A fascinating and extensive recounting of the technical achievements 
of the Soviet Union and of what was lost due to its demise.Worth 
looking at.

           http://www.geocities.com/jefferywinkler/sovietunion.html
&        http://www.geocities.com/jefferywinkler/sovietunion2.html


        RM
________________


When I have read in the past about the discovery of the cosmic 
background radiation by researchers using the Bell Lab horn antenna at 
Crawford Hill it has always been said that the researchers were 
puzzled by inexplicable background noise and ultimately found that it 
was coming from "the sky". This article states that -

    "One of the most prominent Soviet physicists was Yakov B. 
Zel'dovich who was a professor of astrophysics at Moscow University 
and director of the theoretical group at the Institute of Physical 
Problems at Moscow. Zel'dovich was a member of the Soviet Academy of 
Sciences and a foreign member of both the Royal Society of London and 
the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Zel'dovich was one of those who 
first theorized the existence of the microwave background radiation of 
the Universe. He carried out the calculation that showed that in order 
to explain the observed abundances of hydrogen, helium, and deuterium 
in the Universe, it must have started in a hot Big Bang and have a 
temperature of a few K today. Another Soviet researcher, Yu N. Smirnov 
calculated a background temperature in the range of 1 to 30 K and 
jumping off of Smirnov's calculations, A.G. Dorshkevich and I. D. 
Novikov wrote a paper discussing the implications of various existing 
radio astronomy measurements in terms of microwave background. They 
concluded that the best antennae in the world for a search for this 
radiation was the Bell Lab antennae at Crawford Hill, and they 
suggested that it be used for this purpose."

 

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