Cosmic Times Size of the Universe: 10-25 Billion Years 1965 25 Billion Light Years MURMUR of a BANG

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Home Edition Age of the Universe: Cosmic Times Size of the Universe: 10-25 Billion Years 1965 25 Billion Light Years MURMUR of a BANG

stronomers have identified a dicted would exist if the universe Bell Telephone Laboratories. The two mysterious and faint cosmic started with a hot explosion of hy- were trying to track down the source Aradio signal from the birth of drogen about seven billion years ago of unwanted microwave signals be- the Universe. The discovery provides and steadily cooled since that time. ing picked up by a 20-foot horn-an- the first observational evidence that Anything with a temperature greater tenna in Holmdel, N.J. The “Holmdel the universe started with a Big Bang than absolute zero will give off elec- horn” antenna was built to test com- and clues about how it might end. tromagnetic radiation. If the universe munications with the Echo satellite had originally been very hot and that NASA put into orbit in 1960 to The faint radio signal comes in the condensed, and then expanded and bounce radio signals back to Earth. form of microwaves, which lie on the cooled, some of that radiation could electromagnetic radiation spectrum still be detectable today. When the Holmdel horn was aimed between radio waves and infrared at zenith (directly overhead), Penzias light. The microwaves come from ev- This discovery of what’s being called and Wilson found that the antenna ery direction of space, every hour of “cosmic background radiation” was picked up a microwave signal that every day. The wavelength matches made more or less by accident by matched a temperature of 6.7 de- the radiation some scientists pre- Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of grees Kelvin. After subtracting natu- ral microwave radiation from Earth’s atmosphere and from the antenna itself, Penzias and Wilson were still left with unexplained microwave radiation that matched a temperature of 3.5 degrees Kelvin coming from empty space. They had no explanation for it, as empty space should be absolutely cold, or zero degrees Kel- vin.

Luckily, just down the road at Princ- eton University, some scientists had the solution. Astronomer Rob- ert Dicke and his team were in the process of building a telescope that could detect this “cosmic background radiation.” When they heard about Penzias and Wilson’s mystery microwaves at 3.5 degrees Kelvin, they Image Credit: Bell Labs knew it was what they were looking Robert Wilson (left) and Arno Penzias stand in front of their horn reflector antenna in for. After discussing the matter, the Holmdel, New Jersey. They discovered a radiation signal that matches that expected by Bell Lab and Princeton teams an- theorists who propose the Universe began with a hot explosion called the “big bang”. nounced the discovery in a pair of This discovery was made by accident as they tried to track down the source of unwanted letters published in the July issue of noise in their receiver. Astrophysical Journal.

“Murmur” continued on page 2 2 Big Hiss Missed by Others ne of the biggest surprises from the recent discovery of the Big Bang’s faint background radiation is how many times Oothers have missed it. As recently as last year, Russian scientists Andrei Doroshkevic and Igor Novikov published a study on the physics of the Big Bang. They guessed correctly that if the big bang happened, the remaining heat would now be between 1 and 10 degrees Kelvin. They even proposed using sky temperature measurements already made in 1961 by Edward Ohm to see if the signal could be found in them. Ironically, Ohm had gathered that same data using the Holmdel horn antenna. This is the same antenna Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson used to identify the 3.5 degrees Kelvin background radiation of the Big Bang.

Ohm had already identified in his data what seemed to be a 3.3 degrees Kelvin background radiation. He assumed it was coming from the antenna mechanism itself, not from space. Since Penzias and Wilson subtracted out the antenna’s own microwave radiation, they were able to say with far more confidence that the faint excess radiation truly came from space.

There were two other near misses as well. Ten years ago Émile Le Roux reported a microwave background radiation of 3 degrees Kelvin, plus or minus 2 degrees at the Nançay Radio Observatory. In 1957 it was Tigran Shmaonov who nearly made the discovery. He reported measuring background temperature of 4 degrees Kelvin, give or take 3 degrees.

The missing piece in both Le Roux and Shmaonov’s work was they did not connect their observations to what the Big Bang theory predicted as early as 1948. They had the right data but didn’t have a theory that made Image Credit: Based on plot from Dicke et al., ApJ, 142, 414 (1965) sense of them. It’s probably safe to say that Penzias and Wilson would Plot of the temperature history of the universe as pre- have had the same problem if their neighbors at Princeton University had dicted by Dicke and Peebles. Their work led Penzias not recognized their discovery as the background radiation predicted by and Wilson to determine that their signal was the the Big Bang theory. ♦ remnant radiation of the big bang.

“Murmur” continued from page 1 However, Alpher and Herman incor- Steady State theory does not predict rectly thought this background radia- and cannot explain the cosmic back- “The presence of thermal radiation tion could not be detected as it would ground radiation, so its discovery remaining from the fireball is to be be drowned out by starlight and other greatly weakens this theory. expected if we can trace the expan- radiation from objects in space. In- sion of the universe back to a time stead, it appears that the Big Bang Then there are the possible fates of when the temperature was of the has cooled in a way that channels the universe implied by the Big Bang. order of [10 billion˚] K,” wrote Robert energy into specific wavelengths of Either the universe will expand and Dicke and his team. This fireball was radiation. This is what Dicke and his cool forever as an “open universe,” the very hot, dense ball of matter and team suspected and one reason they explain Dicke and his team, or it is energy that existed at the beginning were planning to look for microwave a “closed universe.” In a closed uni- of the universe. radiation. It’s also why they knew verse the gravity of all the matter in Penzias and Wilson’s unexplained the universe will pull it all back to- Amazing as the discovery is, to microwave radiation was actually gether in another hot ball, breaking some astronomers it wasn’t really a quite a significant discovery. down matter and energy again into surprise. In the late 1940s, George their basic building blocks. Then it will Gamow, Ralph Alpher and Robert Of course, the picture is not rosy for explode outward again in another big Herman had said there had been a all scientists studying the Universe. bang to create a totally new universe. “Big Bang” and that its heat should While supporting the Big Bang the- This Dicke refers to as an “oscillating still be detectable. In 1949 Alpher and ory, the cosmic background radia- universe.” Oddly, this resembles the Herman reworked some of Gamow’s tion has caused big problems for the old Steady State model in at least earlier calculations and predicted Steady State theory of the Universe. one way: It has no beginning or end. that this heat (cosmic background That theory, which recently was fa- Sadly, however, it also offers no way radiation) would now have a temper- vored by many astronomers, says of detecting what came before the ature of “a few degree Kelvin.” They that the expansion of the universe is last bang and no escape from be- were correct. caused by the spontaneous creation ing crushed together into another hot of particles in empty space. The ball before the next. ♦ 3 QUASARS: Express Trains Galaxies Still to Netherworlds Misbehaving

stronomers have discovered a quasar racing towards the edge of the he latest attempts to “weigh” known universe at a speed of 450 million miles per hour – that’s two- galaxies are still coming up Athirds of the speed of light. This and other newfound quasars aren’t just Ta bit short. The spiral galaxy fast, they are really bright. The fact they are visible to us Earthlings means NGC 3521 has a mass equal to the these strange objects must be fantastically bright. It’s a surprise inside of a mass of 80 billion Suns. The spiral surprise that’s cloaked in mystery, since nobody really knows what quasars galaxy NGC 972 has a mass equal are. to 12 billion Suns. However, when we compare the amount of light coming For years, radio astronomers have been spotting what they called quasi- from those galaxies, it doesn’t match stellar objects (quasars). Five years ago astronomers managed to match one the amount of light we would expect with a visible-light object seen in telescopes. But it was only two years ago that astronomers Jesse Greenstein and Maarten Schmidt managed to split from that much matter. It’s a puzzle. the visible light of quasar 3C 273 into its spectrum of colors. The amount of starlight coming from What they found in the spectrum was amazing. The lines in the spectrum the two galaxies is based on careful which normally show the presence of certain elements were shifted dramati- measurement of each galaxy’s total cally to the red side of the spectrum. This is the optical equivalent of a train luminosity (brightness), as recorded whistle’s tone dropping as the train moves away at high speed. In the case on photographic plates. It also takes of 3C 273, however, the red-shift corresponded to an unheard of speed of into account the way the stars in 16 percent of the speed of light. That’s more than 100 million miles-per-hour. each galaxy spread from the center out to their edges. This distribution The same technique was used by Schmidt and Allan Sandage to find the varies from galaxy to galaxy. speed of the record holder called quasar BSO-1. Sadly, neither Sandage nor anyone else can yet explain what BSO-1 is. The mass measurement is based on “We do know that [quasars] provide us with the long-sought keys to deter- the same idea that long ago allowed mine the size and shape of the universe,” Sandage reported. astronomers to calculate the mass of the Sun. Basically, if you have a They also are confident that at least one theory is not true: quasars are prob- relatively small mass object orbiting ably not coded messages from a super-civilization, as has been suggested a very large mass object at a known by Russian astronomer Nikolai Kardashev. It’s highly unlikely, say the U.S. speed, you can work out the large astronomers, that any civilization could broadcast messages with the power object’s mass mathematically. The of 10,000 billion Suns, same physics applies to stars orbiting which seems to be the a galaxy’s center of gravity. power of these objects. To get the speeds of stars the If there is any message astronomers did not clock them with from quasars, it is from a stopwatch. Their actual motions the universe itself. Many astronomers hope that are too small to measure with a by seeking out and mea- telescope. Instead, the researchers suring the distance to sampled small areas of starlight from more quasars using the different parts of the galaxies and 200-inch Mount Palomar split the light into spectra – or their telescope, they can see rainbows of color. These spectra some of these objects contain lines that shift in proportion that started shining when to the speeds the stars are moving. the universe was just sev- The speed of the stars can then be en percent of its current used to determine the mass of the age. Some of that light, galaxy the stars are in. perhaps 15 billion years old, is only now reaching To make comparisons easier, Earth. ♦ astronomers blend the luminosity Image Credit: Bachall et al., ApJ 450, 486 (1995) and mass measurements into a Quasar 3C 273 “Galaxies” continued on page 4 4 “Galaxies” continued from page 3 Supernovae Leave Behind single number called a mass-to-light ratio which is based on the mass and Cosmic X-Ray Generators luminosity of our Sun. Our Sun has a mass of “one solar mass” and a wo years after discovering that (solar wind) flung out by the Sun. They luminosity of “one solar luminosity,” the Universe is awash in X-rays, were wrong. so the Sun’s mass-to-light ratio is Tastronomers are starting to pin- equal to one. A ratio greater than 1 point discrete sources with greater ac- What they found instead was far more implies more mass than luminosity curacy – and none of them resembles amazing and unexpected: X-rays com- – which means an object (a galaxy) your doctor’s X-ray machine. ing from every direction and a particu- has more mass than expected. larly intense X-ray source from the di- One X-ray source is called the Crab rection of the constellation Scorpius. The NGC 3521 galaxy was studied nebula and is the remains of a star that They named this area Sco X-1. Unlike with the 82 inch telescope at exploded nearly 900 years ago. Those the Crab nebula, Sco X-1 still has not McDonald Observatory at the remains are often called a supernova been tracked to any known object. For University of Texas. The results remnant. The second source, called now, it’s a space mystery. of the study give it a light-to-mass Ophiuchus XR-1, appears to lie in the ratio of 4 or greater. This means this direction of another past supernova. In X-ray astronomers are hoping that galaxy has four times more mass fact, if you drew a map of all of the X- someday their jobs will get a little easi- than its light indicates it should have. ray sources and compared it to a map er by placing one of their instruments in The mass of the NGC 972 galaxy is of all of the supernova remnants, the a stable orbit so they can spend more two would look similar. Astronomers time looking at the X-ray universe. Until closer to what was expected, with aren’t sure what is causing X-ray radia- that day, they will be limited to observ- a light-to-mass ratio of 1.2. These tion from these sources far, far away ing X-rays during those five floating results were reported in recent from the Sun. If Ophiuchus really does minutes in space with their instruments issues of Astrophysical Journal come from a supernova remnant, then on a rocket. ♦ by teams of researchers led by astronomers can compare the two Margaret Burbidge at the University sources to peel back some of the mys- of California at San Diego. tique.

These two galaxies are not unique The task of identifying these two X-ray in their “misbehavior.” Other sources was not easy. X-rays cannot researchers are finding galaxies penetrate Earth’s atmosphere so the everywhere that have mismatched trick was to get enough time in space, mass-to-light ratios. So far, no one on board rockets, to allow X-ray astro- has offered a clear explanation for nomical instruments to find the distant this. sources. Because of this property of X- rays, this new field of X-ray astronomy About the only consolation these is rather difficult and expensive; each scientists may have is that their rocket launch only allows five minutes missing matter problem is far less of time to observe. However, because extreme than that of astronomer Fritz Earth’s atmosphere blocks X-rays, life Zwicky at CalTech University. In 1933 has been protected from occasional X- he measured the amount of light from ray flares found here close to the Sun. the entire Coma cluster of galaxies. Then he measured the speeds of the The Crab nebula and Ophiuchus XR-1 discoveries are the culmination of galaxies as they orbited the cluster about three years of rocket flights in to determine their mass. Zwicky search of X-ray sources other than our came up with a light-to-mass ratio of Sun. Our Sun doesn’t put out a lot of X- about 500. That means 99 percent rays, but it’s the closest such source in of the matter there is hidden (not the sky. The first rocket launch in 1962 giving off light). At the moment, most was designed to use its five minutes in Image Credit: NASA astronomers seem content to ignore space to observe the Moon. Riccardo An Aerobee rocket launches from Wallops such extreme numbers, being, as Giacconi and his team at the American Island, Virginia. This rocket is similar to they probably are, astronomical Science and Engineering group ex- those used in recent discoveries of cosmic flukes.♦ pected to discover Moon minerals fluo- X-ray sources such as Scorpius X-1 and, rescing in X-rays after being smacked more recently, the Crab nebula and Ophiu- and excited by heavy atomic particles chus XR-1.