• Question: What is the one question in science that you would like to be the first person to answer?

    Asked by Leann to Christopher, Dan, Jen, Mohan, Sarah on 6 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Sarah De Vos

      Sarah De Vos answered on 6 Mar 2017:

      I would love to be the first person to confirm that yes there is other intelligent life in the universe but as I’m not an astrophysicist that probably won’t ever happen!

    • Photo: Mohan K

      Mohan K answered on 6 Mar 2017:

      I was going to answer what Sarah had said!

      Ok to be different, ever heard of the Abscopal effect? It’s when tumours not irradiated by a radiation beam and some distance from the primary tumour that is irradiated still undergoes shrinkage even though it received no radiation dose.

      Also, is life better with gills or with wings?

    • Photo: Jen Dennis

      Jen Dennis answered on 6 Mar 2017:

      Wow – what a brilliant question. It’s a difficult one to answer as there are so many things we don’t know yet. I think I’d like to be able to figure out at what level of exposure radiation is really dangerous. No one has yet worked out for definite if low levels of radiation (like you get from most medical tests) are actually dangerous or if they might actually help you. If I could work that out, lots of medical physicists would have an easier life!

    • Photo: Daniel Fovargue

      Daniel Fovargue answered on 6 Mar 2017:

      I would want to solve one of the millennium maths problems. My favourite would be to prove that P does not equal NP.

      NP is a group of computer problems that are really hard. But no one has been able to prove that they are as hard as we think they are. So if you prove that they are not equal to P (easy problems) then you can win $1 million.

    • Photo: Christopher Mirfin

      Christopher Mirfin answered on 7 Mar 2017:

      How do you create intelligence?
      (i.e. can we create a machine that is smarter than us)

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