While doing tests and experiments with theHolmdel Horn Antenna atBell Labs inHolmdel Township, New Jersey, Wilson and Penzias discovered a source of noise in the atmosphere that they could not explain.[3] After removing all potential sources of noise, including pigeon droppings on the antenna, the noise was finally identified as CMB, which served as important corroboration of theBig Bang theory.
In 1970, Wilson led a team that made the first detection of a rotational spectral line of carbon monoxide (CO) in an astronomical object, theOrion Nebula, and eight other galactic sources.[4] Subsequently,CO observations became the standard method of tracing cool molecular interstellar gas, and detection of CO was the foundational event for the fields of millimeter andsubmillimeter astronomy.
^ab"Robert Woodrow Wilson / Biographical".My thesis project was to have been hydrogen-line interferometry, but when the first plans for a local oscillator system didn't work out, I used the galactic survey as the basis for my thesis.John Bolton returned to Australia before I completed my Ph.D.Maarten Schmidt, who had previously done galactic research and was currently working on quasars, saw me through the last months of thesis work. I remained at Caltech for an additional year as a postdoctoral fellow to finish several projects in which I was involved.
^Nobel Lectures, Physics 1971–1980, Editor Stig Lundqvist, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, 1992.Autobiography on Nobelprize.org. Accessed March 15, 2011. "We still live in the house in Holmdel which we bought when I first came to Bell Laboratories."
Cite Video | BBC/WGBH Boston | Nova #519 | A Whisper From Space | Copyright 1978 | Available With Permission | Consolidated Aircraft – Ronkonkoma, New York
