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Asked by AyahA on 6 Mar 2026.
Question: If you could run one experiment with unlimited resources what would you test?
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James Lazenby answered on 6 Mar 2026:
This is hard to answer, as any scientific finding is made up of multiple experiments each giving you a little fragment of information that you then piece together to give you an answer to the research question. And then you often have to do experiments to confirm the results of your previous experiments. The more findings you have the more you realise there are more questions you need to address.
If I had one research question I could address with unlimited resources it would be to look at reversing climate change or a vaccine to prevent cancer.
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Erin Jarvis answered on 8 Mar 2026:
This is a great question! I think I’d choose a really fun experiment that I could do on a large scale – something like Elephant’s Toothpaste using unlimited resources would be so much fun (and really messy!). Or something huge like a massive Mentos and Coke experiment – imagine a whole swimming pool of Coke and tons of Mentos. It would create lots of mess so wouldn’t be very practical but I think it would be lots of fun while it lasted.
If it had to be something sensible in my own work, I’d choose to test my antiviral materials on the biggest range of viruses possible to make sure we could fight lots and lots of viruses.
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Max de Carlos Generowicz answered on 9 Mar 2026:
Well that’s a very interesting and very difficult question!
Answering within my own field first: in particle physics, we often need to compromise on the technology we use in our detectors. We have sensors that can detect particles to within fractions of millimetres, but they are just too expensive to use on our whole detector. However, with unlimited resources, we could build a huge detector, fully covered with these super-sensitive trackers. The precision of the results we would get would be incredible!
Looking further afield, I would probably veer towards some sort of huge space mission. Aside from exploring space itself, there’s a lot of interesting physics experiments you can run while in space. The problem usually is that there’s not enough space (called payload) on spacecrafts to fit a lot of physics experiments inside. With unlimited resources, we could build a huge spaceship, fill it with all sorts of experiments and we’d gain loads of new data! We could also of course explore space, land on other planets, etc.
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OLUWAROTIMI MICHAEL POPOOLA answered on 9 Mar 2026:
I would run experiment that will implement a frequencies translator that will tell me what birds in the sky are saying and how i can also communicate with them. They have a lot of information exchange among themselves which can benefits human race.
Comments
orcs532sear75 commented on :
intresting!
Andrew M commented on :
With truly unlimited resources, it would be fasinating to run some experiments on some really big questions, like the beginning and end of the universe, by creating and observing some. Maybe test some hypotheses on collisions between bubble universes, see if the patterns on the cosmic microwave background matched predictions. All that would be needed would be several universes worth of stuff, infinite time and a place to sit.
At the same time within those universes you could run experiments on the range of conditions in which life gets started. Determine properly and with good statistical rigor the probability of life beginning and reaching a technological stage – put proper values to all the factors in the Drake Equation.
Of course bouncing universes together or running experiments on the rates of evolution and destruction of technologic civilisations might raise some ethical issues, but if you’re running experiments using disposable lab-grown universes you may not notice them.