• Question: what do you think the most important scientific discovery ever is ???

    Asked by benandizaak to Carys, Chris, Jeremy, Katherine, Simone on 17 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Carys Cook

      Carys Cook answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Wow. What a question! As an Earth scientist, I personally think that one of the most important ideas is the principle of ‘uniformitarianism’. This basically means that the same processes that we see happening today in Earth, and in the wider Universe have stayed the same throughout its history, and it means that by understanding what things have happened in the past means that we can understand what is going to happen in the future – ‘THE PAST IS THE KEY TO THE FUTURE’. This principle is very important, as it means by looking at how the climate has changed in the past we can predict what might happen in the future, so that we can make changes in our lives to stop producing so much carbon dioxide and prevent those dangerous changes from happening.
      Probably the most important discovery in all of science is evolution, developed by Charles Darwin. The theory of evolution shows that we are equal with the rest of live on Earth, and that the same amount of effort has gone into building an ant as a human. It also shows that the survival of all of our ancestors since the beginning of life on Earth (around 4 billions years ago!!!) was so incredibly unlikely, that we are so lucky to be here (all of us – ants, humans and the rest of life!) and that we should treasure all life on Earth.
      The beauty of science is that the most amazing theories (and as a result, discoveries) are the most elegant and simplest ideas!
      😉

    • Photo: Katherine Jones

      Katherine Jones answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      This is very hard, there are so many!

      Because I am a chemist, I think I have to say the discovery of the electron – electrons are the most important thing in chemistry. When two chemicals react with each other it is the electrons that are reacting.

      Apart from that, I think Isaac Newton discovering gravity was very important. So many other discoveries in maths and physics have come from this idea. And what was amazing about Isaac Newton is that he also made loads of other really important discoveries too!

    • Photo: Simone Bijvoet

      Simone Bijvoet answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      I think the girls before me already gave some great answers, I was actually thinking about evolution and Newton’s principles myself.

      To think of it a bit more practically then, I think the discovery and development of electricity has been very important for us human beings to become where we are now. Just think about preserving food using a fridge, creating light without having to make a fire every night, and of course the use of the computer!! Who can imagine us nowadays having no access to computers and the internet? 🙂

    • Photo: Jeremy Green

      Jeremy Green answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      That’s a wonderful and HUGE question!! How can one decide between an answer like “Agriculture” (the first farmers must have had ideas about how to sow seeds, harvest, etc. and tested them over and over to improve them), versus something like “Electricity” (see Simone’s answer), versus something like “Evolution” (which meant that all biology is explainable as a mechanism rather than some kind of magic) versus “Newton’s laws of motion” (upon which vast areas of physics are based). Wow – you’ve really got my brain going with that one!
      In modern biology, probably the most important discovery was the structure of DNA, which has two matching strands so that if they’re separated (as when a cell divides), each can be used to recreate the other strand, leaving two complete identical copies. I met one of the discoverer’s, Francis Crick, a few years ago – very exciting.

    • Photo: Christopher Phillips

      Christopher Phillips answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      My answer is simple – The most important scientific discovery ever is was this: Earth is not at the centre of the universe.
      That discovery completely revolutionised our approach to who we are and what we do.
      It was a wake up call, probably one of the biggest wake up calls the human race has had since we started to walk this Earth. It freed us, enabled our minds to expand and it enabled us to ask questions openly that we never could have before.. it blew the doors off!
      The cool thing is.. we have never looked back since 🙂

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