• Question: How will your your work of dicovering axions help or affect our lifestyle or life?

    Asked by yangh to Francesca on 11 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Francesca Day

      Francesca Day answered on 11 Mar 2014:

      I have to be honest – in the short term it is unlikely to affect our life. But discovering new particles can lead to all kinds of exciting new technologies in the long term!

      For example, when the electron was discovered everyone thought it was useless, but now we use it to power almost everything in the form of electricity. More recently, the positron particle was discovered in 1932, and now it is used in PET scanning to diagnose cancer.

      My research is helping us to discover more and more about the universe – who knows what new inventions that will lead too? 🙂

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