Professor Michele Dougherty

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury, that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds. Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:45

My castaway this week is the scientist Professor Michelle Doherty. She's President of the Institute of Physics, Professor of Space Physics at Imperial College London, and last year was appointed Astronomer Royal. The post was created by Charles II to perfect the art of navigation at sea. 350 years later, Charles III's appointment is a scientist whose work has uncovered new possibilities in the search for extraterrestrial life and who is currently one of the leaders of a mission to Jupiter's moons. She's also the first woman to hold the post. She was born in Durban, South Africa, and her father was a civil engineer who nurtured her love of science. Her first glimpse of the planets she would go on to explore was through a telescope her family built together in their back garden. Her work brought her to the UK over 30 years ago, and the many accolades she's earned since include fellowships of the Royal Society and the American Geophysical Union and a CBE. She's also the second woman in history to win the prestigious Hughes Medal. But it's not all work, work, work. She says, I'd like to be remembered as a not very well-behaved, interesting person who was good to spend time with. Professor Michelle Doherty, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you so much. I'm very, really pleased to be here. Ready to misbehave.

Professor Michele Dougherty1:56

Okay.

Speaker 31:57

Yeah.

Professor Michele Dougherty1:57

Uh

Speaker 32:01

Software that's

Presenter2:03

So before we get on to your story, Michelle, tell me a little bit more about the position of Astronomer Royal. What does it involve exactly? So the position and its responsibilities have changed over time. As you were describing the fact that it was originally put together to help with navigation, I was sitting here thinking, it's a very good thing it's evolved.

Presenter2:24

Because I have not your fault, no, no sense of direction whatsoever. My excuse is I was born in the southern hemisphere, so the sun's in the wrong place. And when I go back to South Africa, my excuse is I've lived in the northern hemisphere longer than the southern. So it has evolved to now being a position which is an honorary position.

Professor Michele Dougherty2:24

Not your 40.

Presenter2:43

And it officially says that I advise the king on astronomical matters. I haven't been asked any questions yet. But from my perspective, my focus is really going to be engaging with the general public,

Presenter2:57

helping them understand how exciting and important astronomy is.

Presenter3:02

How do you explain the importance of the science that you practise to someone who thinks it's either too expensive or too removed from their everyday life and experiences?

Presenter3:14

Okay, so I think that there's a sort of two-pronged answer to that. For me, what we do is we're exploring our solar system and I focus on the outer solar system. And that's one of the things that mankind or peoplekind has always done. You know, when people first thought the earth was flat, then they sent boats out and realized that it wasn't.

Speaker 33:33

Really?

Presenter3:36

That's what I see as part of what I do, is to explore the environment around us. And to be able to do that, you need to build instruments and spacecraft that can survive in really harsh environments. And a lot of the design that goes into those is then used on the earth as well.

Presenter3:54

The magnetometer instruments that we build are now used in harsh environments in the desert, for example. They're also used in the deep oceans. And also the miniaturization of some of the instrumentation then gets put on robots that go into harsh environments. And things like GPS as well. And GPS as well.

Professor Michele Dougherty4:08

A king's like

Presenter4:13

You almost need a long-term view of the kind of exploration that we do. It might not.

Presenter4:20

Result in something which we can use on Earth straight away, but in the future it will.

Presenter4:25

Okay, 2026 is set to be quite a memorable year, isn't it, for space exploration? NASA's Artemis programme is returning humans to the moon for the first time in 50 years, and the UK, of course, is preparing for its first vertical rocket launch. You generally work on uncrewed missions, Michelle. Is space travel on your personal bucket list? Absolutely not. You wouldn't even like to do the Katie Perry just floating around with a flower in the outer atmosphere. Probably not. Thank you. Probably not. Why not? Too scared.

Speaker 34:53

In the outer atmosphere.

Presenter4:58

You need to be able to solve problems in real time if you're an astronaut, and I would not be able to do that.

Professor Michele Dougherty5:02

Mm-hmm.

Presenter5:06

I can solve problems if I have a long time to think about it. But, you know, if something went wrong, I when I watch the Apollo thirteen movie, I sit there thinking, there's no ways I would have got back to Earth because I wouldn't have known what to have done, I would have got all nervous about things, so I don't think anyone else would want me to be an actor.

Presenter5:26

You do need a a per personality type. Like who could you handle being cooped up with for that long? Yes. I think I would find that hard as well, being cooped up in a rather small environment over a long period of time. Well, we'll stay on Earth for the time being, Michelle. Let's get started with your first disc. What have you chosen and why are you taking it with you today?

Speaker 45:27

That was a

Presenter5:47

So the first piece we're going to hear today is by Luciano Pavarotti, and it's Puccini's Nessendorma.

Presenter5:54

It makes any troubles or any concerns just disappear. It makes the hair on my arms stand up on end. I remember when I I'd left South Africa and I went back to visit my parents one Christmas, and my mum

Presenter6:11

had never really got into classical music, but somehow she had, and she was listening to this one afternoon, and I thought, wow, if mom can love it because she hadn't really liked classical music before, then it it's spot on that I think it's a beautiful piece of music.

Speaker 36:36

I swear.

Speaker 36:46

Yeah.

Speaker 36:51

Uh

Presenter7:28

Pacini's Nessendoma performed by Luciano Pavarotti with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Zubin Mehta. You were absolutely transported by that, Michelle Doxy. On your face, you were just drifting away.

Presenter7:42

So let's take you back. You were born in Johannesburg 1962 and grew up in Durban. What were you like as a little girl?

Presenter7:49

I was a tomboy. I have a memory of going somewhere on my bicycle and there was a manhole cover that had been taken off and I cycled straight over it and fell down into the manhole. And you know, I picked myself up and I had a big saw on the side of my leg and off I went cycling again. So I think I was a lot braver physically when I was little. It was summer most of the time. blue skies. We spend most of our time outside. So a free-range childhood. It was a lovely way to be brought up. Tell me about your parents. Let's start with your dad, Brian. What was he like?

Presenter8:25

Dad was an engineer.

Presenter8:28

you know, one of his projects was

Presenter8:30

designing and building the telescope that we looked through. And he ground the mirror of the telescope himself. Did all of that home? He did all of that at home.

Presenter8:40

And

Presenter8:41

He was a head of department himself. He was head of civil engineering at Nattel University. But he was just fun to be around. He would.

Presenter8:50

make up stories, he would read us books, it was great. I was really fortunate to have him. And what about your your mother? Tell me a little bit about her, June. How do you remember her? She was so

Professor Michele Dougherty8:54

I was a fan of the

Professor Michele Dougherty8:57

Yeah.

Presenter9:05

supportive of us and so proud of both of us. And I in fact, I saw my sister over Christmas when I went out to South Africa, and we were just talking about the fact how fortunate we were to feel loved and valued and protected as kids.

Presenter9:22

Not everybody has that, and I think it changes what you think you can do and achieve. Absolutely, if you've got a secure beginning, absolutely. That's everything, isn't it? Absolutely. And of course, you know, you also, on top of that, your parents were encouraging your interests and who you were. I mean, your dad really ignited your interest in astronomy. It all started with that telescope in the back garden. You and your little sister Susie mixing the concrete for the base. Absolutely, that was the most important part as far as we're concerned. Because if we hadn't done that properly, then you wouldn't have been able to see through that. Do you remember what you did see?

Professor Michele Dougherty9:27

Yeah.

Professor Michele Dougherty9:52

Through that.

Presenter9:55

Yes, I saw Jupiter and its four large moons, and I saw Saturn and its rings, and I must have been ten or eleven. I thought, Oh, this is really cool, that's really out there.

Presenter10:07

And then I remember my dad buying me a book of all the planets, and so I was able to actually see what they looked like in a picture rather than a tiny little thing through a telescope. But I think for both my sister and I, we were brought up thinking we could do anything that we wanted. And the South Africa I was brought up in was quite a chauvinist environment.

Presenter10:30

But I never felt that I couldn't do something because I was a girl. Might be partly because

Presenter10:36

I can

Presenter10:38

I can make it really clear if I don't like something. But I never felt that I was held back because I was female. And I think that was embedded in my childhood. Obviously, your dad was very influential on your interest in science and had a scientific mind himself. But I think you also inherited his focus. Tell me about that.

Presenter10:58

Yes, I think I did because he didn't go to university.

Presenter11:05

He studied.

Presenter11:06

What would be similar to UNISA? No, UNISA is a South African one, I think. Open University. Oh, okay. Yeah, so he had a job and he would study at night, and that's how he got his PhD. And the kind of focus you need for that and the drive. So you do a full day's worth of work and then you come home and you write your master's and then your PhD. And I certainly was fortunate enough to get that focus, but I was also fortunate enough that I did go to university so I could focus on my studies as well. All right, Michelle, time for some more music, I think. Your second choice to do, what's it going to be and why? My second choice is Elga's Cello Concerto played by Jacqueline Dupre. My dad played the cello.

Presenter11:49

And that is what introduced me to classical music. But listening to Jacqueline Dupre play.

Presenter11:58

and then realizing that she died really early,

Presenter12:02

because she had a muscle wasting disease. It's just so sad, but it's also so inspiring as well. She knew she wasn't well and she was able to play like we're going to hear now.

Presenter13:14

Part of the third movement from Elgar's Cello Concerto performed by Jacqueline Dupre with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir John Barbaroli.

Presenter13:24

Michelle Doctor, you grew up in South Africa during apartheid, of course. How aware were you of the regime at that time?

Presenter13:33

Not when I was a child. We would have a gardener who would come in, and we would have a maid who would come in and clean.

Presenter13:42

Anyways, just normal.

Presenter13:44

And then when I was a teenager, my dad was a member of what was then called the Progressive Federal Party, and he would go out canvassing. And while he was involved, the Progress it was called the PFP got their first Member of Parliament, Helen Sussman.

Presenter14:03

And she was the only

Presenter14:05

Progressive Federal Member of Parliament for many, many years.

Presenter14:09

And that's when I began to think, mm, yeah, this is this is not quite right. And I then used to go out canvassing with my dad. But it was only really when I went to university

Presenter14:20

That I began to make friends who were not white. And that's because I simply hadn't had the opportunity before. Totally separated. And what do you remember about canvassing with your dad? I mean, what was he what did he say? And what what ideas was was he expressing and and I suppose able to express in that context?

Speaker 314:24

Mm-hmm.

Presenter14:38

I don't remember a huge amount of it. I remember what I do remember is us being turned away from people's doors on occasion because they simply

Presenter14:47

Why would we want to change the way things were? But I remember him getting into some really good conversations with people where he would describe that it simply wasn't fair. And what did he say to you about it? I mean, was it the kind of family where you could sit down and talk about this kind of thing around the dinner table or whatever? We did used to because at that stage he was head of the civil engineering department at the University of Durban-Westville.

Presenter15:15

which was an Indian university.

Presenter15:18

And so he was in an environment completely different to anything that I had been in, in that most of his colleagues were not white. And so I think that was one of the things that I appreciated about him most. He didn't just talk about things, he went off and did them. And so he went and joined the University of Durban-Westville because.

Professor Michele Dougherty15:32

Until

Presenter15:37

He was offered the job as head of department and he felt it was the right thing to do.

Presenter15:41

And what about your own journey in those years as a teenager? You went to Mitchell High School in Durban. How was your time there? What do you remember about it?

Presenter15:51

The school I went to, so when I left primary school and went to secondary school, I had a choice of two schools. One of them did science, but all of my friends were going to the other one. So I went to the other one. You want to be with your friends? And I was really good at maths. I had a fantastic maths teacher, and I really enjoyed maths. And I did biology and accountancy and geography, I think. And then once I was getting to the end of the year, and then I became top of the year, I thought, oh, what can I do after that? And that's when I began to ponder maybe.

Presenter16:24

doing a BSc. But that's a Bachelor of Science degree. Yes. Okay. So you got a place to study for that BSc in Applied Maths at Natal University in Durban. How did you manage to get in without having had a science background?

Professor Michele Dougherty16:27

Yeah.

Presenter16:39

The fact that I was good at maths helped, and I was fortunate they were willing to take a chance on me.

Presenter16:46

My dad worked at the university. By then he had moved to the University of Nattel. And so I wasn't going to pay fees anyway because he worked there. And so in some ways they weren't going to lose anything by giving me that chance.

Presenter16:58

I remember, so I did, in the first year I did maths, applied maths, physics and chemistry.

Presenter17:03

Physics I enjoyed, but it was really difficult. So I'd go home I was still living at home, I would go home every evening and my dad would go through the physics lectures with me. And it took a couple of years for me to feel that I had caught up.

Presenter17:17

But and if it hadn't been for the fact that my dad was an engineer and had was able to help me, I I don't think I could have managed it. Did you ever doubt yourself, ever feel like giving up? Always. Yeah, yeah. Those first two years were really difficult. What kept you going?

Presenter17:32

Not wanting to let my dad and my mum down.

Presenter17:35

But also not wanting to let one of the professors in the department down. He's still alive, his name's Manfred Hallberg. And he took a real chance on me. He was head of physics and he said, yeah, let's give it a go. So I didn't want to let people down. But also, I'm quite competitive, so once I start something, I want to complete it. It's time for some more music, if you wouldn't mind. Your third choice today. What's next for us? Okay, my third choice is Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto Number One. Frank Peter Zimmerman is playing. And when I was little, my mum and dad took me to a classical music concert. We were sitting in the front row, and this was the piece that was played.

Presenter18:18

And I sat there thinking, I want to do that.

Presenter18:21

And just afterwards I then started learning how to play the violin.

Presenter18:26

And I remember my mum and dad would come to I was part of a youth orchestra, and they would come along and listen, and the looks on their faces you know, they tried desperately to be proud of the music they were hearing, but they knew what it was supposed to sound like, but they would come along and they would cheer and clap at the end.

Presenter18:45

I think I played for four or five years and I realized I was never going to be that good, so I then stopped. But every time I hear this piece of music I have this vision of myself as a as a little child sitting in the front row thinking, I want to do that.

Presenter20:02

Part of the third movement of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto Number One performed by Frank Peter Zimmermann with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Lauren Mazzell.

Presenter20:12

Michelle Doherty, you went on to get both a Master's and a PhD in applied mathematics. What was your career plan back then?

Presenter20:21

I didn't really have one actually.

Presenter20:25

All I knew when I went to university was that I loved maths, and then by the time I'd finished my honours I realized I really enjoyed physics as well.

Presenter20:35

For me, maths was a little bit too dry. I saw physics, and my mathematician friends are not going to be happy with me, but I saw physics as solving real-life problems. But I went ahead and got a PhD in applied maths, and I just then wanted to do something different, so I went to Germany on a two-year fellowship.

Presenter20:55

So, this was at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. What were you working on there? So, I was working on an applied maths problem looking at.

Presenter21:05

There's a wind that blows off from the sun called the solar wind, and trying to understand how it blows off, how it interacts with planets and bodies in its path.

Presenter21:16

But I'd never looked at a piece of data in my life until I went to Imperial College. Oh my goodness. I know.

Presenter21:21

Why not? So how did you get on? How did you find it?

Presenter21:27

Bumbled my way looking at the microphone. Yeah, it is really interesting to think about it. You know, I'm now responsible for an instrument that measures a magnetic field. I'd never looked at a piece of data in my life until I went to Imperial. So it's quite a risk taker, quite a chance taker.

Professor Michele Dougherty21:27

It looks a bit green though.

Presenter21:45

Yes, I think that's part of who I am. If you don't take chances and say yes to things that you don't know how to do.

Speaker 321:53

Mm.

Presenter21:54

You will never find out if you can or not. I do want to ask about moving as well, because obviously, you know, you love South Africa. You've just been back for Christmas. You're very close to your family there, I know. You you had to make the move to progress in your career and moved to Germany and and then came to the UK. How was it leaving? It was very difficult because there were no cell phones, so we used to write weekly letters to each other.

Presenter22:19

I remember I'd save all my coins so I could phone home on a Sunday to find out how things were.

Presenter22:25

And I would save up every year to be able to go back for Christmas.

Presenter22:30

And that's when I grew up.

Presenter22:31

Rice.

Presenter22:32

But, you know, I never meant I n was never planning to stay.

Presenter22:37

Yeah, I was in Germany for two years and then I thought, oh, you know, I'll come to the UK for a couple of years. And then I got involved in spacecraft missions. What choice did I have?

Presenter22:46

Alright Michelle, let's have some more music. Your fourth choice today. What are we going to hear next and why are you taking this to the island? So this is a Christmas carol. We three kings of Orient are. I was putting this list together just before Christmas and I love Christmas. I love Christmas carols. I love singing Christmas carols and it reminded me of when I was a kid.

Presenter23:10

How excited we used to be about Christmas.

Presenter23:13

And I only realized once I was a teenager, but my dad used to dress up as far the Christmas.

Presenter23:19

And he would ring a little bell, and you know, my mum would close all the doors so that we couldn't rush out and go and greet Father Christmas. And we were being told that Father Christmas had sent one of his friends just to drop the presents or

Presenter23:32

Isn't this sung from the perspective of three astronomers as well? You're right, actually. It is. Until you pointed that out to me, I hadn't realized that. It must have been in my head, but I hadn't realized it. But that was the one I most enjoyed singing at Christmas Carol services. So clearly, when I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronomer. I just didn't realize it.

Professor Michele Dougherty23:43

It must have been

Speaker 323:59

Our bearing gates we traverse afar, Field and fountain, Moor and Mountain

Speaker 324:08

Understood.

Speaker 324:17

The star of night, Star with royal beauty bright, Westward is still proceed.

Presenter24:27

We Three Kings of Orient are The Robert Shaw Chambersingers.

Presenter24:33

Michele Dochercy, in nineteen ninety one you joined Imperial College London as a post doctoral researcher. You started work on the Ulysses project, that was a joint venture between NASA and the European Space Agency, which was the first mission to study the environment of space above and below the poles of the sun. What was your task?

Presenter24:53

Two.

Presenter24:54

put a magnetic field model together so that as we were approaching Jupiter and flew by, we would know what kind of measurements we were going to take.

Presenter25:06

I didn't know what a magnetic field model was and how to put it together, but it sounded really cool, so I said yes.

Presenter25:12

And it was so exciting. We went out to the jet propulsion lab and we saw the data coming in and after that I was I was just caught. I just there was nothing else I was then able to do after that. And you hadn't known what a magnetic field model was. No. What is it exactly?

Professor Michele Dougherty25:25

Okay

Presenter25:28

So it's a mathematical model. So that's where my maths background helped. It's a mathematical model that you put together that you can fly the spacecraft through and you can predict what the actual measurements are going to be. What was the data saying? What was it telling you?

Professor Michele Dougherty25:33

Uh

Presenter25:44

The measurements that we made confirmed that there's a solid core and there's a process called a dynamo.

Presenter25:52

that generates the magnetic field.

Presenter25:55

The Jupiter results were fortuitous in a way. We used Jupiter to get above the poles of the Sun. And so we just took data while we were there. So we saw the northern and southern lights at Jupiter. We saw the signals in the magnetic field that were generating them. And that's the first time we had.

Professor Michele Dougherty26:01

Of

Presenter26:15

the lights as well as the signals that were actually generating them. And I was so excited. My first paper that had data in it. And so that's when

Presenter26:26

My enthusiasm for the outer planet started.

Presenter26:30

In nineteen ninety seven then, Michele, the Cassini mission launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Cassini was a probe that had been devised to study Saturn and its system. What were the scientists hoping to find out?

Presenter26:44

So the plan was they were going to orbit around Saturn and its moons for at least four years. In the end, the mission was extended for thirteen years in total. No spacecraft had orbited around Saturn before.

Presenter26:57

So we didn't really know what we were going to discover. There was a real focus on one of the moons called Titan, which has an atmosphere. And we thought at the time that the atmosphere of Titan was very similar to what the Earth's atmosphere was like when we first formed. So that was going to be a real focus. My boss at the time was David Southwood. And he saw something in me that I didn't know I had. What was that, do you think, looking back?

Speaker 327:21

What was that?

Professor Michele Dougherty27:21

Uh

Presenter27:24

He and I don't know how he saw it, and I've never actually asked him, but he he realized that I

Presenter27:30

I was a people person and that I could make difficult decisions and I could take people with me. And I didn't realize that until he asked me to step in for him as lead of an instrument on the Cassini spacecraft. That's when I realized I could do it, and he saw it in me before I did.

Speaker 327:42

Yeah

Presenter27:49

It's time for your next piece of music, Michelle. Disc number five. What's it gonna be? This is Dancing Queen by ABBA. So this takes me back to my teenage years. My sister and I loved ABBA. So I remember there was one summer in particular where we spend most of the summer lying on the couches learning all the ABBA songs. So even today, we hear an ABBA song come on and we sing along. I know all the words.

Presenter28:15

Dancing Queen, I think, epitomizes for me the joy of that summer.

Presenter28:51

ABBA and Dancing Queen, taking you back to singing along with your sister Susie, Professor Michelle Docherty. So, Michelle, not long after Cassini launched, your boss left Imperial. He asked you to take over as principal investigator in charge of the magnetometer on board the probe, a key instrument on this mission. Why exactly?

Presenter29:12

The magnetic field threads the environment, and so everything that goes on in the environment is governed by what the magnetic field is doing. So, you really need to understand the magnetic field. But in addition,

Presenter29:24

If you measure a magnetic field outside of a planet,

Presenter29:28

It allows you to get an understanding about what's going on inside.

Presenter29:32

And I love the way you said it's a very important instrument. I always tell everyone it's the most important instrument on the spacecraft, and they all laugh at me.

Presenter29:40

2005, that was when the breakthrough happened, and it came out of the Cassini data. Take me through it. What did you find?

Presenter29:49

seven months after we got there.

Presenter29:52

We flew past one of the little moons called Enceladus.

Presenter29:56

Didn't expect to see much at all. I must confess that we didn't look at the data until about twenty-four hours later.

Presenter30:03

But we saw something in our magnetic field data that was a bit strange.

Presenter30:09

It was the first flyby we had done.

Presenter30:12

We weren't sure if our data was calibrated properly.

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And so we held back, we didn't say anything, because we knew there was a second fly-by a month later.

Presenter30:20

And on the second flyby, we saw a similar signature. And we also saw a large increase in water group ions. We saw lots of noise in the data. And only a magnetometer person can get excited about noise in the data. But you can use that noise to work out there was a big increase of water group ions.

Presenter30:39

And I thought, okay, if it's really there, let's see if we can persuade the project to take us close on a third flyby which was planned in July of that year.

Presenter30:49

So I remember I flew out to the jet propulsion lab. There was a science meeting that was going to take place.

Presenter30:54

and I was going to try and persuade them.

Presenter30:56

It was going to be difficult to do that because one of the things that we did in the six and a half years it took us to get to Saturn, we planned every second of every day's worth of observations. Everyone knew what the instrument was going to do, and here I was coming in saying, Oh, let's just change all of that.

Presenter31:13

So the jet propulsion lab is based in California. So I flew from London to California, which is an eight hour time difference, and I arrived the day before the meeting.

Presenter31:23

So I was standing in line at the Starbucks to get a coffee'cause I was jet lagged to hell, and the man in the line in front of me, whose name was Jerry Jones, was responsible for the Cassini spacecraft.

Presenter31:35

And he turned to me and he said,'Michelle, what you doing here'? Wasn't expecting to see you, and I explained to him why I was there.

Presenter31:42

And he rubbed his hands together in glee, and he said I've always wanted to go closer to a planetary body than anyone else. So I knew I had one vote in my back pocket.

Presenter31:52

So I made the case.

Presenter31:54

It wasn't consensus, but

Presenter31:57

The project agreed that they would change the flyby. So instead of being 1,000 kilometres away, they were going to change it so it was 173 kilometres above the surface.

Presenter32:08

For two or three nights before that flyby I didn't sleep, because if they hadn't found anything no one would ever have believed anything.

Speaker 332:15

Mm-hmm.

Presenter32:16

I said again. Well, that's probably a slight and extreme statement, but I was a little bit concerned. And then what we found was instead of it being an atmosphere,

Presenter32:25

There was a water vapor plume coming from or from the South Pole.

Presenter32:31

Other instruments saw there were cracks at the South Pole.

Presenter32:36

There was internal heat leaking out from the South Pole, and there was organic material in the plume. So, what does that tell us about Enceladus and what are the implications? I mean, that is a massive discovery, isn't it? It was a massive discovery. So, if you're looking for life or habitability in our solar system.

Presenter32:57

Our understanding of how life forms is: you need liquid water, you need a heat source.

Presenter33:02

And you need organic material. But you need those three things to be stable enough over a long enough period of time that something can happen. So we had three of those things.

Presenter33:14

So I think that and some of the observations which the NASA Galileo spacecraft made at the moons of Jupiter.

Presenter33:22

have changed

Presenter33:24

Our thoughts about where you can find life in the solar system. There was a real focus on planets close to the sun, because if you're looking for liquid water,

Professor Michele Dougherty33:31

Yeah.

Presenter33:33

You need to be close to the sun so that water on the surface is thinking of it as rather than it could be inside.

Presenter33:40

Absolutely.

Presenter33:42

The most one of the most important realizations planetary scientists have come to in the last thirty years is you can go much further out in the solar system, find liquid water, but it's not on the surface, it's underneath the surface.

Presenter33:55

Michele, I know that you lost your parents quite quite close together in your early forties. Yes. You must have thought of them at that moment, and I'm sure those big moments in your life since I just wished they were there. What would they have made of it to you? You just want to phone them up and tell'em, you know. Yes, it it's it has saddened me.

Professor Michele Dougherty34:06

What would they have made of it, do you think?

Presenter34:14

Because they've just missed out on so many things. And I still, every once in a while, I still want to phone them and say, guess what happened today?

Presenter34:22

Let's have some more music, Professor Michelle Docherty. It's your sixth choice today. What are we going to hear? So that actually touches on what we've just been talking about. And the sixth choice is called Dance with My Father. Luther Van Dross sings it. It's a really sad song. It talks about loss. But also, it confirms how lovely it is to be loved. So if you listen to the words of this.

Presenter34:50

This man is talking about having lost his father, but

Presenter34:54

Clearly, the life that he had with his father was spectacular. So it's a combination of loss, but also.

Presenter35:00

Being really fortunate to have been loved like that.

Speaker 435:05

Back when I was a child

Speaker 435:11

Before life removed all the innocence.

Speaker 435:17

My father would lift me high

Speaker 335:20

Uh

Speaker 435:23

And dance with my mother and me And then spin me around till I fell asleep

Presenter35:33

Luther Vandross and Dance with My Father. So Michele, your current mission is to Jupiter. It is. That's the next place on the list. The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer mission, known as Juice, launched in twenty twenty three. What are you hoping to achieve?

Presenter35:48

We are going to focus on three of the moons of Jupiter.

Presenter35:52

the three moons where we're almost certain that they have liquid water oceans under the surface. And we're going to go into orbit around one of them, the moon called Ganymede.

Presenter36:03

And that moon is a magnetometer person's dream. Why? Because it's the only moon in the solar system that has an internal dynamo field. So if you stood on the surface of Ganymede with a compass needle, it would be like on the Earth it would point to the north pole of the Earth. So it's the only moon in the solar system that has. So why wouldn't I want to go there?

Presenter36:24

But the most difficult measurements that we are going to need to make are the very small signals.

Presenter36:31

coming from a liquid water ocean.

Presenter36:33

So the way that it works is if you've got a conducting body

Presenter36:37

and you've got a magnetic field that is moving and changing around that conducting body. That changing magnetic field induces electrical currents in the conducting body. Those electrical currents generate a magnetic field, and we need to measure those.

Presenter36:54

Tiny.

Presenter36:55

So when I lose sleep

Presenter36:57

That's what I lose sleep over. We've built the instrument that can do it, but can we separate all those effects out? It's like.

Presenter37:04

Trying to find needles in a haystack that are changing shape and colour.

Professor Michele Dougherty37:08

But we would tend to that.

Presenter37:10

It's oh, but it's gonna be cool. When we do it, it's gonna be really cool. And what what will they tell us exactly? So it will tell us how deep the ocean is, what its salt content is, is it a global ocean, is there a thick ice crust? And there were some observations that were made on the deep oceans on the earth.

Presenter37:31

where bacteria was found.

Presenter37:34

At temperatures and pressures where you would never expect to find bacteria.

Presenter37:39

Is that similar to something that is going on on the outer moons of of Jupiter and Saturn?

Speaker 337:45

Cars.

Presenter37:45

We won't find that out with Juice, but what we will find out with Juice is where.

Presenter37:51

We might want to land in the future. Whether all three moons have these liquid water oceans, do they have organic material?

Presenter37:59

You are younger than me, so in my lifetime we will probably be able to say that the conditions are there at Jupiter's moons for life to be able to form.

Presenter38:12

I'm not suggesting there's life like us out there, but bacteria, some kind of bacteria, I would be amazed if there wasn't.

Presenter38:23

Juice won't reach Jupiter until twenty thirty one. You'll be in your late sixties by by that point, by the time the mission's complete. Do you think you'll still want to be involved at the current level you're at?

Presenter38:34

Yes. We first started thinking about a juice type mission in 2008. I want to see it through.

Presenter38:42

But I

Presenter38:43

I see myself as sitting in the shade somewhere drinking a gin and tonic, saying to the team, You did what? I would never have done something like that.

Presenter38:51

So the mission is going to run until 2035. I mean, how do you feel when a mission or a project comes to an end? How are you with endings?

Presenter39:00

It's really interesting, you know, the only end of mission that I've really gone through was Cassini, and it had been going on for 13 years, and the end of the mission in particular was very intense. We were flying, having a close fly-by past Saturn every six and a half days. We were exhausted, and so we were almost relieved that it was going to come to an end.

Presenter39:22

And then it did.

Presenter39:24

and you suddenly realize that the last twenty five years of your life

Presenter39:29

It's not over, but it will never be the same again. I remember.

Presenter39:34

I was out at the Jet Propulsion Lab and there was there was a screen showing a graph that had a big spike on it. And as long as that spike was there, the spacecraft was talking to the earth.

Presenter39:46

And at the end of the mission, the spike disappeared.

Presenter39:50

But then it came back again.

Presenter39:52

Because the spacecraft had been trained to move itself so it could continue to talk to the earth. No one had told Cassini the mission was coming to an end.

Presenter40:02

And so it moved itself so it could continue to talk, and then the tumbling got too great and it disappeared.

Speaker 340:07

Oof.

Presenter40:09

And when I give outreach talks, I show that picture. And every time I tell the story, even now, the hair on my arms is standing up on end. But it it was like losing a family member. I can imagine. I mean, I'm horribly sentimental and prone to anthropomorphosise things.

Presenter40:24

I'm going to be thinking about that when I'm trying to drift off to sleep later tonight. Thank you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm launching a spacecraft trying to talk to you.

Speaker 340:27

I'm sorry.

Professor Michele Dougherty40:28

Funny spacecraft trying to talk to

Presenter40:31

Alright Michelle, let's have some more music. This is disc number seven. What's next?

Presenter40:35

Okay, so this is Parnus Angelicus. Dame Kiritakanwa is singing it. I'm so jealous of people who can sing.

Presenter40:45

I remember when I was a child at school, every year I would go and try out for the school choir, and every year they would smile at me, thank me for coming, and ask me to come back next year. Never got into the school choir. So this is partly jealousy, but also just awe at listening to her voice.

Speaker 341:10

Great promise on you.

Speaker 341:17

What is trickles, folks still in war?

Speaker 341:30

Lord rest with thy peace.

Speaker 341:47

Oh man, sadness of the world.

Presenter42:04

Parnus Angelicus, composed by Cesar Franke and performed by Dame Kiriti Canawa with the English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Barry Rose.

Presenter42:13

Professor Michele Doherty, the data that's coming back and the information that you're getting, it is it's a new frontier, isn't it, for space exploration. I wonder what your thoughts are on private space exploration companies?

Presenter42:26

Positive in the main.

Presenter42:29

Because

Presenter42:30

It allows more launches to take place. It enables the launches, the cost of launches to be cheaper. So it helps push the boundaries of what we launch and how we can launch. But a concern that I have is there are so many spacecraft up there now.

Presenter42:51

That we might get to a position where seeing the night sky in all its glory is going to be difficult.

Presenter42:58

It's getting really crowded up there.

Presenter43:01

There are old spacecraft which are no longer operating but are up there and one has to be really careful that the spacecraft you launch don't crash into these other spacecraft.

Presenter43:12

So I think we need to take a deep breath and think really carefully about how much is being put up into space. Needs to be joined up thinking, and I don't think we've quite got there yet.

Presenter43:24

Elon Musk is a member of the Royal Society, Michele. He's a controversial figure, in part because of his role in Donald Trump's Doge Efficiency Initiative, which cut science research budgets. Do you support his membership?

Presenter43:40

So I wasn't involved in the discussions or in the decision that was made, but once I heard that they had decided not to take it away from him, on thinking about it I think it was the right decision, because the reasons that he was awarded the fellowship, all that he had done for space launches and for spacecraft, those were still there.

Presenter44:01

you know, he's done a lot for

Presenter44:03

improving our ability to get into space.

Presenter44:07

And so I think it was the right decision.

Presenter44:11

Okay, Michelle. I wonder about your curiosity as a scientist. What drives it today?

Presenter44:17

So much more to find out. What do you do for fun?

Presenter44:24

I was about to say I drink wine. That's not the only thing. I did hear that there's a wine fridge in your office. Yes, I must confess, when I became head of department at Imperial, head of physics, seven years ago now, I was one day into the job and I thought, oh, this is a difficult job. So I thought I'm going to need some help.

Speaker 344:26

That's not the only fridge.

Professor Michele Dougherty44:28

Uh

Presenter44:42

So I bought a wine fridge, which I hid behind a couch so no one could see it. And what was really interesting, you know, was the number of colleagues who would want to have meetings with me at five o'clock in the afternoon because they knew about the wine fridge. I was very well behaved because I always drove home, so I'd never have more than a glass or half a glass of wine. But we solved all of the world's problems in those meetings after five o'clock in the afternoon. Well, it's almost time to send you away to the island. Apparently, you're worried that there might be bananas. Yes, so I'm really weird. I have two phobias. One of them is snakes and the other is bananas. I think they're linked. So when I was a kid in South Africa, we had a big banana tree in the garden.

Professor Michele Dougherty45:20

It's okay.

Presenter45:25

And

Presenter45:26

A gardener would come in once a month just to chop things down if they needed to be chopped down, and he was trying to chop part of the banana tree down, and he found a black mamba snake in the banana tree. This is one of the only snakes in the world that will go after you. And I don't know if it was that, but I'm terrified of snakes.

Presenter45:42

And I just don't like bananas.

Speaker 345:45

Okay.

Presenter45:46

People have said to me, would I ever eat a banana? And I would my answer before you guys even approached me was I would only ever contemplate eating a banana if I was stuck on a desert island and there was nothing else to eat.

Speaker 345:57

Oh, it is nothing.

Presenter45:59

Oh dear.

Professor Michele Dougherty46:00

Yeah.

Presenter46:01

Here we go. So, you aren't going to put me through that, are you? The prophecy has come to pass. I know, I know.

Professor Michele Dougherty46:03

The prof

Professor Michele Dougherty46:04

Depending on the

Presenter46:06

I can't bear the taste or the smell. It's really strange. We'll have to hope that yours is an island of coconuts only. Thank you. Thank you. If you could do that for me, it'd be much appreciated. Beyond the bananas, Michelle, how do you think you'll get on on the island? I'll certainly stare up at the night sky. I'm not very good at spotting what things are, so I've got a secret.

Professor Michele Dougherty46:13

Thank you.

Presenter46:26

You know, people come up to me and say, Oh, what's that planet? And I always say, Oh, I've just got to quickly go to the toilet. I'll be back in a sec. I've got an app on my phone.

Presenter46:37

That tells you what's just above the horizon. I'm assuming my app on my phone won't work on the desert island. Indeed not, you won't have your phone, I'm afraid. So you're gonna have to. So I will just have to make it up. Spot the bear and the plug. Make it up or make it up. Why not?

Professor Michele Dougherty46:42

I Dip.

Professor Michele Dougherty46:45

So

Professor Michele Dougherty46:47

Uh

Presenter46:51

Why not? That's another way of expanding our notions of what the sky could hold to.

Presenter46:55

Well, we'll have let you have one more track before we send you to the Desert Island. Your final choice today, please. So this was difficult for me. In the month that before I had to give you my list, every time I heard a song, I was thinking, no, that's got to be that song. So the way that I decided on this last one

Presenter47:14

was how I would feel if I was stuck on a desert island for the rest of my life and I never heard something like this. So my eighth choice is P A Yezu performed by Malachi Bayo.

Speaker 347:49

Uh

Speaker 347:55

Oh, be stormy, sweet, forever.

Presenter48:29

P.A. Yezu from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Requiem performed by Malachi Bayo with the Scola Cantorum Choir of the Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School, directed by Scott Price. So, Professor Michelle Doherty, I am going to send you away to the island. I'll give you the books to take along: the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and one other book of your choice. What will it be?

Professor Michele Dougherty48:43

Silence

Presenter48:51

I've said Lord of the Rings partly because my dad read the whole book to us when we were kids, and it just takes you into fantasy land.

Presenter49:01

But also the good thing about it is it's such a long book that by the time you get to the end you can start from the beginning and it's like starting from that again.

Speaker 349:04

Are the trendy?

Speaker 349:10

Ha!

Presenter49:11

It sounds like the perfect choice. You can also have a luxury item. What would you like? It would need to be wine, please. Oh, okay. Any more direction other than that? Reds, whites? So, champagne, please. Indeed. A really nice Chardonnay. Okay. And the beautiful red blends that you get in South Africa. Fabulous. Done. Thank you. And I'll give you a solar-powered wine fridge so everything's at the correct temperature. Fantastic. I love that. For no animals, Michelle. Come on. There might be bananas there. You might need a stiff drink at the end of the day. Clearly, I was just thinking of that. Yes, no, I thought you said it was an island with coconuts. I'm hoping.

Professor Michele Dougherty49:35

I love that.

Professor Michele Dougherty49:40

Yeah.

Professor Michele Dougherty49:42

By the way.

Professor Michele Dougherty49:44

Time O

Presenter49:45

I can't. There are no guarantees in this game. No, that's true.

Professor Michele Dougherty49:47

Yeah.

Presenter49:49

And finally, Michelle, which one of the eight tracks that you've shared with us today would you save from the waves first if you needed to? Ah, I think probably Elga's Cello Concerta, because it's one of the first pieces of classical music that I came to love.

Presenter50:06

And

Presenter50:07

because it's the instrument that I think

Presenter50:11

makes the most beautiful music when it comes to classical music.

Presenter50:14

And because it makes me think of all the lovely things we did as a child, so that one place.

Presenter50:21

Professor Michelle Dochty, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you very much.

Presenter50:42

Hello, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Michelle. I really do think the champagne will help fortify her against snakes and, yes, bananas. We've cast away many space experts, including NASA's head of science, Dr. Nikki Fox, and the astronomer, Carl Sagan. Astronauts Tim Peake and Chris Hadfield are in our archive, too. The studio manager for today's program was Steve Greenwood. The researcher was Fiona Woods. The executive production coordinator was Susie Roylands. The content editor was Mugabe Turia, and the producer was Paula McGinley. Next time, my guest will be the costume and creature effects designer, Tara Zafar. I do hope you'll join us.

Professor Michele Dougherty51:34

How does someone invent a political theory that reshapes the map of the world? How do you get to a scientific breakthrough that saves thousands of lives? Or create works of art that stand the test of time? How have brilliant thinkers through history done their best thinking? And what can we learn from them? From BBC Radio 4, it's the second series of Human Intelligence with me, Naomi Alderman. From Karl Marx to Mary Curie, from Emily Bronte to Leonardo da Vinci. How did those exceptional minds do their work? And are there ways of thinking we can emulate today?

Professor Michele Dougherty52:08

To find out, listen to Human Intelligence on BBC Sounds.