Wonders Of The Moon With Dara Ó Briain (Ch5)
Heat Pumps: What They Really Mean For You (BBC1)
Sir Paul Neile MP, one of the 17th-century founders of the Royal Society, made the greatest scientific discovery of his age — the existence of life on the moon.
Using a telescope he built him-self after the English Civil War, he saw a large animal galloping across the lunar surface. It was, he announced to fellow astronomers, probably an elephant.
Further investigation revealed that what he’d seen was a mouse, trapped inside the homemade apparatus. This proves, if nothing else, that you should never trust what a scientist tells you.
Comedian and keen amateur stargazer Dara Ó Briain, in the first part of his Wonders Of The Moon (Ch5), was thrilled by lunar effects on the tides, and fascinated with prehistoric moon calendars carved in stone.
He told us with delight that the moon is moving away from the Earth at 3.8cm a year, about the speed our fingernails grow. And he bubbled over with excitement at the news that, when viewed at the atomic level under microscopes, slivers of rock brought back by astronauts on the Apollo missions reveal minute quantities of water.
Comedian and keen amateur stargazer Dara Ó Briain, in the first part of his Wonders Of The Moon (Ch5), was thrilled by lunar effects on the tides
OPERATIC FINALE OF THE NIGHT
Sword-wielding psycho Honey (Sacha Dhawan) mimed Figaro’s aria from The Barber Of Seville by Rossini, while he set about more bloodshed at the climax of Wolf (BBC1). As barbers go, this one’s more like Sweeney Todd.
Actor Sacha Dhawan stars as sword-wielding psycho Honey in Wolf (BBC1)
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But he didn’t mention Sir Paul Neile, and he firmly denied the moon could have any psychological effect on the human mind or body. Analysis of scientific data, he explained, reveals no connection. We might as well believe in werewolves.
That’s the strange thing about devotees of science. They’ll wax lyrical about the marvels of the solar system but they flatly refuse to admit there might be anything beyond their understanding. Their obsession with the rational masks a fear of the unknown.
This look at the moon’s influence on civilisation through the millennia could have been much more interesting if Dara had dared to consider some of the anecdotal evidence. Many police officers, A&E nurses and teachers will tell you that surges in lawless behaviour often coincide with the full moon.
The explorer Laurens Van Der Post, a survivor of wartime Japanese prison camps, wrote that British POWs knew to fear the new moon, because that was when the guards were at their most sadistic.
At the other extreme, New York literary agent Oscar Collier always put potential bestsellers out to auction at a full moon, because long experience taught him that’s when publishers were most reckless with their money. ‘I can’t explain it,’ he said, ‘but I would have been foolish to ignore it.’
Dara’s producers were not reckless with their money. They sent him moon-watching in County Wicklow for a night, hoping for clear skies. Instead, there was thick cloud . . . and no budget to hang around waiting for better weather. ‘You’d see everything here,’ said Dara sadly, ‘if the clouds would just go away.’
Heat Pumps: What They Really Mean For You (BBC1) gives us an idea of how we’ll fare after it becomes impossible to install a new gas boiler in the UK
We’ll all need a serious budget if we want to stay warm after 2035. BBC climate editor Justin Rowlatt casually remarked, on Heat Pumps: What They Really Mean For You (BBC1), that the Government’s Net Zero drive means it will be impossible to install a new gas boiler in the UK within 12 years.
Instead, we’ll be expected to rip out all our radiators and convert to noisy, bulky outdoor heat pumps, which look like the air conditioning units you see rattling away on the side of dodgy new builds along the Costa del Sol.
Justin chatted to one couple whose switch to a heat pump is costing them 18 grand. Cheap at half the price, eh?
Co-presenter Dr Tara Shine investigated an alternative ‘green’ option, hydrogen heaters. Their only by-product is water so there’s no CO2 pollution.
Unfortunately, added Dr Tara, hydrogen is ‘highly explosive’. Nobody mention the Hindenburg, please.
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