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| Presenting the Award for Specialist Factual Programme at the 2010 BAFTA's Photo from Bafta.org |
In his most recent series - Wonders Of the Universe - He explains the details of things such as the end of the universe, and why scientists know it's going to end in a set number of years with such passion and simplicity that the viewer cannot help but stick with him and relate the new knowledge of something so complicated and depressing to friends, and yet still find it fascinating!!
What I also love about this series- because it's not all depressing and about how the world's going to end and we're all going to die I promise you are the views of nature and the wonders of - not just the universe as the title of the series would expect you to believe - the earth that we live on. I personally think clips from the show like the one's below make you appreciate the beauty of the earth that most of the time passes us by...
I think the clip above also shows, as Brian says, how magnificent and clever the ancient civilisation of humans were more intelligent than we give them credit for... I mean we always imagine the 'cavemen' banging around with sticks and grunting... where as alot of them were making structures like this, working out the position of sun, and where to build the towers, and it still works, they weren't even a tiny bit out... Just amazing.
Aaaand... just for all you people who don't think this guy's amazing.. here's 7 facts you may be suprised (or may not..) to know about this lovely fella..
1) Despite his baby-faced looks and general 'cuteness' - though I never understand when guys are classed as cute but anyway.. he's actually 43.
2) As well as working on Wonders of the Universe, he is also...
- a Royal Society University Research Fellow
- a professor at the University of Manchester,
- member of the High Energy Physics group at the University of Manchester
- works on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland.
- working on the R&D project of the FP420 experiment in an international collaboration to upgrade the ATLAS and the CMS experiment.
- Co-Presenter of the comedy science magazine programme - ,The Infinite Monkey Cage with Robin Ince on Radio 4 (Due to return in May 2011)
4) He IS the reason Mr. Tony Blair got into power in 1997 - fact! No really, he's not just a geeky scientist, he's a musician too, the keyboard player in the band D:Ream - who had a few Number 1 hits including 'things can only get better' ... (He was also in the boyband Dare in the 80's..)
5) Awards he has recieved include; British Association's Lord Kelvin Award,and in 2010 won the Institute of Physics Kelvin Prize for his work in communicating the appeal and excitement of physics to the general public!! And was nominated for and won Best Presenter and Best Science/Natural History program by the Royal Television Society for Wonders of the Solar System (which also won best documentary series of 2010).
He also has and OBE from the Queen, for his services for science..
6) He is a Humanist and distiguished supporter of the The British Humanist Association.
7) And lastly but not leastly... He's a northern lad!! Born and brought up in Oldham, and still based at the University of Manchester... what could make this guy better??
