• Question: What is the most important topic in science?

    Asked by anon-358591 on 15 Mar 2023.
    • Photo: Jyoti Mangal

      Jyoti Mangal answered on 15 Mar 2023: last edited 15 Mar 2023 10:05 am

      As much as I’d like to say that brain MRI science at high magnetic fields (which is my research 😅) is the most important topic in science, I would say it’s very hard to narrow down to just one important topic!

      Imagine a sphere – this represents all human knowledge about science that has been acquired till date. Now, with each new research done in science, a point on the sphere (which represents a scientific topic) moves a tad outwards, making the sphere just a bit bigger. With each new scientific discovery, the sphere grows even bigger! The ‘important’ part comes in science when we can all ensure that we’re able to make the sphere bigger and bigger. Of course, some points on this sphere could be to do with a chemistry-based science, some physics-based, some biology, some maths and so on. Many points are often a mix of the different sciences, but as long as the overall volume is increasing, we are adding to the knowledge bubble, which is very important in science overall.

    • Photo: Hannah Tanner

      Hannah Tanner answered on 15 Mar 2023:

      I think it might be climate change. Nothing else is going to matter if we haven’t got a planet we, and all the rest of the wildlife can safely live on.

    • Photo: Rachel Colquhoun

      Rachel Colquhoun answered on 15 Mar 2023:

      They are all important – I’m not sure we can rank them. And often scientific advances in one area can unexpectedly improve another area. e.g. there is science/chemistry behind power/electricity generation. With electricity we can power computers which can analyse genomes or study photos of cancers. Understanding these can improve human health. But we needed the science of electricity first.

    • Photo: Aishwarya Mishra

      Aishwarya Mishra answered on 15 Mar 2023:

      I would go with environmental, marine and climate science. They are very important right now for us to have a better future.

    • Photo: Edward Guy

      Edward Guy answered on 17 Mar 2023:

      I think the most important challenge humans face right now is safely producing energy without CO2. So, research in the areas of nuclear physics and cold fusion are probably the most important… unless there’s another pandemic, in which case vaccine research ;). And that’s the tricky part of answering your question… many areas of science are important from predicting earthquakes and tsunamis, forecasting weather, treating cancer… so if you want to make a difference by being a scientist, only your imagination limits how you can do this 🙂

    • Photo: Benjamin Foster

      Benjamin Foster answered on 22 Mar 2023:

      Depends who you ask. I would say fundamental principles in physics are key, as that dictates the activity and properties of atoms which make up all things. Lots of science research is enhanced through being inter-disciplinary in that they study different concepts or topics to arrive to a nuanced and thorough answer to a particular research question. I guess there is no one, correct answer here…

Comments