Question: As in your 3 wishes question in the interview, you said discover something ground breaking. Based on your work what could that be? :-)

Anna Scaife answered on 17 Nov 2014:

Hey Hannah – there are lots of things I’d like to make discoveries about! Here are a couple…

My PhD student and I recently discovered a radio shock in the jet from a young star (it was the first time anyone had seen one). If we could find more of those and determine how often they happen then we might be able to explain the halo of high energy particles that surrounds our galaxy – that would be ground breaking!

I recently found a new way to measure magnetic fields in galaxy clusters using X-rays. If we could use that technique to prove that magnetic fields in clusters change over the history of the Universe that would allow us to say where magnetic fields came from in the first place – that would be ground breaking too 🙂

But these things don’t happen quickly – you need to check all of the results that your own work builds on and think about all the possible alternative causes for the effect before you can really be certain of your result. It’s exciting, but also a nerve-wracking process!