Brian Cox says “everybody owns science” – so why aren’t we paying attention?

I’m not often at a loss for words but, I must confess, I recently let myself down. Sharing drinks with the crew of Artemis II, who travelled around the moon and back earlier this year, I found myself standing next to the pilot, Victor Glover. Stuck for chat with the man who has flown further than any other person ever, I could only ask, “And how are you liking Tenerife?” and hotel chit-chat ensued.

Why didn’t I have the knowledge, or at least the curiosity, to ask something more significant? Is it because my brain’s too full of whether the Faithfuls will outwit the Traitors, or whether Manchester City gets relegated? Or are ideas of space, science and the universe just too big and complicated to deal with?

I ask Brian May, our host in the Canary Islands to the Artemis crew, 15 Nobel laureates and dozens of other planet-sized brains at Starmus, the festival he co-founded to celebrate science, space, music and art. Because, of course, besides being a legendary guitarist and longtime defender of animal wildlife, May is a bona fide astrophysicist, with a PhD in interplanetary dust and a mission to communicate science to the masses.

May agrees it’s a tough one – “I wish I had the answer” – but one of this year’s Festival Awards recipients, Professor Brian Cox, sounds more hopeful: “Science, astronomy, cosmology are more entertaining and fulfilling than TV and those things you mention, but people are busy, so they respond to what they have access to. We have a treasure trove of stuff, and every single taxpayer in this country pays for it, so they have a right to the knowledge we’ve generated. Everybody owns it.”

Which seems fair enough, but what’s our incentive to go digging, or risk if we don’t? Cox quotes the American astronomer and broadcaster who inspired his own interest in all things scientific: “Carl Sagan said that we once had the Great Library at Alexandria but curiosity remained a noble pursuit and no one democratised it.” For Sagan, sharing such knowledge was our only defence against a possible collapse of civilisation, what Cox describes as “the barbarians at the gate”.

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In better news, May and Cox are both able to draw their own crowds and bring stardust to proceedings, not least because of their celebrated musical hinterlands. May tells me his happiest moment as a physicist, securing the world’s first high-quality stereoscopic picture of Pluto, was as joyful as “striking the final chord of the national anthem on the roof of Buckingham Palace” for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 2002.

To him, music, maths, science and art are all connected. “It’s a jigsaw puzzle that fits together without trying.” He adds: “If science is the knowledge of where we really stand in the universe, music connects people and liberates them from feeling too important.”

For Cox, also a hitmaker in a previous life, music offers another way to make sense of otherwise unimaginable ideas. “It’s a language allowing us to explore our human reaction to nature and to life, an extra way of trying to deal with existential questions, a different light to illuminate problems and challenges.”

Not everyone needs music to tell a great story, where the personal meets the universal. After we’d swapped notes on our breakfasts, Glover shared with a wider crowd his sensation of radio silence for the 40 minutes he was on the far side of the moon. He said, “I’ve had the privilege of missing Earth and all earthlings. I wish everybody could have this experience.” You could’ve heard a pin drop, everyone at a loss for words, this time in a good way.

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