• Question: What do you as a scientist

    Asked by moeidriss to Ben, Clare, Ezzy, Mario, Sam on 12 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by evanspuddifoot, thandi12.
    • Photo: Ben Smart

      Ben Smart answered on 10 Mar 2012:

      I’m guessing that you meant to type a bit more at the end of your question 🙂 Ask it again and we’ll have a go at answering it 🙂

      If you meant to ask “What do you as a scientist do?”, well I spend my time trying to understand how the smallest things in the universe work. Some days I work in a big control room, controlling a big experimental machine (called the ATLAS Detector). Other days I sit in my office working on my computer and trying to think of clever ways to try to find out the things I want to find out about the universe.

    • Photo: Elizabeth Pearson

      Elizabeth Pearson answered on 12 Mar 2012:

      Drink tea, answer emails, play office golf, attend meetings and seminars, go to Arizona to use a telescope, read papers, look busy.

      Between all that I investigate dust in very distant galaxies to try and work out how far away they are. You can do that by looking at the colour they are. The further away something is the redder it looks due to something called ‘doppler shift’ and so you can compare what you expect to get to what you do get to work out how far away something is. When you know how far away all those galaxies are you can look at how everything is positioned in the universe. That is a very useful thing to know.

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