{"id":229356,"date":"2026-01-20T01:32:53","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T07:32:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/the-worlds-longest-running-lab-experiment-is-almost-100-years-old"},"modified":"2026-01-20T01:32:53","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T07:32:53","slug":"the-worlds-longest-running-lab-experiment-is-almost-100-years-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/the-worlds-longest-running-lab-experiment-is-almost-100-years-old","title":{"rendered":"The World\u2019s Longest-Running Lab Experiment Is Almost 100 Years Old"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-worlds-longest-running-lab-experiment-is-almost-100-years-old.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Sometimes science can be painfully slow. Data comes in dribs and drabs, truth trickles, and veracity proves viscous.<\/p>\n<p>The world\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.guinnessworldrecords.com\/world-records\/longest-running-laboratory-experiment\">longest-running lab experiment<\/a> is an ongoing work in sheer scientific patience. It has been running continuously for nearly a century, under the close supervision of several custodians and many spectators \u2013 and it\u2019s ever so slowly drip, drip, dripping away.<\/p>\n<p>It all started in 1927, when physicist Thomas Parnell at the University of Queensland in Australia filled a closed funnel with the world\u2019s thickest known fluid: <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pitch_(resin)\">pitch<\/a>, a derivative of tar that was once used to seal ships against the seas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes science can be painfully slow. Data comes in dribs and drabs, truth trickles, and veracity proves viscous. The world\u2019s longest-running lab experiment is an ongoing work in sheer scientific patience. It has been running continuously for nearly a century, under the close supervision of several custodians and many spectators \u2013 and it\u2019s ever so [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229356\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}