Scientific Experimentation One of the things about life is there are many things which just cannot be explained sufficiently. I guess life would be very dull if we knew the answers to everything. In science sometimes an experiment is said to be successful and yet no one else seems to be able to repeat it, putting those who conducted the first experiment under suspicion. One of the first things which comes to mind is cold fusion. Some considered the idea worth pursuing, and in 1989 it was said a successful experiment was conducted. The so called result of that experiment was never able to be repeated and today cold fusion is thought not to be possible by most scientists. Basically, it was an experiment to create nuclear fusion at about room temperature using chemicals and other materials. Psychology is notorious for having experiments, the successful results of which can not be repeated. It has been said there are about 100 recent experimental results of which at least two thirds cannot be substantiated. It makes one wonder why, doesn’t it? One would think these kinds of experiments would be easy to replicate. Should we believe the results were fudged? Could it be there is no way to repeat the results for some other reasons? This certainly doesn’t make much sense to me. Sometimes the results of an experiment cannot only be replicated, but they produce something entirely unexpected. In 1965 an experiment produced something unexpected. If we examine what the experiment was trying to do, we would have to say it was a failure. The idea was for a scientist at DuPont to produce a material that would improve tires. A new material was produced, but it was not what the scientist was originally looking for and not suitable for tires. Even though this happened it turned out the material had some incredible abilities, one of which was the ability to stop a bullet. The scientist had invented Kevlar by mistake. Today, it has many uses, one of which is in bullet proof vests. In 1895 Wilhelm Roentgen was experimenting with a cathode ray tube. While he was examining it, he turned out the lights and found it would make a fluorescent screen on the other side of the room light up. He decided to block the tube, but couldn’t believe what he found out. It seems most materials he placed in front of the tube had no effect. Then for some reason decided to put his hand in front of the tube and was surprised to see the bones in his hand visible. He had no idea he was getting irradiated and neither did early proponents of X-rays realize this resulting in much damage to their bodies and even death. Today when X-rays are taken, the people are only exposed to a much lower dose and a much shorter period of time. Another device which was invented by accident during experimenting was the pacemaker. There are probably millions of them in use today. Originally the inventor was trying to build a machine that would record heart rhythms. As he was working on his device, he found he didn’t have the resistor he wanted so he installed a different one and then it completed the circuit. As he noticed the circuit was emitting a pulse, he realized he might be able to build a smaller one which could regulate a heartbeat, and the pacemaker was born. He saved many lives with this device. One thing most of us take for granted is the safety glass use for our car’s windows. A scientist was conducting an experiment and using a beaker filled with a solution made of cellulose nitrate. The beaker slipped out of his hand and fell to the floor. It broke but in a very strange way for the time. The broken beaker still maintained its shape even though the glass in it was shattered. The cellulose nitrate had formed a plastic coating over the glass holding it together. The rest is history. One invention in the 16th century had to do with the discovery of a very popular alcoholic drink today. A man was doing experiments with wine and got an idea. He thought he would heat wine to make it more concentrated and maybe be able to add water to reconstitute it. The heated concentrate became popular and today we know it as brandy. Brandy has triple the alcohol content of most wines. Sometimes even scientists lie about the results of their experiments. It doesn’t happen often and there is a lot at stake for them such as a destroyed reputation and maybe even jail time in certain cases. Such is what happen in Australia, when a researcher got caught doing just that, creating false data. The scientist had made believe he had discovered a breakthrough in Parkinson’s disease. A judge said there was no evidence he even conducted trials. While scientific fraud is rare, it has increased and is not as rare as it was a few years ago. One scientists who was accepting funds for conducting experiments in quantum computing, produced false results and was sentenced to jail for scientific fraud. He not only accepted the funds, but did not conduct any experiments and created the data he claimed were from experiments in the field. Recently, an experiment in nuclear fusion has proven we might be able to conquer it and use nuclear fusion to solve our clean energy problems. Scientists have been able to sustain the longest reaction so far. China is said to have broken the record for the length of a fusion reaction. They were able to sustain it for 17 minutes. This may not sound like much, but these experiments have been going on for many years and have cost billions of dollars, and some day we will be able to get a sustained reaction. Fusion is not only powerful, there is no danger of a meltdown and no nuclear waste. It is the holy grail of nuclear power. Once we succeed in conquering it, the world will change for the better. There are all kinds of experiments going on today. Some are simple are some so complex even the scientists are unsure what the results could be. Introducing artificial intelligence into the mix has sometimes made things more complex, especially when the artificial intelligence or AI does something unexpected. There are even some today in the scientific field who believe some AIs have reached sentience, that is they are alive. A Google engineer claimed this about a Google AI. He was suspended for saying this.
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