Question: if you had the chance to construct any experiment what would it be?

Simon Albright answered on 12 Mar 2014:

Really depends on the scenario, if we go with realistic (money and modern technology being the limits) I’d love to have access to a small particle accelerator which could take a range of elements and accelerate them into targets. By varying the acclerated particle, the target and the energy I could measure the neutron production under all sorts of conditions and work out the best one for security.

I’d also like to take a device like that but aim the neutrons at different materials and take really accurate measurements of the gamma rays produced. The more accurately that’s known the better we can identify hidden materials in containers.

But if we go for no-limits edge of insanity sort of things it becomes WAY more fun!

We could build a particle accelerator like the LHC but around the circumference of the earth, the bigger the accelerator the higher the collission energy and the more we learn.

We could also put up satellites designed to measure gravitational waves, there was a plan to do that already but not as big as could be imagined. Imagine 3 satellites orbiting as far out as Pluto, the distance between them would be enormous and that would let us measure gravitational waves on an unprecedented scale! Although it would be rather difficult as it would take several hours for light to travel between them…

That’s just a couple off the top of my head. There’s so much that could be done, both realistic and utterly bonkers, it’s one of the reasons I love physics!