

The woman who saw beneath oceans - tokenadult
http://www.skepticblog.org/2014/05/14/the-woman-who-saw-beneath-oceans/

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BrandonMarc
I'm amazed that topics I've long taken for granted, like plate techtonics and
seafloor spreading, have only been widely accepted for a few decades ... and
indeed, 50 years ago such ideas were "new" and "controversial" and even
ridiculed / fought against.

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sampo
It is really amazing, that the Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics were
pretty much accepted science in the 1920's, but it took to the end of 1950's
before Continental Drift was accepted.

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frozenport
On the flip side, the fact of Continental Drift will remain when a new theory
supersedes Quantum Mechanics.

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TeMPOraL
Nothing will happen to either QM or continental drift. New scientific theories
don't suddenly invalidate the otherwise working old ones, they only add more
details and refine the modelling of reality.

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stefantalpalaru
> New scientific theories don't suddenly invalidate the otherwise working old
> ones [...]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston_theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston_theory)

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Jweb_Guru
Phlogiston theory never "worked," as demonstrated by the Wikipedia article you
linked.

> Eventually, quantitative experiments revealed problems, including the fact
> that some metals, such as magnesium, gained mass when they burned, even
> though they were supposed to have lost phlogiston.

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stefantalpalaru
It worked well enough. Metals that gained weight through oxidation were simply
losing "negative phlogiston".

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ahmett
She is also mentioned on Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. That's a fantastic
discovery on proving the theory saying America was once connected to Europe
and Africa.

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geekam
Wikipedia article on that episode :
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Worlds_of_Planet_Eart...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Worlds_of_Planet_Earth)

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wayanon
The url and title made me think I'd be reading about someone who could make
accurate drawings of the ocean floor just by looking at the water surface.

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chrissyb
The title is a double entendre.

