• Question: What's the most exciting discovery you've ever made?

    Asked by milliemoo to Hephzi, Imogen, Jen, Jennifer, Tom on 9 Mar 2015. This question was also asked by harvey_scothern, JBHFifaHD, pink unicorns are happy.
    • Photo: Thomas Barrett

      Thomas Barrett answered on 9 Mar 2015:

      I think the most exciting thing for me was getting the first proper results from my PhD and seeing that the water in my meteorite samples has the same chemical fingerprint as the water on Earth. I was stunned 😀

      If you think that’s because it’s not water from space we did lots of tests and calculations and can prove that it is 🙂

    • Photo: Hephzi Tagoe

      Hephzi Tagoe answered on 9 Mar 2015:

      Any data at all you get from an experiemnt that works is exciting, but for me the first really exciting discovery was finding a link between a cytokine (small proteins in the body that generate signals and can control how other cells behave) and my protein of interest. This meant I could continue along those lines and investigate further to find out what causes hyperkeratosis (over production of skin cells).

    • Photo: Imogen Napper

      Imogen Napper answered on 9 Mar 2015:

      I made an exciting discovery recently!

      Have you ever used a facial scrub?
      Did you know that a lot of them contain plastic :s !

      Facial scrubs often contain really small pieces of plastic for their exfoliating properties. Basically the plastic pieces can take off the dead skin so that your skin is nice and smooth!

      Recently I have been extracting the plastic in the facial scrub to research them. I found out that in one facial scrub product there could be over 2 million plastic particles!!!

      Finding that facial scrubs can have over 2 million plastic particles in each product is unfortunately an extremely worrying result 🙁 .

      As this plastic is so small, when it gets washed down the drain into the sewage system, it doesn’t get caught be the filtration system, so these plastic particles make their way into the ocean!

      It can have some scary effects in the ocean, for example animals can eat the plastic thinking its food! The plastic fills up in their stomach, so they feel full. They don’t want to eat anymore so end up starving! Can you imagine eating plastic?! We would get very ill! It is also making the ocean into a ‘plastic soup’! It can be found everywhere, even at your nearest beach!!

      Hopefully this result will make people not want to buy facial scrubs containing plastic, so this source of pollution can stop!

    • Photo: Jennifer Rudd

      Jennifer Rudd answered on 9 Mar 2015:

      Mine has to be a copper complex that could be used as a chromophore (light absorber) to make a solar cell with an efficiency of 2.3%. I know that doesn’t sound high, but in the copper world it was the best of its kind, for about 2 months until a guy in my group made a better one!!

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