First Success Witnessed In World's Longest-Running Experiment

Friday, April 18, 2014 - 14:30 in Physics & Chemistry

Here comes the pitch...  ... ... In baseball, that phrase would quickly be followed by an outcome, like strike three! But in the world's longest-running scientific experiment, waiting is the game. And so far, humans have struck out.  In 1927, scientists at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, heated up a bunch of pitch, a derivative of tar once used for waterproofing boats. After letting it settle for three years they opened the seal at the bottom of the funnel, and the great pitch drop experiment began, a demonstration that some things that appear solid, like pitch, are really just highly viscous fluids. And flow. Very slowly. Since 1930, eight drops of pitch have fallen, and not a single one has been witnessed by a human or a camera.  Until this week. Sort of. When it comes to the pitch drop experiment, there's a lot of waiting, and continual letdowns. Kind of like being a baseball fan. But every now and then, something...

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