• Question: What would you consider to be the most interesting or "cool" thing about the science you are involved in?

    Asked by aoifeomara to Eugene, Arlene, Colin, David, Paul on 16 Nov 2012. This question was also asked by aislinncosgrove.
    • Photo: Colin Johnston

      Colin Johnston answered on 16 Nov 2012:

      Gosh, there’s so much it’s hard to choose.

      Probably exoplanets, planets orbiting other stars, 20 years ago they were science fiction, now we know of more than 800. Many of them are very strange compared to our neighbouring planets and Earth, we never epected that!

    • Photo: Paul Higgins

      Paul Higgins answered on 18 Nov 2012:

      I study the Sun, which used to be thought of as a perfect boring sphere hundreds of years ago. But then we realised that the Sun is VERY complicated. There are all kinds of bizarre structures, twisted up magnetic fields, and huge explosions that happen on the Sun. And the better our telescopes get, the closer we can look at the Sun, and the more complicated it seems to get… The Sun is just a huge ball of hot gas, but there are so many interesting things happening there.

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