Five Accidental Discoveries

Sometimes Science Doesn’t Go As Planned…

3 min readFeb 25, 2023

Scientists always seem to know what they’re doing right? Wrong! Some of the most influential discoveries have been complete flukes. Find out about five such discoveries…

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Searching for life and finding death

Ancient Chinese alchemists were searching for the Elixir of Immortality, but little did they know they were creating something altogether different. They produced a mixture which when heated would produce a small explosion, naming it ‘Flame Medicine’. However, the tragic irony is that they invented gunpowder. In their search for life they created one of the most devastating discoveries of all time.

Melted Chocolate = Microwave?

A combination of dumb luck, out of the box thinking and questionable laboratory practices brought about one of the most convenient discoveries. Percy Spencer was working with magnetrons as part of a radar related project. He noticed that as he approached the machine the chocolate bar in his pocket would melt.

Instead of doing the sensible thing and removing all food from the lab, Spencer decided to aim his device at other items of food. From eggs to popcorn kernels, they would all cook. Soon, the microwave oven was born.

The Oldest Signal

A signal as old as the Universe was discovered completely by mistake.

In 1964, astronomers Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias were working with an incredibly sensitive radio telescope. For the telescope to be as sensitive as they required, they needed to remove all the background signal and sources of interference. This involved replacing wires and even cleaning pigeon droppings.

However, there was one signal no matter how hard they tried they could not remove. It turned out that this signal was present at all times and even across the globe. It was only after an effort spanning decades that they confirmed they had detected Cosmic Microwave Background radiation. This is the signal produced as a result of the birth of our Universe.

Seeing through skin

One of the biggest challenges the medical field faced throughout history was; How do we see inside the body without opening it up? Prior to a solution doctors often went in blind, trying to figure out what to do after cutting a patient open. You can see why this is problematic, so you would assume that there would have been an effort to solve this particular problem with a plan.

The opposite is true, the discovery was due to complete luck and an open mind. Willhelm Röntgen, a German Physicist, was working with cathode ray tubes (CRT). The radiation that these tubes released would cause a screen in the back of his lab to fluoresce.

Röntgen tried to cover up the device as far as possible to contain the radiation, however, a small gap persisted. He decided to just cover this gap with his hand, but in doing so he noticed that his bones were projected on to the screen.

He then had the bright idea of replacing the screen with photographic film, and as a result the first X-ray machine was born.

Killer Fungi

Keeping on the topic of medicine, probably one of the most impactful discoveries of all time was made by a bacteriologist. Alexander Fleming, had taken a vacation and upon his return he made an observation. There was a fungi that had invaded his petri dishes.

Instead of discarding the dishes, he noticed something remarkable. The plates should have been covered in bacteria, but to his surprise, the areas around the fungi were blank or littered with dead bacteria.

Somehow the fungi was preventing the growth of bacteria. In an attempt to identify just this, he isolated the first antibiotic penicillin. A discovery that has saved the lives of over 200 million lives, a number that increases with each day.

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