![]() It would be impossible to detect such motion if the spirals were actually way far away. But a few experts insisted that the spirals were much more distant, themselves entire galaxies like the Milky Way, or “island universes.” Supposed evidence against the island universe idea came from measurements of internal motion in the spirals. Most astronomers believed the spiral nebulae resided within the Milky Way galaxy, at the time believed to comprise the entire universe. In the early 20th century, astronomers vigorously disagreed on the distance from Earth of fuzzy cloudlike blobs shaped something like whirlpools (called spiral nebulae). Primordial gravitational waves remain undiscovered, though their more recent cousins, produced in cataclysmic events like black hole collisions, have been repeatedly detected in recent years. Sure enough, the team’s analysis had not properly accounted for dust in space that skewed the data. Suspiciously, though, the reported signal was much stronger than expected for most versions of inflation theory. In 2014, scientists reported finding precisely the signal expected, simultaneously verifying the existence of gravitational waves predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity and providing strong evidence favoring inflation. A popular theory explaining details of the early universe - called inflation - predicts the presence of blips in the microwave radiation caused by primordial gravitational waves from the earliest epochs of the universe. Gravitational waves from the early universeĪll space is pervaded by microwave radiation, the leftover glow from the Big Bang that kicked the universe into action 13.8 billion years ago. But sanity was restored in 2012, when the research team realized that a loose electrical cable knocked the experiment’s clocks out of sync, explaining the error. Faster-than-light neutrinos grabbed some headlines, evoked disbelief from most physicists and induced Einstein to turn over in his grave. Initial reports found that the neutrinos arrived 60 nanoseconds sooner than a beam of light would. But not as fast as scientists claimed in 2011, when they timed how long it took neutrinos to fly from the CERN atom smasher near Geneva to a detector in Italy. Neutrinos are weird little flyweight subatomic particles that zip through space faster than Usain Bolt on PEDs. Soon those experiments showed that polywater’s properties came about from the presence of impurities in ordinary water. It seemed that the water molecules must have been coagulating in some way to produce “polywater.” By the end of the 1960s chemists around the world had begun vigorously pursuing polywater experiments. ![]() Ordinary water flushed through narrow tubes became denser and thicker, boiled at higher than normal temperatures and froze at much lower temperatures than usual. In the 1960s, Soviet scientists contended that they had produced a new form of water. And arsenic-based life never made it into the textbooks. This one sounded rather suspicious, but the evidence, at first glance, looked pretty good. A weird form of lifeĪ report in 2010 claimed that a weird form of life incorporates arsenic in place of phosphorus in biological molecules. (With one exception, there will be no names, for the purpose here is not to shame.) 10. Rather, let’s just list the Top 10 erroneous scientific conclusions that got a lot of attention before ultimately getting refuted. We’re not talking about fraud here, or just bad ideas that were worth floating but flopped instead, or initial false positives due to statistical randomness. While the final verdict on phosphine remains to be rendered, it’s a good time to recall some of science’s other famous errors. ( See the story by well-trained Science News reporter Lisa Grossman.) Evidence for the gas phosphine, a chemical that supposedly could be created only by life (either microbes or well-trained human chemists), has started to look a little shaky. But instant replay review has now raised some serious concerns about that report’s conclusion. Recently much hype accompanied a scientific report about the possibility of life on Venus. ![]() Still, sometimes science’s errors can be rather embarrassing. An erroneous experiment may inspire further experiments that not only correct the original error, but also identify new previously unsuspected truths. That’s because making mistakes is often the best path to progress. In fact, mistakes are fairly common in science, and most scientists tell you they wouldn’t have it any other way. But since scientists are human (most of them, anyway), even science is never free from error. To err is human, which is really not a very good excuse.Īnd to err as a scientist is worse, of course, because depending on science is supposed to be the best way for people to make sure they’re right.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |