In an interview with China Newsweek, the renowned physicist Yang Zhenning once attributed all his achievements to "luck" (Jie, 2011). This comment might appear absurd at first — Yang has countless scientific accomplishments, and science is known for its systematic inquiry and rigorous experimentation in general, but once one learns more about the process of scientific discovery in history, one will find that a lot of scientific discoveries are sometimes truly serendipitous. In other words, scientific discoveries sometimes indeed require a little bit of luck. Is luck the key to scientific discoveries? Through 3 case studies of scientific discoveries usually considered as "lucky," this essay aims to explore the phenomenon and examine the relation between luck and scientific discovery.
The first example comes from the discovery of neutron stars. In 1967, Jocelyn Bell, a graduate student who was still studying in Cambridge at the time, was studying radio astronomy (Rumberg, 2022). One day, Bell was aimlessly tracking the stars in the sky through a radio telescope and accidentally discovered a pulse signal coming from a position with a very fixed frequency, about once every 1.33 seconds (Walsh, n.d.). She recorded this position and consulted her tutor, Anthony Hewish. They thought it might be a signal from aliens, so they named it "Little Green Man 1". However, within a few years, this pulsar was determined to be the neutron star predicted by Landau more than 30 years ago. Thus were neutron stars discovered. Bell is considered to be lucky to have discovered neutron stars because the radio telescope is like the human eye. When it's focused on a certain position, the observer might ignore other positions and even have blind spots. For a telescope, the observable range is inversely proportional to the aperture of the telescope. In other words, the more we pursue accuracy, the larger the aperture of the telescope needs to be, and the smaller the observable range of the telescope. As a result, Bell's aimless observations were the key to discovering neutron stars since people didn't know where the signal would come from. From this perspective, she was indeed lucky. However, Bell's discovery of neutron stars was not accidental, but the result of her long-term persistence and hard work. Starting in 1965, Bell and her team were responsible for designing and building the telescope. They spent two years building the radio telescope and officially started observation in July 1967. During the observation period, she needed to analyze 30 meters of data recording paper every day, on which were recorded a large number of signals from the universe, most of which were interference signals or signals from known celestial bodies. Bell's observation work lasted for several months, and she needed to look for weak abnormal signals in the massive data (Baig, 2023). In August 1967, she first noticed a strange "interference" signal on the chaotic recording tape. After repeated studies, she found that a pulse signal was received every 1.33 seconds, and this signal came from an unknown celestial source. Bell did not give up because of the weakness of the signal, but continued to observe and analyze. It was not until November 1967 that she and her team finally confirmed that the signals came from a rapidly rotating object (Britannica, n.d.). Without her persistence, this lucky discovery could never have been made.
The second story is about the discovery of graphene. At that time, scientists had theoretically predicted the advantages of graphene, a single layer of graphite and a film with a thickness of only one carbon atom, but had no effective way to prepare it. In 2004, two physics teams from the University of Manchester and the Russian Institute of Microelectronics Industry cooperated, led by Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov (University of Manchester, n.d.). One day, Geim suddenly had an idea: how to make something thinner? Inspired by his childhood memory of removing pen-written typos from a sheet of paper using tape, he tried to stick graphite repeatedly with transparent tape and finally found a single layer of graphene under a microscope(Ed Gerstner, 2010). For this, they won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics. Many people say that he was lucky to have discovered graphene in such a simple way. However, Geim's unexpected idea is not accidental, but the inevitable result of his long-term accumulation of the unique scientific research spirit. He won the Ig Nobel Prize in 1997 for the "levitating frog" experiment. Behind this seemingly absurd research is his courage to think outside the box and explore the unknown. In addition, Geim also insists on the "Friday night experiment" (Connor, 2013), trying some seemingly bizarre experiments outside of conventional research, such as pouring water into an electromagnet and accidentally discovering the phenomenon of water suspension. Although these experiments seem random, they reflect his keen insight into finding breakthroughs from ordinary phenomena, and this spirit is the result of Geim's continuous attempts.
The third case is about the discovery of radioactivity. The discovery was considered "lucky" because the original intention of Henri Becquerel's experiment was to verify whether Phosphorescent substances (such as uranium salts) would emit radiation similar to the newly discovered X-rays under sunlight. He wrapped photographic plates in thick black paper to prevent exposure to light, placed the uranium salt crystals on top of the covered plates and then exposed the setup to sunlight. He found out that a large area of the photographic plates was exposed. He was excited and felt that his previous conjecture was correct. He planned to share this idea with his colleagues at the weekly meeting. But out of rigor, he decided to do another experiment. However, France suddenly had heavy rain, and there was no sun for several consecutive days, so he put the uranium salt under the table in the house and put the photographic plate on the table. A week later, the rain stopped. But again, out of rigor, to ensure that all plates are not currently exposed, he developed one of the plates first. It turned out surprisingly that the plate was exposed, and there were two shadows on the plate, which were the shapes of two pieces of metal in the table drawer. Becquerel then realized that the phosphorescence of uranium salt and the radiation of unknown rays were two different things. He eventually determined that the spontaneous radiation property of this element was only related to the element itself, rather than the sunlight. This phenomenon was later called "radioactivity." (Bowersox, 2011) Becquerel's discovery of radioactivity indeed had coincidental factors: it had been raining for days in Paris, and he put his experimental equipment in a drawer at random. But there was a necessity behind this accident: the Becquerel family had been studying phosphorescent substances for generations and had accumulated rich knowledge and experience (Lim, 2019). More importantly, if Becquerel had not had a rigorous scientific spirit, he would not have insisted on the experiment on rainy days and would not have explored the unexpected results in depth, and radioactivity might have been missed.
From taking a closer look at the three cases, it is safe to say that scientific discoveries that are often considered to be full of luck have long-term efforts and perseverance behind them, and luck is only a small part of success. Bell may have discovered neutron stars from random observation, but she also spent years dedicated to astronomical research and observation; Geim may have randomly used tape to thin out graphene, but he was consistent in his persistence in breaking the rules; Becquerel accidentally discovered radioactivity because of rain, but he came to the conclusion of radioactivity thanks to his rich experience and theoretic background. As French microbiologist Louis Pasteur once said, "Chance favors only the prepared mind." There are indeed many coincidences in the world, but one should not be fooled by luck. But we should not be fooled by luck. Behind every casual mention of luck in scientific discoveries, there lies decades of hard work, dedication, and courage to break from conventions.
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