I'm a physics major, and still in science 20 years later, cancer research. I originally came here to ask, in general, why would anyone care about this result?

Since you asserted an answer to the question before I managed to ask, I'm happy to subordinate my question. But I will also suggest your specific answer, cure cancer, won't work. I need to kill cells, which requires a cascade of large molecules interacting at energies on the order of a fraction of an eV, or massive amounts of high energy radiation.

I can kill cells directly with high energy radiation, however, the energies for this investigation, the hydrogen 2s-4p transition, (1,2) are trivial (486 nm is visible light). Also, radiotherapy isn't really good at interrogating cell type, the current standard for new cancer therapies (immunotherapy).

(1) http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6359/79

(2) https://indico.mitp.uni-mainz.de/event/14/contribution/11/ma...