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The Key To Astronomy Has Often Been Serendipity
Ars Technica has a great look at just how often serendipity plays a part in major astronomy advances. From Galileo to the accidental discovery of cosmic microwaves, it seems that it is still better to be lucky than good. "But what's stunning is a catalog of just how common this sort of event has been. Herschell was looking for faint stars when he happened across the planet Uranus, while Piazi was simply creating a star catalog when he observed the object that turned out to be the first asteroid to ever be described, Ceres I."
"Shit Happens"
"Herschell was looking for faint stars when he happened across... ...Uranus"
That was lucky! On the contrary...
Luck has always and probably always will play a strong role in science. The fact that the first blood transfusion happened to work was mostly luck, had it not worked out well it would've probably been quite some time before somebody tried again. Watson and Crick getting to the double helix first required a bit of luck as they probably wouldn't've gotten there first if they weren't lucky enough to be able to get x-ray crystallography from a different research institution.
Odds are if an astronomer is going to be looking around for evidence to support one hypothesis, they'll come across lots of other stuff while they're at it.
Its not the same as staring at the sludge in the bottom of a test tube.
Have gnu, will travel.
Chance favors the prepared mind. -- Louis Pasteur
Maybe important findings get publicity and "breakthrough!" status only if they're somewhat surprising? If folks chip away at a problem for 20 years, even if the result is the same as waiting 19 years and then having a eureka discovery, is it still called a breakthrough?
Prof. Andy Fabian's (of the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge and president of the Royal Astronomical Society) entertaining lecture on this very topic, entitled Serendipity's Guide to the Galaxy is available on-line in a range of formats.. Enjoy!
There are so many things going on out there that you are likely to stumble upon something that in hindsight appears serendipitous. You may have won a lottery, but since you have tickets to million different ones, it's not that amazing really.
while there are exceptions, luck is mostly
a biproduct of being "good". Everyone technical
knows this: the posted nes item was written
as much as an "attention-getter"
"It has generally been supposed that it was a lucky accident which brought this star [Uranus] into my view; this is an evident mistake. In the regular manner I examined every star of the heavens, not only of that magnitude but many far inferior, it was that night its turn to be discovered. ... Had business prevented me that evening, I must have found it the next."
This sort of pop-sci is really insulting to the huge number of dedicated scientists and technicians who spend their whole lives carefully taking measurements, building and proving (or disproving) theories, based on painstaking work. Even worse is that it makes it harder for people to get grants if the bodies holding the purse strings (or the public who's money it eventually is) thinks it's basically a lottery.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Herschell was looking for faint stars when he happened across the planet Uranus
Wow, I didn't know Herschell was from another planet!
...you must be good first.
You got to be good to see that it's not a star but a planet.
No-one is so good that he can predict exactly where the next as-of-yet-unknown thing will be found.
Also, the discovery of yet another planet (Uranus) is of whole different class than the discovery of something that no-one had any idea was there (cosmic background radiation).
War, yeah right. More likely Galileo wanted to peep at the neighbor's bosomy daughter. Porn drove new tech back then also.
Table-ized A.I.
... by definition? (scientific or not)
Now give it some more emphasis by saying "accidental" instead of "surprising"
... on a million telescopes will eventually catalog all the observable wonders of the universe
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
The harder I work, the luckier I get. --Samuel Goldwyn
Uranus and a Asteroid does not sound to me like KEY or OFTEN...
Dear
There is more to scientific serendipity than just luck. A degree of luck is certainly involved, as by definition the process involves observing something one did not plan to see. However, that is why scientists do research: If we only ever saw what we expected to see, then why bother?
But there is an important additional ingredient to it, and that is being able to actually absorb the unexpected and to be able to think of a reasonable explanation for it. The ability to give unexpected data a rational interpretation is crucial, because this is what protects good scientists from the cognitive dissonance that makes other close their eyes for the unexpected. Without interpretation, a surprising observation is just that; it may be a coincidence or an experimental error, and is often thrown out.
The most famous example is Alfred Wegener and his theory of continental drift. Mainstream science has been criticised a lot for its scepticism about Wegener's ideas, but Wegener failed to propose a credible mechanism for the motion of the continents -- the concept of plate tectonics arrived fifty years later. Without an explanation, the observation didn't convince, and Wegener was long dead when it was recognized that his intuitive idea had been right.
The reverse is also true, there is a real danger in theory without experimental observation. This is illustrated by the case of the mysterious "N-Rays" of a patriotic French scientist, who "discovered" them as a counterweight to the German Roentgen's discovery of X-Rays. The N-rays did not exist, but an otherwise very capable scientist also proved highly capable of seeing just what he wanted to see.
Omnipitidipity, to coin a fnord.