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Which two scientists first discovered the cosmic microwave background?

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Which two scientists first discovered the cosmic microwave background? – Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson were the two scientists who first discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation in 1964 while working at Bell Labs in New Jersey.

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They were looking for something completely different, such as neutral hydrogen, when they stumbled upon a faint glow of microwave radiation that permeates the universe.

In order to detect such a faint signal, they needed to make sure they knew the source of every part of the signal their telescope was receiving.

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Arno Penzias & Robert Wilson / northcountrypublicradio.org

As such, they had to account for a number of peculiar things, such as their theoretical models suggesting that a young, hot, dense universe would produce such radiation.

They were months away from making their own measurements but Penzias and Wilson got there first.

Their discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation provided strong evidence for the Big Bang theory of the universe’s origin and earned them the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978.


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