Jim Peebles winner of the Noble Prize 2019

I was interested to hear that Jim Peebles, at the age of 84,  has won a half share of the 2019 Noble Prize for physics for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology. Jim Peebles (1935-) Image from Wikimedia commons In the early 1960s Peebles and his colleague Robert Dicke had predicted the existence of the microwave… Continue reading Jim Peebles winner of the Noble Prize 2019

How the Cosmic Microwave Background Changed Our Understanding of the Universe

Map of the Cosmic Microwave Background from the ESA Planck Satellite

Updated 4 February 2026 As The accidental discovery of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) by Penzias and Wilson in 1964 proved to be one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the early twentieth century and since then has made a huge contribution to our understanding of the Universe. One of the first things it achieved… Continue reading How the Cosmic Microwave Background Changed Our Understanding of the Universe

The Steady State Theory

The Big Bang vs the State State theory

Revised March 2026 The Steady State theory is an  elegant alternative to the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe . It 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 incredibly hot… Continue reading The Steady State Theory