I
read about the discovery of Cosmic Microwave Background
Radiation (CMBR) when I was just a freshman at a Catholic
seminary outside of Seattle, and I was excited because the CMBR
had a specific wavelength. Pulling out my omnipresent slide rule, I
converted the wavelength into a sonic wavelength; a pitch. It was a
D flat. The Cosmic Tinnitus of the Universe is a D flat.
The discovery of CMBR happened in 1964, when astronomers
Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of Bell Laboratories used the
Holmdel Horn Antenna to try to track radio signals between
galaxies. Despite their efforts, they kept getting a pesky low-level
background noise, like the white noise between radio channels.
It seemed to come from everywhere in the galaxy. They tried
climbing aboard the Horn and covering every seam and crack in the
400-square-foot aperture with duct tape. Astronauts Gene Cernan
and Jack Schmitt had used duct tape to repair their moon buggy
during a mission on the moon, but Penzias and Wilson couldn’t seem
to fix an antenna located in New Jersey.
At their wits’ end, the two headed up the road to Princeton to
consult with a team of physicists who were trying to isolate the
residual microwave background radiation from the Big Bang. After
they described their problem to the lead physicist, Robert Dicke,
they learned a startling truth.
They had accidentally discovered evidence of CMBR from the Big
Bang.
For their efforts, Penzias and Wilson received the Nobel Prize in
1978, the Holmdel Horn was designated a National Historic Site,
and the group of scientists at Princeton probably didn’t even receive
memorial coffee cups.
There are a couple of supernova level ironies in Penzias’ and
Wilson’s discovery. First, they made their discovery using a tool
called a Dicke Radiometer. Second, their research destroyed the
Steady State Universe theories promoted by the scientist Fred Hoyle,
and he and his followers were left without a steady leg, so to speak,
to stand on, including Robert Wilson himself, who didn’t believe in
the Big Bang. Perhaps he altered his beliefs before the Nobel Prize
Michael Coolen is a pianist, composer, actor,
performance artist, storyteller, and writer living
in Corvallis, Oregon.