The Accidental Birth of Radio Astronomy

Sometimes the biggest scientific discoveries arise from technicians simply trying to do their job. This was certainly the case for one of the key astronomical discoveries of the past century: the 1933 detection of radio waves from outer space. This accidental discovery gave birth to the field of radio astronomy and the subsequent detection of the most distant and most powerful phenomena in the universe: quasars, pulsars, and the cosmic microwave background. The Milky Way and the Cosmic Microwave...