11 Scientific Discoveries That Were Total Accidents

Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were trying to look at the Milky Way. They had a massive dish that was fine tuned to pick up signals from the deepest, darkest parts of the universe and they pointed it at the sky to see what they would find.

Unfortunately, try as they might, almost all of their readings were ruined by an unwavering, annoying hum.

The pair desperately tried to figure out where the hum was coming from, thinking of everything from rogue military communications, to the family of pigeons that had nested in the dish.

After ruling out the military and wringing the necks of the pigeons, they were forced to think outside the box.

After a while, the scientists came to realise that they were actually listening to the universe itself. The persistent humming noise was actually the radiation left over from the very beginning of time and space. In other words, the Big Bang.

It is what is known as cosmic background radiation. It is sort of like an echo, except that, rather than being made of sound, the radiation is actually the blinding flash from the big bang. It is made up of light waves that have had their wavelength stretched into microwaves by an effect called redshift.

The radiation permeates every part of the universe and that is what Penzias' and Wilson's antenna was picking up. The two wrote up their findings and were awarded the Nobel Prize for their discovery.

Not bad for a bit of blind luck.