• Question: when you do your job whats the most suprising thing in are earth

    Asked by anon-275020 to Graham on 13 Jan 2021.
    • Photo: Graham Shields

      Graham Shields answered on 13 Jan 2021:

      I think for me the most surprising thing has been to discover how different the Earth was in the past. We think it’s normal for our planet to have liquid oceans and mountains and animals and oxygen in the air. But at times in the past, Earth was covered in ice, sometimes had no mountains, and long ago had no animals or oxygen. Weird!

Comments

  • Photo: Michael

    Michael commented on :

    MY biggest surprise is everytime we think we hit the limits of materials that we use, we find new and batter materials (whether these are good for the plant is another question of course!)

  • Photo: Stephanie

    Stephanie commented on :

    I’m a marine scientist, and I’m amazed that almost every time we do a research voyage we find new deep-sea species of animals and plants. It’s an undiscovered world down there at the bottom of the ocean!

  • Photo: Helena

    Helena commented on :

    I work in a lab that researches how liquids interact with themselves and other things (other liquids, sand, soil) when they move and I’m always shocked at how beautiful all the natural phenomenon are. If you’re interested have a look at the videos of vortex shedding on YouTube.

  • Photo: Becky

    Becky commented on :

    I think for me the most surprising thing I’ve discovered is that there are literally hundreds of bacteria who work together to achieve things that they couldn’t do on their own. For example it takes hundreds of different types of bacteria to convert food waste into methane. If 1 of them stopped working then the whole process will slow down or stop. It’s amazing how they all work together. It’s a bit like us – if everyone worked together all the time then imagine what we could achieve 🙂