Sometimes luck can get you a Nobel prize!
In getting a Nobel; this pair could be considered most lucky!
So while working with the Holmdel antenna in New Jersey, the two astronomers discovered a background noise.
After ruling out possible interference from urban areas, nuclear tests, or pigeons living in the antenna, Wilson and Penzias came across an explanation which simply changed their life!
First to tell about the background noise; some background!
In the mid-1960s, while a professor at Princeton University, Dicke independently concluded that the early universe’s hot, dense state would have left a detectable thermal afterglow that had cooled over billions of years due to the expansion of the universe.
He estimated this residual radiation would have a temperature of about 10 Kelvin (later refined to approximately 2.7 Kelvin) and would be observable in the microwave portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Dicke and his research team at Princeton (which included Jim Peebles, Peter Roll, and David Wilkinson) began building a special radio antenna called a Dicke radiometer to search for this signal.
But luck was not in their side!
The radiation was accidentally discovered by radio astronomers at Bell Labs just a few miles away.
So when Penzias and Wilson connected with the Princeton team, it became clear they had inadvertently found the very evidence Dicke had predicted.
This discovery of the CMB provided crucial, concrete evidence supporting the Big Bang theory over the competing steady-state model of the universe.
Now even though the whole theory was provided by Dicke; Penzias and Wilson received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978 for their ‘accidental’ discover
Even when they did not know what it was!
Being first is important and it is also important is to have luck!
Then again it is also important to have true conviction and bravery to become one of the best officers of the army! One such amazing legendary officer was
Major Mohit Sharma AC SM!
Big salute to legends like him
A quick travel sketch and blog
Shubh ratri…
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