Séminaire - New Insights from Failed Experiments, Unanticipated Results and Embracing Controversial Observations

Experiments and observations, whether telescopic or analytical, never lie, though data derived from such sources can be misinterpreted or applied inappropriately to derive conclusions that are incorrect.  Given that nature always behaves according to the laws of physics and chemistry, rather than according to currently popular models and theories, experimental results are always correct even when the results are far from those that one initially expected. 

I discuss a number of cases where the results of my own experiments, even one carried out as a simple calibration measure, produced wildly different results that generally required many years of effort or contemplation to begin to understand.  On the positive side, exploration of the circumstances that produced the “errant” results often led to new and interesting insights concerning processes that might occur in natural environments and were well worth the effort involved. 

Specifically, I show how an experiment that “failed” due to a broken conductor led to experiments that made the first refractory oxide solids containing mass independently fractionated oxygen isotopes and to a 1998 prediction of the oxygen isotopic composition of the Sun that was confirmed by the analysis of Genesis samples in 2011. 

I will describe a calibration experiment that unexpectedly produced single magnetic domain iron particles and discuss how tracking down a source of “contamination”  in experiments intended to produce amorphous iron and magnesium silicate smokes led to studies of the synthesis of carbonaceous grain coatings that turn out to be terrific Fischer-Tropsch-type catalysts and have great potential for trapping the planetary noble gases in meteorites. 

Finally I will briefly discuss a modern and still unresolved conflict between the assumptions built into the CO Self Shielding Model for mass independent isotopic fractionation of oxygen in solar system solids, rapid and thorough mixing within the solar nebula, and the efficient conversion of CO into organic coatings and volatiles on the surfaces of nebular grains via Fischer-Tropsch-type processes.