I apparently do not have a wild enough imagination for what researchers do in their spare time... this seems like something I wouldn't have expected anyone to do more than speculate about.

Why "in their spare time"? We're seriously researching things like that now, for a few years at least.

I assume research just always takes place in spare time I guess :) I'm not up to date on the field and had never considered it is mainly the idea I was trying to get across.