Data Make Sense Only In Light Of Theory Summary

In the article "The Origin of Chemical Elements," the prediction that Alpher, Bethe, and Gamow were making, from what I understand, they were trying to suggest that because of the way the neutron gases were compressed at such a high density when the universe was made that they were boiling hot and they needed time to cool. The original idea (that they show side by side with their hypothesis) was that the universe expanded from these gases due to a cooling of temperatures, but they suggest that it also took a great deal of time for the gasses to cool. Thus electrons and protons emerged from the cooling neutron gases as the universe expanded.

In the article "Data Makes Sense Only in Light of Theory”, Penzias and Wilson made a discovery using

At the time there was very little research in cosmology and what was available was limited. They were originally trying to increase the accuracy of existing measurements of radio sources in the Milky Way.

Robert Dicke and James Peebles came up with a theory of an expanding and contracting universe, much like the article written by Alpher, Herman, and Gamow. However Dicke and Peebles could not find any evidence backing the previous theory. So in search of proof they contacted Penzias and Wilson about their mystery noise. They had detected evidence for a relic blackbody radiation in agreement with the Big Bang theory rather than the temperatures and radio sources in space.

The first scientists that came up with the theory Alpher, Herman, and Gamow were not credited for their work, because the scientific community felt the hypothesis uncertain. Later Dicke and Peebles published a similar theory just to find out the first one had been buried with a lack of emphasis on their calculations. In 1965 when the theory was proved in the Astrophysical Journal they merely mentioned the first article, not really crediting them for the original theory. If the four (Dicke, Peebles, Penzias, and Wilson) had only contacted Alpher, Herman, and Gamow, and compared their ideas and observations they may have made a much bigger discovery working as a team. Instead they each worked individually. Great minds may think alike, but pride can always get in the