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Asked by to Becky, Clara, Daniel, Simon, Thomas on 12 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
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Simon Albright answered on 12 Mar 2014:
All the time! I’ve probably learned more during my PhD than during my degree.
Everything I learn just introduces more questions, it got so frustrating that I said to my supervisor that I just wish I could take things off my list of unknowns faster than I added them, she said that never changes… I now realise that’s good though, having questions you want to answer and things you don’t know is fun because it gives you things to look for!
Working out the mechanics of some of the nuclear reactions I’m looking at, and what the differences are was great. For a long time I knew that a proton hitting a nucleus might get absorbed and then a neutron could get shot out, but it took a long time before I had an idea what was going on inside the nucleus that caused it to happen. And even then I just came up with even more questions as a result!
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Daniel Roach answered on 12 Mar 2014:
There’s a lot of stuff out there that we just don’t understand – sure, we have general rules, and these can sometimes seem like we understand everything… especially in the textbooks! Nothing could be further from the truth, though – we’re skimming the surface of reality with our ‘laws’ and the relatively simple ways that simples rules can all mix together to produce something amazing and weird… it’s always an adventure!
It’s hard to say what’s the most exciting single thing – it’s more like seeing an amazing shape, a little bit at a time.
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Thomas Elias Cocolios answered on 12 Mar 2014:
Being a scientist, you learn all the time! And most importantly, you learn to learn. Everything becomes a research topic, a subject of interest. For example, you improvise yourself anthropologist and start to look at your colleagues habits in the restaurant.
There are also all the tools you need for your research to work. In order to make my research in nuclear physics work, I have to understand lasers, vacuum systems, interaction of particles with matter, electronics, programming, …
But the most interesting part is meeting people from all over the world with whom you share a passion and common interest. I have actually learned Dutch, German and Japanese (at least some) in order to better exchange with my colleagues and visit them in their research centres. That human dimension to research is really an important factor to the excitement!
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Becky Martin answered on 12 Mar 2014:
Goodness! Every day brings something new to learn or understand.
It’s humbling because there’s so much interesting and important nuclear and radiation research going on. I only work within a tiny and specific area, a paper-thin slice of a whole world of study; and the more I learn, the more I realise there is to learn – It’s never-ending and fascinating. You suddenly realise just how enormous science is when you become a scientist!
If I had to pick one thing, I’d probably go for agent-based modelling. It’s amazing to be able to simulate populations and use modelling to understand how population distribution changes over time.
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Clara Nellist answered on 14 Mar 2014:
As a scientist we are constantly learning new things, it’s part of the job. A couple of times in history, people have said, “that’s it, we know everything in science now”, but they were always wrong!
The MOST exciting thing that I have learnt was the discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN in 2012. It took thousands of scientists over 50 years to find this new particle, so understandably people were very excited. In fact some people (including me!) slept outside the room where the announcement was going to be made to make sure that they got a seat, just like people do for tickets for a music gig! It was a huge deal. The world media was there too and I ended up in the photo that was on the front cover of the New York Times.
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