Post by trailboss on Apr 11, 2019 22:23:17 GMT -5
www.washington.edu/news/2019/04/11/stars-and-stories-uw-astronomer-emily-levesque-gathering-material-for-book-on-true-tales-of-observational-astronomy/
In the 1960s a research team of French astronomers spotted unexplained flares of light while looking at stars and found the phenomena unexpectedly contained the element potassium. They wrote up their results, which caused great excitement — but no one else was able to see those flares, even when observing the same stars.
Researchers in California later studied and solved the mystery: One of those French researchers was a well-known pipe smoker, and the bright potassium flares thought to come from deep space actually resulted from him lighting his pipe with a match in a back room that also contained the team’s light detector.
Levesque is entertained by the follow-up work: “Their paper on it is just exquisite science, because they’re so rigorous about getting to the bottom of this wacky explanation. They actually write out: ‘We tested safety matches, we tested book matches, we tested kitchen matches…’ And to their credit — and I think this is true of scientists — the folks in France were like, ‘Oh, you explained it? How can we help?’”
Researchers in California later studied and solved the mystery: One of those French researchers was a well-known pipe smoker, and the bright potassium flares thought to come from deep space actually resulted from him lighting his pipe with a match in a back room that also contained the team’s light detector.
Levesque is entertained by the follow-up work: “Their paper on it is just exquisite science, because they’re so rigorous about getting to the bottom of this wacky explanation. They actually write out: ‘We tested safety matches, we tested book matches, we tested kitchen matches…’ And to their credit — and I think this is true of scientists — the folks in France were like, ‘Oh, you explained it? How can we help?’”
