Hoyle theorized that the sudden heat and pressure of exploding young stars could account for the fusion of helium molecules into carbon. However, his calculations called for the carbon to be in an "excited" state not known to exist in nature. Hoyle persuaded nuclear physicist Willy Fowler at the California Institute of Technology to look for the excited carbon. After 10 days of analyzing the carbon nucleus, Fowler found excited carbon with exactly the energy state predicted by Hoyle. With such carbon as a starter, larger atoms can be formed in stars in various stages of their history. Without intending to, Hoyle had filled in a major gap in understanding how a universe evolving from a simple hydrogen-helium beginning could form the many elements we know in stars and on earth.

Stars have a life history of eventually running low on hydrogen fuel, contracting and then exploding when the heat created by the increasing density leads to intense nuclear reactions. Cosmic dust created by these explosions can eventually coalesce into secondary bodies that again have the internal pressures and temperatures large enough to rekindle fusion of hydrogen into helium and produce long lasting stars. Our sun is considered such a secondary star. The disc of dust surrounding such stars can condense into planets such as our solar system.

As noted above, the Big Bang theory predicted that "primordial light" existed for the first 300,000 years of the youthful universe until cooling allowed the elementary particles to bond together into stable atoms. This primordial radiation should continue unchanged except that with the expansion of space its wavelength should be lengthened so that it would now be radio waves. Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson wanted to observe the radio waves emitted by stars. They needed, however, to eliminate an annoying background noise that interfered with their observations of radio waves generated by distant galaxies. They originally thought the noise was from sources on earth, but after a time realized that this noise was not local but the "cosmic microwave background" radiation long predicted but hitherto unobserved. Many scientists agreed that the finding was a big step in proving the Big Bang and they were awarded the Nobel Prize.

Advocates of the Big Bang model said that the matter created at about the 300,000th year of creation had coalesced into stars, which in turn were collected into galaxies, which were in turn grouped into regions. They said that this was caused by irregularities in the distribution of early matter that created gravitational forces that encouraged coalescence. Observations to confirm this idea were lacking and noted by critics of the theory. If, however, the cosmic background radiation were irregular it would be evidence that the posited irregularities had existed in the early universe. NASA became interested in the question and spent nearly 13 years designing, building and finally launching a satellite called COBE (cosmic background explorer). The satellite was launched in 1989 and sent back mapping data until late 1991. The map showed the anticipated irregularities for all to see.

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