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The notable exception being Nikola Tesla, who was both a mad scientist and a mad engineer.

_delirium 16y ago
The Manhattan Project physicists occupy a dual space as well. Their ultimate hypothesis was "hmm, maybe building a bomb this way will work", and the experimental setup was "build it and try exploding it in the desert", which is a pretty engineeringy kind of science experiment. (Of course, there were plenty of earlier, more basic-physics experiments leading up to it.)
- bitwize 16y ago
  The Manhattan Project physicists -- in particular J. Robert Oppenheimer -- joined Victor Frankenstein as archetypal mad scientists post-WWII. In particular, fictional mad scientists tend to implicitly operate in the manner you describe: by the time they're building fully functional death rays with which to threaten the world, they've presumably carried out maybe tens or hundreds of experiments to see if the new form of radiation from a crystal meteorite energy source could be channelled and weaponized.
- seldo 16y ago
  My favourite part of that experiment was that they believed there to be a non-zero chance that it would trigger an uncontrollable reaction that would ignite the atmosphere and end the whole world but did it anyway.
  - DilipJ 16y ago
    Crazy, isn't it? But I guess they felt the risk was worth it. I assume that's how the scientists working on the LHC feel.
    - devinj 16y ago
      Nah, the LHC dudes think there's an actual zero risk. The LHC doesn't produce collisions of any magnitude greater than collisions that occur in the upper atmosphere (from what I understand). That was the ultimate debunk of things like the whole "microscopic black hole will eat the earth" thing.
      - grinich 16y ago
        The black hole would evaporate so quickly it wouldn't be able to pull in any matter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    Come on... There is a non- zero chance of me turning into a potato too and that hasn't happ

The Manhattan Project physicists occupy a dual space as well. Their ultimate hypothesis was "hmm, maybe building a bomb this way will work", and the experimental setup was "build it and try exploding it in the desert", which is a pretty engineeringy kind of science experiment. (Of course, there were plenty of earlier, more basic-physics experiments leading up to it.)

bitwize 16y ago
The Manhattan Project physicists -- in particular J. Robert Oppenheimer -- joined Victor Frankenstein as archetypal mad scientists post-WWII. In particular, fictional mad scientists tend to implicitly operate in the manner you describe: by the time they're building fully functional death rays with which to threaten the world, they've presumably carried out maybe tens or hundreds of experiments to see if the new form of radiation from a crystal meteorite energy source could be channelled and weaponized.
seldo 16y ago
My favourite part of that experiment was that they believed there to be a non-zero chance that it would trigger an uncontrollable reaction that would ignite the atmosphere and end the whole world but did it anyway.
- DilipJ 16y ago
  Crazy, isn't it? But I guess they felt the risk was worth it. I assume that's how the scientists working on the LHC feel.
  - devinj 16y ago
    Nah, the LHC dudes think there's an actual zero risk. The LHC doesn't produce collisions of any magnitude greater than collisions that occur in the upper atmosphere (from what I understand). That was the ultimate debunk of things like the whole "microscopic black hole will eat the earth" thing.
    - grinich 16y ago
      The black hole would evaporate so quickly it wouldn't be able to pull in any matter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation
- rbanffy 16y ago
  Come on... There is a non- zero chance of me turning into a potato too and that hasn't happ