Page 19 - The Miracle in the Atom

The Formation Adventure Of The Atom

The gigantic horn
antenna at Bell Labora-
tories where Arno Pen-
zias and Robert Wilson
discovered the cosmic
background radiation.
Penzias and Wilson
were awarded the
Nobel Prize for this dis-
covery in 1978.

1965, two researchers by the name of Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson chan-
ced upon a form of radiation hitherto unnoticed. Called "cosmic background
radiation", it was unlike anything coming from anywhere else in the univer-
se for it was extraordinarily uniform. It was neither localised nor did it have
a definite source; instead, it was distributed equally everywhere. It was soon
realised that this radiation is the relic of the Big Bang, still reverberating sin-
ce the first moments of that great explosion. Gamow had been spot-on, for
the frequency of the radiation was nearly the same value that scientists had
predicted. Penzias and Wilson were awarded the Nobel Prize for their disco-
very.
It took only eight minutes for George Smoot and his NASA
team to confirm the levels of radiation reported by Penzias
and Wilson, thanks to the COBE space satellite. The sensi-
tive sensors on board the satellite earned a new victory for
the Big Bang theory. The sensors verified the existence of
the hot, dense form remaining from the first moments of
the Big Bang. COBE captured evidentiary remnants of the
Big Bang, and the scientific community was compelled to
acknowledge it.
Other evidence had to do with the relative amounts
of hydrogen and helium in the universe. Calculations re-
vealed that the proportion of hydrogen-helium gasses in
the universe is in accord with theoretical calculations of
what should remain after the Big Bang.
George Smoot

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