Discovery
In 1951 researchers on board the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service research vessel were indulging in a spot of long line fishing. They noticed that the gear deep under water drifted eastwards. This was unusual because the surface currents of the pacific ocean flow westwards on the equator. (They follow the direction of the winds).
The following year Townsend Cromwell led a research party to investigate how the currents of the ocean varied as a function of depth. They discovered a fast flowing current that flowed eastwards in the deep surface layers.
Read more about this topic: Cromwell Current
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Your discovery of the contradiction caused me the greatest surprise and, I would almost say, consternation, since it has shaken the basis on which I intended to build my arithmetic.... It is all the more serious since, with the loss of my rule V, not only the foundations of my arithmetic, but also the sole possible foundations of arithmetic seem to vanish.”
—Gottlob Frege (1848–1925)
“One of the laudable by-products of the Freudian quackery is the discovery that lying, in most cases, is involuntary and inevitable—that the liar can no more avoid it than he can avoid blinking his eyes when a light flashes or jumping when a bomb goes off behind him.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)