Maybe that sounds sad, but I disagree. The universe doesn't care if we succeed, it just moves forward. You're going through a breakup? Keep spinning. You got fired? Keep spinning. Feel like the sky is falling on your own personal world, that the future is over, you know that this too shall pass.

There was so way to justify posting someone at the funnel 24/7 if the drop could fall in the next week, or month, or year, and that a sudden change in climate could speed it up or stop it almost completely.

The universe does not care that it defies our search for answers, even past the use of pitch

Over the past near-century, there have been many scientifically minded folk who have tried to create algorithms to predict when the drop will fall, but if the time table is in the form of decades you'll always run into the issue of large numbers. The technology to monitor and review that time is new

This isn't a non-Newtonian fluid - think Oobleck, which changes it's resistance to force based on the force applied. Pitch is always the pretty much same general thickness.

But that's one of the problems. Because the movement is always so slow, any changes are hard to detect and hard to predict.

Thing is tho, the experiment is trying to draw conclusions on the viscosity of pitch - a substance used for centuries in construction, infrastructure, etc. that is kind of a liquid but kind of a solid due to its thiccness. Therefore, it's dripping is so slow as to be reminiscent of a solid.

My time at Portia/Sandrock are both fun, as well as Grow: Song of the Evertree