If you take a look at the histories of science and technology, you'll find that many great discoveries or new innovations actually happened by sheer accident.
Take gravity, for instance.
According to the myth, we would all still be wondering why our feet stick to the ground if Sir Isaac Newton hadn't been bonked on the head with an apple while sitting under a tree.
We wouldn't have microwaves in our kitchens, either, if a guy named Percy Spencer hadn't had a sweet tooth. In 1945, he discovered the candy bar in his pocket had melted when he was working with a new type of vacuum tube, which led to the development of microwaves. So, thanks to this guy inadvertently exposing his unshielded nether regions to radiation that melts chocolate - we can all have hot, buttery popcorn in about the same time it takes to say, "That's taking one for science!"
But in recent weeks, the scientific world has been abuzz over some accidental and surprising results from an experiment at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (also known as CERN, presumably because EONR would be an unpronounceable acronym).
Just so everyone's up to speed here, CERN is the place that houses the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a record-breaking piece of scientific machinery that violently smashes itty-bitty, teensy-tiny pieces of energy together to study the laws of nature.
I don't know how it works, either, but it took 10,000 scientists and engineers from more than 100 countries to build the thing.
Protesters and some fringe scientists didn't want the LHC even turned on, because they thought it would create tiny black holes and destroy the planet, but it's been running experiments for a few years now, and as far as I know we haven't blown up yet.
But in September, scientists at CERN did blow their peers away when, during an experiment, they clocked particles (called neutrinos) travelling faster than the speed of light.
That - according to some dude named Albert Einstein - is impossible.
Einstein's famous and oft-quoted formula E=mc2 is what actually says particles can't travel at the speed of light. That's pretty much been the foundation of most modern physics. So, what's going on?
The big brains at CERN haven't the faintest idea, to be honest.
Those scientists working on the experiment said they were - obviously - quite surprised by the results.
I think that's a bit of an understatement.
Can you imagine that conversation?
"So, Fritz what were the results of the experiment?"
"Um, well it seems we have recorded particles that travel faster than the speed of light, therefore totally destroying Einstein's theories, modern physics and our entire understanding of reality and the universe."
"Oh isn't that SURPRISING?"
Personally, I like to think those scientists had completely different kinds of accidents when they saw those results.
Understandably, the rest of the world's physicists were skeptical of the data, and allege there is an error somewhere that the CERN researchers have yet to discover.
For their part, the folks at CERN have asked for the data to be scrutinized, and said this week that they are running the experiment, albeit differently, to see if they can reproduce the astounding results.
They'll get back to us on the status of Einstein's formula, modern physics, and our understanding of the universe - in just a few weeks.
If proven accurate, the data would surely lead to completely new ways of thinking about the universe and how it works, as well as the most incredible scientific and technological advances.
Who knows? Maybe they'll find a way to pop popcorn even faster.
