• Question: what is the main thing you have discovered

    Asked by japan to Peta, Andrew, Daniel, Hayley, Natalia on 21 Nov 2011. This question was also asked by liltarmy.
    • Photo: Peta Foster

      Peta Foster answered on 14 Nov 2011:

      That working in science is more fun than i thought it would be and has never felt like a ‘real job’. 🙂

      I have developed new diagnostics and i even called one ‘The Petatron’ because i thought it would be funny, but the other discoveries have not been singular big high impact things but more corrections to current thoughts on how lasers interact with materials. 🙂

      There is still time to discover something big and i am working on it 😉

    • Photo: Daniel Scully

      Daniel Scully answered on 21 Nov 2011:

      My experiment is looking for particles called “neutrinos” changing between their different types as they travel, finding them doing this would be really big for physics and help us answer some of the biggest questions about how the Universe was made after the Big Bang.

      We think we almost saw it (at least, we saw a hint) before the big earthquake in Japan that shut out experiment down. We’re turning it back on again in January so hopefully we’ll be able to make that big discovery soon!

    • Photo: Hayley Smith

      Hayley Smith answered on 21 Nov 2011:

      The main thing I have discovered since being a “proper scientist” (ie, since I left University and came to work here 2 years ago) is that scientists are just regular folk and it’s a great laugh working here.
      There’s so much commitment to science, that everyone trys their best to make the particle accelerator the best they can, there’s a lot of pride associated with it.

      In terms of ground-breaking earth-shattering science, I’m not sure any of that will really come my way, it’s more incremental changes that will help the further development of particle accelerators…

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