Question: whats your hardest question

Mark Kennedy answered on 15 Nov 2016:

“Why is your research important for daily life?”

If a chemist gets asked this question, they normally can say “I make chemicals and drugs which cure and help people”. Or a biologist might say “I’m working on how to grow food better” or “make sure babies don’t get sick when they’re born”. Even other physicists get to say stuff like “I make computers and the internet faster” or “I help generate energy without fossil fuels”.

Astrophysics isn’t like that at all. When I see 2 stars interact with each other, it doesn’t have any obvious effects on people on Earth – it won’t cure cancer, it won’t make your internet faster, it won’t save babies.

But astrophysics has, accidentally, led to some amazing discoveries that have helped people. You know that camera that’s in the back of your phone? It uses something called a CCD (Charged Coupled Device), which was an invention first built by astronomers so they could look at the night sky. No one thought it would be useful for anything else at the time – but it was. Astrophysics tends to push the limits of technology, but it’s hard to explain that to people when on a day-to-day basis, all I do is look at pretty pictures.

But sometimes, science and research doesn’t have to have a point. You don’t have to say “I’m going to try X because I want to cure cancer”. Just saying “I’m going to try X because I don’t know what will happen” is the best way to approach science.