Watch the world’s longest-running experiment on webcam

The experiment aiming to demonstrate that tar pitch is fluid has been running for more than 80 years

It all started in 1927, back when bob cuts were in and talkies had only begun gaining traction. Professor Thomas Parnell wanted to demonstrate that tar pitch — a derivative of tar that's so brittle, a hammer could shatter it — is actually fluid. To do so, he heated a pitch sample, poured it into a funnel, and waited for it to cool…for three years. Once it was settled, he broke the seal of the funnel's stem, and waited for the tar pitch to drip out. And it did! After eight years, that is.

The next dollop of pitch that took a year longer than the first was the last one that occurred within the University of Queensland's first physics professor's lifetime. The third pitch blob settled at the bottom of the beaker in 1954, and there have only been five more drops since then. Thanks to this experiment, we now know that tar pitch is roughly 100 billion times more viscous than water!

For quite some time, the experiment (protected by nothing but a bell jar) had been in danger of being thrown out if not for John Mainstone, who joined the university's physics faculty back in 1961. It took another 14 long years before he was able to persuade his department to display the tar pitch set-up again.

Now, you can even watch Professor Parnell's brainchild on webcam if you suddenly get the urge to stare at the black globule forming at the end of the funnel stem very, very slowly. Mainstone reckons the ninth drop will happen sometime in 2013. This will be the first one to ever be recorded on video, as the plan to document the eighth instance in 2000 was ruined by a broken camera. If you're wondering how long it will actually take for the experiment to be marked complete, Mainstone says, "it has at least 100 years left if someone doesn't throw it out."