Top 5 scientific discoveries in the 20th C
Discussion
4x4Tyke said:
However many inventions are based on a scientific discover; so for example liquid crystals are a discovery that led to LCD the invention. Semiconductor materials were a discovery that led to Transistors & Diodes (inc LED). In others the boundary between discovery or an invention is even more blurry, such as cavity resonators.
Yes - but the title of the thread says "discoveries". So, I would keep to what the OP seemed to want. - Antibiotics
- Double Helix structure of DNA
- Cavity resonators
- Relativity, both general and special
- Semiconductors
Edited by 4x4Tyke on Monday 5th November 13:39
4x4Tyke said:
RobM77 said:
The discovery of gravitational waves is a pretty big one.
There are some scientific doubts, but hey that is how good science should work.Yes, if it pans out it is likely to be huge, if not we've still learnt something.
ETA: Just seen your links on the other thread and I've replied there.
Edited by RobM77 on Monday 5th November 14:10
4x4Tyke said:
However many inventions are based on a scientific discover; so for example liquid crystals are a discovery that led to LCD the invention. Semiconductor materials were a discovery that led to Transistors & Diodes (inc LED). In others the boundary between discovery or an invention is even more blurry, such as cavity resonators.
Semiconductors were discovered in the 19th century.- Antibiotics
- Double Helix structure of DNA
- Cavity resonators
- Relativity, both general and special
- Semiconductors
Edited by 4x4Tyke on Monday 5th November 13:39
It comes down to how you define 'top'.
Plate tectonics and exoplanets may be major discoveries in their fields but they don't affect anyone's life.
The biggest changes to ordinary people's lives in the 20th C, globally, were probably advances in medicine and food storage/preservation. So discovering how to freeze food is probably a good candidate for the list.
Plate tectonics and exoplanets may be major discoveries in their fields but they don't affect anyone's life.
The biggest changes to ordinary people's lives in the 20th C, globally, were probably advances in medicine and food storage/preservation. So discovering how to freeze food is probably a good candidate for the list.
Simpo Two said:
It comes down to how you define 'top'.
Plate tectonics and exoplanets may be major discoveries in their fields but they don't affect anyone's life.
The biggest changes to ordinary people's lives in the 20th C, globally, were probably advances in medicine and food storage/preservation. So discovering how to freeze food is probably a good candidate for the list.
Completely agree, but if I put my pedant hat on then the first refrigeration systems were invented in the 19th century, and I think the concept was actually demonstrated even earlier than that (would the key "scientific discovery" which laid the groundwork for refrigeration be Boyles law?) And that's notwithstanding icehouses which were used for centuries beforehand Plate tectonics and exoplanets may be major discoveries in their fields but they don't affect anyone's life.
The biggest changes to ordinary people's lives in the 20th C, globally, were probably advances in medicine and food storage/preservation. So discovering how to freeze food is probably a good candidate for the list.
It was only in the 20th century that it was brought to mass market.
Simpo Two said:
It comes down to how you define 'top'.
Plate tectonics and exoplanets may be major discoveries in their fields but they don't affect anyone's life.
The biggest changes to ordinary people's lives in the 20th C, globally, were probably advances in medicine and food storage/preservation. So discovering how to freeze food is probably a good candidate for the list.
I was thinking of 'top' as in the quest for human knowledge about the world around us, which is blue sky science at its purest. 'Top' In terms of effects on people's lives is perhaps more of an engineering question? (for example, the difference between General Relativity, which is blue sky science; and Sat Nav, which is a practical application of GR).Plate tectonics and exoplanets may be major discoveries in their fields but they don't affect anyone's life.
The biggest changes to ordinary people's lives in the 20th C, globally, were probably advances in medicine and food storage/preservation. So discovering how to freeze food is probably a good candidate for the list.
Edited by RobM77 on Wednesday 7th November 17:48
Simpo Two said:
It makes you think that most of what the 20th C was noted for were inventions - powered flight, jet engines, Saturn V, computers and many more.
What have we invented or discovered so far in the 21st C? Social media and several more sexes.
I think lots of the discussed significant discoveries wouldn't have been talked about much (outside of scientific circles) in the first few years.What have we invented or discovered so far in the 21st C? Social media and several more sexes.
The CERN particle accelerator probably has yielded results/discoveries not yet ultilised (and therefore not yet cared about or common knowledge!) by the masses. Often scientists are busy discovering for discovery sake and it's only over the decades that discoveries turn, via inventions/applications, into something useful/profitable that you get some understanding of the science/discovery originally involved and the recognition among the general public.
Scootersp said:
I think lots of the discussed significant discoveries wouldn't have been talked about much (outside of scientific circles) in the first few years.
The CERN particle accelerator probably has yielded results/discoveries not yet ultilised (and therefore not yet cared about or common knowledge!) by the masses. Often scientists are busy discovering for discovery sake and it's only over the decades that discoveries turn, via inventions/applications, into something useful/profitable that you get some understanding of the science/discovery originally involved and the recognition among the general public.
Graphene.The CERN particle accelerator probably has yielded results/discoveries not yet ultilised (and therefore not yet cared about or common knowledge!) by the masses. Often scientists are busy discovering for discovery sake and it's only over the decades that discoveries turn, via inventions/applications, into something useful/profitable that you get some understanding of the science/discovery originally involved and the recognition among the general public.
Haber-Bosch process. (1910) Fixing nitrogen on an industrial scale.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process
Now used for everything from plastics to explosives. 50% of the nitrogen in your body comes from it, says Wikipedia. Frequently pops up in geology courses as being an pre-cursor of 'Anthropocene' epoch, or will be to geologists of the future.
"Due to its dramatic impact on the human ability to grow food, the Haber process served as the "detonator of the population explosion", enabling the global population to increase from 1.6 billion in 1900 to today's 7 billion." - W.pedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process
Now used for everything from plastics to explosives. 50% of the nitrogen in your body comes from it, says Wikipedia. Frequently pops up in geology courses as being an pre-cursor of 'Anthropocene' epoch, or will be to geologists of the future.
"Due to its dramatic impact on the human ability to grow food, the Haber process served as the "detonator of the population explosion", enabling the global population to increase from 1.6 billion in 1900 to today's 7 billion." - W.pedia
Halmyre said:
Roofless Toothless said:
Plate tectonics?
I was swithering over including that - a literally ground-breaking (if not earth-shattering) discovery. I'm only surprised it's a theory that came about in my life time; it seems so bleedin' obvious now.It was a revellation. It almost made geography interesting. I thought it was a trick but even as a kid I realised that such long coincidences were a step too far. All of a sudden the world was dynamic and played with your mind. Great! What was even better was that we were told that there was some dispute amongst scientists as to whether the continents moved. I realised then that these blokes in white coats were occasionally pretty thick.
I have been so lucky in many aspects of my life. One of them is being born at just the right time to have experienced as a young man the excitement of discoveries in geology and oceanography in the 1960's. (I could say the same about the Beatles, but that is for another thread.)
I started with geology as an A level subject in 1965. My text at this time was Arthur Holmes' Principles of Physical Geology, which he wrote in the 1940's. The last chapter is a resume of current trends in research, and he outlines how the jig-saw fit of the continents had been noted by Taylor in the USA in 1908 and (especially) Wegener in Germany in 1915 as evidence for what was then called continental drift. Once seen it is so obvious, but nobody could come up with an explanation of how it could come about. Wegener's own explanation was that it was tidal forces from the moon and sun, but mathematically it was clear that this had to be wrong.
It was only after WWII that people like Harry Hess started producing detailed bathymetric maps of the ocean floor that the true extent of the mid-oceanic ridges became apparent, and even Holmes' book contains cross sections of the crust showing the lighter continents sitting like rafts on a sea of heavier oceanic material and being pushed apart by convection currents in the mantle.
But the real breakthrough came with the work of Fred Vine in Cambridge with his 1963 paper in Nature, where he showed that magnetic pole reversals had created a 'tape recording' in the basaltic crust of the sea floor that could be mapped by ships towing magnetometers. It was a wonderful bit of science, the theories that had seemed so tempting all these years finally being proved by observations in the field. Fred Vine really was the Crick and Watson of the earth sciences.
And it was between 1965 and 1970 when I was a student of geology and oceanography that all this was going on. As Wordworth said, "bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be a young man heaven."
PS. I hope I got through that without any virtue signalling.
I started with geology as an A level subject in 1965. My text at this time was Arthur Holmes' Principles of Physical Geology, which he wrote in the 1940's. The last chapter is a resume of current trends in research, and he outlines how the jig-saw fit of the continents had been noted by Taylor in the USA in 1908 and (especially) Wegener in Germany in 1915 as evidence for what was then called continental drift. Once seen it is so obvious, but nobody could come up with an explanation of how it could come about. Wegener's own explanation was that it was tidal forces from the moon and sun, but mathematically it was clear that this had to be wrong.
It was only after WWII that people like Harry Hess started producing detailed bathymetric maps of the ocean floor that the true extent of the mid-oceanic ridges became apparent, and even Holmes' book contains cross sections of the crust showing the lighter continents sitting like rafts on a sea of heavier oceanic material and being pushed apart by convection currents in the mantle.
But the real breakthrough came with the work of Fred Vine in Cambridge with his 1963 paper in Nature, where he showed that magnetic pole reversals had created a 'tape recording' in the basaltic crust of the sea floor that could be mapped by ships towing magnetometers. It was a wonderful bit of science, the theories that had seemed so tempting all these years finally being proved by observations in the field. Fred Vine really was the Crick and Watson of the earth sciences.
And it was between 1965 and 1970 when I was a student of geology and oceanography that all this was going on. As Wordworth said, "bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be a young man heaven."
PS. I hope I got through that without any virtue signalling.
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