And part of our quantum quest all aboard the Starship QI we have from a distant galaxy Susan
Kalman.
And it's Joe Light Universe, Holly Walsh.
Planet he's from, Alien Davis.
Press the transporter thing again, that didn't quite work.
Buzz is a highly illogical captain, Susan Goes.
Sexiest night I've ever had.
Question one.
Seven seven eight point five three.
Everything can happen in the next half hour.
Our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to boldly go to a galaxy far, far away
and become the first Earthlings to reach another star.
So my question is, shall we get going?
Yeah.
So here's the thing.
If we are heading into interstellar space, it is not necessarily true that the earlier
you set off, the earlier you will get there.
Why is that the case?
Is it southern rail?
Is it because space time is warps basically, so the faster you go through space, then
the time changes?
No.
If you set off too early, the technology on Earth will advance while you've gone
off and you'll be overtaken by rivals who've left later but in a faster spaceship.
Oh.
They could pick you up though, couldn't they?
They could.
I suppose.
Yeah.
I'm splitting tickets to get from Glasgow to London because if you think I'll go on
the half seven, but actually you're better to go on the eight sometimes.
I'll leave it a bit later.
Because you don't have to change at Preston.
That's it, exactly.
It's just like changing at Preston.
So the furthest spacecraft from Earth is Voyager 1, it was launched in 1977.
40 years later, Stephen Hawking proposed an interstellar craft which would theoretically
use energy from the sun to reach enormous speeds and overtake Voyager in just a few
months.
So the ideal point that we should set off can be found using a really simple calculation
called the weight calculation.
I'm sure we've all jotted this down at some point.
So our recommendation is don't set off on an interstellar mission if it's going
to take more than 50 years to get there.
So currently space probes can travel around 50,000 miles per hour.
So it is definitely worth setting off to visit somewhere that is less than 20 billion
miles away.
But the closest star, so not our sun to Earth, Proxima Centauri, is about 25 trillion
miles away.
So probably not worth setting off to at the moment.
There's going to be a cut-off point as well because you basically want to put a
three-year-old in a rocket, don't you?
You don't want to put a 50-year-old in a rocket because they'll be dead before that
even happens.
No, no, because you would go into stasis, like in Alien, they've got the tubes and
you just go to sleep in your pants because they're always in their pants.
Yeah.
I don't know why they never wore pyjamas but they're just in their pants.
I guess because if you think about it, pyjamas that your parents wear aren't
pyjamas you're going to wear.
You know, like fashion changes, you don't want to wake up.
Time with tartan pyjamas.
Yes.
So, tartan pyjamas, so when I then wake up in 50 years when I'm at this star
that you refer to.
Yeah, yeah.
You look like Rupert the Bear.
Yeah.
The first person to leave the solar system will almost certainly be a man
called Clyde W. Tombaugh.
He was the US astronomer who discovered Pluto.
He died in 1997 and his ashes were placed inside the New Horizon probe.
That was launched in 2006.
He's already had a flyby Pluto which is great because he discovered it.
It happened in 2016 and his ashes are still travelling out towards the
edge of the solar system.
That's sort of pollution really, isn't it?
Kind of littering.
You think so?
Would you send your ashes up into space?
No.
Oh, I think it would be marvellous.
I don't think you'd notice, Sandy.
I mean, I don't know what you expect to happen when you are
ashes but I expect you can see and hear almost nothing.
There's a company in America that now offers to turn your ashes into
glassware.
Yours would just be a shot glass.
Wow.
I think you should be made into a monocle.
I think it would be great, rather than sending your ashes into
space, they should just propel your dead body so that anyone
as suddenly as you're like, is that Sandy?
Talk to me.
Close your eyes.
One of my friends, they had ashes of somebody turned into an
egg timer.
That's a great idea.
I would have my ashes scattered in the petite section of
Marks and Spencers.
Anyway, old Clyde, who's up in space in this New Horizons
probe, you can see it there, it's about the size of a grand
piano, it's now in the Kuiper belt, so it's in the outer
ridges of the solar system.
It's the furthest any spacecraft has gone.
But basically, to get to the nearest star, it's going to
take 72,000 years.
So in space terms, despite the fact that they are all that
distance from the Earth, 4 billion miles, it's effectively
like we've just pulled the car out of the garage.
Why is interstellar travel unlikely in the 21st century?
What's the reason?
Well, is it because everyone would die before you'd get
anywhere?
Yes, we'd never have the time.
And also our best idea for rockets, which use nuclear
fusion, would cause radiation enough to kill any human
being.
The mutations might be quite interesting, though.
What mutations?
Well, if you take Spider-Man as an example.
You have a real thing that happened and was pushed up by
the government.
Yes.
That was the effect of radiation.
I was once bitten in the left breast by a guinea pig.
I wondered for some time afterwards.
It wasn't a radiated guinea pig.
I'll grant you.
Whether or not I would acquire the powers of a guinea pig.
You'd be somehow reduced in capability.
Hey, girl.
What is the particular guinea pig skill?
Well, they eat their own feces, is all I know.
What you'd need, you'd need immense speed in order to be
able to get there.
The real issue is we probably wouldn't be able to stop.
So because we'd be going so fast to Proxima Centauri, by the
time we got there, there would not be the brakes in the
world or in the universe that would slow us down.
In the Martian, didn't he stop himself with a fire
extinguisher?
Yes.
Anyway, let's say we arrive on a new planet and find an alien.
What should we do?
Kill it.
Well, that's what we'd do in the past, and it's worked
all right for us, isn't it?
The truth is that NASA does not have an official plan.
The man who is the head of the Mars Exploration Project,
a man called Michael Mayer, presumes that they would tell
the president.
No idea how that's going to go.
He's the person to tell.
Stand in front of it and go...
Basically said it's a long time since they visited the
procedure, but the truth is NASA doesn't have a great
track record in terms of uncovering alien life.
So, 1976, the Viking lander picked up soil from the
dried lake bed of Mars, and it roasted all the samples
as part of the analysis process, and it concluded
there was no evidence of life.
Curiosity, so that's 40 years later in 2006, did the
same experiment without incinerating everything, and
it did find organic compounds.
So that's one of the first signs that scientists will
look to for pointing to possible aliens.
Yeah, but I wouldn't roast it.
That seems quite full-on to me.
I would saute it a bit.
There's a little olive oil.
There's another reason not to do that, because we
don't know its capabilities.
If we've learned anything, anything from the history
of documentaries about aliens, it fools them.
Yes.
Or high-pitched noises.
High-pitched noises, that'll do it as well.
But also, if you know anything about any creature,
like you might find in the house, like, say, an
ant, they're never alone.
You can only see one, but there are others.
And they find a mouse.
They don't live on their own mice.
Don't say that.
We had one mouse in our house that didn't...
No, no.
Andy, what did you do with the mouse?
I killed it.
A trail of cheese.
A trail of cheese out the back door.
And it went, I think.
It went to get its friends and said,
look, you've got to come to this cheese
emporium.
Cheese!
Ooh!
Who believes that aliens have already visited Earth?
Wow, straight up.
Anybody else believe it?
I think people who've been probed are correct.
Oh, well, if that's it, yes, definitely.
Sorry, I didn't realise that.
The US government funded something called
the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Programme
in 2002 to
investigate reports of UFOs.
It was a $22 million
programme. It was closed down in 2007
because they ran out of money.
So all we absolutely know for sure
is that aliens did not visit between
2002 and 2007.
Provided, of course, the programme
was working properly. As far as they know,
I never saw NASA in
Glasgow checking for aliens.
So what if the aliens had just gone where
they are not? So that's not
empirical proof they haven't. It's just that they
weren't there when the aliens were there
because they couldn't be bothered to
come to Glasgow.
Right, moving on.
When Apollo 11
first landed, NASA was worried
it might sink. What did
they think the moon was made
of?
Why is that
like... I am...
Oh, cheesy peeps. Just
to see it. What?
Just to see.
Do you remember the Christopher
Biggin show on Safari?
Yes.
Such a niche reference.
At the end game,
there was quicksand.
Did they think...
Shut up!
Did they think it was made out of quicksand?
They did think it was made out of quicksand.
Absolutely right. Well done.
No, but they did think
it would swallow the lunar module whole
and that is why they had those great, flat,
broad feet on the lunar module
because they did not know what the surface was going
to be like. I thought it was just so the
furniture wouldn't mark the carpet.
In the 1960s,
one in every 35 films
featured quicksand.
Who was quicksand's agent?
Because he was doing well.
So it comes from Middle English, it means living
sand. Do you think it will kill you?
Is it actually a thing? It can.
Quicksand is something you
get off the UK coast,
isn't it? It can be really dangerous. It's not going
to kill you, is the thing. But it does
kill you. No.
So,
we're going to love this, Alan, and we wanted to show
how this works. We're going to kill Alan!
Don't give more to people who didn't applaud.
The British Geological Survey,
very kindly, have done a short film
about Alan and myself at
the beach and seeing what would happen
if quicksand
developed. So here we are at the beach.
And you can see the
groundwater swelling up and what happens is
liquefaction. So all of the sand
particles have drifted
apart, making it a really mushy
mixture. Basically what happens is you get
stuck in the quicksand. That's
not what kills you. What kills you
is that you're stuck in the sand. You haven't gone
under, but the tide has come in, you haven't been able
to get away. It's to do with
viscosity and
Newtonian properties. So what
happens is it becomes so
thick that it develops into non
Newtonian liquid.
And that means its thickness can change
as you apply force to it. So
quicksand is exactly like that.
It is true that the more you
struggle, the more difficult it is to get out.
But your body is less dense than
quicksand. You will just float. You're not going to be
sucked under. And frankly,
most quicksand is only a few feet deep.
So you and I might go.
The rest of the panel will be
absolutely fine. So you're just supposed to
lie down and sort of panic? The
don't panic is the main thing. I love the
sense of depth because it has so many niche
corners in it. There is an online
community of quicksand
enthusiasts.
They're called sinkers.
And they enjoy the sensation
of, I suppose it's literally an immersive
experience. Is it like a fetish?
No, well, it's hard to say because
there are whole forums devoted to this.
It's like the trip advisor of sinkholes.
And they rate them for the quality, the depth,
the thickness, the available parking.
Here is the worrying bit.
It's a sexy thing.
Why would you need to be entirely
private in yours? Because it's a sexy thing.
Do you know, I sort of get it, because I got
for Christmas some of those jelly crystals
that you put in. It makes the bath turn to sort of jelly.
And I felt pretty saucy.
Did that not feel weird,
like your subcutaneous fat
was kind of dripping out of you?
I didn't think that at all.
The thing where they suck out all your fat.
It's lapar suction. And then you have a bath in it.
What is wrong with you?
Not have a bath. Because if I try and lie
down in the bath, I go like that.
I'll lend you our
baby seat. It's really good.
This is one of the first arguments
that I ever won and I felt such a huge
feeling. I was with a girl at school
and I said I love baths. And she said
I don't like baths because
obviously the water goes up your bum and then
it flushes out all of the particles
and you're basically bathing in your own
faeces. I only have showers and I said
we must have absolutely
loads of built up faeces in your bum.
And I felt like...
It was honestly the first
time that I'd ever felt like I'd won an argument.
Creatures that actually sort of
create their own quicksand in order to be able
to hide. So an octopus
underwater, if it wants to
escape, one of the things it can do
is make all the sand particles
drift apart by making a sort of mushy mixture.
So look at it. It's taking in water
and putting it down to the sand and then it just
disappears. That's amazing.
So that's your quicksand. It's sandy but it
won't suck you under.
I will not take
the baby. It's special rental
when you fool me.
So they may not
have any quicksand but what should you
watch out for when house hunting on
the moon? Foxtons.
Hmm.
What should you look out for?
I mean, I've looked at a few pictures of the moon.
I think you'd want to find
a house. Just one
house. Well, the difficulty...
The difficulty about finding
a house is finding a house that would stay
standing up.
Oh, yeah. What? Because it's different.
The gravity and all that's different
in all that there, isn't it? That's why the astronauts
were all bouncing.
It wasn't because of their
shoes. It was because things
are different up there.
She said scientifically. Yeah.
I'm not
meant to step on anyone's toes but I am wearing
the blue of the science
officers of Star Trek.
There are nerds in the audience who are waiting
for someone to acknowledge that.
OK. Do you know what
Holly is? The red, of course,
die first. Die first.
Go behind a rock,
hear a bang, then you run round
and it's just a pair of boots with smoke coming out.
Yeah.
Because there was security and there was really no colour
such as a teal uniform.
So I don't exist?
Yeah, you're the entertainment branch.
In a bit. Is it windy
on the moon? No, so the answer is the same
as earthquakes but there are moon quakes.
So the moon does not have tectonic
plates such as we do on Earth.
The quakes are caused by the
strain of changes in temperature.
Also by meteorites hitting it or by tidal forces
exerted by the Earth. Moon quakes
are not just violent, they're really
lengthy. So the initial
quake is about ten minutes and then it
tails off but it lasts for hours.
And all the time, honestly, the moon is
ringing like a bell. It happens about
every month or so and we know this from the
seismographs left on the moon by the Apollo
astronauts. In fact, it's disturbed
the ground on the moon and some of the footprints
left on the moon by the Apollo astronauts may
no longer be there. We definitely
know that Neil Armstrong's very first footprint
is not there anymore. Do we know why it's not
there anymore? Because they never went, did they?
It's because he
was wearing stilettos and it just leaves a
tiniest little imprint. No, well, it
is to do with another footprint. Buzz Aldrin
stepped in it.
I always hated that guy.
And then of course the takeoff,
the blast from the lunar module.
We also have obliterated it. What's the best
place to live on the moon?
There's no caves or anything,
are there? It's really interesting that you
mentioned that because the Japanese space probe
Selene recently found a huge
cave on the moon. Oh, is that?
Yes, it is 31 miles long. Is it?
Yep, 100 metres wide. It could contain
a small city. It's 31
miles long and 100 metres wide?
Yep. Is it just one way in, one way out?
I don't think anybody's actually been in
to find out if there's an exit. There might be a bear in there.
Anyway, here is my next question.
What can't I hear you do
in space?
That's a very poor fishing
account there. I didn't get my head
in that thing! It's fantastic.
You cannot hear sound
in space, so when you see
films... Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep,
beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. Wrong.
Because you would not hear the
beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, because you couldn't hear
any sound. What is that?
It's a recreation
of, so,
it's a
Oh, it's a space battle. Space battle, OK.
When I get excited about something,
I pretend I've got, like, a missile launch and I go...
HE MAKES MACHINE GUN SOUNDS
It's hard if you're in a traffic jam.
Just...
Just give me an answer!
Sound? Screaming sound?
HE MAKES MACHINE GUN SOUNDS
LAUGHTER
So you can hear screaming, then?
Well, it's a vacuum, right? Sound can't reverberate.
But there are conditions where you could hear a scream,
and that is what I'm going to come to.
Oh, she got you there!
No, she has not got me there,
because the question I was presented by my learned friend
was, what kind of video does space answer scream?
And I said, because space is completely silent,
which he said, and I went, did I just talk to myself?
No, because I thought I just said that!
Because I did not say...
Oh, God, I wish I was in space!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
I did not say what you might be wearing.
Oh, well, for the love of God's sake!
The picture was a clue.
So, sound is caused by the vibration of molecules,
and if you didn't have a spacesuit on,
it would be almost impossible to hear anything at all.
However, astronauts can talk to each other
by touching helmets.
So...
I'm off. All right, show off.
So, the sound vibrations, they travel through the air
inside the spacesuits and inside the glass,
enough for them to be able to communicate
with raised voices, and, in fact, NASA
teach this to the astronauts as a sort of backup
in case radio communication fails.
So, we're going to try it.
But we don't get any lesbians in space.
You've both got helmets. Pop them on.
LAUGHTER
It smells really bad!
They're enormous, much bigger than mine!
Brian!
It's much bigger, but mine looks exactly like Susan.
Stand up and touch helmets
and see if it helps you to hear.
Now talk to each other. Hello.
Could you feel the vibrations through the helmets?
I don't think I could really hear,
but I don't really understand her at the best of times, so...
No, that's not the problem.
It's possible that vibrations travel through an object.
It was a thing that Beethoven used later in life
when he went deaf.
He used to put a pencil in his mouth while he played,
and he would touch the other end of the piano soundboard
and he could feel the vibration of the notes,
even though he couldn't hear them.
What would an astronaut do with a Snoopy cap?
I need to know this, because my little boy
is going as Snoopy for World Book Day.
Oh, OK, so that's the cap.
That's Neil Armstrong wearing it.
And it is the communications
and radio-microphone combo,
and they referred to it as the Snoopy cap.
It does look a bit, doesn't it?
It looks a little bit like Snoopy.
It looks like when I put a bra on my head
for fun on a Saturday night.
Have you ever heard that?
There'll be a Saturday night
with a bra on your head going...
You have not lived Saturday night.
I had that to look forward to.
Now, what would you do
if you saw this Chappie on the side of the road?
Hitchbot.
So is it... Is it a hitcher?
It is, yes, yes. Pick it up.
You'd better pick it up. You'd better pick it up.
That is entirely correct.
It is a hitch-hiking robot.
So, hitchbots, it was a pair of robots
they were created in 2014
by David Harris Smith of McMaster University
and Fra Kozela of Ryerson University,
and the aim was to see
how far human kindness
would take a mechanical hitchhiker.
And the robots travelled through Canada,
they travelled through Germany and the Netherlands
and they relied entirely on friendly human beings
taking them from town to town.
At one stage, in less than a month,
one hitchbot hitched a total of
19 rides travelling more than
10,000 kilometres.
And then they thought, we'll travel across the United States.
2015,
in the city of brotherly love,
Philadelphia, 17 days after
they set off, the robot was found
beaten up and dismembered.
Does it have a message
on it or something?
It has a voice box and the robot would explain
the particular destination that it wanted to go to,
explain that it couldn't move of its own accord,
and then it had solar panels which would help to charge you,
and then there were cameras that took occasional photos,
and then they were able to track them through the 3G
and the GPS.
I love that somebody's idea when they picked that up
was just kick the shit out.
Do you know why I wouldn't pick that up?
I have a real emotional problem
with robots.
Why?
I fear the sentient nature of robots.
Are you afraid of robots?
I love them but I worry that they have feelings and we're ignoring them.
What are you doing?
I've just said I've got a problem.
Don't tick me with my own phobia.
What are the chances, right?
Try a couple of seconds and it'll be towering over you.
The thing is,
when talking about robot-human relations, it might not all be bad.
So they did a research in
2018 and they asked 89 students
to look after a really cute
looking robot called Now
and answer some questions and so on.
And later on they were told to turn the robot off
and it was programmed to say,
no, please do not switch me
off.
OK, listen to you.
So a third of the humans
took twice as long as normal
to turn off the robots
that were speaking compared to the ones that said
please
do not turn me off.
There were 13 students who refused to turn it off at all.
They just couldn't do it.
Do you remember Marvin from Hitchhiker's Guide?
Yes, brain size of a planet.
Opening door.
Marvin the Paranoid Android
from Hitchhiker's Guide.
Hello, Marvin, how are you?
I think you ought to know I'm feeling very
depressed.
So you're a hitchhiking robot.
Any idea why someone might want
to murder you?
I'm 50,000 times more intelligent than you
and even I don't know the answer.
It gives me a headache just trying to think
down to your level.
Wow, I'm getting anything about that
murder thing.
Thank you very much for coming on the show.
You don't have to pretend to be interested
in me, you know. I know perfectly
well I'm only a menial robot.
Well, anyway, 42 points to Marvin.
Let's give him a round of applause.
It would be a nightmare getting on the tube with that.
It was one of the camera things that went
to a planet or the moon or somewhere like that
and the last message it sent was
it's going very dark now.
And I was just like, oh my, that's the worst thing I've ever heard.
I think it might be the Opportunity
Rover on Mars. Yeah, and it sent a
wee message saying, that's me away now, it's
going dark. And I was like, oh my god.
I don't think it said that's me away now.
Before putting on tartan pajamas.
What I can tell you
is that Marvin was actually designed by
somebody. It was designed by Dirk Maggs,
producer of the last four series of Hitchhiker.
Operated by his son Tom
and Dirk has just flown in from New York, especially
where the sixth series has just won a major award.
Where are you, Dirk? Yeah.
And in fact, our very own John Lloyd
was the voice of the book. Fantastic.
Thank you very much for joining us. Now, back to
torch quests. What are these people firing
at each other?
Do, do, do, do.
Not lasers.
Not lasers, no.
Light emitting diodes.
A torch. I like the torch best.
So they don't actually fire lasers, why not?
Because you'd die? You would die, yes.
Which would be so fun.
I guess though, like,
torch quest doesn't sound as good as lasers.
People aren't like,
oh god, I'll pay £16
to flash someone.
Yeah.
They're firing infrared
beams and they usually have a coloured light
sent out at the same time and I suppose it makes it
look a little bit like a laser. When I was
about 12, my parents
used to have a shop quite near a laser quest
so they'd basically just give us like
the entrance fee and we'd just play
for hours and hours.
I used to sometimes just go on my own and
it was just, I mean that's got to be one of the saddest things,
you know. Yeah, going to laser quest by yourself.
Being 13 and just shooting at eight-year-olds,
just, you know, like, knowing the terrain
like the back of your hand.
Thinking, you idiot, you're going to get me here.
I'm going behind the corrugated ramp. You're going to eat
your dust, you dickhead.
So the difference is,
a laser is a way of focusing light in a single direction
so even a weak laser pointer can cause
retinal damage, you know, if you
expose your eye to it. The thing about
laser beams is you can't see them side on at all, right?
Did you say lesbians or laser beams?
That's correct.
Yeah.
Cannot see lesbians side on.
Let's try that out, right? I'll go here
and see how many lesbians you can see on stage.
Cannot see a laser beam.
Laser beams.
Side on.
Cannot see it side on because the
light is so concentrated, it's just going
in one direction. So in order to see it from the side,
some of the light would have to be travelling
towards your eye and that happens if it goes
through dust or fog because it scatters
some of the light. Supplementary
question, why might I say that Laser
Quest is full of losers?
Holly?
Is it
going to be an acronym? It is. It is an
acronym, you're absolutely right. Do you know what the acronym
Laser? Do you know what it stands for? Oh, I have known
in the past but no. The first one's
light. Yeah, light amplification by
stimulated emission of radiation is
the thing. However,
some people have noted that the light is
technically being oscillated
so a more accurate name would be
light oscillation by
stimulated emission radiation.
So strictly speaking, a laser
ought to be a loser.
Loser quest.
And speaking of losing, set your
faces to buzz because it's time to
journey into the uncharted quadrant
of space that is general ignorance. Let's
start with an easy one. What
is this?
Yes, Joe. A melon.
Is it the moon or is it the Earth?
You're not far
off, actually. If we pull out, it is
an artist's impression of what is a
moon, moon.
Okay, so this is a wonderful piece of
science.
In 2018, the astronomers
Juna Kohlmeyer and Sean Raymond, they published
research based on one of the children's
questions, Kohlmeyer's children, can a
moon have a moon?
So it's a really interesting
question. So let us imagine that this
is the Earth here and let us
imagine that this is the
moon and it's going round. So the question
was, can the
moon have a moon of
its own? So here you'd have
this going round the moon and the whole
thing going all the way round the Earth
like this. And they worked out it is mathematically
possible. Yeah, I'm going to say yes. Yes, it is mathematically
possible. If it's got enough gravitational
humph. Well, what they worked
out is that the moon, moon, okay,
so the baby moon, the ping pong ball, if you like.
Another word for the moon, moon. I know what you're
saying. I think it's technically
called a tax haven.
This one,
the moon's moon, would have
to be no more than six miles in
diameter. Any bigger than that, it would get pulled towards
the planet due to gravity and it would be ripped
apart. And the scientists have worked out
that there are moons in our solar system
like Titan, which is a moon of Saturn,
and Callisto, which is a moon of Jupiter, and
they are big enough to host
a moon, moon.
Could you have a moon, moon, moon?
Well, yes. What's the planning
commission on these? I don't know.
They have made another discovery that we, in fact,
have something called the Kordaluski
clouds and Earth has actually
got two extra moon-like
dust clouds that orbit
the planet. They're not solid, but they are
huge. Each one covers an area of space
nine times wider than the Earth.
And they glow very slightly in the light of the sun.
But very faintly, it's very difficult to spot
them against all the light of stars, the
galaxy of the glow of the sky, and so on.
Named after a Polish astronomer called
Kordaluski. This is a very nice new football
do you want to take home? Yeah.
Can I have the hockey ball?
No, the moon, moon, moon.
Moon, moon, moon.
Can I have a present?
There you go, give it to the kids, the one.
Oh, that's really sweet of you. Do you want the robot?
Name this phenomenon.
Northern Lights.
Is it a shooting star? It's not a shooting star.
Can I just say, I've watched this show
loads, and I've always hated that font.
We could try it in another font next time.
If you could, thank you. So,
what is the name of this?
It is not the Northern Lights. It has
a name, and the name is
just an ordinary name. Norman.
Steve. Yes!
No. It is perfect!
In 2017, it appears
for up to a bar of time, it was
Citizens Science Skywatching Group,
and they named it after the 2006
children's film called
Over the Hedge. Do you know this film? Yeah.
Well, the animal characters not knowing
what a hedge is and wanting it to be less
frightened, named it Steve.
So, when they discovered this, and they
didn't know what it was, they decided to
name it Steve.
You can stretch for thousands
of miles in a sort of beautiful purple
band. Now,
NASA have got involved. They have officially
said that Steve stands for
Strong Thermal Emission Velocity
Enhancement. Forget going
out into space and looking back at the Earth.
I just had a very spiritual experience there.
Take the rest of the night off me. Yeah!
How many points do I get for that?
It's looking good. It's looking very good.
Just because he said Steve!
Yeah.
Yeah. You said Norman, which isn't
even an interesting period for churches.
Do you know what I mean?
Anyway, Steve!
Studies are ongoing. Nobody's quite sure
what it is. Now, what's so dangerous
about flying through an asteroid
field?
Impact with an asteroid?
There isn't a danger. There isn't a danger.
There's no more dangerous than flying through normal space,
so we have to blame science fiction
here. What?
Why? Well, because it was portrayed as being
unbelievably dense and treacherous, full of spinning
rocks and debris. Yes. The truth is
the average distance between
asteroids is about
600,000 miles.
Most of the objects,
when you do come across one,
about the size of a tennis ball.
I don't think that's right.
And again, I know you guys are all sitting
there with your science and stuff like that,
but no.
Were you there when the asteroids
were made holding
God's hand?
12 spacecraft have so far
travelled through our solar system's asteroid
belt. None of them has ever come even close
to the idea. But that should issue right there, Sandy. What?
Our solar system. I'm talking about
the other solar systems that exist.
All the other ones that we don't know about?
That we don't know about. OK. They look like that.
I weirdly was sticking to facts we knew.
You should have QI brackets Earth version.
The chance of being hit by an asteroid
is about one in a billion,
if you go into an asteroid.
The chances of anything
coming from Mars
are a million to one. They say,
woo-wee! Cut from a shot of the two of us
with brows on our heads.
That's from Jeff Weins, War Of The Worlds.
When I was younger, we only had one tape in the car
for summer holidays, and it was that one tape,
and we listened to it for ten years.
That's a really long holiday.
We had the same with Joseph's
Technicolour dreamcoat. Oh, yeah.
A flash of light,
my golden coat
flew out of sight.
Colours were in it.
This material, that was terrible.
This skirt, called a mini skirt.
Because of the size of it?
Cooper, named after the car.
So it had nothing to do with the size. So Mary Quandt,
she's the person who sort of popularised
the mini skirt, she said it shared many
qualities of the Mini Cooper.
It was optimistic, exuberant, young and flirty,
but she never, ever mentioned
that it was small.
Anyway, I had a thought, Joe, which is that
picture that we had at the beginning with the woman wearing the mini skirt.
I really liked the wig she was wearing.
So I've got it for you, because I thought
it would look really nice in it. Oh.
Do you want to try it on, darling? Just checking
you haven't got the rest of the outfit.
No, I haven't.
Steve!
What are you doing here, darling?
You actually look pretty hot.
I just look like an alien, don't I?
Captain Kirk, I will destroy
your ship.
Is that what I say? Captain Kirk,
I will destroy your ship,
you naughty boy.
And so, before we terminate the show,
it's time for Judgement Day.
Let's take a look at the scores.
First of all, in fifth place,
light cheers behind the rest.
With minus 56, it's Alan.
A special commendation from Starfleet.
With minus three in fourth place,
it's Susan.
In third, it's Joe. In space, it's Holly.
In 42, it's Marvin.
Take us out, please, Mr Davis.