it, enougo begin tions t create ter elements—principally  one atom in a es, 98 percent of all tter t is a place of t ifying possibility,and beautiful, too. And it  time it takes to make a sandwich.

    ter of some debate. Cosmologists  of creation  or someto be  13.7 billion years, but toriously difficult to measure, as  at some indeterminate point in tant past, for reasons unkno knoo science as t = 0. e were on our way.

    t deal  kno kno ion of te arecent one. tre, aBelgian priest-sc tentatively proposed it, but it didn’t really become an activenotion in cosmology until tronomers made anextraordinary and inadvertent discovery.

    t ilson. In 1965, trying to make useof a large communications antenna oories at troubled by a persistent background noise—a steady, steamy  made anyexperimental ing and unfocused. It came from everypoint in t, tronomers dideveryto track doe tested everyelectrical system. t instruments, cs, ed plugs.

    to t tape over every seam and rivet. to t it clean of er paper as “ric material,” or ried worked.

    Unknoo t ty miles a Princeton University, a team of scientists led byRobert Dicke rying so diligently to getrid of. ton researc ed in trop George Gamo if you looked deep enougo spaceyou sion left over from ted t by time it crossed tness of tion rumentt migenna at unately, neiton team, had read Gamow’s paper.

    t Penzias and ilson ed. t least t of it, 90 billiontrillion miles a pons—t ancient ligime and distance ed to micro as