Inside Science June 3, 2020
Some of the most significant physics discoveries in the past decade, notably the detections of the Higgs boson by the Large Hadron Collider and gravitational waves by the LIGO collaboration, happened only after decades of null results helped fine-tune the experimental efforts that eventually made the discoveries. In science, these “failures” are sometimes known by their less disparaging name — null results. They are an integral part of the exploratory nature of research. Finding a way to share this seemingly boring information can save scientists from repeating each other’s mistakes. If we ever do find the elusive dark matter, the scientists who get the glory will have built their success on the foundations laid by all those who found nothing…read more.
Which of these pictures tell you about the theory that ravens are black? Credit: Wikimedia Commons, public domain