Why conduct scientific research on questions that lack an obvious purpose? Danail Obreschkow argues that science has a long and proud history of discovery from fundamental research, powered by curiosity more than prospects. "We don’t always know the destination, but some roads look very exciting ... and sometimes such roads lead to astounding places!"
In this talk, Danail explains his research on the collapse of bubbles in microgravity and shares the feeling of flying on parabolic flights with the European Space Agency. It’s an endeavour that might seem inapplicable at first, but it has expanded our knowledge on highly concentrated energy - and the applications could include large environmental and medical benefits. Danail is an astrophysicist aiming to understand the origin and evolution of galaxies and the cosmos. He is based at the University of Western Australia (UWA) node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) and helps develop the Square Kilometre Array Telescope (SKA) project. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx