The sun isn’t a tidy sphere. If you go a little closer, you’ll see it looks a bit… fuzzy. Its plasma doesn’t sit as a smooth surface; it’s a roiling sea, throwing itself high above the sun, responding to magnetic fields that would tower many times over our entire planet in a way that would make any sane person feel very tiny indeed. So best not to think about the scale of it too much. We get enough existential panic from the possibility of a Michael Bay remake of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Some of this plasma gets enough of a kick to leave the pull of the Sun altogether, and it heads out into the universe. It’s barely there – just some electrons and protons held together by the merest hint of a magnetic field. But it’s there. After about 18 hours, if it’s lucky, it’ll hit the Earth. Now, it might have whizzed passed Mercury and Venus, but the Earth is slightly different – we have a magnetosphere.

A lovely NASA diagram of our magnetosphere

Our magnetosphere is the area around our planet that is affected by our magnetic field – the same magnetic field that makes compasses point north. When the plasma hits our magnetosphere it gets pulled around us, following our magnetic field lines right to the poles.

We’re almost at Aurora. The next thing you need to picture is an atom. The classic orbital model is probably what you’re thinking of here, and that’s the most useful way of picturing an atom when we’re talking about Aurora. The reality of life inside an atom is very different to the image of electrons whizzing around the nucleus in a neat orbit – electrons are closer to clouds of probability, and, well, the whole thing is a mind-bending hot mess. But the orbital model is a useful way to think about certain properties of the atom, without all the quantum weirdness, so let’s do that.

So in this model of the atom you can have electrons whizzing around the nucleus in different orbits, at different distances from the centre. It’s possible for an electron to jump up to a higher orbit if it gets a jolt of energy from somewhere.

And that’s what this plasma from the Sun does – as it hits our atmosphere it gives the electrons in the air a boost into a higher orbit (or energy level, in the parlance). But the atom has rules. It has rules! They shall not be disobeyed. And one of the rules says that the orbits around the nucleus have to be filled from the lowest to the highest, with no gaps in between. So if an electron jumps to a higher orbit, that means there’s a gap underneath it. So it has to drop back down. But it’s gotten this energy from the plasma, and it has to do something with that energy – it can’t just ignore it or give it back. So this electron gives off a photon of light, which allows it to drop back down where it came from.

And when this process happens a lot, all at once, you get the Aurora. So the poles would be a good place to study them – however, the poles are a strange place, full of strange people, and who knows what could happen…

Incidentally, you can find out more about the Halley Research Station (where our heroes are stationed) here.

1. It’s cold
2. They have penguins
3. Penguins tend to poop everywhere

Into this icy, poop-covered wasteland comes Bill Chesham – a man seeking quiet isolation. Instead, he’s in for the adventure of a lifetime.

Will Bill find out what the clanging sound is? Who solved the Rubik’s Cube? And what sound do penguins make? Find out now…

Bill Chesham – Dan Bond
Sailor, Helpful Penguin, Andrew – David Ault
Sandra – Kirsten Summers
Melissa – Elena Wright
Ian – Jamie Crowther

Written by Dan Bond & Brian Macken

Produced by Dan Booth

Some sound effects provided by Freesound.org

Recently we decided to harness this power and put it to work. So we entered a competition. This competition:
War of the Worlds 75th Anniversary Contest

And here we make available to you, our sophisticated audience, our entry for this competition: War of the Cotswolds.

What do you do if your budget’s been cut, your marking isn’t finished, you’ve run out of biscuits, and aliens land in the playing field? Time to find out…

Herbert “Spadger” Watkins  – Dan Bond
Terry “It Must Be Alive” Smythe - Brian Macken
Gareth “Epic Fail” McPhail - Dan Booth

Written by Dan Bond, Brian Macken & Dan Booth

Produced by Dan Booth

Original music by Dan Booth

Some sound effects provided by Freesound.org

Since then there has been massive regeneration. Like similar areas in cities such as Sheffield and Birmingham, Newcastle’s Quayside has been transformed into a centre for arts and culture, as well as new housing developments.

So what does all this have to do with Editing Episode 10? Well… not much. But after 10 episodes, I’m rather running out of things to talk about.

This picture of the Tyne Bridge will use up some space.

OK, let’s give this a go… Episode 10, as you will no doubt recall, is set on a boat. A 19th-century ship bound for scientific exploration in southern climes, no less. This meant that, aurally speaking, I had to build a boat.

The boat sound effect consists of three main elements:

1. Creaking of the wooden structure
2. Waves
3. Wind

I was all set to go hunting for individual effects and build the soundscape myself, but a quick Freesound search for ‘wooden ship creaking’ revealed that user Walter_Odington had already done most of the hard work for me. I felt that the creaking was a little loud, and perhaps a bit too regular, so I reduced the volume and added some extra waves to draw the listener’s ear away from the creaking (if the listener is focusing on the creaking rather than the dialogue, then something has gone very wrong somewhere).

Action Dan’s script featured scenes on the deck of the ship as well as in various cabins, so I created a second version of the background noise by adding some wind, which I had kicking around from Episode 4, and then played the whole thing a bit louder over the dialogue track. And you can practically taste the salt.

Anyway, that’s 374 words, which is more than enough for one month. It’s a Science Brian script next time, so I imagine I’ll have the opposite problem in trying to keep my ranting about impossible sound effects to a reasonable length. I’d like to think that Science Brian will take this as a challenge to include simple sound effects that will not send my blood pressure soaring, but I fear this may be too much to ask. Ah well.

You spend hours working on a script, and it ends up like this.

So, how do we do it? Well, we’d recommend Celtx – it’s free! And it does all the formatting for you. Which is good for us because we’re quite lazy. So that’s the tool, what about the constituent parts? The anatomy, if you will, of an AST script?

Let me take you through it:

Title

My favourite part of the whole thing. A great place to stick in a pun, play on words or, better still, something that is almost a pun or play on words but actually isn’t. Nothing like confusing the minds of a select group of the population. And you are a select group aren’t you? Of course you are. Look at you, sitting there. Reading this. Probably eating something sticky. Don’t let other people judge you. We don’t judge you. We think you rock. Have another one, handsome.

Authors

You cast your eye over the show details. You look for the tell-tale signs of quality. Names. Names that you’ve seen before on other things that you liked. Pinter. Shakespeare. Archer. But sometimes those names aren’t there for quality. Sometimes you want the unhealthy stuff. The burnt bits on the bottom of the meat pan. And here it is. Bond and Macken. Every time. Every episode. You read the names, and the names read you right back.

Cast

You’ve got to put people in these things. Otherwise you just get twenty minutes of silence. And nobody wants that do they? Do they? Pick people who have too much time on their hands and will do it for free.

Intro

It’s the same every time. But it has a jaunty tune. All together now; dum dum dum dum dum, dum dum dum dum, dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum. You owe Producer Dan £5 for copyright infringement. That’ll learn you.

Scenes

Got to do this bit yourself chum. We ain’t helpin’ ya. But make it good. Laid out thusly:

Scene: 1
(A large room filled with a sense of demonstrable disappointment and tins of Spam)

SOUND: A DOOR OPENING (NOTE TO PRODUCER – THE DOOR IS A 2CM THICK DOOR MADE FROM OAK AND HELD IN PLACE BY BRASS HINGES, PLEASE MAKE SURE THIS IS AN ACCURATE REPRESENTATION)

STEVE
Hello.

PAUL
Hello.

STEVE
Shall we go on an adventure?

PAUL
Sure. A sciency adventure.

SOUND: AN AWARD FOR WRITING BEING HANDED TO A VERY SURPRISED CHIMP WITH A TYPEWRITER

Repeat ad infinitum

Outro

It’s that tune again! But this time with the names of the cast and a blatant plug. Consistency.

Well, that just about covers it. But you can ask questions in the comments if you REALLY must know more.

But what is so exciting about it?

Well, for a start, it was how we first worked out where we are.

The black dot is Venus, on it’s way from left to right across the face of the Sun

But first, what is a transit of Venus? Well, it’s the celestial arrangement where, from our point of view, it looks like Venus’ path takes it right across the Sun. This doesn’t happen terribly often, although they come in pairs separated by 8 years – so the last one was in 2012, and there was one 8 years before that in 2004; before that it was 1882 and 1874; before that it was 1761 and 1769, and so on. So there could be a hundred years between one pair of transits and the next – the next one is in 2117.

But they’re not just interesting because they’re rare. Scientists used the 1761 and 1769 transits to determine, with very high accuracy, the distance from the Earth to the Sun. This distance, in astronomy parlance, is called the “Astronomical Unit”, or AU; so one AU is the distance from the Earth to the Sun, two AU is twice that distance etc.

Now, you might think that to calculate the AU by looking at Venus passing across the face of the sun would be complicated, but it’s not really – it uses, at it’s core, very basic geometry.

I’ll talk through it, using the most high-tech tools at my disposal – MS Paint

So, first off you need as many people as you can get to view the transit, and they all need to be as far away from each other as possible. For simplicity’s sake, let’s say we have two observers, one at point A and one at point B, at opposite ends of the Earth.

Where, exactly, the transit appears on the face of the Sun depends on where you’re standing – so observer A sees something slightly different to observer B. As you can see from the diagram, A will see the transit taking place near the bottom of the Sun, and B will see it as being much higher up.  A and B take a very careful record of where they saw the transit occur, then they meet up again and compare notes.

By looking at the difference in the pictures, you can work out the angle between them (marked in the diagram as #) . Then you need to work out the vertical distance between point A and B. The keen-eyed amongst you will notice you now have a triangle, and once you have one of those the world is your mathematical oyster, and it’s simple to work out the distance between the Earth and Venus.

Look, a triangle!

And once you have THAT distance, there’s just one last step. Kepler, and others, had worked out the relative sizes of each planet’s orbit, if not their exact sizes. So, in our case, we know that Venus’ orbit is 0.723 that of Earth’s. Which means that the distance from Venus to Earth is 0.277 of the full distance from the Earth to the Sun – et voila! We can then work out the full distance.

And after the 1761 and 1769 transits that’s exactly what happened, and a man with the rather wonderful name of Maximilian Hell calculated a figure for the AU which was within 97% of the true value.

The next transit, in 1874, was used to further improve the accuracy of the AU. I imagine, however, that the scientists on the HMS Treasure found it a bit difficult to keep their minds on the job…

If any of you would like to have a go at calculating the AU for yourself, this page has a good walkthrough of how to do it.

There are no pirates in this episode. Let’s get that out of the way first up. What have pirates ever done for science? Other than contributions to cartography, and encouraging people to bury important things. It took ages to find Newton’s Principia I understand.

Join the crew of the scientific research vessel HMS Treasure, as they tackle some big issues: gambling, cross-dressing and musical talent. Get downloading. Ye scurvy dogs.

Captain Cuse  - Calum Mitchell
First Officer Ricks – Brian Macken
Mr Green – Matt Kirk
Mr Banks – Dan Bond
First Crewman – Tara Clarke
Second Crewman – Wendy Bradley

Written by Dan Bond & Brian Macken

Produced by Dan Booth

Some sound effects provided by Freesound.org

Music:

Why yes, I would like to borrow your
Zoom H4n Handy Recorder

At the end of last month’s thrilling instalment, you may recall that the heretofore reliable AST technology had undergone catastrophic working-properlyness failure. Episode 8 was eventually rescued by a man on a motorbike, but we couldn’t rely on that happening every time. So, I had to find a way to make sure that we could get safely through Episode 9. For reasons that now escape me, the first step involved inviting Action Dan and Science Brian to my house and feeding them steak and chips.

Seriously – I’ve got to work out what they’re putting in my water.

A handy maxim I’ve developed over the years when dealing with all things sound-equipmenty is “plug more cable into more things”. Up to now, the amount of cable involved in AST recordings had been disappointingly small.

Microphone → Recorder (×3)

Hardly worth getting out of bed for. Now I had the opportunity to double that:

Microphone → Unnecessarily large mixer → Recorder (×3)

This also has the bonus effect of increasing the number of twiddly knobs – and thus my status as a sound engineer – by around 20-fold. Now we’re getting somewhere. Next step: try it out. Which is where Messrs Dan and Brian and their eating habits come in.

Having plied them with dinner, we repair to my spare room the Action Science Theatre Central Recording Complex to test out my theories. It’s round about here that I lose a certain degree of control of events, and I am forced to endure mangled renditions of Goon Show sketches at high volume until I can fix the sound balance. Let’s just say I’m highly motivated to succeed.

And did I succeed? Well, have a listen to Episode 9. If you can’t hear chirruping hard drives (or Goon Show sketches, for that matter), then it seems that I did.

I was taken to task somewhat over last month’s blog, in which I likened the recording of an AST episode to the lyrics of Chris Rea’s Road to Hell. Taken in their most literal interpretation, yes, I concede that the lyrics do not reflect a typical recording session. We do not record ‘underneath the streetlights’, the room is not full of ‘bits of paper flying away’, and we don’t quite achieve a ‘perverted fear of violence’. But… I would argue that I was simply trying to convey the existential horror that I face every month when forced to endure another AST session. You’d have thought that I wouldn’t have to explain metaphor to an English Literature graduate (albeit from a provincial university), but what do I know – I’m just a scientist…

The International Prototype Kilogram is under all of those bell jars

This is a picture of the international prototype kilogram, or IPK. It is exactly, and always, a kilogram. It’s a big lump of metal which the world has agreed is how much a kilogram weighs. It was made in 1879, and it is still beautifully, perfectly, and exactly the same as it was then.

Er, more or less. And that is the problem.

Now, the thing is, technically the IPK can never be anything other than exactly one kilogram. But everyone can’t use the one physical object, so every 50 years some copies are compared to the IPK, and the copies go out into the world. So by comparing all of these to each other we’ve learned that no matter how carefully you store something like the IPK, you can never stop it getting a tiny bit heavier over time. The air *itself* deposits a measurable amount of mass onto the IPK every year, which means it has to be cleaned (very, very carefully); its actual mass is never totally static. It can’t be.

Now the differences in mass here are very small – the IPK gains maybe a millionth of a gram a year. But it’s a measurable amount, and it starts to make a difference when you’re doing experiments that make measurements on that scale. So The International Bureau of Weights and Measures (or BIPM, to use the French acronym) are making a move to define the kilogram in relation to a fundamental constant of nature.

This isn’t a new idea – they did it in the 80s with the metre. There used to be an International Prototype Metre, but one metre is now defined as being the distance light covers in 1/299,792,458 of a second while travelling through a vacuum. That is the sort of thing a lab can replicate without having to go into a vault in France, and isn’t a value which is going to change (assuming that the speed of light doesn’t change over time, mind you. But there’s no reason to think that will happen. It is the kind of thought that festers in the back of the mind of the BIPM, though…)

So what’s the plan for the kilogram? Which constant of nature is it going to be defined in relation to? Well, the best candidate at the moment seems to be the Planck constant. This is a number which turns up all over the place when you look at quantum physics; it was originally described as the number that relates the energy of a photon to its frequency, but it’s since popped up all over the place.

But how can we use a number that describes the relationship between a wave’s energy and its frequency to define mass? Well, as it turns out, it is perfectly sensible to describe matter as a wave. I’ll let the weirdness of that sink in for a moment, in case you’ve not come across that before. Physical matter is not a thing which just sits there, but a wobbling wave.

Follow me on this one:

So if matter is a wave, the we can talk about the frequency of this matter-wave

Then with this frequency, through the Planck constant, we can talk about the energy of this matter-wave

And Einstein told us that energy and mass are the same thing.

So if we know what the Planck constant is, precisely, we can then define the kilogram in relation to it.

Phew. Of course, if the IPK is no longer needed, then it will become a very expensive collectible. And so a very interesting thing to try and steal…

Sneaky people are after it. Not the feathers, the kilogram. The original. Which is in a vault in France for safe keeping. And these are no ordinary sneaky people; they have skills. Will they get away with it? Will we? The con is on.

Written by Dan Bond & Brian Macken

Produced by Dan Booth

Some sound effects provided by Freesound.org