Peano

Nice description of science (physics in particular) from the JREF forums.

As it turns out, we know enough to make really incredibly detailed descriptions. So detailed, we can describe things that we can’t actually sense directly with our own senses. We can measure those things, and we can describe them, but we can’t see them. So how do we know they’re right?

The answer is, reality appears to be consistent. In other words, our universe appears to be a place where, although random things can happen, not just anything can happen. Only certain sorts of random things can. For example, if you get out of bed and walk to the store and buy some brewskis and come home and sit on the couch and drink one, you’re still you. You don’t turn into a penguin when you walk around the corner, and you don’t cease to exist when you sit down on the couch. And this implies some things about the nature of our universe- and those things add up to consistency. Rocks don’t just disappear, or appear out of nowhere. The planet beneath our feet is there all the time, and holds us to itself.

Penetrating Radiation at the Surface of and in Water

Domenico Pacini; translated, commented by Alessandro De Angelis(Submitted on 9 Feb 2010)

At the beginning of the twentieth century, two scientists, the Austrian Victor Hess and the Italian Domenico Pacini, developed two brilliant lines of research independently, leading to the determination of the origin of atmospheric radiation. Before their work, the origin of the radiation today called “cosmic rays” was strongly debated, as many scientists thought that these particles came from the crust of the Earth. 
The approach by Hess is well known: Hess measured the rate of discharge of an electroscope that flew aboard an atmospheric balloon. Because the discharge rate increased as the balloon flew at higher altitude, he concluded in 1912 that the origin could not be terrestrial. For this discovery, Hess was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1936, and his experiment became legendary. 
At the same time, in 1911, Pacini, a professor at the University of Bari, mad a series of measurements to determine the variation in the speed of discharge of an electroscope (and thus the intensity of the radiation) while the electroscope was immersed in a box in a sea near the Naval Academy in the Bay of Livorno (the Italian Navy supported the research). The measures are documented in his work “Penetrating radiation at the surface of and in water”. Pacini discovered that the discharge of the oscilloscope was significantly slower than at the surface. 
Documents testify that Pacini and Hess knew of each other’s work. Pacini died in 1934, two years before the Nobel Prize was awarded for the discovery of cosmic rays. While Hess is remembered as the discoverer of cosmic rays, the simultaneous discovery by Pacini is forgotten by most.