Questions.
Curiosity.
Creativity.
Ideas.
These are the secret to scientific breakthroughs... and some Nobels along the way, as well.
But, Nobel or no Nobel the key is creating the environment to nurture curiosity-driven
science and blue sky research... and long-term investment is the only way we can continue
to make progress in what impacts our lives.
I wanted to examine where Korea stands...
part two of our four-part weekly feature.
We come into the world curious.
With nurturing that curiosity remains with us... throughout our lives.
Sometimes curiosity leads us in unusual directions.
Knowledge is a journey.
Who knows where research can take you?
"When I was a child I remember the Nobel prize being a dream, but since I began my research,
the Nobel Prize wasn't something I was concerned about."
Most of the matter in the universe is dark.
Without dark matter, galaxies and stars would not have formed and life would not exist.
It holds the universe together.
What is it?
That's the ultimate question that brought Yannis Semertzidis from a lab in New York
to Korea... to this pristine lab.
At the center of this 7-point-6 million U.S. dollar-per-year research project led by this
distinguished Greek-born, U.S. trained physicist - the quest for axion.
"We call it a cavity and this is our basic Axion detector.
Almost everything we do right now is using cylinders like this."
These gleaming cylindrical apparatus of copper and gold are prototypes of a device that might
one day answer a major mystery about the Universe by detecting a particle called the axion - a
possible component of dark matter.
"But in this unit, we have this size of, so imagine we have the cavity over there we could
have mounted in here.
This will go down to 4 Kelvin, which is minus 269 degrees Celsius."
But physicists don't know what the axion's mass is, so they have to scan for it, tuning
the resonant frequency of the cavity with rods of copper or sapphire.
It will take years for a single device to cover the whole range of possible frequencies.
"This kind of module is the first-ever to be tried.
The advantages of this cavity compared to others is that it lacks end-caps.
Because the whole thing is in a continuous shape, we can increase the volume much more
easily.
It's a new cavity that we're trying out and we'll run more experiments with it."
But here's a catch: no one knows whether axions even exist.
It's the kind of high-risk, high-reward project that many basic scientists in Korea aren't
used to... just yet.
So, what if they end up finding...
no such particle exists?
"It would be great because our goal is not really detecting the axion... truly believe
there is axion.
This is not research.
If we find out there is no axion, then we also we figured it out."
In its quest to find the axion, CAPP is chasing a high-profile rival in the United States:
the Axion Dark Matter Experiment, based at the University of Washington in Seattle.
"That team was on for more than twenty years now, they are doing great.
They are very smart people, the best scientists in the world.
We are challenging their position.
So in five years, we will have the best axion experiment in the world, no question about
it."
If CAPP succeeds in finding axion, it will not only transform Korea, but rewrite physics.
"I want Korea to be able to produce Nobel prizes, year after year.
And it is the attitude that will make this possible."
Dr. Ryoo Ryong is a globally-recognized chemist, the recipient of many prestigious awards around
the world...
often cited by Thomson Reuters as a future Nobel laureate in chemistry.
"Zeolites' nanoporous systems are an ideal template for the synthesis of three-dimensional
graphene architecture, but the high temperatures required for their synthesis cause the reactions
to occur non-selectively.
We lowered the temperature required for the carbonization by embedding lanthanum ions,
a silvery-white metal element, in zeolite pores."
The breakthrough discovery was published in Nature, one of the world's most prestigious
scientific journals.
But, it wasn't overnight that Ryoo Ryong and his team could solve this centuries-old conundrum...
it took them 17 years to arrive at the Eureka moment.
Why?
For what?
"It's the scientist's curiosity and love for challenge.
What's key for a scientist is creativity and originality.
That means the society needs to let scientists explore, take risks, go for those blue sky
research.
But, there aren't many research in Korea free from pressure to produce results...
the outcome."
It's like Thomas Edison once said.
I have not failed.
I've just found 10-thousand ways that won't work.
"Research in basic science starts with a question; curiosity... and if along the way, they happen
to discover something, that's good.
Most of the time, you won't.
We MAY produce two or three results out of 1-hundred tries.
We need to be able to embrace failure and not dwell on the results.
Korea needs to create a system where researchers can do what they want to do for 10, 20 years."
Take your chances, these scientists say.
Don't be afraid to make mistakes.
Go for it.
Because for curiosity-driven sciences to thrive... for blue-sky research to survive...
we need to be able to say, it's okay to fail.
Moon Conn-young, Arirang News.