Looking up to the stars

Entertainment and substance can go well together, says Ben Moore. He’s also happy to acknowledge what he doesn’t know, and prefers using humour to sermonising. | Photo: Désirée Good

The Universe is 13.8 billion years old. That’s a figure that simply defies imagination – which is why Ben Moore is standing in front of the clock tower of St Peter’s Church in Zurich on a rainy night. The clock strikes midnight – that’s the Big Bang. “Space, matter and energy come into being”, he says. “Time begins; the Universe explodes into existence”. Twenty minutes after midnight, the first star emits its light. Moore drives through the nocturnal city. The day progresses, and further galactic events occur. Our Sun appears at around 4 p.m., followed not long afterwards by our Earth and Moon.

Moore celebrates the birth of our Solar System with a cocktail at a bar. Late in the evening, he returns to the clock tower to show how Homo sapiens only appears at one second before midnight. This is all shown in a 15-minute film produced by the Rietberg Museum for non-European art in Zurich, in which 13.8 billion years are condensed into a 24-hour day. It was released in 2015 and has so far racked up almost 20,000 views on YouTube.

Moore is always finding new ways of communicating the mysteries of his field to a broader audience. In 2022, he published a best-selling book entitled ‘Unrewarded’ in which he tells the story of the Universe through the lives of 42 scientists who made groundbreaking discoveries but never received a Nobel Prize. He pays tribute, for example, to the Ancient Greek philosopher Eratosthenes, who proved that the Earth is round, and to the long-overlooked US astronomer Vera Rubin (1928–2016), who provided crucial evidence for the existence of dark matter.

People today often insist that scientific findings should be better represented in society and politics, and that researchers should communicate openly so as to build up trust. Moore, who is a professor of astrophysics at the University of Zurich, has actually been doing just this for over twenty years. He has published five books, written columns for the magazine of the Swiss daily newspaper ‘Tages-Anzeiger’ and has given countless interviews. He’s even hosted science shows at Zurich’s Kosmos cultural centre, where he was billed as the ‘pop star of astrophysics’.

Entertainment with substance

But Moore always combines his entertainment with substance. “There’s a lot of work behind it, alongside my day job as a professor”, he tells us when we meet him in his small office. There’s a blackboard covered in equations and a photograph of a star nebula hanging on the opposite wall. In his science communication work, Moore aims to express himself clearly, though without any loss of precision. He’ll freely admit when he doesn’t know something, and he prefers humour to sermonising. “As a Brit, I suppose this is a natural advantage of mine”, he says.

But in academic circles, he’s sometimes confronted with the scepticism that exists regarding popular science. “On occasion, it’s undoubtedly hurt my chances when applying for funding”, he says. He’s referring to the so-called ‘Sagan effect’ – a phenomenon discussed among historians of science according to which scientists who are more in the public eye are generally taken less seriously by certain segments of the academic community. It’s named after the US astronomer Carl Sagan, who produced a successful science series for TV and also wrote bestsellers. In 1991, five years before his death, the National Academy of Sciences rejected his application for honorary membership. “That was despite his having a proven record of research achievement”, says Moore. Sagan gets a whole chapter to himself in ‘Unrewarded’.

So what’s Moore’s motivation for popularising his findings all the same? “Knowledge is the most important asset of our civilisation”, he says. He’s keen to give something back to the general public – after all, it’s their taxes that fund the salary that enables him to reflect on the origins of the Universe, the stars and the planets of our Milky Way. But he’s also realised that he simply likes answering questions.

It was Moore’s father, a forester in northern England, who sparked his son’s quest for knowledge. “My parents never had the chance to go to university”, he says. But his father was interested in nature and the Universe, even reading books on quantum mechanics. Moore Senior and Junior together carried out the double-slit experiment in their loft that shows how light can behave like a wave – an astonishing phenomenon. Today, says Moore Junior, he could answer some of his father’s questions, “but not all of them”.

The hunt for dark matter

Moore’s research interests include dark matter. It’s not visible, and its existence is proved only by the laws of physics. “We understand better today how galaxies are formed, but it remains a mystery as to what dark matter actually comprises”, he says. That could change from 2030 onwards when the European Space Agency (ESA) launches its ARRAKIHS mission that will use a telescope in space to search for traces of dark matter in the outer regions (called ‘halos’) of at least 80 galaxies. Swiss universities are also participating in the mission, and Moore is leading the Swiss science team on it.

He finds this project “cool” and can’t wait to see the data – not least because he’s the person responsible for checking the simulation calculations. When he’s asked about the biggest challenge we face in exploring the Universe, he says with conviction: “Getting the funding”. He adds: “We only know a miniscule part of the Universe”. When he was a young researcher, he was convinced that he’d be able to unravel the mysteries of the cosmos. He’s more humble today, and believes that certain fundamental questions might not be answered fully for another thousand years. “But every little contribution can inspire younger researchers to pursue what fascinates them”.

Moore’s public appearances elicit mixed reactions. Religious people send him Bibles, while conspiracy theorists accuse him of withholding information. But most of the feedback is positive and comes from people with an interest in science. Moore tells us about one particular encounter that he found moving. A reader of his rang him up, said he was suffering from cancer, and asked to meet him. “So I drove out to see him”, says Moore. “We chatted, and a week later he was dead”.

Where do we come from, where are we going? These are questions that concern not just astrophysicists. Moore calculates that the Sun will swallow the Earth some seven billion years from now. “Humanity is only here by pure chance. And, measured on the scale of the Universe itself, we’ll have disappeared again in the twinkling of an eye”. But contemplating the end of all things only brings forth his British sense of humour again. “Life is utterly meaningless”, he says. “So let’s enjoy it and make the best of it”.

For Moore, one of the best things life can offer is music. He’s released electronic tracks as ‘Professor Moore’ and is currently recording an album featuring the Spanish guitar. These sounds help his brain to relax, he says. After having spent a long time working almost exclusively in front of a computer screen, the past few years have seen him back at his telescope – sometimes in a secluded spot in the mountains of the canton of Graubünden, at other times in the Namibian desert. “In those moments, I see the same things as everyone else”, he says. “Endless stars and the overwhelming beauty of the Universe”.