One of Louis Pasteur’s famous contributions was to help disp…
One of Louis Pasteur’s famous contributions was to help disprove the theory of spontaneous generation. In his experiments, he used sugar or yeast extracts, and following boiling and despite being open to the air via the “swan neck” of the flask, his broths remained sterile. However, other researchers who attempted to reproduce his work instead used hay infusions (i.e., hay boiled in water to make a tea), and their solutions did not remain sterile. What would most likely have happened if Pasteur himself had used hay infusions instead of sugar or yeast extracts?