Rocks do not fall..

..from the sky.

On the left is a meteorite, on the right is a tektite which is what happens when a meteorite strikes the ground and melts it into a glassy substance.

Antoine Lavoisier was a French chemist living from 1743 to 1794 so a contemporary of James Hutton whom I spoke about yesterday. He isolated oxygen and hydrogen -previously water had been considered to be a single element - and was the first to show that sulphur was a single element and not a compound. His pioneering technique of weighing things carefully to perform experiments meant he could prove that you could change the state of a chemical but not its mass. He also contributed to the formation of the metric system and generally made massive inroads to the understanding of chemistry.

However. If you mention the name of Antoine Lavoisier to a Fortean they will know him from his statement that "rocks do not fall from the sky". Up until the early 1800s, a few years after Lavoisier was guillotined, the existance of meteorites was not entertained for this reason despite eyewitness accounts that claimed that they did.

It is therefore used as the comeback for any declarations that such and such is impossible.

Witchcreations asked yesterday if I thought there were any scientific theories that we think are true today that might be discovered to be wrong. The answer is yes! Blipping this today saved me from having to go outside, in the grip of Hurricane Bawbag to take an outdoor photo. :-)