The Wonder of Brian Cox

by Ben Falk

  Luckily, the Manchester physics department is packed full of people exactly like Cox – young, thrusting professors who are experts in their fields and keen to pass their knowledge on. Jeff Forshaw is still a constant presence at the university and while he doesn’t consider himself a rock star, he can measure the impact of the work he has shared with Brian Cox on the younger generation. ‘I think the students know me now,’ he says. ‘A lot of them have read the first book and I’ve been on the telly a few times. It’s good. Manchester’s physics intake is burgeoning; we’re completely rammed full. I’d like to think a part of that is the contribution that Brian and I have made to popularising science. I wouldn’t want to take too much credit – we’ve got two guys who won the Nobel Prize!’

  Forshaw and his friend planned more books. ‘We’ve got one or two books we’re thinking about,’ says Forshaw. ‘It’s not decided yet, we need to talk about it with our editor. I like the idea of writing a book about how old things are. So there’s going to be another one, that’s for sure.’ For Forshaw, it seems like a long way from the days spent drinking and laughing in Hamburg but even he couldn’t have foreseen the success his friend would achieve or the path their careers would take. ‘Absolutely not,’ he insists, ‘not for me, anyway. I don’t know if Brian had a secret plan but he never mentioned it. This really is a result of loving physics and wanting to communicate it, wanting to talk to people about it and just going with it, really. And recognising that there is an audience for it.

  ‘It was never part of a long-term plan, although both of us are definitely on something of a mission because if I do this kind of thing alongside my research, it’s going to take time out of my research, time out of my teaching, so it has to be worth it; there has to be a reason to do it. Struggling myself at the beginning [of my scientific learning], just knowing how easy it is to miss the boat, I feel passionately that if I can help contribute to helping people understand better the laws of nature and these wonderful laws of physics, then it’s well worth it for me to do it.’

  While it may have become a many-headed beast that none of the department could have fathomed when he first joined the faculty, great affection is obviously held for their famous colleague among the academics. At a department open day, held in the Schuster Building and the Rutherford lecture hall (named for Ernest Rutherford, who they call ‘Uncle Ernie’ on campus), a picture of a pony-tailed Cox holding his degree was pinned onto the board behind the booth in a collage called ‘Life Of Brian’ displaying some of his greatest hits in the press – with a round, furry toy stuck to his face like a clown nose. Cox himself explained how his celebrity had helped the university. ‘My students are very grateful,’ he told the Sunday Mirror. ‘Before I was on TV, physics students were seen as a bit boring and no one wanted to speak to them. Now they say, “You’ve made physics cool”. The other students are interested in the subject and they get chatted up a lot more.’

  Professor Paddy Regan from the University of Surrey reveals Cox’s televisual success has helped professional scientists in other ways, too. ‘I think more and more fundamental scientists are realising [talking to the media] is an important aspect of what they must do,’ he explains. ‘I’m sure there are other scientists who would like to be on telly but the idea [that] the world is rampant with scientists who are killing themselves to become TV presenters, that’s not true. Ultimately, much of the science we do is funded by the public. I personally think it’s very good that science is part of the wider culture and that it’s not seen as something weirdos do. Maybe one of the things that’s made Brian such a star is 24-hour news coverage. There’s lots of channels to fill and somebody somewhere thought it was a good idea to have qualified scientists present stuff, rather than doing talking heads. Overall, that’s a good thing.’

  Cox still maintains a flat in the Saddleworth area, where he often indulges in a curry at his favourite local restaurant Mitali in Uppermill, but he has become a southern boy, with the main family home in south London. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m as useless as I ever was,’ he said. ‘[Physicist] Richard Feynman once said, “A scientist looking at non-scientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.” When it comes to cooking and directions and DIY, I’m definitely as dumb as the next guy.’

  Meanwhile, little George went from strength to strength. ‘I could easily have not had children, but I’m very glad I did,’ Cox told the Daily Mail. ‘You think before you have them, “Oh, I’m going to lose all my spare time,” but then you have them and it’s brilliant.’

  He dreamed of George growing up in the world’s leading scientific nation. ‘I’d love it if George got into science,’ he said. ‘Gia always says we can never tell what he’ll want to do, but he’s got a good start and I brought him back a cute space suit from NASA while I was filming in America.’ George enjoys watching his father on television but seems to be aware of Cox’s television persona, too. Rather than see him on screen and say ‘Daddy’, he will point and call his father ‘Brian Cox’. Cox himself finds this endearing. ‘I think it’s something every parent can do – find out what their child is interested in and foster that interest,’ he revealed to journalist Jenna Sloan. ‘I was lucky my imagination was awakened at an early age. If you don’t show kids what’s out there, they’ll never know.’

  And he wanted to improve his cooking skills. ‘I heat things up as quickly as possible, which is my view of what cooking is, which appears to not be the correct approach,’ he admitted in 2010. A year later, he said: ‘I love food, I love eating food, so I’m hoping to improve.’ He relished his time at home, away from the clutter of public life, and he loved driving despite the London traffic wardens. ‘They’re absolute hooligans,’ he declared. ‘They gave us a ticket when we were loading the car outside our house recently.’

  He liked the idea of appearing on Top Gear and keeps a Sat Nav in the glove compartment of his own car because he doesn’t have a good sense of direction (he said he would love to chat to Einstein about coming up with how satellite navigation works). A fan of BMWs, he owned an 118d and was also given the chance to drive a vehicle of the future. ‘I did a thing at the Frankfurt Motor Show for BMW – they let me drive a hydrogen-powered 7 series BM,’ he explained. ‘I think they’re about half a million quid at the moment. You put liquid hydrogen in it. When it runs out of hydrogen, it switches over to petrol. It’s a BM V-12 engine with different injectors in it that can do hydrogen as well as petrol. I don’t know if that’s a dream car, but it’s an interesting car.’

  It was a world away from his worst car, a Ford Escort. ‘It had done 40,000 miles and the engine blew up, which seemed to be par for the course with Ford Escorts at the time because they were rubbish,’ he revealed.

  With his family, though, he enjoyed the quiet life. ‘I’m self-contained,’ he admitted. ‘I can amuse myself – sit and play the piano, read, write. But Gia is as well – she’s learning Egyptian at the moment.’ As the kids grew older, Milinovich threw herself back into work, while acknowledging, ‘My current project is our children, mainly. They’re brilliant projects. Very, very tiring and not a lot of thinking involved, so it’s quite hard.’ And she made sure her husband stayed grounded. ‘Turning into a TV star is the last thing on my mind but there’s no way she would let it happen,’ said Cox. ‘She always says she could tell any admirer some tales that would put them right off me.’

  Gia became Jonathan Ross’s new media advisor, helping the star out with his online ideas. ‘He’s writing comics at the moment, so I’m hoping to start doing more things,’ she said. ‘He’s lovely. I’m playing it by ear. Trying to just keep the house going while Brian’s away actually is a full-time job.’

  Cox’s continued piano practice was to serve him well after he received a phone call from an old friend. D:Ream’s Peter Cunnah had been working in the record industry since breaking up the band, but in a more behind-the-scenes capacity. However, a chance meeting during an afternoon walk brought the former chart-top
per crashing into his past. He bumped into his old bandmate Al Mackenzie on a bench in a park and the pair started talking about old times. Unintentionally, the band was now back together. An album called The Platinum Collection containing an array of remixes and old material had been released without their input in 2006. Cunnah believed the time was right to unveil some new songs. Thus were the seeds sewn for In Memory Of…, a record which eventually came out in March 2011. There was one key – and independently now very famous – former band member who needed to be contacted, though.

  ‘It took a while for us to catch up, but we finally managed to get hold of [Brian] in Chicago via satellite phone,’ Cunnah told Sosogay.org. Cox was thrilled to hear from his old bandmates. ‘The album’s essentially finished and Pete called me up and said, “Just for old time’s sake, do you want to stick a few keyboards on a couple of the songs?”’ he told the BBC. ‘I said, “Yeah, brilliant!” It was a great bit of my life and I just wanted to give it another go, but the last time I played with D:Ream was in 1997 at the election. I’ve probably forgotten how to play.’

  The album was eventually released at the same time as Wonders of the Universe appeared on our television screens, although Cunnah described this as being a coincidence. ‘He thinks there’s a link between music, science and art – and he’s right,’ said the singer/songwriter. ‘He’s contributed on three tracks on the album. He’s actually been issued [with] a bit of a gagging order by the BBC not to talk about us in science-y interviews – we’re not cool enough!’ Cox said he wouldn’t be touring with the band, but the album did solid indie business and had its fans, achieving four-and-a-half stars out of five on Amazon. It wasn’t enough for Cox to return to music, but has probably increased the likelihood of a Dare reunion some time in the near future.

  Perhaps the greatest impact he has made as he moves forward is just how much debate there is about science in the media and how much he’s influenced young people to feel involved in that debate. ‘Certainly in the UK there’s been a renewed interest in rational thought,’ he said. ‘That might seem surprising to say, as you might assume that as the centuries pass, societies become more rational but we haven’t really. In the 18th century, science was the thing to do if you were important, but we’ve lost that.’ But all that appears to be changing. A nationwide survey of 2,000 parents by the Big Bang UK Science & Engineers Fair, of which Brian Cox is a spokesman, found that a quarter of parents thought their children knew more than they did about science. Cox even offered his services to answer some of the most likely questions a parent would be asked by their offspring, including how aeroplanes stay in the air, why the sky is blue, why water is wet and how to do long division.

  ‘The best thing parents can do is work with their children to find the answers,’ he said. ‘Not only can it be fun, but you’ll both learn something new along the way.’ He equated this newfound attitude to how the great scientific innovators worked. ‘Most scientists are interested in just looking at the universe, looking at nature,’ he told The A.V. Club. ‘I don’t think there are many great discoveries that you can point to that were the result of someone wanting to find the answer to a particular question. If you look back at Einstein or Newton, you find that people are fascinated often by the smallest things, actually. In terms of Einstein, cosmology – which is a real part of the way the universe evolved, the way the universe began, the Big Bang – all that stuff came from Einstein really just being interested in the speed of light. He was just interested; it was a question he’d always asked. He’d always wondered about how light travels. It’s a useful lesson, in general, not only to the theories, but that science is at its best when curious people are just trying to find things out.’

  The increasing frequency of discoveries at CERN continued to excite him. ‘The big question is the origin and mass of the universe,’ he insisted to Universe Today. ‘It is very, very important because it is not an end in itself. It is a fundamental part of Quantum Field Theory, which is our theory of three of the four forces of nature. So, if you ask the question on the most basic level of how does the universe work, there are only two pillars of our understanding at the moment. There is Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, which deals with gravity – the weakest force in the Universe that deals with the shape of space and time, and all those things. But everything else – electromagnetism, the way the atomic nuclei works, the way molecules work, chemistry, all that – everything else is what’s called a Quantum Field Theory. Embedded in that is called the Standard Model of particle physics. And embedded in that is this mechanism for generating mass and it’s just so fundamental. It’s not just kind of an interesting add-on, it’s right [at] the heart of the way the theory works. So, understanding whether our current picture of the Universe is right – and if there is this thing called the Higgs mechanism or whether there is something else going on – is critical to our progress because it is built into that picture.

  ‘There are hints in the data recently that maybe that mechanism is right. We have to be careful. It’s not a very scientific thing to say that we have hints. We have these thresholds for scientific discovery, and we have them for a reason because you get these statistical flukes that appear in the data and when you get more data, they go away again. I think it is very important to emphasise that this is not just a lot of particle physicists looking for particles because that’s their job. It is the fundamental part of our understanding of three of the four forces of nature.’

  As the team appeared to ever closer to finding the elusive Higgs, he was thrilled. Speaking in August 2011, he said: ‘The latest results were published in a set of conferences a few weeks ago and they are just under what is called the “Three Sigma” level. That is the way of assessing how significant the results are. The thing about all quantum theory and particle physics in general is it is all statistical. If you do this a thousand times, then three times this should happen, and eight times that should happen, so it’s all statistics. As you know, if you toss a coin, it can come up heads ten times – there is a probability for that to happen. It doesn’t mean the coin is weighted or there’s something wrong with it, that’s just how statistics is so there are intriguing hints that they have found something interesting.

  ‘Both experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, the ATLAS and the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) recently reported “excess events,” where there were more events than would be expected if the Higgs does not exist. It is about the right mass: we think the Higgs particle should be somewhere between about 120 and 150 gigaelectron volts, which is the expected mass range of the Higgs. These hints are around 140, so that’s good, it’s where it should be, and it is behaving in the way that it is predicted to by the theory. The theory also predicts how it should decay away, and what the probability should be, so all the data is that this is consistent with the so-called standard model Higgs. But so far, these events are not consistently significant enough to make the call.

  ‘It is important that the Tevatron has glimpsed it as well, but that has even a lower significance because that was low energy and not as many collisions there so you’ve got to be scientific about things. There is a reason we have these barriers – these thresholds are to be cleared to claim discoveries and we haven’t cleared it yet, but it is fascinating. It’s the first time one of these rumours have been, you know, not just nonsense. It really is a genuine piece of exciting physics. But you have to be scientific about these things: it’s not that we know it is there and we’re just not going to announce it yet. It’s the statistics aren’t here yet to claim the discovery. The thing about the Higgs, it is so fundamentally embedded in quantum theory. You’ve got to explore it because it is one thing to see a hint of a new particle, but it’s another thing to understand how that particle behaves. There are lots of different ways the Higgs particles can behave and there are lots of different mechanisms.’

  At time of writing, despite a couple of false positives, Higgs still hasn’t been discovered and Co
x emphasised the need to keep finding new ways of investigating. ‘There are a huge amount of questions,’ he said. ‘The Higgs theory as it is now doesn’t explain why the particles have the masses they do. It doesn’t explain why the top quark, which is the heaviest of the fundamental particles, is something like 180 times heavier than the proton. It’s a tiny point-like thing with no size but it’s 180 times the mass of a proton! That is heavier than some of the heaviest atomic nuclei! Why? We don’t know.

  I think it is correct to say there is a door that needs to be opened that has been closed in our understanding of the Universe for decades. It is so fundamental that we’ve got to open it before we can start answering these further questions, which are equally intriguing, but we need this answered first. Well, I think it will – because this is part of the fundamental theory of the forces of nature. So, quantum theory in the past has given us an understanding, for example, of the way semiconductors work and it underpins our understanding of modern technology and the way chemistry works, the way that biological systems work – it’s all there. This is the theory that describes it all. I think having a radical shift and deepening in understanding of the basic laws of nature will change the way that physics proceeds in the 21st century without a doubt – it is that fundamental. So, who knows?

  ‘At every paradigm shift in science, you never really could predict what it was going to do, but the history of science tells you that it did something quite remarkable. Some of our theories, you look at them and wonder how we worked them! The answer is mathematically, the same way that Einstein came up with General Relativity, with mathematical predictions. It is remarkable we’ve been able to predict something so fundamental about the way that empty space behaves. We might turn out to be right.’