61–70 of 119 posts
For a bit more background on the history of this experiment and why the previous drips were missed, check out this recent Radiolab podcast: http://joshuafoer.com/radiolab-the-pitch-drop-experiment/
I sort of take issue with "experiment succeeds". You don't (shouldn't) set up an experiment to prove or disprove something, merely to discover. I'm sure the issue, if indeed there is one, is with the reporting not the scientists though.
substitute "ends" for "succeeds" if you're feeling pedantic. I think that for a decades long experiment the two words become synonyms.
I bet the grad student involved is celebrating now that they can finally submit their thesis
Woah woah woah, not so fast, Doctorate McPhdsosoon. Science is repeatable. See you at lab meeting next Monday morning. Please come prepared with a roadmap for phase 2 trials. These grants don't write themselves, you know.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really? Scientists are people. Proving each other wrong is one of the biggest motivators to do years of painstaking, labour-intensive research. Of course, you can't prove someone wrong without being rigorous.
It gets finnier if you imagine Stephen Hawking saying "I told you so." to Leonard Susskind. D'OOOH... WERNSTROM!!!
Um, not to take away from the achievement of the result, but couldn't this result have been obtained in much less time with higher force than 1G in, say, a centrifuge?
In other news students preferred "watching the pitch" over lectures by a margin of 2 to 1. :-)
The title is misleading. The experiment did succeed before, it just hasn't been captured on camera.
The first thought that popped into my punny little brain was: Why didn't they use a centrifuge to accelerate results? The one variable that could be controlled is the gravitational force on the substance. If we were on the moon the experiment, as designed, would take far longer to produce a drop. By using a centrifuge they could have easily simulated significantly greater gravitational forces and arrived at a result…
Pitch is a suspension. The heavy stuff would drop to the outside, the viscosity would be affected, no experiment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
down-to-earth experiments Bwahahahah!
Please keep the discussion constructive. No, there is no pun there.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure it would be valid. At a million g's, I'm a liquid. But most people would broadly speaking classify me as a solid (albeit one containing a lot of liquid).
> At a million g's, I'm a liquid Not really. You'll disintegrate in strange ways based on the relative density of your constituent parts. : Another thought is that if you laid on a bed for 13 years (the time it took for a drop of pitch to form) without moving --ignoring tissue decay and other factors-- you'd probably "flow" just as you might in a high gravity environment. Gravity, like rust, never sleeps. Yet, unless…