Science Friday - 3D Images Of Galaxies Will Rock You (Ft. Queen)

Episode Date: March 5, 2026

"Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality. Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see." There’s something about space that captures the imagination of scientists and artists alike. Just ask astrophysicist Derek Ward-Thompson and astronomer Brian May (yes, THAT Brian May, guitarist of Queen). In their new book Islands in Infinity: Galaxies 3-D, they turn flat images of the galaxies to three dimensional spacescapes that leap off the page.  Host Flora Lichtman talks with Ward-Thompson and May about the enchanting nature of space and the collision of art and astronomy. And yes, they get into the music. Guests: Dr. Brian May is an astronomer and the guitarist of Queen. Dr. Derek Ward-Thompson is an astrophysicist at the University of Lancashire in England. Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Hey, it's Flora Lichten, and you're listening to Science Friday. As you know, we live in the Milky Way galaxy, one of an estimated 200 billion galaxies out there. You know the pictures, you've seen them, the cloudy, beautiful spirals? Well, now a new book takes these images to a higher dimension. Islands in infinity, galaxies 3D brings space to stereoscopic life, turning those flat galactic postcards into three-dimensional spacecapes. I've got the authors with me. Dr. Derek Ward Thompson is an astrophysicist at the University of Lancashire in England and astronomer Dr. Brian May. He's had a circuitous career in astronomy

because he was busy for 30 years, you know, doing this. Yes, Brian May, as in the guitarist of Queen, that Brian May. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for inviting us. Thank you, Flora. Okay, Brian, I don't know if this is charming or embarrassing, but I think on this show, your astronomer credentials may hold as much weight

as being in one of the most iconic bands of all time. So thank you for coming to nerd out with us today. Thank you, Flores. It's my pleasure, absolutely. And I'm very proud of the book, and I'm glad you like it. I had a great time creating it with Derek here and with J.P. Metsavayno, are a Finnish genius friend who converted these, as you say,

flat pictures normally of galaxies into wonderful three-dimensional representations, which really are very true to life. And yeah, it's a first. It's a first. Is that true? There has never been a stereoscopic book on galaxies before, no, never, ever. And the reason is clear it's very hard to do. You know, you can't go out with a stereoscopic. microscopic camera with a 3D camera and take pictures of galaxies, you have to do it another way.

And it's a magic process that JPM has pioneered using the available data on the spatial setup in each of these galaxies. I mean, Derek, you're an astrophysicist. You focus on star and planet formation. What interests you about these images? Oh, it's just amazing. I mean, I've been looking at stars and galaxies for since my PhD over 40 years ago. And this is the first time I felt that them literally jumping out of the page at me. And actually, okay, you might be able to guess what their structure is from looking at a picture.

But it's only when you see them in these stereoscopic images that you really, really get a feel for how they genuinely look, how they feel. It's almost like holding them in your hand. It's quite remarkable. It really is. J.P. is a wizard. I mean, they are, they're mesmerizing to look at. And it's funny because I, you know, I've looked at space imagery for decades in this job. And then to realize that they're, the shapes are actually quite different from what I had pictured in my mind. You know, I always imagine them as flat. because that's how they looked. Yeah. Yep. Yeah.

Even the most familiar ones, it's the shock, isn't it? You see like M31. We've all seen countless pictures of M31. But I mean, the same for me. Until you actually see it in 3D, you don't have the right image in your head. You don't have the right understanding of the way it ticks. Derek, can you learn something new by seeing these images in 3D?

I mean, is it telling us anything scientifically? Oh yes. In the book we try to demonstrate the full sort of range of what galaxies look like. And in particular, there's one chapter in the book where we talk about so-called interacting galaxies. These are galaxies in the process of colliding with each other. And you look at those two-dimensional pictures and it's sort of difficult to feel. or what's going on. You see it in three dimensions, and suddenly you see the whole train wreck of these galaxies that are literally tearing each other apart. And there was one in particular where we've contributed to the debate about how the collision is taking place. Wow, that's cool. Brian, I know you have a long relationship with stereoscopy. How did this come into your life? Well, it goes back a long way to when I was a kid eating my breakfast cereal. And in those days, you used to get toys with your breakfast. It doesn't happen anymore now.

It's rather sad. But with Wheatabix, you used to get little cards at one point, which had two little images on them. And I remember taking this one picture out of the packet, and it was of a hippopotamus. But there's two images of it, and each of the images is flat. and it says on the back, send away a packet top and one and sixpence and we will send you a stereo viewers and you can look at these things as they're meant to be seen. This is what I did. In the post comes the viewer. I pop in the hippopotamus and suddenly the thing isn't too flat pictures anymore. It's one picture and it's so three-dimensional. I feel like I could fall into the mouth of this hippo. It's incredible. I could almost like smell the breath of this animal. So I think to myself,

If this is what can be done in three dimensions, why does anybody bother with two dimensional pictures? Why isn't everything in 3D? So it is a really life-changing moment for me. And truly, I've never lost that excitement. It always seems to me, if you can see it well in 2D, you can see it a whole lot better in 3D. And that's the inspiration for where I am now with Derek.

Now my, you know, I don't have any genius about this. My only genius is bringing Derek and JP together, which is a masterstroke because it's not just a picture book. You have this genius who can make pictures in 3D coupled with one of the world's greatest experts on galactic evolution, which is Derek. And, you know, I thought I knew about galaxies. I didn't until I started writing this book with Derek. And every time we ventured into a new page, I learned something more. So to me, this has been a wonderful voyage of discovery. And marrying these pictures with this incredible knowledge, very up-to-date knowledge in galaxies,

has been completely eye-opening for me. And that's what I hope will happen to you. And anyone who opens this book, I hope your eyes will be open to the universe in three dimensions. Derek, I watched a video of you showing people pictures in 3D, and you can hear people responding. There were literal ooze and ahs in the audience. Yeah. I mean, beyond the science, is this about pleasure?

The pleasure of seeing space in a different way? It's the pleasure of scientific discovery that I'm sure all your listeners can relate to learning something new. I learn something new every day. Brian's being far too modest, by the way. He basically translated it from nerdies into English. so that the idea is that everybody can understand it. It's not just a book for the scientific expert. It's a book for everyone.

And what we hope is people will pick it up and go, ooh, and as you said, and then pause to read some of the words and actually learn along the way as well. I'm so glad we did this. I'm so glad we did this interviewer. I'm going to cherish that quote forever. Thank you.

Nerdies, translating nerdy's. That's true. That's my job. That's my job. That's my job specification. We had lots of fun writing the book together. We had lots of fun in our little team. That was great.

You can tell. You can tell you all are having fun. This is the perfect segue way because after the break, I want to talk about the collision of art and astronomy. Stick around. Brian, let's go back to your salad days. You said growing up that you were told that you couldn't do both art and science. What did you hear exactly? Yeah, that's exactly what I was told.

There were points in my school days where they said, you have to choose now between this and this. There were always choices between art and science. always felt that I did not want to be abandoning one for the other. And that's kind of been my whole life, because I think the complete person, the complete human being, has to understand both art and science. They have to understand the beauty of the universe, and they also have to understand the way it works. They have to understand people. People are part of the universe. People are artistic creatures as well as scientific creations, if you like. So it all intermingles. And people, people that I've met more and more are understanding this. A lot of the greatest scientists

throughout history were actually great musicians or in some cases other kind of artists, including my great friend Patrick Moore, who's an inspiration to all of us. He was a great scientist, but also a fantastic musician and composer. But you look at Sir Isaac Newton, he's a musician. So it's not a new idea, but it's an idea which I think got lost when I was growing up, the previous generation somehow got separated into art and science. And I think it was damaging. I think human beings need to be able to do both and to be able to enjoy both sides of their nature. I agree completely. Derek, where do you fall on this? Oh, absolutely. And Brian gave the example of music. And music is in fact highly mathematical, follows very strict.

mathematical rules. And actually to understand music, you have to understand the mathematics of the rhythm and of the frequencies, the overtones. It's all pure maths and applied physics. I mean, Brian, let's go, I want to go to this moment in your life where your musical career is blasting off and you're trying to do a PhD, which seems just like very difficult to me. What was that like? Yes, difficult. It was. Yeah, I'm trying to do the two things at the same time.

I'm also trying to teach because I have no money and the money for my PhD has run out. So I'm teaching at a comprehensive school in Brixton. So I'm doing this. I am trying to get the group going and the group is looking. hopeful but at the same time we don't have any contacts we don't know how to break into the world of music and I'm trying to finish off my PhD which is increasingly hard because my supervisor doesn't really think I've got it in me I think I can sum it up that way you know I said I'd written up most of my

work and he kept coming back and saying well you could just do a bit more on this a bit more on this I'm thinking okay that's another three years work he's suggesting there so I'm feeling more and more that this is never going to going to happen. And I have to make the choice of where my life's going to go at this minute. And I made the choice to jump into playing guitar around the world. And I think it was a good decision. I remember saying at the time, this is going to be a good decision for science, because I'm obviously not good enough. But hopefully it's a good decision for music as well. I think many, many millions, if not billions of people,

thank you for that decision that you made. Oh, bless you. Derek, do you think scientists could learn something from musicians? Oh, definitely, definitely. And from artists generally. And that is how to communicate. Scientists are very good at inventing our own language. and behaving like a sort of high priesthood.

And you have to be initiated into the secrets of our science before you're allowed to participate. I mean, that's been changing in the last couple of decades, but it certainly used to be more like that. But we still need even more. I spent quite a lot of time trying to pass on the excitement that we feel about science, because the other aspect about schools is they can make science seem very fusty and kind of boring and hard work.

Well, it should be fun. Yeah. And I think that's something that artists do very, very well. Did you have a perspective on that, Brian? The idea that can musicians learn from scientists or scientists learn from musicians? I think it's part of a bigger picture. I feel that we live in very dangerous times because it's hard to find the truth. And it's much easier to propagate mistruths on the internet than it is to, for some reason,

it's more exciting to propagate misinformation than the truth. And it concerns me greatly because we're seeing science being submerged in a welter of superstition and we seem to be going backwards in many ways. I think you get more views for saying the earth is flat or people didn't go on the moon and you know, all this sort of stuff. And that's a whole mass of nonsense to make your way through if you're a kid now. So it's our responsibility to give kids an inquiring mind so that they find out for themselves what the truth really is.

So music is a help in that. Music is part of that. You know, music opens people's minds and brings people together. And we have to get away from this kind of polarization culture that we seem to have at the moment. It's good to discuss. It's good to have alternative points of view. But out of those discussions should come an awareness of truth, not just scientific truth, but universal truth, human truths. And the ideas of compassion and mercy and...

Decency, justice are embodied in those discussions. And I would like to see more of that. And I think it's our responsibility as a generation to try to bring that back. As we're talking about music opening people's minds and bringing people together, we have to talk a little bit about one of my favorite songs, Don't Stop Me Now, which uses space as a metaphor for pleasure. Yes. Did you have anything to do with those lyrics?

No. In fact, I kind of berating, I remember berating Freddy for saying that he was traveling at the speed of light. Okay, Freddy, you cannot travel at the speed of light. I'm sorry. And he says, I don't care. Sorry for my friends, but you can't really quote Freddie without using those words. But, you know, it's all about fun and joy, yeah.

I stayed out of it. I was worried, actually, because being such a hedonistic thing, there were dangers to living a hedonistic lifestyle at that time. And I remember, you know, being a bit of a schoolmaster, a bit of a geek myself, you know. I felt worried for Freddie at that time, which is part of my reservations about the song.

Now I look back and see the song, and I think it is a work of genius because it takes you away from, it takes you above those questions. And it became, it's funny, it didn't immediately become a huge hit. It had a slow burn, and now it's become one of Queen's best known songs around the world, and it's universally played at Hind Nights and Stag Nights, and God knows what, funerals, births, weddings.

So, you know, it's got to be a great song. And I appreciate that, and I'm happy that I was at least something to do with it. Yeah, I mean, it strikes me that space provides a place for our imagination to go when we feel perhaps imprisoned or constrained by our life on Earth. And that's what I love about it. I've found it very helpful at certain times, particularly when I was deep in depression, I found that looking at the stars, There's a particular time when winter is coming on and you start to see the winter stars. I used to call them the brave stars, Orion and Sirius and Gemini, Altebran, the Pleiades. I find great comfort in seeing these beauties in the sky and thinking they will be there long after I've gone away.

They will still be strong. They will still be beautiful. And my descendants will be seeing them and getting the same. strength as I do from them. So it's a spiritual thing, I think, connecting with those fantastic beacons in the sky. That's really beautifully put. Can I tell you, Flora, which one's my favorite queen track? Yes, please.

This one might make Brian blush, because it was written by him. It's called The Year of 39. and it's actually a very, very sad, tragic love song that uses a thing that some of your listeners will have heard of called the twin paradox, which is an effect of relativity, that if you go away from the earth in a rocket ship fast enough and you turn around and come back again after about a year, you will have experienced a year in your,

your time, but time as we know is relative. And so there are these two lovers and he goes off on the spaceship and comes back and a hundred years have passed and his beloved is dead and buried and he's still got his life ahead of him. Thank you for bringing that up, Derek. It's a beautiful song. It's a beautiful song. Thank you, Derek.

Yeah, it's a long time ago now. I mean, I'm old enough to be that time traveler now. In fact, when I was recently playing my acoustic guitar on tour quite recently, I felt like I had been away and come back because I'm playing to a new generation. In fact, two generations, you know, apart from me. So, yeah. Yeah. And I think everyone will appreciate it.

There's a scientific backbone to that song. There's a reason for that, as Derek has told you. But I was concerned with the emotional side, really, with the human side. That's what the song is about. Dr. Derek Ward Thompson is an astrophysicist at the University of Lancashire in England and Dr. Brian May is an astronomer and, yes, the guitarist in the band, Queen. Thank you both for joining me today. This has been really such a pleasure. Thank you, Flora. Thank you, Flora. Great pleasure.

This episode was produced by Rasha Aireedi with help from D. Peter Schmidt. I don't want to put you under pressure, but if you like what you heard, why not tell a friend about our show? It really does help us if you get the word out. And if you have a great review you've been meaning to write for the podcast, don't let it bite the dust. Go to your favorite platform and leave us a review. Catch you next time. I'm Flora Lichtman.