The case for curiosity-driven research

Seemingly pointless scientific research can lead to extraordinary discoveries, says physicist Suzie Sheehy. In a talk and tech demo, she shows how many of our modern technologies are tied to centuries-old, curiosity-driven experiments -- and makes the case for investing in more to arrive at a deeper understanding of the world.

In the late 19th century,
scientists were trying to solve a mystery.

They found that if they had
a vacuum tube like this one

and applied a high voltage across it,

something strange happened.

They called them cathode rays.

But the question was:
What were they made of?

In England, the 19th-century
physicist J.J. Thompson

conducted experiments using
magnets and electricity, like this.

And he came to an incredible revelation.

These rays were made
of negatively charged particles

around 2,000 times lighter
than the hydrogen atom,

the smallest thing they knew.

So Thompson had discovered
the first subatomic particle,

which we now call electrons.

Now, at the time, this seemed to be
a completely impractical discovery.

I mean, Thompson didn't think
there were any applications of electrons.

Around his lab in Cambridge,
he used to like to propose a toast:

"To the electron.

May it never be of use to anybody."

(Laughter)

He was strongly in favor of doing research
out of sheer curiosity,

to arrive at a deeper
understanding of the world.

And what he found
did cause a revolution in science.

But it also caused a second,
unexpected revolution in technology.

Today, I'd like to make a case
for curiosity-driven research,

because without it,

none of the technologies
I'll talk about today

would have been possible.

Now, what Thompson found here
has actually changed our view of reality.

I mean, I think I'm standing on a stage,

and you think you're sitting in a seat.

But that's just the electrons in your body

pushing back against
the electrons in the seat,

opposing the force of gravity.

You're not even really touching the seat.

You're hovering ever so slightly above it.

But in many ways, our modern society
was actually built on this discovery.

I mean, these tubes
were the start of electronics.

And then for many years,

most of us actually had one of these,
if you remember, in your living room,

in cathode-ray tube televisions.

But -- I mean, how impoverished
would our lives be

if the only invention that had come
from here was the television?

(Laughter)

Thankfully, this tube was just a start,

because something else happens
when the electrons here

hit the piece of metal inside the tube.

Let me show you.

Pop this one back on.

So as the electrons
screech to a halt inside the metal,

their energy gets thrown out again

in a form of high-energy light,
which we call X-rays.

(Buzzing)

(Buzzing)

And within 15 years
of discovering the electron,

these X-rays were being used
to make images inside the human body,

helping soldiers' lives
being saved by surgeons,

who could then find pieces of bullets
and shrapnel inside their bodies.

But there's no way we could have
come up with that technology

by asking scientists to build
better surgical probes.

Only research done out of sheer curiosity,
with no application in mind,

could have given us the discovery
of the electron and X-rays.

Now, this tube also threw open the gates
for our understanding of the universe

and the field of particle physics,

because it's also the first,
very simple particle accelerator.

Now, I'm an accelerator physicist,
so I design particle accelerators,

and I try and understand how beams behave.

And my field's a bit unusual,

because it crosses between
curiosity-driven research

and technology with
real-world applications.

But it's the combination
of those two things

that gets me really excited
about what I do.

Now, over the last 100 years,

there have been far too many examples
for me to list them all.

But I want to share with you just a few.

In 1928, a physicist named Paul Dirac
found something strange in his equations.

And he predicted, based purely
on mathematical insight,

that there ought to be
a second kind of matter,

the opposite to normal matter,

that literally annihilates
when it comes in contact:

antimatter.

I mean, the idea sounded ridiculous.

But within four years, they'd found it.

And nowadays, we use it
every day in hospitals,

in positron emission tomography,
or PET scans, used for detecting disease.

Or, take these X-rays.

If you can get these electrons
up to a higher energy,

so about 1,000 times higher
than this tube,

the X-rays that those produce

can actually deliver enough
ionizing radiation to kill human cells.

And if you can shape and direct
those X-rays where you want them to go,

that allows us to do an incredible thing:

to treat cancer without drugs or surgery,

which we call radiotherapy.

In countries like Australia and the UK,

around half of all cancer patients
are treated using radiotherapy.

And so, electron accelerators
are actually standard equipment

in most hospitals.

Or, a little closer to home:

if you have a smartphone or a computer --

and this is TEDx, so you've got
both with you right now, right?

Well, inside those devices

are chips that are made
by implanting single ions into silicon,

in a process called ion implantation.

And that uses a particle accelerator.

Without curiosity-driven research, though,

none of these things would exist at all.

So, over the years, we really learned
to explore inside the atom.

And to do that, we had to learn
to develop particle accelerators.

The first ones we developed
let us split the atom.

And then we got to higher
and higher energies;

we created circular accelerators
that let us delve into the nucleus

and then create new elements, even.

And at that point, we were no longer
just exploring inside the atom.

We'd actually learned
how to control these particles.

We'd learned how to interact
with our world

on a scale that's too small
for humans to see or touch

or even sense that it's there.

And then we built larger
and larger accelerators,

because we were curious
about the nature of the universe.

As we went deeper and deeper,
new particles started popping up.

Eventually, we got to huge
ring-like machines

that take two beams of particles
in opposite directions,

squeeze them down
to less than the width of a hair

and smash them together.

And then, using Einstein's E=mc2,

you can take all of that energy
and convert it into new matter,

new particles which we rip
from the very fabric of the universe.

Nowadays, there are
about 35,000 accelerators in the world,

not including televisions.

And inside each one of these
incredible machines,

there are hundreds of billions
of tiny particles,

dancing and swirling in systems
that are more complex

than the formation of galaxies.

You guys, I can't even begin to explain
how incredible it is

that we can do this.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

So I want to encourage you
to invest your time and energy

in people that do
curiosity-driven research.

It was Jonathan Swift who once said,

"Vision is the art
of seeing the invisible."

And over a century ago,
J.J. Thompson did just that,

when he pulled back the veil
on the subatomic world.

And now we need to invest
in curiosity-driven research,

because we have so many
challenges that we face.

And we need patience;

we need to give scientists the time,
the space and the means

to continue their quest,

because history tells us

that if we can remain
curious and open-minded

about the outcomes of research,

the more world-changing
our discoveries will be.

Thank you.

(Applause)