A drop of tar pitch has dripped into a waiting glass cylinder in a lab in Dublin, and it was caught on film. For this, the sciencey interwebs rejoice. This lab experiment, which was started 69 years ago, set out to prove that tar pitch—better known as asphalt or bitumen—is actually a very-slow-moving liquid, instead of the solid it was long assumed to be. This is not even the only decades-old pitch-drop experiment, either. The one in Queensland has suffered a sadder fate:
Since it started the Australian pitch has dropped eight times—an average of one drip per decade—and yet despite this positively clockwork-like regularity the event itself has never actually been seen, by either human or digital eyes.
This may seem near impossible, but the Queensland experiment has been the victim of a number of sitcom-worthy mishaps including one drop when the professor in charge (John Mainstone) simply chose the wrong time to step out for a cup of tea. Gone 15 minutes, he came back to find the drop had fallen—that’s the nature of the experiment, a decade of waiting for mere seconds of action.
Watch the Dublin drop here:
Meanwhile, in the US Botanical Garden, a once-in-10-years corpse flower bloom is about to happen for the first time.