When I left my home planet for Earth many hundreds of years ago, I brought with me a large collection of science books to read during the long voyage aboard my spaceship. In addition to the usual books about physics, chemistry, and mathematics, I also read several volumes dealing with unusual, or “fringe,” science. What exactly is fringe science? It is any theory that is not accepted by the majority of scientists. You see, scientists are very cautious when it comes to accepting new ideas. They insist on checking every idea they have with carefully controlled experiments and sharing the results with other scientists so others can check their work.
When scientists perform experiments, they use something called the “scientific method,” which is a four-step process for discovering how the universe operates. It goes like this:
1. Make an observation about something. (For example, observe that water freezes when it gets cold.)
2. Make a prediction based on your observation. This is called a hypothesis. (In our example, you might hypothesize, “Water freezes when its temperature drops to 35 degrees Fahrenheit.”)
3. Conduct an experiment to test the hypothesis. (Place a glass of warm water in the freezer and stick a thermometer in it. Notice the temperature of the water when it freezes.)
4. Draw conclusions based on the results of your experiment, and change your hypothesis to match what really happened. (The water did not freeze at 35 degrees, it froze at 32 degrees!)
There’s a good reason why scientists don’t bother with fringe theories—most of them were not developed using the scientific method. Take the concept of perpetual motion, for instance. For hundreds of years, people have been trying to make machines that produce more energy than they consume. People have frittered away countless hours on all sorts of contraptions made out of gears, sponges, ropes, pulleys, rubber bands, pistons, gases, and magnets in a foolish attempt to generate power from nothing. Now, strictly speaking, there is no proof that a perpetual motion machine can’t be made, but two hundred years of experimentation using the scientific method strongly suggests that the universe doesn’t give anyone a “free lunch.”
Nevertheless, I enjoy reading about fringe science and coming up with experiments that seem a little fringy. Electric lemons? Invisible ink? Tiny flying objects? I’ve made them all, and more. They’re fun to make, and everyone likes to watch them work.
The other reason I like to study fringe science is because once in a great while (and I do mean great), a fringe scientist turns out to be right (but only if he or she uses the scientific method to prove the discovery). Take Nicolaus Copernicus, for instance. He was an astronomer who was born in Poland in 1473. In those days, scientists were convinced that the Earth was at the center of the universe, and that it didn’t move an inch. They insisted that everything else, including the other planets, the sun, and the stars, moved around the Earth. But Copernicus, using the scientific method to study the motion of the heavenly bodies, discovered that everyone else was wrong. The Earth was not at the center of the universe; it was just one of several planets in orbit around the sun. For almost two hundred years, nobody believed Copernicus except for two other scientists: Giordano Bruno in the sixteenth century and Galileo in the seventeenth century, who both proved Copernicus’s theory was correct. However, it was such a radical idea that both scientists were punished by the authorities.
Luckily, in most places on Earth today, the worst thing that can happen to you for coming up with an unusual theory is that you’ll get laughed at. And I must admit; some fringy ideas are quite hilarious. I never fail to be amused by you Earthlings!
