As usual, once a week, the Seed folks send all of us a question from one of the SB readers:

Assuming that time and money were not obstacles, what area of scientific research, outside of your own discipline, would you most like to explore? Why?

I’ve actually got two answers to that question.

First up: theoretical physics. I’m fascinated by the work that’s trying to unify quantum mechanics and relativity: string theory, the shape of extended dimensions, etc. The problem is, I think that this answer is probably cheating, even though it’s my second choice after what I’m doing now. Because what attracted me to what I’m doing is the math: computer science is a science of applied math with a deep theoretical side; and what attracts me to physics is also the beautiful deep math. In fact, the particular parts of physics that most interest me are the parts that are closest to pure math – the shape of dimensions in string theory, the strange topologies that Lisa Randall has been suggesting, etc.

If that’s cheating, and I really have to get away from the math, then I’d have to say evolutionary development, aka evo-devo. Around holiday time last year, PZ posted a list of books for science geeks, and one was by a guy named Sean Carroll (alas, no relation) on evolutionary development. I grabbed the book on his recommendation – and the ways that gene expression drives the development of living things, the way you can recognize the relationships between species by watching how they form; the way you can use the relationships between species to explore how features evolved – it’s just unbelievably cool.