The Astronomy Book

219 See also: The theory of relativity 146–53 ■ Radio astronomy 179 ■ Nuclei and radiation 185 ■ Quasars and pulsars 236–39 ■ Di ...

220 In 1962, 3C 273 was occulted, or covered, several times by the moon. By watching for the reappearance of the radio source fr ...

221 may emerge in another universe as “small bang” events. Nevertheless, as the understanding of black holes grew, the white-hol ...

AN OCEAN OF WHISPERS LEFT OVER FROM OUR ERUPTIVE CREATIONS SEARCHING FOR THE BIG BANG ...

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224 T he discovery of the universe’s “first light” is one of the most fundamental scientific findings of all time. A full 99.9 p ...

225 showed that it would have two distinguishing features. It would come from every direction in the sky, and the energy curve w ...

226 communications. In 1964, it was being used by two radio astronomers, Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias, who were trying to dete ...

227 CMB had the black-body signature of a system in thermal equilibrium, with no heat flowing from one part to another. This ast ...

THE SEARCH FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE IS A SEARCH FOR OURSELV ES LIFE ON OTHER PLANETS ...

THE SEARCH FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE IS A SEARCH FOR OURSELV ES LIFE ON OTHER PLANETS ...

230 T he Copernican principle states the working assumption that Earth is not special—it is no more than an average planet, orbi ...

231 Indeed, life may have arisen elsewhere and been transported to Earth. Greek philosopher Anaxagoras first suggested this idea ...

232 at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia, set out to look for them. Drake founded Project Oz ...

233 In 1971, Sagan approached NASA with the idea of sending a message on its Pioneer spacecraft. Sagan and Drake worked on a des ...

234 touched down on planets, such as NASA’s Viking landers on Mars, carried experiments to test for signs of life. To date, no i ...

235 In recent years, the focus of SETI has moved away from merely listening for messages. Efforts have been directed toward pick ...

236 IT HAS TO BE SOME NEW KIND OF STAR QUASARS AND PULSARS I n the late 1950s, astronomers across the world started to find myst ...

237 See also: Radio astronomy 179 ■ Supernovae 180–81 ■ Quasars and black holes 218–21 ■ Discovering black holes 254 ■ Ryle (Dir ...

238 Bell showed the signal, dubbed “Little Green Man 1” (LGM-1), to Hewish. His initial reaction was that a pulse occurring ever ...