00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Lovely this
00:06afternoon to speak to Ian and Charlotte, who are the Average Scientist, and you are taking part
00:12in a number of events around the Luke Jerram Mars installation in Chichester Cathedral.
00:18Before we talk about that, Charlotte, just tell me what the Average Scientist does.
00:24What are you about?
00:26So we're an organisation that we bring science to the general public, and we bring it in a little
00:35bit of a more engaging way. We're science communicators. We're scientists, but we're
00:39also science communicators, and we basically bring science to the general public in,
00:47I think, a much more formidable way, isn't it? It's much more engaging.
00:51Ian, it's abandoning some of the convoluted, very erudite language, isn't it, and speaking
00:56more directly, perhaps?
00:58It is, yeah. We democratise the subject. That's what we attempt to do, and make it accessible.
01:03The stories of science, it's our story, a human story, and that story belongs to everybody. So
01:11we're very keen that everybody has the opportunity to understand and have an opinion on all aspects
01:19of science, and we aim to make those subjects more accessible to people.
01:23And in that context, well, it's absolutely right that you should be in Chichester for
01:26the Mars installation. Ian, tell me why Mars is significant, and you tell me,
01:32well, the context of the Mars astronaut, when will that be?
01:37Yeah, so we're about, well, the average age of a NASA astronaut is 35 years or something like
01:43that, so around 35 years old, and we're about 20 to 25 years away from attempting to send
01:51human beings to Mars. So that makes a Martian astronaut 10 years old today.
01:56It's hard to watch, isn't it?
01:58Oh, it's a huge thought, yeah. And when we communicate that to our audiences
02:04across the country, you can hear almost a stony silence all over our auditoriums,
02:11very, very profound information, isn't it? So if you have a 10-year-old son or daughter or,
02:18you know, grandchild...
02:19They might, they just might, yeah. So Charlotte,
02:22tell me what you're doing in Chichester then, and when.
02:25So we're bringing a part of our main flagship show, The Wonders of Our Universe, to Chichester,
02:31and we're going to be concentrating solely on Mars, and our show is to complement Luke Durham's
02:37Mars installation in the cathedral. So we're going to be bringing our audience through
02:43some subjects around Mars, so we'll be talking about Mars as a planet, of what we have achieved
02:53so far in scientific terms with Mars, the Mars rovers, what they're doing there,
02:59what information we've managed to gain from sending these rovers over there, but we're
03:05also going to be talking about, obviously, the Mars generation and the future exploration
03:12of the red planet.
03:13Yeah, it sounds fascinating. Brilliant. Well, lovely to speak to you both.
03:17Have a great time in Chichester. Thank you.
03:19Thank you for having us.
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