• Question: what's the most interesting thing you have found as a scientist?

    Asked by saskia123 to Zachary, Venus, Tim, Joel on 19 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Tim Hollowood

      Tim Hollowood answered on 19 Nov 2013:

      I find these kinds of question really difficult to answer because I can’t help but like a lot of the ideas I have had…I also have other ideas that aren’t so good.
      At the moment I am working on quantum theory, the theory that describes the microscopic world. All the gadgets that we love, phones, ipods, laptops, etc, all harness the power of the quantum behaviour of matter (in their electronics) and this theory is incredibly accurate. For instance atoms and particle are all described by quantum theory. However, there are some puzzles with the theory because if it’s the theory that describes everything small then it should describe everything big as well. But when we describe big things there are puzzles and paradoxes. I am trying to see whether we can solve the paradoxes. If I get this right then that will be the most interesting thing I’ve done as a scientist.

    • Photo: Zachary Williamson

      Zachary Williamson answered on 21 Nov 2013:

      Err, well it’s interesting to me but probably nobody else: the amount of neutral pions my experiment’s neutrino beam produces in our particle detector. Eventually some use will come out of this but it will take some time.

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