• Question: Has Any Of Your Theory's Been Proven Yet?

    Asked by joxxx to Martin on 19 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Martin Zaltz Austwick

      Martin Zaltz Austwick answered on 19 Mar 2012:

      I don’t really have my own theories – I’m not that famous. The interesting thing is – theories can never be proven, only disproven! So even if you test your theory loads of times an experiment might come along which disproves it. This is sometimes called Black Swan effect, because before Europeans discovered Australia, they thought all swans were white. But Australia has black swans! So the theory that “all swans are white” was immediately thrown away.

Comments

  • Photo: James

    James commented on :

    My supervisor has put forward a theory about folds being created in layers of Graphite during its use in nuclear power plants, and there are a few of us (including me) trying to obtain evidence for their existence by doing computer simulations on fold structures. It’s tough work, and there’s a lot of science in folding thing sheets so it’s quite competitive. The group has had a paper published on folds in graphite but the theory remains unproven… so far.