Myths and mistakes in serious science
Myths
and mistakes in serious
science
in
1999, NASA’s Mars Climate Observer went AWOL because engineers at
Lockheed Martin had been working in feet and pounds, while NASA had been
working in meters and kilograms!
The
Climate Observer was meant to go into orbit around the Red Planet, but the
numbers fed into the navigation system were wrong; the Climate Observer crashed
into Mars and was destroyed – a waste of over a hundred million dollars and a
major setback to our knowledge about Mars’s climate. So, yes, even major-league
Science & Tech can get it wrong.
On
April 1, 1976, the well-known British astronomer
Patrick Moore told early morning listeners to BBC Radio something very strange
would happen that morning. At 9:47 a.m.
everyone would feel the effects of a rare alignment of the planets Jupiter and
Pluto. When Pluto moved behind Jupiter, their gravities would briefly combine,
reducing gravity on our own planet.Listeners could verify the effect by jumping
into the air at 9:47 a.m., when they would feel a floating sensation.
Of
course, this was an April Fools’ prank cooked up by Moore and the BBC.
Sure
enough, at 9:47 a.m., large numbers of people who had not realized it was a
prank jumped into the air. Soon the BBC was getting hundreds of telephone calls
confirming the decrease in gravity – yes, people had really felt like they were
floating. One lady told the BBC that she and her friends had floated out of
their seats at 9:47 a.m.Truth,
part-myth or myth? Truth. It all happened.
. Darwin’s Theory
of Natural Selection Pangenesis
Nine years after his
1859 scientific blockbuster On the Origin of Species, Darwin
published The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication.
This was similar to
Lamarkian hypothesis
Cold Fusion
Polywater
In
1962, a new form of water was announced by the Russian physicist Nikolai
Fedyakin. Polywater was denser, and more viscous than normal H2O; it
froze at -40 °C and boiled at 150 °C.
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