must be some connection between music and the workings of the heavens, was based on the mystical numerology of philosophers like pythagoras. ironically, even though their explicit declarations of rational orbits analogizing the relative lengths of harmonious strings was wrong, their instinct was correct. while there isn't really a music of the spheres, there is a song of the universe, a steady hum that you hear no matter where you turn your ear, or rather, your microwave detector. that's what robert wilson and arno penzias discovered in the mid-1960s at bell labs. they aimed a radio antenna at the sky and noticed that no matter where they pointed it, they received the same steady microwave signal, which sounded like static. with the help of some princeton physicists, they realized that this wasn't any old static, rather it was very likely to be the spectral remnants of the big bang, the leftover vibrations from that initial explosion of densely packed energy that presumably gave us our universe. for this discovery of the cosmic microwave background, penzias and wilson received the nobel pri