Question: Have you been involved in any major findings?

Kate Dobson answered on 17 Nov 2014:

Science is usually a series of lots of little findings. Unfortunaletly not many of us have the “Eureka” moment when we make a major breakthrough. We also always try to know or predict the outcome of an experiment – we do the experiment to test a theory – so the biggest “Wow” moments I have had are usually when something goes wrong or I didn’t understand what I was doing as well as through tI did and the results are not what we expected.

I am working with all sorts of volcanologists and geolgoists t obetter understand how volcanoes work. We all do our little bit to improve the global understanding, so that when something happens we can give advice to the local government, or villagers, or air traffic controllers about the safest way to deal with any eruption.

As there aren’t any volacnoes in the UK, I think the work I have been invovled with that will probably have the biggest impact on the UK, is the work on fracking, assessing the gas storred in the shale rocks in the UK, and understanding how the gas might be ebing stored and moved and released when we drill for hydrocarbons.