Which pair won a Nobel Prize for physics despite not looking for what they found, not realising what they had found, and not understanding its signifiance when they were told what they had found?

peasypod

Penzias & Wilson, 1978 Nobel Prize. They discovered in the 60's the cosmic background radiation accidentally, using a large horn antenna. They were so sure the result was bogus they cleaned all the bird droppings out of the antenna in an attempt to remove the curious "noise". The background radiation is a small isotropic (equal in all directions) energy at a temperature of about 2.7 Kelvin. This radiation is a remnant of the big bang, chronically Doppler shifted to low frequencies (hence the low temperature figure given). Of course the temperature at the time of the big bang was phenomonally greater. The confirmation of their discovery by COBE topped off one of the least deserving Nobel prizes ever. Feb 09 04, 6:24 AM