Most thrilling scientific discovery or experiment

[newatheist]

I've been watching the BBC blood and guts series, and the discoveries that were mentioned are pretty damn impressive.

So I thought we should share what we each think are the greatest (most fascinating) scientific experiments and discoveries are. It would be great for all of us to learn about scientific work that we might not have known about before.

PS: It would be nice to talk about scientists and discoveries that don't get much of the lime light.

[ajrmoore]

Ha ha, great thread actually. But where does one start? My initial reaction was to start categorizing inventions/discoveries into different scientific fields. In the spirit of all other fence-sitters out there I'm not going to commit myself to one answer... yet. Here are my top five discoveries (either thrilling or important, in no particular order)

1. The Big Bang - Discovered by Penzias & Wilson and expanded upon by many others, but the fact that they initiated the discovery that we live in an expanding Universe with a microwave receiver is pretty damn thrilling

2. The Germ Theory of Disease - Go ahead, count how many people have been saved by this discovery? Sorry, you'll never have enough hands. In competition with number 3 on the list for most important medical discovery

3. Immunisation - Undoubtedly one of the single-most important medical discoveries in history. (I expect to see X-rays, anaesthetic and antibiotics on this thread as well)

4. Iron Processing - Pretty darn huge discovery, though it happend about 4000 years ago.

5. The Steam Engine - Don't knock it yet! From mills to factories to trains to boats, it catalysed the Industrial Revolution in behemoth scope and literally influenced the entire way our world now works.

I so wanted to put the disccvery of the genome and DNA in there but resisted since there have not been any direct, broadly applied benefits from the discovey (and since it's medical I think that should apply)

[ajrmoore]

Ah yes, regarding number 1, apologies for the poor grammar; the Big Bang discovery was made employing the use of a micowave receiver. We don't actually live in a Universe that contains a gigantic microwave receiver (though that was probably obvious, just for the pedants out there)

[lost thought]

Faraday perhaps Tesselar as well for with out electricity what would we have just thinking of all the things and other discoveries that would not have happened with out electricity to light our lives.

[newatheist]

My personal favourite invention has to be the "heart/lung machine" mentioned on the show, to have a living person without a beating heart is just incredible.

Feel free to mention work that hasn't helped humanity in any way.

[Trinoc]

Hindu/Arabic numerals. Particularly zero. Also Algebra, so that maths could be about generalisations and not only specific examples.

[DrS]

Anaesthesia and effective pain relief generally, for me.

[ZERO]

Darwin's theory fundamentally changed the way we view the world.

[bindeweede]

1. Electricity - as lost thought said.

2. Alcohol. Not just fun, but antiseptic and anaesthetic. (Hic!)

[Lord Muck oGentry]

Galileo and inclined planes:
http://galileo.rice.edu/lib/student_...ned_plane.html

[Wintings]

Darwin's theory fundamentally changed the way we view the world.

I have to agree with ZERO. Darwin's "Dangerous Idea" (to use Daniel Dennett's term) shows us that God is not needed to explain the complexity of life and that religion is really nothing more than wishful thinking.

[bobdezon]

I would have to go with incubators, vaccinations and pestilent resistant crops.

[Pebble]

DNA must surely get a look in here, also in the medical field - the development of the randomised controlled trial is probably one of the most important, however, the demonstration of the circulation of blood, overturning 1600 years of belief must have been pretty thrilling.

In engineering the Archimedes screw must have been pretty amazing, 2300 years ago.

[Janot]

For me, the most exciting experiment is the Michelson-Morley experiment to measure any difference in the speed of light as a function of direction. It has to be the best failed experiment ever. What is particularly clever is that a measurement of the speed of light in any one direction would have had errors too large to be of any use, so the experiment is devised to detect differences, with incredible accuracy. The stage is then set for Einstein.

[chaggle]

SSSHHH!!! Janot, you seriously don't want a conversation about this with Nakakayama!