The Longest-Running Experiment In The World

TL;DR

Long-running scientific experiments like the pitch drop and Broadbalk field trials reveal how patient, multi-generational research produces discoveries that benefit billions.

Key Points

• 1.The pitch drop experiment holds the Guinness record for longest-running lab experiment. Started by Thomas Parnell at the University of Queensland in 1927, pitch has dropped only 9 times in 96 years and has never once been witnessed live — every drop was missed, including by Professor John Mainstone who monitored it for 52 years.
• 2.Pitch is technically a highly viscous liquid, not a solid. Its viscosity is estimated at 100 billion times that of water, and studying how materials flow belongs to a field called rheology, with applications in manufacturing and predicting lava paths.
• 3.The Broadbalk experiment at Rothamsted, England is the longest-running experiment overall, dating to 1843. It tests fertilizers across 20 wheat-growing strips and has revealed, among other things, that most plants get nitrogen from soil rather than air — data that has likely sustained billions of lives.
• 4.The Oxford Electric Bell has been ringing since 1840 and nobody knows exactly how. Powered by a Clarendon dry pile of unknown construction, it has rung roughly 10 billion times; scientists won't disassemble it to find out how it works because that would end the experiment.
• 5.The Centennial Light in Livermore, California has burned since 1901 and exemplifies planned obsolescence. In 1924, light bulb manufacturers deliberately agreed to limit bulb lifespan to 1,000 hours to drive repeat purchases — a conspiracy the pre-1924 bulb predates entirely.
• 6.A 500-year microbiology experiment was launched in 2014 to test how long bacterial spores can survive dormant. Hundreds of sealed vials will be opened every 2–25 years through June 2514, with findings recorded on archival paper since digital media won't last; first results published in 2018 were promising.
• 7.The Clock of the Long Now began construction in 2018 on Jeff Bezos-owned land near Van Horn, Texas. Powered by mountain-top temperature changes and solar-synced each solstice, it requires visitors to wind chimes to display time — each triggering a unique composition by Brian Eno — and was deliberately placed in rattlesnake-inhabited wilderness to limit tourist traffic.