The confrontation makes Louis Pasteur a famous scientist

Louis Pasteur felt most comfortable working in his laboratory in Paris. It was the place where he achieved some of the greatest scientific achievements, including experiments that help confirm germs that could cause disease. “Everything becomes complicated when leaving the lab,” Pasteur once complained to a friend. But in 1860, many years before becoming famous for developing the vaccine, it was warming up milk to destroy pathogens, he once climbed to the top of a glacier in the search for invisible life.

Pasteur and a guide began the journey at the foot of Mont Blanc mountain on the Alps, walking through the murky pine forest. Behind them, a basket filled with long -necked glass bottles containing meat broth. They climbed through the slope until the Mer de Glace glacier. The strong wind blows through the surface of the glacier and the valley echoing the sound of gravel falling through the slope of Pasteur struggling to detect the road under the bright sunlight reflected from the ice surface.

When the scientist reached a height of 2,000 m, he stopped. He took a glass bottle from the basket on the back of the La and raised it over his head, the other hand holding the clip to shock the plug. Cold air flows inside the bottle. The scene can make visitors visit the glacier Mer de Glace that day find it difficult to understand. If they asked what he was doing, the answer seemed crazy. Pasteur is hunting “germs floating in the air”.

Today, after 165 years, scientists around the world also hunt for floating germs. Some studies of Corona virus spread disease throughout the bus and restaurant. Mushroom spores can fly thousands of kilometers away, infecting humans and trees. The ocean put bacteria into the air through each wave. Even scientists realize the clouds contain bacteria. The ecosystem in the sky is called Aerobiome. In Pasteur’s era, it has no name. The idea of ​​living creatures floating in the air is too strange to imagine.

But Pasteur began to wonder the possibility of living in the air when he was a poor scientist at Lille University in France. There, a student’s father approached him for help. This man owns a distillation factory using yeast to turn radish juice into wine. But the juice suddenly smells difficult to understand.

When checking the liquid under a microscope, Pasteur detects black stick bacteria instead of yeast in the brewing box. Discovering helped him develop the doctrine of the fermentation process. Microbiological organizations absorb nutrients, then secrete new compounds. Depending on the species, they can make butter smell rancid or grape juice into alcohol. Detecting Pasteur won a reputation in Paris. When describing the detection, Pasteur speculated that bacteria could float in the air and enter the brewing box. That idea led him to receive an indignation letter from Félix‑archimède Pouchet, one of the leading natural students in France.

Pouchet told Pasteur microorganisms that he discovered not falling from the air into the brewing bottle. Instead, radish juice produces them. Pasteur calmly responded that the experiment of Pouchet’s self -birth theory made a serious mistake. The conflict between Pasteur and Pouchet motivated the French Academy of Sciences to announce a contest on the best research to answer whether or not the theory of self -birth is real or not. Both Pasteur and Pouchet have registered to participate to win a prize worth 2,500 Francs.

The public eagerly watched the contest. To prove his hypothesis, Pasteur decided to collect bacteria from the air. Working with glass workers, he created a small mouth of the mouth of a few centimeters. He poured a sterile broth into it and waited to see if anything was developed inside. If the neck is straight, the broth is often chiseled due to microorganisms. But with the slope and the mouth of the bottle, the broth is still clear. Pasteur thinks that the germs in the air can drift into the neck, but cannot push themselves up.

When Pouchet heard about Pasteur’s experiment, he mocked. Is Pasteur really believing that every bacterium in organic decomposition comes from air? If that is true, each mm3 air will contain more bacteria than all people living on Earth. “The atmosphere we live will be close to iron,” Pouchet said.

Pasteur responded by changing the hypothesis. Germs are not everywhere. Instead, they float in the cloud, common in some places elsewhere. To prove, Pasteur carries the neck flask from the lab and starts gathering germs. At the Paris observatory, all 11 of his bottles were opaque with the germs. But when he went to the countryside and repeated the experiment again, many of his votes were still sterile. Pasteur goes far away from the residential area, the more sparse the organisms of the organism. To check the idea, Pasteur decided to climb the Mer de Glace glacier.

The first trip to Pasteur’s glacier ended in failure. When he held a vase, he tried to use fire from a lamp to tighten the jar, but the dazzling sun made the fire difficult to see clearly. Pasteur touched the lamp and wondered whether he would pollute the broth with germs on his skin or tools. He gave up and Le walked to a small motel on the mountain to stay overnight. Pasteur does not close the neck lid when going to bed. In the morning, they are filled with microorganisms. Pasteur concluded that the motel contains many bacteria in the air that tourists from around the world bring.

At the end of that day, Pasteur edited the lamp so that the fire burned so brightly that he could see it in the sunshine of the glacier. When Mr. Leo returned to the glacier Mer de Glace, the experiment went smoothly. Only one bottle is chiseled by germs. 19 other vase is still sterile.

In November 1869, Pasteur went to Ham Lam Science Institute in Paris with 73 Binh Ong on the trip. He walked into the auditorium, coming to the table that the review council was sitting and displaying the vases. The judges observed the broth while Pasteur described the undeniable evidence that germs floating in the place where there were people. Pouchet refused to accept evidence but still withdrew from the competition. Pasteur was awarded. However, the two of them continued to fight. The argument was so tense that the Academy had to set up a new committee to evaluate the final experiment.

Pasteur decided to refer to the community and build a show. On the evening of April 7, 1864, in the auditorium filled with members of the upper class of Paris, Pasteur stood in the middle of the experimental device and the lamp to show the image on the screen. At Pasteur’s order, the light was off, leaving only a light column revealing the floating dust. After that, he used the pump to push the air into a sterile cotton cloth. After dipping a cotton cloth in water, he put a drop of water under a microscope and enlarge the image on the screen for the audience to see. Along with soot and plaster debris, there are wiggling particles, which are extremely small germs.

According to Pasteur, germs are everywhere in the air. The lecture ends with a fierce applause. The hunt for floating germs has helped Pasteur climb to the highest position in the French scientific world. When he passed away after 31 years, Pasteur has created many inventions to change the world that very few people remember his trip to the glacier of his Mer de Glace.