From a distance, the whole site could be mistaken for an old mining camp you might come across in Montana or Idaho. They were listening to the last sigh of the Big Bang, which birthed the universe 13.8 billion years ago and is detectable now only as a faint, omnipresent hiss of microwave radiation. Up until then, scientists had debated whether the universe even had a beginning; maybe it was timeless. As important, the discovery brought the beginning of time into the lab, where it could be pinched, squeezed and dissected. The cosmic microwave background offered a new window into the nature of reality, one into which astronomers have been peering intently ever since.

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Persons: Crawford Hill, Arno Penzias, Robert Wilson, Penzias, Wilson Organizations: Historic Landmark Locations: Crawford, Monmouth County, N.J, Manhattan, Montana, Idaho