In 1948, George Gamow wrote a paper talking about the Big Bang Theory and the reactions cause by the Big Bang. He estimated that there would be a great amount of electromagnetic radiation left over from the Big Bang. He was the first to predict the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), and predicted that the radiation from the big bang would cool down to microwave radiation after a few billion years. In 1950, Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman joined with George Gamow to continue studying this CMB.
In 1965, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were in the Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. They were using an ultra-sensitive microwave receiving system to study radio emissions of the Milky Way. They unexpectedly found a background of radio noise that seemed to be coming from outside the galaxy. They then consulted with Robert Dicke (a Princeton physicist) who had theorized that, “if the universe was created according to the Big Bang theory, a background radiation at 3-degree Kelvin would exist throughout the universe.” [Penzias and Wilson actually thought that the excess noise coming from the antenna was from pigeons on the roof. They spent hours searching for the pigeons and realized that they weren’t the source of the excess noise!] Penzias and Wilson shared the Nobel Peace Prize in physics in 1965.
MP3<== click here to listen to the cosmic noise!
NASA launched the COBE satellite on November 18, 1989 to detect and measure cosmic radiation left over from the big bang. The Satellite was equipped with a Diffuse Infrared Background Experiment to search for cosmic background radiation, Differential Microwave Radiometer in order to map cosmic radiation sensitivity, and lastly a Far Infrared Background Spectrophotometer which views the spectrum of the cosmic background radiation against a blackbody. Each provide their own measurements in favor of Gamos, Dicke, Penzias, & Wilson’s assertions.
Sources:
http://www.bell-labs.com/project/feature/archives/cosmology/
