern for
a little while.
I'm Grace. I'm gonna call you Rocky. Thumbs
up.
No. That's thumbs down. If we do the
thumbs up,
it's close enough.
Yeah. No. It's it it is a shame,
isn't it? But they are two different things,
aren't they? And that's
that's just one of those. What what I
love about the book when I was watching
the film, I was like, I remember this,
the start of the film. You have that,
Ryan Gosling,
Brian and Grace
character
going around the ship. I mean, that just
lasts for ages in the boat. Right? It's
just pissing. And and I like the bit
where he drops something, and he realizes,
that fell weird. Mhmm. Mhmm. And that's how
he realized he's he's in space or at
least in a centrifuge because
it was falling at a different gravity. It
was at 1.5 g rather than one g.
The sun is not the only star dying.
Every star was infected by its neighbor except
one. Why?
We don't know. Which is why we build
a ship
to go there and find out. Now Andy
Weir does famously do an awful lot of
work into the background and the science that
goes into
his books. One time when I spoke to
him, he said that he would go away
and spend a day, maybe half a day,
maybe two days on the maths of a
particular problem for The Martian, and then it
would end up as being one sentence in
the book. So I asked him about how
he went about creating the world,
which
admittedly, at the time that he was writing
this, the science was suggesting there was actually
a real planet, a real exoplanet
orbiting the star.
So he was basing this on real science
at the time. As it happens,
the latest data suggests that actually there isn't
a planet there, and it's
aspects of the star that are creating the
dimming that we're seeing.
Here's Andy Weir. There are actually three biospheres
involved in this story. There's ours, Earth.
There is,
planet Adrian is what they ultimately name it,
which is a planet in orbit around Tau
Ceti, and that is basically the homeworld of
astrophage.
And,
then there's,
the planet Arid around
the star 40 Eridani,
and that is the home world of the
Eridians, which is an intelligent alien race who
has the exact same problem that, that the
humans are having. And so they did the
exact same thing. The reason everybody went the
reason these two ships both went to Tau
Ceti is because for whatever reason, Tau Ceti
is proven to be immune to astrophage. It's
the only star in the neighborhood that's not
dimming. Okay. So that's the setup.
As for designing Rocky, and Rocky is the
nickname that our protagonist gives to the alien
that he meets.
For the design of Rocky, I had decided
early
on that of these three biospheres,
they're way too close together for it to
make sense for them to each be a
separate genesis. Because, I mean, in the grand
scheme of things, Forti Aridani, Sol, that's the
name of our star,
and Tau Ceti are all really close to
each other. Tau Ceti is 12 light years
from here. Forti Aradani is 16 light years
from here, and the Milky Way galaxy is
a 100,000 light years across.
So it's just, like, absurdly close together. So
I decided
these are not separate genesis events. There was
a single genesis event. I'm not talking about
the religious type of genesis. I mean, life
evolved actually on the planet Adrian
on
in orbit around Tau Ceti. And then a,
an ancestor of astrophy, a like a 4,000,000,000
years ago ancestor of astrophy, which was another
interstellar
traveling life form monosyllular
thing, seeded Earth and arid with life.
And so we are actually all very distinctly
related.
So this made things a lot easier for
me. I mean, I did that on purpose
to explain why we're all so close together,
but also,
I don't have to invent all the chemistry
and stuff for new life. I just say,
like, okay. If you look at the cells
in Rocky's body and if you look at
an astrophage itself, you'll see there's mitochondria,
ribosomes, DNA,
all the cellular machinery that is present in
our own cells. And that made it so
much easier. I didn't have to invent all
that crap. Right? And then,
so that having been said, I'm like, okay.
It's the same cellular machinery
as we have on Earth.
What would this alien species be like? And
so I'd selected as the planet,
40 Eridani b. 40 Eridani is a real
star. It's a solar analog. It's very similar
to the sun. So I said, well, what
do we know about that planet?
And
it's very close to its star. It orbits
it orbits in forty six days. It's I
think it's even closer to 40 Aradani than
Mercury is to the sun. Right? It's very
close.
And it's about eight times the mass of
Earth.
We know that. And so I decided, alright,
there's gonna be life on this planet so
it has to have an atmosphere.
Okay. It needs an atmosphere. And also,
if if a planet's that close to its
star, the the solar wind from the star
tends to basically sandblast the atmosphere off,
unless you have a good magnetic field. So
I decided Arid would have a good magnetic
field. The way a planet gets a good
strong magnetic field is by having a liquid
iron a liquid ferromagnetic core and spinning really
fast. Earth spins,
you know, once a day.
That's why,
we have a a much stronger magnetic field
than, for instance, Venus, which very slowly spins.
Okay. So I'm like, okay. So they spin
fast. Now I'm learning things. Their planet, their
day
is very short. It's like six hours. And
their year is very short. It's like forty
six days. Okay. Great.
And I'm like, okay. But they're very, very
close to the star, so it's gonna be
really, really hot on the planet.
And there are a lot of different planets
can be all sorts of different temperature based
on what their atmosphere is and how thick
it is and what it's composed of. Like,
Venus is actually hotter than Mercury despite being
further away because of its atmosphere.
So I decided it's gonna be really hot.
It's gonna be way more than the boiling
point of water, and we need water to
survive. And I was like, well, hold on.
I arbitrarily decided it would be 210 degrees
Celsius on the surface of their home world.
And,
I said, well, if you have, like, 29
atmospheres of pressure, 210 degrees Celsius water is
liquid.
So I'm like, there you go. You got
liquid water. So all these things came from,
you know, the environment that they live in
came from starting off with the real data.
And then just kind of extrapolating and making
stuff up as needed. So now I'm like,
okay. We got a life form that lives
on the surface of a planet with 29
atmospheres of pressure. And that atmosphere I'd I
had decided as pure ammonia because it has
to be a pretty heavy molecule
to not get sandblasted by the sun anyway.
That's why Venus still has its atmosphere because
it's it's a bunch of carbon dioxide, and
that's heavy. So I'm like, alright.
Ammonia. Well,
that much ammonia in the atmosphere,
it would have, like, I figured that atmosphere
is almost like an ocean. It's basically, like,
there's there's,
life kind of in the upper atmosphere that
absorbs light and, like, and grows that way,
and then there's life below that that eats
that, and and then there's life below that
that eats that life and so on. At
the surface, there'd be no sunlight reaching the
surface, just like there's no sunlight reaching the
sir the the bottom of our ocean.
And so I'm like, oh, okay. Then iridians
don't have eyes. They don't have vision. There's
no such thing as vision. But they do
need some sort of three-dimensional spatial knowledge.
So sound. They have, like, echolocation.
Like, they can
hear with sound really well. And then everything
else kinda came from that. It's really hot.
And I had a lot of fun putting
them together. And and the big epiphany I
had on that was, okay. I decided that,
an iridian's body is almost like if a
beehive had arms and legs and could move.
Like, there's actually
only a an iridian weighs, like, 300 plus
kilograms,
But there's only eight there's, like, less than
five kilograms of actually living biological material in
it. So just as you have hair and
the lenses of your eyes and your fingernails
well, not you, Andrew. But
just wanna be absolutely clear. I could have
edited that bit out, but there's something quite
lovely about one of your favorite authors making
fun of you being follically challenged.
He's not referring to my fingernails with that
joke. It is very much to do with
the hair or, well, the disappearing of the
hair on my head. Anyway, back to Andy
Wing. And,
just as you have all those things and
that's dead tissue that your body created and
is now part of your body, but it's
not living anymore, An Iridion's body is almost
entirely that tissue. Even their blood vessels, everything
like that are all made out of this
dead tissue, and they have little worker cells
that swim through their bloodstream
to do things to maintain the body. And
I thought that's a really cool concept, so
I got to do that. He was supposed
to be a likable character. Right? I mean,
I did that on purpose. I wanted him
to be, like, oh, you like him. He's
cool. And this is really a story of
friendship. Yeah. This book.
Friendship is magic. Right? But,
I had no idea the response to Rocky.
People are, like, saying, I would die for
a project.
I'm Grace.
I'm gonna call you Rocky.
We're here for the same same reason. His
son is dying too.
If we're gonna save our planets, we have
to learn how to communicate.
I also got to meet Rocky as well.
In all the press junkets, I got to
meet Rocky. Did you? When you asked me
before who did I find Philip?
They didn't give me any warning. I didn't
know ahead of time, and they were taking
me down, and I thought I was gonna
go in to be Ryan, and I was
like, okay, cool. It's the Ryan moment, and
then they were like, okay, so here's Rocky,
and I was like, oh. Amazing.
Amazing.
What a lovely I've I've been loving all
this stuff that they've been doing with Rocky
and the promotional stuff. It's been great. But
there's one thing about Rocky.
Because his planet
is
so,
the cloud is so dense as far as
far as I understand it.
This
the the Iridians,
as they know,
have managed to do space travel without knowing
about time dilation and radiation.
Is that possible? I think radiation, yes. If
you've got such a massively thick atmosphere, then
perhaps, yeah, there's some filtering that doesn't make
it down to the surface of the planet.
You know? The Earth's,
magnetic field protects us from a lot of
it, but also the atmosphere does a lot
of hard work as well. So cosmic rays,
radiation comes into the very top of the
atmosphere and creates, like, a a big shower
of other particles when it hits into a
an air molecule.
And we detect those,
you know, on the ground with all sorts
of things like chair and cover rays and
stuff like that. And sometimes in particle accelerators,
I think they can have an impact on.
Correct me if I'm wrong, particle physicist.
So, yes, I think that is a
a possibility in that respect. What what I
had to suspend disbelief about is
whether they would even know spaces
there because they've also evolved that they they
don't use light to communicate, to see, or
anything like that. They just use sound.
So if you don't know to to look
up but they do know about light, I
guess.
So how how did they figure out light?
But I guess that's like saying how did
we figure out magnetic fields, I guess, because
you you know, you can't see it. You
don't interact with it. How do you know
it's there? So there is some sort of
that suspension of disbelief,
a little bit to sort of believe
that side of the story.
I guess that's the question for the the
sort of the astrophysicist and the astrochemists out
there and things is, like, how life
like that would would evolve and whether that
would be realistic.
So I can understand the not knowing about
time dilation and relativity, because if you think
about it, we went to the into the
moon
without knowing a lot of more modern day
science in the past fifty years. Right? It
was just thrust in that direction in a
tin can and off you go kinda thing.
So I can
understand that it that whole they have if
I can just this if I can suspend
disbelief that, okay, they knew about space despite
not having anything to detect light with, and
they'll know about it, I can suspend disbelief
that they managed to build a spacecraft and
and hop on over there. Would you do
the trip? Would they have to kind of
induce a coma in you to to get
you to go to space?
There's two very warring sides of me because
one side of me is very happy with
my feet on the ground looking through a
telescope and not going anywhere near space.
The other side of me is the one
that is, like, I always get a window
seat on an airplane. Like, I'm the person
that's, like, yeah, just two hour flight when
it flew by, because I was just looking
out the window the entire time. That was
my TV. Right?
I literally just took a flight from Palm
Springs to Seattle,
and I must have gone over eight national
parks. And I was I was literally just
like I saw Yosemite from a plane, and
I looked down the whole of Yosemite Valley
and was like, this is the coolest experience.
And, like, everyone else is just watching film.
So that part of me, I just I
would love to go to space because I
would just stare out the window the entire
time at the view of Earth, at least,
if I was in orbit around Earth.
I
I guess if I was to go on
a long journey, the view would be a
little bit it would be the same. Well,
I guess it wouldn't be the same starry
night. It would be fun to see how
constellations change and things like this, and you
would have a perfect dark sky. Right? You
would have the darkest of dark skies, so
that would be great.
I think I've always said if space travel
becomes
as blase as air travel
currently is for us,
then
you may find me one day going to
space,
from the sort of commercialization
of space travel and things like that.
But if I could have ever remote it,
probably
not.
I say probably most likely not.
In terms of a long mission like this,
though, I wouldn't be the person that would
be volunteering to be the science specialist.
Unfortunately, I don't have the, the brave gene
as
Ryan yeah. Rylan Grace puts it in the
film. Yeah. You don't need that. You just
need to find someone to be brave for.
That's what I'm I knew you were gonna
say that.
I do I need I'd I'd I'd alright.
Fine. I'd I'd get on it for my
cat.
Amazing. What's your cat's name?
Pippin. Pippin. Guess guess what? That's a reference
to
full name, Peregrin Took. It means when she's
being crazy cat, I can call her full
of a took.
Brilliant. Brilliant. Okay. So there's there is a
a beautiful moment in the film, for me
at least,
where,
Grace has to use
basic geometry, a sextant to,
work out how to move. And,
what I really love about that, and it's
what I really love about Andy Weir's work
generally, is that he he's found a way
in that story
to make it so that you can't just
use a computer to do it. Right? You
have to do the the foundational math so
that you have to do the foundational geometry
of it to make it work.
My concern,
and I don't think I'm alone in this,
is that what we're doing
currently in society
with AI
Mhmm. Is to remove all of the need
for that. So if we do find ourselves
not necessarily in a situation where we have
to, you know, navigate
stars, but maybe where we have to solve
complex issues. If the tech fails us, we're
in difficulties, aren't we?
Do you share that? Do you think it's
important for people to understand
and learn about the foundational
aspects of
our universe?
Yeah. Definitely. I think the oh, I mean,
you could have made this argument twenty years
ago about the overreliance on tech. Right? It's
just new tech with AI. You know? You
see the story crop up over and over
again.
And I think, you know,
the argument then was, oh, if we've got
you know, if we can just code up,
you know,
all of this stuff, then then we'd never
do the maths and we'll lose our basic
math skills. But then you learn by the
doing the coding and things like that. I
guess then
the new argument is if you can just
ask AI to write you the code to
do this specific thing, then you don't understand
the the black box of what's going on
inside it and and understand the the science
behind it. So, yes,
I just
I wonder whether it's sort of a hypothetical
question of whether you'd ever need to do
a back of the envelope calculation
with using a sextant of which direction to
go in rather than having a computer to
necessarily have to do it.
But I do worry about the over reliance
on tech, especially if someone in
academia,
you know, supervising students and things like that.
And you you think, okay. Well,
how much are they actually,
you know, just very gung hoing with the
date? Because I'm an observational astrophysicist, so it's
very much, like, data driven, and it's like,
we want to understand this data specifically, you
know, can you grab this and grab that?
And,
you know, if we're saying, okay. Can we
do something with this data or have to
code up, you know,
say it's a statistical test or whatever it
might be.
You want the student to be able to
understand the statistical test because they need to
understand the ins and outs of it to
actually understand
how to interpret the data afterwards.
Right? So you need
a a a pretty good foundational stats knowledge.
And even twenty years ago, it's like, okay.
Well, we've coded it up in a Python
package. Just grab that and and run that
on your data kind of thing. Are you
actually understanding what it's doing?
The
you know, if you take it a step
further with AI generating that code for you,
then there there's an extra layer of, like,
has the AI actually done what you want
it to do, first of all? But then
also, yeah, again, are you understanding what's going
on under the hood to be able to
actually make that scientific interpretation?
So, yeah, it is something I worry about,
but at the same time, I think, well,
we've been here before, and we've adapted.
So Yeah. No. That's fair. I was just
thinking then, but I because I do a
lecture on,
practical uses of AI for science journalists. One
of the things I get the students to
do is to get
I give them each a paper and then
they choose an AI of their choice, generative
AI of their choice,
to
ask it to explain
that paper as if to a 15 year
old.
So they get that and then they have
to
make a note of everything that it says,
and go back to the original paper, and
find
where what that AI says is in the
paper. And almost every single time, it's hallucinated
something that isn't in the paper. Is Well
yeah. Because it's just based on something that's
been written before. Right? So it's not just
pulling on the paper itself when you ask
a Jedi to do that. It's being pulled
on everything that's ever been written for a
15 year old on
that topic or physics. So
that's the thing with AI is that it
doesn't always do the things that you ask
it
to do. And that's the point of it,
right, is because it is just the computer
deciding what's what's relevant and things like that.
So
it's funny how I think far the conversation
has come with AI since I started my
PhD even just over 10 ago now.
So I was very involved in, the Zooniverse
project,
which is a project where you get citizen
scientists, so members of the public, to classify
scientific data,
huge datasets that we had no chance of
just going through ourselves. So it started with
Galaxy Zoo with a million images of galaxies
that needed classifying.
Project's still going because you need human classified
datasets to train AI. Now people are like,
isn't this a solved problem?
And, also, there's still some that AI can't
do and things like that.
But I remember sitting in a meeting
where, you know, we were pulling in all
the fields
of research. So all the scientists that you
know, not just the galaxies people where I
started,
but they also had this problem, like, people
who'd set up camera traps in Antarctica to
take pictures of penguins, and they wanted to
know how many penguins there were in an
image where I have never seen so many
penguins in my life. You know? To, people
in, zoology, for example, as well, where they'd
set up camera traps in the Serengeti, and
every time something moved, it took a picture.
So they ended up with a lot of
grass waving in the wind, but they also
ended up with antelopes and zebras and lions
and everything like that.
And there was someone from the computer science
department came in who was like, well, we
think we can help solve this problem of
of classification.
And they were like, but it you know,
we need
the human
classifications first because it was like, this is
where our AI model is, and it they
showed an image of a zebra walking through
a grassy field.
And it was like the AI thought there
was about 50 different antelopes
in the field as well as the sky.
You know? So it's just a clear blue
sky. So it's it's funny thinking back to
that meeting and thinking about where we are
now in terms of how fast the technology
has moved on.
Because in terms of, like, for example, galaxy
classifications,
you know, we were at sort of, like,
the 70%
level
back ten ten years ago where it was
like, yeah. AI can do maybe, like, 70%
of them, but that's only if we take
the human classifications we already have and
make the images so that, actually, the same
classification can be used on four different images
because we've just rotationally
flipped the image, so it's technically different four
different
ways. Whereas now, the AI is at the
sort of 99%
level, and it's only the 1% level we're
still asking people about.
And we also have sort of, like, from
the AI, we have, like, a confidence score.
So So it can be like, I am
confident in this classification to this amount. And
if it's not passing a certain threshold, we
can still show it to people as well
just to double check it.
So it's just yeah. In ten years, the
the technology in terms of how it can
be applied to the research side of things
is just absolutely
shot up. But there are a lot of
black boxes as well. And it's fun to
see how people are going, oh, okay. You
know, Google have developed this tool, and it's
a black box. But can I then apply
it over here? And how does that compare
with something that's been specifically written as an
AI tool by an astronomer, by an astrophysicist
who knows
what it specific science case it will be
used for.
And it's interesting to compare
the different answers that you get. So that's
a slight detail from the main topic of
this podcast, which is, of course, Project Hail
Mary. We'll get back to that very shortly
with Andy Weir. But if you get two
academics talking to each other, then these things
do tend to happen. And in case you're
interested, I teach on the master's in science
communication
at UE Bristol. It's been going for about
fifteen years, and we do all sorts of
things, including writing,
podcasting,
of course, radio, TV,
and, filmmaking, wildlife filmmaking, all that sort of
thing on the course. But let's return to
Andy Weir, and I asked him about the
character of Rylan Grace.
Is it somebody who is based on him?
So I'm always trying to get better as
a writer. And my biggest weakness in my
opinion is characters. Character depth, growth, story arcs,
character arcs, and so on. Like, in The
Martian, there is no character depth or growth
at all. Like, no one would accuse The
Martian of being literature.
Mark Watney has the exact same personality at
the end of the book as he did
at the beginning.
He undergoes no change
at all.
And you don't really know anything about Mark
by the time you finish the book other
than he's a guy who didn't wanna die.
Okay.
And, you know, he's got sort of a
quirky personality, but that's that's it. Okay. So
for Artemis, I said, like, alright. I'm gonna
make a care and Mark is, of course,
based on my own personality. As you can
tell, I'm a smart ass.
And but he's he's all the aspects that
I have in my own personality that I
like and none of my many, many flaws.
So he's just
the the idealized version of me, what I
wish I could be.
Jazz in Artemis was also based on me,
but she's got all my flaws. I said,
like, I'm gonna make a deeper, more nuanced,
and interesting character. Jazz is young. She's, like,
26.
And so I said, like, I'm gonna give
her all the flaws I had when I
was her age. Like, I was a screw
up. I was ostensibly intelligent, but kept making
bad life decisions and that sort of thing.
And people were always disappointed in me because
they're like, you could be doing so much
better, you dipshit. Anyway, so,
It's alright now. What's that? Yeah. I'm doing
okay now. But
if you met me when I was 26,
you'd be like,
dude,
please Are you not? Like, get better at
life. But,
so I gave her my flaws. And,
what I found out is that,
my the the flawed and more realistic version
of me is not a character people have
a easy time rooting for because she was
such the architect of her own problems. People
had a tough time,
like, rooting for her. And so, you know,
I I said, like, okay. I went too
far. I made her too flawed. Okay.
Alright. Now for Ryland, I decided I wanna
grow more.
So for Ryland, I said, I'm not gonna
base him on me. I'm gonna just make
a character that is not me, not based
on any part of my personality.
He's still humor. I mean, there's no way
to keep your own personality out of your
characters at least a little bit, but he's
still kind of funny. But
I started him off kinda blank without having
much personality at all and just started writing.
And as the story progressed, his personality started
to develop naturally.
And then I went back and rewrote the
early chapters to match the personality that had
developed. So for the reader, it's a consistent,
you know, personality. But for me, it was
a lot of work to just slowly kinda
see how that developed and kinda scary too.
Because I'm the sort of guy who likes
to sit down and have everything set up
on a spreadsheet, and I kinda know what's
going on. So to just jump into the
void and start writing and hope that the
character comes out well. If you have seen
the film, if you haven't seen the film,
either way, I highly recommend you go and
find a copy of the book and read
it in whatever format you prefer. But
if you have read the book and you've
seen the film, of course, you can go
back and
experience them both again. But I wondered if
doctor Becky had some suggestions for space related
science fiction for us.
I love Becky Chambers' books. So I I
particularly loved A Long Way to a Small
Angry Planet. I thought that was great. And
there is also a very short novel that
she wrote called To Be Taught If Fortunate,
which is, again, about
sort of, like, astronauts
in space that have been sent very far
away from Earth. But it's more about the
psychology of what that does to a human.
So I found that a really interesting read.
In terms of the the more fantasy side
of sci fi,
I love the Red Rising novels by Pierce
Brown. I thought that was very interesting sort
of in terms of a it's like,
humanity spread across the solar system.
What does that do in terms of the
politics and economics and everything of of that
whole world?
Complete disbelief on the science because there's people
living on, like, moons of Jupiter and things
like that. And you're like, okay. Well, they
figured that out, I guess, like habitability, but
whatever.
That's just all glossed over. You know, it's
not very science heavy because it's sci it's
more of the fantasy side of sci fi.
In terms of films,
I always have to just turn off my
brain when I watch
a a film most of the time, unless
I'm doing a
let's react to this so that we can
use this as my Trojan horse of science
education.
You think you're you think you're watching a
a fun react video on a film, but
you're actually gonna get hit with science.
So weirdly
weirdly,
some of my favorite
sci fi films are the ones you have
to dis like, suspend your disbelief the most
because I think I I can do it
more. I think that's why I didn't like
Interstellar was because they were like, it's the
most scientifically accurate film. And I went in
like, right. Well, you know, every time there
wasn't something scientifically accurate, I was like,
you know, like they needed a Saturn five
rocket to get off Earth, but all the
other planets, they just went off in their
little spacecraft like,
what point? You know?
So I think, weirdly, some of my favorites
are, like, the classics of, like, Deep Impact
and Armageddon that came out within, like, a
year of each other, and I watched when
I was, like, 10, and I was just,
like,
these are the best films ever.
You know?
I also really enjoyed, weirdly, Don't Look Up
that came out recently,
which is a film about yeah. Again, like,
an apparently, I like asteroid films,
which is a film about, like, a comet
that's gonna impact with Earth that's discovered, but
instead of the classic sort of scientists and
the world bands together, and America saves us,
usually, it's how it goes in the Hollywood
films. Right?
It's very much like a they just sort
of ignore the problem,
and they think, oh, actually, how can we
make money from this problem and things like
that. And you think it it's a very,
like it's probably the exact opposite sort of
message of Project Hail Mary. Right? It's that
humanity wouldn't band together and
it wouldn't save it. And it's a very
interesting commentary.
It's less of a sci fi film, I
guess, and more of a commentary on the
world as it is today, but it's also
very funny
at the same time.
The dark humor, I guess.
More of a Star Wars than a Star
Trek person, which I know makes a lot
of my colleagues very disappointed.
That's interesting. Why is that?
Like, I just I love fantasy, though. And
I think because I can I like, if
I if I'm reading, I'm probably more more
likely reading fantasy than I am sci fi?
Again, just because of the suspension of disbelief,
it's just easier.
It's more of an escape. I think. You
know? Like, as much as I absolutely love
my job, like, sci fi is still
adjacent
to it. And so it doesn't always feel
like a full switch off
in comparison to fantasy. No. That's fair.
But you're very excited about Project Hail Mary.
Why why then? Yeah. And I think
I think it just it
when I listened to it, I was in
a a really nice frame of mind
that I could
sort of enjoy it for what it was.
And I went in knowing that it was
going to be work adjacent, and it's become
very work adjacent in the fact that, yeah,
I've, you know, made science communication about it
and stuff. So in the same way that
I can be very joyful
about
work and everything like that, you you still
have joy for it. But if I'm if
I'm fully wanting to to switch off and
relax like I said, I put it on
because I was doing jobs. Right? I was
literally around the house, like, you know, cleaning
or something, and I thought I'll put this
audiobook on. So I wasn't, like, putting something
on to fully switch off from, you know,
everything. Like, you know, I wasn't, like,
being, like, oh, I need something that I
can just kill up and read by the
fire on holiday. You know?
That would be a fantasy novel I'd like
to thank doctor Becky and Andy Weir for
joining me for this episode of the Physics
World Stories podcast. Of course, you will find
links to everything we've talked about on the
Physics World website physicsworld.com.
We'll be back next month with something else
from this wonderful world of physics. I think
I'll leave the last word to Rocky.
It is time go.