About that Vaccination...

Please
Put Your
Answer in
the Form of
a Question
Nobel Prize winner
Arno Penzias
believes questions
are the answer
by Nick Pleatsikas
An older man adjusts the microphone in front of him while the Great
Hall, packed with students, teachers, and parents, waits. “I would like to
answer some questions,” he says. “Talks are only as good as the questions.”
Arno Allan Penzias, age 81, refers to a PowerPoint presentation
featuring questions laid over images of the cosmos. His daughter stands adjacent to
the podium, directing her father toward questions on the PowerPoint. When asked
what it was like to arrive in the U.S. after leaving Nazi Germany in 1940, Penzias
responds, “I got out with my life, and the moment I got here, they stopped telling you
how to think.” Penzias then dedicated his life to asking questions about the origin of
the universe, a quest he continues today.
In 1964 Penzias worked with a colleague, Robert Woodrow Wilson, on a project
to use microwave receivers for radio-astronomy. They were measuring radiation
coming from the background of the universe.
Penzias and Wilson tried to understand why the background radiation existed. A
colleague suggested the anomalous readings might come from background radiation
created at the beginning of the universe, as proposed by some theories. If the universe
had background temperature and radiation, it would have to have been caused
by a massive release of energy as opposed to the universe being infinite, as it had
been assumed by scientists before. This would later become known as the Big Bang.
This was a massive discovery. Science could finally explain where the universe
came from, that it was not “always infinite,” as many in the scientific community believed.
By simply asking “why?,” Penzias and his collaborators had solved one of the
biggest mysteries of the universe.
In 1978 after publishing several papers on their discoveries, Penzias and Wilson
were awarded the Nobel Physics Prize: “I found out like anyone else does. Someone
calls you early in the morning.”
Penzias’s questions about the origin of life in the universe led him and colleagues
to additional discoveries. Water: a basic component for life on earth--previously assumed
to be rare in the universe--was in fact quite abundant. As Penzias remarked,
“the Universe is exquisitely tuned for the creation of life.”
Penzias admits there are many things he still doesn’t understand, but he hopes
people will keep asking questions. “Is it worth spending time thinking about questions
science can’t answer?” asked science teacher Josh Tropp. Penzias’s response was
direct: “How do you know you can’t answer them?”
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