What does it take to find a New Effect in Physics ?

02 February 2015 18 10K Report

Not much of advise can come from me personally, as during 50 + years of my professional experience I can be credited with only 1 new effect, related to Physics of Liquid State.

I hope my RG peers had more success and are willing to share how they came to that.

Marc M. Abitbol Popular answer

Dear Alexander,

I did not realize on my page that you launched the discussion.

Except for genuine geniuses, It is very rare to make even a single groundbreaking discovery. Even in biology, very rare are the scientists who develop more than one field continuously.

Pasteur, Goldstein and Brown with their continuous discoveries in the metabolism od cholesterol, Frederick Sanger, David Baltimore (Reverse transcriptase, RAG1 and RAG2, NF Kappa B........) , Gerald edelman (Immunoglobulins and cell adhesion molecules), Seymour Benzer, Gunther Blobel........and a few others did

Ramon y Cajal one of the greatest geniuses in biology used the method of Camillo Golgi and id generally considered as the father of neuroscience.

While working as chief medical officer in a psychiatric hospital, Golgi experimented with metal impregnation of nervous tissue, using mainly silver (silver staining). He discovered a method of staining nervous tissue that would stain a limited number of cells at random, in their entirety. This enabled him to view the paths of nerve cells in the brain for the first time. He called his discovery the "black reaction" (in Italian, reazione nera), which later received his name (Golgi's method or Golgi stain). The reason for the random staining is still not understood. The black reaction consisted in fixing silver chromate particles to the neurilemma (the neuron membrane) by reacting silver nitrate with potassium dichromate. This resulted in a stark black deposit on the soma as well as on the axon and all dendrites, providing an exceedingly clear and well-contrasted picture of neuron against a yellow background. The ability to visualize separate neurons led to the eventual acceptance of the neuron doctrine. However, Golgi himself was led to a conviction that nervous system is a single network, not of separate cells; the notion called "reticular theory." He supported this discredited theory even in his Nobel lecture.

Golgi devised a crucial method based on serenpidity but the genius was Ramon y Cajal . Ramón y Cajal made several major contributions to neuroanatomy. He discovered the axonal growth cone, and demonstrated experimentally that the relationship between nerve cells was not continuous, but contiguous.This provided definitive evidence for what would later be known as "neuron doctrine", now widely considered the foundation of modern neuroscience. In debating neural network theories (e.g. neuron theory, reticular theory), Ramón y Cajal was a fierce defender of the neuron theory.

He provided detailed descriptions of cell types associated with neural structures, and produced excellent depictions of structures and their connectivity.

He was an advocate of the existence of dendritic spines, although he did not recognize them as the site of contact from presynaptic cells. He was a proponent of polarization of nerve cell function and his student, Rafael Lorente de Nó, would continue this study of input-output systems into cable theory and some of the earliest circuit analysis of neural structures. He discovered a new type of cell, to be named after him: the interstitial cell of Cajal (ICC).This cell is found interleaved among neurons embedded within the smooth muscles lining the gut, serving as the generator and pacemaker of the slow waves of contraction that move material along the gastrointestine, vitally mediating neurotransmission from motor nerves to smooth muscle cells. In his 1894 Croonian Lecture, Ramón y Cajal suggested in an extended metaphor that cortical pyramidal cells may become more elaborate with time, as a tree grows and extends its branches.

Blessed are the scientists who make even on seminal groundbreaking discovery.

Jacob and Monod, Tom Cech, Herschko, Ciechanover and Rose, Gurdon and Yamanaka, Mello and Fire , Barbara McClintock especially changed paradigms

Biology changed completely after them

Hamilton Smith , Daniel Nathans and their Swiss Colleague provided crucial tools which opened the field of molecular biology

Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Dudna with their CRISPR Cas0 system revolutionized biolology and medicine

Karl Desseroth is revolutionizing Neuroscience by repeated revolutions in the field of optogenetics and and the field of morphological techniques (CLARITY)

I personaly god a few good ideas that i implemented and made some interesting contributions .

But we have to remember that what a scientist discover several other scientist can inevitably discover it it is just a matter of Time. Even Einstein could have beenn scooped

Whereas Artists and their work cannot be duplicated. The paintings of Leonardo Da vinci, Turner, Monet, Chagall or Picasso, the Cantate of Bach, the Miserere of Allegri, The Musical prayers of Salomone Rossi , Claudio Monteverdi, the compositions of Mozart or Beethoven and other composers are unique.

This is why so many scientists dream to shift to Mathematics because they have an intrinsic beauty very close to the production od Arts and not necessarilily found in other fields of science

Even in this Field, rare were the Mathematicians who were capable to produce novelties late in their age such as Leonard Von Euler and Carl Friedrich Gauss (who started so young..........

Baruch Spinoza described happiness as the joy felt while performing a positive action.

we are blessed as scientists by this wonderful possibility to ask how ? and sometimes to find the anwer. Science is a Yes to to the Mystery and thus to Life. Despite the fact that the results of science can be used for despicable goals.

De facto, we have a feeling of freedom as scientists while in Fact in any country at the surface of our small earth we are the tools of sovereighn states for which science is just a tool for more power economically and militarily.

Philosophy nor science can produce morality and ethics.

The French author François Rabelais used to say : "Science without Conscience is the ruin of soul"

But does conscience can rule Science ? Lise Meitner was called the Mother of the Atomic Bomb because she discovered Atomic Fission without conceiving that this discovery would lead to weapons of Mass Destruction ......

Fritz Haber got the the Nobel Prize of chemistry for the synthesis of Ammoniac and is the Father of the Chemical Warefare......Clara his wife commited suicide because he persevered in his use of his knowledge for devising chemical weapons which were used during the first world war and to this day.

The question of Ego is central question for the sense we want to give to our life. Without Ego, there is no action.

With too much ego , catastrophy happens again and again.

Alexander J. Babchin

I will have to start discussion, as peers are unusually shy with the question posted.

I claimed theoretically the following Effect in Physics: Polar Liquid, submitted into Electric Field becomes non-Newtonian Rheological Body. The paper on the subject was published in 1976. Just recently I discovered that the same effect was claimed experimentally in 1936, or 40 years earlier. But theory, describing this effect is still original. I post both papers.

Marc M. Abitbol

The question is too general and must be more focused. New effect in what field ? Additionally , the definition of "new effects" must be provided

The Hole in the Ozon layer was a new effect of huge importance the cause of which has been demonstrated

There too many types of effects of inequal importance.

Thus this question as it has been written seems devoid of any epistemological sense.

I would advise the author of the question to read the Logics of Scientific Discovery by Karl Popper, The structure of Scientific revolutions by Kuhn, The Logics of Life by François Jacob, The Introdiction to Experimental Medicine by Claude Bernard

and other books. Books dealing with epistemology will teach him many interesting concepts but will not allow him to find any answer to his or her question .

I cannot be of any help for this question

I will add the story of Kosterlitz which led to the discovery of enkephalins

Hans Walter Kosterlitz FRS[1](27 April 1903 – 26 October 1996) was a German-born British biologist, who graduated Doctor of Medicine (Dr. med) in Berlin. He emigrated to Scotland in 1934, after the takeover of the Nazi Party in Germany. He joined the staff of Aberdeen University in the same year where he later served as professor of pharmacology and chemistry from 1968 until 1973 when he became director of the university's drug addiction research unit.

Kosterlitz is best known for his work on endorphins. He performed a famous experiment that he envisioned in a dream while sleeping. He stimulated a strip of guinea pig intestine electrically and was able to record the contractions with a polygraph. He then found that if you added opiates to the solution, the intestine would not contract. Opiates inhibit intestinal contraction. Those contractions were later found to resume in the presence of both opiates and an antagonist such as naloxone. The degree to which an opiate agonist inhibits contractions in the guinea pig ileum is highly correlated to its potency.Using this assay, Kosterlitz and Hughes Discovered the Enkephalins.

Later, endogenous endorphins were discovered by applying tissue (pig brain cell homegenate) to the apparatus. This caused the contractions to cease.

There are three well-characterized families of opioid peptides produced by the body: enkephalins, endorphins, and dynorphins. The met-enkephalin peptide sequence is coded for by the enkephalin gene; the leu-enkephalin peptide sequence is coded for by both the enkephalin gene and the dynorphin gene. The proopiomelanocortin gene (POMC) also contains the met-enkephalin sequence on the N-terminus of beta-endorphin, but the endorphin peptide is not processed into enkephalin.

The receptors for enkephalin are the delta opioid receptors. Opioid receptors are a group of G-protein-coupled receptors, with other opioids as ligands as well. The other endogenous opioids are dynorphins (that bind to kappa receptors), endorphins (mu receptors), endomorphins, and nociceptin/orphanin FQ. The opioid receptors are ~40% identical to somatostatin receptors (SSTRs).

Kosterlitz was given the Scheele Award in 1977, and shared the Albert Lasker Award with John Hughes and Solomon Snyder in 1978 for his work in the discovery of the opiate receptors and their natural ligands. The University of Aberdeen officially opened its new Kosterlitz Centre on 16 September 2010 in memory of Professor Hans Kosterlitz, who joined the University in 1933.

The effects of Opiates on their receptors are physical effects : it took quite a long time to discover these effects and more time to understand them.

To this day Addictions are not understood at all...........

Victor Christianto

@Dr.Babchin: if we follow Kuhn's logic, then new effects can be expected once a researcher comes up with either a new paradigm or new mathematics, but they also depend on the fields. Best wishes

Hashem Adnan Kilani

Thanks Alex for the question and thanks Marc for an extended answer. I learned from it.