Episode description

Sir Roger Penrose was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in physics this year for his ground-breaking work on black holes and their relationship with the general theory of relativity. He looks back at his extraordinary career with Andrew Marr – from his early interest in mathematical patterns and the ‘impossible’ works of Escher, to his revolutionary use of mathematics in cosmology and his continued fascination with the beginning and end of time.

Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist who researches quantum gravity, as well as a best-selling author. In his latest collection of essays, There are Places in the World Where Rules are Less Important than Kindness, he demonstrates a curiosity that crosses the boundaries from the sciences to the arts. He reflects on everything from Newton’s alchemy to Einstein’s mistakes, and from Dante’s cosmology to Nabokov's butterflies.

The world underwater is the physicist Helen Czerski’s playground. The focus of much of her research has been the physics of breaking waves and bubbles on the ocean surface. As one of this year’s Royal Institution Christmas Lecturers, Czerski will reveal the vital role oceans play in the Earth’s heating and plumbing systems, and the impact of human activity on the planet.

Producer: Katy Hickman