The World's Longest-Running Lab Experiment Is Almost 100 Years Old (sciencealert.com)
- Reference: 0180617092
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/01/19/2324236/the-worlds-longest-running-lab-experiment-is-almost-100-years-old
- Source link: https://www.sciencealert.com/the-worlds-longest-running-lab-experiment-is-almost-100-years-old
> It all started in 1927, when physicist Thomas Parnell at the University of Queensland in Australia [2]filled a closed funnel with the world's thickest known fluid : pitch, a derivative of tar that was once used to seal ships against the seas. Three years later, in 1930, Parnell cut the funnel's stem, like a ribbon at an event, heralding the start of the [3]Pitch Drop Experiment . From then on, the black substance began to flow. At least, that is, in a manner of speaking. At room temperature pitch might look solid, but it is actually a fluid 100 billion times more viscous than water.
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> It took eight years for the first droplet to finally hit the beaker below. Then, they dripped at a cadence of once every eight years or so, slowing down only after air conditioning was installed in the building in the 1980s. Today, 96 years after the funnel was cut, only nine drops in total have seeped out. The last was in 2014. Scientists expect another will fall sometime in the 2020s, but they are still waiting. No one has ever actually seen a droplet fall directly, despite all the watchful eyes. The experiment is now live-streamed, but various glitches in the past meant that each fateful moment has slipped us by.
[1] https://slashdot.org/~alternative_right
[2] https://www.sciencealert.com/the-worlds-longest-running-lab-experiment-is-almost-100-years-old
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_drop_experiment
I suppose it does count as an experiment (Score:4, Insightful)
But what exactly are we learning from it?
Re:I suppose it does count as an experiment (Score:4, Insightful)
Sometimes, experiments are worth doing not because we don't know what the results of the experiment will be, but because young future scientists are constantly being born, and will learn from witnessing the experiment. For some, the fanfare around the latest drip will be the spark that lights a lifelong desire to pursue science. That alone makes it worthwhile.
Re: (Score:3)
Mostly it's a teaching tool/exhibit these days.
This is the experiment that was actually used to determine the relative viscosity of pitch, and there are some other actual materials science findings that were produced from it... admittedly quite some time ago.
Re: (Score:3)
For one thing, how long we can continuously run an experiment.
I actually do think it is an interesting question - you need continuity of several things (broader social stability, specific organizational stability, a community of people interested enough to bother keeping it going) without any of the usual things that keep something going (profit motive, government edict, etc.)
But I like proof-by-doing sorts of things in general.
Re: (Score:3)
There are some experiments that are not possible to complete within a scientist's lifetime. All of the data-gathering over decades or even centuries is a gift to future generations. Many observations over a very long time-frame in astronomy, weather, solar activity, etc., have led to new understandings and theories.
I'm reminded of a musical analog to this story: [1]ASLSP [wikipedia.org] by John Cage. The name is roughly a mnemonic for As Slow As Possible . Although it was originally a piano piece intended for concert or recita
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Slow_as_Possible
Re: (Score:2)
We're leaning how slowly something can drip. It's just like when you ask someone "how small can you jump?" or "how quietly can you clap?"
Remembered this on that would seem older (Score:3, Interesting)
Oxford Electric Bell or Clarendon Dry Pile The Bell has produced approximately 10 billion rings since 1840 and holds the Guinness World Record as "the world's most durable battery [delivering] ceaseless tintinnabulation". There are others.
Re: (Score:2)
I once read that it had to be covered with a glass bell because it was so distracting to those around it. We need to figure out what the heck was put into that pile.
Re: (Score:1)
Here's [1]another long-running experiment [nih.gov] to test how long seeds can be stored.
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37812737/
Impressive job security! (Score:2)
That all.
We already performed this experiment (Score:3)
Pitch pans have been used since the nineteen-hundreds in construction to weatherproof roof penetrations. You need some electrical conduit or some such on the roof, esp. a flat commercial roof, you'd build a sheetmetal enclosure and fill it with pitch after extending the conduit through the roof plate.
Some of the pitch always drips through the roof eventually, sticking to everything in sight, but never quite as well as to human clothing and skin. One contractor I knew would'nt allow it on his job sites, referring to it as the black death .
Have seen this in person (Score:4, Interesting)
It's kinda fun. There are events that run when they expect another drop to fall.