• Question: can you look so far back into the solar system you could see the big bang?

    Asked by ehsy93 to Chris, Emily, Martin, Natalie, Tamsin on 25 Mar 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Martin Coath

      Martin Coath answered on 25 Mar 2010:


      I am afraid not – the solar system is very young. It hasn’t been around long enough to have any direct evidence of the big bang.

      Of course the heat of the bang is still around us everwhere! This is one of the most famous experiments of the 20th century.

      Two guys in America measured microwaves that seemed to be coming from EVERYWHERE in outer space. They did some carfeul maths and discovered that the microwaves were exactly right to be the leftover energy of the big bang.

      They got the Nobel prize in (I think) 1978 – they were called Penzias and Wilson.

      So the evidence of the big bang IS around us all the time! If you have a VERY old analogue TV without a flat screen you can turn it on and see lots of white flashes on the screen. Some of these are caused by photons from the big bang!

    • Photo: Chris Cooper

      Chris Cooper answered on 25 Mar 2010:


      the big bang is all around us! There is a background microwave radiation (not enough to cook a meal though). This is the same wherever you are in the world (or in space). It was found by a couple of telephone researchers who had a background “hiss” on their really sensitive machine and couldn’t get rid of it.

      [just seen Martin’s answer – great minds think alike!]

      For this lucky discovery they won the 1978 Nobel Prize in physics. Actually they were really clever to figure out what it was, but the basic finding was luck as are a lot of things in science. If you want to find out more see:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background_radiation

      http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1978/

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