While pondering ideas, history offers us a few lessons. Flash back to 1781: musician and amateur astronomer William Herschel was peering through a telescope in his garden in Bath, UK, when he spotted a curious object “either nebulous star, or perhaps a comet”. It turned out Herschel’s discovery was rather more significant – it was a new planet.

But what to call it? Herschel named it after the ruling King George III, one of the few British monarchs to have a deep interest in science. But he was swiftly overruled by the astronomical community. Planets had been traditionally named after mythological deities. Imagine: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, George, Neptune… it doesn’t bear thinking about. Uranus – in mythology the father of Saturn – won. Sorry, George.

By the start of the 19th century, astronomers were uncovering dozens of asteroids and minor planets in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. For a while, tradition held – Ceres, Vesta, Pallas – but as the asteroid count grew, the myths ran out. They started calling the cosmic runts after mistresses and pets. Asteroid 2309 is named Mr Spock, not after the Star Trek character but the discoverer’s cat. Horrified, the IAU .

“Asteroid 2309 is named Mr Spock, not after the Star Trek character but the discoverer’s cat”

But strict rules still leave room for creative manoeuvres. In 1978, astronomer Jim Christy discovered a moon orbiting Pluto. His instinct was to name it after his wife Charlene (nicknamed Shar). But mythology had to prevail. He chose Charon (“Shar-on” in some astronomer circles), the ferryman who transported souls across the river Styx to Pluto’s underworld.

Now groups keen on astronomy – clubs, planetariums, schools – have a chance to join the name game and christen a new world. The rules: 16 characters or fewer; inoffensive; pronounceable (in some language); and no names of living individuals or pets!

Good luck. It’s a real gift of a chance. Just don’t suggest Fido.

This article appeared in print under the headline “A gift from above”

The new measurements were possible only because the galaxy, which is
not visible, lies in front of the quasar Parkes 1229-021 (Astrophysical
Journal, 10 March). A team of astronomers from Britain and Canada was able
to analyse the structure of the magnetic field of the galaxy by studying
the radio emission from the quasar behind it.

Judith Perry of the University of Cambridge and Phillipp Kronberg and
Edwin Zukowsky of the University of Toronto used the Very Large Array (VLA)
of radio telscopes in Socorro, New Mexico, to observe the quasar. The quasar
has a red shift of 1.04, which is equivalent to a distance of 6 billion
light years.

The astronomers found that the radio waves from the quasar are polarised
– that is, the waves vibrate preferentially in one direction. When the radio
waves pass through the galaxy, a region in which there is both a magnetic
field and ionised gas, the direction of polarisation is changed, or ‘rotated’.
Different wavelengths are rotated by different amounts.

The quasar has a narrow jet emerging from it. Perry and her colleagues
observed the ‘rotation measure’ at a range of frequencies along the jet.
This enabled them to map the strength and structure of the intervening galaxy’s
magnetic field.

The optical spectrum of the quasar has absorption lines that are characteristic
of spiral galaxies. The galaxy lies at a redshift of 0.4, so it is about
4 billion light years away.

Because we see the galaxy as it was when the Universe was only slightly
more than half its present age, we might expect it to be different from
nearby galaxies. However, Perry and her colleagues were surprised to find
that the structure of its magnetic field is very similar to the Milky Way’s
close neighbour M 81, and its strength is comparable to our own Galaxy’s
magnetic field – between 1 and 4 microgauss (about a millionth of the field
strength of the Earth).

Cosmologists believe that a field of such strength and complexity should
not have been able to develop so soon after the big bang. According to theory,
there was a very weak ‘seed field’ in the very early Universe. The action
of electric currents driven by moving gas later amplified the field inside
galaxies by a ‘dynamo effect’. The seed field was very weak – 10 billion
times weaker than the field in our Galaxy today. If it had been much stronger,
it would have prevented the collapse of gas clouds to form stars and galaxies.
The new observations suggest that the ‘seed field’ could have been more
than a thousand times stronger than previously believed. If this is so,
the magnetic field must have played an important role in the evolution of
the Universe.

Perry and her colleagues have already observed rotation measures for
several hundred quasars with red shifts up to 2.5. In the case of the more
distant quasars, several galaxies – not to mention intergalactic clouds
– may lie in the line of the sight, making it difficult to measure the magnetic
field of a single galaxy. Perry has tantalising evidence that many other
galaxies with large fields exist at even greater distances, but it is impossible
to disentangle the measurements without corroboration at visible wavelengths.
‘The statistics are really compelling, but we want to see much more optical
data,’ she says.

It was to be my first revelation of just how ignorant our arts-biased
culture can be of matters scientific. Today, at least no one is in any doubt
that science education is a good thing. MPs wax lyrical about it (incredible,
when you realise that only 2 per cent of them have any qualifications even
in school science). Industrialists emphasise the need for a future supply
of technologists to make Britain a great manufacturing nation once again.
And now educationists are ensuring that most children in England and Wales
follow the National Curriculum, and therefore study some science at school.

But all of these initiatives are hollow if the cultural climate is wrong.
What is the point in educating a youngster to achieve A-grades in A-level
mathematics and physics if all he or she is going to do is take those skills
to the City?

Science needs some good – and honest – PR. (It also needs higher status,
more realistic remuneration, and much greater job security, but that is
for another article.) Nowhere has this become more evident that in the extensive
research into public attitudes to science in recent years. The well-known
survey led by John Durant of the Science Museum in London of 2009 adults
revealed two fascinating bits of information. First, most people are appallingly
ignorant of science – but that is not because they want to be. When asked
which issues they would like the media to give more coverage to, the respondents
placed new advances in medicine, science and technology well ahead of sport,
films or politics.

Durant’s sample would have a hard time looking for such enlightenment
in the media of today. Sport, the arts and politics are not only covered
in depth as news items, but they are endlessly dissected, chewed over and
analysed long after the event. Would that this could happen to science.
So often, it is dismissed as an amusing tailpiece, ‘and finally . . .’

The tabloid press is the worst offender, still perpetuating the myth
that scientists are ‘boffins’ who make ‘amazing discoveries’. Because science
is presented as a string of unexpected rabbits emerging from a magician’s
hat, it is little wonder that readers take crackpot counterclaims just as
seriously. How are you to know the score when you have not been told the
rules of the game?

But as far as our cultural climate is concerned, it really does not
matter. Surveys – and straightforward experience – reveal that most people
(53 per cent) glean their knowledge of science from television. Newspapers
(25 per cent), books (24 per cent) and radio (a paltry 5 per cent – which
is sad because it is doing a good job these days) cannot hold a candle to
the box. And there’s the rub. Of all the media, television is in the most
conservative hands: the arts-educated Oxbridge mafia. It is run by people
who have been known to exclaim: ‘Goodness! So the Sun is a star. Tell me
– is the Moon a star?’ But they do allow science programmes on television
– just as long as they know their place. TV science is slotted into its
own ghettos – Tomorrow’s World and (occasionally) QED on BBC₁;
Horizon and Antenna on BBC₂; Equinox on Channel 4; and nothing
to speak of on ITV. If you try to buck the system by attempting to get a
network programme on ITV – as Pioneer Productions once did – you will not
win. The Neptune Encounter, which we somehow managed to finished just four
days after Voyager 2’s historic flyby of Neptune, the schedulers in their
wisdom deemed suitable for screening at 3 am.

At least we gained a showing on the box – the majority of programme-makers
are nowhere near as fortunate. Ironically, there is no shortage of ideas.
Equinox received 550 proposals in the latest round of submissions, competing
for a grand total of 15 slots. Given the incredibly successful track record
of natural history on television, why don’t the controllers expand the number
of science slots? But commercial television says science does not attract
the advertisers. The BBC is liable to tell you that it must keep up its
ratings and besides, it has done it all before. Have you ever heard that
argument advanced when it comes to sport or politics?

It gets worse. Like everything else, television had to become leaner
and fitter. Gone are the days of expensive blockbuster documentaries, and
instead are slotted in the quick and cheap quiz shows. Programme makers
are deeply concerned about this, which is why they are mooting the idea
of subscription television. But this would be the death-knell for the understanding
of science. As the former Astronomer Royal, Francis Graham Smith, said:
‘If science occurs only in obvious predetermined slots, it will never reach
90 per cent of the public audience. Furthermore, if television is accessible
only by subscription, no one among the 90 per cent will find an unexpectedly
interesting science programme by accident.’

So how do we change the prevailing culture? One way is to lobby hectically
to get more science programmes onto television – especially fun ones, in
the mould of Yorkshire TV’s Don’t Ask Me, in which viewers can participate.
Anything goes – anything, that is, to show that science is part of normal
life. Graham Smith asks ‘Couldn’t we expect some science, and some scientists,
more often in the soaps?’ Ultimately, of course, we want to have more scientifically
literate people running our television stations.

Mike Hollingworth, secretary of the Directors’ and Producers’ Council,
suggests an even more revolutionary idea. Channel 5 is up for grabs. The
usual bidders are out in force, including what was London’s Thames Television.
What is to stop one of the foundations of science in the UK – perhaps one
blessed with large subscriptions from industrial and technological companies
– from bidding for the franchise itself?

On this occasion, it is almost certainly too late. But the vision is
there. I cannot think of anything calculated to bring back a sense of awe
and wonder to our jaded palates than to have a channel looking in depth
at the exploration of our world and our Universe. And of course, we would
allow arts programming – within reason.

Heather Couper is past president of the British Astronomical Association,
author and television presenter, and now runs Pioneer Productions.