• Question: How many experiments have you done.

    Asked by anon-205625 to Kathryn, Affelia on 4 Mar 2019. This question was also asked by anon-205632.
    • Photo: Kathryn Boast

      Kathryn Boast answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      More than I could count! A lot of my research was testing out equipment that I was building. In some sense every time I tested whether something was working, I was doing an experiment – because the equipment was brand new and had never existed before, and I was designing it myself.
      I have worked on one *really* big experiment though – the LUX-ZEPLIN experiment. It’s a team of about 300 scientists searching for “dark matter” – mysterious stuff that seems to make up lots of the universe. There’s a great video about that experiment here:

    • Photo: Affelia Wibisono

      Affelia Wibisono answered on 9 Mar 2019:

      I did lots when I was at school and university, One of my favourites was firing small metal balls at a tray full of sand to see how the size and speed of meteorites affect the size and depth of the craters they make when they hit the ground.

      Now I just work on one experiment. I use the data taken by a space telescope called XMM-Newton to find out how and why Jupiter’s northern and southern lights give off X-rays.

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