Space scientists accidentally intercepted what is believed to be the 'pale echo' of the Big Bang. This discovery plays a very important role in shaping the picture of the history of the universe.
The universe is believed to have expanded from a state of high density and high temperature approximately 13.8 billion years ago in an event known as the Big Bang. They came to this conclusion based on a wide range of phenomena, including abundance of light elements, cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), large-scale clusters in space, and Edwin Hubble's observations of galaxies moving away from Earth. Recently, another breakthrough was made in this theory, which made it even more plausible. The study is described in The Mystery of Dark Matter, in Amazon Prime:
'The universe was extremely hot magma and so condensed that it formed a milky fog in which light particles could not propagate. But after 380,000 years, it expanded and cooled enough for light particles to move. After that, a gigantic flash of light spread through space, beginning a long journey of 13.8 billion years. '
In 1964, two New Jersey scientists, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, accidentally intercepted this light. They caught some background noise that they couldn't explain. The signal was so weak that they thought it was a defect in his radio telescope due to pigeon droppings. '
However, after cleaning the antenna, the presence of waves from the primordial light was only confirmed. Warped and chilled from a long voyage in space, they finally reached Earth in the form of a very weak radio signal. So Penzias and Wilson discovered a pale echo of the formation of the universe.
But astronomers needed a more accurate picture of this event. Their observation was confirmed nearly four decades later. On June 30, 2001, the WMAP probe was launched into orbit 1.5 million kilometers from Earth to analyze the background radiation.
His goal was to capture the moment when light arose and to outline the nascent universe.
David Spergel, an astrophysicist who was part of the team that created the WMAP mission and designed the spacecraft, explained how he pieced together the history of the universe:
'What's amazing about the microwave background is that you look back 13.7 billion years ago when the universe was very simple. So I like to think of it as photographing the universe. My job is to look at a photograph of a child and try to figure out from the photograph where the child came from and what he will grow up to. I have to put together a story about how the universe formed and developed. '
