Steve's CS855 School Blog

The week 4 assignment is to discuss a failed prediction. While most predictions fail, some stand out more than others do.

I found an interesting one, made back in the early 1900s. Dr. Ernest Rutherford stated that, “The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine” (http://listverse.com/history/top-30-failed-technology-predictions/).

What makes this interesting is that, Dr. Rutherford is credited with being the first person to split the atom, figured out what radiation was, discovered alpha and beta waves, invented the Rutherford-Geiger detector (precursor to the Geiger-Mueller tube), created the nuclear model of the atom (see illustration below), and predicted the existence of the neutron. He was a highly educated man and an expert in the field, at the time, but as his prediction suggests, even experts of the time had little real understanding of their field.

Rutherfords Depiction of the Atom (http://www.rostra.dk/louis/andreart/Rutherford.html)

-steve