Most thrilling scientific discovery or experiment

**newatheist** · 14th July 2009, 04:09 AM

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** · 14th July 2009, 04:47 PM

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** · 14th July 2009, 04:50 PM

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** · 14th July 2009, 05:45 PM

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** · 14th July 2009, 11:01 PM

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.