Question: How does your research impact the world around us?

Lucien Heurtier answered on 24 Mar 2023:

Research has a huge impact on the society and the environment over time. Sometimes, fundamental research may sound useless because you may not see how it could be useful NOW. But with years, technologies and knowledge improve, and sometimes research has an impact decades later.

For example, when Einstein discovered the theory of general relativity in 1916 (the theory of gravitation), people thought that was very cool, but nobody thought it would have so many applications later. Nowadays, satellites use this theory to communicate with your phone, and know exactly where you are on Earth because it know how your phone signals propagates through space before reaching the satellite. Without Einstein theory, they could not know that precisely. So if you would use your smartphone in London, without Einstein theory of gravitation, you could not know if you are in Hyde Park or on the Tower Bridge!

Research can also help understanding how to produce and store energy in an efficient way. This is a very important question these days, as you may have heard from the news, since the planet is getting warmer and warmer, and countries are fighting to find cheap resources to produce electricity or heating. I believe research is the only way to find solutions to avoid wars and avoid destroying our planet.

It can also help medicine. Radioactivity for example was first discovered by physicists but is used in medicine a lot! Electronic microscopes also use quantum mechanics to observe very tiny cells or molecules, and could not have been possible without research in physics. And believe me, when quantum mechanics was invented, people thought that was crazy!