• Question: Also what the best discovery you have made?

    Asked by anon-360747 on 23 Mar 2023.
    • Photo: Martin McCoustra

      Martin McCoustra answered on 23 Mar 2023:

      A few years ago, we were working on how carbon monoxide molecules orient themselves in thin solid films of the compound and discovered that these films posses an electric field. Such icy films of carbon monoxide form in the cold, dense gas present in star forming regions in space. We reasoned that this might be the missing link in explaining the difference between the rate of star formation observed by astronomers and the best calculated rate determined by astrophysicists. We were right, it turned that the presence of this electric field increased the rate from the best calculation to that which is observed. Amazing how something on the nanoscale could impact on the astronomical scale.

    • Photo: Rebecca Woods

      Rebecca Woods answered on 24 Mar 2023:

      I found that some of the compounds I was working with caused my parasites to lose one of their organelles (little organs), it’s a known thing in the literature, but it was still interesting to find/see on the fluorescent microscope.

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