• Question: Hi, Its Troy, We talked to you guys on friday, There was a question I didn't have time to answer: How does your work help the world as it is now. Thanks alot, Troy A

    Asked by troya to Duncan, Paul on 22 Mar 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Duncan Murdock

      Duncan Murdock answered on 22 Mar 2010:

      Hi Troy, thanks for your questions on Friday, it was great chatting to you guys and sorry I didn’t get round to your question then but there were so many good questions it’s hard to keep up.

      I hope my research with help to solve some of the mysteries of the origins of the amazing array of different shells, bones and teeth that animals have and maybe why they came about in the first place. It will help us to understand what causes animals to evolve in the way that they do. The more we understand about the past history of the earth the more we can understand the present. It might also inspire other people to work on these problems too.

    • Photo: Paul Stevenson

      Paul Stevenson answered on 22 Mar 2010:

      Hi troy. The stuff I work on day to day does not have an immediate benefit on the world. All I can say is that work in basic physics (just trying to answer questions about how the universe works) has led to all sorts of helpful and perhaps unhelpful but fun things, like radiotherapy, computers, the world wide web, TV, radio, cars, trains, electricity… All these things have needed people who just like to understand the way that nature works. Hopefully some of what I discover will lead to some other great things – maybe nuclear fusion.

      The other way that what I do helps the world is that I train students to work in nuclear physics, and once they have mastered that they can go off to do all sorts of other useful things. One of my PhD students is now going to work on climate change modelling, and they employed her because of all the skills she got working on nuclear physics

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