In 1964, radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were troubled by a persistent, low-frequency buzz emanating from their Crawford Hill horn antenna. Regardless of where they pointed the instrument in the night sky, or how meticulously they scrubbed the telescope of nesting pigeons and their debris, the static remained. The researchers initially assumed the noise was an instrumental malfunction or a local disturbance. However, Princeton physicist Robert Dicke, upon learning of their predicament, recognized the noise not as a local nuisance, but as the long-sought cosmic microwave background radiation—the thermal echo of the Big Bang itself.
Based on the passage, what is the primary rhetorical function of the highlighted sentence ("Regardless of where... the static remained")?
- It emphasizes the researchers' diligent efforts to eliminate potential local causes for the interference before concluding it had a cosmic origin.Cevap
- BIt describes the physical habitat of the wildlife surrounding the Crawford Hill antenna to explain why the telescope failed.
- CIt explains the mechanical process by which cosmic microwave background radiation interacts with radio antennas.
- DIt transitions the passage from a serious discussion of physics to a humorous critique of the researchers' amateur methods.