Background noise and Nobel prizes

By Bob Gariano

The leadership of a research and development team is one of the most difficult managerial roles in business. The person who runs such a team must maintain a vital interface between the demands for results that are an inherent part of a commercial enterprise and the freedom to discover new knowledge and invent new ideas. The ability to meld these two environments takes wisdom and persuasiveness. It also takes the courage to provide researchers with the room and resources needed to discover new things.

In the late 1950’s, Bell Labs was experimenting with equipment that could be used to economically relay microwaves over long distances. Such microwaves could be used to transmit enormous amounts of information efficiently and accurately. One such scheme involved using metallic coated, high altitude balloons as relay stations to bounce wireless communication signals across the continent or ocean. By collecting and amplifying signals reflected from the balloons, it was thought that microwaves could be used for both data and voice communications transmissions. As part of this effort, Bells Labs built a large, highly sensitive micro wave antenna in Holmdel, New Jersey to study the requirements of such long distance, low strength signals. The system was aptly named Echo.

In the early 1960’s, missile and satellite technology made the Echo concept obsolete. The new Telstar satellites not only received microwave transmissions, but they also amplified and retransmitted the signals back to receiving stations on the ground. In this way a whole new network using satellite communications was begun. The idea of bouncing signals off a metallic balloon suddenly looked archaic and primitive.

Nevertheless, the big Bell Labs Holmdel microwave antenna was still available for research work. It caught the eye of two Bell Laboratory researchers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson. They suggested that the antenna could be used to study microwave radiation that was bombarding the earth from outer space. Their bosses at Bell Labs felt that this research, while a bit theoretical, might be useful in eliminating unwanted interference from their new wireless communications networks. Other than that, they did not see much practical value in studying low strength signals that were characteristic of an obsolete balloon based network.

The two researchers must have indeed been an odd couple. Penzias was born in Munich in 1933. In 1939 he and his family were deported to Poland. Fearing the worst from the new German regime, the family made their way to the US after a circuitous and dangerous journey. The family settled in New York City.  Arno Penzias studied physics at City College of New York and went on to do his graduate work at Columbia. In contrast, Robert Wilson, his partner on the antenna project, grew up in the oil fields around Houston, Texas where his father was a drilling engineer. Always interested in the new field of electronics, Wilson studied at Rice and then went to California Institute of Technology for his graduate work. Thrown together by Bell Labs, the two became fast friends and set about to use the Holmdel antenna as their own personal astronomical observatory.

The two were aware that the intensity of microwave radiation decreases with lower wavelengths and the antenna itself was designed to minimize instrument noise. The two decided to study waves at the 7 centimeter wavelength, which, theoretically, should have eliminated almost all noise from the system. These signals occur at about the same wavelength as TV signals so their characteristics are well understood.

In spite of all their precautions, Penzias and Wilson could not get the machine to work correctly. They were surprised by the high level of background noise that was a consistent part of the measurements. Some scientists have said that this noise was similar to the “snow” that a person sees on a television screen when the set is turned on but not connected to an antenna or cable. The screen never goes completely black. In the same way, the antenna never stopped registering this unexpectedly high level of background noise.

The two researchers began a painstaking process to find out what they were doing wrong and to eliminate this error. They pointed the antenna into different regions of the sky but the noise persisted. They patiently waited as the earth cycled through its yearly orbit but the noise was constant.  They eliminated the signals that were coming from nearby New York City, but the noise was still there. They even climbed inside the big antenna’s ear and evicted pigeons living there. The noise was still not eliminated.

At about this same time, Robert Dicke, a researcher at Princeton was investigating the theories that described the beginnings of our universe. According to these theories, there was a clear suggestion that the universe started with a “big bang”, some 15 billion years ago. The only obstacle to this theory’s acceptance was a distinct lack of evidence in today’s universe for such a momentous event. There must certainly be some residual evidence, if the theory was to make sense and be generally embraced. Dicke was looking for this evidence when Penzias and Wilson contacted his lab to get help with their misbehaving antenna. Dicke immediately recognized that the noise was not instrument error at all. The noise that the two were hearing from the instrument was indeed the echo of the theoretical “big bang” that was still rattling around our universe. The universe is filled with this cosmic background radiation because the radiation is the echo of the original “big bang”.

In 1978, Penzias and Wilson were awarded the Nobel Prize for physics for discovering cosmic background radiation. This radiation was the final evidence needed to legitimize the modern theory of cosmology involving the origins of the universe. Cosmic background radiation is one of the pillars of modern evidence that supports physicists’ ideas about how our universe was formed.

I do not believe that their supervisors at Bell Labs could have possibly predicted this outcome from Penzias and Wilson as they watched the two scientists struggle to account for the anomalies in their experiments. We can only imagine what the management was thinking when the two climbed into the antenna to clear away the pigeon nests. It must have taken a certain degree of patience and political air cover to keep the two assigned to their work while other research was being put to more practical use to build the new wireless communications network.

The lesson from this story is that new knowledge and invention is almost never a straight line process. It is a surprisingly circuitous affair with unexpected outcomes and little opportunity for business strategy and quarterly results. Nevertheless, most successful technology companies have provided their best and brightest researchers and scientists with the elbow room and resources to pursue new ideas that do not have an immediate commercial payoff. In the case of Penzias and Wilson, Bell Labs provided this room and their work allowed us to explain how our universe began.