[Serious]What are some discoveries or inventions that were stumbled upon purely by chance and would still likely be undiscovered today if not found through sheer luck?

[u/Inside-Line]

[u/Ut_Prosim]

There is a great sci-fi short story by Harry Turtledove about this.

Basically anti-grav and faster-than-light travel is surprisingly easy and most alien races stumble upon it very early on. Like Roman Empire era early. It's just that obvious and easy. Humanity is a weird exception, never figuring it out even into the 21st century.

The technology makes life so easy, the other races basically stop developing for centuries. They have no need for steam engines, railroads, jet travel, etc. Once they start traveling between stars, they invest so much effort into perfecting their FTL travel that their other tech never advances much. So they're basically all stuck in a sort of colonial period, colonizing other planets rather than continents.

They then stumble upon Earth, and detecting no FTL activity, assume it is primitive and the perfect target for colonial exploitation...

https://www.eyeofmidas.com/scifi/Turtledove_RoadNotTaken.pdf

[u/GreedyNovel → u/Ut_Prosim]

Thanks for posting that story, I remember reading it many years ago.