Destination Moon - Christmas Lectures 2025 with Maggie Aderin-Pocock 1/3
Dame Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock begins her search for extraterrestrial life with an exploration of our nearest neighbour, and her favourite space rock, the moon.Join this channel to get access to perks:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYeF244yNGuFefuFKqxIAXw/join
Subscribe for regular science videos: http://bit.ly/RiSubscRibe
This is the 200th year of the Christmas Lectures - watch the full archive here: https://www.youtube.com/show/VLPLbnrZHfNEDZxqZEF6PDCLUq1OE6lJW5PQ?sbp=QAE%3D
Scientists in 2025 detected the 'strongest hint yet' of biological activity outside our solar system on exoplanet K2-18b, sparking growing excitement about the real possibility of extraterrestrial life. In this series of lectures, Dame Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock sets out on a journey to find it. In lecture 1, self-confessed ‘lunartic’ Maggie begins by exploring our fascination with our closest neighbour, the moon.
Maggie first became obsessed with the moon as a child, when she would watch it with her dad, and aged 14, she even built a telescope of her own. Four hundred years earlier, Galileo first assembled glass lenses and made a telescope, which Maggie and audience volunteers will help to recreate. He too pointed it at the moon, astonishing the world with his drawings and inspiring a raft of theories about the type of alien life that might be living there. The moon wouldn’t be confirmed as lifeless until humans actually set foot on it in 1969.
Maggie explores the history of our own species in space, joined by the UK’s latest crew of European Space Agency astronauts - Rosemary Coogan, John McFall and Meganne Cristian. From the early Apollo missions to the planned Artemis Moon landing in 2027, the astronauts join children from the audience in a series of demos that illustrate the challenges of human space travel and the reality of colonies on the moon and beyond.
Maggie uses this lunar viewpoint to look back on our own planet and ask some fundamental questions about life. Cosmic mineralogist Prof Sara Russell from the Natural History Museum studies space rocks and demonstrates what they can tell us about where life’s precursors came from and how life on earth may have got started. We then meet some of the most weird and wonderful creatures that have evolved here on our planet, like the scaly foot snails that live at hydrothermal vents deep in the ocean, at temperatures of over 350°C. What are the limits for life on another world, and what might it look like?
Finding other planets that might host life will require us to ‘see the invisible’. Maggie and her volunteers demonstrate, using UV torches and infrared cameras, how today’s modern telescopes allow us to do just that.
Finally, Maggie examines what it means to be a 'goldilocks planet' - not too hot, not too cold - just right for life. In a full audience participation demo, we question if there is another habitable world out there and what it would need to be like. What are we searching for in our quest to find an extraterrestrial species?
--
This is the 200th anniversary year of the Christmas Lectures. They are the most prestigious event in the Royal Institution calendar, dating from 1825, when Michael Faraday founded the series for children. They have become the world’s longest-running science television series and promise to inspire children and adults alike each year through explosive demonstrations and interactive experiments with the live theatre audience. Find out more at http://www.rigb.org/christmas-lectures
---
The Ri is on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ri_science
and Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/royalinstitution
and TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ri_science
Listen to the Ri podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ri-science-podcast
Donate to the RI and help us bring you more lectures: https://www.rigb.org/support-us/donate-ri
Our editorial policy: https://www.rigb.org/editing-ri-talks-and-moderating-comments
Subscribe for the latest science videos: http://bit.ly/RiNewsletter
Product links on this page may be affiliate links which means it won't cost you any extra but we may earn a small commission if you decide to purchase through the link.
#christmaslectures #spacetravel #scienceducation
#spacetravel #spacerocks #europeanspaceagency #moonscience #astronauts Receive SMS online on sms24.me
TubeReader video aggregator is a website that collects and organizes online videos from the YouTube source. Video aggregation is done for different purposes, and TubeReader take different approaches to achieve their purpose.
Our try to collect videos of high quality or interest for visitors to view; the collection may be made by editors or may be based on community votes.
Another method is to base the collection on those videos most viewed, either at the aggregator site or at various popular video hosting sites.
TubeReader site exists to allow users to collect their own sets of videos, for personal use as well as for browsing and viewing by others; TubeReader can develop online communities around video sharing.
Our site allow users to create a personalized video playlist, for personal use as well as for browsing and viewing by others.
@YouTubeReaderBot allows you to subscribe to Youtube channels.
By using @YouTubeReaderBot Bot you agree with YouTube Terms of Service.
Use the @YouTubeReaderBot telegram bot to be the first to be notified when new videos are released on your favorite channels.
Look for new videos or channels and share them with your friends.
You can start using our bot from this video, subscribe now to Destination Moon - Christmas Lectures 2025 with Maggie Aderin-Pocock 1/3
What is YouTube?
YouTube is a free video sharing website that makes it easy to watch online videos. You can even create and upload your own videos to share with others. Originally created in 2005, YouTube is now one of the most popular sites on the Web, with visitors watching around 6 billion hours of video every month.
