• Question: What is your biggest discovery?

    Asked by emochicinlove to Chris, Eva, Michael, Paddy, Philip on 14 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Chris Jordan

      Chris Jordan answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      I did “find” a pulsar once – sort of by accident. I did a series of experiments for an astronomer from an american group and when I checked the data there was a very nice pulsar in it (pulsars are the remains of a start that has exploded. They spin very fats sending out a radio beam – rather
      like a lighthouse sends out a flah of light as it turns)
      The astronomer wrote the paper about the discovery and got the credit – but I saw it first 🙂

    • Photo: Paddy Brock

      Paddy Brock answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      I once found a South American sea lion skeleton on the Galapagos Islands… it was the second one ever recorded. It’s unusual as South American sea lions live on the coast of South America and Galapagos sea lions live on the Galapagos Islands. South American sea lions usually don’t cross the ocean and the discovery meant that the one we found had to have swum 1000km through open ocean to reach the Galapagos Islands from South America.

    • Photo: Philip Denniff

      Philip Denniff answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      The dried blood spots that I am working on at the moment have the potential to revolutionise the way hospitals take blood samples. It uses a very small amount of blood that can be taken from pricking the finger rather than sticking a needle into the arm. Because the amount of blood is so small it can safely be used for sick babies.

    • Photo: Michael Wharmby

      Michael Wharmby answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      I made a new material with *huge* holes in it! This is good because with more empty space, I can fit more gas molecules in and it’s a better store for carbon dioxide. Now, by huge I mean the holes are 5000x smaller than the width of a human hair – this can still fit a lot of molecules in. The material is purple but changes colour to blue when you heat it up which is quite neat too.
      I got my work reported in a very good chemistry journal which was the icing on the cake 😀

    • Photo: Eva Bachmair

      Eva Bachmair answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      My biggest discovery was not in science. I found out that scientists are normal human beings. That is something to take comfort from, isn’t it?

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