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

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

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and applied a high voltage across it,

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something strange happened.

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They called them cathode rays.

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But the question was:
What were they made of?

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

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conducted experiments using
magnets and electricity, like this.

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And he came to an incredible revelation.

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These rays were made
of negatively charged particles

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around 2,000 times lighter
than the hydrogen atom,

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the smallest thing they knew.

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So Thompson had discovered
the first subatomic particle,

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which we now call electrons.

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

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

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

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"To the electron.

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May it never be of use to anybody."

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(Laughter)

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

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to arrive at a deeper
understanding of the world.

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And what he found
did cause a revolution in science.

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

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

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because without it,

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none of the technologies
I'll talk about today

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would have been possible.

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

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

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and you think you're sitting in a seat.

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But that's just the electrons in your body

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pushing back against
the electrons in the seat,

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opposing the force of gravity.

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You're not even really touching the seat.

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You're hovering ever so slightly above it.

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

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I mean, these tubes
were the start of electronics.

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And then for many years,

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

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in cathode-ray tube televisions.

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

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

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(Laughter)

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Thankfully, this tube was just a start,

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because something else happens
when the electrons here

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hit the piece of metal inside the tube.

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Let me show you.

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Pop this one back on.

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

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their energy gets thrown out again

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

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(Buzzing)

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(Buzzing)

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And within 15 years
of discovering the electron,

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

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helping soldiers' lives
being saved by surgeons,

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

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

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by asking scientists to build
better surgical probes.

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

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

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

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and the field of particle physics,

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

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

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and I try and understand how beams behave.

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And my field's a bit unusual,

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because it crosses between
curiosity-driven research

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and technology with
real-world applications.

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But it's the combination
of those two things

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that gets me really excited
about what I do.

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Now, over the last 100 years,

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

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But I want to share with you just a few.

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

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And he predicted, based purely
on mathematical insight,

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that there ought to be
a second kind of matter,

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the opposite to normal matter,

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that literally annihilates
when it comes in contact:

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antimatter.

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I mean, the idea sounded ridiculous.

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But within four years, they'd found it.

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And nowadays, we use it
every day in hospitals,

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

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Or, take these X-rays.

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

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so about 1,000 times higher
than this tube,

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the X-rays that those produce

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can actually deliver enough
ionizing radiation to kill human cells.

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

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that allows us to do an incredible thing:

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to treat cancer without drugs or surgery,

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which we call radiotherapy.

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In countries like Australia and the UK,

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around half of all cancer patients
are treated using radiotherapy.

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And so, electron accelerators
are actually standard equipment

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in most hospitals.

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Or, a little closer to home:

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if you have a smartphone or a computer --

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

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Well, inside those devices

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

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in a process called ion implantation.

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And that uses a particle accelerator.

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Without curiosity-driven research, though,

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none of these things would exist at all.

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

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

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The first ones we developed
let us split the atom.

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And then we got to higher
and higher energies;

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we created circular accelerators
that let us delve into the nucleus

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and then create new elements, even.

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

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We'd actually learned
how to control these particles.

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We'd learned how to interact
with our world

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

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or even sense that it's there.

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And then we built larger
and larger accelerators,

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because we were curious
about the nature of the universe.

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

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Eventually, we got to huge
ring-like machines

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that take two beams of particles
in opposite directions,

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squeeze them down
to less than the width of a hair

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and smash them together.

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And then, using Einstein's E=mc2,

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

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

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

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not including televisions.

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And inside each one of these
incredible machines,

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there are hundreds of billions
of tiny particles,

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dancing and swirling in systems
that are more complex

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than the formation of galaxies.

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

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that we can do this.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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

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in people that do
curiosity-driven research.

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It was Jonathan Swift who once said,

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"Vision is the art
of seeing the invisible."

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

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when he pulled back the veil
on the subatomic world.

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

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because we have so many
challenges that we face.

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And we need patience;

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

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to continue their quest,

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because history tells us

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that if we can remain
curious and open-minded

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about the outcomes of research,

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the more world-changing
our discoveries will be.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)