• Question: Is your work going to change the way we live within the next 30 years?

    Asked by Jess Hollis to Angeline, Catherine, Luke, Philip, Shona on 13 Mar 2015. This question was also asked by TheOfficialSwagGod.
    • Photo: Philip Moriarty

      Philip Moriarty answered on 13 Mar 2015:

      Possibly not but then I do science to answer questions about how Nature and the Universe work rather than to develop technology/products. There’s a value to curiosity-driven scientific research (i.e. work which isn’t focused on applications). Often the major revolutions in science come out of exactly that type of exploratory research — scientists find something completely unexpected at the limits of our knowledge.

    • Photo: Angeline Burrell

      Angeline Burrell answered on 16 Mar 2015:

      Probably not. To really affect people’s lives in the UK, space science would need to be as good at predicting space weather as the Met office is at predicting the “normal” (tropospheric!) weather right now. And we’re about 50-100 years behind them at the moment.

    • Photo: Shona Whittam

      Shona Whittam answered on 16 Mar 2015:

      Hopefully it will improve the way we treat cancer but this is only possible with all the 60 radiotherapy centres in the UK taking part in clinical trials and sharing information.

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