Failed Experiments

Cold fusion, N-rays, Biosphere 2 — ambitious ideas that taught us more by failing.

22 stories

• The Venus Lander That Tested the Hardness of Its Own Lens Cap
• The Windows That Took the Blame for a Plane Crash They Didn't Cause
• The Student Who Drank Vomit to Prove Yellow Fever Wasn't Contagious
• The Time Australia Sent Machine Guns After 20,000 Emus
• The Six Macaques Given a Keyboard to Write Shakespeare — Who Typed Five Pages of the Letter 'S'
• The Nuclear Landmine Britain Planned to Keep Warm With Live Chickens
• The Obelisk That Took Three Attempts, Two Countries, and 120 Men to Stand Up
• N-Rays: The Radiation 300 Scientists Saw That Was Never There
• The Rescue Kits That Tried to Revive the Drowning by Blowing Smoke Up Their Backsides
• The Rocket That Exploded on Live TV and Got Called 'Kaputnik'
• The Loose Cable That Made Neutrinos Outrun Light for Five Months
• The Mars Lander That Carried a Blur Ringtone and a Damien Hirst Painting — and Then Went Quiet for 11 Years
• The Mouse Utopia With Endless Food That Went Extinct Anyway
• The Genesis Capsule That Crashed Because a Switch Was Installed Backward
• The Ether-Hunting Machine That Found Nothing — and Broke Physics
• The Chemist Who Failed to Make Diamonds — and Got the World's Favorite Fake One Named After Him
• Acoustic Kitty: The CIA Wired a Live Cat for Sound to Spy on the Soviets
• The Corned Beef Sandwich That Got NASA Hauled Before Congress
• Polywater: The New Form of Water That Almost Ate the World
• Cold Fusion: The Breakthrough That Wasn't
• Kon-Tiki: The Raft That Crossed an Ocean to Prove a Theory That Was Wrong
• Biosphere 2: The Sealed World Where the Oxygen Mysteriously Vanished

← All series