alt Hacker NewsThat wasn’t just a physics professor that was William Thompson aka Lord Kelvin (the dude the temperature unit is named after and one of the most important mathematical physicists of the 19th century [1]), who also said that heavier than air flight was physically impossible only a couple of weeks before the Wright Brothers (and presumably in spite of having at least once in his lifetime seen a bird). Proof that you can be both very smart and simultaneously a bit of a jackass.
I love these arguments "You know, we thought we couldn't cross the ocean, and now we did!"
This means we can just jump over to mars, then explore other planets, etc, etc.
We know tons of regimes where there is non-continuous progress. Finding a smart dude with an anecdote does not invalidate the breadth and width of all human experience with non-continuous systems.
Some dude thought all fluid was newtonian, and then we discovered non-newtonian fluid. It does exactly what yuou don't expect. Which basically demos physics is complex but that still doesn't mean progress is fluid.