Bell Labs Scientists Accidentally Proved the Big Bang Theory

Summary

“How did we get here?”That existential question about the universe has captivated humankind for centuries. Many scientists have attempted to answer it, including the Rev. Georges Lemaître, a Belgian cosmologist and Catholic priest. In 1927 he theorized that the universe was created from a single particle he called the “primeval atom.”That atom later disintegrated in an explosion, LeMaître figured, creating space, time, and an ever-expanding universe, according to the American Museum of Natural History.LeMaître’s idea likely sounds familiar, as it is now known as the big bang theory. Direct evidence for the theory wasn’t found until almost four decades later, entirely by accident.Bell Labs researchers Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson were conducting radio astronomy experiments in 1964 using a horn antenna located on the company’s campus in Holmdel, N.J. The reflector antenna was the most sensitive in the world at the time. It was constructed to pick up weak radio signals from space for Project Echo, NASA’s experimental 1960 satellite communications program. The project successfully did so twice, first in 1961 through the passive Echo communication satellite, and a second time in 1963 through the active Telstar communications satellite.While Penzias and Wilson were using the Holmdel antenna to map radio signals from the Milky Way, it picked up a mysterious buzzing noise that wouldn’t go away despite their attempts to eliminate it.The signals, which persisted day and night, turned out to be cosmic microwave background radiation that permeates the universe—a remnant from the creation of the cosmos—that helped confirm the big bang theory. The accidental breakthrough earned Penzias and Wilson the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics.Project Echo, Telstar, and the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation were recognized as an IEEE Milestone at a ceremony held on 25 May in Holmdel at Wilson Park, where the horn antenna is located.Penzias and Wilson’s evidence for...