The big bang model’s correct prediction that space would be filled with microwave background radiation was a triumph. During a mere three hundred years of scientific thought and technological progress, our species went from peering through rudimentary telescopes and dropping balls from leaning towers to grasping physical processes at work just after the universe was born. Nevertheless, further investigation of the data raised a pointed challenge. Ever more refined measurements of the radiation’s temperature, made not with television sets but with some of the most precise astronomical equipment
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