do you believe in god
oh that's a big question okay no
do you believe in god
no
i guess you'd have to put me down in the
in the don't knows column on that one
i'm an agnostic no
i don't
do you believe in god no
absolutely not
no evidence for it it's interesting it's
actually a topic that interests me a lot
because i met scientists you know there
are fundamentalist christian physicists
there are staunch atheist physicists
i would say probably the staunch
atheists are probably in the majority i
mean i can't prove that there's no god
can't forget there is one but as far as
belief goes i don't believe that there
is one
do you believe in god
not really
i don't believe in the sort of
judeo-christian god but then i also
don't believe that the universe was
sneezed out of the nose of the great
green article caesar i don't believe
that it was brought into existence by
the flying spaghetti monster i don't
believe that thor's use or whatever god
you can think of there are an infinite
number of possibilities and because i'm
a scientist what i'm interested in is
the evidence there's no contradiction
it's possible to both have a religious
belief
and and to to be a scientist uh for my
part i guess maybe i just lack the
imagination or the leap of faith you
need to actually to actually believe in
religion as well so you have to put me
down in the agnostics column my i guess
uh departure from religion came i think
as early as nine or ten when i was uh we
were being taught about uh a big element
of the catholic faith which is called
transubstantiation
transubstantiation for those who don't
know means that during the eucharist
during the sort of communion ceremony
the body is that the bread is actually
physically changed whatever that means
in terms of catholic doctrine into the
into the body of christ and i got very
excited as a nine-year-old
and stuck my hand up excitedly in the
class and go look look i got a
microscope for christmas what we can do
we can do this really great experiment
we can look at the the host beforehand
and then we can do the holy communion
thing and then we can look at it
afterwards and compare the two wouldn't
that be a great experiment and i got
sent out of the class and um also a note
was sent to the paris priest
and i was told that those type of
questions are not the questions you
should ask just observe the world and
make your own opinion about it so
religion and i departed
ways very very long time ago anyway
i think religion is wonderful for all
the good work it does
but uh i can't find my way to believe in
it
in god
is that fair
you'll keep your mouth closed
what's your favorite astronomical
feature my favorite astronomical
phenomenon is are comets when you can
see them in the sky and they just hang
there for months and you just watch them
i'm fascinated by that so it's got to be
i think it's those star-forming pillars
that the hubble space telescope took
this truly amazing picture of which is a
little strange because actually the main
thing i research on is galaxies but
actually in terms of beautiful pictures
that really is stunning and it's just
because it's such a it's such a
beautiful object it's nothing to do with
the fact that it's an astronomical
object you know if i'd seen that picture
hung up in an art gallery i'd said
that's a really pretty picture there's a
bright star just out of the picture
which is kind of blazing down on it and
is eroding these pillars away and so you
see these pillars of gas and then little
stars just starting to pop out from them
so from scientific point of view it's
fascinating but fundamentally it's
because it's a very pretty picture i
have a particular favorite picture which
you can look up on the internet it's uh
it's a picture by the hubble space
telescope of the galaxy cluster abell
2218 and it's one of the iconic images
because it shows
really spectacular examples of
gravitational lensing which is something
that i've worked on in the past but i
like this picture because just at a
glance it tells us two really amazing
things about the universe first that
einstein was right and that mass bends
light and secondly that dark matter
exists
it's a lot to infer from one image but
it's a pretty powerful package and it
looks beautiful as well
my favorite astronomical feature
i think my favorite phot is is is
something you can't see
with the naked eye it's the hubble deep
field
image
the one where you you look at it and you
realize that there are faint blue
objects in the image that are
you know they're about
10 billion years old and you just think
you're looking at anything that light
has been traveling for 10 billion years
and
it's just remarkable that's that's the
remarkable thing about astronomy that
when you look out you're not just
looking at beautiful things
you're not just looking at large
distances you're looking back in time
and that is quite amazing
you