The Big Bang

"Big things have small beginnings." All right, so that's actually a quote from Michael Fassbender in (Prometheus,) but nothing could be more true for radio astronomer duo Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias.

The secret to discovering the prevailing theory to how the universe was made began with noise, like common radio static. In 1964, while working with the Holmdel antenna in New Jersey, the two astronomers discovered a background noise that left them perplexed. After ruling out possible interference from urban areas, nuclear tests, or pigeons living in the antenna, Wilson and Penzias came across an explanation with Robert Dicke's theory that radiation leftover from a universe-forming big bang would now act as background cosmic radiation.

In fact, only 37 miles from the Holmdel antenna at Princeton University, Dicke and his team had been searching for this background radiation. When he heard the news of Wilson and Penzias' discovery, he famously told his research partners, "well boys, we've been scooped." Penzias and Wilson would go on to receive the Nobel Prize.