Cosmic Anniversary: ‘Big Bang Echo’ Discovered 50 Years Ago Today

Humanity’s understanding of the universe took a giant leap forward 50 years ago today.

On May 20, 1964, American radio astronomers Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), the ancient light that began saturating the universe 380,000 years after its creation. And they did so pretty much by accident.

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CrazyNeutrino said:

Cosmic Anniversary: ‘Big Bang Echo’ Discovered 50 Years Ago Today

Humanity’s understanding of the universe took a giant leap forward 50 years ago today.

On May 20, 1964, American radio astronomers Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), the ancient light that began saturating the universe 380,000 years after its creation. And they did so pretty much by accident.

more…

Penzias and Wilson got the Nobel Prize even though they hadn’t a clue what it was they had found. IIRC, they had to have somebody from Cambridge tell them.

mollwollfumble said:

Penzias and Wilson got the Nobel Prize even though they hadn’t a clue what it was they had found. IIRC, they had to have somebody from Cambridge tell them.

Princeton, not Cambridge.

Sure, Penzias and Wilson were a bit puzzled by the excess 4.2K antenna temperature of their Dicke radiometer, but the CMB had been predicted a decade and a half earlier. Back then cosmology wasn’t a major concern of mainstream astronomy, and even among astronomers interested in cosmology the Steady State theory was more popular than the Big Bang theory. So it’s not like the idea of the CMB was common knowledge, even among radio astronomers like Penzias and Wilson.

And it’s not like Penzias and Wilson had to go searching for experts to interpret their results, all it took was one phone call to Robert Dicke.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background#History for details.

poor old dicke, missed it by this || much.

PM 2Ring said:

mollwollfumble said:

Penzias and Wilson got the Nobel Prize even though they hadn’t a clue what it was they had found. IIRC, they had to have somebody from Cambridge tell them.

Princeton, not Cambridge.

Sure, Penzias and Wilson were a bit puzzled by the excess 4.2K antenna temperature of their Dicke radiometer, but the CMB had been predicted a decade and a half earlier. Back then cosmology wasn’t a major concern of mainstream astronomy, and even among astronomers interested in cosmology the Steady State theory was more popular than the Big Bang theory. So it’s not like the idea of the CMB was common knowledge, even among radio astronomers like Penzias and Wilson.

And it’s not like Penzias and Wilson had to go searching for experts to interpret their results, all it took was one phone call to Robert Dicke.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background#History for details.

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Still someone has to claen up the shit in science. ;)

ChrispenEvan said:

poor old dicke, missed it by this || much.

Yeah. I reckon he should’ve shared the Nobel, but it’s notoriously hard to argue with Nobel committees.