• Question: Does your work protect the environment?

    Asked by goatscheese to Adam, Geoff, Rob, Sheila, Suzie on 15 Mar 2011 in Categories: . This question was also asked by bigmac95, eevee.
    • Photo: Adam Tuff

      Adam Tuff answered on 14 Mar 2011:

      My work directly doesn’t no. However, my girlfriend is a geologist, and she looks at natural radiation that comes from rocks, particularly in the south of England – geologists know what elements and radioactive isotopes they have in the ground because nuclear physicists have been able to find out which of these the radiation comes from. That way we can better understand our environment, and protect people from areas that might be more radioactive than others.

    • Photo: Sheila Kanani

      Sheila Kanani answered on 14 Mar 2011:

      Sort of. I am looking at the plasma environment at Saturn. The Sun creates plasma which it then inflicts on the Earth as the solar wind. Plasma is a ‘soup’ of charged particles which can be dangerous if they impinge the Earth. The Earth is protected from the solar wind because of its magnetic field, or magnetosphere. I am investigating Saturn’s magnetosphere, so the more we learn about magnetospheres in general the more we can learn how to protect the Earth from the solar wind!

    • Photo: Geoff McBride

      Geoff McBride answered on 14 Mar 2011:

      Not protect but the team I work with looks at solutions to global warming and other problems

    • Photo: Suzie Sheehy

      Suzie Sheehy answered on 14 Mar 2011:

      My current work aims to design a particle accelerator to drive a new type of completely safe nuclear reactor that has less nuclear waste and can even burn up existing nuclear waste, as well as producing almost carbon-free power. So in that sense, it does protect the environment!

    • Photo: Robert Simpson

      Robert Simpson answered on 15 Mar 2011:

      Personally, my own work has little to do with the environment, but a lot of space technology is about observing the Earth and watching and measuring changes to the environment. So space science in general does help the environment, but not my own research.

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