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Discovery

The Life Scientific: Hiranya Peiris

25 May 2026

Transcription

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

0.031 - 27.031 Unknown

Sanni on Sanni, eikä sisustusinfluensseri. Kun Sanni päättää maalata keittiönsä, pitää värien olla valkattuina, varusteet viimeisen päälle ja game plan valmiina. Niinpä hän suuntaa k-rautaan, jolloin maalaus onnistuu. Pinnalla millä hyvänsä. Maaliostoksilla voit voittaa myös 10 tonnia rempparahaa.

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27.301 - 53.896 Unknown

K-Rauta auttaa alkuun ja eteenpäin. Kun työpäivät vaativat paljon, tuolin pitää antaa enemmän. Kotimaiselta Hexaplanilta ergonomiset työtuolit, jotka tukevat, rullaavat ja pysyvät mukana, olipa työpäiväsi millainen tahansa. Löydä juuri sinun tarpeisiisi sopiva työtuoli osoitteesta hexaplan.fi. Hexaplan, työtilojesi pelastaja.

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55.769 - 84.76 Jim

Last summer filming began on a movie that promises to tell perhaps the greatest story of all time. But it's a movie with a difference. There's no director, no script and it won't be on your local cinema. This is the legacy survey of space and time. And it's one of the most ambitious projects in the world of astronomy. With a mission to create a decade long time lapse movie of the visible universe.

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Chapter 2: What is the Legacy Survey of Space and Time?

84.76 - 100.775 Jim

to answer fundamental questions about its origin, evolution and ultimately its fate. My guest today is playing a starring role. Hiranya Pieris is professor of astrophysics 1909, the prestigious chair at the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University.

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100.775 - 127.673 Jim

Hän on ollut yksi avustusjärjestöä astrofysiikan revoluutista, joka käsittelee yksityiskohtaisen fysiikan ja yksityiskohtaisen fysiikan. Hän on ollut yksi avustusjärjestöä astrofysiikan revoluutista, joka käsittelee yksityiskohtaisen fysiikan revoluutista.

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127.842 - 154.842 Hiranya Peiris

Thank you so much, Jim. It's really nice to be here. Now, I mentioned that passion you have to inspire schoolgirls to take up science. Where does that come from? It comes from being a young girl myself and falling in love with science through, for example, books, where the people who were writing the books were very inspirational, but they did not look like me. And I want young girls to see role models that look like themselves and

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154.842 - 174.772 Hiranya Peiris

ja tehdä asioita, joita he voivat haluaa tehdä. Ja se on se, mikä vahvistaa minun tunnettaani, että minulla on nuoret tyyliä alapuolella, ei alapuolella, ja joskus ei edes yöllä. Ja sinulle, kun olet nuori tyyli, sinä kehittävät tämän rakkauden tietojen kanssa, olet osa tieteellisestä ympäristöstä. Miksi luulet, että se on niin?

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174.772 - 200.692 Hiranya Peiris

When I'm doing science, I feel that we are on a search for truth as humanity. And I really connect to that idea. For me, it is a safe place. It is a place where things make sense. When you state a fact, it is an objective truth about reality rather than something someone made up. I mentioned in the introduction that you are professor of astrophysics 1909. What's the 1909?

200.928 - 226.898 Hiranya Peiris

This marks a time when astrophysics, as distinct from astronomy, became a subject of study. Astronomy can be thought of as mapping the universe, but astrophysics is turning the data or the observations we have made into understanding and connecting it to fundamental physics. That started around the time of 1909.

226.898 - 256.261 Hiranya Peiris

Hiranja Pieris, olit sydämellä Sri Lankassa, Colomboissa, 70-luvulla. Silloin olit vanhemmat, jotka olivat kuitenkin yksilöitä, ymmärrän. Se on oikeastaan niin. Minun vanhempani oli järjestelmäjärjestelmäjärjestelmäjärjestelmäjärjestelmä. Hän oli yksi Sri Lankan ensimmäisistä yksilöitä yksilöitä. Ja vanhempani työskennelli isoja hydrauliittisia projekteja. Ja sinun vanhempani erityisesti oli sinun roolimodellisi. Kyllä, hän on todella hyvä erilaisista asioista, mutta hän on todella yksilöitä. Ja se on oikeastaan se, mitä minä todella haluan tehdä.

256.261 - 283.531 Hiranya Peiris

I have a particular image in my mind of accompanying my mother when I was a small child to a building site where she was supervising a very large team of men constructing a bridge that she had designed. And she was very elegantly dressed in a sari. And she was very dignified. She was clearly in charge. But she wasn't shouting. She wasn't projecting dominance. It was a different kind of leadership. And I really connected with that image.

284.071 - 309.265 Hiranya Peiris

Ja olisit ollut noin seitsemän vuotta vanha, kun Carl Saganin dokumentaari-seriossa aloitettiin. Ja se tuntui sinun kiinnostasi kosmosin itselleen, maailmalle. Se on oikein. Muistan vain olevani täysin perustunut näistä todella suurista ympäristöjä, joita hän aloitti, sekä taidetta että aikaa. Kuinka maailma liittyy meille ihmisille. Ja se oli todella mahtavaa.

Chapter 3: How did Hiranya Peiris become interested in science?

309.738 - 331.439 Hiranya Peiris

And I believe your parents also nurtured your love of astronomy that was just beginning at this point. That's right. My father went on an international trip and he brought back a small telescope for me. And Sri Lanka had very, very dark skies. Just from my backyard we could see, for example, Saturn's rings.

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331.439 - 352.972 Hiranya Peiris

It was the first time I saw Jupiter's moons and I remember projecting solar flares and sunspots onto a sheet of white paper and looking at that. Yeah, it was a great time. Around this time you were becoming increasingly curious about the universe, but it wasn't always easy to get hold of the books that you wanted to read.

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353.528 - 379.718 Hiranya Peiris

Tämä on oikeastaan. Siinä oli semmoinen rauhattava kirjallinen kaveri, joka tuli Colomboon. Ja isäni otti minulle ja osti minulle kirjan A breif history of time. Tämä on ensimmäinen kerta, jossa olin tapahtunut kosmologiasta, joka on minun nykyinen tutkimusalueeni. Se oli hyvin ympäristökohtainen. Tuo kirja Stephen Hawkingin, useimmat vanhemmat sanoisivat, että olin vain luonut ensimmäiset kaksi kirjaa, ja sitten pysähtyin. Olet luonut sen ympärillä ympärillä.

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379.769 - 408.794 Hiranya Peiris

Lähtökohtaisesti en ymmärtänyt kaikkea, mutta muistan diagraafia tältä päivältä. Loppuun loppuun kirjassa puhutaan kaksidimensionaaleista ihmisiä, jotka yrittävät kuvitella kolme dimensioita, ja se on melkein epäonnistunut. Mielestäni se, mikä minua todella kiinnosti, oli se, että kirja otti minut paikoihin, jotka eivät olleet todellisessa maassa, mutta voin ajatella niitä mielestäni.

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408.794 - 431.069 Hiranya Peiris

Herania, sinulla oli koulutuskoulutus Kalambossa koko lapsen aikana, tykkäsitkö siitä? En oikeastaan tykkäsin koulutusta. Olen elänyt aika paljon mielestäni. Muistan yhden matkin koulutuksen erityisesti, jossa en huomannut monia kysymyksiä. Päädyin vain tekemään niitä ja nukkumaan päivittäin, joten olin melkein onnistunut testiin.

431.069 - 472.632 Hiranya Peiris

But I do remember this wonderful teacher, Mrs. Mendis. And she had taught my mother before me. She really tolerated the why questions. And I must have been a very annoying kid, constantly asking why this and why that. And some of them weren't so easy to answer. Juontaja Erja Hyytiäinen

472.632 - 497.557 Jim

that are being reincarnated, why is the population of the planet increasing? I don't remember his answer, but I remember the deathly silence afterwards. This reminds me a bit of what you took away from Stephen Hawking's book, Brief History of Time, a realisation that you could go to places in your mind far beyond what you had imagined. Did you have dreams of going into space, becoming an astronaut?

497.725 - 516.119 Hiranya Peiris

Absoluutti. My life's ambition was to become an astronaut. It was only when I was about 16 when I became short-sighted. It was a devastating blow. I no longer could pilot the space shuttle. And so have you now ruled out any possibility of going to space or do you still have some?

516.119 - 538.563 Hiranya Peiris

I really want to go to space. I almost signed up for the Mars One to a one-way trip to Mars, but my partner said he wouldn't come, so I had to nix that idea. But then later I found out it was a scam anyway, but I still want to go. Well, fingers crossed for getting into space, but back in your teenage years you did create your own journey through the solar system.

Chapter 4: What challenges did Hiranya face moving from Sri Lanka to the UK?

589.913 - 605.236 Hiranya Peiris

There was violence in everyday life. The universities were closed and my parents just didn't see any future for us there. And they decided to leave everything behind. You settled in Manchester. You had an uncle and aunt who lived there.

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605.557 - 625.115 Hiranya Peiris

So we arrived with very little. So my mother got a job in Manchester. We had to make do on my mother's salary basically. So we watched the pennies and, you know, I was 16 in a new country. I started in a new school and I'd previously learned in my native language Sinhalese.

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625.115 - 650.36 Jim

It was a mixed school. And for the first time in my life I found that I was a minority in maths and science class. Oh, coming from an all-girls school in Colombo. That's right. And suddenly people just assumed girls couldn't do these subjects. I was 16 when I came over with my family from Iraq. I went to a school that had originally been a girls' grammar school, and then it became a mixed comprehensive. So I was one of only three boys. Ha ha ha!

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650.36 - 662.948 Jim

In a year group of 120 girls. So doing A-level maths and physics it never occurred to me that these were boy subjects rather than girl subjects. We were in the minority. That was fascinating. Did you enjoy your A-levels?

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663.067 - 689.847 Hiranya Peiris

I did, actually. The teachers were really good. There was a teacher called Dr. Egan, and he was my further maths teacher. And he gave me university-level textbooks, and he encouraged me to apply to Cambridge. What did you think about that? It felt like a really unattainable goal, but when he told me that I could do it, I didn't know anything about Cambridge, so I applied to a college. It's called Newhall at the time, now Murray Edwards, and there's a very iconic dome, which...

689.847 - 703.617 Jim

It's suggestive of an observatory dome, and that's the reason I picked that college. Good enough reason is any. Now then, given where you've ended up in your career, you applied to study computer science. Why?

703.988 - 727.04 Jim

We were not well off, and at that time computer science was one of those subjects that was held to have very good career prospects. In fact, before you got to Cambridge, you had only lived in the UK for two years, and so you were still classed as an overseas student. So you had to wait another couple of years before you'd qualify for home fees. Cambridge kept that place open for you. What did you do in the meantime, though?

727.04 - 753.989 Hiranya Peiris

Muistan, että toimin niin monilla eri töillä, että käsitin järjestelmät ylöspäin. Minulla on se vielä jossain, jotta muistaisin, että järjestelmä on hyvä. Lopulta menin järjestelmään, joka kutsuttiin Nukleari-Elektrikkiin, joka johti UK-nukleareaktoreita. Olin paikassa, jossa tutkittiin järjestelmäturvallisuuden rikkoja.

753.989 - 771.758 Hiranya Peiris

Siinä ei ollut henkilöä, ja minä olin nuori, henkilökohtainen henkilö, mutta olin asunut tästä ryhmästä, joka ei käsitteli minua eroon. Olin vain sanonut, että tämä on se, mitä sinun täytyy tehdä. Ja opettelin itseäni koodin C++. Opitsin Unixia.

Chapter 5: What was the significance of Hiranya's experience at Princeton?

915.078 - 932.763 Jim

You started your PhD at Princeton in 1998. NASA already had plans in place to launch a satellite mission called the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. The idea was to take detailed measurements of the faint radiation that permeates the entire universe.

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932.763 - 948.71 Jim

which would help us understand something about the universe's origin and its evolution. So your supervisor asked you to lead on the analysis. Maybe you can first briefly say something about this radiation, the cosmic microwave background, and what it tells us about the early universe.

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948.997 - 978.393 Hiranya Peiris

One of the crucial points that makes my field possible is that light has a speed limit, which means that when you look into the distant universe, you see things as they were in the past. Because it's taken a long time to get to us. That's absolutely right. So the oldest light we can see in the universe is the cosmic microwave background. And the probe was picking up the faint patterns of this ancient light. You were part of the team that analysed the data. What did that involve?

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978.46 - 1004.549 Hiranya Peiris

So the analysis involved comparing the patterns of the very early light that we can see in the cosmic microwave background with theoretical models and different cosmological models make different predictions for the pattern. It's like a fingerprint. It identifies the theory. And my job was to build a sort of statistical bridge

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1004.549 - 1031.903 Jim

ympäristöjen määrittelyyn ja teoreettisiin ympäristöihin. Nämä teoreettiset ympäristöt ovat yleensä tarinoita siitä, kuinka maailma tuli ja miten se kehittyy. Haluat nähdä, mikä tarina on oikea ja mikä määrittää tietoja. Se on täysin oikea. Puhutaan siitä, mitä löydät. Voitko aloittaa ympäristön aikana ja kuinka kauan taustalla voimme määrittää sitä?

1031.903 - 1058.92 Hiranya Peiris

Ympäristön ajan voimme laittaa siihen 13,8 miljoonaa vuotta. Voimme myös määritellä, kun tämä alkuperäinen ilma tuli. Se tuli ajan, kun ympäristö oli noin 380 000 vuotta vanha. Tämä on ympäristön pieni kuvio. 380 000 vuotta on kuinka monta vuotta myöhemmin Big Bangin jälkeen?

1058.971 - 1074.563 Jim

That's correct. We can therefore tell a story about the evolution of the universe at least from that early age till now. Now back to what you found then. Your observations confirmed a simple model for the origin and evolution of the universe.

1074.614 - 1104.601 Hiranya Peiris

It's a simple model, but it's a really bizarre one. It is described by just six numbers. So we need two numbers to describe the origin of cosmic structure. Where did everything come from? Then we have three numbers to describe how it's evolving. So that's the amount of ordinary matter in the universe. Everything our world is made of, what we are made of, that's ordinary matter. It's only 5%. And then there is dark matter and dark energy, which are very mysterious components of the universe.

1104.601 - 1122.067 Hiranya Peiris

Ja silti ne ovat 95 prosenttia. 95 prosenttia. Voimme nähdä, että ne ovat siellä, mutta ne eivät ole kuin mitään, mitä me tiedämme. Ja sitten ympäristön geometria, joka kertoo sinulle jotain itsenäistä. Ja sitten me myös tarvitsemme tietää, kun ensimmäiset maat muodostuivat, jotta voimme kuvitella ympäristön.

Chapter 6: How does the Planck Observatory contribute to our understanding of the universe?

1381.199 - 1407.085 Hiranya Peiris

Axion particles, if they exist, are very light, so they behave less like particles and more like a radio wave permeating the universe. And so you can kind of do a tabletop experiment in a university lab to try to detect this radio wave. The experiment is like a radio receiver. We have to tune it and find the right frequency, but we don't know what the frequency is. It's in a range. Yes, so we need to tune into it.

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1407.085 - 1430.221 Jim

Vuonna 2023 tulit takaisin Cambridgein astrofysiikan koulutukseen vuonna 1909. Silloin, kun koko teidän koulutuksen jälkeen olitte keskittyneet alkuperäiseen maailmaan, olitte myöhemmin siirtyneet alkuperäiseen maailmaan. Tämä on todella hieno projekti. Se on kutsuttu spasi- ja aikapäivän legaatiivisen tutkimuksella. Se on tehty uudestaan koulutuksella Chileistä.

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1430.221 - 1452.783 Jim

called the Vera Rubin Observatory. This is named after the woman who first explained how dark matter holds galaxies together, that it had to be out there. The project is going to generate this time-lapse movie of the visible universe. This is the biggest digital camera ever built. Each image is 3.2 billion pixels. And what do you see in these images?

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1452.783 - 1478.348 Hiranya Peiris

The first images are just astonishing. So not only are they super high resolution, but the depth is very great so that you can see much, much further into the universe. So when you look at pictures of galaxies, for example, they look super crisp, but you can also see the faint outskirts of these galaxies where gas is accumulating there.

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1478.348 - 1498.278 Hiranya Peiris

which is going to feed into future generations of stars that we couldn't see before. And also because it is a time lapse, you can see exploding stars in the universe. I've had a look at some of these moving images online, and it really is mind-blowing. But in terms of the science, how does this enhance what you can learn about the universe?

1498.379 - 1519.709 Hiranya Peiris

Voimme käyttää näitä kuvia, jotta voidaan nähdä syvällä ympäri maailmaa ja noin puolivälillä maailman elämästä. Emme voi nähdä syvällä maailmaa, mutta syvällä maailmalla näkyy ilma, kun seuraa syvällä maailman koncentraatioita. Tämä vaikuttaa pienen pienen ympäristöön galaksien muotoiluun.

1519.709 - 1543.233 Hiranya Peiris

which we can map. So if you have billions of galaxies, you can back out the intrinsic shapes of the galaxies and extract the very, very faint dark matter signal and use that to map out how structure is evolving over the course of the universe's history. So that's what we plan to do. What is your role then on the project?

1543.385 - 1563.348 Hiranya Peiris

So I'm one of the people who is going to turn those pictures into conclusions about dark matter and dark energy. So it's another statistical bridge, but because the volume and complexity of the data is so great, the statistics now has to be augmented by machine learning and very advanced AI techniques.

1563.348 - 1588.053 Jim

Statistinen järjestelmä, jota luodaan, jota voidaan verrata tietojen tulevaisuuteen yhdistelmiin. Se muistuttaa isäni, roolimodellini, joka on tehty järjestelmäänsä järjestelmiä rakentamalla järjestelmiä. Kyllä, se on todella kiva miettiä siitä. Kiitos, että teit tätä yhteyttä. Yksi asiaa, jota tutkimus toivoo katsomaan, on asteroideja.

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