PIGEON INTRUDERS

IN 1965, American astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were using a radio telescope to study t he Universe when they saw a l ot of static interference ( l i ke a bad connection on a video call).

They thought it might be caused by pigeon droppings, as there were two pigeons nesting in their telescope. But when they caught the pigeons, the noise didn’t stop. Eventually, the t wo men realised they were hearing the echo of cosmic microwave background radiation — evidence for the Big Bang. When we look at the stars, we look back in t i me because the light from stars travels at the speed of light and takes time to reach us. The next nearest star to our Sun is known as Proxima Centauri and is more than four years older t han we see it now.