Not many of us would have heard about Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). It is a microwave radiation that fills all of space. The darkness we can observe in the sky is in fact a faint background glow which is stronger is some spectrums, as seen in the picture (www.nasa.org). The discovery of the CMB is a story of curiosity, collaboration, and serendipity that transformed our understanding of the universe
In the 1940s, physicists George Gamow, Ralph Alpher, and Robert Herman theorized that the remnants of the universe’s hot beginnings should still exist as a faint radiation. Though their calculations were accurate, their prediction was largely ignored due to the lack of evidence.Decades later, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson encountered an unexplained noise while conducting experiments with a satellite communication antenna. This persistent hum, uniform and omnipresent, puzzled them. They ruled out every possible source of interference, even cleaning out pigeons nesting in the antenna. Despite their best efforts, the noise persisted.At the same time, Princeton University physicists Robert Dicke and Jim Peebles were revisiting the idea of relic radiation from the Big Bang. When Penzias and Wilson learned of this work, the connection became clear. The noise they had detected was not an error but the long-sought evidence of the universe’s origins.This accidental discovery was published in 1965 and reshaped cosmology. Penzias and Wilson’s openness to curiosity, combined with the theoretical insights of their peers, turned an ordinary problem into an extraordinary breakthrough. Their Nobel Prize winning work highlights the power of persistence and collaboration.