Joshua Howgego - Five Way Interview

Joshua Howgego is currently the Acting Head of Features at New Scientist magazine. He’s been on staff at the magazine for nine years and before that completed a PhD in chemistry. His first book is The Meteorite Hunters. 

Why meteorites?

Years ago I was at a scientific conference and I heard meteorites described as time capsules from the birth of the solar system. I realised that, although we usually use telescopes to study space, these extraterrestrial stones provide another unique way of doing so. I found that prompted a lot of questions for me, including 'how on Earth do you find a meteorite?' and 'how do you read the secrets inside them?' It was these questions that led me to write my book.

Why this book?

As a magazine feature editor, I’m interested in how stories are told and how a good narrative is structured. What appealed to me about hunting meteorites is that presents a ready-made narrative: you have a person setting out on a quest to find incredible treasure! I thought I could see a way to tell these adventure stories, weave in some science, and so produce a book the like of which no one else had quite done before.

Are meteorite hunters the Indiana Joneses of the science world?

Definitely – forget archaeologists, it’s all about meteorite hunters! I mean, I am being facetious here. But there are certainly some incredible escapades in the book, with people hunting the lost meteorites of Antarctica, searching for stardust across the rooftops of Oslo, scouring remote deserts. I didn’t meet anyone that carries a whip – but a magnetic walking stick is the next best thing, right?

What’s next?

The last chapter of my book is all about sample-return missions, in other words, space missions that visit asteroids, burgle a sample, and bring it back to Earth. There has been a handful of these over the past decade or so and they give us another unique window on the early solar system. One thing that would be a next step would be a sample-return mission that would bring back a piece of the frozen core of a comet. We’ve never done this before and it would require us to build a sort of bullet proof solar-powered space freezer to bring the sample back. Noone knows how to do that yet, but scientists are looking into it now.

What’s exciting you at the moment?

This year is, by one reasonable estimation, the 100th anniversary of the birth of quantum mechanics, so I’m looking forward to editing some stories for New Scientist exploring that. I am fascinated by what quantum mechanics is trying to tell us about the deep workings of reality. When it comes to meteorites, though, I am excited to see how one particular adventure pans out: the quest to find the legendary Chinguetti meteorite. It was supposedly found by a French army captain more than a century ago in the desert of Mauritania and it was vast: 40 metres wide by 100 long. This would make it easily the largest known meteorite – but it has never been found again. I wrote in the book about a new effort to find it, and if that is successful (a big if) it will be thrilling.

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Interview by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here