Bell Labs scientists Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson received the 1978 Nobel Prize in physics for their “accidental” discovery in 1965 that “the electromagnetic noise picked up by their horn antenna was not caused by a white dielectric substance (pigeon droppings) within the antenna, but represented the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The CMB was found to be diffuse, coming essentially uniformly from all directions, and had an equivalent temperature of around 2.7 Kelvin. Since it originated only 300,000 years after the Big Bang (the genesis moment around 14 billion years ago when space and time began), it provides crucial experimental data about the early history of our universe” [1].
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