First, a definition. This is not the sort of “pitch” we want Daniel Bard to uncork at Fenway this season.
This is a pitch that rolls out oh, so slowly. Agonizingly slowly.
An experiment in Australia is measuring the viscosity of bitumen, or asphalt — a black, sticky distillation of petroleum. Think of a clump of road-paving material sitting in the sun.
An Australian professor in 1927 poured a heated sample of the pitch into a funnel, sealed the funnel at the neck, and set it aside for three years.
Then, the seal was broken, the funnel was suspended over a collection vial inside a bell jar, and the real waiting began.
Thomas Parnell of the University of Queensland in Brisbane wanted to show that some substances can seem solid but actually are fluid — tough and thick but officially, they flow.
Indeed, a drop formed from the pitch and fell into the vial. It took eight years — not surprising for something 230 billion times more viscous than water.
The second drop fell after another eight years. The professor died the following year, in 1948, but the experiment continued.
After the seventh drop hung down and at last collapsed into the vial in 1988, air conditioning was added to the setup’s location. Before that, there were no temperature controls. The cooler environment slowed down the dropping, and the eighth goopy sample didn’t arrive until Nov. 28, 2000.
There’s excitement now, because 2013 is predicted to be the year the ninth drop is collected.
This is definitely slower than watching grass grow, but we don’t have to. This time a webcam (http://smp.uq.edu.au/content/pitch-drop-experiment) is expected to record the fall.
Human eyes have never actually seen a drop of the pitch go down. This time, whenever it happens, people — physics enthusiasts and Internet surfers — will see it happen.
We don’t expect it to look like much. But we do hope fans around the world will cheer what just occurred in a small glass funnel, far away.