50 Years With the Big Bang’s ‘Smoking Gun’
Back in 1964, a couple of guys in New Jersey were puzzled by an odd hum.
Today, Alcatel-Lucent, the corporate entity that inherited Bell Labs, is celebrating one of the lab’s most momentous discoveries: the cosmic microwave background, a remnant of the Big Bang. Since its discovery, the study of the cosmic microwave background’s details has continued to pay dividends in our understanding of the Universe and its formation, with the latest results being released just this year.
We’re a long way from 1964, where pigeon droppings in New Jersey were an experimental complication.