well welcome to soviet vision or is me sophie shevardnadze. the best efforts of scientists this fundamental question a still a conundrum my guest today has his own formula for tracing the answer is joined by professor paul davies is a system astrobiology cosmologist and bestselling author. professor paul davis. bestselling author really great to have you with us today. so i should talk about special information because i'm a journalist and i work with information a lot now you're interested in this concept of organized information for me as a journalist information is more obstructive a concept than mathematicians think of it as bits and binary code and stuff without making it to complicate formality and says can you explain what is information in physics. right say you're correct that we use that data nice but we have a sort of rough and ready idea of what information means and the best definition is that it reduces on certainty so for example if you were going to carry moscow to the metro and you just got random you might quite tight on a 10

hello welcome to so think of visionaries me sophie shevardnadze more than 5 years ago humanity managed to glimpse into the farthest corner of our solar system pluto and the clipper about i asked dr alan stern planetary scientist astronaut and had him not his pluto mission what wonderful discoveries still lie ahead of us. dr alan stern planetary scientist astronaut had of nasa has played a mission great to have you with us today alan thanks it's just great to be here so you have been the principal investigator of nasa as mission to pluto and the most widespread conception of pluto in the eyes of the public is the ball of ice floating out there in the dark so can you call it scientific wonderland what makes it so special. well it really is a scientific wonder and we really had a pretty good idea that from studies from the earth. new horizons the nasa mission that explored for the 1st time what it's deemed discovered was far beyond their expectations. which is a planet with 5 moods and atmosphere highly active geology and evidence for water ocean it's you're even. close for biology is jus

sophie shevardnadze has been speaking to the founder of the ig nobel prize which rewards some of the years wackiest findings you can watch the show at any time dot com here's a preview. you get something like 10000 new nominations every year and about 10 or 20 percent of those are people who nominate themselves the ones who nominate themselves almost always lose if you're trying to these prizes are strange. ignore it nobel prize are not for the best something they're also not for the worst something they're there only for things that make people laugh and then think if that's what you're trying to do you're trying to win an ignoble prize you're trying to think of something that will make everybody laugh and then think you're going to fail well there's uncertainty and stress this year i'm having an impression that if a thing in science is becoming a little bit more shaky among the general public do you feel that. yeah i think that's true for a few reasons part of it is that it around the world there are now some people who are. just automatically reacting to everything that happens by

be holding the ignoble prize which does celebrate the strangest side of scientific research sophie shevardnadze speaks to its founder on r.t. dot com will all this uncertainty and stress this year i'm having an impression that a faith in science is becoming a little bit more shaky among the general public do you feel that. yeah i think that's true for a few reasons part of it is that it around the world there are now some people who are. just automatically reacting to everything that happens by saying that's wrong don't trust it. another thing though that's happening is that for the 1st time in a long long time everybody is paying attention to scientists so now people are looking at what scientists actually do rather than what the movie version of scientists do in the movie version the scientists all they understand everything before they even begin to look at it that's not what really happens what really happens is most of the time scientists are very confused about most things and they're not sure and they spend most of their time trying to be less confused trying to become a little more sure