• Question: what do u think is the strangest descovery in the past 10 years

    Asked by 228spea37 to Francesca, Laura, Matthew, Andrew, Rebecca on 13 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Laura Schofield

      Laura Schofield answered on 13 Nov 2014:

      I think 3D printing body parts, like ears, that actually work is pretty strange! If you’d told me 10 years ago that’s what scientists and doctors would be working on, I would’ve laughed and told you you were crazy! Don’t get me wrong, it is amazing and awesome and incredible, but sounds so completely science fiction!!

    • Photo: Andrew McKinley

      Andrew McKinley answered on 14 Nov 2014:

      Strangest discovery? I’m really not sure. I think the Higgs Boson which was discovered at CERN in the Large Hadron Collider in 2009/2010 is pretty strange! Ok, it was predicted some time ago, but think about it – there is a particle that gives things *massMATOMO_URL That sort of implies that you can have matter without this boson, and it would not have mass at all! (and yes, this can happen. A photon – a ‘particle’ of light – does not have any mass because there is no Higgs boson associated with it). The discovery itself may not seem strange, but thinking about the consequences leads to some pretty strange results!

      I could make a particle physics joke about “strange particles”… this relies on knowing the six types of quark (particles that make up protons and neutrons). They are called “Up”, “Down”, “Top”, “Bottom”, “Strange” and “Charm”…. I really don’t know why! But a “strange particle” must be a quark according to this!

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