This improved our military’s ability to target Moscow with ICBMs.
My father hated the military.
• • •
The next-generation communications satellite, Telstar 1, was put in orbit in 1962.
Because the Telstar satellites required larger ground antennae, the Holmdel Horn Antenna was out of a job.
In 1964, two Bell Labs scientists began to use it as a radio telescope.
Arno Penzias studied intergalactic radio sources and Robert Wilson studied radio sources from within the Milky Way.
Since Penzias and Wilson were trying to analyze extremely weak signals, they were bothered by background noise.
Their tests showed that the noise did not come from New York City.
Nor was it thermal radiation from the ground.
Because it didn’t vary with the seasons, and appeared to be uniform in all directions, Penzias and Wilson thought it must be generated by the telescope itself.
A pair of pigeons was nesting in the telescope.
Pigeon shit is dielectric.
Penzias and Wilson captured the pigeons, relocated them thirty miles away, and scraped the shit out of the telescope.
Pigeons are pigeons: they have a homing instinct.
The mating pair came back and nested in the telescope again.
Penzias and Wilson took a shotgun and killed the pigeons.
Years later, Penzias remembered that it was Wilson’s decision to shoot the pigeons.
Wilson remembered that it was Penzias’s decision.
Scientists are human.
• • •
Getting rid of the pigeons failed to get rid of the background radio noise.
This noise had an equivalent temperature of approximately three degrees above absolute zero.
It was driving Penzias and Wilson crazy.
Penzias related his troubles to a friend.
This friend had read a preprint paper from a Big Bang theorist named Jim Peebles.
The Big Bang theory had not yet been widely accepted, partly because no one knew how to test for it.
Peebles suggested in his paper that one way to test for it would be to look for the radiation remaining from the original explosion.
This radiation would emanate from all directions and, after 13.7 billion years of redshifting, it would have an equivalent temperature of approximately three degrees above absolute zero.
Peebles and his colleagues were planning to set up an experiment to test this theory.
Penzias called Peebles and said, “Don’t bother.”
In 1978, Penzias and Wilson were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.
• • •
Pigeons mate for life, and so, alas, did my parents.
I am my parents’ son.
But echoes can rebound in unexpected ways.
At this moment, every cubic centimeter of space in the universe has approximately three hundred photons passing through it that are a remnant of the Big Bang.
A poet might call this the leftover cry of the universe being born.
In 1965, when my mother was stuck in the house with me, and my father was out in the yard hoping to see Telstar 2 fly over, I sometimes looked at the static on the TV screen when it was tuned to a dead channel.
Approximately 1 percent of that static was the echo of the birth of the universe, dancing in front of my eyes in the form of tiny silver spheres.
If only I had known.
Instead, I turned the dial to watch Lost in Space.
August 21, 2017
On the interstate out of St. Louis, Saskia reads laughing the electronic message board set up on the verge. “Solar Eclipse Today. No Photographing While Driving.”
“You’d think that would be obvious,” he says.
“That’s why it’s funny.” Her mission, should she choose to accept it: train him to get a joke faster. They’re heading for the town of St. Clair. They had a number of choices, but the forecast called for clouds around the time of the eclipse and St. Clair promised luck. “You don’t believe in luck,” she said, when he suggested it.
“I don’t, but there’s a great story about Niels Bohr, or maybe it was Freeman Dyson—”
“The horseshoe. You’ve already told me that one.”
“It’s a great story.”
“It is.” She could tell he was dying to tell it again, but he’s getting better about that. Now she’s looking up the eponymous saint on her phone. (He’s driving. Being a passenger still makes him nervous. Her mission, should she choose . . . ) “Saint Clare of Assisi,” she announces. “Hm, different spelling. Maybe a French-English thing.” She skims. “Yeah, this is the right gal . . . Looks like she first had the idea of devoting herself to Christ right around the time her parents wanted her to marry.”
“A familiar theme.”
“Another fun fact, she’s the patron saint of television.”
He’s silent for several seconds. Then he says, “We can change the focus to a soft blur, or sharpen it to crystal clarity.”
“The Outer Limits.”
“Saint Clare, clarity—get it?”
“I got it.”
“That show scared the crap out of me when I was a kid.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
In St. Clair, the service station next to the interstate is packed. A farmer is hawking watermelons for five dollars apiece off a flatbed truck. It’s 10:30 a.m., ninety degrees. In the town center locals have set up booths in their front yards and are selling lemonade, baked goods, balloons, ice cream, eclipse glasses. The streets are packed with heat-stunned pedestrians trying to figure out how to have fun. “This is great,” Saskia says. “Let’s stop for a few minutes.”
A church is charging $25 for Eclipse Parking in its lot. He makes a puzzled comment, then parks on the other side of the street for free. Saskia wanders around soaking up the atmosphere. “Eclipse cookies!”
“Aren’t those just half moon cookies?”
“Read the sign, dummy.”
Saskia talks to a couple of people and finds out that the town council voted to hold a three-day music festival to take advantage of their position in the path of totality. Now they’re hoping to repeat the festival every year. “Good luck with that,” Mark says to them.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Saskia says, as they walk away, “traditions have to start somehow.”
“This town is in the middle of nowhere.”
“Says the man who lives in Ithaca, New York.”
“From the vantage point of New York City I guess all towns look alike.”
“From those giddy heights, yes.”
They get back in the car and head east out of town. Mark
