Roughly 13.8 billion years ago, scientists think the universe expanded from a very high-density and high-temperature state in an event known as the Big Bang. They reach this conclusion based on a broad range of phenomena, including the abundance of light elements, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, large-scale clusters in space and Edwin Hubble’s observation that galaxies are moving away from Earth. But scientists made an accidental breakthrough in this theory in the Sixties, giving it far more credibility, Amazon Prime’s “The Mystery of Dark Matter” revealed.
The narrator explained: “The universe was an extremely hot magma and so condensed that it formed a milky fog in which light particles were unable to propagate.
“But, after 380,000 years, it expanded and cooled sufficiently for light particles to be able to move around.
“Then a gigantic flash of light spread through space, beginning a long journey.
“13.8 billion years later, in 1964, two scientists in New Jersey, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, intercepted this light by chance.
“They picked up some background noise that they couldn’t explain.”
The series went on to explain how the pair thought they had made a mistake.
It added: “The signal was so weak that they thought it was a defect in their radio telescope due to pigeon droppings.
“They cleaned the antenna and did the necessary tests and they were indeed waves from this primordial light.
“Deformed and cooled after their long journey through space, they had finally reached Earth in the form of a very weak radio signal.
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David Spergel, an astrophysicist who was part of the team that originated the WMAP mission and designed the spacecraft, explained how he pieced together the universe’s history.
He said during the same show: “What’s wonderful about studying the microwave background is you’re looking back in time, back 13.7 billion years to a tie when the universe was very simple.
“So I like to think of it as taking the universe’s baby picture.
“And my job is to look at the baby picture and try to figure out from the picture where the baby came from, and what will it grow up into.
“I have to put together a story of how the universe formed and evolved.”
The series then revealed a photo of what the universe may have looked like in its early days.
The narrator explained: “Here is the first picture of this baby universe, a mere 380,000 years after the Big Bang.
“The red zones are the hottest and densest parts, the blue zones are the coolest.
“These minuscule differences in temperature are vital clues in understanding the future structure of the universe.”