• Question: has their ever been a time were your trying so hard,spending so much of your own time to try and answer a question that you eventually find out you cant answer, like (Aliens existing)??

    Asked by sarahi to David, James, Mike, Suze, Will on 16 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by saraha.
    • Photo: James Marrow

      James Marrow answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Always! (but not usually about aliens existing). Many scientific investigations end up in dead-ends. If you think carefully before starting something, you can avoid some of these, but it’s an inevitable problem.

      If we knew the answer to a scientific problem, then we wouldn’t need to do the research! So quite often, we don’t know what we’re doing! (but we should know why we’re doing it).

    • Photo: Suze Kundu

      Suze Kundu answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Luckily I’ve not reached that point yet. I think that would drive me crazy! I imagine that it’s really satisfying when you can solve the problem, but I’m someone that needs to know everything, and I’m quite impatient sometimes, so that would be awful for me!

    • Photo: Mike Dodd

      Mike Dodd answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Yeah, sometimes you can spend a long time on something that you think is really interesting, but at the moment you just can’t answer. It might be that the technology isn’t around to allow you to measure well enough. It does drive you crazy! It’s like when an experiment just doesn’t work. It’s supposed to be simple, but however hard you try it just doesn’t work. Luckily this doesn’t happen often 🙂

    • Photo: William Eborall

      William Eborall answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      I’ve had this problem once and it was really frustrating. I had a part of an experiment that I just couldn’t get to work and had to give up trying because I had to go and work somewhere else. You always remember that problems your couldn’t solve, but hopefully you can move onto something else and put it behind you.

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