What are some of the most famous scientific theories that have proven false over time?

Question

Either as one competing theory has been proven without a doubt to be the correct theory, or simply as evidence has come out to destroy the general foundation of the theory in question.

Answer 1

It has just got to be Newton's theory of time.
Newton's time was a smooth continuum that flowed at exactly the same rate throughout the universe.
It stood the test of time for over 300 years - until Einstein blew it out of the water with his theory of relativity in 1905. It has since been proved that time depends on the observer's acceleration, gravitational field and speeds approaching those of light - to the exact extent that was predicted in Einstein's theory.

Answer 2

Maxwell's theory of the aether was found to be incorrect.
Lamarck's theory of acquired heritable traits was found incorrect.
Pons and Flieschman's cold fusion theory was discredited.
The "Clovis-first" theory of North American immigration is false.
Newton's mechanics were "extended" to include special relativity.

The difficulty here is that we're limited to genuine scientific theories which were/are "famous." This implies that they were once well known and thought to be correct. There are countless ancient theories which have been discredited but they were never scientific. In modern times we have many pseudo-sciences such as creationism which have been discredited but were never scientific. When a brand new science is developing, a few scientist's make their initial "best-guesses". While this is still science, their guesses are not theory. There are few responses which meet all the criteria.

Answer 3

The electron was believed to be the smallest particle inside the atom. It was then dicovered - recently- that there are smaller particles called Quarks. Each three quarks form an electron. Thus, it is believed that the whole universe started with the interaction between Quarks.
I've learned about this just a week ago in a physics lecture.

Answer 4

it is going to be extremely confusing to instruct the life or non-life of an all-powerful, omniscient being, much greater so while it does not decide for us to be responsive to it exists. we can look on the great bang thought, or the history of evolution, which has no longer shown a homo sapien fossil interior the Precambrian era, as evidence. even nevertheless, because of the character of being all-powerful, we can't rule out the possibility of it arising a majority of those 'diversions' to question our thought in it. If we've been to locate existence on yet another planet, Creationists can nevertheless declare that it replaced into built, that it replaced into placed there by skill of their writer. inspite of the invention of M-thought and the possibility of distinctive dimensions, a number of which domicile an countless sort of universes, Creationists can nevertheless supply a advance to their ideals by skill of classifying this as yet another 'diversion.' it rather is the commonplace flaw with the hypothesis you plan. At our present day point of technologies, we've not any thank you to fully instruct or disprove its life. In a million billion years, if humanity survives that long, as quickly as we are on the brink of omnipotence ourselves, we could be waiting to respond to this question.

Answer 5

As far I understand no scientific theory was ever proven
to be wrong.

A lot of pseudo-scientific speculations were proven
wrong on the other hand. Some current exmaples
of pseudo-theories are global warming, UFO sightings
and similar things.

Answer 6

For thousands of years people believed in 'spontaneous generation', the theory life could arise from non living matter, such as maggots being created out of a rotting animal. Louis Pasteur proved this wrong.

Answer 7

Capernicus proved the Earth was not the center of the solar system.
Hubble proved that objects in space are moving away from us ( little did he realize an expanding universe).

Dr. Leaky - Discovery of " The Missing Link"

Hollerith's IBM Punch Cards for data processing, used into the 1970's

Bill Gates - Renovated how we use computers in our every day lives.

Answer 8

The theory that the world was flat...I think we're all pretty sure now that the world is not flat. And the theory that the Earth was at the center of the Universe...I think we're all pretty sure that's not the case now, too.

Answer 9

Einstein once said that the universe wasn't expanding or contracting he said it just stayed the same and called it the cosmological constant of the universe, but when people found evidence of the universe expanding (Blue and Red shifts), he then said it was the biggest blunder of his career(Cosmological Constant).

Answer 10

Newton's laws of motion, for one, are not fundamentally correct. Newtonian mechanics is a very good approximation of the macroscopic world, but the true picture of mechanics is described by quantum physics.