• Question: What was your most important/surprising scientific finding?

    Asked by anon-260032 on 2 Oct 2020.
    • Photo: Ian Linney

      Ian Linney answered on 2 Oct 2020:

      For me it is proving that an idea written on a piece of paper at the beginning of a project works in the real world. Designing the right experiments to challenge that idea and the actually seeing it work in practice. So any finding that proves that idea is important

    • Photo: James Smallcombe

      James Smallcombe answered on 2 Oct 2020:

      Mine was actually the result of my PhD thesis. We were studying isotopes of the element samarium as these had been used for 40+ years as the perfect example of nuclei that vibrate in particular way (people though they sort of pulsed a bit like a heart).
      My result showed that they didnt.
      And if the “perfect example” of this sort of behaviour was wrong, did that mean the entire idea was wrong and we had been miss-interpreting nuclear physics for decades? I’m still working on that question.

    • Photo: Alison Young

      Alison Young answered on 2 Oct 2020:

      I was part of a team that found a triple star system with a planet-forming disc that is being torn apart by the gravity of the stars. This is the first time this effect has been directly observed and was reported by newspapers in this country as well as in Spain, Germany, Russia, Australia and others. It was very exciting! There’s an artist’s impression of this star system on the Astronomy Picture of the Day website.

    • Photo: Stephen Clarke

      Stephen Clarke answered on 22 Oct 2020:

      It wasn’t a finding of mine, but I was flabbergasted when I was told that because all of the water on Earth is recycled and reused, I have probably drank a lot of dinosaur pee in my lifetime!!!

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