In 1964 two young American radio astronomers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, made an accidental finding which would win them both the Nobel prize and turned out to be one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the twentieth century. The story started when Penzias and Wilson were given observing time on a large radio telescope at Bell Labs in New… Continue reading The cosmic microwave background: part I
Tag: Big Bang
The Steady State Theory
This post, the latest in my series about cosmology, talks about the Steady State theory. This is an elegant alternative theory to the Big Bang, which was very popular among astronomers in the 1950s, but is now obsolete. What is the Steady State Theory? The Big Bang theory states that the Universe originated from an… Continue reading The Steady State Theory
Dark Energy Over Time
This post continues the subject of dark energy, which, as discussed in my previous post is a mysterious form of energy which makes up about 68 per cent of the mass of the Universe and is the reason why the Universe is expanding at an ever-faster speed. This post will discuss how the percentage of dark energy changes over time… Continue reading Dark Energy Over Time
A Brief History of the Universe.
This post covers a brief history of the Universe from the Big Bang until the the present day. This, as I am sure you'll agree, is a pretty big topic so I'll only give a outline of some of the key events and when we believed they happened. This post in my series about cosmology,… Continue reading A Brief History of the Universe.
The Universe Past, Present and Future.
The Universe is all existing matter and space, including all stars, planets, galaxies and the space between them. This post, which is the first in a series about cosmology discusses the origins of the Universe and its ultimate future. (All my posts on this topic can be found at https://explainingscience.org/tag/cosmology/) How large is the Universe ?… Continue reading The Universe Past, Present and Future.
Explaining Science 