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World Service,25 May 2026,26 mins

The Life Scientific: Hiranya Peiris

Discovery

Available for over a year

Hiranya Peiris is playing a starring role in a movie that promises to tell perhaps the greatest story of all time. However, it鈥檚 a movie with a difference 鈥 there鈥檚 no director and no script. The Legacy Survey of Space and Time is 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, to answer fundamental questions about its origin, evolution and, ultimately, its fate. Hiranya is Professor of Astrophysics 1909, the prestigious Chair at the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University. Over her career she鈥檚 been one of the pioneers of a revolution in astronomy, bridging fundamental physics with the observational data coming back from space, to establish the first evidence-based standard model for the origin, evolution and fate of the universe. The endeavour has transformed the field from the 鈥榳ild west鈥 of physics to the modern era of precision cosmology. Ironically, it was another movie, of sorts, Carl Sagan鈥檚 documentary series 鈥楥osmos鈥, that first sparked Hiranya鈥檚 interest in the universe as a young girl. Always keen to inspire women to follow in her footsteps and choose careers in science, if this interview were a live show she鈥檇 have reserved the front row for schoolgirls.

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