Exploratory Synthesis

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Pages: 2

Penzias and Wilson were two scientists who “couldn’t make sense of the background ‘noise’” they heard as they studied radio astronomy. Their main purpose was to “increase the accuracy of existing measurements of radio sources in the Milky Way.” However, they noticed a signal that measured 3 degrees kelvin warmer than expected. And it didn’t matter where they pointed their telescope, the measurement was the same. What they were witnessing was what is today called the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). When they started their experiment, they had used hand-me-down parts to build their equipment, and they thought at first that the increased temperature measurement was a result of faulty equipment. They determined that a pair of pigeons had perched on their antenna, and the bird droppings were causing the noise. Being that they were physicists rather than cosmologists, they didn’t equate the noise to the Big Bang theory.

Meanwhile there were other scientists that were theorizing as to the origins of the universe, and they too detected background radiation. Their
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His name was Robert Dicke, and he believed that the universe was oscillating, or in other words that it went through cycles of expansion and contraction. He felt that when the universe contracted, then expanded again, that it would leave behind this radiation which would “plant the seeds for the hydrogen in the next expansion.” This was his version of the CMB. As luck would have it, one of his colleagues went to submit a paper to Astrophysical Journal, but it was rejected on the account that a paper had already been submitted by Alpher, Herman, and Gamow. Through the association of a friend, they were put into contact with Penzias and Wilson. Finally the groups could make sense of this background noise that each of them had detected, but none of them knew how to put all of the pieces