What if the smartest people in scientific history had had Twitter accounts? In all honesty. we'd probably be less advanced than we are now. Photograph: Kacper Pempel/Reuters Photograph: KACPER PEMPEL/REUTERS

Great moments in science (if Twitter had existed)

This article is more than 9 years old

Twitter is the source of a great deal of modern news, and scientists are often encouraged to tweet about their research. So what if Twitter had been around during the times of historic scientific breakthroughs and discoveries?

A lot of news these days comes from, or is about, Twitter. Entertainment magazines and shows seem to be entirely dependant on celebrity Tweets, like those fish that feed on the random things that fall out of a sharks mouth.

It's not all random utterances and spats though. Time magazine recently ran an article about the most intelligent celebrities on Twitter. And those of us in the science field are regularly encouraged to Tweet about our research.

But what if these two approaches were combined? What if famous scientists were on Twitter, at the time of their greatest discoveries? Obviously the vast majority of celebrated scientific discoveries occurred before Twitter even existed. But this is the internet, where nothing is impossible!

(Explanatory links in the titles, for those not familiar with the references)