Physicist and broadcaster Jim Al-khalili

The professor and broadcaster on gravity, apps and showing off his Michael Jackson moves

I recently IntervIewed the American astrophysicist neil degrasse tyson for my radio 4 programme The

Life Scientific. we discussed the challenge of having more than 7,000,000 twitter followers (him, not me), as well as t he hate mail he received over his role in the relegation of Pluto from planet hood. But what got him most animated was a challenge I set him after recording.

I had heard he could moonwalk – the Michael Jackson version, not neil Armstrong’s – and that he was the only other scientist, apart from me, owning up to this useless talent. cue a mad dash out of the studio to find the slipperiest floor in Broadcasting House for our moon walk-off–right in front of the main entrance.

I think he won. Just. Impartial judges (my producer) said he had the correct arm movements to go along with the slide. not fair really, I would argue, as he took his shoes off. Is that in the rules? It HAS Been A Busy few months. My BBC science documentary, Gravity and

Me aired at t he end of March and, as well as discussing the mandatory ‘apples falling on heads’ business, we developed a smartphone a pp that highlighted a cool feature of gravity most people aren’ t aware of: that its lows down the flow of time by a tiny amount, so clocks run at different rates depending on altitude.

the programme had been scheduled to air months earlier but just before the end of the edit, my clever executive producer discovered I’d made a mistake in the equations for the a pp. so the next few weeks looked something like this: minor panic, stop the edit, delay transmission, back to the drawing board.

In the end, it all made for a dramatic turn in the film. I owned up to my mistake on camera and it became part of my ‘journey’. why are tv documentary-makers obsessed with journeys? Apparently, a physics professor waving his arms wildly while explaining the theory of relativity doesn’t cut it any more. I’M writing my first novel and it’s the most fun I’ve had in ages. I’ve arrogantly assumed that just because I can write popular science books, I should also be able to write a sci-fi thriller. I mean, how hard could it be?

well, it’s been a steep learning curve. the first comment from my editor was: ‘Jim, a science-based novel isn’t a paragraph of physics lecture, followed by a line of dialogue, followed by a paragraph of physics lecture. let any science you need to explain emerge naturally in the telling of the story…’ All I can say is, dan Brown seems to do OK by it. we’re HEADING to MAJORCA at the end of June. the kids are both grownup (aged 23 and 25) but that doesn’t stop them taking up Mum and dad’s offer of a free holiday.

Hopefully, my son david and I won’t suffer a similar mishap to the one on last year’s holiday when we decided – a physicist and an engineer here, mind you – that if one ran fast enough across a swimming pool cover t hey could make it over to the other side without it rip ping .( we got the idea from the ‘Jesus christ lizard ’, which can run across water thanks, in part, to its super speed.) As a scientific experiment it was interesting… but my wife was none too pleased with the €400 bill for the new pool cover. Hey-ho.

We had a mad dash to find the slipperiest floor in Broadcasting House for our moonwalk-off