Question: Has anything any of you done very been proved and then disproved? If so, what and when?

Lisa Baddeley answered on 6 Mar 2018:

Hi, That’s a good question. A lot of research is about taking measurements and then using your knowledge to make sense of them. In some cases there is no definite answer, only what you can prove with your data and your equipment. This is what makes science so fun and also creates a lot of conversations between scientists at meetings.
As an example, for many years no-one could tell how high above the ground the aurora was. People drew pictures of it from the top of mountains and tried to use the stars as a reference point. Estimates varied from 10 km to 100s of km and there was no way of proving or disproving those estimates as they were as good as people could do with the equipment. It wasn’t until we had cameras that we could start to understand and even then it wasn’t until we could have pairs of cameras located at two different viewing points and then use trigometry to try to work it out. Even today, when we observe the aurora we often have to approximate what height it is at (220km for red aurora and 120km for green) and we are still arguing about it (although now we argue as to whether it is at, for example 120km or 130km for green aurora, so our estimates are a lot better).
I have presented work at conferences where I think one thing and another scientist thinks something else. We won’t know the exact answer until we have more data and better models.