Although the Big Bang microwaves were predicted in 1948, they were soon forgotten because astronomers did not have any technology that was sensitive enough to detect microwaves from outer space. However, in 1964 two American radio astronomers discovered them in an episode of pure serendipity. (Serendipity is the art of making fortunate discoveries by accident, or as one anonymous male scientist put it: ‘Serendipity means looking for a needle in a haystack and finding the farmer’s daughter.’)
Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were using something called a radio telescope to study galaxies. A radio telescope is like an ordinary telescope, except it is a large dish or cone and it detects radio waves instead of visible light waves. Annoyingly, the astronomers noticed that they were picking up unexpected radio waves coming all the time from all directions. Initially, they thought the signal might be an error caused by a component within the telescope, so they began to check every single element of the equipment. They searched for dodgy contacts, sloppy wiring, faulty electronics, misalignments in the cone and so on.
When they climbed inside the cone they discovered a pair of nesting pigeons that had deposited a ‘white dielectric material’. Thinking that this pigeon poo was somehow causing the spurious signal, they trapped the birds, placed them in a delivery van and had them released thirty miles away. The astronomers then scrubbed and polished the cone, but the pigeons obeyed their homing instinct, flew back to the telescope and started depositing white dielectric material all over again. When I met Arno Penzias in 2003, he described to me what happened when he recaptured the pigeons: ‘There was a pigeon fancier who was willing to strangle them for us, but I figured the most humane thing was just to open the cage and shoot them.’
Of course, even without the pigeons and their pigeon poo, the microwaves still kept coming and after several weeks Penzias and Wilson eventually realised that they had discovered the leftover radiation from the Big Bang. This was one of the most sensationally serendipitous discoveries in the history of science, and a decade later the lucky duo were rewarded with the Nobel Prize for essentially proving that the Big Bang had really happened.
Some people sneer at the accidental nature of this discovery and question whether it deserved the Nobel Prize. Such folk would do well to remember the words of Winston Churchill: ‘Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.’ Indeed, it seems likely that other astronomers probably detected the microwave radiation from the Big Bang before 1964, but it was so faint that they ignored it and carried on regardless.
In fact, you have probably witnessed this Big Bang radiation yourself without realising it, because most old radios are capable of picking up microwaves. And because a radio can act as a very, very, very primitive radio telescope I suggest that you use one as the focus for your Christmas celebration of the birth of the universe. Here’s what you need to do:
At some point over the Christmas period switch on an analogue radio and retune it so that you are not on any station. Instead of ‘Jingle Bells’ or ‘Away in a Manger’, all you should be able to hear is white noise. This gentle, calming hiss is the audible output caused by all sorts of random electromagnetic waves being picked up by your radio aerial. You cannot single them out, but can rest assured that about 1% or 2% of these waves are due to microwaves from the Big Bang. In other words, your humble radio is capable of detecting energy waves that were created over 13 billion years ago.
While everyone else is pulling crackers or arguing over the last chocolate orange segment, you can simply close your eyes and listen to the sound of the universe. You are experiencing the echo of the Big Bang, a relic of creation, the most ancient fossil in the universe.
RICHARD DAWKINS
I was hoofing it down Regent Street, admiring the Christmas decorations, when I saw the bus. One of those bendy buses that mayors keep threatening with the old heave-ho. As it drove by, I looked up and got the message square in the monocle. You could have knocked me down with the proverbial. Another of the blighters nearly did knock me down as I set a course for the Dregs Club, where it was my purpose to inhale a festive snifter, and I saw the same thing on the side. There are some pretty deep thinkers to be found at the Dregs, as my regular readers know, but none of them could make a dent on the vexed question of the buses when I bowled it their way. Not even Swotty Postlethwaite, the club’s tame intellectual. So I decided to put my trust in a higher power.
‘Jarvis,’ I sang out, as I latchkeyed self into the old headquarters, shedding hat and stick on my way through the hall to consult the oracle. ‘I say, Jarvis, what about these buses?’
‘Sir?’
‘You know, Jarvis, the buses, the “What is this that roareth thus?” brigade, the bendy buses, the conveyances with the kink amidships. What’s going on, Jarvis? What price the bendy bus campaign?’
‘Well, sir, I understand that, while flexibility is often considered a virtue, these particular omnibuses have not given uniform satisfaction. Mayor Johnson…’
‘Never mind Mayor Johnson, Jarvis. Consign Boris to the back burner and bend the bean to the buses. I’m not referring to their bendiness per se, if that is the right expression.’ ‘Perfectly correct, sir. The Latin phrase might be literally construed…’
‘That’ll do for the Latin phrase Jarvis. Never mind their bendiness. Fix the attention on the slogan on the side. The orange-and-pink apparition that flashes by before you have a chance to read it properly. Something like “There’s no bally God, so put a sock in it and have a gargle with the lads.” That was the gist of it, anyway, although I may have foozled the fine print.’
‘Oh yes, sir, I am familiar with the admonition: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”’
‘That’s the baby, Jarvis. Probably no God. What’s it all about? Isn’t there a God, Jarvis?’
‘Well, sir, some would say it depends upon what you mean. All things which follow from the absolute nature of any attribute of God must always exist and be infinite, or, in other words, are eternal and infinite through the said attribute. Spinoza.’
‘Thank you, Jarvis, I don’t mind if I do. Not one I’ve heard of, but anything from your shaker, Jarvis, always hits the spot and reaches the parts other cocktails can’t. I’ll have a large Spinoza, shaken not stirred.’
‘No, sir, my allusion was to the philosopher Spinoza, the father of pantheism, although some prefer to speak of panentheism.’
‘Oh, that Spinoza. Yes, I remember he was a friend of yours. Seen much of him lately?’
‘No, sir, I was not present in the seventeenth century. Spinoza was a great favourite of Einstein, sir.’
‘Einstein, Jarvis? You mean the one with the hair and no socks?’
‘Yes, sir, arguably the greatest physicist of all time.’
‘Well, Jarvis, you can’t do better than that. Did Einstein believe in God?’
‘Not in the conventional sense of a personal God, sir, he was most emphatic on the point. Einstein believed in Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.’
‘Gosh, Jarvis, bit of a googly there, but I think I get your drift. God’s just another word for the great outdoors, so we’re