The following passage is adapted from an article about the history of science.
Paragraph 1
In , physicists Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were troubleshooting a sensitive horn antenna at Bell Labs in Holmdel, New Jersey. They were attempting to measure radio waves from the outskirts of the Milky Way galaxy, but their measurements were plagued by a persistent, low-level hiss. This background noise was isotropic—it remained constant regardless of where they pointed the antenna, and it persisted day and night, through all seasons. Initially suspecting local sources of interference, they meticulously cleaned the antenna of urban radio signals, thermal noise, and even nesting pigeons, yet the mysterious static remained.
Paragraph 2
Unbeknownst to Penzias and Wilson, a team of theoretical physicists at nearby Princeton University, led by Robert Dicke, was concurrently conceptualizing the remnants of the early universe. Dicke hypothesized that if the universe had indeed begun with a hot, dense explosion—the Big Bang—a relic of that primordial heat should still exist as low-temperature radiation filling the cosmos. The Princeton group was in the process of building their own instrument to search for this thermal echo, completely unaware that Penzias and Wilson had already detected a noise that corresponded to a temperature of about .
Paragraph 3
The resolution of the mystery came when Penzias, describing the persistent hiss to a colleague, was put in contact with Dicke. When Penzias called Princeton to discuss his measurements, Dicke famously turned to his colleagues and remarked, 'Well, boys, we’ve been scooped.' The combination of Bell Labs' empirical detection and Princeton's theoretical framework quickly led to a joint publication in , confirming the existence of the cosmic microwave background radiation. This accidental discovery provided the first definitive empirical evidence for the Big Bang theory, transforming cosmology from a speculative discipline into a rigorous observational science.
Which of the following best describes the relationship between the first and second paragraphs of the passage?
- AParagraph 1 presents a theoretical prediction about cosmic radiation, while Paragraph 2 describes the experimental verification of that prediction.
- BParagraph 1 outlines the technical specifications of a scientific instrument, while Paragraph 2 details the initial trial-and-error experiments that led to its invention.
- Paragraph 1 describes an unexplained empirical observation, while Paragraph 2 introduces a theoretical concept that provides the explanation for that observation.Answer
- DParagraph 1 details the historical origin of a scientific mystery, while Paragraph 2 documents a collaborative research project subsequently launched to solve it.