The Big Bang was a creation myth, but by 1965 it was a creation myth with a difference: It came with a prediction. By the time Penzias placed his call to Dicke, Peebles had arrived at a temperature of approximately 10° Celsius above absolute zero, which is more commonly referred to as 10 Kelvin.* Penzias and Wilson had found a measurement of 3.5 K (plus or minus 1 K) in their antenna. Because Peebles’s calculations were rudimentary and Penzias and Wilson’s detection was serendipitous, the approximation of theory and observation was hardly definitive. Yet it was also too close to dismiss as
...more
