Abstract
THE discovery of microwave background radiation by Penzias and Wilson1 is one of the most interesting events in observational astronomy in recent years. On the basis of the first observations at a single wavelength, the radiation was interpreted2 as being of the black-body type, and it was concluded that this was the remnant of the primordial radiation of a big-bang universe. Later results by different observers have strengthened this interpretation. Indeed it is now claimed3,4 that the black-body curve applies for a wavelength range of 1 : 90, and corresponds to a temperature T = 2.68° K. The observers5 go as far as to state that the exact black-body intensity curve fits the observations better than the “grey-body” approximation at long wavelengths—namely
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NARLIKAR, J., WICKRAMASINGHE, N. Interpretation of Cosmic Microwave Background. Nature 217, 1235–1236 (1968). https://doi.org/10.1038/2171235a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/2171235a0
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