7 scientific accidents that led to world-changing discoveries

7 scientific accidents that led to world-changing discoveries: Accidental discoveries sometimes aren't as hard to see as a tiny dish of mold, or as esoteric as stable boys rubbing things on other things. Sometimes they're as loud an annoying as a persistent hum that you just can't get out of your head. Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were using an antenna to get signals from the Milky Way. Except they weren't because instead of small, discrete signals they heard a constant, annoying hum no matter what way they turned the antenna. After checking the equipment, ruling out military communications, and slaughtering pigeons nested inside the antenna, on the grounds that perhaps they were humming pigeons, the two researchers still heard the noise. It turned out they were listening to the residual radiation from the Big Bang. Apologizing to the pigeon corpses, they wrote up their findings and won a Nobel Prize.