Cosmic Fingerprints #2

Here is day two of Cosmic Fingerprints.
There is not much to disagree with this posting and seams fairly accurate.






 Max,

  The Big Bang theory was totally rejected at first.

But those who supported it had predicted that the ignition

of the Big Bang would have left behind a sort of 

'hot flash' of radiation.

   If a big black wood stove produces heat that you

can feel, then in a similar manner, the Big Bang should 

produce its own kind of heat that would echo throughout 

the universe.

   In 1965, without looking for it, two physicists at

Bell Labs in New Jersey found it.  At first, Arno Penzias 

and Robert Wilson were bothered because, while

trying to refine the world's most sensitive radio antenna,

they couldn't eliminate a bothersome source of noise.

They picked up this noise everywhere they pointed the

antenna.

   At first they thought it was bird droppings.  The

antenna was so sensitive it could pick up the heat

of bird droppings (which certainly are warm when

they're brand new) but even after cleaning it off,

they still picked up this noise.

   This noise had actually been predicted in detail 

by other astronomers, and after a year of checking 

and re-checking the data, they arrived at a conclusion: 

This crazy Big Bang theory really was correct.

  In an interview, Penzias was asked why there was so much 

resistance to the Big Bang theory.

   He said, "Most physicists would rather attempt to

describe the universe in ways which require no explanation.

And since science can't *explain* anything - it can only

*describe* things - that's perfectly sensible.  If you

have a universe which has always been there, you don't

explain it, right?  

   "Somebody asks you, 'How come all the secretaries 

in your company are women?' You can say, 'Well, it's 

always been that way.'  That's a way of not having 

to explain it.  So in the same way, theories which 

don't require explanation tend to be the ones

accepted by science, which is perfectly acceptable 

and the best way to make science work."

   But on the older theory that the universe was eternal, 

he explains: "It turned out to be so ugly that people

dismissed it.  What we find - the simplest theory - is

a creation out of nothing, the appearance out of nothing 

of the universe."

   Penzias and his partner, Robert Wilson, won the Nobel

Prize for their discovery of this radiation.  The Big

Bang theory is now one of the most thoroughly 

validated theories in all of science.

   Robert Wilson was asked by journalist Fred Heeren if 

the Big Bang indicated a creator.

   Wilson said, "Certainly there was something that

set it all off.  Certainly, if you are religious, I can't

think of a better theory of the origin of the universe

to match with Genesis."

"if you are religious"

   Stay tuned for tomorrow's installment: "Why the

Big Bang was the most precisely planned event in

all of history."

Let's see what we get next this should be interesting.