If you walk in the halls of the National Air and Space Museum, in one of the most famous sections, you’ll see a bird cage, next to it a pigeon wearing shades and a pearl necklace. A pigeon involved in one of the most important discoveries of the world of cosmology, Gisele.
In 1964, Crawford Hill, NJ there lived the most intelligent and wonderful pigeon, Gisele. They said she was Athena, the Goddess of wisdom, reincarnated. When she was born the fortune tellers told her parents she would unlock the mysteries of the universe. And so she did.
Gisele was a goofy girl growing up, but curious and persistent. Why, was her favorite word and how, was the word she would dream of every night. At the age of 1 she got into the prestigious University of Goosewestern and at the age of 2 she mastered her knowledge of physics and astronomy. After dedicating half of her life learning about the universe, she had to fly away and push her boundaries because Goosewestern wasn’t enough. Gisele’s question was more fundamental than anything she has ever learned. Where do we come from? How was our universe made? Were we all in a nutshell, pupping out when there was not enough space for us? Were we born out of a Cat-Deity sneezing us out of her nose? Or is the universe all an image inside a gigantic black hole? She had to know.
After befriending the mice system of New Jersey she learned where the brilliant scientists live. So she would fly around, finding them, and listen and learn. For days and weeks and months. She wouldn’t care about nice worm food or healthy cheetos-flavoured-bugs. Her food was knowledge.
Until one day she visits some Princeton University Astrophysicists. She heard them discussing the origin of the universe. At the time, there were two possible explanations. One was the Steady-State Theory, believing the universe had always existed. There is no beginning and no end. The other is the Big Bang Theory, that the universe was born out of something like an explosion. They discussed that if the big bang is true, the explosion has released radiations everywhere, and if we listen carefully we should be able to hear it.
Gisel couldn’t believe her ears. Are we the children of a cosmic firework? An explosion? Is this why she has a flame of curiosity that burns her, every moment of every day? If it’s true, there must be evidence. How can we carefully listen to the birth of the universe? “I will find that ear and I will listen”. Motivated and excited, Gisele started her mission of finding the ultimate ear. Lucky for her, recently two scientists, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson have moved to New Jersey with a huge horn-shaped antenna, to listen to radio waves bouncing off the satellites. Nothing even remotely related to the big bang theory.
The Holmdel Horn Antenna
Gisele, knew she found a potential ear to hear the universe’s first cry. She made a nest on the antenna and waited. To find these radio waves from satellites, Arno and Robert had to get rid of any background noise. So they cooled down the temperature of the antenna to get rid of any noise caused by the heat and they got rid of the radio signals, but in their data, there was a consistent background noise at every direction. They thought maybe it’s the Sun, but the noise was there at night, maybe it’s the Milky Way galaxy, but it’s from every direction. Maybe the antenna is dirty!
But Gisele, her home, and her research. She couldn’t just leave and give up learning about the noise. What if the noise….this constant background noise, that is everywhere, is actually the universe’s big bang radiation? So she stayed.
Arno and Robert found her, and they knew they have to get rid of her, they threatened her, they tried to capture her in a cage, bullied her…but she’d always come back. She was sure, she unlocked the evidence for the theory of big bang but she had no way of letting Arno and Robert know. She exploded poop all around the antenna, though Arno and Robert were not very good at symbolic conversations. No poop explosion could make them understand that this was the evidence for the universe’s explosion. Giese could not leave. She stayed.
“But we can’t kill her…” said Arno. Robert was determined but sad. “We have no other way”. Wilson took the gun. Climbed the stairs, to the ear, to Gisele, to the pigeon that unlocked the evidence for the birth of universe. She was sitting there, knowing what is coming for her. One more explosion, she pooped, and Robert, came as close as possible, looked into her eyes, and pulled the trigger.
Gisele was gone. Some time after, one of Robert and Arno’s friends told them about the paper on the evidence of the big bang. They figure out that what they have been hearing might be the evidence that other scientists have been looking for. Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of evidence for the Big Bang theory. But in their heart, they knew that Gisele was there to help them. It all made sense now, the poop, the constant explosions of poop. They were too blind to see it.
Today, if you walk in the halls of the National Air and Space Museum, in one of the most famous sections, you’ll see a bird cage, next to it a pigeon wearing shades and a pearl necklace. A pigeon involved in one of the most important discoveries of the world of cosmology, Gisele.