Uncovering Secrets, Big and Small

摘要

In science, it doesn't really count if you see it coming. The genuinely novel discovery is the one that takes researchers by surprise. Who knew that in 1964 a couple of unknown astronomers, trying to silence the static coming out of a radio telescope—static they suspected was caused by pigeon droppings—would discover the echo of creation? The crackle turned out to be microwave radiation that bathes the cosmos, and was the first solid evidence that the universe began in a big bang. And who knew that, after vaporizing some carbon in 1985, chemists would discover a strange spike on the readout of molecular weights in their sample, and that it would be buckyballs? These previously unknown soccer-ball-shaped molecules of 60 carbon atoms, and their "buckytube" cousins, promise to revolutionize materials science, producing structures 100 times stronger than steel but with only one sixth the weight. Who knew?