Astrophysicist Andy Fabian

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 11 January 2021

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

Professor Andrew Fabian from Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy has spent his career trying to unravel the mystery of how some of the most dramatic events in the universe can profoundly influence its evolution. For over 50 years he’s been examining our universe using X-ray satellites orbiting way above earth’s atmosphere . He’s built up compelling evidence that supermassive black holes at the heart of galaxies are the engines that drive the movement of energy through the universe and provide the building blocks for the formation of new galaxies. They're extraordinary insights, for which he’s now been awarded the 2020 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics, one of the world's most prestigious science prizes. Jim Al-Khalili hears how Andy gets to capture epic galactic events in motion to build up a picture of this vast ecosystem - and also how he earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records for discovering the deepest note in the universe – a B flat , 57 octaves below middle C. Producer Adrian Washbourne

Transcript

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0:40.0	about their life and research.
0:42.0	Welcome to the life scientific.
0:44.0	Today we're in for an exciting journey into deep deep space.
0:48.0	My guest is Cambridge astronomer Andrew Fabian, who spent his career studying some of the most dramatic
0:54.4	and violent events in the universe taking place hundreds of millions of light years
0:58.8	from Earth and is one of the most prolific and influential astronomers of our time.
1:04.0	In particular, he scrutinised the X-ray light emitted from the centres of very bright galaxies,
1:09.7	revealing the intriguing supermassive black holes hiding within and which play a vital
1:15.0	role in the way galaxies evolve over cosmic timescales. These black holes are, he says, the
1:20.8	engines at the heart of galaxies, redistributing energy throughout the universe
1:25.6	and providing the building blocks for future galaxy formation.
1:29.6	And he became hooked on astronomy at the age of seven when he read in a children's
1:33.2	Encyclopedia that astronomers could work out what a star is made of by studying the
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