• Question: what do you think the most important scientific discovery is and why?

    Asked by 2ameliamcg to Sinead, Jessamyn, Eleanor, Chris, Adam on 11 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Adam Murphy

      Adam Murphy answered on 11 Nov 2013:

      Cool question, I had a good think about this!

      Quantum Physics.

      In the early 20th Century, you were as mad as a bag of cats if you wanted to go into physics. People thought we had it all sown up, with a few little puzzles.

      Then a few guys like Schrodinger and Heisenberg came along and showed us this new kind of physics, with this new maths and new ideas.

      A load of older scientists didn’t accept it. Even Einstein said “God does not play dice with the universe.” To which a quantum physicist responded, “I would not tell God what to do with his dice”.

      The thing is, not only is Quantum Physics amazing, and has led to things like computers, it teaches us never to say that something’s wrong, we need to look at the evidence first.

    • Photo: Eleanor Holmes

      Eleanor Holmes answered on 11 Nov 2013:

      The transistor.

      As an electro-nut the transistor is responsible for my job. Also for computers as we know them and therefore the Internet. And if there is a better tool for science than the Internet it would probably be some sort of infinite matter generator.

      On a grander scale I think the development of the Scientific Method was fairly important. The Scientific Method is the techniques used to investigate and acquire knowledge about the universe and to correct previous knowledge. In order to be called scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on empirical and measurable evidence and subject to reasoning. It was widely implemented in the 17th century. Before that it was considered OK to state things that you believe categorically and with little evidence. Hence all that fun about the world being flat and the planets orbiting Earth instead of the Sun.

    • Photo: Christian Wirtz

      Christian Wirtz answered on 12 Nov 2013:

      I had to think a while about this and I think the most fundamental thing I could find is: The most important discovery was that we can trust our logical thinking.
      There have been many times when we start with an established theory and apply other established concepts to it and from that make a new theory that sounds completely insane to our common understanding of the world.
      Examples of that are that electrons can tunnel (teleport over short distances), light can interfere with itself and time slows down when you move at high speed. Also the expansion of the universe is accelerating even though all stars are attracted to each other and that every particle is also a wave. There are many more such things that just sound crazy.
      These concepts pop out of when you do the maths for certain systems just by taking established equations and combining them. To our common sense they seem absolutely ridiculous and make no sense whatsoever but when you do the right experiments you can prove the theory right.
      I think the most important discovery is that we can trust this way of finding out things by theory and have to accept that the universe works in much more complicated and counter-intuitive ways than our five senses and first impressions lead us to believe.

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