Thursday 22nd September 2022
Manchester Arena, Manchester, England
It’s a strange homecoming that takes a man to the farthest reaches of the universe. But strange things are the stock in trade of Oldham lad (and internationally renowned physicist) Brian Cox, whose Horizons Live tour winds down with a return to Manchester. Galaxies, suns, quantum mechanics and, of course, black holes – oddities that, when delivered by Professor Cox on stage tonight, seem as natural as the air outside.
I was sceptical of the Horizons Live tour before booking my ticket. I passed up the opportunity to see the Manchester show when it was originally scheduled and it was only because of its Covid-induced cancellation that I was given a second chance on this Thursday night a year later. I wondered what it would involve: it would be a visual treat, no doubt, but would such an extravaganza turn it into a circus? Would its discussion of astrophysics be too complicated or, in trying to reach laymen like myself, would it be dumbed down to the point of insult? I read popular science, listen to podcasts, even write my own science-fiction; what, I asked myself as I opened my wallet, would I be getting out of Horizons?
Professor Cox, too, is aware of the strange dimensions of his show. On stage tonight, he remarks with warmth on how so many people have shown up for Horizons in an arena usually reserved for concerts. There are mathematicians in the audience. Cox mentions that his support act, the comedian Robin Ince (who also co-hosts his podcast), told him not to refer to the show as a lecture, “not at these prices”. It’s a joke, of course (though an inaccurate one – have they not seen the current level of tuition fees?) but it addresses the elephant in the room. Horizons Live is an astrophysics lecture, but in the best possible sense. It’s a lecture delivered by a charismatic and knowledgeable lecturer at the top of his game, augmented by powerful cinematic imagery far beyond what you’d find in a university lecture hall.
It is this imagery which, with all due respect to Professor Cox, is the main selling point of Horizons Live. As Cox leads us through a two-hour tour of the universe and our knowledge of it, covering gravity, spacetime, black holes, quantum physics and the origins of life on Earth, this backdrop shifts between various interactive images of stars and galaxies to match his script. The visuals on the screen are incredible; some use the same technology used to create the black hole in the film Interstellar (as Cox acknowledges); others I recognise from the inspiring short film Wanderers. For one brief moment, Cox’s iPad fails and he appeals to an IT geek off-stage (IT being the only vocation that deals in witchcraft more than an astrophysicist). Otherwise, the display is in perfect rehearsed synchronicity with Cox’s delivery, punctuating his points as he makes them.
At its best moments, this is awe-inspiring. The most striking moment comes when Cox presents one of those high-resolution images of the universe captured by space telescopes, but moves us through it in 3D. All the galaxies shown in the image are calculated at their correct distance from one another, and we move forward through them as through a flock of fireflies. I’ve been sitting quietly throughout the whole show, but at this moment I’m also quiet in my soul. I can’t think of anything that has impressed upon me so greatly the sheer scale of the known universe. Any residual scepticism I have about Horizons Live has vanished.
Another welcome feature of the show is the contribution of Robin Ince. Recognising the intellectual heaviness of the lecture, Professor Cox turns the stage over to his companion during various intermissions, in which Ince has the daunting task of delivering some science-based stand-up comedy, but in such a way as to make our return to Cox’s serious lecture seamless. This Ince carries off with aplomb, remarking on our collective furrowed brows and equation-induced headaches, and contrasting his own looks with the similarly-aged Cox’s rock-star features (“time ages us at different speeds”; “a man who declines to follow the law of entropy”). It’s a valuable part of the show: when Ince emerges to provide relief during a later intermission, it’s a crucial intervention at a point when our minds have begun to unspool in following Cox’s discussion of quantum mechanics.
I cannot provide a full review of Horizons Live as that would involve discussing in depth the ideas Professor Cox unpacks. And, as Ince might say, that would require me to have some understanding of what’s going on. But it’s to Cox’s great credit that he can summarise his key points without talking down to the audience, and lead us on a tour through the universe and its hidden trails without us ever feeling lost, or needing to grip his hand more tightly. There’s a confidence to Cox’s lecture and a naturalness to how it unfolds. From Einstein’s equations, he explains, there emerged so many questions and inquiries, and he weaves important but lesser-known luminaries like Karl Schwarzschild and John Wheeler into his scientific tapestry with skill.
There is, however, one concept which dominates the evening, just as it dominates our imagination when we think about the universe. “I want to talk about black holes,” Cox says. He has a book about them coming out in a couple of weeks, and clearly they are on his mind. They are the “Rosetta stones” for understanding our universe, he says, and he talks us through their emergence in post-Einsteinian theory, the scepticism and then acceptance shown towards the idea of them, before talking about Hawking radiation and the black hole information paradox. When the big screen behind him shows the famous photograph of a black hole, captured in 2019, it’s an image no doubt familiar to everyone in the audience, such is our fascination with them.
Cox’s anchor in this discussion is the Penrose diagram, which is used to explain the relationship spacetime has to black holes. It remains on the screen as Cox discusses the event horizon, singularities, world lines and the multiverse – it’s a marvel that Cox is able to lead us down this path without losing us. The use of diagrams might sound off-putting to one who has not seen the show, but they are used sparingly (earlier, Cox unpacks an equation he has put up on the screen, something which, in a nod to the Arena’s more usual musical acts, he calls an “equation solo”). The more powerful visuals mentioned earlier dominate, and the show as a whole is well-balanced between popular science and providing glimpses of the cutting edge.
It has indeed been a strange homecoming for Cox. I’ve been to the Manchester Arena multiple times, both before and after the attack in 2017, but no visit has been as peculiar as this: thousands of people listening intently to an astrophysics lecture. For all the spectacular visuals, the night has essentially been one mild-mannered man talking on stage. It’s been a great display of human intelligence and inquisitiveness, not only from Cox but from the audience who have eagerly followed him on his path. Even the comic Ince returns to the stage to deliver a profound poem he has written.
Our curiosity has been indulged, but rather than sated, the show has inspired us to ask more about the universe. Cox quotes the physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who wrote that beauty is that which resonates with us on the deepest level, and certainly the night and the stage has produced plenty of beauty and resonance. Even black holes, which in the popular imagination are imposing destroyers of stars, are shown to be key to our future understanding. They are phenomena that link universes together in a web of Penrose diagrams; the eddas of black holes which proliferate throughout the universe perhaps not holes but stitches of repair.
One of Professor Cox’s stated aims for Horizons Live is for audiences to leave with a greater sense of wonder at their world, and to go out into the night and look at the sky a bit differently. But in thinking back on the night I have a moment of understanding before even leaving the Arena. And as I drive home through the Manchester night, fog settles on the road, yet the thought becomes even clearer. At the start of the show, after the stage lights ebbed and the arena went dark, and the professor emerged to begin his tour of space and time, members of the audience who had not yet reached their seats used the light of their smartphones to find their place. Searching in darkness, with small lights used to illuminate their path; while, before them, the story of the universe is already unfolding.
[Author’s Note: The collective noun used here for a group of black holes, an ‘edda’, is my own invention. It is inspired by the Poetic Edda that speaks of Ragnarok, the assembling and the twilight of the gods.]
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