Scientific surprises, pushed by experiment, are sometimes how science advances. However most of the time, they’re simply dangerous science.
Whenever you’re a scientist, getting an sudden outcome generally is a double-edged sword. The very best prevailing theories of the day can let you know what kind of information you must count on to amass as you ask nature questions on itself, however solely by confronting your predictions with real-world scientific inquiry — involving experiments, measurements, and observations — can you set these theories to the take a look at. Mostly, the outcomes agree with what the main theories predict; in any case, that’s why they turned the main theories within the first place. Nonetheless, it’s vital to maintain pushing the frontiers of even probably the most well-established theories in new and untested regimes, as if there’s ever going to be a brand new scientific breakthrough, the primary hints of it should come from experiments and observations that nature has by no means been subjected to earlier than.
That’s why it’s so compelling when, each on occasion, scientists get a outcome that conflicts with our theoretical expectations. On the whole, when this occurs in physics, most individuals default to probably the most skeptical of explanations: that there’s an issue with the experiment, the…
