Category: Discoveries

British cave divers are among the top practitioners and rescuers in the world ~ famously leading the team, for instance, which found and brought to safety the boys  trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand in 2018. It may be hard to understand the impetus to explore subterranean caves with murky, underwater stretches. As one cave diver recently said, there are no accidents in cave diving, only fatalities.

However, the exhileration of being the first to see what is around the corner and the beauty of the caverns are what motivate these brave souls. In the UK, one of the first pioneers was Graham Balcombe (1907-2000), who helped set up the Cave Diving Group of Great Britain & N.Ireland in 1946. Another was Bob Leakey (1914-2013), who conquered his claustrophobia and aquaphobia with extraordinary courage. It was said of him that no-one wanted to be his diving ‘buddy’, but they would definitely want him in their rescue team!

Expert cave divers such as Martyn Farr (1951-) and Rick Stanton, MBE,GM (1961-) have propelled advancements in cave diving equipment. From barely being able to stand up in early rigs, it is now possible to explore deeper and further than ever before in modern wetsuits, with rebreathers and underwater scooters.

(Top image: pxhere.com / Public domain)

In the mid-1800s, central Africa held much mystery for Europeans, with most believing it to be desert like the north. Dr David Livingstone (1813-73) from Blantyre had travelled to southern Africa in 1841 as a Christian missionary and ten years later decided to venture forth to explore the unmapped African hinterland.

Slavery had been abolished in the British Empire in 1833 and Livingstone was appalled to see Arab Muslim slave traders marching hundreds of Africans yoked together. He determined to find a passage to the sea to allow trading ships to reform local commerce, thereby eliminating this evil. He mapped many lakes, rapids and rivers, including the Zambezi, and waterfalls, notably Victoria Falls which he named after the Queen, but came to realise there was no such navigable passage.

He ended up at Lake Tanganyika searching for the source of the Nile. Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904), a journalist-adventurer from Denbigh, was sent by the New York Herald to find Livingstone, as he had not made contact for several years. On reaching Ujiji town in 1871, Stanley at last found the Doctor, who would become his close friend and father-figure, and the famous greeting was uttered. The now frail and poverty-stricken Livingstone replied with a thankful “Yes”.

(Image [cropped]: wellcomeimages.org / CC BY 4.0)

Shropshire-born Charles Darwin (1809-82) had just graduated from Cambridge when he received the exciting invitation to be the ‘gentleman passenger’ on the Royal Navy’s research ship. HMS Beagle. This trip across the southern hemisphere, in which he observed and took specimens of many previously unrecorded species, was the subject of his first book, ‘The Voyage of The Beagle’ (1839).

It provided the foundation for his life’s work. He analysed small in-species variations of birds, such as beak shape, and experimented on plants. For three years he investigated coral reefs. He was halfway through writing up his theory of random variation under natural selection when he received Alfred Wallace‘s essay on the same subject. This prompted him to focus on finishing his book, ‘On the Origin of Species’ in 1859.

In ‘The Descent of Man’ (1871) Darwin proposed his theory of the evolution of one species by the mutation of another, specifically man from ape. This dented creationist beliefs and substituted ‘scientific materialism’. However, new techniques in genetics and paleontology, not to mention logic and complete lack of evidence, show that the theory is impossible, but Darwin’s theories are still heralded as a breakthrough for their time and continue to be taught as fact.

(Image: Maull and Polybank at Wikimedia Commons / Public domain)

In 1984, Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys (1950-) realised that each DNA ‘bar-code’ he was studying was unique to each donor and that their patterns were inherited from the parents. He was researching DNA variations in animals at his University of Leicester laboratory when, by chance, on checking his technique on a colleague’s family, he produced the very first DNA ‘fingerprint’.

It was so named because top of the list of possible applications was forensic crime-scene investigations, in the same way as fingerprints are used. Only identical twins have exactly the same DNA, so these applications include parent-child identification in paternity suits, immigration applications and family tree mapping, as well as DNA matching on criminal evidence collected by the police. Samples are taken from blood, sweat, semen, hair, saliva, skin or bone cells.

Professor Jeffreys’s discovery was in demand by lawyers straight away and by the police from 1986. In their first case, it prevented an innocent man going to prison. There is now a National DNA Database holding six million records of the relevant part of the DNA for anyone who is arrested. It does not hold the full DNA profile as that would be unethical. From 2001-2018 it found 675,000 matches for police purposes.

(Image showing father is no. 1: Helixitta at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0)

Alfred Russel Wallace, OM FRS (1823-1913) was born in Monmouthshire and showed a fascination for identifying flora and fauna from a young age. This led him to make major explorations of far-flung parts of the world, in which he carried out ground-breaking first-hand observations and discoveries of thousands of species. He also realised, for the first time, that the world is divided into various biogeographic regions, named Wallace’s Realms in his honour. These six regions have only recently been updated to eleven in number.

He spent 1848-52 in Brazil, mapping out the Amazon River and collecting specimens of insects, birds and mammals, many of which were lost when his ship home sank. Undeterred, he then travelled extensively around Malaysia and Indonesia, where he collected 125,660 specimens, of which 5,000 were previously unknown. He noticed the differences in the types of species either side of what is called Wallace’s Line between the islands.

Once in possession of so much data, Wallace then came to the same conclusion as Charles Darwin on the evolution of species by the mechanism of natural selection. In 1858, he sent Darwin an essay on his findings for his opinion, unaware of the similarity since Darwin had not yet gone into print.

(Top image of Wallace statue at the Natural History Museum: Matt Brown at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)

London-born Michael Faraday (1791-1867) is regarded as one of the most brilliant scientists of our time. Yet he came from a poor family and, in his day, pursuing a career in science was unheard of for someone in his situation. It was Faraday’s self-belief and religious drive to do good for the world that pushed him to educate himself and seek out conducive opportunities. This led to a job as Sir Humphry Davy‘s laboratory assistant from 1812 to 1820 at the Royal Institution, through which he met various other leading chemists and physicists and began giving lectures and writing papers.

Gaining promotion in 1821, his important discoveries in chemistry, physics and electrochemistry soon followed. In that year, he discovered electro-magnetic rotation. In 1823 he liquefied chlorine (which led to refrigerators) and in 1825 he isolated benzene. In 1826 he established the Christmas lectures for children. 1831 saw his extraordinary discovery of electro-magnetic induction, leading to the electric motors and generators we depend upon today.

His tireless devotion to his work continued. In 1834 he produced the First and Second Laws of Electrolysis and in 1836 he discovered the principle that allowed the construction of the protective ‘Faraday Cage’. Theories of diamagnetism and the ‘Faraday Effect’ resulted from experiments in 1845.

(Image of Faraday delivering a Christmas lecture at the Royal Institution: Wikimedia Commons / Public domain)

In 1973 Dr Rupert Sheldrake (1942-) began investigating how plants and animals receive the information on how they are supposed to grow and behave. One of science’s pioneering thinkers, he developed his idea of ‘morphic resonance‘ and published his initial study of this discovery in 1981. He proposed that there is an invisible field which connects members of a self-organising group, which may be global, and stores memories which any member can automatically access, explaining innate knowledge, or instincts.

Even small groups, such as a pet dog and its owner, have their own morphic field, enabling the dog to anticipate when the owner is approaching home. A flock of birds swoops around in the sky without collisions because of their morphic field. New rat poison baits are regularly needed as all the rats learn to avoid the current one instinctively. Telepathy is a component of morphic resonance.

Mainstream scientists have tried to stick with the genetics theory of characteristics, but since 2000 they have started to realise that genes have their limitations. Dr Sheldrake’s 2013 TED talk, ‘The Science Delusion’, was banned as ‘pseudoscience’ but has had over five million views on other platforms and he continues to attract  audiences interested in unexplored scientific avenues.

(Image: maxpixel.net / Public domain)

Professor Peter Ware Higgs was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1929 and grew up in Birmingham and Bristol before entering an illustrious career in particle physics research. Scientists had been investigating the existence and properties of smaller particles than the electrons previously discovered by J.J. Thomson, when Higgs had a spark of inspiration, which he set out in two papers published in 1964. The ‘Higgs mechanism’, ‘Higgs field’ and ‘Higgs boson‘ were the result.

He proposed that his boson particle is the means of force by which the other fundamental particles gain their mass. It thus became one of the seventeen particles in the Standard Model used in physics. However, the Higgs boson is invisible to the human eye and could only be experimentally concluded almost fifty years after Higgs’s initial “one big idea”. In 2012, physicists at CERN declared that the detectors for the Large Hadron Collider had found the long-sought-after decay event which proved the existence of the Higgs boson.

Following this, Professor Higgs was joint awardee of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics for “the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles“.

(Top image: robertg6n1 at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

On 2nd May 1800, William Nicholson (1753-1815) from London and his friend Sir Anthony Carlisle (1768-1840) from Co. Durham worked together on an experiment into an aspect of electricity that was to launch ground-breaking industrial developments. These include the production of pure metals, electroplating and electrochemical machining.

Nicholson had started the very first science journal three years beforehand and had learnt of investigations being carried out on electricity and metals. He and Carlisle discovered a technique for isolating the constituent chemical elements of an ionic substance by passing an electric current through its fluid or molten state. Such a state allows the ions to become mobile and gather together with identical ions. This is electrolysis and its uses range from supplying oxygen in spacecraft to the removal of body hair!

Nicholson and Carlisle first used electrolysis on water to decompose it into hydrogen and oxygen. They published their exciting findings in Nicholson’s science journal. Sir Humphry Davy then used it to isolate sodium, potassium, calcium, strontium, barium, magnesium and lithium, and in 1834 Michael Faraday formulated his ‘laws of electrolysis’.

(Image: Wikimedia Commons / Public domain)

Annie Russell Maunder (1868-1947) and her husband Edward Walter Maunder (1851-1928) were the first scientists to analyse records of sunspot activity and identify a specific ‘grand solar minimum’. This natural phenomenon, lasting from 1645 to 1715, is known as the Maunder Minimum.

The sun is a seething mass of activity which waxes and wanes on an eleven-year cycle. A normal ‘minimum’ is a quiet time for the sun, as it has fewer sunspots, thereby producing less ultra-violet light. The Maunder Minimum was a prolonged minimum and the Maunders noticed that it coincided with a cooler period in the weather ~ the River Thames froze over several times, for example. Scientists now believe there is a definite cause-and-effect on the weather, as well as changes in the upper atmosphere which are potentially dangerous for aircraft and spacecraft.

No-one can confidently predict when the next grand solar minimum will occur, but it is hypothesised that it will be shorter than the seventy-year Maunder Minimum. However, we know from the diary of Samuel Pepys that life continued as usual during that period, despite the cold. An interesting summary of the weather at that time can be found on Netweather.

(Image of the frozen River Thames in 1683 painted by Thomas Wyke: Wikimedia / Public domain)

Born in Devon, Sir Walter Raleigh (1552/4-1618) seemed to be following in the footsteps of Sir Francis Drake as a swashbuckling hero, fighting against the Spanish and sailing the Atlantic to explore new lands. However, he caught the eye of Queen Elizabeth I whilst quashing an uprising in Ireland in 1580 and she demanded that he cease his reckless adventures.

She made him a wealthy landowner and knighted him in 1585. He charmed her with his poetry and extrovert personality, but this changed when she discovered he had a wife and baby. She put them in the Tower of London, the first of three imprisonments for Raleigh. After this, he was permitted to venture into the wilds of South America searching for ‘Eldorado’ and gold. He discovered a little gold but no magical kingdoms and on his final trip his son was killed by the Spanish while he lagged behind.

Raleigh is credited with popularising the potato and tobacco, which had been introduced from Spain, and he is viewed as a pioneering explorer to North America, naming Virginia after the Queen, although he mainly sent other people there. His anti-Spanish foolhardiness was his downfall and King James I had him beheaded for treason.

(Image [cropped]: Ben Sutherland at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)